to our loving communities who hold and inspire us with their stories, resilience, and resistance.
introduction
as part of the 27th Asian Pacific Islander Issues Conference (APIICON), growing home is a platform for children and members of the Asian and Pacific Islander diaspora to create and share space through art together. this space sought to center and uplift all those who identify within the AAPI umbrella to submit and share, especially those who identify as Southeast Asian, mixed, Pacific Islander, Pilipinx, South Asian, Southwest Asian, North African, Arab, undocumented, immigrant, refugee, low income, queer, trans, gender nonconforming, disabled, femme, & womxn identified folx. “growing home� seeks to hold and ground us as we explore what building a home in community means. as children of the diaspora and/or stolen and colonized homelands, home is a complicated concept. it is holding the contradictions of violent hxstories in one hand and healing and empowering hxstories in another. together, we hope to learn, reclaim, and grow home. thank you to our artists for sharing a piece of themselves, a piece of their healing, and a piece of their resistance. without your intentionality and vulnerability, this space of radical love would be incomplete. and lastly, thank you to the ethnic studies 5th account and arts and media co-chairs swetha pola and kat nham who made this zine possible.
table of contents sampaguita: the phillipine jasmine flower // jasmine quintana .................................. 1 where are you from? // angel trazo ................................................................................................ 3 crumbling ghazal // shivani narang ................................................................................................ 7 on home // neena mohan ........................................................................................................................ 8 the girl in the fishing boat // casey tran ..................................................................................... 9 changing tides in the pacific // thomas mangolona ........................................................ 11 growing hearts // vikram boyapati ............................................................................................... 12 dad, will you love me still? // van sam ........................................................................................ 13 homelands some lands home body some body //~ kat nham .....................................15
active exposure i // kourtney nham ................................................................................................ 16 iii. growing home // maria palaroan .............................................................................................. 17 where do i water first // swetha pola ............................................................................................. 18 untitled 62 // isaac yi ............................................................................................................................... 19 prayers//
//du'Ä ' // leenah bassouni ....................................................................... 20
atlas, or a guide on how to leave home // voulette hattar ........................................ 21 homophones (a translation) // yujane chen ............................................................................ 23 home is her // alex penano .................................................................................................................. 25
sampaguita: the philippine jasmine flower
jasmine joyce quintana
sampaguita bloom all year round in the tropical climates of the philippines pure white, star-shaped born from woody vines pale yellow center bleeds to white always white jasmine: sweet-scented inheritance of generations flourishing / thriving grown from immigrants baptized by waters of pacific ocean in the land of the howling winds Catanduanes and Cagayan: Homeland never white always brown earthly being kissed by the sun who rises, breaks dawn, and nurtures all her children and loved me too much to not leave me something to remember her by-eight rays of revolt sowed into my skin a revolution waiting like a dormant garden 1
it is said that sampaguita flowers do not bear seeds instead, new ones can only grow by cutting it that is, jasmine does not grow but is instead severed / scattered / replanted / displaced diaspora child of immigrants separated by waters of pacific ocean never white always foreign to a land that bore me a body that has become colonized by thousands of tongues who have chosen my words for me hair so long i’ve forgotten my roots the color of the soil that births the living bleached out of this skin / each ray of sunlight extracted like gold taken from underneath our feet through the labor of our own people cultivated by the burnt umber soil of forgotten wars turned insurrection of america’s religious duty to spread democracy and education / kill the savage save the man so they destroyed our crops / starved a nation / cut us down / forced thousands to flee all in the name of god / the burden pure white, star-shaped revolt uprooted from the earth with centuries of brown bleeding to white years later grown from immigrants baptized by pacific ocean, a single bud unfurls brown as the dirt breathing it into life sweet-scented inheritance of: lilies, roses, jasmines rooted. thriving. wildly rising from dust with eyes wide breaking dawn in its wake a revolution Here. 2
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crumbling ghazal
shivani narang
i have only ever written broken ghazals crumbling mimics of fantasies &
only ever danced
memories that aren’t even mine they say this queer nonbinary femmeboi desi body couldn’t have existed if there weren’t these bodies before please
where can i meet
them they don’t come in my dreams these days they used to i pushed them away i deeply apolo-i was just scar-- this ghazal keeps breaking this ghazal keeps breaking or this ghazal keeps ghosting none of these words are from the body they could’ve been from i’ve been taught to not use the word should taught to not use words
to use
body to use pussy to use whiskey none of which can ever be mine & still this ghazal keeps fucking breaking
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on home
neena mohan
as the salt of summer washes over my tongue I taste the bittersweetness only an ocean could carry moonlight torments stormy seas to divulge my truth but only in her glow could I ever see home home, nanaji tells me I am supposed to feel it in my own body tells me my bones and blood are part of god I ask him if god could exist in a place so tired with rifts and holes that hold nothing in and keep nothing out I fear this erosion has made me too soft, malleable to the rage of the white tides my yearning hands gripping, then slipping, on unwelcoming brown sand condemning my desires to the trenches of the sea
oh, how she touched me so soft! her fingers as light as sea foam crests mouth indulgent as waves lapping the shore is this the wholeness home is supposed to feel? this question I do not ask nanaji carrying these identities coarse as salt breeze lungs battle water to fill instead with whispers of sandalwood smoke reminds me of punjabi warrior womxn, of my fighting, righteous blood that on both lands was only taught how to fight itself is this how freedom means? can I only exist at the bottom of the sea? part of me thinks the ocean knows how to hold longing for the unknown in its body without breaking tell me, is it possible for an ocean to flood?
