Flawless Mag: The Roots Issue

FLAWLESS

MAG

ISSUE 9 - FALL 2019

THE ROOTS ISSUE

Editor and Chief Jalyn Cox

Assistant Editor Niki Hester

Layout by Flawless Writes

Emily Cardona Santana T.J. Coste Jalyn Cox Kait D’Souza Brianna Jackman Diana Koenigsberg

vvn AZ Nowell Leah Heath Niki Hester Shruti Rajkumar

Cover Shoot By Jalyn Cox

Cover Makeup Director Lexi Leap

Flawless Brown is an artist collective and sisterhood for self identifying women femmes and nonbinary people of color based at Emerson College.. We aim to develop socially concious art while forming sisterly bonds..

Flawless Brown Executive Board Fall 2019 Chair of P ictures Hanna El-Mohandess

Chair of Stage Devante Jackson

Chair of Sisterhood Amali Dunmore

President

Jasmine Williams

Chair of Writes Jalyn Cox

Vice President Chair of Comedy Caroline Rodriguez

Amalia Gonzalez

Treasurer

Chair of Marketing

Annie Hinh

Laura Frometa

Letter from the Editor There’s something so poetic about Roots. I think nature, harmony, growth, rebirth, rerooting - so many vivid images with metaphorical meanings. Exploration of all of our roots posed questions and conversations that helped us continue to facilitate this conversation on Identity. I always talk about how before entering Flawless Brown, identity was something that I struggled with. I was too white, too black, too brown, seemingly being everything but the fuller picture of what I am. It was hard for me to take up space with who I was because I didn’t have any strong sense of identity. Flawless creates a space for women, femmes, and nonbinary people of color to be seen and supported, first, and then, we are able to create. Our Flawless foresisters created something for us that I know we are all incredibly grateful to be able to continue to harness within their wakes. This is an incredibly organic and beautiful support system that cultivates growth in such a loving way. My Team, Flawless Writes - thank you. You are everything. I see each and every one of your light, creativity, beauty, resilence, and strength.

I want to especially thank Niki for being such a beautiful guiding force. You add so much to every meeting - Your passion is contagious. This semester, will be my last semester as Chair of Writes, but you know I am leaving you in the best of hands. I can’t think of anyone more deserving than Niki to take my place next semester.

xoxoxo Jalyn Cox

Letter from the Assistant Editor Coming into my third semester being a part of Flawless, I walked into the first meeting with the knowledge that I was walking into an incredible community full of love and trust and incredible creativity. Flawless is a safe place full of people that I have so much love for. This semester, I got to watch us not only get closer to each other as we explored our roots, but also get more in touch with ourselves and where we all come from. I am forever in awe of the amazing minds that I get to see at work, and forever grateful for the loving and encouraging community that we have created together. I am especially grateful for Jalyn for being an amazing guiding hand, and for filling the room with such incredible positive energy at every meeting.

With love Niki Hester

Table of Contents 1 To My Roots

Emily Cardona

3 Severed Roots AZ Nowell

6 Roots

Kait D’Souza

7 If My Roots Could Speak Shruti Rajkumar

9 Flawless:Class of 2019-2020 Caroline Rodriguez

13 Mind the Gap Harriette Chan

17 I am of it All

Jazmin Brooks

18 Sharing Circles Sydney Logan

19 Ancestral Awakening Jalyn Cox

23 Tangled Roots Niki Hester

25 Ghost Lily Walkow 30 Body Community Ilina Ghosh

31 Roots in Identity Annie Hinh

33 Raiz

Eliana Ulloa

35 Old Comforts New Times Skylar Figaro

36 I am the World Nada Alturki

37 Out of Eden vvn 41 Eldest Daughter Santana T.J. Coste

43 Branching

Santana T.J. Coste

47 Prayer of a Fallen Leaf Santana T.J. Coste

Table of Contents

To My Roots, By: Emily Cardona You deserve an apology.

Because for years I cut you, preventing you from growing, from spreading.

I washed you with bleach until you turn white.

I just watched the colors go down the drain.

I thought if hid my curls with a straightening iron my hair would be easier to braid.

That maybe the other girls would think my hair was pretty instead of a frizzy mess, I thought if I hid behind my pale skin that they wouldn’t notice the scent of plátanos fritos in my clothes.

I thought if I spoke slower in a southern drawl they wouldn’t push me to prove that I speak another language.

“You speak Spanish! Say something in Spanish!”

I thought if I covered my hairy arms with long sleeves they would stop laughing like my arms were the punch line of a joke.

That maybe they would stop trying to pet the hair that they didn’t see on themselves.

I thought if I hid you from them that I was protecting us from shame.

But instead it deprived us from the truth.

The truth is that you are beautiful and that I need you to feel whole.

I am a part of you and you are a part of me.

We complement each other, And reality is I wouldn’t be myself without you.

My wonderful, beautifully colored roots, I love you and I appreciate you.

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I know as we got older it didn’t get easier.

Ignorance doesn’t go away with age It gets sharper, like cheese.

We grew up surrounded by whiteness.

