PDF version - Scripps College

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[our mission]:
Our Sound Magazine is a biannual literary magazine dedicated to serving marginalized
communities at Scripps College. We aim to create a space for expression by accepting submissions of art, photography, prose, and poetry from members of these communities and their
allies. As an intersectional publication, we focus on issues of race, ethnicity, gender, class, sexuality, difference, and identity. Through the permanence of published work, we will document
the marginalized voices at Scripps and spark dialogue. These pages are your space, and we
hope you will share with us your truth.
in remembrance of Dean Bekki Lee:
As we worked on our first issue, we kept Dean Lee’s legacy in mind. While she served the
Scripps community, she supported marginalized groups on campus, showing solidarity
through not only her words but also her actions. Her dedication to making Scripps a
better community for all of us will be remembered, and we hope that this magazine will
contribute to her vision for inclusivity and diversity at Scripps.
photo from Scripps College
/ / l e t te r f r o m t he
e d it o r s :
Dear Reader,
The conception for Our Sound came from the realization that for all the talking we do at Scripps,
about “difficult dialogues” and issues of color, gender, sexuality, class, and difference, marginalized
communities aren’t heard nearly enough. There
wasn’t a space to tell our stories on the undeniable
permanence of paper, to be able to express our experiences and have other people hold that in their
hands—so we decided to change that.
You are holding a collection of voices that are not,
nor aim to be, part of the mainstream narrative.
Instead, this magazine is a separate space for our
communities, where we can share the stories that
may otherwise be lost in the disproportionately
loud voices of the overrepresented.
The publication of this magazine results from a
culmination of effort: from our editorial team,
from Yuka over at SCORE, and from members
and leaders of the groups we aim to serve. In short,
Alexa Muniz
this magazine was created by a community, here at
Scripps—and that is perhaps the greatest outcome
of this project.
In creating Our Sound, we hoped to not only
showcase the voices of marginalized groups, but to
build connections between groups; we wanted this
publication to be a collaborative effort. We wanted
to create solidarity in the binding of these pages, to
find community in a myriad of experiences. As you
read the submissions, we hope that you appreciate
not only the kaleidoscopic range of perspectives,
but also the shared humanity underneath them.
Thank you for your readership, and thank you for
your solidarity.
On behalf of the Our Sound team,
Catherine Chiang
Aida Villarreal-Licona
Pamela Ng
Grace Xue
Vivienne Muller
{table of contents}
in the beginning / Megan Elise Gianniny
2
do i define identity? or does it define me? / Amelia Hamiter
4
intersection of mom and asian american experiences in literature / Rona Chong
5
flora / Stephanie Huang
8
poverty—more than just about money / Xitlally Sanchez
11 untitled / Shane Zackery
12 american daydream / Pamela Ng
16eyelids / Joanne Chern
18 the brown girl / Alexa Muniz
19 ambiguously queer / Anonymous
20 morning routine / Lizzie Kumar
21 half & half / Lizzie Kumar
22 the syntactical life / Victoria Nguyen
24untitled / Yuka Ogino
25 existentialism at bedtime / Shane Zackery
27inlifebetween / Vivienne Muller
31 going home / Catherine Chiang
32lines / Aida Villarreal-Licona
33home / Grace Xue
1
s t a f f & c o n t r i bu t e r s
editorial board:
with contributions from:
Catherine Chiang
Vivienne Muller
Alexa Muniz
Pamela Ng
Aida Villarreal-Licona
Grace Xue
joanne chern
rona chong
megan elise gianniny
amelia hamiter
stephanie huang
lizzie kumar
victoria nguyen
yuka ogino
xitlally sanchez
shane zackery
acknowledgements:
Thank you to SCORE (Scripps Communities of Resources and Empowerment) for providing the funding that makes this publication
possible, and to Yuka, for giving us the tools to get this first issue off the ground. We’re grateful for the support and
encouragement of the Scripps community. Lastly, thank you to Pam Ng, SCORE Arts & Activism Intern, for her unwavering support.
in the beginning/megan gianniny
An eighth grade theatre class was where it all began:
We met each other as writers ­– wannabe novelists –
we both felt that we had stories to tell
We came out
each in our own ways
me on myspace
her to her mother
But there was a boy who caught my eye too
and maybe my heart, just for a little while
So nothing ever happened with her
But we stayed friends
Calling each other
‘Angel’ and ‘Mimi’
after our favorite Rent characters
and when the end of the year came around
we chose to write a scene together
“you pick a character,
and I’ll pick a character,
and we’ll see what happens”
It took us a little while to realize
we’d both picked gay characters
and so a scene was born:
Two strange women in a room together.
Why are they there?
How did they get there?
It turned into something more –
Two women kidnapped out of hate,
A scene full of fear.
Both dead at the end,
A crime full of hate
We didn’t intend it to be so dark,
we just wrote what felt real,
wrote out our fears.
I mean, we were young –
lots of friends were depressed,
death felt close, grief felt near,
and we were both a little scared
of ourselves.
1
do i define identity? or does it define me?
/amelia hamiter
“Identity” is a ginormous concept – bigger, it seems at times, than the individuals it
attempts to define! There are so many facets
of my identity – “I’m a straight cis-gendered
biracial female college student” might be a
summary in some contexts. In other instances,
it might be “I’m a liberal-arts-educated Christian left-wing millennial” or “I’m a pre-health
college student attending college in Southern California.” Other times it’s “I’m from
the Bay Area, I’m a sophomore at Scripps, I
think I’m an STS* major,” “I’m half Chinese
Indonesian, half European American,” “I’m a
hapa haole third culture kid,” “I’m ADD and
a science major,” “My mother’s Chinese from
Indonesia but I used to live in Thailand,” “I’m
a band kid,” “For fun I like to read, swim, and
play music,” “I’m from Concord,” “I used to
be homeschooled and now I attend a women’s
college,” or “Yes, I’m mixed.” This is just a
small selection – there are so many ways and
combinations of words I use to introduce my
identity depending on the situation. Which one
is the real answer? And how did these all get to
be possible answers in the first place?
I can’t pinpoint what formed some of
these identities (other than social and political
construct) because they happened to me. I was
born biracial, my family moved to different cities and countries when I was a kid, my dream
college ended up being in Southern California**. I probably played a larger part in the
formation of some of these identities: I want to
serve people through healthcare, throughout
school I loved both making music and my band
2
friends, and in college I decided I needed a
certain kind of spiritual fulfillment. I’m not
certain where I get some of these other identities – what exactly
makes me ADD? How can I commit to health
professional school and while in my early
twenties determine how I’ll spend the rest of
my life? Why do I admit to being obsessed with
Broadway when I was too shy to audition for
anything in high school?
Identity is highly politicized here at
Scripps, which has led me to further probe
how to present myself. To the untrained eye I
pass as white –so why do I identify as Asian
American despite my white skin privilege? I
technically have a learning disability, but I
don’t know if I identify similarly to someone
who would join DIDA***. I fulfill the technical
definition of a third culture kid, having lived in
Thailand from ages 1-5, but the years of 6-19
I’ve spent in California; while I’ve had some archetypal third culture kid experiences, I don’t
qualify for a lot of other ones and no longer
introduce myself as someone who does. Both
of my parents have Bachelor’s degrees, so I
have a good family history of college education.
Both of them came from pretty humble beginnings, though, and we live in a working-class
community where most kids just strive for twoyear college, so I too always assumed I’d stick
around and go to community college after high
school.
I still am fuzzy on the details of how I
ended up skipping the local junior college and
coming instead to the shiny bubble of class
and educational privilege that is Claremont.