only at the point of drowning when water rushes through these cracks does desperation for breath, her breath trick me into believing she is air itself air that has touched home, touched here, and now touched me
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the girl in the fishing boat casey tran
i feel you, restless as the sea. She has felt them her entire life—lost mothers and fathers, sisters and brothers, friends and strangers. They rise from the dead of the sea, seeking home in her. She drowns in them, not knowing where their pain, her pain begins or ends. They shadow her, wanting her to tell their story. --she rides waves, searching for home. - no one leaves home unless On a tiny fishing boat in the middle of the ocean and nowhere, she quiets her breath until all she can hear is the rise and fall of salt water. She bends her spine, folds into herself to fit the boat’s crevices. She holds lips together, forces hard truths down her throat. She seeks refuge in silence. --i come from the womb of your silence. In a sea of fishing boats, a baby girl is born. She is born to a war that has not ended yet, a war that is still felt by living and dead alike. She opens her mouth in a silent cry. --silence is survival, they tell her. - wisdom rooted in scars She remembers the tiny fishing boat in the middle of the ocean. Of how her mother stayed silent,watched hunger eat men, men break women, and the waves that swallowed them all. And how she hid her pain in the crevices of the boat.
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On the playground, she quiets her breath until all she can hear are the taunts. She bends her spine, folds into herself, disappears into the ground. Pale faces spit untruths; she bites her tongue until she cannot feel voice. She seeks refuge in silence, hoping it will save her. But it does not. --you coax out the words, one by one, until they become salt water. - flow She’s afraid that she will disappear into the silence. That the silence will swallow her, like it swallowed lost sailors in tiny fishing boats. So, she throws an anchor into blank pages, hoping that she won’t be swept away in the margins. She puts pen to paper. She writes herself into existence. --home is the feeling of you, of us.
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my people
On a tiny fishing boat in the middle of the Pacific, a girl rises from the crevices. She unfolds her spine, eyes on the horizon. There, she sees another fishing boat and a boy. The boy looks at her. They drift toward each other, drawn by home. The girl clears the cobweb of quiet in her throat. She licks lips parched from truth and speaks. Together, they join a wave of fishing boats and journey to a golden city on the curve of a coast. --i am screaming to you in my silence. listen for me. what do you hear? If she listens hard enough, she can hear them in the silence. They are talking to each other, to cousins, and to her. She tries to talk back, but her tongue has forgotten the motherland. Instead she writes them back.
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changing tides in the pacific ~ thomas mangolona II
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growing hearts vikram boyapati
In strange woods, we gather broken twigs, In time, we build our nest. Our songs fill with zest, With friends and strangers, we zig and zag. The song we tune and the dance we perfect, So as we grow our hearts, We grow our home.
