May/June 2010
Issue No. 2
No Cover Girl
Read To Me
Charlyne Yi on Sex, Drugs, and Dirty Dancing
Balancing Act
Theresa Falk Explores Living in Tree Pose
Face-Off in the Kitchen
Kale Is the New Bacon vs. For the Love of Pork
Bringing Incarcerated Mothers Closer to Their Children
Kindness Isn't Just for Other People
von Hottie Lays Down the Law about Treating Yourself to Some of Your Own Hospitality
Hawai‘i's Domestic Violence Policy Gap
Housing Survivors of Domestic Violence Results in Better Health
Our Room Is the World May/June 2010
Issue No. 2
Page 15
Charlyne Yi chats it up with the Domestic Diva features 15
No Cover Girl: Charlyne Yi on Sex, Drugs, and Dirty Dancing
poetry & prose 4
29
Rooms of Their Own
How Keeping Survivors of Domestic Violence Housed Results in Better Health BY TATJANA JOHNSON
Thinking Outside the ServiceProvision Box
Jennifer Rose Talks about Ending Violence against Women BY CARMEN GOLAY-SWIZDOR
33
Oh, Baby
Symphony
BY KEITH MEATTO
BY MISTY TASHINA BRADLEY
AN INTERVIEW WITH JENNIFER DAWN ROGERS
21
Sink, Sink, into a Gypsy Sleep
photo by Tommy Shih
9
Waiting
35
11
Reading Signs
37
BY ZOIE WATTS
BY LYZ SOTO
BY RED SLIDER
A Love Letter to San Francisco
BY MAYUMI SHIMOSE POE
Our Room Is the World
PUBLISHER
Page 15 Kathryn Xian
EDITOR-IN-CHIEF
Jennifer Meleana Hee
MANAGING EDITOR
Mayumi Shimose Poe
CONTRIBUTING EDITOR
Anna Harmon
ART DIRECTOR
Kathryn Xian
PROOFREADER
Suzanne Farrell
PHOTOGRAPHERS
CONTRIBUTING WRITERS
Michelle Bassler, Rita Coury, Archana Hass, Ryan Matsumoto, Tommy Shih, Lucas Stoffel, Kathryn Xian Misty Tashina Bradley Ivy Castellanos Deanna Espinas Theresa Falk Carmen Golay-Swizdor Jennifer Meleana Hee Tatjana Johnson Keith Meatto Nancy Alpert Mower Jennifer Dawn Rogers Lorelle Saxena Mayumi Shimose Poe Red Slider
Charlyne's photos by Tommy Shih
HOW TO REACH HAWAII WOMEN'S JOURNAL HAWAII WOMEN'S JOURNAL a project of the Safe Zone Foundation 501(c)3 a Hawaii-based nonprofit organization EDITORIAL editor@hawaiiwomensjournal.com SUBMISSIONS submissions@hawaiiwomensjournal.com ADVERTISING ads@hawaiiwomensjournal.com GENERAL INQUIRY info@hawaiiwomensjournal.com WEB www.hawaiiwomensjournal.com facebook.com/hiwomensjournal twitter: @hiwomensjournal
Lyz Soto Ali Stewart-Ito von Hottie and Zoie Watts
MAILING ADDRESS Hawaii Women's Journal c/o Safe Zone Foundation 4348 Waialae Avenue #248 Honolulu, Hawaii 96816 DISCLAIMER The Safe Zone Foundation (SZF) dba Hawaii Women’s Journal (HWJ), its Publisher, and Editors cannot be held responsible for errors or consequences arising from the use of information contained herein; the views and opinions expressed do not necessarily reflect those of the SZF, HWJ, Publisher, and Editors, neither does the publication of advertisements constitute any endorsement by HWJ, Publisher, and Editors of the products advertised.
Hawaii Women’s Journal | 3
poetry massive light derails
Sink, Sink, into a Gypsy Sleep
her kept body.
Sink, sink into a gypsy sleep Into heated unresolve Into silent rages that torch the lining of your stomach Like the plank we set on fire in the middle of that blue mountain valley lake Yesterday Sullen passively crossed a busy street somewhere south of the equator.
splattering my backside
without a
Everyday I wake I believe I am not good
I think for a moment I should cry a hinder warning. Instead I slowly turn my back and walk away as
A little girl holding her
massive light derails her kept body. Louder than the halting brakes from neighboring traffic I hear her bones crack and rip through her flesh
as we pass.
her blood splattering my backside without a cry. Everyday I wake up and for less than a moment I believe I am not good enough. I never look in the mirror any more to think things that are not true. Instead, long runs fade to walk. A little girl holding her mother’s hand smiles as we pass. All we know all we know all we know all we know is how to live with what we do not have. Hence, the weeping to the words of a pleasant memory. Maybe tomorrow it won’t matter That there is no comfort in genius sleep Because I am lost Between the cycles of the moon And the cycles of conditioned intellect. I have forgotten to value the breath that gives me life into simple southern memories whose clouds, I remember, carry more than just rain. v
Misty Tashina Bradley
Hawaii Women’s Journal | 4
live with what we do not have
I have forgo
whose clouds, I remember,
contents columns 8
Ms. DeMeaners
10
The Balancing Act
13
The Domestic Diva: Diva vs. Hee
14
Hee vs. Diva
18
The Pen Women's Column
19
The Wellness Manifesto
25
Nonprofit Corner
Kindness Isn't Just for Other People BY VON HOTTIE
Living in Tree Pose BY THERESA FALK
For the Love of Pork BY JENNIFER DAWN ROGERS
Kale Is the New Bacon BY JENNIFER MELEANA HEE
The Whirlwind Life of a Woman Writer: Lisa Yee BY NANCY ALPERT MOWER
Diet, Interrupted, Part Two: My Body Is a Temple ... Sometimes. BY IVY CASTELLANOS
Read To Me International's Prison Literacy Project in Hawai‘i BY DEANNA ESPINAS
27
The Dame Game
32
Kitchen Medicine
details 6
From the Publisher
7
Contributors
Playing with the Boys BY ALI STEWART-ITO
Traditional Remedies for Today, Part 2 BY LORELLE SAXENA
Hawaii Women’s Journal | 5
art by Michelle Bassler
photos by Michelle Bassler
from the publisher “Woman is the nigger of the world.” – Yoko Ono a
O
no said it in 1969. By 1972, John Lennon had made it into a song, with the help of The Plastic Ono Band. The words are as powerful and problematic today as they were then. However, many cannot see past Ono’s use of a racial slur, misunderstanding her commentary about the global hierarchy of discrimination upon which societies are based: misogyny. They miss her point—that, without misogyny, governments could not operate their patriarchal civilizations, upheld throughout millennia. Throughout history, Caucasians, Blacks, Asians, Latinos, and many Native Peoples have controlled the potentiality that is the female, subsequently perpetuating violence and social battery against both genders. It’s unfortunate because, if left to flourish, female potentiality could improve the world—for men, too. In fact, most believe that it was John Lennon, not Yoko Ono, who first uttered those words. Case in point. Sadly, when race is put in a minority competition with gender, women often lose the #1 position in Justice Trend of the Season and for good reason: men exist in different colors. And in the race for the model-minority finish line, men of any color will succeed farther than their female counterparts. What do women do in this paradigm where there is no pot of golden equality at the end of the rainbow— because oppression comes from all colors in the spectrum? Short answer? Embrace loneliness atop the sheer Cliff of Freedom and base-jump that literal mother-fucker
d
with a big-ass parachute strapped to your back, carrying with you the mothers of the past—all the women who were never able to pursue their dreams because they were too busy giving birth to nations—too busy being housewives, childcare services, house maids, cooks and dishwashers, and personal laundromats to see their girlhood dreams of becoming astronauts, doctors, lawyers, firefighters, or Presidents fade into the mundane routine of perpetuating the species behind a smock and a wooden spoon. We are a generation of women born from mothers of stolen futures. But it is entirely our choice what we do with our own. This is the why and how Hawaii Women’s Journal came to be. One step at a time, one independent idea at a time, we come closer to our own personal liberation. The Hawaii Women’s Journal is not a panacea for gender inequality, but it is a step in the right direction. Any project that seeks to promote women’s voices farther than usual is a step in the absolute “right direction” from every corner of this very cubist globe. I never liked squares. And I found a few others who didn’t either: my editors. And my editors found like-minded writers and photographers. Before we knew it, the literary love-child we call Hawaii Women’s Journal was birthed, despite our lack of spare time from our full-time jobs. Like Athena from the forehead of Zeus. It’s interesting how much wisdom comes from Hawaii Women’s Journal | 6
the most splitting headaches. It’s true. We suffer. I make the Editorin-Chief cry daily. It’s part of the birth. We women sometimes sit on our birthing stones, contemplating if the world is worth us moving for—it’s either overwhelming, because of the voices in our heads urging us to “go perfect or go home,” or undermotivating, because we can’t really see much sitting in one place. That’s not base-jumping the Cliff of Freedom—it’s paralyzing apathy. At Hawaii Women’s Journal, we believe in taking the big leap. We embrace all of those who have the courage to do so. We’re holding out the safety net—or perhaps it’s a trampoline. Liberation may be frightening in its apparent loneliness, but it is well worth the journey. And you will find many friends along the way. Our magazine proudly introduces you to writers who continue down that path by unfettering their unique voices in print. Allow us the privilege of exposing you to the informative, the funny, the poetic, the gossamer, the child-like, the witty, the tragic, the crazy, the sensual, and the beautiful. Allow us the privilege of giving you a push towards the edge. Parachutes are available upon request. We’ll be waiting with our safety nets/trampolines should you decide to land. v
Kathryn Xian, Publisher Hawaii Women's Journal
contributors Michelle Bassler
Michelle is a University of Hawai‘i at Manoa graduate who is now living in Southern California. She started selling her designs in Brooklyn, NY, in 2005 after learning how to screen print. In 2009, she created the clothing company Blonde Peacock. She enjoys growing her company in ethical and sustainable ways. www.blondepeacock.etsy.com
Misty Tashina Bradley
Misty spends most her days dreaming, but when there is time writing, friends, and ashtanga yoga contribute to her happiness. She is a graduate from the University of Hawai‘i at Manoa and is currently preparing to serve with the Peace Corps. www. xanga.com/strewnlight email: mistytashina@gmail.com photo: Lauryn Gerstle
Ivy Castellanos
Ivy is a freelance writer, currently shopping her first screenplay and finishing two unruly, very insubordinate novels. She has worked in the health and wellness field for over ten years and holds a master’s degree from the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health in Health Education, Behavioral Health, and Health Communications. email: ikcastellanos@gmail.com
Rita Coury
Award-winning photographer Rita Coury finds the beauty in all that surrounds her. She specializes in fine-art portrait photography with an emphasis on the unique and emotional side of her subjects. www.ritacouryphotography.com
Deanna Espinas
Deanna Espinas has been with Library Services in the Department of Public Safety for over 29 years. She enjoys working with the men and women inmates to help them continue a connection with their children through the Read To Me Program. email: deanna.l.espinas@hawaii.gov or phone: 808-587-1273
Theresa Falk
Theresa Falk is a writer, director, performer, and educator. She teaches English at Iolani School. email: theresa.d.falk@gmail.com blog: msmanifest.typepad.com
Carmen Golay-Swizdor
She currently lives and works in Honolulu, promoting 4-H Youth Development for military kids. She is a partner to a Navy submariner, mother to Ethan, and dog mom to rescued pitbulls Lucy and Bella. email: thinkingglobal@mac.com photo: Rita Coury
Jennifer Meleana Hee
Jennifer Meleana Hee is a vegetarian cook and baker at Kale's Natural Foods, a blogger for Peace Corps Worldwide dot com, the editor of the Hawaii Women’s Journal, and a freelance writer and editor for Chromatic Magazine. She has been published in The Smart Set, Worldview Magazine, and innov8. She is the proud owner of the only Bulgarian street dog in Hawai‘i. blog: www.jennmeleana.com email: editor@hawaiiwomensjournal.com photo: Ryan Matsumoto
Tatjana Johnson
Tatjana is in her second year at the William S. Richardson School of Law at the University of Hawai‘i. After graduating from Smith College, Tatjana was a fellow with the American India Foundation and worked in a remote elementary school in the Himalayan mountain range of India. She returned to Hawai‘i to serve as an AmeriCorps Advocate at the Legal Aid Society of Hawai‘i for two years and provided direct legal services to low-income persons.
