F WORD VOL. IX

VOL. IX APRIL 2018

CONTENT warning: SEE TABLE OF CONTENTS

WELCOME TO Welcome to VOLUME IX of F WORD, a feminist collective based in Montréal, QC. Through our publication, we aim to provide a platform for the marginalized feminist voices that are underrepresented in our community. Our notion of feminism is not limited to gender politics, but rather extends to all anti-oppressive perspectives. With this intersectional framework in mind, we aim to separate ourselves from feminisms that refute such values. We want our content to reflect these goals and to be a space where people feel safe sharing their experiences. As well as being a platform for our contributors, we hope F WORD will evolve as a community resource in Montréal and stand as a meeting place of feminists.

We are currently working to partner with other groups and organizations that share our anti-oppressive values and interests. If you or a group you are involved in would like to collaborate with F WORD, please e-mail us.

As always, we have the greatest appreciation for all of the support that we receive from our contributors, allies, and readers.

Lots of love from the collective!

F WORD seeks to explore feminism in its present-day cultural context as a unifying, anti-oppressive, intersectional force. We seek to provide an accessible community resource through inclusive, constructive multi-media content. Through our collective’s non-hierarchical structure, we aim to challenge and move away from existing systems of oppression.

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Content warning: As a feminist publication, some of the content in this zine discusses traumatic experiences. Please read the table of contents and the accompanying content warnings carefully.

F WORD acknowledges that Montreal/ McGill is on traditional Haudenosaunee or Kanien’kehá:ka land

BIENVENUE à Nous avons le plaisir de vous présenter le neuvième publication de F WORD, un collectif fondé à Montréal. À travers nos publications, nous nous sommes donné pour mandat de fournir une plateforme aux féministes marginalisé(e) s qui sont sous-représenté(e)s dans notre communauté. Notre vision du féminisme ne se limite pas à l’aspect politique, mais s’étend plutôt à toutes les perspectives anti-oppressives. Dans ce cadre multidimensionnel, nous visons à nous dissocier des féminismes qui rejettent de telles valeurs. Nous voulons que le contenu de nos publications reflète ces objectifs et assure un espace accueillant où toute personne puisse se sentir à l’aise de partager ses expériences. En plus d’être une plateforme pour nos contributeurs et contributrices, nous espérons que F WORD évoluera en tant que communauté ressource à Montréal et pourra servir de lieu de rencontre pour les féministes.

Nous tentons présentement de nous associer avec d’autres groupes ou organisations qui partagent nos valeurs et intérêts anti-oppressifs. Si vous ou un groupe dont vous faite partie souhaite collaborer avec F WORD, n’hésitez pas a nous contacter par e-mail.

Comme toujours, nous apprécions énormément tout le soutien que nous recevons de nos contributeurs et contributrices, allié(e)s et lecteurs et lectrices.

Nous vous envoyons plein d’amour de la part du collectif!

F WORD cherche à explorer le Féminisme dans son contexte culturel actuel, en tant que force intersectionnelle, anti-oppressive, et unifiante. Nous voulons créer une ressource communautaire accessible grâce à un contenu multimédia inclusif et constructif. Grâce à une structure non hiérarchisée au sein de notre collectif, nous désirons nous distancer des systèmes d’oppression existants.

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Avertissement sur le contenu: En tant que publication féministe, certains éléments dans le contenu de ce magazine font référence à des évènements traumatisants. Veuillez lire la table des matières et les avertissements attentivement.

F WORD reconnaît que Montreal/McGill fait partie du territoire traditionel Haudenosaunee ou Kanien'kehá:ka.

Table of Contents Gold Circles by Hannah Taylor...................................................................................1-2 Bound by Anthi Tsobou Self-Portrait by Alexa Rhynd ....................................................................................3 fighter girl by Kirsten Wesselow .............................................................................. 4 PROJECTIONS by by Emma Ciereszynski (TW: rape, sexual assault, harassment) ....

