‘My Ancestors Speak to Me’: The Week 9 Winner of Our Summer Reading Contest

Our annual Summer Reading Contest invites teenagers around the world to tell us what New York Times pieces get their attention and why. This week, the ninth of our 10-week challenge, we received 1,263 entries. Thank you to everyone who participated, and congratulations to our winner, Ming-Li Sabina Wolfe, as well as to the runners-up and honorable mentions we honor below.

Scroll down to take a look at the variety of topics that caught the eyes of our participants, including the Maui wildfires, the Pittsburgh synagogue trial, a recent paper that reveals women were hunters too, and why “Barbie” and Taylor Swift won the summer. You can read the work of all of our winners since 2017 in this column.

(Note to students: If you are one of this week’s winners and would like your last name published, please have a parent or guardian complete our permission form [PDF] and send it to us at LNFeedback@nytimes.com.)

Winner

Ming-Li Sabina Wolfe, 16, from Brooklyn, N.Y., selected the obituary “Astrud Gilberto, 83, Dies; Shot to Fame With ‘The Girl From Ipanema’” and wrote:

In 1951, my grandfather’s family moved from China to Brazil. He left after one year to study in the U.S., but his parents stayed until 1975. When “Getz/Gilberto” was released, my great-grandparents mailed the record to my grandfather, which he played while writing love notes to his girlfriend — my future grandmother.

When Gilberto released “The Astrud Gilberto Album,” his parents sent it again, but this time to my married grandparents’ home in Connecticut. From then on, their Sundays were spent cleaning to “Corcovado” and “Dindi.”

This summer, 58 years later and two years since my grandfather’s death, my grandmother came to visit my mom and me. Their record player had sat in our closet for decades, but when she arrived, we dusted it off. She sat and played those records on repeat. Like Farber mentioned, Gilberto can “evoke images of summers imagined or lost.”

The other night, my grandmother, mother and I were walking in the East Village when we heard the familiar chords of “Agua de Beber.” I realized then that music is transient, not singularly tied to lonely moments next to a record player or cool summer nights surrounded by family. Through art, the living and the dead are lost in a dance. My ancestors speak to me through the art of a dead singer, while I repeat their mistakes.

Lately, I’ve been wondering, “What is a life’s work?” It’s one that keeps people alive and Gilberto has raised three generations.

Runners-Up

Allen W. on “Move Over, Men: Women Were Hunters, Too”

Dingzhong on “O’Shae Sibley’s ‘Expression Was Turned Into Resistance’”