Ryan Matsumoto
Ryan Matsumoto is a photographer/ videographer from Honolulu, Hawai‘i. He is openly biased towards Hawai‘i Women who Journal and is notorious for over-customizing his three-sentence bio towards whatever magazine hires him. He now realizes that he only needs two sentences. email: hawaiianryanrocks@gmail.com photo: Jennifer Meleana Hee
Keith Meatto
Keith Meatto has fiction published or forthcoming in Harpur Palate, Opium, Artifice, Glossolalia, Ghoti, The Northville Review, Writers’ Bloc, Spork, and LITnIMAGE. He has worked for many years as a teacher and a journalist and is now at work on a collection of short stories.
Nancy Alpert Mower
Mower is a former Instructor of Writing and Literature in the English Department of the University of Hawai‘i and former director of the Conference on Literature and Hawai'i's Children. She has published seven books for children, articles, essays, poetry, and short stories for children and adults.
Jennifer Dawn Rogers
A graduate of Harvard University and a former film development executive, Jennifer cooks and writes in Los Angeles. In 2009, she launched her blog Domestic Divas, which focuses on local, organic cooking and wine reviews. She is currently writing her first novel. email: domesticdivasblog@gmail.com www.domesticdivasblog.com photo: Jeri Rogers
Mayumi Shimose Poe
Mayumi Shimose Poe is not a poet. However, she has been published in American Anthropologist, Eternal Portraits, Hybolics, Stepping Stones, the Honolulu Advertiser, the Phoenix, and Dark Phrases and was awarded a 2002 honorable mention in the Honolulu Magazine Annual Fiction Contest. email: mayumi.shimose@gmail.com www.mayumishimosepoe.com
Red Slider
The poet does what poets in Northern California do. The poet’s partner, Frances Kakugawa, is a well-known Island author with marvelous children’s stories and many other published works to her credit. The poet is also published. ©red slider, 2010; www.holopoet.com
Lyz Soto
Lyz Soto is the Executive Director of Youth Speaks Hawai‘i. She is a performance poet, a student at University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa, and her chapbook Eulogies was recently published by Tinfish Press.
Ali Stewart-Ito
Ali Stewart-Ito currently teaches high school English and coaches at a private school in Honolulu. Despite a general state of rootlessness (she’s lived in three different countries and several different states), Hawai‘i gives her warmth in her belly. A lover of travel, sport, and creating, Ali writes to clear the utter mayhem that rocks her skull. email: stewartito@gmail.com
von Hottie
von Hottie is performer, pinup, and guru living in New York. You can follow her many adventures at vonhottie.com as well as on Twitter @askvonhottie and Facebook blogs: www.vonoracle.blogspot.com, www.vonhottie.tumblr.com photo: Lucas Stoffel
Zoie Watts
Lorelle Saxena, M.S., L.Ac, is a licensed acupuncturist and practitioner of traditional Chinese medicine. Originally from Honolulu, Lorelle now lives in Santa Rosa, California, where she maintains a private practice. She welcomes any questions at lorelle@thesaxenaclinic.com. www.thesaxenaclinic.com
Zoie has sailed the Indian Ocean on a shark-hunting boat with Chinese refugees-turned-pirate-fisherman and was allowed into their close circle because they liked the color of her eyes. She speaks five languages including Esperanto, fluently, and was classically trained as a pianist until age 16 when she gave up music to invent a nonsurgical biopsy device for meerkats with skin cancer. email: poetwatts@ gmail.com
Tommy Shih
Kathryn Xian
Lorelle Saxena
Photographer Tommy Shih is based in Southern California but shoots in Hawai‘i, New York, and Las Vegas, and would probably even travel somewhere remote and exotic, like Arkansas, for the right gig. He specializes in commercial beauty, music, portfolio, editorial, advertising, lifestyle, agency testing, corporate and executive, product shots, and portraiture of a shih tzu named Leo. This is his first cover for HWJ. www.tommyshihphoto.com email: info@tommyshihphoto.com twitter: @tommyshih
Hawaii Women’s Journal | 7
Award-winning organizer and filmmaker Kathryn Xian is one of the founding members of the Pacific Alliance to Stop Slavery, the NonExecutive Director of Girl Fest Hawai‘i, the Director of Development and Communications for at the Legal Aid Society of Hawai‘i, and the Publisher of Hawaii Women's Journal. photo: Michelle Bassler
Ms. deMeaners von Hottie’s guide to navigating a modern life
Kindness Isn't Just for Other People
H
ere’s the fantasy I have when I am about to receive houseguests: When I open the door, my lipstick is fresh, the refrigerator is fully stocked, the floors and toilet bowl sparkle, and nary a stray paper is on my desk. My guests will roll from plush towels onto satin sheets, where they’ll drift into a deep and cozy sleep and wake to Kona coffee and freshly baked muffins. I want my home to represent my heart: a large, warm space where my nearest and dearest are welcome to curl up and stay awhile, and where frozen Thin Mints are always on hand. It is a fantasy because it’s far from the dusty reality in which my trash is overflowing, where months after my Valentine’s party, sparkly heart detritus is still piled in three corners, and where clothing from the past two weeks makes a trail from my bedroom to my bathroom—which does a lot of things but sparkling is not one of them. Hold up a second, von Hottie! Who lives here? von Hottie! Who pays the rent? von Hottie! Who deserves to live in a clean and tidy home? von Hottie! So why do I only take care of my personal space when it’s about to be shared by others? Why do we so often neglect to treat ourselves as well as we treat others? If we’d never let our friends sleep on our unfolded laundry, why are we cuddling up to our clean gym shorts? We’ll cook wholesome and delicious meals for our loved ones, so why are we eating dinners of cold cereal when we’re
alone? Our friends could have just swum in mud puddles and we’d still greet them with an enthusiastic “Hello, gorgeous!” but in the mirror we make monster faces at ourselves
flirtatiously at our reflections after we apply lipstick. It is time to buy ourselves the good brand of coffee just because it makes our whole day better. It is time to take the bigger slice, the sparkly Band-Aid, the higher threadcount, and the first, hottest shower. Even if you pressed snooze three times, go ahead and congratulate yourself for getting out of bed at all. Before you begin that eighteenmillionth task for someone else, book that appointment you’ve been meaning to make for you. Or simply start with this new rule: every time you do a favor for someone else, you must first do one for yourself. Aircraft safety cards instruct us to put on our own oxygen masks before helping others for a very good reason: if we neglect to take care of ourselves, we will soon be incapable of helping others. Yes, we are all busy living big and important lives, but let’s remember to take a deep breath for ourselves first. We’re worth it—and the people who love us would agree. v If you have pressing etiquette concerns or questions on how to best navigate this modern life, please e-mail vonhottie@vonhottie.com.
photo by Lucas Stoffel
over a mere cowlick. Enough! Basta cosí! The End, dahling! People of Earth, it is time to throw a little TLC in our own direction. It is time to wink
by von Hottie vonhottie.com
Five Quick Ways to Take Care of Numero Uno p
1) Look in the mirror. Catcall that sexy beast. 2) Make your bed first thing in the morning. Look—you haven’t even left the house and you’ve accomplished so much! 3) Eat your vegetables. Super foods are for super people. 4) Make bold and new choices, especially when they concern the color of your pedicure. 5) Forget Daylight Savings. Set your clock to “me time.” Hawaii Women’s Journal | 8
poetry
Zoie Watts
waiting
souls who've forgotten
what it means to float together
I struggle to move quickly so that the rest of my time won’t be wasted on the frivolity of days.
I didn’t shower for two days after our first night together because I like smelling you on me, everywhere, all the time.
But waiting has become the most distracting imposition since we’ve met. I’m frustrated with the way minutes move as if they’ve gained weight all of a sudden; plump seconds taking their time passing by circularly, sluggishly. It weights me.
And it’s hard to believe that you’ve been in front of me for months, patient. Silent. Waiting.
You’ve wandered through me like faith invading a killing field; something green sprouting through a crack in a fortressed routine, crumbling everything away like chaff peeling off rusty souls who’ve forgotten what it means to float together. It doesn’t make sense. And I like it. You make me crazy, shaky. I can’t wait to see you even when we’re together. I write poetry about you at work because it’s the only thing that doesn’t leave me paralyzed thinking about how you kiss.
You have me at a disadvantage because though time may have tempered your heartbeat, trained to be calm, my body tightens the farther I am from you; unable to feel anything but wanting. It’s as if I can hear when you think of us, on the inside of me, within my chest. And all I can do is breathe. My testament to the history of lovers is this: our story will write itself off the pages, past the ends of the world through dimensions, unconfined, our souls floating, with these poems neverending. v
I do stupid things like walk down the street with a shit-eating grin that I can’t explain away by saying “Bluetooth.”
through me like faith invading a killing field Hawaii Women’s Journal | 9
Living in Tree Pose
the balancing act
by Theresa Falk
E
very morning I pad to my living room in bare feet, lay out my yoga mat, and do three sun salutations. I finish with Vrksasana, tree pose, in the light of the rising sun. Tree pose looks relatively simple: standing in Tadasana (mountain pose, from which all the standing poses originate), one raises a foot and nestles it firmly against the opposite leg, as close to the top of the thigh as possible. One can either hold hands in prayer pose or reach them to the sky. Vrksasana is, ultimately, about balance. I have always felt that yoga is not about achieving complete stillness; it’s about a million little purposeful movements and adjustments, each an attempt to counter an opposing force. I have found this perspective useful in not only my yoga practice but also in my daily life. Everyone has heard the ubiquitous mantra: “Strive for balance.” We as women certainly make a brave attempt at it. We work all day and then come home to our families, nurturing who and when we can, all the while trying to fit in a workout, a manicure, a yoga session, or even just a trip to Longs. Sometimes you make it to the 4:30 p.m. Vinyasa class; sometimes you end up dozing on the couch in your Ganesha tee shirt. Sometimes you fall out of tree pose and land on your ass. My right-legged tree pose is always firm and beautiful: I can get that left foot all the way up my right thigh. Switch to standing on my left leg, however, and no matter how many days a week I work to perfect it, my right foot slips down to my left knee like a wiggling fish. It drives me crazy. I have coated my right foot with baby powder and bought extra-sticky yoga socks, but that foot has a mind of its own. This vexes me. The other day one of my students—I’ll call her Zoe—came to confer with me about a paper she was writing. She brought in a complete, twice peer-reviewed, and edited draft four days before it was due. She laid the paper in front of me, smoothed it out, and proceeded to burst into tears. After procuring a tissue box and gently pulling the tear-stained pages from her trembling fingers, I asked her what was wrong. “It’s just not doing what I want it to, Ms. Falk! It’s—it’s like the words have a mind of
their own!” “What do the words want to say, Zoe?” She proceeded to outline an entirely new essay, complete with thesis statement, main points, and possible support. “Why don’t you just write that paper, Zoe?” She sniffled, “Because I worked so hard on this one, and I feel like I failed it.” That afternoon, with my legs up in shoulder stand, I thought about Zoe’s predicament. It was and is a very accurate mirror of the experiences we all have when trying to achieve a balanced life. We have huge expectations of ourselves as women, girlfriends, wives, mothers, daughters,
and friends. We are expected (or expect ourselves) to do everything—and do it right. The first time. And when we fail to fight off the toppling influences of whatever life throws at us, we beat ourselves up. Big time. My train of thought must have distracted me, though, because I felt my legs become heavy and collapse toward the wall behind me. I quickly tightened my core and pushed my heels toward the ceiling, finding my way back into the pose. The extra blood to my brain then induced a moment of clarity. The root cause of Zoe’s frustration lay not in her writing, which was much better than she imagined, but in her inflexibility. She was so unwilling Hawaii Women’s Journal | 10
to let go of that first draft—that first enormous expectation—that she could not acknowledge the newer essay before her. The one she actually wanted to write. Striving for perfection will always throw us off balance. I still hate the fact that my left-legged tree pose is not as strong as my right. I have to remind myself that part of living one’s yoga is to let go of perfectionism and unrealistic expectations. I must be flexible in body—as well as mind and spirit. I am human—I can only do so much, and if that right foot wants to kiss my knee instead of my upper thigh, then so be it. We women tend to measure our lives against the ruler of perfection: we only consider our lives “balanced” if we are the perfect woman, daughter, wife, and friend. We are “balanced” if we have full bank accounts, schedules, and closets. We are “balanced” when we have way too much to carry—we try to do tree pose every day, all day, while holding a Coach bag, gym duffel, briefcase, laptop carrier, and mini cooler containing our homemade and nutritious lunch. While in three-inch heels. It’s no wonder we often drop it all and fall over. Maybe we need to be flexible enough to let ourselves carry only one bag at a time. There’s a point you reach in yoga, after having practiced for a while, where you suddenly sink into a pose like a root into soil. Your body settles into its natural grace; it is a feeling of stillness, yet if you pay attention, you’ll notice your muscles adjusting, a millimeter here, a millimeter there. You’re not in control anymore—your body has learned how to right itself, how to regain its balance on its own. It’s an amazing feeling, but it comes only after consistent—and challenging—practice. When teaching tree pose to kids in my summer yoga class, I include a variation: the “windy tree.” While standing firm in Vrksasana, I ask them to move their arms back and forth as if they are branches in the wind. We even make wind sounds. The students’ faces inevitably burst into joyous smiles as they sway back and forth, their fingers gliding in every direction; some are gentle breezes, others are trades. And it’s funny—I’ve never seen a single one of those branches break. v
creative nonfiction
Reading Signs
I
magine breathing in carbon monoxide. It is odorless. It is tasteless. It gives no hint of danger, and symptoms of poisoning can be mistaken for the flu. Domesticated canaries, for more than a century, were used as early warning detectors in coal mines. These birds’ respiratory systems are more sensitive than those of humans, so the canaries would sicken first, alerting miners to the possible presence of carbon monoxide or methane and giving them a chance to put on respirators or evacuate Humans and canaries have a similar reaction to carbon monoxide poisoning. First Stage: Headache/Dizziness Hemoglobin is the primary oxygen carrier to all tissues of the body but has a stronger molecular attraction to carbon monoxide, which is first absorbed by the lungs. Carbon monoxide binds to the hemoglobin in the blood, which creates carboxyhemoglobin. Second Stage: Increased Headache/ Convulsions/Disorientation Carbon monoxide attaches to the oxygen molecules, which interferes with the body’s
ability to deliver oxygen to organ and muscle tissue. Third Stage: Convulsions/Respiratory Failure/Death Carboxyhemoglobin prevents hemoglobin from releasing oxygen, causing the oxygen content in the blood to increase. Cells may respond to the presence of carbon monoxide in the body by changing to an anaerobic metabolism, which will lead to anoxia and cell death. Imagine reaching for a respirator after the canary’s song has ceased. People began breeding canaries for domestication in the seventeenth century. They bred them for color, size, shape, and song. They were pets before they were sentinels. If the words “bird” and “respirator” are Googled together, Wikipedia pops up an entry for Forrest Bird, who invented mechanical ventilators for people suffering from severe cardiopulmonary illness. Bird was also an aviator. Imagine flying with no air. There are no protective respirators for Hawaii Women’s Journal | 11
birds. My hometown of Kailua, on the windward side of O‘ahu, Hawai‘i, was built on the remnants of a volcanic caldera. The bay was created thousands of years ago when one side of the crater collapsed into the ocean, leaving a half-bowl dipping into the Pacific. One New Year’s Eve, several years ago, there was no wind in Kailua. That did not stop fireworks enthusiasts. They lit, cracked, popped, bombed, and sparkled with abandon. Through the night and the next morning, there was no breeze. A thick white blanket of smoke hovered over the town, and the bodies of birds littered the beaches. What did the miners do with their canary sentinels after they heralded pending danger? Swine flu (H1N1), avian influenza, SARS, mad cow disease, salmonella, rabies, E. coli 0157:H7, and Yersinia enterocolitica are all diseases associated with, or first found, in animal (nonhuman) populations. One to three percent of pigs that contract swine flu die from it. The World Health Organization estimates, as of September 2009, 0.01 percent of the human population that caught swine flu died from it.
