Grrrl Couch Vol. #8: A Year in Quarantine

A YEAR IN QUARANTINE

GRRRL COUCH VOL. #8

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Letter Welcome to the 8th volume of Grrrl Couch Zine. When I started this zine in high school, I never thought I’d still be writing it nearly 6 years later, much less about a pandemic.

In the beginning, I thought this whole COVID-19 thing was going to be like a worldwide shroom trip. I thought people were gonna wake up, reset, and we’d all get to return to normal life refreshed after

from

quarantine.

Boy was I in for a wild ride. I think it’s safe to say this is not how any of us imagined 2020 or 2021 would go. After how exhausting this past year has been, and just how much bad news we all have read and experienced, I wanted to reflect back in a more constructive light. We’ve all been through a lot of change over the past year, individually and collectively. In this zine I aim to bring different perspectives to the table

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of what happened over the past year, everything from protests to personal growth. I hope you are all healthy and well. Get vaccinated and enjoy your summer safely.

Xoxo, Ruby

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Table of Contents Features ISLANDS & EPIDEMICS / 6

Creations From Da Couch: A Community Art Gallery / 8 Artist Spotlight: Maria Belen Amitrano / 12 Looking back / 20 Learning to stop and smell the roses / 22 Pandemic Love Stories / 29 Weaving My Way Through the Pandemic / 30

Returning Cast Letter From The Editor / 3 IG Polls / 28 & 31 Playlist / 32

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Contributors Ally Frank // IG: @womenandwomen.first ESME YOKOoji // IG: @ez.y_of_eastside Sam Herrera // IG: @_satanswifey giuliana lorenzini // IG: @_giulianalorenzini Kimmy diaz // iG: @kimmyndiaz

Maria belen amitrano // IG: @themiscyrart @normalidadph Cheyenne hanson // IG: @garbagecake.art ...And all the anonymous grrrls out there

Support your favorite zine by picking up some physical copies of your favorites at grrrlcouch.weebly.com

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Islands & Epidemics

Written by Esme Yokooji In Miyako, during ancient times an epidemic swept across our land. After much prayer, my people were met with the Paantu Punaha who came from far-off shores to relieve us of our suffering. There was UyaPaantu, Nnaka- Paantu, and FfaPaantu, all three donning imposing masks and covered in mud and foliage.

They brought an end to the sickness in the mud, which they painted onto the bodies of our people. We received the mud gratefully and jubilantly and still do. I receive the mud in any way that I can in Hawaiʻi, when I find myself sat in a loʻi shaded by the growing Kalo surrounded by women who have wrapped me in sisterhood it feels medicinal. It feels ancient and sacred to hold space as we hold the land and as the land holds us back. In the mud, I feel the dirt and grime of the past year slowly wash away.

Diseases of epidemic proportions are nothing new to these islands or the islands of my ancestors.

In the memoir Hawaiʻiʻs Story by Hawaiʻiʻs Queen, Queen Liliʻuokalani recounts a smallpox outbreak in 1881.

In response to the virulence of the disease, the then Princess swiftly and decisively closed down the ports and instituted a mandatory quarantine for those afflicted (much to the displeasure of sugar growers and foreign merchants). I read the Queen’s story as the islands began to swell with chaos and the epidemic began to situate itself on our shores. The ʻōlelo noʻeau “ ka wā ma mua, ka wā ma hope, “ situates the future as the ʻtime in backʻ and the past as the ʻtime in front,ʻ it is a common ideological thread across Oceania. In Aotearoa the whakataukī is Kia whakatōmuri te 8

haere whakamua, which literally refers to walking backwards into the past with eyes on the future.

As I studied the past and walked into the future, I realized the magnitude of our present deficits as they unfolded. Instead of sugar growers and missionary’s sons bearing bayonets, it was disheartened white men storming their own capital, but the same groups of people were disproportionately dying and once again haole people brought with them a new and terrifying pestilence. Some patterns in our history remain stubborn, like creases that refuse to fall to an iron. Yellow peril and anti-blackness persisted like heinous weeds cracking through bandaids of pavement, and neocolonialism boomed at the doorsteps of afflicted islands across Oceania. Our shores were free to tourists and military personnel who acted with a reckless entitlement and boldness befitting of their ancestry.

Insta-colonizers took up occupancy in Airbnbs and quickly profiteered off of “paradise” as our houseless struggled to find ways to keep clean and disinfect without having reliable access to running water. I saw so much selfishness. When I will tell the story of the pandemic I will tell the story of selfish of people who came to be here through privilege and access and those who chose to invest in whiteness and a seat at the table at the expense of other people’s lives. I will never forget how the government tried to move forward on desecrating the iwi kūpuna in Hūnānāniho during the pandemic, I will never forget how we were forced to bear RIMPAC during the pandemic, I will never forget how the U.S. military caused outbreaks in

Guåhan and Okinawa and Hawai’i. I will never forget how in Okinawa they began to remove soil with the remains of our war dead in order to fill in our sacred waters with the hopes of building a military base on top of this desecration sandwich. I am bitter, so bitter that so many struggled and died needlessly; that these islands experience yet another tragedy upon the already gargantuan shoulders of displacement and land theft and illegal occupation.

I will also never forget the incandescent and wonderful way that Waikīkī looked without tourists, the way it felt to see local and Hawaiian people chilling with their families at the beach and at the countless trails that were usually so crowded. In a strange way, the pandemic offered a glimpse into a future waiting. A future that could be if we only sought after it and coaxed it into being. I turned my hands to the earth as so many others did, in the midst of the uncertainty. It was more than a fluke, it was an instinct. I sought out healing mud, I sought out healing waters, and more than anything I sought the past. Colonization is so effective because when you are made to forget your native tongue you forget the stories of your people, you are forced to forget the things that truly matter and hold meaning so you can invest in false idols like Capitalism, Tourism, and whiteness.