White peers, white teachers, white friends, white culture, white privilege, White was one of the only colors I knew, that we knew.

You tried multiple times to show me that your colorfulness was something I shouldn’t be ashamed of but I was afraid of what people would do to you.

I saw people’s roots get ripped out and thrown back at their face.

I didn’t want to make you go through that humiliation.

I didn’t want people to ruin the little connection I had with you.

You aren’t just my roots, you are my culture, my family, you are the air that I breathe, the food that I eat, you are the way I was raised and the beliefs that I believe in.

You are me and I learned to love all of you.

I learned to stand up for you and stop feeling ashamed of you.

Now I wear you with pride.

If I could I would tattoo you onto my body.

Roots, what I want to say to you is Thank you.

Thank you for giving me everything I love about myself.

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Severed Roots AZ Nowell

When people ask me where I’m from, my answer is always the same: “Barbados.” Then, a slight hesitation, “I mean, the slave ships dropped my ancestors in Barbados and my grandparents grew up there, but I don’t know past that.” For a while that answer was enough, until I went to Africa.

I was seventeen, travelling the world with Semester at Sea, a study abroad program. I wanted to go to Africa for as long as I could remember. It was something my family always talked about but never actually planned; several conversations over holiday dinners were spent dreaming of “returning to the motherland,” returning to our roots. Going to Africa was a chance to find my true self, my true culture.

My first stop in Africa was Cape Town, South Africa. I got up early, my excitement preventing me from sleeping in. I ate my breakfast outside that morning, watching the landscape as the ship made its way into the harbor. As I saw Table mountain pressed up against the sapphire sky, an uncontrollable smile spread across my face. I couldn’t wait to disembark and start exploring.

Later that morning, my Social Problems class got ready to go on our field trip to Langa Township. I will never forget the moment that I stepped off the ship and onto African soil; time seemed to slow as we made our way down the ramp and through customs. Somewhere in the midst of it all I turned to the only other black person on the field trip with a wide smile and said:

“We made it.” ...

After a 45 minute bus ride and a brief introduction of Langa Township history, a man who grew up there gave us a tour of its various neighborhoods. As we walked I drank it all in -- eyes wide and head on a swivel. I felt like I was in a dream.

Suddenly, someone grabbed my arm and pulled me aside. I gasped, surprised, but was met with earnest eyes from an older woman. My fear melted. She held on tightly to both of my arms, looked deep into my eyes and said:

“Welcome home.”

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In the moment, those words made me feel so seen, so validated. My exchange with that woman seemed to fit exactly into the high expectations I had for what my first time in Africa was going to be like. My elation was fleeting, because at the same time those two words me made aware of a void within myself that I hadn’t known existed. If Africa was home, I knew very little about it. That terrified me.

The void widened over the next two weeks as we finished our days in South Africa and made our way to Ghana. I never told anyone about it, but much of that time I spent reflecting on that moment. The woman at Langa Township had sought me out because she saw that I was an outsider — that I didn’t belong. Although I knew that her intentions were good, I worried that my travels in the African continent would be more of the same: almost fitting in, but still missing something that I couldn’t put a finger on. I looked like I should be there, but there was still a separation between me and the people that I couldn’t cross. I hated it. I worried that I would never feel the cultural acceptance that I had been looking forward to.

Like I mentioned before, the furthest I can trace my family tree is about three generations, to Barbados. Because my grandfather on my mother’s side was born and raised there, little elements from Baijan culture had made its way into my daily life. In Ghana I began to notice similarities between Ghanian culture and Baijan culture. It made everything seem familiar, which brought comfort, but wasn’t what I was looking for.

Included in our trip was a visit the Cape Coast Slave Castle. It’s a strangely beautiful place, despite the horrible inhumanity of its existence. Our group moved through the space in a respectful silence, the waves on the shore crashing in the distance. I was face to face with the cause of my African Identity my African roots. I had an epiphany near the end of the tour, standing in the “Door of No Return,” the place that my ancestors passed through before facing the horrible conditions of the Middle Passage. There I was, one who finally returned, but the hundreds of years between my African ancestors, who were forced to leave, and I had caused an irreversible separation out of my control. I realized it was not my fault that my roots had been severed. Ghana reminded me that my roots were still in Africa, even if I didn’t know exactly how or where. That knowledge was all I needed.

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One of my best friends, who knows exactly where in Africa she is from, said it wasn’t enough.

“You’re not African.” she had said, as if it was an obvious fact.

My best friend’s family had lived in Nigeria for a few years when she was younger, and her dad, the chief of a Nigerian village, takes her and the rest of her family back home twice a year. She engages with her culture daily, and has never questioned her cultural identity or wondered where her roots lay. It was this connection to her culture that I wanted so badly. If anyone knew what they were talking about when it came to this, I assumed it would be her.

“But I am, though, if you think about it.” I still tried to explain, “All black people are ultimately from Africa, right? So, on some level, I am African. Where do you think the term ‘African American’ comes from?”

“But you don’t know anything about the culture,” she said, “You didn’t grow up in it, you don’t know what village you’re from, you don’t know anything. So no, you’re not African, you’re African-American. You’re Black.”