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dad, will you love me still? van sam
grandma said when i smile next to you at the dinner table she’s sure that you didn’t pick me up from the trashcan, she’s sure that i’m your daughter, ‘cause our smiles are identical you know? like how our lips bend upward stretch wide from one side to another, our eyes fold into itself somehow, i, too have too many wrinkles on my eyelid when i smile so did she think that you picked me up from the trashcan all this time ‘cause i didn’t always smile around you i used to just sit up right, spend half of my dinner trying to keep my spoon from hitting the flowery bowl, slowly allowing my teeth to press into crispy fried rice, without spitting any words out of my mouth, at the dinner table, ‘cause the last time i put my elbow on the table and allowed words to roll out of my tongue while eating with you, your words turned into blades as you said you got no manner just like your mom if you keep being like your mom i will kick you out of the house as if you forget that I didn’t want to be in this house and mom didn’t make me by herself and dinner time is the only time I could talk to you I wonder if working thirteen hours at the poultry market and have chicken scratch you all over your hands make you feel the need to scratch someone else when you get home, too
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grandma said when i smile next to you at the dinner table she’s sure that you didn’t pick me up from the trashcan, she’s sure that i’m your daughter ‘cause our smiles are identical but would she still think that you didn’t pick me up from the trashcan if she knew that my lips also stretch wide from one side to another when i see my crush rock their floral button up and uses they them pronounce let me speak about the day after liberation and what we would do then with my mouth full of the food they made laugh with me when i clumsily drop my chopstick for the third time on the floor make me feel like i never want to leave the dinner table would your eyes still fold into itself and smile with me or would you shut them tight call me sick and blame it on mom forgetting that mom didn’t make me by herself but how dare i take away your smile keep your lips from bending upward stretching from one side to another when you are just healing from the scratches that mom gave you
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homelands some lands home body some body kat nham i am not from places i am of them. when places have slipped from your hxstory like shadows chase the sun out of the sky home is not where you rest your head at night. it is supposedly this body its skin both walls and borders at once each bone a settled ancestor all soil and breath and memory a faded map no generation can read can a body be a ghost in three languages its hands all messy translation the distance between diaspora and dysphoria just because there is a house does not mean there is a home look for the way laughter stayed how it pressed itself softly into melanin search for ocean in its eyes how many dragons brought rain to tend new life how many boats braved the storms touch the places that incense stained the way ghost tongues still know how to burn listen to the beat of a heart the gentle thrum of heavenly & earthly voices together drawn in a nurturing breath that keep these walls alive and the way they hold the shape of my hands.
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active exposure i
kourtney nham 16
iii. growing home maria palaroan
Everyday, I am learning that my heart is more than just a vessel for abuse. Mother’s Day: I am sitting across from my mother and I am watching her cry. After an hour of talking, she breaks down and explains why she pushes us away. Why she’s cold. Why it’s hard for her to be a good mother. And I am listening. I am listening and with every tear my heart is breaking and soaring at the same time because I finally understand the complicated woman that ruled my life for so long. Understood that she’s carried the burden of abuse in her for years. That life was hard in the Philippines, that her family, my titas, threw money at her face, that despite the violence against her, she worked hard, studied, survived to get away. That she was terrified of this foreign land where she knew no one and did not speak the language. And for the first time, I see myself in her, the girl who carried the pain in silence, whose is breaking to carry a world. Who wanted to prove that she mattered. My mother is crying and I am grasping her hand, her shaking shoulders and for once I understand, after 20 years, that she hurt us to keep us from feeling the hurt she had lived. To save herself from feeling that hurt again. It isn’t right, but I get it. I am hugging her and I am telling her that I love her, and my mother who has never confided in me before, who has yelled and hurt me, is as vulnerable as an egg in my arms. And I am crying with her. I am telling her I am thankful that she fought so hard to survive, and for the first time, I feel at peace. Resilience Runs in my blood. I have learned through her to take what others have hurt me with, to lift myself up I am flying I can see my roots. There is no such thing as a closing thought: Part of growing up is realizing that home is not a physical space. Home can be more than one place, can be everything all at once Home is the tightness in your chest, an ache to understand To feel safe, unguarded Home is my mother’s cooking, the sweet, tangy taste of her kaldereta Home is his arms after a long day Home is my bed A phone call My friends faces after months of separation Home is something that I am constantly in and constantly searching for I have been looking for a way To be at home in myself.