There is no media coverage of animal disease until people become ill. Animal illness rarely excites media interest unless it comes into our homes. If our dogs die, or if we cannot eat our meat, chicken, or fish, then we are interested. If we think maybe we will be next, then we notice. The doctor thought my son and I contracted swine flu. We were sick. We felt terrible. We were not tested. He just said, given the symptoms and the timing, it was probable. My son is not immune to media hype. When he went back to school, he was quite proud to announce that he had been a casualty of swine flu. I got a call from the school. My son got a sound scolding from his principal. He was told not to talk about swine flu. Apparently, my son’s school is not immune to media hype, either. In the United States, as of November 13, 2009, there have been 4,000 swine flu–related human deaths. The Center for Disease Control estimates that, in the U.S., 36,000 people die from the seasonal flu every year. The CDC suggests certain practices common in high-density animal husbandry contribute directly to the proliferation and spread of virulent pathogens. Consider the high-density factory farm, the goal of which is to produce as much food as possible at the lowest possible cost. “Factory farm” was a new term at the turn of
the last century. The definition, according to MSN Encarta, is “a farm where animals are raised using intensive methods and modern equipment.” When my son was four, I had a conversation with one of his playmates. This child was adamant that meat came like a gift from the sky, wrapped in plastic or packaged in decorated cardboard. He maintained there was no connection between the chickens that ran through the yard and the chickens that were battered, fried, and eaten. McDonald’s USA maintains that it can be a nutritional player in a child’s well-balanced diet. Chicken McNuggets contain: white boneless chicken, water, food starch-modified, salt, seasoning (autolyzed yeast extract, salt, wheat starch, natural flavoring [botanical source], safflower oil, dextrose, citric acid, rosemary), sodium phosphates, seasoning (canola oil, monoand diglycerides, extractives of rosemary). They are battered and breaded with water, enriched flour (bleached wheat flour, niacin, reduced iron, thiamin mononitrate, riboflavin, folic acid), yellow corn flour, food starch (modified), salt, leavening (baking soda, sodium acid pyrophosphate, sodium aluminum phosphate, monocalcium phosphate, calcium lactate), spices, wheat starch, whey, and corn starch. They are prepared in vegetable oil (canola oil, corn oil, soybean oil, hydrogenated soybean oil with
Hawaii Women’s Journal | 12
TBHQ, and citric acid added to preserve freshness). Finally, dimethylpolysiloxane is added as an antifoaming agent. Global meat consumption is on the rise. Production has tripled in the last 40 years. It may double by 2050. My son loves eating meat. I do not stop him. An article in the New York Times suggests the easiest way to reduce a carbon footprint is to become a vegetarian. Animals produced for human consumption contribute eighteen percent of global greenhouse emissions. We are now in a period of time biologists call the Holocene Extinction. They speculate humans may be the cause for this most recent period of mass extinctions. The passenger pigeon, the Honshu wolf, the Atlas bear, the Tarpan, the Thylacine, the Toolache wallaby, the Caspian tiger, the Baiji dolphin, and the Pyrenean ibex are all gone—and this a mere fraction of a much longer list. All of these animals disappeared within the last 200 years. What happens, tunneled deep into the earth’s crust, when the canary dies, and the miners fail to notice? v
by Lyz Soto photos by Michelle Bassler and Kathryn Xian
www.facebook.com/blondepeacock
For the Love of Pork
diva vs. hee the domestic diva
by Jennifer Dawn Rogers
I
’d never cooked pork until last year. No, I’m not Jewish. Nor am I a vegetarian. Rather, it all dates back to the day my mother converted to Judaism for her first husband. Despite the demise of both the union and her newly acquired faith (and her subsequent marriage to my gentile father), my mother continued to maintain one tenant of Judaism: Thou shalt not dine on swine. If your mother is antipork, that pretty much makes you anti-pork, too. For the whole of my childhood, through college, and beyond, I never ate a morsel of pork, let alone cooked up a meal of it. As fate would have it, I also fell in love with a man of the Jewish persuasion, and as is often the case, while he would eagerly shovel down a plateful of bacon, he abstained from pork. This is pretty much like someone saying, “Yeah, I’m vegan, except I eat cow.” Both bacon and pork come from a pig and are equally prohibited, but bacon tastes so delicious that many less pious Jews still eat it. And so the tradition of pork avoidance continued. Occasionally, I’d reassure myself by saying things like, “What’s the big deal about pork? It can’t taste better than steak, can it?” But there was always that hint of uncertainty clinging to my voice, reinforced every time Homer Simpson waxed poetic about that “magical animal” from whence came ham, bacon, and pork. This all began to change when I started to delve into cooking, taking on all manner of culinary challenges from risotto to braised short ribs and roast chicken. As I progressed, pork began to take on an almost holy quality— it was the final culinary frontier. On a crisp fall day, and at the urging of my youngest brother, a chef who regularly butchers whole pigs with a chainsaw at Picco, his restaurant in Larkspur, California, I decided the time had finally come. I picked up two huge, organic, bone-in pork chops from my local Whole Foods, fried them up in a pan, and topped them with a simple sherryshallot vinaigrette. I proffered a plate to my boyfriend, who had agreed to take this giant culinary leap with me, and we each took a tentative first bite. “Oh my god!” I moaned as a pork orgasm
went off in my mouth. “It’s like the fifth dimension of food.” “How can pork be so wrong when it tastes so right?” murmured my boyfriend, huskily. We both immediately dove back in for seconds—and then for thirds and fourths. Sure, it felt sinful and dirty but also exhilarating and astonishing, like the first time you raided your father’s liquor cabinet or slept with a Republican. We decided right then and there that if hell was filled with pork, then that was where we wanted to go. There was no turning back. Pork was to be on the menu. Permanently. I have learned over the years that the key to guilt-free meat consumption is ensuring that you buy sustainable, quality product from a reliable source. I now procure milk-fed
Organic Bone-In Pork Chops with Apple-Bacon “Slaw” Serves 2 people Cooking time: 20 minutes INGREDIENTS FOR THE PORK CHOPS 2 organic bone-in pork chops 1 tablespoon fresh thyme (or 1 teaspoon dried thyme) 1 tablespoon organic olive oil 2 tablespoons organic grapeseed or canola oil salt & pepper for apple-bacon slaw: 1 granny smith apple, peeled and julienned 4 slices nitrate-free bacon, chopped 1 shallot, peeled and diced 1 teaspoon sherry vinegar salt & pepper APPLE-BACON SLAW
photo by Jennifer Rogers
Heritage pork from Healthy Family Farms, CSA (Community Supported Agriculture), which is a group of local family-run farms supported by their local community. Not only are CSAs better for the animals, the farm workers, your health, and the health of the planet, they’re also a great way to support local businesses. To find a CSA near you, visit Local Harvest (www.localharvest.org/csa/) where you can search by your zip code. While I’ve experimented with many pork recipes over the past year, “Organic BoneIn Pork Chops with Apple-Bacon ‘Slaw’” has got to be my favorite. Not only are apples and pork a classic pairing, but the addition of the bacon, which hearkens from that same “magical animal,” adds a wonderfully smoky, salty, fatty component to the dish. Have one taste, and I promise you’ll never abstain from pork again. v
Heat a pan over medium heat. Add the bacon and sauté for one minute. Then add the shallots and cook for another minute. Next, add the apple and cook until it begins to caramelize and the bacon is cooked through, about 6–8 minutes. Add the sherry vinegar and season to taste with salt and pepper. DIRECTIONS Next, prepare the pork chops by rinsing them with cool water and patting them dry with paper towels. Sprinkle both sides with salt and pepper and rub them with the olive oil and thyme. Heat the grapeseed or canola oil in a large sauté pan over medium-high heat until it’s almost smoking. Add the pork chops, reduce the heat to medium, and cook, turning once, until they’re cooked through (a few minutes on each side). Remove from the pan and allow to rest for 5 minutes before serving. To plate, place a pork chop on a plate and top with a generous portion of the apple-bacon slaw. Enjoy!
Food for Thought: 1. When buying meat, opt for local, organic product that’s both hormone- and antibioticfree. This will reduce your exposure to harmful additives; help prevent the overuse of antibiotics in livestock, which contributes to the emergence of antibiotic-resistant bacteria like MRSA (a.k.a. staph infection); and support local businesses.
2. When buying bacon, look for nitrate-free bacon. Nitrates, which are used as a preservative in processed meats like hotdogs, sausages, and bacon, have been linked to an increased risk of cancer.
Hawaii Women’s Journal | 13
3. A final health hint? Cook with oils high in monounsaturated fat, the “healthy fat” that has been shown to improve good cholesterol and lower your risk of a heart attack. Some of these “healthy fats” include olive oil, canola oil, and grapeseed oil (the latter is my preference, particularly for high-heat cooking).