5-6

Orange Dreams by Navneet Kaur Untitled by Alexa Rhynd...........................................................................................7 I am Fire by Laurence Guysinger (CW: death) ........................................................... 8 not what you think by Holly Lu Rees (CW: rape mention) ........................................... 9 Surveillance and Intervention by Anonymous (CW: cancer, needles) ........................ 10 My mother, the Goddess by Lavanya Huria Rebellion by Navneet Kaur ...................................................................................... 11 Shattered Light by Navneet Kaur.............................................................................. 12 Mother Nature is She by Tia Goodhand ....................................................................13-14 multiples by Sarah Sparks ......................................................................................15 exit wounds by zahra (CW: homophobia) .................................................................. 16 cop car by Lulu Lebowitz Untitled by Lulu Lebowitz ........................................................................................17 Heat by Navneet Kaur Hindrance by Navneet Kaur .................................................................................... 18 New and Stuck by Carlotta Esposito Doc 2 by Alyzeh Jiwani ........................................................................................... 19 Parasol by Lulu Lebowitz Morning By the Window by Judy Park ......................................................................20 Εξομολόγηση/Exomologisi (Confession) by Anonymous (CW: homophobia, sexual harassment) ........................................................................................................... 21 Her by D D ............................................................................................................. 22 a study in eschatology, half-imagined by Hannah Kaya ............................................23 In Bloom by Lulu Lebowitz ......................................................................................24 Sporagmos by Grace Gunning (TW: sexual assault) ...................................................25 Cry Me A River by Jordanna Gisser ......................................................................... 26 Black Silently Cracking by Saherla Osman (CW: anti-black racism, police brutality) .....27 Front cover: Girl Under a Cocktail Umbrella by Kaylina Kodlick Back cover: Hygiene de Vie by Charlotte Zaininger

Meet the artists Emma Ciereszynski is a poet and somewhat-artist in/on/under/across Montréal. She is on Twitter @gothcompost and on Instagram @ciereszynski.

D D - U3 Undergraduate, Faculty of Arts & Science, Major Cognitive Science.

Carlotta Esposito is a third year East Asian Studies major at McGill with minors in Economics and Environment. Home is Texas, Boston, and Brooklyn.

Artistic interests include drawing people and drawing on her walls.

Jordanna Gisser - U1 Anthropology major and Social Studies of Medicine minor. I love miniature schnauzers, potatoes, Michel Foucault, and letting the sun’s natural rays lay their hands on my face.

Tia Goodhand is a photographer and poet from Montréal. She enjoys a quality cup of coffee, long drives with good playlists and has yet to see a bad sunset. She is in her second year of Teaching English as a Second Language at McGill and hopes to teach while travelling after getting her degree.

Grace Gunning is a U3 student at McGill. She likes to write poetry and embroider.

Laurence Guysinger - sort of French, sort of a guy, sort of a singer. Despite a poem about fire, they are always cold. You can find them (occasionally) @laur_guy_the_singer or in a dark corner of McLennan.

Lavanya Huria is always trying to step out of her comfort zone and taking full advantage of all the opportunities given to her. Currently, she is pursuing Economics and Statistics, is Co-President of a Raag Fusion A Cappella, is an Internship Advisor at the Faculty of Arts Internship Office, and Social Media Manager for her cat, Kulfi (@kulfeline). Feel free to stop her while she’s running around campus and have a conversation about anything in the world, she would be delighted to talk to you!

Alyzeh Jiwani grew up in Dubai, U.A.E. and is currently living in Montreal. She is a third year at McGill University studying Mathematics and International Development. You can probably find her finishing a last minute assignment in Burnside basement on her fifth cup of coffee!

Hannah Kaya is a thinker, artist, and organizer based in Montreal. Her work offers ludic, participatory, and performative methods of enacting radical imagination and intervention. She is the co-founder of Fishbowl Collective - a glitter-punk, feminist physical theatre company promoting insurrectional and intimate dialogue. She co-runs the Togethering Lab, a participatory & interdisciplinary experiment that plays with ways of being together. Sometimes, she writes poetry about the things that may or may not have happened to her in her life.