(Confession: I didn’t know boarding schools
still existed in the United States until the New
Students Welcome Reception I attended right
before Orientation, and I definitely didn’t know
the term “working-class” was still in use until
I arrived.) And yet, here I am – the world of
Fulbright and Birkenstocks is now my world
(though I don’t know if I will ever participate
in either of those trends) and I need to figure
out how my identity navigates it. For the first
time I’m surrounded by large amounts of other
Chinese Americans, other feminists, other students who are really into academics, and other
kids who are American but lived internationally
– enough amounts of each that these facets of
identity are recognized in campus politics and
discourse.
While it’s been great to be engulfed in a
community that recognizes these facets of my
identity, it’s also been disconcerting as I realize
that I don’t actually fill any of those models.
I’m Chinese American by way of Indonesia, but
there isn’t a large East Asian American community in my current hometown, so I don’t
have a strong connection with those roots. I feel
strongly about feminist causes, but I believe
racism and classism are at the root of many
issues within mainstream feminism. I love being plunged into the world of scholarly papers
and fellowships, but it’s brand new to me – I
don’t think I knew college students who did
summer internships or research before coming
to Scripps – so I don’t feel like I can own it as
much as do many of my classmates.
3
political identities. I was enthused by the realization that these were all recognized as identities, something I hadn’t really seen before, but
intimidated by the belief that I didn’t truly fit
any of their definitions. This year, I’ve realized
that these facets of my being aren’t meant to fit
into pre-established boxes – identity may seem
bigger than me at times, but that doesn’t mean
it is. Rather, it grows out of my lifetime and
experiences, as a medium through which I can
express the impact they have had on me. Given that, what is a “real” answer that I can give
people when asked about my identity? None
of the above, or all? I prefer to think that there
isn’t one answer that can encompass all of me
in passing conversation. Instead, the language
I use to describe how I identify can shift as its
subject shifts and molds to fit my life.
*Science, Technology, and Society
**Broader causes for these identity facets: People
continue to try to fit everyone into racial categories,
nation-states and third culture kids are a thing, and
in 1926 Ellen Browning Scripps decided to team up
with Pomona to create a new Oxford.
**Disability, Illness, and Difference Alliance
Intersection of Mom and Asian
American Experiences in Literature
Graphic Art
By Rona Chong
4
flora/ stephanie huang
I.
The quintessential question
a boy must ask a girl, a special girl:
What’s your favorite flower?
Lilac, lavender, and lilies of the valley,
primrose, pansies, and pink peonies,
Jacob’s ladder, Lady’s mantle.
The more extravagant, the better, he thinks,
Each flower should mean something,
white chrysanthemums to say goodbye.
yellow roses for jealousy,
So caught up we are
in what it means to mean.
What does it mean to have twenty-six flecks
of pollen, rather than fourteen?
Losing ourselves in the stuff
of the microscopic sort—
yellow freckles on red skin,
orange snowstorms amid blue skies.
What does it mean when she says hello,
I think it means what it means.
rather than hi, he asks.
II.
My favorite flowers are daisies because they are
unremarkable.
They sprinkle the spring grass with snow, they
pale next to the grandiose beauty of roses in
bloom. I like to think of them as the underdog, the
wallflower—plain Jane.
5
III.
There’s this silk rose corsage I have—layers and
layers of baby pink attached to a black elastic
band. A year old, it sits atop the graceful neck of
a glass bottle, petals ready to be petted between
my forefinger and thumb. False delicacy of thin
fabric, pretense of fragility—I use it as a hair tie.
Unlike real flowers, its rosiness never subsides, its
fluttery petals, like moth-wings, never choose to
die.
Flower in my hair, I cannot say the same about
the one, with pianist’s hands, that first slipped you
onto my wrist.
IV.
Petals caught between strands, tresses snagged in
branches, yellow pollen in black hair. What drew
me to wearing garlands, to weaving daisy chains,
was just the same as what drew me to faeries and
nymphs and elves. Dreams of every little girl, of
every grown woman.
My nine-year old self wanted to wear white
flowers in my hair, wanted to paint my nails
white. You can’t, my mother said – why not, I
protested.
6
It’ll mean someone has just passed away; you’ll
give granny a fright
V.
The first time I attended a funeral was when I lost
my grandfather.
Chinese funeral bouquets of assorted blooms,
weaved baskets rising taller than me, reds and
yellows for happiness, good fortune, and royalty.
Yellow, gold,
name, but not my grandfather’s.
the color of the king is my last
The smell of lilies and roses consumes the room,
and I can’t stop associating it with death. Scent
so strong, my nose stings, and if I weren’t already
crying, the acridity would bring tears to my eyes.
It’s my turn to lay a single flower upon my
grandfather’s body, his skin petal-thin, peaceful
face painted with rosiness for the ceremony.
VI.
Flowers wilt, flowers turn crunchy.
Lilac blossoms tinted gray,
white buds now mustard.
Shedding wrinkled tissue paper,
dead blooms rustle,
plastic bags in the wind.
7
poverty — more than just about money
/ xitlally sanchez
Growing up in a low-income neighborhood, the
word ‘poverty’ always came accompanied with a notion of
monetary wealth. Its definition did not go beyond a lack
of money. However, as Cherríe Moraga suggests in her
piece “La Guera”, poverty extends beyond being ‘poor’:
“In this country, lesbianism is a poverty - as is
being brown, as is being a woman, as is being just plain
poor. Without an emotional, heartfelt grappling with the
source of our own oppression, naming the enemy within
ourselves and outside of us, no authentic, non-hierarchical connection among oppressed groups can take place”
(Moraga 52-53).
Poverty can take on the form of any aspect of our
identity, ranging from a lack of money, to being a woman.
Our identities become types of ‘poverty’ when they are
not what is desirable or ‘adequate’ in this country. Creating connections with other oppressed groups, or people
in poverty, is only possible if we acknowledge that each
oppression is unique and specific. However, it is also important to recognize the ways in which we have internalized these oppressions while at the same time recognizing
our privilege. It is only after we come to terms with our
own oppression and privilege that we will be able to relate
to other oppressed groups and thus be able to successfully
work together to enact change.
Cherríe- Moraga mentions that to her, lesbianism
was the first poverty she experienced and came to terms
with. She writes: “my lesbianism is the avenue through
which I have learned the most about silence and oppression, and it continues to be the most tactile reminder to
me that we are not free human beings” (Moraga 52). Like
Moraga, we each have our own ‘avenues’ through which
we learn about oppression and silence. I know that for
me, my avenue has often been different depending on my
environment but has usually been tied to my socio-economic
class. I am oftentimes reminded of the ways that low-income communities are criminalized, and even more so
of how people of color living in low-income communities are perceived as ‘less than’ and how the lives of our
community members are not valued. I first began to think
about my race and class when I was in fifth grade. I began
to realize that some schools actually had enough desks
and seats for their children. I began to wonder why my
teacher was allowed to demean us becasue of our ethnicity. I knew that I was not less tha her becasue she is white
and I am not, but I did not understand why she did not
know that.
Race itself is the production of the global slave
trade and has, since its creation, been used to justify the
subjugation of groups of people. Racism paved the way
for white supremacy. As Tomás Almaguer reminds us in
his book, Racial Fault Lines, “white supremacy means…
the restriction of meaningful citizenship rights to a privileged group characterized by its light pigmentation.” (Almaguer 19). In this country, not having light pigmentation means being regulated as a second-class citizen. It
wasn’t until I was at Scripps that I began to think about
my actual skin tone. As I looked around me, I noticed
that many of the Latinas at Scripps are very light skinned
in comparison to me. It was not until one of my close
friends complained of
being able to ‘pass as white’ that I realized that I did not
have that option. It’s not like I have ever wanted to deny
who I am, but my skin color and facial features invite
others to judge me based on who they think I am and
where they think I come from instead of what I want to
be known as and who I really am. Cherríe Moraga recounts how for her mother, “on a basic economic level,
being Chicana meant being ‘less’” (Moraga 51), because
the paycheck at the end of the day is less. Someone’s skin
color could result in one being poor. Thus it is through
keeping groups of people silenced and economically poor
that race becomes a poverty.
