15 minute read
Ari Laurel
1st Place Fiction 2021 Summer Contest
“Farewell Address to the Last Mango in the Pacific Northwest” uses an imagined historical document to explore a future in which the land has been given back to Indigenous peoples, and globalization and dependence on colonized economies have been replaced by local supply chains and sustainable agricultural practices. Yet “Farewell Address” explores a moment not of triumph, but of grief, centering that grief as central to the path that leads to change. As one last mango is passed around a crowd at a speech that functions as a ritual closure to the unsustainable past, the assembled audience has mixed reactions, just as there is conflict among community elders in advance of the ceremony. People openly weep; they grow anxious or angry over letting go of the mango; they are afraid. Rather than imagining a future utopia without collective grief, fear, and conflict, “Farewell Address” posits these emotions as central to liberation, and asks whether finding collective ways of mourning might be the key to making such a future possible.
Zeyn Joukhadar
Ari Laurel
A speech given by Ruby Valencia Fung, First Secretary of the Central Committee of Cascadia (formerly the Pacific Northwest Territories of the former United States of America), September, 2068
In the early 20th century, Chairman Mao Zedong was gifted a basket of mangoes from a Pakistani delegation. Rather than keep them for himself, he bestowed them upon the factory workers who were instrumental in the Cultural Revolution. While the workers stayed up through the night, admiring and caressing the fruit, the mangoes soon became subject of debate. How should they indulge in the spoils if they could not divide the basket evenly among the masses? Following the precedent set by the Chairman, they chose to preserve the mangoes in wax so that all might enjoy them. A ceremony was held at the factory to welcome the fruit. To spread the message of friendship and solidarity between China and Pakistan, teams of workers were sent to various parts of China with real and artificial mangoes on trucks where the mangoes were received with fanfare and veneration.
In the early 21st century, when Asian American diaspora storytelling was at its height, cut fruit, and specifically mangoes were often the subject of poetry. Writers meditated on the mango’s golden flesh and compared its taste to nectar and honey. Mangoes became such a popular device that they came to be seen as a tired trope. Asian American writers who invoked the mango were accused of self-exotification and pandering to a colonial fantasy, which sparked a movement against depictions of “the mango and the monsoon.”1
Often the invocation of the mango was an attempt at reconciliation with a land lost to time and distance. The flavor of the mango is distinct and vibrant, triggering nostalgic sensations that connect us to the earth. But we are not simply stewards of the earth, we are the earth. The land is not something separate from us. We are the land. So when we say we have lost our connection to nature, what we have truly lost is our connection to ourselves. In rebuilding this society together, we have the opportunity to restore the connection which was once lost.
Today, we have made great strides in progress toward restoring that connection. In the last three years, we have increased wild salmon populations in the salmon run to levels that will ensure their survival. We have built sixty-five new renewable energy farms up and down the coastline, with wind farms being planned in inland regions. We have successfully mended the failing infrastructure of four major urban hubs—Vancouver, Surrey, Seattle, and Portland—and have begun exporting those same infrastructure resources Eastward to rural communities. We developed local supply chains in forestry
1 The criticism of using mango and monsoon imagery in East, Southeast, and South Asian fiction and poetry extends as far back as the 1990s. See Atima Srivatastava’s 1999 British Asian novel Looking for Maya, where Amrit sneeringly refers to South Asian diasporic fiction as “mangoes and coconuts and grandmothers ... The Great Immigrant Novel.” The repeated trope was often criticized by other writers as cultural performance, where the East or South Asian writer exploits their ethnic background by playing up orientalist ideas for the consumption of white readership. However, it was not until late 2021 that the art movement, “No Mangoes, No Monsoons,” emerged when a collective of East Asian, Southeast Asian,and South Asian writers campaigned to eradicate orientalist fiction from American publishing.
processing. In doing so, we have not only provided jobs for 1.5 million people, but we have also been able to construct homes by sourcing from those areas. Today, we are well on our way to decommodify housing and end homelessness for our unhoused populations in the Pacific Northwest territories.
I am grateful for the certain promise of a quality of life yet to be seen by previous generations. For clean, safe drinking water for every community and family across the region. For the lush green of our backyards. For meaningful work ahead of us led by skilled expertise and strong hands. I am grateful that children are nourished, healthy, cared for, and educated by model caregivers and educators. I am grateful for the World Indigenous Nations, who have assumed authority and restoration of the land, for this chance to repair generations of broken promises. I am grateful that we have begun this process of healing from the trauma of capitalism, imperialism, settler colonialism, and environmental ruin, and that we are mending ties with those who have faced the most virulent effects of this former nation’s crimes against humanity.2
This mango that I have in my hands is a gift from my ancestral homeland of the Philippines as a show of faith in continued relations and internationalism. This mango, which was grown in the tropical sunshine, was plucked off one of the oldest trees in Central Luzon. From that tree, it was brought by freight to a warehouse facility where it was carefully packaged in cotton batting and molded pulp trays to keep it safe from damage. From there, it was driven again, one hundred and thirty miles to the Port of Manila. It was then stored upon a large shipping vessel, which, traveling 19,000 nautical miles for nearly a month, delivered it to the Port of Seattle. When we received it several weeks ago, it was still very firm. So we let it sit in the sun until it reached peak ripeness. As with a mango, all good things come with time, care, and cultivation. For a mango, this may be a few weeks. For a society, this may be several centuries.