Kale Is the New Bacon
hee vs. diva
by Jennifer Meleana Hee
W
hen our very own Domestic Diva submitted recipe options for Issue 2, I high-fived her double-pork recipe. Something about how it used two completely distinct forms of pig seemed really dirty and wrong, and I love dirty and wrong like Amish love clean linens. Let’s run the double pork, I said, but we’ll need to balance out the decomposing dead meat times two with something vibrant and soulless, like kale. I was kidding, but our Managing Editor hasn’t gotten the hang of my sense of humor yet, so here we are. Much like the diva and her pork, my love affair with kale began recently. A few years ago, I heard that you could put greens such as kale, beet greens, and spinach in a smoothie and drink them, but as much of a health freak as I am, that seemed about as appealing as a SPAM smoothie. My sister, already a convert to the cult of the blended green, even bought me the book Green for Life by Victoria Boutenko, the green-smoothie bible, but when I opened the book, it read, “To my beloved husband Igor,” and thusly I let it sit at the bottom of my bookshelf for two years. Much like watching The Passion of the Christ while on Quaaludes or baking to Michael Bublé, I didn’t know what I was missing. But as fate and a bad economy would have it, I began working for a natural-foods market and had to develop a menu for a detox program because the recession was making us all want a good cleanse, hoping a clean colon would give us a fresh start on life. Or at least a clean colon. Forced to create kale smoothies— experimenting and sampling as I finalized recipes—I finally came to understand what all the hype was about, and I began to fanatically pour green smoothies down the throats of everyone who ever trusted me. Green-smoothie breakfast, greensmoothie happy hour, postdinner greensmoothie dessert—welcome the kale smoothie into your life, and soon you will be singing my praises. Preferably to the tune of a Lady Gaga and Mozart mashup.
Let’s talk ingredients: KALE A superfood with super antiinflammatory and antioxidant power, containing phytonutrients that help protect against cancer. According to the World’s Healthiest Foods website (whfoods.org), kale’s phytonutrients also “initiate an intricate dance inside our cells in which gene response elements direct and balance the steps among dozens of detoxification enzyme partners, each performing its own protective role in perfect balance with the other dancers.” I don’t know about you, but I want this to happen inside my body. Studies show you only need less than one cup of kale a day to benefit from its anticancer effects. Drink a green smoothie a day and that one
photo by Ryan Matsumoto
cup of kale goes down smooth like a shot of Patrón. With kale in it. Kale is also loaded with calcium, fiber, vitamins K, A, C, E, and vitamin awesome. ALMOND BUTTER Contains vitamin E, magnesium, fiber, and protein—the last being key for us non-pig eaters out there. BLUEBERRIES Two superfoods, one smoothie. Don’t ever tell us HWJ didn’t try to improve your mind and body. Blueberries, according to Web MD’s superfood list, help lower your risk of heart disease and cancer. AGAVE NECTAR OR LOCAL HONEY You only
need a touch of one of these sweeteners and you can even do without, provided that your banana and blueberries are superripe. Local honey is always an ecofriendly alternative to refined sugar. Agave nectar is low on the glycemic index, which means it won’t cause a sugar high or crash. Recent health food buzz is that agave is evil, but until I hear from Oprah that it’s not one of her favorite things, then I’m still down with agave. If you don’t own a Vitamix, don’t be ashamed. We can’t all be highly evolved and/ or work in a natural-foods deli. However, if you have a blender that couldn’t puree a superripe banana, consider not making green smoothies (or anything involving a blender) until you purchase a better one. And if you have to spend the money on a new blender, why not get one that could pulverize a femur in less than ten seconds? While a Vitamix turns kale into drinkable manna in seconds, crappy blenders will just chop and swirl it around and you’ll be stuck chewing on cud-like nastiness. If you own a semidecent blender, first add the juice and kale and blend that shit together until the kale is as pulverized as possible before adding the remaining ingredients. If you are a superior person and own a Vitamix, just throw everything in that bad girl, blend, and enjoy. v
HWJ’s Morning-After-Double-PorkInjection Smoothie
1 cup fruit juice (I use Mixed Berry or Concord Grape) 1 frozen banana 1 cup frozen organic blueberries As much kale as you can handle (I use 2–3 huge leaves with the thickest part of the stem removed) A gentle squirt of agave nectar or local honey 1 tablespoon almond butter 2 handfuls of ice
Five Tips on How to Go from Smoothie Amateur to Smoothie Badass: 1. Whenever you have overripe bananas, peel them, break them into small pieces, and freeze them for future smoothie use. This may also allow you to skip the addition of ice. 2. Give your smoothies names, such as “Walking in a Winter Wonder CHAI” or “The Incredible Bulk” because this makes you seem like a dynamic and creative person to people who don’t know you. My five-year-old nephew and I always name our smoothies before we drink them. His names are limited—“Mango
Smasher,” “Peanut Butter Banana Smasher,” or the ever-popular “Strawberry Smasher”—but I don’t mock his ability to think outside the “Smasher” box in naming smoothies because I am a good auntie. Also because he is only five. 3. One of my favorite smoothie boosts is a packet of Emergen-C. Are you on your death bed? Make the same basic smoothie, substituting in a packet of orange Emergen-C and a whole peeled orange (leave the pith and seeds, it’s all good) for the almond butter—and heal thyself. Hawaii Women’s Journal | 14
4. Did I mention you should really get a Vitamix? 5. Protein takes many forms, not only the form of something dead. Soy protein, whey protein, eggwhite protein—the protein powder aisle at your local natural foods store overfloweth with options to turn any smoothie into a power smoothie. I drink a smoothie with soy protein every day; it maintains my natural-foods-deli-running and editing muscles. Not to mention the metaphorical muscle of my inner rage.
cover story
No Cover Girl:
Charlyne Yi on Sex, Drugs, and Dirty Dancing
an interview with Jennifer Dawn Rogers
C
harlyne Yi isn’t your typical cover girl.
For starters, there’s her headshot—a photo that a friend snapped of her making a funny face. When asked about it, Yi immediately launches into an impression of her headshot, raising her brow and breaking into a goofy grin. The look does not scream “America’s Next Top Model” as much as it does “America’s Most Wanted.” Then there’s the matter of her shoes— scruffy, two-tone saddle shoes, the formal footwear worn by little girls. Only Yi never wore them as a kid, which could be why she sports them now. “[My mother] never let me [buy saddle shoes],” she says. “I wore Payless canvas shoes—we were poor.”
photos by Tommy Shih
And I haven’t even gotten to the crotch shots yet. Unaccustomed to wearing skirts, Yi often sits with her legs splayed and her hemline hiked up around her waist, unwittingly flashing more people than Paris Hilton on a Saturday night.
and a poet. In an exclusive interview, Yi opens up about her relationship with Michael Cera, what it was like to “Dirty Dance” with Channing Tatum, and how she channeled her inner stoner for the chance to get Knocked Up.
But there’s more than one reason why Yi graces this cover—and scored a coveted supporting role in Judd Apatow’s Knocked Up, one of the most successful recent comedies to come out of Hollywood. The 24-year-old isn’t just an actress and a comedian (she’s a regular at the Los Angeles branch of the comedy club, Upright Citizens Brigade). She’s also a writer (her 2009 film Paper Heart won a screenplay award at Sundance), a musician (her band is called, of all things, “The Glass Beef”), a painter,
HWJ: You have more hyphens than Jennifer Lopez: comedian-musician-writer-actresspainter. Are we missing any?
Hawaii Women’s Journal | 15
CY: I’m going to try to write a poetry book. HWJ: Have you always aspired to be a sextuple threat?
CY: I don’t know… I never really thought about it. When I was a kid, I went through phases. I wanted to be a dentist because I liked picking at my teeth, but I didn’t really want to pick at other people’s teeth. And then I wanted to be an archeologist, but I was afraid of curses. And then I wanted to be an astronaut, but I was afraid of heights. Everything that I wanted to be was contradicted by the reality of the world— besides, the curses. [Laughs] I don’t know if they’re true. I wanted to be a lot of things, but I think I have ADD or something. I want to paint—now I’m bored with that, now I’m going to write. HWJ: So from a young age, it sounds like you’ve had a lot of interests. Did your parents encourage you to explore all these creative outlets?
got pregnant. So those were the options. I thought I’d try college for a bit, and then I didn’t like college and knew I wanted to perform. HWJ: Paper Heart, the film you co-wrote and starred in, is about your quest to discover if true love exists. What inspired you to take on the dreaded “L word”? CY: The idea came when I was nineteen. People would just open up to me at bars where I would perform. And I wasn’t even old enough to be in a bar, but I’d perform there. Just random strangers would open up to me about love. Around that time, too, I was wondering how you date in the real world. I’m not in college anymore. I hang out with mostly older males—how do you meet new
CY: I think so. They supported me when I quit college. They said, “As long as you’re doing what you want.” And then they cursed and said, “And as long as we don’t see you f---ing up, we support you.”
HWJ: You were born and raised around Los Angeles. How did that influence your decision to get into show business? CY: I was born in Los Angeles and lived here until I was four. And then [we] moved to Fontana [California] and [I] was raised there most of my life. [Fontana] is a very suburban, dirty town with chickens and truck drivers. I actually really liked living there. Now I don’t want to live there because I don’t like the wind and the sand and the smell of chicken poop. I really enjoy living here [in Los Angeles] even though there’s a lot of pollution. I prefer pollution over chicken poop. I think with Fontana, there weren’t that many options for what to do with your life. A lot of times, you feel lost after getting out of high school. A lot of my friends either went to college, or just got day jobs, or got into drugs, or became homeless, or
CY: We didn’t—we made a list of young people we kind of knew or were friends with who might not want to get paid that much. [Laughs] And also who would be willing to play a character named [after them], which is kind of risky. We went through a list of people, and then Nick suggested Michael. I knew that he acted, but I’d never seen anything that he’d done. When I finally watched his stuff, I thought he was so natural. In “Arrested Development,” he was so good at keeping grounded. He was Nick’s first choice. So I asked him [Cera] to do the movie, but I didn’t articulate the idea very well. He said, “Umm, I don’t know about that.” And then I told Nick what happened. And then Nick had to re-pitch it … and it worked out in the end. HWJ: A few tabloids reported that you dated Michael Cera and that he recently broke up with you. Is there any truth to the rumors?
HWJ: Your parents sound pretty cool. CY: Yeah, I think it’s because my mom was raised in the Philippines until she was in her teens. They lived in this swamp-type area. They had only three pairs of underwear and would wash them and run in the mud with no shoes. And my dad was [raised] on a ranch in Mexico. They grew up in poverty, so they’re like, “You only have one life, why not take advantage of it and do what you want?”
HWJ: Did you want to cast Michael Cera as the love interest from the start?
people around your age? I would ask other comedians about it, and then I would tell somebody else the story. It almost became this thing about storytelling. There are so many movies about love—what if there was one about actual true love stories? HWJ: You’re right, there are a lot of movies about love, so your film could have come off as cliché, but your approach, which combines narrative with documentary, is really refreshing. How did you come up with it? CY: I wanted to do a straight documentary actually, but then I met up with Nick [Jasenovec, her friend and the director]. He said, “Oh, it would just be like a hour and half of these stories?” I was like, “Yeah!” He said, “Ideally, it would be great if you experienced it firsthand and we would see growth within your character in real life.” So we did a combination of both. Hawaii Women’s Journal | 16
CY: I wish I would have just started crying right now. [Laughs] I made up a rumor while on tour that I used to babysit him, and I saw it on TV. When people act together in movies, [others] make the assumption, “Oh, are they dating? They’re hanging out!” And what’s strange, too, is that our movie is kind of anti that, because in [Paper Heart] what ruined [our onscreen] relationship were the cameras. After watching the movie, for [the public] not to understand that means they don’t get it. HWJ: You made your big screen debut in Knocked Up, directed by Judd Apatow who is known for making “dude-centric” comedies. Was being on set like being handed the keys to the boys’ locker room? CY: I’ve been friends mostly with guys throughout my life, so I never thought about them being guys. I was used to it. I was only supposed to be there for one day, but they kept me around the whole week and let me hang out. Martin Starr ended up being one of my best friends. HWJ: So what you’re saying is that you’re used to being in the boys’ locker room? CY: Yeah! I actually wanted to play football in high school, but I was afraid they might break me.
HWJ: What was Judd Apatow like as a director? CY: I’d never worked with anyone before, so I didn’t know how directing worked or what would happen. I was just sitting on the couch, saying my lines really badly. I didn’t know why he wasn’t in the same room, but he was watching from a monitor in the other room. He came in and was rubbing his head. He said, “Can you do what you did in the audition?” I had to improvise at the audition. He said, “You know, let’s just have fun. I’m going to let the camera roll for ten minutes. Just say any dumb stuff you can think of. You’re a stupid stoner.” I never admitted to them that I’d never been high before. HWJ: If you’d never been high, how did you channel your inner stoner?