One of the main reasons that being a darkskinned Latina is a poverty is because of the associations
that come along with it. Almaguer mentions that “this
century has witnessed the reconfiguration of these racial fault lines... most obvious ... is the reassignment of
Mexicans--especially the undocumented, non-English
speaking population--to the bottom end of the new racial and ethnic hierarchy” (Almaguer 212). The danger
with this theory is that it is easy to move from creating
a racial hierarchy to ranking the oppression of different
racial groups. When
we begin to rank oppressions, we risk denying the magnitude of the experiences of others. Therefore, it is important to remember that each struggle has its own specific
elements that make it hard to compare with other forms
of oppression.
Latinas/os as a whole are often seen as being undocumented and not belonging in this country, despite
being on these lands for hundreds of years. While not
all Latinas/os are undocumented, or even immigrants,
8
because of the way we are perceived in this country, often
times we are treated as if we were undocumented persons. This is often the case because “by determining who
was ‘fit’ to enter and hoist the country’s rapidly expanding industrial workforce, US authorities were not only
serving the interests of capital, but more importantly they
were defining what it meant to be “American”, and who
belonged and who did not” (Nevins 109). And the truth
is that for the most part, Latinos/as do not meet the standards to be ‘American’.Thus the poverty of being a Latina
lies in being an outsider in your home. Yet, I must admit
that I am privileged. While I might at times be told that I
do not belong in this country, I have my citizenship. I was
given so many opportunities simply because I was born in
the ‘right place’. Had I been born 100 miles south, my life
would have been so much different. For instance, I don’t
even know if I would be living in the United States, either
because I would have never come or because I would have
long been deported. I do not have to fear for myself. I do
not fear that one day I will be kicked out of the only land
I know. However, I fear for the people I love and for the
families being torn apart. While it
is not the same, this separation of
families often times remind me
of the ways that enslaved families
were torn apart.
It is hard sometimes to
speak up and not be silenced when
our poverty gives us few options.
Once again, Viramontes’ characters are able to articulate the inconsistency of life when one is
poor and lives in ‘poverty’; Estrella says, “It was always a
question of work, and work depended on the harvest, the
car running, their health, the conditions of the road, how
long the money held out, and the weather, which meant
they could depend on nothing” (Viramontes 4). In the
same way, living in ‘poverty’, means depending on very
little. The conditions that we live in are much bigger than
us. For people who are oppressed, it is always a question
of change and change depends on the willingness of the
people, able leaders, committed participants, and structural tearing down and rebuilding, which takes time and
more work. So then it becomes a question of whether the
poor have the energy and stamina to work and fight for
the much-needed change. And it becomes a struggle between surviving on a day-to-day basis and enacting long
term change.
Change is powerful and much-needed but in order for change to occur, we must take a look at our own
oppression. While looking at a barn that she is going
to help tear down, Estrella wonders: “Is that what happens?... people just use you until you’re all used up, then
rip you into pieces when they’re finished using you?”(Viramontes 75). While it might be hard to think about,
Estrella’s quote leads me to wonder whether this is how
Latinos/as are seen in the United States. If so, that would
explain the low quality of education that our people receive. For what is the purpose of investing in us if they are
simply going to rip us into pieces when they are finished
using us for cheap sources of manual labor? However, as
Moraga reminds us, “to a larger degree, the real battle
with such oppression, for all of us, begins under the skin”
(Moraga 54). In what ways have we internalized racism,
sexism, classism, or homophobia?
At the same time that we internalize all of these
ideologies, we ignore the privileges that we do have. While
I do not want to undermine the hardships of ‘poverty’, I
cannot help but think that such aspects of our identity are
only forms of ‘poverty’ through the majoritarian story.
Counterstories tell us that, while these hardships suck, we
have acquired cultural wealth along the way that we can
use to work with each other. While each oppressed group
is unique, this does not mean that we have to stand alone.
We can share our resistant capital,
which “draws on this legacy of resistance to oppression in Communities of Color [as well as other oppressed communities] and refers to
the knowledges and skills cultivated through behavior that challenges inequality” (Yosso 49). In the
same way that these lines of poetry
speak to who I am as an individual, they can also speak to groups of
oppressed people: “I am new. History made me. ... I was
born on the crossroads/ and I am whole” (Levins). It is
necessary to realize that we are whole persons who are
not lacking, even though that is how this country often
makes us feel. With this in mind, Sophia Villenas offers us
some advice in her piece “The Colonizer/Colonized Chicana Ethnographer”, in which she says, “I find the key: to
resist ‘othering’ and marginalization is to use our multiplicity of identities in order to tolerate and welcome the
contradictions and ambiguities” (Villenas 11).
The first step for oppressed groups to come together is to listen. All of our experiences are important
and through active listening, we cannot only learn but
also help to validate one another. Hamilton and Stoltz remind us in their book, Seeking Community in a Global
City, that “seeking community is part of being human”
(Hamilton 11). In the same way that many college students of color create counterspaces around campus, it is
necessary for some of these counterspaces to be birthed
out of collaboration between groups of oppressed people. Personally, I have been able to create counterspaces
“While each oppressed
group is unique, this does
not mean that we have to
stand alone.”
9
with some of my friends who are not Latinas/os because
through listening, we have come to realize that our struggles are very much real but we can get through them together. Yosso, the author of Critical Race Counterstories
Along the Chicana/Chicano Educational Pipeline, warns
us that “without social spaces to share information, our
ability to help each other navigate will weaken” (Yosso
45). As she puts it, it is necessary to “[lift] as we climb”
(Yosso 45). In the same way that I did not get here on my
own, I cannot climb any further on my own either. I have
come to realize that “the real power is collective” (Moraga
59). Because together, like air, we will rise (Angelou).
This country has done a very good job in telling
us that we are impoverished and do not belong. In doing
so, it has blinded us and left us feeling hopeless. However,
by recognizing our oppression and seeing the ways that
we have internalized it, we may become willing to change
the social structures, or at least create counterspaces with
other oppressed groups, recognizing the specificity of
each oppression while at the same time making a collective effort to support one another. We can also use our
often overlooked privilege and the multiplicity of our
identities to support one another.
Works Cited
Almaguer, Tomás. Racial Fault Lines: The Historical Origins of White Supremacy in California. Berkeley: University of California, 1994. Print.
Angelou, Maya. Still I Rise. Print.
Blow, Charles Marí-a. “Two Little Boys.” N.p., 24 Apr. 2009. Web.
Class Discussion. Soc 30: Chicanas/os in Contemporary Society. Claremont
Colleges. 13 February 2013.
Diaz, Elizabeth María, and Joseph G. Kosciw. Shared Differences: The Experiences of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Students of Color in Our
Nation’s Schools. Rep. N.p.: n.p., n.d. Print.
Garcia, Lorena. Respect Yourself, Protect Yourself: Latina Girls and Sexual
Identity. New York: New York University, 2012. Print.
Hamilton, Nora, and Norma Stoltz. Chinchilla. Seeking Community in a Global City: Guatemalans and Salvadorans in Los Angeles. Philadelphia: Temple
UP, 2001. Print.