As our ecological recovery programs continue to restore the old-growth forests, the mountains, wetlands, and the beautiful coastline to the ecosystems that rival the days before extraction, our communities will thrive on sustainable fishing and agriculture—enough to feed generations. And yet, as we all know, the region does not sustain enough sunlight and warmth to grow mangoes and many other foods in a largely permaculture society. As subsistence farming dominates our agriculture, we must also lower the imports of such goods, even things like coffee, which once commercially defined this region. These so-called luxury goods were grown under a monocultural system which devastated the soils and left whole countries unable to plant for their own sustenance. These goods were the product of exploited labor and enslavement and tethered colonized economies to the whims of Western bourgeois imperialists. Finally, the export of these goods contributed to unparalleled levels of environmental destruction, which only intensified the cycle of loss, trauma3, and pain experienced by all. Our generation, having lived through yearly wildfires that ripped through our towns, swore that the next
2 There were ten acts punishable as crimes against humanity when perpetrated knowingly by a state actor as part of a systematic or widespread attack against a civilian population. These were: murder; extermination; deportation or forcible transfer; false imprisonment; torture; rape, sexual slavery or enforced sterilization; ethnic persecution; disappearance; and apartheid. The ICC was set up by the Rome Statute in 1998 to prosecute those responsible for the most serious international crimes. While it was conventionally accepted that the United States had committed all ten of these acts, either on its own soil or on international soil, trials for war crimes and crimes against humanity have only been completed in a small handful of cases, and the US was never convicted. 3 “Trauma” was the common term in North American analysis, which more often than not, used clinical or mental-health terminology. In publications from China, for example, these things were often called “ghosts” of backwardness, ignorance, imperialism, and colonialism.
generation would never see the same devastation. We can only count ourselves as so lucky to still be blessed with fertile farmland and a mild climate. But as you can see, the journey that the mango took from Luzon to Cascadia is no longer sustainable on a large scale.
Today, we find ourselves in a similar position to the great revolutionaries a hundred years ago. Today, we are on the precipice of fundamental change. And so I’d like the delegates seated before me4 to join me in passing the last mango in our possession from one person to the next. You are invited to participate in this ceremony because you have been entrusted with the monumental task of preserving this moment and reporting our history. Upon receiving the mango from your neighbor, take several seconds to admire it, smell it, and commit it to memory. After that, please pass it to the delegate next to you. As there are several hundred delegates in attendance today, I ask that you be patient during this ceremony. When the mango reaches the final delegate, I ask that it be returned to the lectern, so that it can be transported to the People’s Memorial Garden of Willamette Valley, where it will be planted as a display of our commitment and solidarity to our comrades in the Asia Pacific.
And now, we must say farewell to a number of these small, but sensual luxuries—to this mango, which we have committed to being the last mango in the Pacific Northwest. It is a solemn farewell. But it is also a promise. It is a promise to cultivate our own crop, to make our own wares, to share the fruits of our labor to each according to their need.
ENDNOTES
In the weeks leading up to the farewell address, procedural details for the mango ceremony were hotly debated within the central committee. A number of committee members expressed skepticism over a ceremony that invited veneration of a luxury object. After all, the mango during the Cultural Revolution symbolized what could be gained through struggle, while in this case, it symbolized what the people of Cascadia were sacrificing for the sake of better conditions for all. A luxury good won during an industrial period of society gave the people hope that mangoes would one day be enjoyed by all, but due to globalization, there were so many daily luxuries enjoyed by the middle classes of late capitalist North American society, that they became tantamount to other banned luxuries such as mansions, private jets, or designer clothing. A mango exported to China also did not bear the same carbon footprint as a mango exported to Cascadia5 .