Navneet Kaur - A Physics and Math Joint Honors student at McGill, Navneet Kaur seeks to portray elements of misery, affection, defeat, assault and ecstasy in art and writing. In her work she presents women as warriors. Born in Amritsar, India, Navneet believes that breathing life into art has the power to heal and inspire. Inspired by her mother and a friend’s style of reading poetry, she hopes to use art to empower, educate, question and heal.

Among many other things in life, she enjoys watching sunsets and raising almost unanswerable questions about Physics.

Lulu Lebowitz is a student at McGill who likes History. She is from the Bay Area where she has created a majority of her work using 35mm film.

Lulu likes Montreal, although she does not like the ice and is confused by the borderline excessive use of decorative Christmas lights.

Judy Park is a nihilistic, hedonistic, and overly emotional engineering student who likes to dabble in the fine arts. If you happen to like her paintings, Judy would probably paint your nudes if you send them her way at @judy_park. If you happen to own a mechanical engineering firm, and are hiring undergraduate interns, Judy would definitely work for you if you add her to your LinkedIn Professional Network.

Saherla Osman is a Psychology student at the University of Guelph-Humber likes to write poetry and go to new restaurants recommended by bloggers to eat delicious food. She also enjoys fashion and learning languages to further broaden her artistic skills.

Holly Lu Rees - i am old enough to have been published previously in sojourner, calliope, sinister wisdom, and elsewhere. i am a feminist, vegetarian, quaker, cat-keeping poet, caregiver and disability activist who writes in lower case as a revolutionary act.

Sarah Sparks is a second year student at McGill majoring in Sociology with a minor in IDS. When she isn’t spending time working on her next paper or assignment, she enjoys drawing, painting, hangin’ with her cat, and cry-watching ‘This is Us’ with her roommates. She is still searching for her style as an artist.

Hannah Taylor is a portrait and documentary photographer from Winnipeg, MB currently living in Montreal, QC. Her little sister is the best person in the world.

Kirsten Wesselow studies Art History in Montreal.

She has been writing (and developing her writing style) since she was about 13 years old. Her focus in her written work as of late has been trying to put her constantly fluctuating feelings about herself and the way she lives her life into words.

Gold Circles

Gold Circles

ait

bou

Self-portrait

Bound

s

u

s

fighter girl She is a fighter girl-no nonsense-chewing gumspat out on their shoes-girlpretty girl- lipstick a shade too dark on her gritted teeth-girlquiet girl, but does she actually want to be quiet-girl fighter girl tired girl depleted girl defeated girl When was the last time she looked in the mirror and liked what she saw?

She put on a bra today and that was progress And she knows that shouldn’t be progress She wants to be an accomplished girl She dreams of when she was the ‘she has so much potential’ girl Will it be realized?

Will she feel anything if it is?

She wants to lie down She wants to forget She wants to be the ‘it will make you stronger’ girl But she is not so sure she wants to be strong anymore Fighter girl does not want to be poetry She feels so silent She feels so small She takes her bra off

PROJECTIONS

Untitled

Orange Dreams Navneet Kaur

I am Fire I was born three weeks past the hottest day of the year My mother had been panting for weeks So it was no different in the last hours She carried me in her body Before her armsThe summer had raged and raged Passionate and angry Only until the moment I was born Screaming Did she mollify Meek and contented As if she had been carrying all of my will Until I took the wind from her in my first breath.

Only then, Cradled in red, Did she succumb to the flame of her funeral pyre And sooth into autumnI was born from her fire hot and sweaty In the dog days of August As I opened my eyesWater bluefor the first time, I opened my mouth And ragedRaged at the injustices of the world For my sisters For the unfairness of it all For all the beauty in the painI took it in, Clenched my chubby fists, And wailed.