Levins Morales, Aurora. “Child of the Americas.” Getting Home Alive. Ed. Aurora Levins Morales and Rosario Morales. Milford, Connecticut: Firebrand,
1986. 636. Print.
Moraga, Cherra-e. “La Guera.” Ed. Gloria Anzalda and Cherrie Moraga. This
Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color. New York:
Kitchen Table, Women of Color, 1983. 50-59. Print.
Nevins, Joseph. Dying to Live: A Story of U.S. Immigration in an Age of Global
Apartheid. San Francisco: Open Media, 2008. Print.
Villenas, Sophia. “The Colonizer/Colonized Chicana Ethnographer: Identity,
Marginalization, and Co-optation in the Field.” Harvard Educational Review
66.4 (n.d.): 711-31. ProQuest. Web. 2 Jan. 2002.
Viramontes, Helena Mara-a. Under the Feet of Jesus. New York: Dutton, 1995.
Print.
Yosso, Tara J. Critical Race Counterstories along the Chicana/Chicano Educational Pipeline. New York: Routledge, 2006. Print.
”Why am I compelled to write?...Because I have no
choice. Because I must keep the spirit of my revolt and
myself alive. Because the world I create in writing compensates for what the real world does not give me...I write
because life does not appease my appetite and hunger. I
write to record what others erase when I speak, to rewrite
the stories others have miswritten about me, about you...
To discover myself, to preserve myself, to achieve self-autonomy...To convince myself that I am worthy and that
what I have to say is not a pile of shit. To show that I can
and that I will write, never mind their admonitions to
the contrary. And I will write about the unmentionables,
never mind the outraged gasp of the censor and the audience, Finally I write because I am scared of writing but
I’m more scared of not writing”. -Gloria Anzaldua
10
Untitled
Digital Photography
By Shane Zackery
11
american daydreams/ pamela ng
I. The bell rings and I’m sitting looking around at my classmates—faces yellow and
brown. We are divided by our expectations. We huddle into groups, whispering
our mothers’ tongues to those who look like us. Our parents, at home, tell us what
to expect (and not) from one another. We are too young to know anything
but what our parents say. We are told, however, that we are all under one God. We begin
to recite this fact every morning, together. I don’t know who God is, but I stop thinking about what my parents say.
II. My teacher begins to teach us. Her blonde hair gleams under the flickering lights
that have been built precariously into our cardboard ceilings. She mispronounces many
names as she checks for attendance, twisting them into words only mostly understandable. We don’t correct her.
She tells us stories of the American life. Her stories instill fantasies into us; ones of houses we have never been inside and fences we’ve never had on lawns we’ve never played on.
These don’t look like the homelands our parents had described to us. I start to like these
stories more than my bedtime ones.
She explains the foundation of our great country, where we are all free thanks to our
founding fathers. I learn to speak the way she speaks and I go home forgetting the dialect
that my tongue has been disciplined to twist away from because of my class.
My English is better than everyone else in my class and I get to be exempt from a test
because of it. I notice how my friend refers to one person as “that people” and I try to
correct her but she doesn’t understand.
I don’t want to eat with chopsticks and want to bring peanut butter and jelly sandwiches
to school like some of my friends do.
III.
“Try this,” my Baba says to me as he places a chicken foot onto my plate.
“I don’t like this,” I respond, in English.
“You’ve never tried it. Try it,” he insists.
I pick up the chicken foot with my chopsticks and throw it back onto his plate. “I’ve tried
it before, I don’t like it.”
He scoffs at me and tells me I’m not a true Chinese. “You don’t like dim sum, you don’t
like durian, you don’t like rice—“
“That’s not true!”
“You call yourself Chinese, act like one!”
My teacher says we are all American.
12
“Yeah, yeah…”
“Remember where you’re from. You are Chinese.”
My teacher says we are all American.
IV. My parents tell me not to watch so much TV, so I start reading instead. I read about
wizardry and mysteries, about children who are just like me. I start to dream of myself
looking like them. My teacher tells me I am “gifted” so I start reading more and going
to extra school. Some of my friends do not go with me, but my Best Friend does. I make
new friends who are also “gifted” like me and we begin to spend more time at regular school together. My Best Friend hangs out with other people. As time goes by I’ve
stopped reading but I start spending more time with my new friends. Only, we’re not
called “gifted” anymore, we’re just called Asian.
V.
“How do you do that? How do you get such good grades?”
I shrug, embarrassed, “I just do the work, that’s all.”
She stares at me. “It can’t be that easy, right? I mean, then again, you are Asian.”
I laugh. “Trust me, I don’t even really get half the things we’re learning.”
She looks thoughtful.
I’m in regular biology class. Everything is mechanic and I am learning nothing. My
teacher does not question my intelligence even though I’m panicking because I don’t
know what I’m doing. I learn to regurgitate information. All of my other friends are in
Honors classes or have taken this over the summer.
“That sucks you’re in regular.”
“I know…”
“At least it’ll be easy and the teacher likes you!”
I wonder why they think she likes me. I don’t tell them it’s not easy at all.
I have no friends, but a lot of my classmates want to be my partner because I’m Asian
and because I let them copy my work.
“You’re not like most Asian girls, you’re super chill!”
This makes me uncomfortable and I don’t know why. After a while I stop doing my
work.
By the end of the year the girl who I had had the initial conversation with, gets a 4.0; I
barely scrape a B in our class. The next year, when we’re in AP Lang together she tells
everyone that it is because of me that she’s even taking AP classes. “Before, I used to not
care. My mom wants to bake her a cake.”
This makes me uncomfortable and I don’t know why.
13
VI. My AP Lang teacher is slightly odd because she uses her position to make us try
to conceptualize the idea of questioning power. We learn about Plato’s Allegory of the
Cave. She tells us about how she used to skip class to go to more interesting lectures.
She tells us to be proactive. We’re scared of her. Some of my friends don’t like her class
because they can’t suck up to her.
She talks about how she’s heard teachers say that they don’t bother with the Mexican
students on our campus. When a number of Mexican students begin to run for ASB,
which has almost always been majority Asian, everyone gets upset.
“They don’t have the experience necessary,” say my friends.
“They’re only doing it because they’re being forced to.”
The standing ASB campaigns to keep things the way they are by using adjectives like
experienced and responsible. I find it ironic because a lot of the ASB students cheat in
all of their classes. They are also not very nice for the most part, even though they are all
quite popular. Nonetheless, I am on the fence. I end up voting for people I “know will do
a good job.”
When voting time comes, a lot of students vote. There is talk that it is rigged. Regardless, ASB doesn’t change.
VII. “Is Scripps a good school?” My mom has trouble pronouncing the name. It sounds
more like ‘script’ than anything. “Why don’t you apply for UCLA?”
I feel irritated. “I don’t want to just be like everyone else and apply there. I want to go
here.”
“Is it well-known?”
Scripps is exactly like the books I’ve read and the fantasies I’ve had. I imagine reading
on the lawn and being friends with everyone. Everyone there is so nice and everyone
there is so beautiful! I fantasize about being best friends with my roommate and going
to lots of parties. I don’t want to have only the same kind of friends that I had in high
school. I want to broaden my horizons. Whatever that means.
VIII. The first few weeks I am overwhelmed by how small the classes are and how little
color there are in my classes. But this excites me. It’s like reverse culture shock! I try to
make friends—lots of friends. At first it’s okay, but after a while I burn out. No one tells
you that college is a lonely place. I start thinking about my parents and how I couldn’t
speak to them fluently in Cantonese. How I spoke this broken language interrupted constantly by the language I had learned from a woman who looked like the people I now
went to school with.