CY: I think (1) all my friends get high and (2) I constantly got accused of being high in high school because I laugh a lot and I’m always tired. HWJ: The Dirty Dancing spoof you did for MSN Cinemash was hilarious. How did you get Channing Tatum to agree to star in it with you? CY: I’m actually a really big fan of his. I saw two of his movies—She’s the Man, which is a really cheesy movie but he’s really funny in it, and A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints, which he’s so scary in. I got his e-mail from my agent, and I wrote him to ask if he’d ever want to shoot a short. And we sent him our movie [Paper Heart]. He liked our movie a lot, so he said that he’d love to. Then, we got asked to do something for Cinemash. They asked, “What movie do you want to do?” I said,
The Warm-Up HWJ: Let’s play “two choices.” I’ll name two options, and you pick your favorite. Which book do you prefer: Pride and Prejudice or Pride and Prejudice and Zombies? CY: Pride and Prejudice. HWJ: Which baby daddy would you want fathering your children: Kevin Federline (Britney Spears’s) or Levi Johnson (Bristol Palin’s)? CY: I’d rather be an independent single mom. HWJ: Favorite tween musician: The Jonas Brothers or Justin Bieber? CY: Justin Bieber. I have to go with the new hot thing. HWJ: Who’s your favorite Twilight character: Edward or Jacob? CY: The werewolf [Jacob]. Vampires are too sexy for me. HWJ: Cinnamon Toast Crunch or Cocoa Puffs? CY: Cocoa Puffs. HWJ: Who’s funnier: Tina Fey or Sarah Palin? CY: Tina Fey. I cringe at Sarah Palin. HWJ: Britney Spears as a blonde or Britney Spears as a brunette? CY: Brunette. HWJ: Which is your favorite “Jersey Shore” character: Snookie or The Situation? CY: I’ve walked by the TV while my roommate was watching. I think Snookie was the one who said, “I like sucking pickles.” So I’ll pick The Situation. Hawaii Women’s Journal | 17
“I’ve always wanted to do Dirty Dancing. I love that movie.” He [Channing] knows how to dance and he’s strong, so he can lift me. I asked him about it. He said, “I love it! I’ve always wanted to play Johnny Castle.” He’s the nicest guy. He came to my house to practice. He lifted me in the air and I was almost touching the roof because he’s so tall. HWJ: Is “Dancing with the Stars” in your future (since you already danced with a star)? CY: That’d be really fun, but I get scared of reality shows. I actually took a hip-hop class inspired by Step Up 2. I was dreadful. I kept hoping I’d be that kid that’s bad at first, but then she wins them over. But I only went for one day. v
The
Pen Women’s Column
The Whirlwind Life of a Woman Writer:
W
hat many women have dreamed, Lisa Yee has done: gotten paid for eating chocolate. Add inventor, associate director of a creative think tank, writer and producer at Walt Disney World, and co-owner of a strategic creative company, and you still haven’t gotten to the heart of Yee’s life and successes—her writing. Yee has written her own newspaper column, television and radio commercials, menus, jingles for waffles, and television specials for Disney. She is most famous for her award-winning books for children and young adults, which appeal to readers of all ages due to her sense of humor and amusing and somewhat quirky characters. Millicent Min, Girl Genius won the prestigious Sid Fleischman Humor Award. The delightful protagonist is an eleven-year-old junior in high school. The National League of American Pen Women, Honolulu Branch, invited Yee to be the Keynote Speaker at its 2010 Biennial Writers’ Conference, held at Punahou School in Honolulu, on April 9–10, 2010. Yee gave the keynote address “Write from the Heart” and led two master workshops entitled “REVision, ReVision, Revision.” Yee has published six novels and currently over 900,000 copies of those novels are in print. She has won many literary awards, including the Chinese American Librarian Association Best Book of the Year for Youth, an American Library Association Notable Book, Washington Post Book of the Week, and NPR Best Summer Read. In addition,
Lisa Yee
Hawai‘i’s children nominated Yee for the Nene Book Award. Although she loved books as a child—the smell, the soft feel of old ones—Yee grew up planning to be a lawyer. Sometime before college graduation, though, she gathered courage to tell her parents that law was not her career of choice. Instead, she wanted to write. She braced for her parents’ disappointment, only to be astonished by her mother saying she’d never wanted Lisa to be a lawyer. Yee sent her first novel to Arthur Levine, editor of J. K. Rowling’s Harry Potter books. He rejected it but wrote back saying he’d like to see her next novel. That was Millicent Min, Girl Genius, and Levine has been her editor ever since. Her whirlwind life as wife, mother, and author includes more than sixty presentations a year, including school visits and conferences. She also appears on quiz shows, and she’s currently working on five different books. So she values time at home with her husband, son, and daughter. She usually writes between 10:00 p.m. and 2:00 a.m., and when traveling, she writes at airports and between conference activities. She told the women in the conference audience not to do laundry if the children were asleep or the family was out. “It can wait. Use that time for writing.” When you do laundry, she said, “Wash everything in cold water so you won’t have to sort”— saving more time for writing. After bathing her young children at night, she put them to bed in clothes they’d Hawaii Women’s Journal | 18
by Nancy Alpert Mower
wear to school the next day. “My family means everything to me,” she said, “and I find ways to make it work with my writing life.” In her keynote address, she mentioned that working mothers often feel guilty about not devoting enough time to their families. Men don’t. She said, “You never hear a man say, ‘I feel guilty because I’m going to watch football.’” She began her workshops by asking us to list five things we might find in a child’s room then to write about the room from various viewpoints. She gave hints for revising. “Change the font and margins, then cut 20% of your draft. If it doesn’t move your story forward, leave it out.” She told us to save what we cut because we might be able to use it in another book. Our final revision was to describe the room from the viewpoint of a parent whose child has died. When she asked which revision we liked best, most chose this last one. Yee had convinced us of the importance of being emotionally involved in our writing. Lisa Yee is exciting, enthusiastic, and encouraging. When an intermediate school attendee said, “I want to be a writer when I grow up,” Yee replied, “You already are a writer. You don’t have to wait until you grow up.” Pen Honolulu feels very fortunate that a woman and writer as delightful as Lisa Yee accepted our invitation to keynote our recent conference. v
The Wellness Manifesto
Diet, Interrupted, Part Two: My Body Is a Temple… Sometimes.
S
elf-hate is a succubus. Just when we think the fetishization of thinness and perfection is waning, we’re smacked with an evolved beauty bias. “Real beauty” has become corporate America’s new It Girl, as contemporary commercials now nobly feature an ensemble of “regular” women varying in age, shape, size, race, and ethnicity. They are certainly more representative of our population than Heidi and Gisele, but each heralded nontraditional model is still, at the end of the day, retouched to mask “minor imperfections.” We all struggle with a lessthan-favorite body part (or two), but with every media and corporate retouch, realness itself becomes redefined. Buy our product because we campaign for real beauty. Is the “real woman” marketing approach simply the evolution of the “waif with porcelain skin” archetype? Now that “real” has become relative and is subject to corporate modification, you bet it is. For the past few decades, we’ve challenged the assumption of the homogenized, unattainable female form to which all women should aspire. But challenging one’s perceptions and distortions about our own bodies—ingrained and reinforced over a lifetime—can be another matter entirely. Last issue, we resolved that selfdisparagement and conforming to rigid standards of beauty are outdated scripts. Armed with nothing more than truth goggles, she-love, and a dash of defiance, this issue’s Wellness Manifesto explores three things: self-care, self-appreciation, and positing a wider, more inclusive definition of beauty. Wellness—of which positive selfimage and healthy self-esteem are integral components—is about physical invigoration, nutrition that nourishes and satisfies, and an outlook that is affirming. We’ve adopted a quid pro quo relationship with our bodies— appreciating them only after they’ve satisfied the list of conditions and mandates we’ve set for them. It’s time, however, to flip the script. Starting from a place of gratitude and reverence for your body allows you to build on your strengths and assets rather than minimize and abandon them every time you flip through a Victoria’s Secret catalogue.
by Ivy Castellanos Life Is a Catwalk Ours is a society governed by a Media/ Entertainment/Advertising Triarchy, a nefarious triple threat that lures us into its web of products, illusions, and fantasies. We’ve come to view life as a pageant, and this notion is firmly supported by our electro-addicted, perpetually plugged-in way of life. Reality television reinforces the belief that stardom is just a sex tape and a few Tweets away. Celebrity adulation and its corollary, celebrity scrutinization, have become national pastimes. Websites, television shows, and magazines magnify every celebrity blemish, dissect every fashion faux pas, and monitor the slightest weight gain (baby bump!) or weight loss (her lifelong battle with addiction). We are offered ample opportunity to vote, rate, and judge our cultural icons, and anyone on
Young girls are more afraid of becoming fat than they are of nuclear war, cancer, or losing their parents. MySpace or Facebook is subject to the same scorecard system. The result of this “hot or not” mentality is the dichotomization of women. Essentially, we are either Megan Fox or Susan Boyle— pre-Britain’s Got Talent. We’ve become masters of picking apart the female body, not realizing the sum of these parts is, gasp, a whole person. Aspiring starlets plead with their plastic surgeons: Doc, please make me hot. Give me ScarJo’s lips, Tyra’s boobs, Cameron’s legs, and a Kardashian ass. In the context of pre-party Master Cleansing, drivethrough lap-band, and a life-as-a-photo-shoot mindset, what’s a girl to do? Is any degree of self-love achievable?
Create Opportunities That Allow You to Appreciate Your Body Summer is on its way, and we all know what that means: It’s time for the “Get Beach-Body Ready” media blitz, reminding us that dimples belong on our faces, not our thighs. Rather than Hawaii Women’s Journal | 19
resolve to diet or lose weight, why not devote your attention to living in greater harmony with your body? Many people equate accepting your body with throwing fitness and health to the wind. Unconditional body acceptance does not condone being a Burger King habitué or living life from your sofa under the guise of my pot belly is cute, thank you very much. Instead, accepting your body is about building a positive self-image, upon which other healthy behaviors may be developed. For millennia, women have been taught to value their bodies as purely ornamental. Changing the focus, however, from what our bodies look like to what our bodies can do—and how powerful we feel in them—is an empowering first step. • Enjoy the process. If you’re an outdoorsy girl who loves surfing, getting into the water will be far more rewarding than going to the gym. If you’re a sports enthusiast and enjoy the thrill of competition, why not join a league? If you think sweating is more repulsive than Jesse James’s mistresses, consider swimming or water sports instead of jogging. Physical activity must be a part of your lifestyle, so it has to be fun and stimulating. • Identify barriers. What’s really stopping you? Be honest and devise a plan that’s doable and realistic. Time will always be an issue, so it’s a matter of weaving activities you love into your daily schedule. For example, if you’re a stay-at-home mom without access to a sitter, exergames such as Wii Fit or Dancetown may be plausible solutions. If it’s motivation you lack, why not buddy up, hire a personal trainer, or join an online support group? • Consider the physiological benefits. Exercise is an excellent stress management tool and instantly improves mood and libido by releasing endorphins into your bloodstream. Less bitchy and more sexually charged? I’m on it!
photos by Archana Hass
Have you ever been held hostage by a bag of Cheetos? Rather than eat for health and pleasure, we often become prisoners to food. Focus on eating to support the health of your body. In other words, eat for optimum nutrition and don’t cheat yourself out of enjoyment. • Rather than focus on reducing and restricting, which can often provoke feelings of deprivation, try adding whole, nutritious foods to your diet. • Before you eat, ask yourself whether the food will nurture and sustain your health or potentially compromise it. • Healthy eating is about variety and balance, therefore cookies are not inherently evil. In fact, a good-versus-bad mentality encourages moral judgment, which then often extends to the person doing the eating. I ate well today, therefore I’m a good person. I ate badly today, therefore I’m a bad person and must substantiate this by polishing off another package of Oreos. • Certain highly palatable foods are considered gateway foods: having a little often leads to consuming enormous amounts, so be wary. For example, I bite into one salsa-doused tortilla chip, and three baskets later, I realize I’ve just exceeded the daily caloric intake of a Clydesdale. • A food journal is an excellent tool for providing feedback on nutrition, identifying pitfalls and areas of improvement. Try this: Over a two-week period, record what you eat, being as specific as possible. Note quantities and include beverages and condiments (yes, that glob of mayo counts). Record the time of each meal and snack, and be aware of situational cues that correspond with hunger/mealtimes: Were you vegging in front of the television? Arguing with your boyfriend? (Note: driving past Leonard’s Bakery on the way home may explain why you were compelled to empty the
contents of your fridge directly into your mouth.) Record your mood: How were you feeling? Were you worried, stressed, bored, happy, or anxious? Journaling can give great insight into how emotional triggers and food cues affect eating habits. When you reflect on your entries, you may notice you’re consuming too many or too few calories, or you may realize you crave chocolate every day at exactly 4:00 pm. Armed with this information, you can make more informed food choices and set yourself up for success. Instead of grabbing the Twix bar from your desk drawer, why not have a piece of fruit handy, substitute dark chocolate, or take a brisk walk?
• Experiment with a weight that feels right for you, aiming to find your body’s set point—the weight at which you feel most comfortable, energetic, and strong. Interestingly, your body will fight to maintain your natural weight, which is likely to fall within a range rather than on an absolute number. • Find your personal style. Whether you rock a head full of dreads, a nifty pair of throwback librarian glasses, or a mansuit a la Annie Hall, find a style that allows you to express your individuality. After all, you are inherently unique: there is no one else on earth like you.