My mother took me in with her brown eyes and shaking arms But she couldn’t extinguish my passionate cries, Because my mom may have given me life But the summer gave me my defiance.

not what you think damn this lively archive in my brain, this slideshow powered by cortisol & shame, fly’s eye view of the rapist’s art, hung in every hunched muscle. there’s no mistaking the rancid gleam in the eye, sly press of trousers against the hip, the nasty quip, the arrogant dismissal. understand, i’m not claiming all— i have my dear ones, as you have yours, & i have gladly lain down in heather & on linens, drowsing over plummy lips, rampant in the sheets & ready for the jubilee. but never just we 2, others ghosting over the threshold, yeasty breath, calloused thumb trawling up my back, nowhere close to yes. this is not the poem i had in mind. i wanted 20 sacred words for hope, heart’s balm, sentences both clean & tart to rinse the taste of panic from my mouth. instead, up churns what sounds like the story of how to wreck a girl, a plotline riding between pathos & a k-mart thriller.

by Holly Lu Rees

but the angels always know best, though they’re swamped at the moment, chugging espresso & burning through baskets of manna to bring us through to morning. the angels tell me just this: we are made of spirit & good flesh, & nothing can ruin us. we are the very air to one another. we are sanctuary. we are flame. we are the hairs on each other’s head & also the cherished sparrow. we are not done. i love you & i will never leave you. & so, once more, we rise.

Surveillance and Intervention

Anonymous

My mother, the Goddess | Lavanya Huria I look like my mother I carry her curly hair on my shoulders and her laughter in my cheeks I pray to her, with her, for her, every morning and every night I started wearing lipstick when I moved away because my mother could be late but not sans colourful lips I look like my mother, I proudly declare as my reflection gets ready in the morning.

She is the most honest person I know, and has confessed every embarrassing moment of her life to me How wicked, to remind me of her mortality, her imperfections, her moments of weakness.

I am tired, I am weak, would you mind making dinner for your father and me?

Oh, you’re having trouble. Here, let me.

My mum heals with everything she does and has ignited that same yearning within me. you were put on this path to listen you were put on this path to guide you were put on this path to help you were put on this path to show everyone that God is everywhere Stay strong, you have been taught to lead by example I look like my mother, and I pretend that it is her in the shadow that follows me as I jump through hoops and crawl through tunnels.

I cannot fathom a world where she is different from me, and I from her.

Sometimes I wonder: maybe I am trying so much to become my mother that I have forgotten how to be myself I want to tattoo all of her achievements on my skin, it would only serve as a list of all that I have yet to accomplish.

I am finding who I am supposed to be, and I look just like my mother.

Rebellion | Navneet Kaur

Shattered Light

| Navneet Kaur

mother nature is she

Multiples

exit wounds listen. I don’t know how to do this. I’m 19. I’m a girl. I’m Muslim. I’m gay. gay? how gay? I don’t know.

I am malleable always always always I can bend and twist and mold into someone new something new but it hurts to bend and twist and stretch and be pulled apart at the seams and put back together all the time and I want to find my shape, my mold, my self. I am 19 I am a girl I am Muslim I am gay but I don’t know how gay don’t ask me how gay and I am scared and I just want to live in a world where all of my parts can live in one place, fit into one mold, but they just. won’t. stick. listen. when I was 15 my dad died and I miss him every day.

I loved him love him will keep on loving him but I don’t know if I could love myself if he were still alive. brown dad muslim dad queer daughter gay daughter lesbian? daughter I am sorry I don’t think I could ever love a man. listen. this word has been in my back pocket for too many years and it is crumpled and worn out and wrinkled but I am reaching for it now.

I am tired of my shell. I am tired of insides inside inside i n s i d e, I want my insides to spill open on the floor and I want to wear them on my skin and I will make a mess and this time I will make you look. I am tired of using small words to describe big things like when I came out to five of my friends (no one else though I’m 19 and I’m a girl and I’m Muslim) and my words were, well I don’t like labels because they scare me but I like girls too. I am a girl and I am Muslim and I need the safety net of a man. my mom doesn’t need to know I am gay if I could love a man and I am safe if I could love a man and lesbian is a big word, a scary word, such an official word, and what if maybe I do fall in love with a man? but I am tired of using small words to describe big things. I will repeat lesbian lesbian lesbian until it bends and twists and molds into me, until I am 19 and a girl and a Muslim and a lesbian.

