A Year in Tears is a 366-day exploration of crying.
It is a broad and intimate archive of emotional release—what moves us, what undoes us, and what finally lets us heal. Each month collects voices, real and imagined, around a feeling, turning the kaleidoscope of how we come to shed tears.
Inspired by the crystal structure of salt, these cards can be rearranged and slotted together into structures. Create fortifications from vulnerability. Allow raw emotions to take up the space they need. A Year in Tears invites you to see crying as clarity rather than collapse.
With something in our eyes,
Sooyoung Yang & Margaret Sun
We Thank The Following for Their Stories:
Jing Cai, Bhavna Chandramouli, Aimee Chang, Peggy Chen, Youmin Choi, Simone Chu, Aislinn Devlin, Rosie Han, Jessica Hische, Randy Hunt, Spencer Isaacs, Julia Jung, Bobae Johnson, Caroline Kubacki, Vivian Lee, Chris Leow, Shuni Liang, Cat McDonnell, Samyuktha Narayanan, Simran Shah, Lily She, Taranjeet Singh, Andrea Song, Jiaqi Sun, Winter Sun, Lance Tan, Joyce Tian, Rachel Ticas, Janine Toro, Isabel Webre, Kyle Wiessinger, Ying Ying, Yulan Zhang
Quotes from literature and film are credited on their respective cards. Select passages were developed in collaboration with OpenAI’s ChatGPT, drawing from a broad base of publicly available texts. All outputs were curated, and edited by the authors to align with A Year in Tears’ vision and intent.
Special Thanks to Our Lifesavers:
Youmin Choi, Andrea Song, and Huy Nguyen from the Visible Futures Lab
Tremendous Gratitude to:
Warren Lehrer