My parents keep telling me to remember where I am from. They don’t want me to forget. I think about the stories my family used to tell me about their childhoods—the
cramped houses and running away from canings. I think about the food they make and
how they told me I would grow up and learn to like it. Nowadays, I can’t stop thinking
about what my parents said.
14
IX.
I go out with my friends and am labeled by my skin tone.
“What are all these Asian girls doing here?”
“They call you two the horny Asians.”
My teacher says we are all American.
I stop thinking about what my teacher says.
15
eyelids/ joanne chern
I am not sure when it first started
the event that stands out most clearly in my mind
is when I was sixteen
and a friend of mine told me that when I smile
my eyes go squinty
and I look even more Chinky than usual
“don’t call me that,” I protested
“it’s okay,” he assured me, “I’m allowed to say it, I’m a Chink too”
but I think I must have known before then
between the glossy magazine pages of girls who didn’t look like me
and the jokes of “all you need
to blindfold an Asian is dental floss”
and the optometrist saying
“you’re going to have some trouble putting in the contacts
you have such small eyes”
I cannot point to a single event, a catastrophic explosion
it was a slow and insidious erosion
so gradual that I did not even realize it was taking place
until the appearance of tape
and tweezers beside eyeliner and lipstick seemed utterly natural
and if eyes are the windows to the soul
then I spent a hell of a long time messing about with the drapes
cutting the tape
until it fit me just right
this is what beauty looks like
a tailored fold in the skin
two millimeters wide
and nobody can see it but me
I wear it like the finest of dresses
but it’s like the emperor’s new clothes and I am only dreaming
scheming to look like what I think is royalty
this is what beauty feels like
the stabbing pains that bring tears to your eyes
but don’t touch them, try not to cry
you’ll mess up
your carefully applied makeup
sit on the guilt and try to look somewhere else
for beauty is pain
this is the way it has always been
16
and it is easy to point fingers at the women
who cut into themselves
looking for a little piece of beauty to call their own
and call them the misguided product of a hegemonic standard of beauty
built upon a foundation
of colonization
where Europeans were royalty
and nobody else deserved to be
anything but ordinary, even ugly
but every one of these women has a tale
that resists the simplicity of theory
and sometimes you may hold knowledge on your tongue
without swallowing it
I know now the implications of my actions
but I have no definitive ending to this story
I cannot say that “I am so much more than any system of beauty
could ever make me out to be”
because there are some days when I feel
like I am no more than those two millimeters of skin
and all the academic theory and criticism in the world
cannot stand up to reality
and reality is sometimes so terribly ugly
we all have our own scars
and our armor is thickest where we were once cut
and we can talk theory all we want
but there are some experiences that must be lived in order to be understood
and when we talk about experiences
I think about the girl that I was not so long ago
using Scotch tape as training wheels for scalpels and stitches
who smiled because she found herself beautiful
and the happiness in her heart was almost – almost – enough to make her forget
the pinpricks of pain in her eyes
17
the brown girl/
alexa muniz
I didn’t grow up knowing where I came from
Unlike all of the other kids in school
With ancestors, stories, history
All I know and all I knew is I came from
Mommy and Daddy.
I was told that I was half Mexican because my dad was
But in my eight-year-old mind I was not,
“We don’t speak Spanish, Daddy.”
Because at that age the language determined
And I spoke English, but I wasn’t White.
My (white) mother would come volunteer at school -“Who is that?”
“Is that your aunt?”
I didn’t understand the confusion,
She was just my mom.
“I look more like my dad”
A response I gave more times than I can count,
Qualifying my mother’s Whiteness.
“Wait, she’s Mexican?”
A classmate asked my mother once.
My brown skin excluded me from being White
But I wasn’t Mexican either,
At that age those were the only options, the only possibilities for me.
I only knew of Mexican and White
Apparently I was a mixture of the two – that is what I was told.
But is that what I felt?
I never knew who I was:
Am I White? Mexican? American? Brown?
What do these words mean to an eight-year-old?
It did not bother me back then that I did not know.
But it bothers me now that I still haven’t figured it out.
18
ambiguously queer/ anonymous
“I don’t think it’s necessary
he said. “You have to
for you to come out,”
remember that coming out
forces you to associate with a
larger movement and cause.
I’m just not sure it’s necessary.”
He might as well have said,
“You don’t count.”
I’m a queer lady with the cisgendered,
hetero privilege of invisibility,
and I guess I should be grateful,
at least that’s what they tell me.
19
But if a flower withers away
in a meadow and no one
cares to witness, did
she ever even
exist at all?
Morning Routine
Graphie on paper
By Lizzie Kumar
20
half and half/lizzie kumar
“I’m half Indian.” That’s what I say when I’m asked about my racial heritage. “Not Native
American; my father was born and raised in India.” Sometimes I’ll get a follow up question asking
what the other half is, but only in the summer when I can’t pass for white. My skin is the color of a
whole-milk iced latte, though it converges towards caramel in the sun and has green undertones in
bad lighting. I have my Grandma Betsy’s eyes, and my nose is a shape unfamiliar to both sides of
my family, round-looking from the front and pointy from the side. My angular black eyebrows are
what really throw off the tan-white-girl look: they frame my face in a way that’s been described as
“exotic” and “unique.” In short, I look like a girl from nowhere. I kind of enjoy this image. I play up
the “alien” look by dying my hair bright colors and slathering on a bold palette of makeup.
I supplement my appearance--normalize it, almost--by joking to people that while I’m biologically 50% South Asian, I’m 98% white in practice. There’s some truth to it. I grew up in a mostly-white town in Massachusetts where I had mostly-white friends. I don’t know a word of Tamil,
my father’s first language, and I can’t fake an accent. I couldn’t even pronounce my real first name,
Indra, until a few years ago. Neither of my parents are religious in the slightest, but we celebrated
Christmas and Easter (and sometimes Hanukkah if they had a lot of Jewish friends at the time). I
had one half-Indian friend in high school I would watch Bollywood movies with in an attempt to
“connect with our roots,” but we never really understood what was going on and thought they were
really funny, so I guess we were kind of doing it ironically.
It makes me uncomfortable, though, that I present myself as otherworldly and exotic while
deliberately deemphasizing my actual heritage. While my racial composition doesn’t seem to affect
my day-to-day life, this doesn’t mean it is not a part of my identity, and I feel guilty for not acknowledging it sometimes. It’s hard, though, when there is so little Indian-ness that I can claim as
my own. My father brings into my life his family values which I often fight and a cuisine that is far
too spicy for my sensitive palette; my distant relatives send me clothes that are beautiful but look
strange on my body. I can’t even show up to the South Asian culture club on campus without feeling a little out of place. I struggle to acknowledge and respect Indian culture, which is supposed
to be “my culture,” but really my culture is that I look nothing like either of my parents and sometimes forget my father ever lived in India at all.
For one of my earlier birthdays I received a comic book version of some stories from the Ramayana. I started reading about the various deities in the Hindu pantheon, wondering which ones
of them would be watching down on me if they were real (and, as a kid who scientifically disproved
the existence of Santa and the Tooth Fairy at age 5, I was fairly sure they were not). On one of my
early trips to India, my grandmother brought me to the back of the kitchen and showed me her
shrine to Saraswati, the goddess of science, music, and the arts, where she said she prayed daily for
my success in school. I didn’t understand what praying did, exactly, but I remember feeling guilty
that she took a bit of time every day to think about me, when my Indianness is something that I
can ignore for weeks at a time.
In my self-portrait, I incorporated imagery associated with Saraswati into a picture of my
daily life, in an attempt to acknowledge my grandmother’s love that is always with me, whether I
notice it or not. Reflecting on it now, I tend to sort of appropriate Indian culture by picking and
choosing the parts I think are relevant to me just as I did in the drawing, but I don’t think that’s
an invalid way to deal with my heritage: my identity is mixed, and can’t be summarized as simply
“half Indian.” My identity is my experience as a brownish sort of person living a white-ish sort of
life.