-zahra

Cop Car

Untitled

Hindrance

Navneet Kaur

Heat

Navneet Kaur

New and Stuck

Doc 2

Parasol

Morning By the Window

Εξομολόγηση/Exomologisi (Confession) The air tastes different when you are by the sea, and the love I have for it cannot compare to the love for another human being.

Perhaps this is why I carry around salt packets in my wallet, just to get back that taste that is so far away from me but so vividly and intrinsically part of me.

It was by the sea that I learned how to act like a boy, how to play soccer, kick, shout, and sit with my legs spread wide.

It was by the sea that I learned how to act like a girl, how to braid my hair, put eyeshadow on, dress, act, and dance to Pump It by the Black Eyed Peas.

I remember the first time I put on a push-up bra, and I remember the last.

I remember the first time I contemplated cutting my hair short, and how I had to dispose of the idea like a tag on a shirt to conceal the inner workings of my brain.

It was by the sea my father told me: “I have nothing against gays, but they’re just a little weird.”

And it was by the sea that I tasted the first salt from my tears.

Burning, blistering hot sun and the asphalt radiating with heat as the summer pulsated on, and the stink of car exhaust made me wheeze in anticipation for a return to the sea.

It was by the street, at age 13, that a man first hollered at me.

It was by the street that a white van pulled up, rolled its windows down and thought to “compliment” me.

And it was by the street that I remembered hearing about a girl being picked up in a white van and returned a survivor.

I remember the first time I realized I could be more than just one singular individual thing.

I remember the first time I had to will my mouth shut and hold the sea from streaming from my eyes as someone joked about one woman loving another woman.

And I remember the time I was felt up on a couch half asleep, screaming with my eyes for help to “friends” who just looked on in wonder.

Dark, penetrating, bone-chilling freeze, cold wind burning my face making my cheeks perfectly rosey.

It was by the snow that I discovered, like one discovering an underground tunnel in their back yard for which there was a visible ladder all along, that I was just as dark and lonely as the night.

It was by the snow I found a way to hide behind a mask of mirage and learn to revel in the inner complexities of the underground tunnels of me.

And it was by the snow that I came to the conclusion that I would lie in the white seeping cold mass and watch as the sky changed above me.

I remember how my family always used to call me pretty, and how I still search for that beauty every time I dare to look in the mirror.

I remember being naïve and thinking that a moment’s respite of the entropy, meant an end to this catastrophic symphony.

I remember how difficult it is for me to forget.

-Anonymous

Her

a study in eschatology, half-imagined sketch one we meet at a party but i dont remember you sketch two Fell back asleep. Woke up to an absence underscored by the myriad sounds of corporate capitalism.

Last night was nice.

See you soon for the second time i wake up in your bed and have to remind myself of the conditions of finding myself there. you may or may not be beside me; it’s too hot in this stifling room to grab onto you at night and i am not yet so accustomed to your presence that i can intuit your proximity. i feel sick and wonder whether it’s the wine, the long night sweating and shaking, the relentless banging and shouts from what i’ve been told is the italian restaurant closing downstairs, the lesbian guilt, the almost unbearable prolonged exposure of a successful first date? sketch three you were born from the womb of a serpent, you say. you smell of oil polluted mead. honeybees in september. i had a dream last night, you say. i was blasted up to the moon, terraformed and suburbanized we cry in the airport sketch four we cry in your sister’s friends’ apartment until five in the morning. the tears are different this time. at some point, around 2am, i go for a long walk and come back with a cat without a tail. we cant look at each other, or, we dont. sketch five i roll over and dream of being there with you, on the 5th floor of the public library, watching the fog role in. slowly it begins to swallow the city up. first the ocean, then the crane, then the church spire and apartment complex until finally i can see nothing around me but the glassy fog. and you. i feel like i’m in some nostalgic lez-core music video, you and the fog and your fake gay-reading- group glasses. sketch six we sleep in the same bed for the first time in months. i drink all of the wine you and c make. a large tub with a syphon down my throat. i sneak out at night to see my scorpio. we walk home in silence.