There it was again, the void. I could feel that sense of cultural belonging I had found in Africa beginning to crumble.

She didn’t know that she had hurt my feelings, and I know she didn’t mean anything cruel by her words, but when the tears started flowing she didn’t apologize.

In a way, she was right. The culture and community that I am the most familiar with is the black culture African Americans had created for themselves to heal their severed roots. My culture exists in soul food, hip hop music, black churches, the Civil Rights Movement, tens of “aunties and uncles” that have no actual blood relation -but most importantly, solidarity in the fact that our ties lay with one another.

I still struggle with the search for my culture, my roots. But now, the process of figuring it out is enough for me. I know that I may not completely tie my roots back together again, because sometime early in my ancestry a white man stole that right from me. Knowing where I truly come from may be a privilege that I’m never granted, and that makes me furious in a way that I couldn’t easily describe. Yet, I know that my connection is there, somewhere.

*All photos taken by AZ Nowell

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if my roots could speak by shruti rajkumar

i used to wish that my roots could speak to someone other than just me. that they’d cry aloud every time we’re planted at the edge of a field of daisies, washed away by the white all around. i used to wish that my roots could speak so they could teach the world not to pull my hair or paint my skin or break my branches to fit within the shape of its ignorant hands. instead, they make my body feel at peace from the ring of sandalwood smoke that wraps around me in front of the puja candle. they make my mouth water from the familiar ways that garam masala and chili powder come together to recreate my favorite childhood dishes.

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they braid my hair and plant flowers in them and adorn me in the gold and red i deserve to wear. they trace my body with bangles and henna, loud and bright and in the flesh, they give me a voice to scream my existence so no one will dare to forget where i come from.

they silence the beckoning calls of conformity and feed me pride for breakfast. they bury my feet within the dirt and hold me so firmly in the ground, the white man’s pesticide can no longer touch me.

and if my roots could speak they would say that i am glorious in all my melanin glory, anchored to the richness of the soil and growing upward for all to remember.

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Flawless Yearbook Fall 2019

President

the next michelle obama 9

Chair of Flawless Comedy

class clown Chair of Flawless Sisterhood

most likely to be mistaken for a freshman Secretary

most likely to start a fight

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Vice President

most likely to tell you she’s from chicago Chair of Flawless Stage

most dramatic Chair of Flawless Pictures

most likely to monopolize the film industry 11

Chair of Flawless Writes

most likely to own a yoga studio Chair of Flawless Marketing

most likely to miss picture day

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MIND THE GAP

Harriette Chan

Who doesn’t want to go to London? As a kid I dreamed of visiting Big Ben, Buckingham Palace, and listening to the charming, swooping accents of the British folk. Perhaps a steady diet of British literature, both the Shakespeare and J.K Rowling varieties, made me romanticize English life.

Through sheer luck I ended up in London for a weekend with two college roommates from a study abroad in the Netherlands.

We were Americans living it up during the three months we had in Europe. The funny thing is I would often hear them talk about how they wished they were European citizens. They would talk about how America was a mess and how they wanted to marry Dutch boys and live in the Netherlands. My friends all gladly said they would give up their American citizenship to live in Europe. Frankly, I don’t blame them. But, something was tugging at my heart. One of my friends jokingly asked me if I would move to Europe with her.

“You can marry a nice Dutch boy and get Dutch citizenship,'' she said.

I pause for a second and thought about trading my American passport for a Dutch one.

“My parents worked too hard to get me this passport, I can’t just give it up.”

I was born in Cebu City, Philippines, and I lived there for the first three years of my life. Americans would call it a slum and say we were living in poverty. But, compared to other people we were some of the lucky ones. There were nine of us living in a house above my grandmother’s hardware shop. There was a cramped dining room with one table that didn’t have enough chairs, so we couldn’t all eat at the same time, upstairs there was a little bathroom and one bedroom where we all slept, either on the bed or on air mattresses on the floor. I remember lying on the air mattress next to my sister and peering out at the sleeping figures of my family through the mosquito nets.

My grandmother raised her three daughters there, and she would have helped raise her two granddaughters had my dad not hit his big break. He got a job in America.

When I ask my parents how we got here they always say that we were lucky. My dad worked in the medical field while my mom was a nurse but it wasn’t making enough for my family to get our own place. My dad applied to a lot of places, Saudi Arabia, Canada, and weirdly enough England. Eventually someone hired him, and he left the Philippines to work at Boston Children’s Hospital. Soon

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“My parents worked too hard to get me this passport, I can’t just give it up.” enough he sent money back for my mom, sister, and I to follow.

I didn’t know this until later, but my dad was a workhorse. He would work a night shift at Children’s Hospital and then, without sleeping, work another shift at a second job he got at a hospital in Cambridge. I never noticed, I was too busy living the American dream. My sister and I got American educations, toys that my mom could never afford growing up, and eventually a house in the suburbs of Massachusetts. We might as well of had a white picket fence. While his children reaped the rewards of an American childhood my dad was sleeping through the day, before taking another night shift.