I caught a sliver of a future where Hawaiʻi is independent, where we grow our own food, where Hawaiian people make decisions about Hawaiian land. It is not a fleeting future, but one rooted firmly in the past.

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WELCOME

TO THE

COMMUNITY

ART GALLERY 10

Left page top left: Sam Herrera; top right: Giuliana Lorenzini; middle left: Sam Herrera; middle right: Ally Frank; bottom left: Sam Herrera; bottom right: Ally Frank Right page top left: Ally Frank top right: Ally Frank; middle left: Sam Herrera; middle right: Giuliana Lorenzini; bottom left: Sam Herrera 11

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Artist Spotlight:

MARIA BELEN AMITRANO Artist Bio: I am Maria Belen Amitrano. I am a 33-year-old Argentine photographer. I live in Argentina in the city of Monte Chingolo. I am an art student at the University of La Plata and I teach special education. I am a photojournalist in different alternative media and collaborate outside and within my country, in exhibitions and street art interventions. I am working on my first photo book today.

What is your favorite camera to shoot with?

My favorite camera is my first one, it's a Nikon 5300 called Nimbus. I'm a big Harry Potter fan.

What is your favorite, film or digital?

Right now most of my work is digital, instead analogic photographs and films allows to create from the photography development. The lab and the films have original tones itselfs but it's not what I choose right now.

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What inspires you?

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I don't have an inspiration itselfs. I usually start with some sketches late at night when I can't sleep... some of them become in shoots...

I found in the photography a way to heal myself, I feel better when I tell stories with my photos.

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How has COVID impacted your work?

I had a lot of time to come up with different ideas that sometimes I couldn't finish building.

I was able to create my first art series completely inspired by the quarantine in its everyday context.

The portrayed coexist in a universe that seemed very distant but, which we are reaching little by little.

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Find Maria on Instagram: @themiscyrart @normalidadph https://linktr.ee/normalidad

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"A historian once said it's difficult to critique an ideology when you're a part of it. History also demonstrates racism as a livingbreathing-evolving thing. Another historian also said pandemics reveal pre-existing fractures within society.

Since March 2020, I have been reflecting a lot more, especially as a WOC in a white conservative town.

COVID-19 in the US has merely revealed tensions that many people failed to recognize prior to the pandemic.

people we see at grocery stores or malls refusing to wear a mask, and at times, causing a scene?

The people who claim "all lives matter" are Americans who don't really care about all lives, rather they care more about their misplaced feelings. These feelings tell them BLM is leaving them out, but they simply care that they don't get to dictate the narrative.

One of the things this country was founded on was racism and I can As a student of history I am taught acknowledge it is difficult to really history doesn't repeat itself, but it comprehend it. It's even more however does rhyme. My perspective challenging to fully realize we are on the pandemic and thoughts about still living in a racist country/society the BLM have come from things I've (or maybe it's only difficult to people learned in history classes. Many who don't experience America like Americans form their identity through this/haven't done the work to learn alterity, only knowing who they are this). because they first know who they're not.

I'm writing as a WOC and a student of history, hopefully able to offer a When people call the pandemic the useful perspective. If this pandemic "Chinese virus" it's racist, but also has taught me anything, it's hard once stems from a history of racism and you notice all the fractures in our alterity. It's easier to target society and country. It has left me "foreigners" instead of doing the hard hopeless at times, but oddly enough, work and looking inward. We've done I've come out more optimistic since this before with the Chinese the start of the pandemic. We need to Exclusion Act of 1882. White put in the work to learn the history, Americans blamed the Chinese for but more importantly, listen to the working the jobs many white voices of people who feel the pain of Americans did not want to do, yet racism this country constantly wields claimed Chinese were stealing jobs against them. It's hard work, but (hmm, seeing any parallels to any fortunately it is possible." other demographic today?). The blame for COVID-19 is Chinese for -B many Americans, but who are the 22

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Learning to Stop And Smell the Roses

COVID’s early debut in Seattle kicked me out of my dorm, and sent me back to Oahu. I am lucky to be able to live in Hawaii during this time, surrounded by familiar places, faces, and family. Out of a job, away from my band, and my college friends, I found myself again in the land I was raised on.

coffee, it’s genuinely difficult for me not to be productive at all times of the day. Forcing myself to stop and appreciate anything felt nearly impossible at first, and I am still not perfect at it. May these photos serve as a reminder to stop and smell the roses, or in my case, the plumerias.

Spending long hours hiking through the mountains and valleys, dousing myself in the ocean, and stopping to enjoy every view from every drive, every window.

Naturally, I am a fast paced person. Fueled by anxiety and

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I found love in appreciating sunset colors during evening traffic,

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the shocking chill of waterfalls on a hot day,

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In classic Sagittarius fashion, traveling and adventure make up a large portion of my happiness. For me, quarantine has forced me to learn how to explore and feel that sense of adventure in a place where I feel like I already know every inch, every nook and cranny.

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Photo by Kimmy Diaz 29

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Weaving My Way Through the Pandemic

"During quarantine I picked up a hobby that I always loved to watch on YouTube. I started weaving wall pieces and selling them and actually made enough money to pay rent during the pandemic. I found it super gratifying that people wanted to pay for my art."

- Kimmy Diaz

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GRRRL COUCH VOL. #8 RELEASED JULY 2021

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ISSUU.COM/GRRRLCOUCH IG: @GRRRLCOUCH GRRRLCOUCH@GMAIL.COM

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