sketch seven my clothes in piles at the bottom of your stairs. c gives me a goodbye hug, he doesnt know what to say. i leave while the rest of you laugh upstairs. i carry my things to j’s and stay on a mattress on the floor in the extra room. there’s vomit in a garbage bag by the head of the bed, all his roomates bikes, and that one painting of some renaissance philosopher that all communal undergrad philosophy houses seem to have. the next day you’re gone and i’m still there with the painting the bikes the vomit. we’ll work it out, you say. sketch eight we dont sketch nine incohate bloom sketch nine sometime between then and now, you take my wings down from the wall and put them in the ocean. you’ve finally given up, unable to love a shadow. and i sit, in a different library, in a different city, and miss your tongue and nothing else.

In Bloom

Sporagmos i. It’s best that it always happened within the closed loop of vacation. a senseless body lies in replica across New England: it was touched here, in Maine in Vermont I peeled away from myself at an unwanted hand in the shifting landscape of the Cape where the sea beats against a curled fistthe rules were useless there, the symbols that I knew flew apart in the corridor of air that cloaks the highway in salt at night. when I arrived, they’d chimaerized in beds where sand stiffened the sheets.

I spoke no words. The words were broken. ii. Your form is broken. You look at you and wonder when you became two, wonder at the way unwelcome touch divides how you became a body and a treacherous new mind a body that remembers and a memory that won’t, that exorcises with a line of salt, opening gaps and faults, that cleaves you into chasms until, a senseless breach you hear a song he played I retract back into wholeness, roads curl backwards cause collapses until everything is useless memory, a widening closed loop.

C r y M e A R i v e r

Jordanna Gisser

Black Silently Cracking

Black is the shade you couldn’t colour yourself in with The kids sitting next to you,” Hey why didn’t you leave the page behind your face blank!”

Shooting him a look, point blank Black is the shade you associated scary things with, “Boo!” “What’s under your bed.”

Black is the shade that causes a rift, makes you stand out but standing out is key standing up is how the pronouns change from I to we Black is the shade that absorbs the sun, a glazed donut But the holes that are brought upon us, irreversible Turning into numbers our minds can’t get a hold of That turn family members into statistics to add to a flow chart, when the flow isn’t but a constant reminder that the battle against blackness is only known by blacks Metal barrels behind our backs Not saying All lives don’t matter but when it’s convenient black lives don’t Choked, our voice boxes broke Black is the shade that is tattered and shattered when last year we all claimed to be “woke”

Artist Statements Girl under a Cocktail Umbrella directly references Ernst Ludwig Kirchner’s painting ‘Girl under a Japanese Umbrella’, one of my favourite paintings. I love Kirchner’s style and colour, though unfortunately his work often incorporate themes of Orientalism and the exoticization of Asian women. ‘Girl under a Cocktail Umbrella’ is my attempt to revise his painting by replacing the impossible anatomy, “tribal” figures, and stereotypically Asian item with an accurately thicc body, dancing cats, and a cocktail umbrella.

Gold Circles - The emotional labour taken on by women on a daily basis is both a massive contribution and grueling sacrifice, and it is often invisible to a world that expects it. Such work deserves to be seen and recognized. So her it is for all to plainly see, represented in this series as a swath of shimmering gold where dark circles may usually be.

Self Portrait - This piece was based off a photographed portrait of myself. Through the making of this self- abstraction, I have gained a concrete sense of familiarity, appreciation and connection to each inch of my body that I had never experienced before.