Meditate on This
Rebel Yell
On a minute-by-minute basis, our bodies perform a multitude of functions that ensure our survival and well-being. Remember that nasty hangover last month? Your body adeptly metabolized all that Riesling right out of your system. Those cigarettes you puffed on in college? Your body restored your lung capacity and skillfully regenerated damaged cilia. Our bodies are remarkable, efficient machines, capable of extraordinary tasks, yet we rarely celebrate them for their labor and dedication. In your lifetime, it’s likely that your body has fought off infections, healed cuts and bruises, and repaired broken bones. It may have even mended a broken heart or two. Your body has probably allowed you to see magnificent sunrises, taste delectable treats, and hold a child in your arms. Perhaps it has allowed you to laugh with friends, experience physical pleasure, and conceive new life. Your body enables you to run, climb, jump, dance, and embrace. You were born with the power to give, nurture, protect, love, and forgive. In the context of such richness, who gives a shit about stretch marks and bad hair?
According to the National Eating Disorders Association, young girls are more afraid of becoming fat than they are of nuclear war, cancer, or losing their parents. Our socially mandated fear of fatness and imperfection has severe ramifications for the next generation. What kind of legacy are we leaving for our nieces, daughters, and younger sisters? We must increase our awareness of the rich and varied experiences of women of all sizes, ages, ethnic and racial groups, abilities, and sexual orientations. When we do, the narrow, often masochistic, ideas about beauty and bodies will inevitably seem laughable and confining. We do not have to passively accept the Triarchy’s negative messages and blatant misrepresentations of the female body. Practice independent thinking and reject imposed ideals. If you’re a Perez Hilton junkie and reading trashy tabloid magazines is your one guilty pleasure in life, don’t fret—you won’t be reproached by the feminist police. Understand, however, that the media’s view of beauty has no authority. Remove the blinders issued to you by the Triarchy and learn to be critical of what society proposes as female measures of worth. Summing up the value of a woman by her waist-to-hip ratio? Please, this ain’t Stepford. Free yourself from the burden of perfection, honey. It’s an illusion. v
• Take note of the amount of time, energy, and money you spend agonizing over your appearance. Ask yourself if it’s really worth it. Try seeking beauty and joy in every moment and bringing an awareness to everything you do. Life is a celebration, not a competition. Hawaii Women’s Journal | 20
local feature
Rooms of Their Own How Keeping Survivors of Domestic Violence Housed Results in Better Health
by Tatjana Johnson
H
oa, a Vietnamese woman in her sixties, contacted a legal services provider after her husband filed for divorce.1 When I answered, Hoa spoke only enough English to tell me she needed an interpreter. I took her application and asked all the routine questions: “What day were you married? Do you have any children? What are your assets?” However, when I came to the point on the questionnaire about domestic violence, I was not prepared for her answers. “Have you ever called the police?” I inquired. Hoa said she had called once, but her husband hung up the phone after breaking through the sliding glass door separating them. When 911 called back, he told them the call had been a mistake. The interpreter paused as he translated Hoa’s tale to me, then relayed that her husband had pushed her back on the couch and raped her. Hoa said she never had any control over her arranged marriage. She did not want a divorce. She had no income. She had no family on O‘ahu. She had nowhere to go but the streets. DOMESTIC VIOLENCE IS A PUBLIC HEALTH PROBLEM “If [domestic violence] were an infectious disease, we would have a treatment center in every neighborhood.”2 Homeless domestic violence survivors experience disproportionately poor health. Hawai‘i law defines domestic violence as
“physical harm, bodily injury, assault, or the threat of imminent physical harm, bodily injury, or assault, extreme psychological abuse or malicious property damages between family or household members.”3 Hoa came to America hoping to start a new life with her husband only to join the twenty-five percent of American women who have experienced domestic violence in their lifetime.4 The Center for Disease Control (CDC) has stated: “Violence against women is a substantial public health problem in the United States.”5 For example, during a separate incident of abuse, Hoa’s husband punched her hard enough to leave her permanently blind in one eye. Battered women have “more physical health problems and have a higher occurrence of depression, drug and alcohol abuse, and suicide attempts than do women who are not abused.”6 A CDC survey found that women “who have experience domestic violence are 80 percent more likely to have a stroke, 70 percent more likely to have heart disease, 60 percent more likely to have asthma and 70 percent more likely to drink heavily than women who have not experienced intimate partner violence.”7 Battered women also suffer from a plethora of mental-health conditions, including anxiety and posttraumatic stress disorder.8 Hoa survived the violence. However, domestic violence is often lethal. Forty to fifty percent of all murders of women in the United States are domestic violence homicides.9 In 2005, the FBI reported that 976 women were victims of domestic violence homicide, out of a total of 1,158 Hawaii Women’s Journal | 21
female victims of homicide nationwide.10 That means, on average, three women a day are killed as a result of domestic violence. Hawai‘i has seen a growing number of domestic violence cases resulting in death. As of March of 2010, five people have died as a result of domestic violence.11 The Attorney General’s Office reported Hawai‘i averaged “nine domestic violence-related murders a year” from 1996 to 2006.12 ONE FAMILY’S STRUGGLE TO FIND HOUSING ON O‘AHU A transitional shelter posted a ten-day eviction notice on Sarah’s rental unit in West O‘ahu.13 The shelter evicted Sarah for failure to pay the program fee, which was $500 per month. Sarah said plenty of other residents had not paid rent in months but had been allowed to work out a payment plan. Sarah moved into the shelter receiving only $500 a month from Temporary Assistance for Needy Families. She admitted she had not paid the program fee for the two months that she and her child lived at the shelter, but how could she? Sarah spent her monthly welfare assistance on her fiveyear-old child and setting up her new home after living on the beach. Sarah said the real reason is the shelter wanted her to leave her boyfriend, who had housed Sarah and her child occasionally when they were homeless. Although Sarah told her boyfriend to stay away from her shelter, the case manager demanded she get a restraining order against him or be evicted. Sarah confessed she had been in
photos by Rita Coury violent relationships before but that her current boyfriend was not as bad as some of the others. Unfortunately, Sarah’s story is not unique. The statistics are harrowing. While one in four women in the United States have experienced domestic violence, some cities report almost “one-hundred percent of homeless women have experienced domestic or sexual violence at some point in their lives.”14 Various studies across America indicate that between twenty-two percent and fifty-eight percent of homeless women reported becoming homeless as a direct result of domestic violence.15 Hawai‘i’s isolation in the Pacific has not shielded Hoa and Sarah from abuse. The Hawai‘i State Coalition against Domestic Violence conservatively estimated in a 2005 report that 22,000 adults in the state experience domestic violence every year.16 A joint University of Hawai‘i and Attorney General’s report concluded that 44,000 local children are exposed to domestic violence annually.17 Furthermore, the Honolulu Advertiser compared homicide statistics and concluded: “Even though Honolulu is one of the safest major U.S. cities in terms of violent crimes overall, the state almost every year since 1997 has topped the national average in domestic violence homicides per capita.”18 Domestic violence is a reality in Hawai‘i—and a lifethreatening fact of life for Hoa and Sarah. SIGNIFICANT HEALTH DISPARITIES BETWEEN HOMELESS & HOUSED WOMEN Homelessness only widens the gap of
health inequity for Hoa and Sarah. In a recent survey conducted by the University of Hawai‘i’s Burns School of Medicine, the homeless on O‘ahu “were 3 times likely more likely than the general population of O‘ahu to rate their health as fair to poor, despite the fact that 77% of interviewees had medical insurance and 66% a regular health care provider.”19 Homeless men and women have higher rates of premature
food and packaged meals. Indeed, a study discovered that although homeless moms and their children were found to consume less food than the housed population, they eat more undesirable fats, which leads to “increased risk for chronic disease and compromised growth and development for children.”23
“If [domestic violence] were an infectious disease, we would have a treatment center in every neighborhood.”
A domestic violence counselor would develop a safety plan with Hoa and Sarah that focuses on two objectives: safety and a safe house.24 Yet, even the first step in ending abuse brings its own set of problems. The National Law Center on Homelessness and Poverty found that many survivors of domestic violence either lose their housing after fleeing abuse or after being evicted because of domestic violence.25 Consequently, Hawai‘i should adopt housing policies—some of which will cost the state little to no money—that focus on homelessness prevention for survivors of domestic violence. I conclude by suggesting two preventative measures. Health care is costly. However, as we have seen, homeless women suffer from worse health than their housed counterparts and use expensive medical services such as the emergency room more often. The Chicago Housing for Health Partnership (CHHP) offers Hawai‘i by example a potential costeffective solution. A four-year study by CHHP revealed that providing permanent housing for the homeless saved the state money.26 After the program provided sixty-year-old Claude Ousley, who suffered
death, hypertension, cardiac failure, infections, diabetes, arthritis, dental problems, and mental illness.20 Homeless women are particularly vulnerable to health disparities. One study focusing on homeless mothers like Sarah found that they frequented the emergency room and “were significantly more likely to be hospitalized than housed mothers.”21 Homeless mothers were also more likely than those who are housed to report “higher stress levels, avoidant behavior, and anti-cognitive coping strategies.”22 Sarah’s child is at risk as well. For Sarah to feed her child three healthy meals a day while living homeless and impoverished on the beach is an impossible task. She has no access to refrigerators and kitchen facilities. Thus, the only alternative is fast Hawaii Women’s Journal | 22
ROOMS OF THEIR OWN
from congestive heart failure and lived on the streets, with permanent housing, she spent “half as many days in hospitals and nursing homes and went to emergency rooms half as often as the [control group] over 18 months.”27 Housing Claude saved Chicago $12,000 a year from its healthcare costs and shelter expenditures.28 Hawai‘i should at the very least conduct a pilot program like CHHP to determine if providing immediate permanent housing to survivors of domestic violence who are fleeing abuse will save the state money in health care and emergency-shelter costs. My second suggestion would cost the
state no money at all. While the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) of 2005 ensures housing rights to survivors of domestic violence in federally funded public-housing programs, Hawai‘i provides survivors little protection from denial of housing or eviction in private landlord–tenant housing as a result of domestic violence.29 Several other states have enacted laws within their landlord–tenant provisions that prevent private landlords from refusing to enter into rental agreements, failing to renew rental agreements, terminating rental agreements, or taking any other adverse actions against survivors of domestic violence.30 Some
states also permit a survivor to terminate a fixed-lease early or to demand her locks be changed upon sufficient written notification to the private landlord.31 If Hoa and Sarah are faced with choosing between homelessness or suffering domestic violence at home, the State of Hawai‘i fails to protect the health and safety of survivors of domestic violence. State policies focused on housing survivors of domestic violence will not only promote better health but also protect a woman’s human right to live free of domestic violence. v
article/20100325/NEWS06/3250325/5th-death-tied-todomestic-violence, accessed April 29, 2010.
org/content/pubs/DVHomelessnessFacts_September20081. pdf, accessed April 30, 2010. 2008b State Laws and Legislation to Ensure Housing Rights for Survivors of Domestic and Sexual Violence. National Law Center on Homelessness & Poverty (February). http://www.nlchp.org/content/pubs/ DV_Housing_State_Laws_Feb%20_20081.pdf, accessed April 30, 2010.
