7 Personal Essays You Need To Read This Week: "Asian Accents," Microaggressions, And Rihanna

Chelsea Harris, who plays a recurring character on the CBS police drama Stalker, wrote about "leaving the Weave Protection Program." Her essay touches on diversity in television and the acting industry's changing ideas about beauty. Read it at BuzzFeed Ideas.

Grace Su is a Taiwanese-American actress who can't do an "Asian accent." But what is an "Asian accent" anyway? In her essay, Su writes about being more selective about potential roles and avoiding stereotypical characters. Read it at BuzzFeed Ideas.

For many people, to be “chill” is to be desirable in the world of modern dating. According to Alana Massey, however, "it is a garbage virtue that will destroy the species." Read her piece against "chill" at Medium.

Racism doesn’t vanish the moment one sets foot into the ivory towers and glittering soirees of the literati. Saeed Jones writes about being black in the literary world and the microaggressions he has experienced. Read it at BuzzFeed LGBT.

Before Empire and How to Get Away With Murder, there were shows like As the World Turns and Sunset Beach. Writer Aaron Foley remembers the daytime soap operas of yesteryear and the many complex black characters whose storylines have become lost to history. Read it at The Atlantic.

Doreen St. Felix analyzes Rihanna's love of money and how the pop singer's wealth actually symbolizes material liberation. In the writer's own words, "The tower of cash is ... an expression of a bad bitch’s increasing girth against social enclosure. Cash collapses her image, her life, and her music in one." Read it at Pitchfork.

Jane Marie writes about motherhood, how she felt compelled to be a "Supermom," and how she realized that maintaining her own identity ultimately makes her a better mother. Read it at Jezebel.