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where do i water first? swetha pola
i am aching for the words that trace between the joints of my bones. but i accidentally exhaled and feel them slipping away through the folds of my brown body, crawling into thin film around me. i’m scrambling to retrieve them, but they have faded, too far-gone to catch. mauve coated, connective blessings too far-gone to catch. my insides have emptied to dust (and my asthmatic mother has trained me to clean more often than i pray). i find myself often: digging for pieces of ancestors even though they passed 14,000 kilometers away from these American soils; pretending to bathe in their whispers spilling in through the safety of my mesh windows; exhausting words so that the space between these stanzas might someday hum the truths of ancient vedas and shlokas. i stir neither here nor there / unrooted. unrooted from generations of climbing mango trees and combing coconut oil into thick black hair and so when i buy my mangoes at Whole Foods and cut my hair above my shoulders, i dangle in this process of rerooting: draping myself over new earth, shoveling into a root system that runs highly complex. when i cross back to ancestral lands, i fear intruding on something pure and so i am neither here nor there / unrooted: suspended halfway, searching for space. digging, i found: how amma and nanna reached far for the lives of their unborn children, accidentally exhaled halfway across the Atlantic ocean, kept reaching till they found foreign fields, and in them, each other. i found how they have fed me పప్పు అన్నం every day since then. these words have not dissipated. they have cleansed our systems a thousand times over. they rest rooted in remembering where we came from / what we came here for. 18
untitled 62 isaac yi
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prayers//
//du'Ä ' leenah bassouni
I will stand as a lover with the mothers of those who have fallen who are still calling for a tomorrow where the color of skin, the shade of my existence, the tint of my resistance is not a death sentence. ;hue or ; broken down houses like broken down bodies like deteriorating structures like collapsing hearts and collapsing minds shuttering windows, blind eyes and shattered teeth my brother shouts where will you go, who will you have, his lips melt into his coffee colored skin while i sink into my milky privilege. ;roots or ; women drenched in rosewater tears, charcoal n kohl dusted down their backs, kisses falling from their lips like forgotten dreams among the dulled stars in their eyes. the beat that left their hands like the rhythm of their roots, echoing strong in the distance— aching. ;ripped or ;reclaiming or ; 20
32° N, 34° E my mother’s hands know many terrains, always kneading coordinates into homes. home when breaking her porcelain sets for ahwa with my forehead and glass cups for shai with my front teeth when the smooth muscle she graphed with her warm-thin fingers slams itself against my diaphragm beats fear through my blood vessels drags me underneath mean sea level and high water line try to reach in / to rip it out / to hold it in my hands blood dripping down the sides of my arms and underneath my sleeves. swallow ice water to pinpoint some other pain, any other pain. 32° N, 36° E my mother learned from her mother who learned from her father how to control the mediterranean sea with their mouths but my mouth is too much washed out with salt and blood and english my mouth-this american thingonly knows how to drown 42° N, 84° W trying to breathe like he taught me how in a dim lit room last week but can’t remember what he said because instant erosion carved on back of my eyelids flood plains in blood vessels exceeding capacity heart-breaking-bones-burning-eyes trying not to break to forget to stop thinking to focus wipe away streams off the topography of my face (not my face someone else’s) move fingers across blueprints on how to keep my heart beating (not my heart someone else’s) watching myself drown disintegrate disappear self-destruct through a screen. afraid i don’t know why (or that i do) afraid that this map will always plot fear try to point out on a map where i am from because they have never heard of me have never seen my body but i’m afraid it’s invisible i’m afraid, it’s not there i’m not there afraid i only exist in terms of fear of dying of loss when my heart is losing splintering and pushing shards of glass into the inside of my skin splattering blood against my bones. like this is something i’ve always known like this is something inherent ---- inherited
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34° N, 118° W i am trying to learn how to trace the contour intervals of my body the depth of its curves like how my ancestors once traced maps of railroads and ports in falasteen and charts of stars and deserts in al’uurdun i am trying to learn in the losing splintering splattering burning breaking but somehow finding a way to wake up even with ashes seeping into my bed sheets finding a way to chart the blood spill into something, something an atlas of scars and dirt and breaths not taken something my mothers’ hands know too well (this isn’t for you this is for me in remembrance of them this mapping, this charting this ancestor thing how i feel closer to home when i am planning how to leave it) 32° N, 34° E i am learning how to wash away the english and control oceans with my mouth how to move my hands hands that look like my mother’s learning to press coordinates into skin and make homes out of hurricanes
N
W
E
atlas, or a guide on how to leave home voulette hattar
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homophones yujane chen 不會分開同音詞的孩子 不會分ㄣ跟ㄥ , 二或三聲 需要用谷歌翻譯 你還算是你母親的孩子嗎 你還記得你的母語嗎 你還記得你的名字嗎 你知道怎麼分開 藥水或 需要水 非需要或 需要飛 水果或 水的國 出生或 出聲 你還記得你的名字嗎 昱蓁
昱蓁
昱蓁
昱蓁
說你母語給你的名字和 你的舌頭開始流
(a translation) child who cannot tell the difference between homophones cannot read a tone as a song or a sigh relies on google translate to speak are you still your mother’s child do you still deserve your name do you know the difference between medicine necessary bruised fruit giving birth
or or or or
longing for water flying back home a sinking country making a sound
do you still know your name yujane yujane
a blooming garden or
the hiss of a knife
say the name your mother gave you & your tongue begins to bleed 23
flower life alec fagarang
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alex penano
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about the artists Casey Tran (she/her) is a poet and storyteller in the San Francisco Bay Area. She writes for those who have yet to find their voice. For more of her writing, visit medium.com/@caseytran or follow her on Twitter @tran_casey.