21
the syntactical life
/ victoria nguyen
We write to remember - to preserve our fondest
memories, to record our thoughts so they can be re-examined in the event that all of our best laid plans go awry.
We write so we do not forget ourselves. Sometimes we
write ourselves into ways of being that contradict what
we once held to be true. I cling to structure and order –
I find myself poring over numerous sources in hopes of
culling some shining nugget of profound truth only to be
disappointed. I write to fill the gaps of my own understanding, to find a way to reconcile the conflicts weighing heavily upon my mind. I write myself nowhere. Even
the constructions with which I was once familiar – titles
that identified me as Vietnamese-American, daughter,
student – have dissipated in my lack of certainty. I may
try to understand and learn about the movement of “feminist,” “identity,” or “ethnic” politics, but I fail miserably
at trying to apply them. Nor can I bring myself to feel
passionate or empowered by adopting the language of
these abstract movements.
While conducting research for my Writing 50
class, I came across what I thought could be a possible
source for narratives that I could relate to - an anthology produced by young Asian-American girls that was
published in 2001. I was somewhat dismayed by the
paperback’s promotional features, however: a garishly lo
ud, neon green cover emblazoned with the bold title
“Yell-Oh Girls!” spelled out in two fonts and two colors; an image of sushi, chopsticks, and Cheetos in a
yellow lunchbox. All this, in addition to a banner of
endorsement by Mary Pipher, author of Reviving Ophelia, who called it a “fine book” in which “Asian American girls speak up and speak out” that was highlighted in a bright yellow strip at the bottom. And not to be
forgotten, the tagline “Emerging Voices Explore Culture, Identity, and Growing Up Asian American” which
emerged from the mouth of a faded image of a roaring
Asian-American girl. I bought it from Amazon the same
day with a twinge of reservation and guilty pleasure.
I finished the anthology over the span of a
few days, but felt oddly empty. The stories I found
offered comfort, familiarity, yet there was something
that kept me from rejoicing the calls for “girl power” and
“sisterhood.” The presentation spoke of a less than
subtle agenda. I could not overcome the slight
discomfort that the anthology as a whole was being
promoted as an Asian American brand of ethnic stories.
What contributed most to my wariness when I opened
the anthology was the list of indicative chapter titles that
gave the impression of a scripted itinerary to ensure the
reader would not accidentally miss the editor’s thesis. The
voices of the contributing authors –often young, college-aged Asian American women- seemed muddled
by the anthology’s categorization. I found some of these
pieces enjoyable and some of the editorial commentary
insightful. I paused a few times to reread particular narratives and editorial reflections that described exactly
what I felt about some cultural “conflicts,” but I was also
frustrated by what I saw as paradoxical statements. By far
the most difficult portion of the book for me to read was
the last section entitled “Girlwind: Emerging Voices for
Change,” where in her final editorial comments Vickie
Nam writes:
“I realized that I had made some general assumptions about what Asian American girls were thinking, saying, and doing in their lives… I needed to let
these girls who exhibited various gifts, perspectives,
and goals, define themselves in their own words…
my role as the editor was to read, to listen, and to
encourage them to keep on scribing.” (180)
Her words identified the paradox I was attempting to
reconcile. I read on with bated breath, hoping that perhaps
the conclusion would be less insistent than the aggressive
opening. Only two pages later, however, she returns to the
idea of sisterhood and declares “in the next few pages, you
will hear self-affirming stories from girls who have gained
knowledge and insight after weathering the storms of
adolescence…like warriors, they continue to seek and
claim words that enable them to speak out” (182). My hopes
deflated. The fierce imagery and declaration had made
another appearance. It seemed to be telling me the same
thing: to become empowered, to demand visibility, and to
appear more assured by adopting a fighting creed that I
was perhaps too indifferent, ignorant, or skeptical to heed.
That is not to dismiss powerful and wonderfully
written work that correct, reclaim, and empower writers,
however. It is not my intention to deny the significance of
these narratives to their individual authors. It’s the interpretation that something must be done to change well-written,
coherent narratives into challenges against an oppressive
silence. The calls for sisterhood seemed to be trying too
22
hard to find resolution and unity. The attempts to resolve
disparate experiences by explaining conflicts in terms
of collective empowerment, the insistence on defeating
silence by “reclaiming” a voice, the implications that
vulnerability can be easily replaced with confidence by
adopting this “warrior’s” mantle – they all seemed to be
trying to do too much. In some ways, just the honesty and
reflection that seemed to pervade the personal narratives
seemed to suffice. Authentic expression – now that was a
grand idea in of itself. Every girl, teen, woman (and here
I risk sounding like the cliché things I resist) has a story
about conflict and reconciliation, about obligations and
desires – the degree to which all of these things are resolved varies with the individual. “Speaking out” seems
not only a foreign concept, it seems redundant because
the act of writing has already enabled the writer to hear
and acknowledge their own thoughts. And if the writer
decides to shares their experiences, the imperative task of
evaluation is still subjective to the understandings of both
writer and reader.
In saying this, I do not mean to discredit the anthology, its editor, or its authors. I have little doubt the
conflicts and paradoxes that troubled me also appear in
my own writing. What intrigues me is the notion of contradiction, commentary, and coherence. Contradiction,
however frustrating, does not seem to imply helplessness
or incoherence. Throughout the process of reading the
anthology, I kept circling around my original question of
what it means to be a second-generation Asian-American woman and what it means to be coherent. External
categorization of written work and individuals seemed
inadequate. The hyphenated identity of “Asian-American
woman” continued to perplex me with its contradictions,
with its divisions and its hybridity.
What does being “Asian-American” mean and
how does the various forms of in which “Asian American” appear, with and without the hyphen, represent? To
hyphenate, as Merriam-Webster tells me, is to connect (as
two words) or divide (as a word at the end of a line of
print). The hyphen suggests unity and modification – two
things that are separate but whole, complex but coherent.
The relationship between the two terms on either side of
the hyphen appears to be in a constant state of flux: now
the first prioritized over the second; now the second preferred over the first; now a more delicate balance between
the two. The identity of “Asian-American” – whether
claimed, categorized, or imposed – has yet to be defined
clearly and may never be. To me, hyphenated identities
and categories seem to imply duality, evoking questions
as to which side a person feels they belong or is told they
should belong. I submit that although the divide, gap,
bridge – whichever significance it has to the individual
– exists, the space created by the hyphen is a free space.
I find that there is no unified second-generation
Vietnamese-American female experience that I can identify with. There are no sentences, no modes of writing,
no scholarly voice that I feel are ready for my use. There
are themes and grammatical constructions and rhetorical forms that I have adopted and applied, but do not
know how to wield with confidence. There is a long history of writers, scholars, women, immigrants, daughters,
mothers, Vietnamese Americans, Asian Americans, second-generation individuals who have found a way to articulate themselves – I am still trying to puzzle my way
through what I have written.
I can recognize aspects of myself in the stories
of others, but those narratives belong uniquely to the author whose intentions I do not know and will likely never know. I tried reading myself into those stories. I tried
writing myself into a story that was not my own. Somewhere, within all the education I have received, the experiences I might have forgotten, the emotions I suspect
I have mislaid, the categories I have refused, the titles I
have adopted – all those things that I keep thinking and
writing about – is coherency. I only fear the uncertainty
of existing in between.