I haven’t forgotten what it’s taken to get me here. It’s taken years of work on my parents part and like my mom says, sheer dumb luck. At our Airbnb in Wimbledon my roommates and I all laid on a comically large bed and talked about what we wanted to do tomorrow. One of them wants to book tickets to ride the London Eye while the other is insistent on seeing Buckingham Palace. We can only talk about London for so long though, soon the topic shifted to home.

My half-Japanese roommate talked about how she wants to go back to Japan. She’s told me before about all the trips she took to visit family there. My family hasn’t been back to the Philippines in years. My mom beens trying but we always fall short on the money.

My roommate tells me about her grandma in Japan who she saw every year. I tell her about my grandpa who filled the house with his origami.

“I hope I can see him before he dies,” I say.

The words hang in the air.

We only went back once when I was twelve. The one thing I took from this trip is that the gap between the rich and poor in the Philippines is insane. You can drive down a road lined with crowded shanty houses hosting families of people under perilous roofs and then see a gated community with perfect life sized doll houses.

“‘I hope I can see him before he dies,’ I say.

The words hang in the air.”

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We went back to the old house. My grandparents, aunt, and her daughter still live there. When we arrived we were greeted by the smell of gasoline mixed with rice cooking over the sounds of motorcycles and Jeeps rumbling down the street. In the dining room we took turns eating dinner in a rotation. I met my cousin for the first time, a sweet and bright girl who got my hand me down Nintendo DS. We spent all day playing and talking about America.

That’s what she wanted to know, what’s America like. We told her about school, the friends we had back home, and the video games we would send to her when we finished them. I spent the night on an air mattress listening to the sounds of stray dogs and traffic. A part of me was happy we left this place behind, but another felt intensely guilty for missing my bedroom and my videogames.

I’ve wanted to go back to the Philippines for years but we never had enough money. My roommate told me about her grandpa who owns a candy shop. She says he doesn’t make enough money to pay for his daughter to work in the shop, so she has to work in a factory. I look up the price for a roundtrip to the Philippines from Boston and then I immediately shut off my phone, the house filled with origami fading fast from my memory.

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I was riding the London Eye and I should have been happy. I was in London, where I always wanted to be. But, I found no solace in that now. As I stared out at the brown churning waters of the Thames and Big Ben’s scaffolded structure, I realized something.

I was the lucky one, the one who made it out. People born where I’m born don’t get to go to London, they don’t get to ride the London Eye. I think about my cousin who still lives in that house in the Philippines. Will she ever be able to do this? Is she going to make it out? My stomach plummets to the ground and lands in the Thames River with a sickening thud.

I woke up later on the Tube as we were heading home. My roommate nudged me awake. Sleepily, I stepped off the train and looked down. Spray painted on the ground in front of me it says, “Mind the Gap.”

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I am of many places I am of New York just like my mother, my father, and my brother If you know me then you know where I’m from The first thing that used to come out my mouth during intro was: “My name is Jazmin and I’m from Brooklyn, New York” I hear BK and I look up like someone just summoned me I will always wear this place with pride I am of California and I’ve lived here basically all my life see New York is where I was born But California is the place that birthed me New York is the parent that left me on a random doorstep California took me in as their own when they saw me there crying, cold, and alone And they made it so I never was those three things again I will always call this place home I am of my father a former member of the Nation of Islam He taught me a crash course of what I know of my blackness now All my life he’s tried to protect me from the outside world Because of him I fight with my mind and my words not with my hands From him I was given my Nicaraguan and Honduran blood We may not always see eye to eye but it’s only because, after all, I got my stubbornness from him I will always be my fathers daughter I am of my mother the most amazing woman I will ever know She taught me how to love and from her I was given my strength I was once in her womb and am forever a part of her From her I was given my Puerto Rican blood Though she may no longer be on this earth She will forever be of me in my heart and in my soul I will always be who I am because of her I am of many places New York California My father My mother My womanhood My Afro-Latina heritage I am of myself in the truest and rawest form I am of it all I am of me

I Am of It All

Jazmin Brooks

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Mama, please tell me where we came from.

Tell me about sand in the eyes and drums in the heart.

Of spices on the tongue and sun on the skin.

You know what I mean, don’t you, Mama?

Talk about the laughter mixing with the sounds of the earth.

Trace the ridges of the mountain on my back.

You remember, don’t you Mama?

Why can’t you tell me?

Why can’t you tell me?

Sharing Circle Sydney Logan

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Ancestral Awakening

Jalyn Cox

My personal beliefs have changed over the course of these past few years. I’ve let go of notions of binary religions that tell me what is and isn’t right. I’ve let go of religions that preach love while also threatening you with judgement. I’ve let go of any idea that there is a white man in the sky preaching hate and regiment. I stopped letting fear drive my beliefs, and I allowed myself to explore, to discover myself and the world, with the idea that my purpose is to experience rather than to oblige. I’ve begun using tarot foundation of conversation and facilitator of exploration. I’ve met people that have come from a family of mediums, and I’ve heard stories of ancestral readings which explore the energy and patterns that play out within one’s own lineage.