Angel Trazo (she/her) graduated from Colgate University with a double major in Biology and Studio Art. She is currently pursuing her dream of becoming a graphic novelist and hopes to begin her Masters in Asian American Studies in 2018.
Neena Mohan (she/her) is a queer, South Asian poet currently studying Environmental Economics & Policy and Environmental Science with an LGBT studies minor at UC Berkeley. She is an organizer with CalSLAM and the Students of Color Environmental Collective (SCEC). Neena finds strength in connecting with her community’s radical hxstory, and believes love and art are powerful tools for collective healing.
Thomas Manglona (he/him/his/Thomas) is a proud native Chamorro and aspiring journalist from the island of Rota in the Northern Mariana Islands.
kat nham (they/she) is a chinese-vietnamese american studying at uc berkeley. their writing has always been their way of understanding and honoring all of the identities they hold and the ancestors who brought them here.
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Vikram Boyapati (he/him) is an Indian immigrant who came to the US in 1990. He is an Electrical Engineer by profession and worked on various consulting projects throughout the US. His passions are reading, writing, listening to music and traveling all over the world with family.
Alex Penano (she/her) is a Filipina born in San Francisco and raised in Las Vegas. Friends call her Alex, family calls her Sasha.
Maria Palaroan (she/her) is an incoming transfer to UC Berkeley for Fall 2017. She is majoring in Sociology and intends on minoring in either Ethnic Studies or Education. She is a second generation Pilipinx, and is originally from Long Beach, CA but studied at SFSU and Berkeley City College before transferring.
shivani narang (she/they) is working towards a degree in Ethnic Studies with a minor in Asian American & Asian Diaspora Studies at UC Berkeley and is an intern at the Multicultural Community Center on campus. they owe their life to Youth Speaks & were part of the Local Future Corps team for Brave New Voices in the Bay Area this past July. they recently co-released a book collection of poems called “in another life, no bodies home” with their sibling Grace.
Isaac Yi (he/him/they/them) calls the Pacific NW home base. Photography and music are his outlets. Potatoes and cheese are his vices. Trees and coffee are his necessities. Monochrome and citrus are his preferences.
jasmine joyce quintana (they/them) is a queer pilipinx student and poet from Los Angeles, CA. they are finishing their last year of undergrad as a Comparative Ethnic Studies major at UC Berkeley and will be pursuing grad school Fall 2018 (probably). the are passionate about grassroots organizing, creative writing & art as a means of resistance & resilience, and cuddling dogs.
swetha pola (she/her) is a 1st generation south asian writer & student. she is eternally grateful for her family and seeks to unravel the hxstories of herself and her family through art.
voulette hattar (she/they): me as a site of all of my ancestors breathing. me as one descendant of a long line of strong Palestinian womxn whose blood pulses through me. me as my skin, as my skin rooted to the ground by them, as my rooted-tothe-ground skin a home for me, me being them. these words as a means to speak to them. these words as a means to fight with them. these words as a means to crawl out from the silences we have been forced to swallow for generations.
leenah bassouni (she/her) is an arab and muslim girl who grew up in germany, scotland, and california with floating roots in libya. she is studying the processes of decolonization.
kourtney nham (she/her) is a chinese american 17 year old who will be attending ucla in the fall. Alec Fagarang (he/him) is a San Francisco local that loves all things creative and has a passion specifically for photography & poetry. He is editor in chief of {m}aganda magazine & strives to be a leader in the API community in the Bay Area.
van sam (they/them) was born in viet nam and raised in philly (215 ayeee). they are a queer, non binary, viet chinese person who’s organizing from place of love for our self determination. wild flowers, dogs, ice cream, tenderness, and loud laughters make them happy.
yujane chen (they/she) is a queer, 1.5 generataion Taiwanese im/migrant & child of diaspora. she was a member of the Bay Area 2017 Brave New Voices Poetry Team & is currently an Emerging Poet Mentor with Youth Speaks in the Bay.
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