I believe that contradiction does not detract from
the validity of one’s experience. Lack of certainty does not
imply silence or incoherence. I may live the syntactical
life of a “hyphenated identity,” where I traverse the many
gaps between “second-generation Vietnamese-American
female,” but the one thing I
know is that I am in constant flux. I realize now that I
was looking for all the right sources, the right opinions,
the right authorities – perhaps in error. All the things
implied, contrived, examined, interpreted, analyzed,
silenced, declared, negotiated, hypothesized, and disputed are contained within the spaces in between the
letters scripted by each individual author. I’ve only been
afraid of letting myself exist in that space of uncertainty
and possibility, from taking that leap into the abyss. So
I write, and I will continue to write myself nowhere and
everywhere inbetween.
23
Untitled
Woodcut Print
By Yuka Ogino
24
existentialism at bedtime/shane zackery
I am here to report a crime committed against me, the assailant myself. I am an imposter. I speak
against this intruder because in these parts, i.e. my mind, we don’t take kindly to strangers; yes,
there is more than one of us. I don’t know which is guilty—the person pretending to be me or the
one that I am impersonating. Truth be told, I don’t know either one, so maybe I shouldn’t be the
one to choose which must go. Isn’t that a sad day for anyone—to not be on your own team?
I suppose it’s all relative. In the bigger scheme of things, it doesn’t matter. You see, I’ve tried and
tried to distinguish a winner, but one always stops the other from pulling the trigger. In truth, I
simply cannot decide. That is why I’m here, sharing with you my dilemma. I share with you because I am about to hand you quite a heavy humble favor. This favor takes the form of an obnoxious request, but please, do not be alarmed. After all, I would do the same for you if the roles were
reversed. I just cannot do it or myself. That is why it’s up to you to make the decision.
Do I stay or do I go, and even more importantly, who am I? Am I writing as the imposter or the
person pretending to be me? Is there a difference? Well, obviously, but really. From the outside, is
there any distinction between the two of us, or am I just out of things to contemplate?
I.
Me.
In that case, I guess that technically, there are three of us. There is I, the person pretending to be
me; I, the one that I am impersonating; and I, me.
I know that you’re thinking. I must be me, because the pretender is obviously just that. You must
remember that it is more complicated than that, because maybe to the pretender, I am the imposter. Which am I? Which is me and which am I not?
Ah. Now you see my dilemma.
You might take a second to think about the other option at this point. How can I be myself if I
am the person that I am impersonating? Well, if I am impersonating me, it is me who I become.
Therefore, I am me, the I that I pretend to be.
If you have understood so far, then hopefully I can talk you through the possibility that I am me.
The me who someone pretends to be and me—the one who might be impersonating myself.
I.
Me.
Someone.
Oh. So maybe there is a fourth. Perhaps I am someone else entirely. Not I, who I claim to be, not
an imposter or a pretender, but someone else who is not I, but They; He or She.
And who are they?
Who am I. Am I the someone pretending to be me, or the someone I am impersonating? Huh. Tell
me. Which of the four is asking your advice? I, the victim being impersonated, I me, or I someone?
25
I ask because after reviewing my summary, I realized that it is impossible to keep this charade. I
must admit that this is not and never was a simple question. It is in fact, a battle of wits. You see,
like I said, I am an imposter. I have stated this fact right from the beginning. I have always been
me. I am I. I am the imposter pretending to be me. I am someone. I am anyone.
The real treat though, what I feel is the real surprise, is that I am You. I am all. And the fact that I
have chosen You to answer my question, or that You have chosen me, or You yourself or me myself
or he or her him/herself is proof that you/I/he/she/they have no idea how ignorant we really are.
Because in retrospect, we are all the same. We are each other and ourselves and someone. And
none of us know the answer.
Some of us, or perhaps all of us don’t even know what the question was. Do you, reader, whoever
you are, know the question? Whoever I am will remind whoever you are. Who is guiltier—the person who pretends to be themself or the person who pretends not to be and therefore lets someone
else become them?
The answer is another question. Who are you to need to ask another who you are? Who are you
to keep yourself up writing such rhetoric? But you have, and you must accept this truth without
complaint, because I am not to be blamed. After all, I am not the author You are. The truth resolve
has been there all along.
I am.
I am you.
You are they.
They are you.
I am you.
We are.
We are all.
And so goes the universe.
26
inlifebetween/ vivienne muller
My life is an “inbetween space.” I’ve spent most of it so far not feeling “something” enough, except
when I’m being degraded. I’m 18, almost 19. I’m racially mixed with a black mom and a white-German-descent dad. When I was little I had (dark) blonde hair and blue eyes. Generally, this didn’t
make me look black “enough,” even when my hair grew darker and curlier. I think 3rd grade was the
first time anyone told me I “wasn’t” black. I just thought they were being a jerk and I couldn’t understand what that meant. I mean my mom is black, so I had to be too, right?
May I see your qualifications?
My what?
Your
color:skineyeshair texture:
curlywaveykinky sexuality:
straightgaybipantrans* gender:
manwomanboygirlneither
fatnorskinnyunderoverinbetweenweight class:
poormiddleuppertoptier towers:
mosquescathedralssynogoguestemples ruins:
ofidentitypersonalitypersonhood.
What are we even anymore?
Rags, scraps, paper shreds
of a life resume that
tells you what you aren't
what you can't do
what you don't have.
May I see your qualifications
for judgement?
I never really started thinking about what I “wasn’t” until middle school. I started having to explain
that I was black: “Yes, I’m half. Yes, my mom is full black. No, I’m not a quarter.” I had another mixed
friend– who looked “more” black than me– and in 6th grade we decided to call each other “nigger.” It
was mostly in a joking context but I think it was also a way to validate our black identities. Neither of
us were “typical” black kids; we didn’t listen to predominantly hip-hop or rap (we loved Green Day)
or do whatever it is black people are supposedly supposed to do. The next year the complexity of my
identity got deeper. I realized I had a crush on one of my close girl friends. I told a few of my friends (I
didn’t think of it as coming out, I wasn’t gay after all); thankfully no one thought it was a big
deal.
27
BlackBrownTan.
Tinted.
But not dark
enough too
pale.
I don’t see you
I'm stuck. as I see my
That's me– self.
squished
pushed
pulled
s t r e t c h e d
t
is
d
w te
in and
out
of what I'm
"supposed"
to be...
A piece of gum–
flavor sucked for
all its worth ground
between teeth
to cement
the texture
then wedged in
a side
walk crack
a gap
in the mortar
the under belly of a desk.
StraightGayBi–?
Indecisive.
you’re confused.
I know you better
than you know your
self.
I used to have this thing where I didn’t feel “gay” enough or like I didn’t belong to that community.
This feeling was enforced (and still is unfortunately) mostly by little things– like the time my best
friend (who knew I was bi) told me (or at least strongly implied) that I couldn’t buy a rainbow belt. I
was 13 and there was this belt with tiny rows of studs, probably 3 rows for each color of the rainbow. I
told her I thought it was cool and she said something to the effect of rainbows only being for people
who are gay. Which I wasn’t. I think it was later that year (or at least the school year) that I had my
first experiences of racism and homophobia. My friends in P.E. “joked” for most of the year about my
manliness and how that meant I was a dyke. They didn’t know I identified as bisexual. And I didn’t
want to tell them. Or anyone. Or be anything that would make what they said true. Then there were
these two isolated incidents regarding my blackness. One friend said “All black people’s skin looks like
shit. Even yours, it’s like watery cat shit.” I was pissed and I tried to find something gross to compare
white skin to. But nothing came up, I had no culturally common insult to draw on. Another time,
I told this kid in my class that my mom was black and he responded with “Oh, so you’re only half
smart?”
28
The privilege of passing:
Mis-recognition.