Bound - When all this chaos is around me I find myself inexplicably bound to the different parts that make me the person that I am that is different, and experiences differently than everyone else.

I am bound to other people around me with strings that try to pull, push, and are left slack in order for me to find new ways of being. I stand out but I am also part of something bigger than just myself. I am bound.

PROJECTIONS - Text-based visual art, in the form of four concise and acute statements presented as projections. They are supposed to be visually harsh, disconcerting, and minimal. You can think about them. Vous pouvez en parler aussi.

Surveillance and Intervention This piece conveys the feeling of medical objectification, where a person loses all sense of control and autonomy over their body at the hands of medical experts.

Perhaps theories regarding the objectification of women may be applied to the medical establishment to improve how we understand patient psychology.

My mother, the Goddess - I don’t think there is anything more feminist in this day and age than to acknowledge and express gratitude to the women who are the reason one gets up in the morning. My mother has been guided me through everything in my life: my spiritual journey, my move to university, and all the relationships I have kept in my life. She is my strength, and reminds me what a privilege it is to have been given the gift of life.

Never have I doubted my self worth, because I am her daughter, and she is the epitome of brilliance.

Mother Nature is She - There is beauty to be found in being both the rainbow and the storm, Mother Nature is She delves into the interwoven duality of resilience and ethereality that embodies femininity.

Artist Statements multiples - A self-portrait showing the subtle (or not so subtle) range of angst in my teenage self. morning by the window - This piece was painted late at night in Molson Hall after a quintessential night of first-year drinking. It depicts a quintessential first-year student sitting on a windowsill in Molson Hall. Εξομολόγηση / Exomologisi - I wrote this after a long day of battle with myself. This is one of the first times I have written and spelled out my experiences so clearly. It’s a confession for myself so that I might come to terms with who I am.

Her That Lady, Her snow in Winter.

The praise of Body From Nature.

Cry Me A River - Let your threads cry the tears of the married, white cotton.

To the unforgiving soil from beneath the core-Let your hair fall back to the nape of your neck And let those tears dry up on the sands of the shore

Black Silently Cracking is a poem I wrote one day after a class where we discussed race and issues pertaining to being a person of colour. I thought it was interesting that we discussed the stereotypes and how some areas of Toronto are seen as being dangerous which hinders development and growth of local businesses which I think is because of those certain areas being predominantly of immigrants and Poc. The last line of my poem says, “Black is the shade that is tattered and shattered when last year we all claimed to be “woke” this is especially important because to be “woke” or aware of what’s going on, you can’t pick and choose when you want to be aware because that’s not how to be a critical thinker. Claiming to be “woke” and only being supportive when it’s convenient or praiseworthy, is how people end up thinking that the problems faced by Black people are fixed, when in fact it’s just that only the surface level has been grazed. In generality, while writing this I was very true to my emotions and how it felt growing up and still growing as a Black person and wanted to paint my image in words.

Hygiene De Vie - This series was inspired by Ollivier Dyens’ promotion of the “Hygiene De Vie” concept. My initial response to his statements (like most of my immediate peers) was outrage. I declared it absurd without taking the time to reflect on the absurdity of the life I currently live here at McGill. It is no wonder people like Ollivier are out of touch! Through these pieces, I seek to view my world and its insular dramas through a more objective lens.

Sarah BĂŠdard

Angelina Mazza

Cassidy Barnes

Moragh McDougall

Feodora Chouakri

Laura Monteiro

Emma Ciereszynski

Natalie Olivares

Jiselle Dallaire

Nadine Pelaez

Jacky Davidson

Gwyn Peters

Delali Egyima

Alexis Racicot

Jordanna Gisser

Maggie Roberts

Emma Hignett

Isabel Robertson

Emily Hoppe

Katie Ross

Judy Huang

ZoĂŠ Roth-Ogier

Mariah Lamont-Lennox

Hannah Taylor

Tiffany Le

Gloria Tong

Thea Lee

Anthi Tsobou

Felycia Luo

Jillian Wesselow Kirsten Wesselow

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