NOTES 1. I changed the original caller’s name and identifying characteristics to maintain her anonymity. 2. DeNoon 2008. 3. Hawaii Revised Statues Annotated § 321-471 (LexisNexis 2009). 4. Tjaden and Thoennes 2000. 5. CDC 2003. CDC defines IPV as intimate-partner violence mostly against women, including “rape, physical assault, and stalking perpetrated by a current or former date, boyfriend, husband, or cohabiting partner, with cohabiting meaning living together as a couple. Both same-sex and opposite-sex cohabitants are included in the definition.” Ibid. 6. CDC 2003. 7. Black and Breiding 2008. 8. End Abuse: Family Violence Prevention Fund 2009. 9. Campbell and Soeken 1999. 10. Violence Policy Center 2007. 11. Aguiar 2010. 12. Ibid. 13. I spoke with Sarah while working at a nonprofit agency. I changed her name and identifying characteristics to maintain her anonymity. 14. National Law Center on Homelessness & Poverty 2008a. 15. Ibid. 16. Perez 2008b:A1. 17. Ibid. 18. Perez 2008a:A1. 19. Withy et al. 2008. 20. Ibid. 21. Silver and Pañares 2000. 22. Ibid. 23. Ibid. 24. Domestic Violence Action Center 2010. 25. Stern et al. 2007. 26. Barrett 2008:A10. 27. Ibid. 28. Ibid. 29. Housing Opportunity and Safety for Battered Women and Children, Title VI of the Violence Against Women Act of 2005, Public Law 109-162 (codified as amended in scattered sections of 42 U.S.C.). 30. National Law Center on Homelessness and Poverty 2008b. 31. Ibid. REFERENCES CITED Aguiar, Eloise 2010 5th Death Tied to Domestic Violence. Honolulu Advertiser, March 25. http://www.honoluluadvertiser.com/
Barrett, Joe 2008 Politics & Economics: Homeless Study Looks at “Housing First”: Shifting Policies to Get Chronically Ill in Homes May Save Lives, Money. Wall Street Journal, March 6:A10. Black, M. C., and M. J. Breiding 2008 Adverse Health Conditions and Health Risk Behaviors Associated with Intimate Partner Violence, Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report—United States, 2005. Atlanta, GA: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/ mm5705a1.htm, accessed April 29, 2010. Campbell, Jacquelyn C., and Karen Soeken 1999 Forced Sex and Intimate Partner Violence: Effects on Women's Risk and Women's Health. Violence Against Women 5(9):1017–1035. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) 2003 Costs of Intimate Partner Violence against Women in the United States. Atlanta, GA: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. http://www.cdc.gov/ violenceprevention/pdf/IPVBook-a.pdf, accessed April 29, 2010. DeNoon, Daniel J. 2008 Intimate Violence Hurts Health: CDC: 1 in 4 Women, 1 in 9 Men Suffer Intimate-Partner Violence. WebMD Health News, February 7. http://www.webmd.com/ sex-relationships/news/20080207/intimate-violence-hurtshealth, accessed April 29, 2010. Domestic Violence Action Center 2010 Safety Plan. http://www. domesticviolenceactioncenter.org/services/safety-plan, accessed April 30, 2010. End Abuse: Family Violence Prevention Fund 2009 Intimate Partner Violence and Healthy People 2010 Fact Sheet. San Francisco, CA: Family Violence Prevention Fund. http://www.endabuse.org/userfiles/file/ HealthCare/healthy_people_2010.pdf, accessed April 29, 2010. National Law Center on Homelessness & Poverty 2008a Some Facts on Homelessness, Housing, and Violence against Women. National Law Center on Homelessness & Poverty (September). http://www.nlchp.
Hawaii Women’s Journal | 23
Perez, Rob 2008a Crossing the Line: Abuse in Hawaii’s Homes. Honolulu Advertiser, December 14:A1. 2008b Lost in Transition. Honolulu Advertiser, December 15:A1. Silver, Gillian, and Rea Pañares 2000 The Health of Homeless Women: Information for State Maternal and Child Health Programs. Baltimore, MD: Women and Children’s Health Policy Center, John Hopkins University. http://www.jhsph.edu/bin/g/m/homeless. PDF, accessed April 30, 2010. Stern, Naomi, Jeanine Valles, and Allison Randall, with others 2007 Lost Housing, Lost Safety: Survivors of Domestic Violence Experience Housing Denials and Evictions across the Country. National Law Center on Homelessness and Poverty and National Network to End Domestic Violence (February). http://www.nlchp.org/content/ pubs/NNEDV-NLCHP_Joint_Stories%20_February_20072. pdf, accessed April 30, 2010. Tjaden, Patricia, and Nancy Thoennes 2000 Extent, Nature, and Consequences of Intimate Partner Violence: Findings from the National Violence against Women Survey. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Justice. http://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/nij/181867.pdf, accessed April 29, 2010. Violence Policy Center 2007 When Men Murder Women: An Analysis of 2005 Homicide Data— Females Murdered by Males in Single Victim/Single Offender Incidents. Violence Policy Center (September). http://www.vpc.org/studies/ wmmw2007.pdf, accessed April 29, 2010. Withy, Kelley M., Francine Amoa, January M. Andaya, Megan Inada, and Shaun P. Berry 2008 Health Care Needs of the Homeless of Oahu. Hawaii Medical Journal 67(8). http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/ pmc/articles/PMC2693419/pdf/nihms100977.pdf, accessed April 30, 2010.
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Hawaii Womenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Journal | 24
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nonprofit corner
Read To Me International’s Prison Literacy Project in Hawai‘i by Deanna Espinas, Library Services Officer
I pretend not to hear the sobs of the young woman sitting in the corner of the dining room as she hunches over a book and whispers into a digital recorder, “I love you, baby. I hope you enjoy this book. Whenever you want to hear my voice, ask grandma to play the CD again, okay? Bye.”
T
his is a typical scene from one of the weekly Read To Me sessions at the Women’s Community Correctional Center (WCCC) in Kailua, Hawai‘i. A young inmate has just recorded herself reading a children’s book that she thinks her daughter will enjoy. This was her first session, and after she finished recording, she turned and eagerly asked, “Are you really gonna mail the CD and book to my kid?” I reassured her that I would. Back at headquarters, I carefully screened her recording, burned her reading to CD, and mailed both the CD and book to her child. For that moment, no matter how long this woman has been or will be incarcerated, she shares a piece of herself with her child through a beloved book. In August of 2003, the Department of Public Safety began the Read To Me Program at WCCC with the help of volunteers from Keolumana United Methodist Church. Library Services coordinates the weekly program, using available space in each housing unit—the dining room, an old dispensary, anywhere that does not jeopardize security. Program space is at a premium. There is no room for privacy or quality acoustics as each woman reads. None of this stops the women. Currently, there are 281 women at WCCC, and 70 of them participate in the Read To Me program. These women are mothers, aunties, and grandmothers who look forward to an opportunity to connect with their children, even if we're only able to schedule them once every two
or three months. Story time is a parentchild privilege these women don't take for granted, and knowing their children can still listen to their voice is a much-needed comfort in a far from comfortable space. Hawai‘i is very fortunate to have this program, as developed by Read To Me International. The program is a partnership between the Hawai‘i State Department of Public Safety, Read To Me International, and a handful of dedicated volunteers. We strive to fulfill Read To Me’s mission statement— to share the love and joy of reading aloud— by telling program participants about the importance of reading aloud, helping them select appropriate books, and supporting
...the point is not for them to do a perfect recording but, rather, to share a story and a moment with their children. them during their read-aloud sessions. We often have to reassure inmates that the point is not for them to do a perfect recording but, rather, to share a story and a moment with their children. The women carefully sort through our book collection, often unsure which book to pick, so we offer suggestions: “How old are your children? How about a story about a little boy who learns to love his real home after running away?” Here are just a few of many titles that the women enjoy recording: Love You Forever by Robert Munsch, Pocket Full of Kisses by Audrey Penn, The Kissing Hand by Audrey Penn, Goodnight Moon by Margaret Wise Brown, and Julius, the Baby of the World by Kevin Henkes. No matter which title is chosen, we always remind the women to include a Hawaii Women’s Journal | 25
brief personal message at the beginning and end of their recordings. The women are encouraged to use this time to connect with their children using humor and laughter. This program benefits the inmates as well as their children. A 1972 report by the California Department of Corrections found a strong and consistently positive relationship between parole success and the maintenance of strong family ties while in prison. Also, according to a survey conducted by the National Council on Crime and Delinquency in 1993, 28 percent of the caregivers of children of incarcerated parents reported the children experienced problems with school and/ or learning. Read To Me prison-literacy projects address educational-risk factors and prison recidivism while benefiting the child, educational system, and caregiver. Many of the women have shared with us how amazed they are when they call home and learn how much their children enjoy listening to the recordings, and relay that many of their children are able to read along with the books. One woman rushed excitedly into her next session to say, “My son took his book on CD to school, and the teacher let him listen and share with his classmates. Unreal, yeah! You can help me find another book like that?” We hope the children understand that their mothers, aunties, and grandmas love them very much and that this love will always be with them, no matter where their parents are. Again and again as I screen each recording, I hear many women end their sessions with a message similar to that of one young participant who, at the end of her tape, said into the recorder: "Mommy loves you very, very much, and I miss you so, so much. I’ll be home soon, so be good and do well in school." v
photos Courtesy of Deanna Espinas, pictured directly above with friend
READ TO ME INTERNATIONAL HAS A SIMPLE MISSION: Beyond its prison literacy projects, Read To Me International focuses to share the love and joy of reading aloud. Read To Me believes that through this simple activity, parents and communities help keiki develop basic literacy skills and nurture positive relationships. The WCCC prison literacy project is one of six grassroots projects in the islands. Read To Me also runs an award-winning, federallyfunded prison project called “Fathers Bridging the Miles,” which supports Hawai‘i inmates incarcerated in Arizona.
on creating awareness on the benefits of reading aloud, produces materials and resources on the importance of reading to children, presents at schools and community events, and hosts a national biannual conference. For more information on RTMI and on how to get involved, visit www.readtomeintl.org, follow Read To Me on Twitter and Facebook (Read To Me International), or call (808) 955-7600.
Hawaii Women’s Journal | 26
the dame game
Playing with the Boys by Ali Stewart-Ito "Why do I have to cover my top?" "That's just what girls have to do," my mom replied as I pulled on the one-piece bathing suit and ran for the pool. It wasn’t fair; why could the boys run around wearing no shirt? It's not like we looked any different. When I was five, gender rules began to reveal themselves, and it became increasingly clear that being a boy was way cooler. I preferred wrestling or playing Masters of the Universe with my brother and his friends, hated dresses, and opted to wear my indestructible toughskins jeans nearly every day. I sported the androgynous bowl cut, and when puberty began to make an appearance in the form of what I deemed unfortunate protrusions, I proceeded to wrap my upper torso with an ace bandage to keep my chest looking flat and fabulous. High school arrived and I began to don my femininity, though it was not in the form of makeup and mini-skirts. I no longer worried about masking my feminine attributes and did my best to emulate the fashion sense of my beloved Punky Brewster. I still hung out with the guys, but being "just friends" started to get a bit tricky. Crushes and butterflies shadowed all else, as gossip about who was “going” with who made it from one end of campus to the other in a matter of minutes. My crush developed into a serious boyfriend. We wrote love poems and made mix-tapes for each other, but more importantly, we engaged in fiery competition. A perfect date was pick-up basketball with the boys followed by a Wendy’s Junior Bacon
Cheeseburger. Blessed with a genetic makeup that granted me coordination and fine motor skills, I was a multi-sport athlete in high school participating in volleyball, basketball, and track. Many girls on my teams shared my passion for hard-fought competition, but once practice or game time passed, the locker room resounded with birdlike chatter as my teammates fluttered and preened, applying fragrances and lipstick in preparation for watching the boys play. They moved as a flock, settled daintily on the bleachers, and cheered for the boys. The picture of societal norms was complete: males engaged in competition while females watched, demurely batting eyelashes and crossing legs, keeping their reproductive organs safe. Because it seemed so scripted, so contrived, I could never bring myself to bat my eyelashes without also expelling a hearty belly laugh, so I decided to forgo the cheerleader act and do what I love best: play. In college, I continued to compete in competitive athletics on club soccer, basketball, and volleyball teams. Some teams were co-ed, some weren’t, but at University of Washington, it really felt like we were all on the same team. As students, we all were feeling our way in a newfound world and having fun was one of the top priorities. Once I stepped foot off-campus, however, the rules were different. But I was lucky enough to have a few of my male college friends introduce me to the world of pick-up soccer. Let me take a moment to explain the difference between an official game and Hawaii Women’s Journal | 27
a pick-up game. A "pick-up game" is not about getting a date or a weekend fling— it’s about showing up at a park with the necessary gear and playing a game with whoever else shows up that day. There are no referees, generally no limitations on the number of players, and only the waning daylight determines when the final whistle blows. A spontaneous pick-up soccer game features players who are almost exclusively men. Women do come together to compete, don’t get me wrong; it is just rarely as spontaneous. We prefer carefully considered plans. I used to feel too intimidated to jump into a pick-up game, preferring to arrive flanked by male comrades who somehow managed to silently vouch for my ability. I couldn’t, however, always depend on their presence, pushing me to venture across that great gender barrier to enter that zone in which the day's frustrations burn to smoke.
The first time I decided to join a pickup game on my own, I was afraid. Many men in pick-up soccer communities have little to no experience playing with women—at least not as equals. How were they going to react to a woman joining the game? To further complicate the scenario, my inherent shyness made it almost impossible for me to simply step into a field of unfamiliar faces. But I had been here before. Playing sports with friends of either gender was such an integral part of my being. My desire to play outweighed my fears. I warmed up on the fringes: dynamic stretches, some juggling, nothing too flashy. I periodically glanced at the field, making intermittent eye contact, careful to avoid being misconstrued as coy. And, after a few minutes, the sought-after “join us” wave beckoned me. I was in. The first ten minutes of playing as an "unknown" in a pick-up game is like being the new animal on display in the zoo or even a newbie in the workplace. People ooh and ahh, poke and test, and throw food scraps until the animal gets up and shows what it can do. Every move I make is carefully scrutinized. If I don’t prove my ability within the first few plays, I will be deemed obsolete, a pretty flower on
the field—nice to look at, but otherwise superfluous. I don't want to be a pretty flower. I want to represent: to bust preconceptions into tiny irreconcilable shards, never to be reconstructed. I want to be respected as a player, treated like others on the field, and in no way protected, coddled, or belittled.