People who claim to be liberal
progressive
allied
post-racial
anti -"isms"
rational
idealistic
politically enlightened
forward thinking
insert-compassionate-understanding-but-privileged-educated-and-tolerantadjectivehere
(even people "like" you)
tell you to your face
about what they think
about the validity of your
identity that they don't even know
you have.
You don't get to be
who you are.
You are lying
suffocating
trapped in a dark, tight space no room to wriggle no space to sprawl how
did you even get here you're a traitor.
Playing dress up in
mommy's shoes
strutting about her wardrobe.
Who do you think you are?
You don't belong
with them
but you aren't one of us.
Go back to your costumes
be true to yourself.
Really?
You don't look like it,
I thought you were___.
High school was the time when people just decided to assume things. That I was straight (that I
wasn’t), that I was black (that I wasn’t), that I had sex/did drugs/cut (that I didn’t). I was too mixed
up to be recognized. I felt like I was constantly coming out as black and having to qualify it in some
way since the only dark brown parts of me are my freckles (plus a couple beauty marks) and my eyes
are green. marks) and my eyes are green. I wasn’t comfortable coming out again (or maybe for realsies
this time?) as queer until my sophomore year. My friends (the ones that I told, and it was gradual)
were all accepting– for the most part. I had one gay friend who told me he didn’t believe in bisexuality
because he thought he was bi when he was 12 but ended up being gay. I didn’t tell everyone because
I didn’t think it was a big deal; I mean, I wasn’t gay gay, bisexuality was just some weird thing to me
that was just straight enough to not have the magnitude of full-on gayness. I had this idea that it
would’ve been easier, would’ve mattered more, if I was gay.
Why does it matter why
is it a thing to say
how masculine you are
not how much femininity you have
or are missing?
At 13 a couple of my friends
told me I was dyke
29
because I acted too manly.
A couple other friends had
a marathon running joke
about how I had a dick—
and their laughs were the last
to cross the finish line.
Hard femme
Soft butch
Gelatinous androgynous?
Am I supposed to pick some
thing? How
when nothing fits quite right?
Snug here loose
there constricting here so inconsistent
I'm having a complex.
But then I smile when my girlfriend calls me stud.
Hard soft gooey melted gelatinous
my darling loves me. No justification
qualification explanation necessary.
I am me. Shane is Shane.
Nothing else matters while
we have someone to lean against.
Once (or maybe while) I was getting comfortable with my sexual identity, I started thinking about my
femininity– or lack-thereof. I still don’t know what I think of it. Butch and femme aren’t right, even
with some mellowing or firming adjectives. Though at this point, I’ve mostly given up on trying to
fit into anything. It isn’t going to happen. And that’s just fine. I can make something up if I have to.
But for now, I’ll aim to be secure enough in my masculinity to not have to defend my femininity to
anyone and secure enough in my femininity to not have to defend my masculinity to anyone.
I’m mad.
I am a woman.
I am brown-skinned-
(as pale and faded as
I seem at times).
I like men.
I like women.
I love a woman.
I’m sad.
You say
I’m not black enough.
feminine enough.
gay enough.
____(blank) enough
To you
I am a category.
I am qualified.
I am categorized.
I’m glad.
I am joyful.
I am so grateful.
I am not you.
I am not anything.
I exist
independent
of your bullshit.
30
going home/ catherine chiang
summer was hard.
I didn’t expect to spend it at home
but I did, and I hated it;
I hated not being able to walk
and I hated having to rely on my parents
as if the hard-won independence
I had recently established
was all of a sudden
completely erased—
I went from living by myself
to not being able to stand up by myself
and maybe my biggest achievement
is that you wouldn’t know that,
if you looked at me now,
but it’s also my biggest trauma,
like a nightmare I can’t shake
long after it’s forgotten.
and maybe I am stronger, like they say,
but I am so much weaker, too,
and these legs keep me moving
but sometimes the ache in my hip
wakes up as if to remind me
that recovery is not restoration.
eighteen years in a citylike suburb and
I was so eager to leave,
my young adult aspirations
cloistered with the musty smell of familiarity;
I spent senior year scheming
my escape to the East.
instead, I ended up here,
transplanted thirty or so miles
into a pseudo-desert shimmering
with mirages that looked so real at first;
it’s still taking me time
to see past the paper people
and their paper smiles
and they said it would be hard,
but they didn’t say it would be this hard
to call this place home.
I went back after two months at college
and everything was gone,
packed up in boxes
stored in the unused garage,
and they showed me where all my stuff went:
here you are, a collection of cardboard.
so I sat in my room
with the bare white walls
where the pictures used to be
and the empty dustless shelves
where the messy clutter of my life used to be
and I didn’t know who I was,
at home, anymore.
I spent the month of
winter break feeling the same
suffocation sitting like a devil
on my chest and I wanted to scream
for lack of air, and I could
only breathe when I left
but I traded air for papercuts,
but then again one kind of hurt is
less consuming than the other.
so this is the truth
I have thought circles around
until it became unavoidable:
I am a transplant, an exotic species,
uprooted with nowhere to return,
fighting a constant battle with
the night terrors that find me in the daytime.
going back to where I grew up
hurts because it is not familiar but strange,
and I don’t know
where home is anymore.
and this is the story they don’t tell
the kids eagerly applying for college:
the house sold while you’re taking midterms
the city changing
your friends moving
your family growing old—
the whole time I thought I was growing up
I didn’t know I was losing home.
31
lines/aida villarreal-licona
I used to say I lived in the White House. I remember riding the lion
statues that sat on either side of the front entrance like horses, hot Texas
breeze dancing on my face. The best part of living there was climbing out
the attic window onto the chalky roof. I could see the Mexican flag and the
border where the vibrant colors of Juarez kissed the earth and bled into
El Paso. The cities seeped over the line: Spanish, English, Chico’s Tacos,
pick-ups full of people. I watched cultures mix and flow, back and forth,
over the border from that white roof. For me, home was in both countries. I
didn’t understand how my identity would change by crossing, feet crossing,
wheels crossing over a line in the dirt, a fence in the dirt. Pick a side.
When I was seven, we moved to Iowa. My dad stayed in Texas. Little
family undone and reformed: Mommie and Step-Mom, Granny, Sister, and
a free cat named Madison. I wondered and worried how I would ever understand a word of Iowan. The magic colors of the border were gone, replaced
by beige carpet in a small brown rental house. Say something in Mexican.
Slowly my Spanish slipped into Spanglish into English into English Only.
But Iowa had magic, too. I remember sitting at the hippie potlucks eating
some kind of casserole. And the Indigo Girls were playing. I could see the
Rainbow flag and the UU chalice flaming.
Pack the car, back to the Southwest: Tucson, home. Wheels over
lines, over lines, over state lines. Where are you from? I don’t know. Pick
a side. I think back to my beginnings on the Juarez/El Paso border, where
my mother would give me sloppy braids every day, a halo of frizz emerging
after an hour. My teacher in Mexico would re-do my mess of hair, slicking
back braids like the other girls’, pulling at the skin on my face and making
my eyes water. Tighter, this is how braids are made here. My friends in
Iowa would laugh at the ‘tight’ braids my mom gave me, why do you wear
braids everyday? Amidst the dry heat and dry hate of the state I call home,
I learned to braid my own hair - weave, under, over, weave – and my own
identity – into a messy perfection.
I’m not picking a side of this made up dichotomy. I want the edges
and the corners. Sing me the Indigo Girls with the windows down. Serenade
me in Spanglish. Dance with me, feet flying, stomping, kicking up dust until
we can’t see anything and the lines fade away.
32
Home
Oil on Canvas
By Grace Xue
33
f
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