How do you know who’s real? How do you know if it works? How do you know what they tell you is the truth? I would know, right? How would I know?

On a whim, I found myself in a professional tarot reading, sitting in front of a medium who knew nothing of me but my first name. He told me things about myself, things that have happened to me, things that I have gone through, things that I’ve dreamt of, things that I wanted, all while looking at a crystal ball. It felt as if he was going through a filing cabinet of my past and the energy within. He then told me that one of my spirit guides was stepping forward. His eyes rolled to the back of his head, and as I saw him connecting with whatever force is attached to me - I couldn’t help but notice how much I wanted this. I always imagine my father’s foremothers stepping forward. When he opened his eyes once again, he told me that the presence was an ancestor from my mother’s side. A side of myself that I’ve never been able to fully relate to, a side that I’ve never truly felt white enough for. He said that the woman was an old spirit, and he was sure that we had never met in real life. The only thing I could recall was some trace of native american on my mother’s maternal side. I knew it was a close enough relation for my mother to have memories of visiting the reservation when she was younger, yet far enough for her appearance to seem simply, singularly, white. The medium said she

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was very poised, quiet, yet direct with him. He described her as a “tribal” woman trying hard to stay connected to her roots through my spirit. I couldn’t help but feel her connectedness with me, of her. I so longed for tangible stories with tangible people to make up the history of myself. She shared a memory with him: when she was younger, her brothers were sent to a Christian school. They were forced to lose their hair. She remembers this as the first memory where her identity was being taken from her. Tears threatened my eyes upon hearing this. All I could do was feel her pain. My whole life I’ve struggled with identity because whenever I would get close to claiming it - someone would take it from me. I was either too white, too black, too brown, seemingly being everything but the fuller picture of what I am. My identity has always been malleable to whoever was trying to place me. I didn’t cry from solely feeling her pain, but from knowing her story - a story she wanted me to have, to hold. A story she knew I could relate to. The medium told me that my family forgets people once they’ve passed away, and I am the last person left that could remember her. The medium told me that there is something in my house that is hers that she wants me to have. The medium told me this is the only thing left of her. All my intuition and gut feeling is her speaking to me, guiding me.

My roots are something that’s always been unknown to me. My mother is white, a combination of European powers, and my father is Black, origin erased when his ancestors crossed the sea. When I was younger, I used to truly believe I was adopted. I would get so angry at my parents because I thought they were lying about being my parents. I couldn’t understand how I didn’t look like neither my mom’s nor my dad’s family. Now that I am older, I see the balance among an amalgam of features spread and rooted through the noses, lips, and eyes of my siblings and myself.

My ancestral history had always been strictly seen as my immediate family, and my knowledge of my ancestors had never gone farther than my great grandparents. Most of my thoughts trailed my father’s family, desperately trying to find the missing pieces that were stolen from

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them. Last year I took a DNA test, and although the results told me locations, I still felt this disconnect. I wanted to know the stories that created my family, and I wanted to at least know my family’s names - I wanted to know all that had been lost.

I have had her power on my side without ever knowing. I didn’t know her name, her tribe, anything about her - and until this medium shared her message with me, I never thought to wonder of it. I remember my mother talking about her ancestor who was named, “Lady of the Lake”. There was a woman with thick hair and brown skin standing and wading through the water of my mind. Immediately after the reading, I called my mom. I unloaded everything onto her, and as I did, my voice was jittery from the coursing adrenaline that came from the unknown figure reaching out to me. She tells me that it could be my great great grandmother. It must have been my great grandfather’s mother who my mother recalls childhood stories of her living on a reservation.. It must have been. But, who is she? What is her name? My family let the evidence of her existence wither with time. So I didn’t have a clear portrait of her. My mom said that the only person left that has met her in life was my grandmother’s sister, my great aunt Gloria.

Through weeks of calling and failing, my mom finally reached her aunt. Her name was finally given to us - Margarett Vincent. She was a part of the Mackinac Bands of Chippewa and Ottawa Native Americans. She was and is a part of the Ojibwe people who named themselves this in order to commune and identify themselves once colonists began to invade their lands and categorize them in the sense of the “other”. Her tribe named her “Lady of the Lake” because she was the only fisherwoman of her tribe. The Ojibwes believe that spirits guide them through life, and it’s something to validating to know its something I have been so interested in. I can not name exactly what my great great grandmother, Margie, believed, but I find a beautiful parallel in the fact that she is guiding me now.

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Without her, I wouldn’t be alive. There is a connection to her that I hold based on our shared ancestry and lineage alone that is now only strengthened by her connection to my own spirit.

Her history has been erased from not only her own land but from her own family. With that, I must do everything in my power to bring her past to life. My roots have spent years underground, not unnoticed but hidden. I’ve been letting the weather dictate the color of my leaves, but winter is coming and soon all my leaves will fall. Forced to turn to my roots, I notice they have come to the surface offering a glimpse of the fuller picture that has made me what I am.

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Tangled Roots

I have never had a green thumb.

I want to blossom, to bask in light and love to be nourished and grounded in culture to grow and reach for all that I am capable of.