The debates originally began just after the mango was in transit from Central Luzon, and continued even after the mango arrived at the Port of Seattle. Minister of Defense, Pamela Haskell, interrogated the committee on whether “flaunting luxury fruit in front of the masses before snatching them away for good” was in fact counterrevolutionary, as they would not be able to anticipate the effect such a powerful commodity would have on the people. She was joined in her objections by Clem Tsosie, Minister of Education and Culture, who emphasized that the
4 Delegates were 500 individuals from varying regions of Cascadia. Among them were a selection of artists, musicians, scholars, filmmakers and storytellers. Occupying the upper seats were some 10,000 local workers who had won a lottery to witness the passing of the mango from afar. 5 Between 2060-2066, nations of the former United States of America experimented with the cultivation of tropical fruits in Florida. However, Florida’s agriculture faced additional challenges from climate change, including sea level rise and intensified extreme climate events, which negatively impacted land and irrigation, livestock, and pest and disease control.
mango was “imbued with generations of meaning.”6
The committee frequently tabled the subject over the course of several meetings, but as the mango sat ripening in the greenhouse, the committee began to call attention to their limited time for debate. Several members in favor of the ceremony accused the objectors of deliberately stalling so that by the time the committee could come to a decision, the mango would be overripe. The objectors blamed Minister of Foreign Affairs, Indigo Diallo, for accepting such a dangerous gift without at first consulting the committee, thereby putting Cascadia in a position of obligation to recognize the gift publicly. A notable turn in the conversation came about when Katrina Noisecat, Chair of the People’s Council of Yakima County, spoke to the committee. Below is an excerpt from the final meeting, which was held August 30, 2068:
I’m personally shocked at the way members of the committee are talking about this. Not the mango, but the people.
Some of y’all already know this, but my family just put a dog down. We had two dogs. Bestie, our elderly mutt -- beautiful girl, Bestie -- and Bullet, named because his head looks like a bullet. Yes, Secretary, this is going to go somewhere, I promise. Bullet grew up with Bestie from a puppy. She was practically his mother. Well, Bestie hit fifteen years old about six months ago, and she got very ill. Kidney disease. Me and my wife took her to vet appointments, and Bullet would stay home with our daughter. Whenever we’d leave with Bestie, Bullet would spend all his time at the window waiting for us to pull into the driveway again, open the back door, and lift her out. Eventually, she became so ill that we made the tough decision to put her down. She’d lived a good life. She saw us through the farm riots. We didn’t want to keep her around in pain and vomiting and not eating just because we couldn’t bear to see her go. This was two weeks ago.
When we brought her body back, she was skin and bones by then. Our daughter, Camilla, wanted to hide Bestie’s body from Bullet. She didn’t want to break that pup’s little heart, didn’t want him to know what we had done. But instead I brought Bestie inside, laid her on the carpet, and uncovered the blanket. We let Bullet smell her body. He howled, nudged her little jowls, and tried to wake her. We let him mourn for her, his adoptive mother. I explained to our daughter that it was important for him, or else he would be at the window living hopeful and confused.
Comrades, these are our people. They fought for the revolution. They pushed for change for over a decade, and have since been rebuilding the world into something that serves us all. Saying goodbye is difficult, but the people barely had the time to mourn the old world. And to let them isn’t a danger to them. Some of these folks have had bigger losses than a fucking mango! Apologies, Secretary. All I’m saying is, people are well aware of the stakes, even more than some of you. We ourselves cannot make ourselves so essential to the movement, that the movement dies with us. I am preparing my daughter to inherit our victories and our sorrows. That’s why we can’t baby them. We have to trust them. We
6 While the exact meaning of Tsosie’s statement is unclear, their early work in Cultural Institutions of Revolutionary Storytelling suggests they are referring to the connection between the invocation of mangoes and the naval-gazing individualism of the writer, as explained in footnote 1.
have to have faith in the masses.
Many scholars argue that Noisecat’s contribution was what ultimately convinced the committee to move forward with the ceremony as planned. While some of the committee members still voiced hesitation, many were unprepared to face public criticism for their unprincipled paternalism toward the masses. During the final vote before the September address, the motion to move forward with the passing of the mango ceremony passed unanimously.
Indeed, as predicted by the objectors in the committee, the ceremony was an emotionally charged event. Some of the attendees of the farewell address reported a serene calm, which gave way to excitement and agitation as the passing of the mango ceremony commenced. Some attendees reported feeling suddenly filled with sadness and longing once they held the mango in their hands. Others reported becoming increasingly manic and anxious as the mango slowly made its way closer. One respondent noted:
I wasn’t feeling that strongly about the mango at first. But the energy of the room must have done something to me because as people passed the mango, it was as if the smell was getting sweeter and stronger the closer it got. It became almost too much to bear. When I was finally given the mango, I became overwhelmed by the fragrance and immediately gave it to the next person. When it started moving away from me again, I felt full of remorse. Like I should have spent more time with it.
The full ceremony took approximately forty minutes. For members of the committee, they were forty tense and uncertain minutes. Some became visibly uncomfortable whenever the mango disappeared from view, and it was later reported that some had privately speculated that there had been tampering or theft. Wails and weeping could be heard from the crowd and a number of people expressed reluctance to pass on the mango, having to be prompted by their neighbor or a committee member monitoring the situation from the aisle. The committee didn’t have to wait too long, however. Eventually the mango was passed to the next person, and the next, and the next, until it was returned safely to the lectern at the front of the assembly hall, where it was once again received by Secretary Ruby Valencia Fung. Though by then it had been handled by by five hundred people, it emerged from the audience completely undamaged.