How do I untangle my roots when they seem so completely determined to continue to twist and hide and grow on downwards until they have smothered everything inside of me that even wants to try. I’m full of fear. I am scared to begin the work that I know has the potential to be heartbreakingly difficult. I do not want to set off down a path that has no discernable end, especially when I feel like I have to do so alone. I know that I owe it to myself and every person that has been a part of my history without me knowing it. I know that I owe it to my ancestors to learn what they were capable of withstanding and what they were capable of creating. I have a desire to know. A desire to unpack every little seemingly insignificant detail that can help me understand and identify with where I come from in a way I never have before. I want to spend hours sifting through photographs and love letters, births and deaths, tragedies and triumphs. I want to know the name of the women that are watching me maneuver through life with a curiosity and fierceness that I like to think I inherited from them. I want to know the humanity that came before me so deeply that it overwhelms me. I want to trace every tiny thing about me back to where it began and I want to thank the person responsible for even the worst of my habits.

How do I begin.

How do I untangle the mess of dirt and bugs and roots that prevent me from breaking through the soil and reaching reaching towards the sun.

Can I strike a bargain with my ancestors.

Am I allowed to ask them to uplift me Am I allowed to ask them to strengthen me when for so long I have refused them.

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I want to be proud of both of my cultures. But how do I rationalize pride in a culture that is responsible for the theft of my other one. How do I bask in my whiteness without further denying my blackness and my lack of a true ancestry. I’ll never truly know the depth of my roots. And I’ll never truly be able to ignore the fact that the institution of whiteness that makes up so much of me is responsible for that.

Every step I take towards success, Is taken on the backs of my black ancestors Whose faces are concealed from me.

I want to educate myself but I’m scared of what I’ll find. My black history in this country begins with slavery. I want to leave all of the pain and suffering of my ancestors in the past, but if I do that I must leave with it their strength and perseverance and all the traits that I want to embody in their honor. To disregard any part of that history, is to disrespect every drop of blood and sweat that my ancestors shed before someone like me could even have the privilege of existing in their wildest dreams.

There are white women behind me, Supporting me in everything that I do, And yet I don’t get to walk through the world beside them and be one of them.

I want to learn but I’m scared of the shame that will shadow my enlightenment. My white half is the part of me that is the most accessible. There shouldn’t be anything holding me back from discovering every little thing that went into my mother’s side of the family. But I don’t know if I want to know the dark sides. I don’t want to meet the great, great, great grandmothers who would have turned me out of their homes. I don’t want the confirmation that I have a history that would reject me for the sin of not being white or straight enough for their tastes. I have no problem addressing the privilege that I get from this side of myself, but I am scared to see that privilege doubled and magnified back to me from people I would much rather be able to revere and learn from.

Is there ever a point where I get to stop gardening.

Will I ever be free from the sun beating down on my back and the constant work I feel like I need to put in, Will I ever be able to fully wash the dirt off my hands

straighten my back,

turn my face towards the sun, And be allowed to grow with the uncomplicated support of my roots?

I’ve never had a green thumb, Maybe that’s why I’ll never really know if I’m doing this the right way.

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Body Community By: Ilina Ghosh

My body is a community.

A miracle of circumstances traced by universal magic, and bound together with my foremother’s energy Each cell, molecule, and atom doing their part so that I can breathe, a village of interdependence.

Beneath our rainbow of shapes, colors, and sizes our bloodlines are vastly connected Descendants of the same 40 million century-old cell how have we lost our familiarity?

I walk through the city searching for sameness-This ache is not new to my soul, but from before this life as we categorize to colonize, wholeness disappears, the inner beauty that nothing is expected of us except being I cannot let us be erased.

I will etch our existence into stone and bury it at the bottom of the deepest ocean So that when this land we call home becomes another empty rock in the sky we will all be hurling through galaxies together, an entanglement of unique transformation lifting one another up as we did in our cosmic creation.

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Roots in Identity

By: Annie Hinh

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In all technicality, I was uprooted before my roots even had a chance to take hold. My mother took me to the United States when I was about one year old, too young to have memories let alone know what countries are. When she took me back to Vietnam to visit only a year or two later, my body rejected my homeland, and I got sick from drinking the water there. “Honey, go home,” the doctor had said. “Your body is already American.” I was deemed a foreigner.

But in the US, I didn’t feel very American. We only spoke Vietnamese at home, only ate Vietnamese/ Chinese food, and only listened to Vietnamese music. I learned English at home from watching copious amounts of Blue’s Clues, Dora, and various news channels, but never actually used it until I was in school.

Plus, my English was imperfect-- accented and awkwardly strung together even by a child’s standards.

In America, I gained another name. “It would be easier for people to wrap their tongues around it if you had a different name,” my father told me. He had chosen a new name too when he finally arrived in the US after the war. It was a rite of passage. A new American name for a new American life. Instead, it just made me confused. On paper, I was Han. With my family, I was Ka-Yan. In everyday life, I was Annie. Who was me?

Where do my roots lie? Even as I enter adulthood, I don’t think I actually know.

Can I have roots when I barely have an identity?

Can I have an identity when I barely have roots?

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RaĂ­z

by Eliana Ulloa After 18 years of being completely distant from my family’s roots in Honduras, I went on a trip with my parents to experience where they came from. Throughout the visit, I was able to put family stories and actual places I saw and visited together in my mind, including my parents meeting story.

This series of candids shot on my iPhone was a way for me to document moments that overwhelmed me with love and gratitude of both the place and the people who came before me as well as those who I get to share my life with right now.

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Old Comforts and New Times Water, grease, comb, twist It’s a never-ending cycle as I sit in-between my mother’s legs At times I would trace the veins she had Or run my fingers through the purple carpet from the pressure she would apply As the comb went through my coils, I’d always fidget And in response I’d feel the light taps of the comb on my shoulder signaling for me to stop Clean, Season, Flour, Sizzle Good Times or The Jeffersons would play in the background Often competing with the sizzling of the fried chicken in the kitchen My mom would often shake the chicken in the flour, as I watched She’d always swat me away, but I’d stay and get popped by the oil Moves, hugs, cries I finally left my rooted place My mom and I unpacked the carts to my new home I looked around the room before looking at her unreadable face This was my time to start my own branch I cried and held her tight She smiled

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Skylar Figaro

I Am The World

I, myself, and me They do not identify with one nationality I am from everywhere and anywhere that so gracefully has me

My insides Well, they’re the color of a sunset sea And my head is the clouds In different shades of propriety And if you were to ask my eyes What color they see They would glimmer And say We see what we want to see As far as infinity And if you were to listen to my tongue And attempt to silence her from speaking She would curse you out with ease In Arabic, Spanish, and a little Japanese You would be baffled Because she would say to you in half-sobriety Even humility I speak all of them And she sings from the belly of my broken soul They all have become me For all the dreams that have become reality

And the rose-colored future I see And my feet, now they Stomp Stomp Stomp On the insects that once made me feel small And my fingers They touch the green And the red white and blues And the rainbow, too They raise a middle finger To “conventionally theist” And pull themselves together In prayer to the god That I may or may not believe in My hands hold on to a thank you To all that I am And all that I can be

Nada Alturki

I am the world And for all that it is Let it be

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photographer - vvn makeup - Lexi Leap concept - vvn, Lexi Leap, Jalyn Cox, Aliyah Browne models - Amalia Gonzalez, Annie Hinh, Jasmine Williams, Laura Frometa

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out of eden

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Eldest Daughter A Prologue by Santana T. J. Coste Eldest Daughter.

The same role So many of them Accepted Flourished in.

Eldest Daughter, Carry your little sister, Hold your parents together, Keep the dishes shining.

Eldest Daughter, Understand that you Are a rough draft.

Made to bear the brunt Of family ailments Woven together tightly enough To strangle you.

Eldest Daughter, Be a son to your father And a mirror of your mother Be ready to leave half of you behind When you become A Young Woman.

How do I tell them I am more tethered to them Than I thought I could be This traitorous body That saw it fit to be both Eldest Daughter

and

Prodigal Son

Perpetually coming home Is the sum total of Their Combined Experience I have too many ghosts in my blood To be so singular a thing As an Eldest Daughter

Eldest Daughter, “What happened to you?

Where is my beautiful girl?�

I know some of them Want to ask.

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Branching

A Short Story by Santana T. J. Coste

Mama Bella was born the same day a tree was planted. It grew with her for the 114 years of her life.

There were no mighty trees to grow alongside in Brooklyn, nor is the span of two decades nearly long enough to make something of a sprout.

She could predict the weather down to the day by examining its roots, trunk, bark, and leaves.

There were no stories to be told by the sad, crooked, half-dead tree withering away in my Newtonian backyard.

Her tree’s shadow protected her from the Caribbean heat, and its above ground roots cradled her as she grew tall. It was molded to her shape by the time she became bent by her years. It prayed with her, spoke to her.

My tree leans if I rest against it, spits nothing but the rotted memory of fruit and leaves that die a season early and return a season late. It haunts me at night as it drags its brittle branches across my roof.

Her tree’s leaves have lost their luster in the decades since she died. It no longer has its soulmate to live for.

My tree can be no companion to me as Mama Bella’s arboreal sweetheart was to her. But I still feel that it suits me.

A wonder of nature for a dearly beloved matriarch. The woman who grew my family.

A dying, overgrown twig for the Not-Quite-Daughter ending their branch of the family tree.

This is what I believed for most of my life.

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My great-grandma Perez had a farm of her own.

My family moved from Brooklyn to a house with a tiny yard. The first of its kind we had.

She practically owned the mountains that towered over a village she fed from the palms of her hands.

Eight-year-old me felt like royalty looking over the shriveled grass and broken fence that stuck out like a weed in the fine garden of the suburbs.

She carried that region on her shoulders, freakishly wide compared to her sisters and cousins.

By the middle of elementary school, I was the same height as some of my teachers and far larger than any girl I knew.

She outlived her husband and out-worked the men she hired, hefting hundred-pound bags of sugar cane over her head. She drove tractors dozens of acres into her eighties and beyond.

I filled and emptied the truck carrying my family’s household life with my father. I dug our house out of blizzards with him and spent the first summers of my adulthood ligting my weight in plates and platters, trash bags, and more.

Each week, she rode down to the village with a family of horses, a shotgun strapped to her back.

I am always called upon when the people in my life are faced with a load they can’t lift.

I can’t shoot. I have no horses.

But I have the broad back that formed her shadow, and the strength that comes with it.

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My grandmother, Isabelle, was a saint of a woman.

I don’t yet know if I will be a saint of a woman or a sinner. Or even a woman at all.

A gentle soul in a petite frame.

My body finds it hard to fit where it is told.

Always wrapped in lace and flowers, thick hair always shiny and sleek, gorgeous face always rendered flawless with makeup.

I could never stuff my bulging self into a slip of hers. My hair too frizzy to stay in the bows she gifted to me. My hands are still too clumsy for makeup.

Despite her size, she was kind enough, loved big enough, to fold the world into her embrace. Right up until the day her infinitely loving heart gave out.

Because of my size, because of her example, I feel I owe my loved ones a sanctuary in my heart. I can only hope to shine a fraction as brightly as she did before I go.

She died perfumed, delicate hands soft with lotion, swaddled in layers of pastels. She was buried that way, too, but her skin felt like rubber beneath my fingers.

Part of me died when she did, all those years ago.

I will bloom anyway. For Her. So She may live on.

My Mother, the Amazon Isabelle bore, has made herself a still-living example that I shall follow.

She never runs out of room for me in her closet or her arms.

My great aunt, Meri, anoints everyone who sleeps in her home with holy water. A blessing.

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When I was little, I drank holy water. It did not purify me. I robbed it of its power with my misuse.

Surely that is a sin.

My mother led a band of merry worshippers, sang God’s praises for thousands of people all the way to world youth Day in Paris.

I sang alone in empty chapels, chasing after the sound of my own voice echoing. Not for His glory, but to feel a forbidden swell of pride in my chest.

My aunt Judy, a woman devoted enough to bow beneath a habit for a time, traveled the word to spread the good word.

I once dreamed of living out my years in marriage to The Lord. I grew into a devotee of another kind.

I’ve lost count of how many household shrines are shared between the whole of my family.

I’ve lost count of how many shrines I’ve made to goddesses found incarnate in the women around me. My bedroom is the only one in my family’s house without a crucifix. There is no space for one.

There are still cathedrals in New York City that display my mother’s paintings of the New Testament. Of Jesus’ life. Her masterful strokes are witnessed by countless congregations. Her faith made Immortal.

I have filled a shelf of notebooks, several demolished hard drives, and a universe of daydreams with stories that have yet to reach their audience.

I shall make my - apostate, pagan - faith Immortal in art of my own.

I may not be a perfect copy of the women who came before me, no reincarnation, but nor am I the end of what they began.

Traces of them remain, ghosts and echoes I catch glimpses of sometimes.

I am a medium that channels them. Perhaps not as well as my sister or cousins, but they move through me.

They find a harmony together that sounds right to me, if a bit dissonant. Is that

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Prayer of a Fallen L eaf An Epilogue by Santana T. J. Coste

I don’t feel like I have roots. Or rather that I was supposed to, but grew disconnected from them. I don’t feel representative enough of My Roots to claim them. My roots are rich, vast, and tangled around trades I’ll never learn. They spread throughout an island I’ve never seen. They are deep, dark brown. I am bleached, left to scramble for every fantastical color but what I am.

Feeling white-washed...It’s like being a leaf at the very tip of a branch. And Autumn comes and saps you of life, and you crack and fall and only catch a glimpse of your roots as you hit the ground. Now that you are separated from them.

Why must my roots be plunged down, a thousand feet deep, into pain? Because that’s the one thing I feel I understand. I feel my trunk, my branch, my leaf, whatever I am to my family, was always meant to bend.

Bend beneath the weight of -

Shame that God is disappointed in me

Silence where my Mother Tongue belongs

Guilt for bleeding through my eyes with girlish tears but never a Woman’s Blood

Guilt for being the End of my house’s branching

Guilt for being the weakling in a long line of Matriarchs.

For someone like me, so split into parts - all derided in some way or another - it feels like I can only plant roots that are mismatched with each other. I feel like less of a tree - or part of one - and more like a collection of potted plants. Not yet a garden. Perhaps not ever. As much as everything I am is connected, united by the whole that is me, and though they affect - indeed exacerbate - each other, they don’t seem like they can I have never met anyone else who shares in all the parts that form my whole. I feel ultimately alone. A single, solitary sapling growing withou a forest. I hope I can grow into something like a weeping willow. Something beautiful in a sad, welcoming sort of way. Somewhere that people can come to for rest and sagedy. I feel like the end and the start of things. If I want roots, I must grow them on my own.

May I become a garden Sanctuary for others like me who feel fallen from their trees, severed from their roots, left out in the cold to grow alone.

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