The picture of societal norms was complete: males engaged in competition while females watched, demurely batting eyelashes and crossing legs, keeping their reproductive organs safe. Yes, I can play. Yes, I want to change preconceived notions some men may have about female athletes. One game at a time, I’m doing my best to prove we can play and compete with the boys. In 1972, Title IX was passed, finally giving women a chance to play on competitive teams that were afforded adequate funding and support. My mom was on the first-ever collegiate track team at her Hawaii Women’s Journal | 28
university. I cannot even imagine having lived when I wouldn’t have been allowed to participate. Times have changed, most definitely. But it is up to us to keep the fire burning. I can’t tell you how many times I have heard women say, "Oh, I used to play sports." What happened? Why do we stop? Yes, the passing of time brings with it great responsibility, but everything we do hinges on our physical health. We have to take care of our bodies. It comes down to this: if you want to play, you have to be proactive. Find a competitive league—or just show up with your gear, and be ready to play. v
photos courtesy Ali Stewart-Ito and Catherine Wood
exclusive interview
Thinking Outside the Service-Provision Box: Jennifer Rose Talks about Ending Violence against Women
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alk story with Jennifer Rose for an hour, and you will want to go do something radical. Perhaps you will feel motivated to make the world a safer and more just place for women and girls, as Rose has been doing for almost twenty years. Maybe you will feel angry that there is still so much work to be done. You may find her supply of positive energy is contagious. Or you may just feel lucky that such a powerful advocate and organizer is here, on our island, and that the reason she must talk so fast is because there are only so many hours in a day and so much work to get done. Rose is the ultimate multitasker, working and volunteering on and off the University of Hawai‘i at Manoa (UHM) campus to end gender-based violence: she serves UHM as Gender Equity Specialist; she is Chair of the Hawai‘i Bar Association’s Diversity, Equality and Access to Law Committee; she sits on the Supreme Court Committee on Equality and Access to the Courts as well as the Commission on Access to Justice/ Overcoming Barriers Committee; and she is on the board of Hawai‘i Women Lawyers. Everything Jennifer Rose does works towards her mission to provide access to justice and prevent violence against women. Despite her unbelievably busy schedule, Rose found an hour to talk with HWJ about her work at UHM, what brought her to this place in her life, and some lessons she’s learned about community organizing, prevention over intervention, and activism. HWJ: Can you tell us more about your position as UHM’s Gender Equity Specialist? For example, why was the position created and how has it changed over time? JR: The position was created 14 years ago. It grew out of students struggling with issues of sexual harassment and not having anywhere to get help. Student affairs at
by Carmen Golay-Swizdor that time advocated for this position, which was supposed to give students dealing with sexual harassment some power and for them to have an advocate to help them through the grievance process. The position still is supposed to focus on “risk reduction” and “prevention” in regards to sexual harassment, so I work under specific policies: the sexual-harassment policy and the sexual-assault policy. When I came in, I recognized a couple of things. There were gaps in what victims needed, like advocacy and case management. Also, there was no precise
...there are women saying to each other, “Well, you know, he just grabbed your ass. Why would you report something like that? It’s not a big deal.” That sort of minimizing is so prevalent. It doesn’t ever go away for the person who was victimized or humiliated. gradation to sexual harassment, and often we are actually dealing with sexual violence and coercion. Those kinds of cases are different: the sexual-harassment cases are less egregious, and these other people need even more help. This office serves [UHM] students, staff, and faculty. [The University is] like a small city, and I had about 88 cases in one year, did 50 trainings—and that’s not counting community trainings. Technically, I don’t take domestic-violence cases, but because I have some expertise, people end up referring [these cases] to me, anyway. But it does cross over because when you think about an “ex,” what you are getting is often unwanted and sexual in nature. It is often sexual harassment. I also have
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been working more on the prevention side of things and just finished up a series of trainings with the football team on [their] rights and responsibilities. Because I’m this legal person, I can tell them what happens in a criminal court setting—I’ve taken real cases and I don’t BS them. They get to see me as a resource and actually want to attend trainings. HWJ: Why did you take this position? What previous life experience brought you to this point? JR: I decided to go to law school when I was 19 because I was sitting on the Chancellor’s Affirmative Action Committee at UCLA, I was a woman of color, and I was invisible. So I said, I have to go to law school and get these credentials—it’s sad that that’s the way the world is, but it’s true. [With a law degree I could] do transformative work and institutional change. Law ended up being the vehicle to do social-change work. [After law school,] I ended up not regretting it because it was true, doors were open to me that would have never been open before, and [these doors] allowed me to have a voice where I never did. I actually wanted to go to film school. I mean, if you want to do social change, that’s a powerful way to do it—art! That might be the one regret that I have. I have now been in this work for so long that I’ve done things on so many levels: microadvocacy, macroadvocacy, legislative, all of it. It almost doesn’t matter what level you are working at. What’s important for the movement is that we place people in the right places, doing what they care about. HWJ: Can you talk about what you see at the University of Hawai‘i in terms of sexual violence? Has there been a lasting impact since the 2006 Declaration of Rape-Free Zone?
JR: I think [the declaration] was a really courageous thing to do, and there have been some lasting impacts for students who were involved at the time—such as [for] those who chose to do this kind of work or chose to further it in some way, students who have collaborated and have been trying to connect other social-justice movements with violence against women. I think to declare UH a Rape-Free Zone was shining a light on something that was really important. I don’t think the number of cases has changed; institutionally, it’s going to take more. I think what we need is a student movement that is real, with energy that is coming from them. We don’t have that yet. What I see is so pervasive, and I knew that from the other world I had been working in. I’d been doing violence against women work for 18 years, but here, for some reason, I didn’t expect for it to be as bad. It manifests itself in different ways, and what is troubling is the normalization of sexual violence. All that time working in domestic violence, we focused on the men as batterers. And here, without blaming the women, there are women saying to each other, “Well, you know, he just grabbed your ass. Why would you report something like that? It’s not a big deal.” That sort of minimizing is so prevalent. It doesn’t ever go away for the person who was victimized or humiliated. We know all the various ways things come out for people who have been victimized and who have survived stalking, domestic violence, or rape. Some of the cases are
not as egregious, but some of them are. It has been really interesting being here and seeing all these intersections [as well as] seeing how compartmentalized the movement has been through funding and other reasons: Here is the Domestic Violence piece, here is the Sexual Assault piece, [etc.]. Not much of it is talking to each other or recognizing how powerful we would be if we all worked together. If we actually care about ending [violence against women], we can’t be spending all this time on making intervention better. HWJ: You've done a lot organizing students at the University of Hawai‘i’s Richardson School of Law. Why do you think that is so important? JR: In the legal community, I do a lot of volunteer work. The reason I do so much work with the law students is because I feel that I have a responsibility to help other young women think about the ways they can do social-change work. I had that privilege when I was going to school at UCLA. I was being taught by some of the best critical-race theorists; I was really lucky. I had some experiences that showed me people were being hurt by a system, but I didn’t have an academic framework to understand it. That led to me going to Legal Aid and working with Head Start moms. [I was] supposed to be doing a “family-law” piece with them [but] all they wanted to talk about was the violence in their lives. They needed a culturally specific place to
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photos by Rita Coury
talk about domestic violence. I want to help others going into law figure out those connections.
HWJ: What are some of your lessons learned? Both from your work with UHM during the past three years and working in many other communities? JR: I spent a lot of the previous ten years on just intervention in domestic violence—the criminal and legal proceedings which happens with a woman and her children after the violence has already happened. And specifically, the latter stage of intervention—the bandaid of family court and restraining orders, which people really need, but all this is at the very tail end. It is frustrating for [advocates to wonder] why are we at the end of this? When you look down, you see these women falling off a cliff. [Draws on paper] We are here at the bottom of the cliff she has just fallen off, with our ambulance. It’s great, it’s shiny, we have better tools, better medicine, and it’s faster. Over the years, we start thinking— why don’t we build a net so she doesn’t fall off? And then, why does she get near the cliff in the first place? Who needs to be involved with figuring that out? These are questions I’ve been asking myself over the past three years, in part because of my work here but also because of my work in communities. That’s the philosophical approach I’ve taken, my lessons learned, and my strategy.
For me, the lesson is that the process is just as important as the result. That’s the most important thing I’ve ever learned. It’s not always the outcomes, it’s [about] how you got there. So in this analogy of a woman falling off a cliff, and we advocates and legal people coming in our ambulance to save her after the fact, we have to ask: If she were living in a village that is not even near this cliff, what is happening there that is making her go toward that cliff? What is the process that happens so she is ending up at the bottom? We need to get there to make sure she and other girls and sisters are not going there.
are we asking the community to do? Can a community come to the table and feel safe enough to create their own agenda, on their own terms?” But do we [advocates/ professionals] even know how to do that? Some women in the communities I have met are [asking]: Help me learn how to run a meeting. How do I talk to them about violence against women? [They’re saying,] I have a lot of power, I’m the pastor’s wife or whoever they are, I’m a gate keeper,
GET INVOLVED Learn about gender-based violence at the National Network to End Domestic Violence (www.nnedv.org). For the international network, see www.unifem.org.
[Rose gives credit to Neil Halifax, MD, for the analogy.] HWJ: Say you were asked, “How will you end violence against women? What are the steps?” What would you answer? JR: I think I would say look at all the different models, the public-health model, the legal model—ok, not the legal model. HWJ: Ha! So says the lawyer ... JR: [Laughs] It’s more of the how you get there. Some states have articulated that you need good leadership, but no one is talking about how to get there—How do you do good capacity building? As an example, [while] working with Chuukese women recently through a friend at her church, the question was not “What are we going to train on?” My questions are always, “What
who show up at events like the Martin Luther King Jr. Parade and talk to them about what they are passionate about, help them find their place. How can we nurture effective social-change agents? In Hawai‘i, all our social-justice movements are so fragmented, and activists are stretched too thin. We are not intentional about how we get together to talk about issues and then to debrief—which goes full circle back to my life’s lessons about how important the process is. v
Donate your old cell phone for a woman who needs safety: www.wirelessfoundation. org/CallToProtect/index.cfm for more information. train me to do run a meeting. We need a plan on how to build the capacity and skills of leaders already in communities. Maybe communities have their own stories on what interventions have worked for them, and we have much to learn.
PACT Hawaii has many domestic-violence programs throughout the state, including shelters and family-visitation centers: see www.pacthawaii.org for more information.
HWJ: What would you say to someone outside the Ending Violence against Women Movement on what they might do?
Legal Aid Hawaii always has a need for volunteers to help children going through the court system after violence: visit www.legalaidhawaii.org for more information.
JR: Find what you care about, do your homework, and then work on it. I would like to talk to all the other young women
Tell a story, make art, or just help out with Girl Fest Hawaii 2010. Find out more at www.girlfesthawaii.org
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Kitchen Medicine Kitchen Medicine: Traditional Remedies for Today, Part 2 by Lorelle Saxena
This column is not intended to replace the advice of a medical doctor. If you are diabetic, have any type of metabolic disorder, or have a history of food allergies, consult a health professional before taking any of the remedies listed here.
I
n the last edition of "Kitchen Medicine," we discussed several easily found household ingredients and their uses in treating common symptoms and minor illnesses. In this edition, we'll explain exactly how to use those ingredients in pleasant-tasting remedies based in the traditional Chinese medical canon. These remedies are so tasty, in fact, that you may find yourself enjoying them even when you're not sick. Because these are all mild, food-based formulas, it's perfectly safe to do so. I've come down with a common cold or flu: A basic remedy requires a 3-inch piece of fresh ginger, a large orange peel, a handful of fresh mint, and a tablespoon of honey. Place the ginger and orange peel in a non-aluminum pot with about four cups of drinking water and bring to a boil. Once boiling, reduce to a simmer for about 15 minutes. Add in the mint and simmer for another 5 minutes, then strain. Mix in the honey and drink the tea while it’s still very hot. Then bundle yourself up warmly—the spicy heat of the tea should make you sweat, which, according to traditional Chinese medical thought, helps expel whatever pathogen is making you sick. Keep yourself covered up to encourage sweating throughout the night. You can customize this tea based on your symptoms: • If you're coughing or having lots of phlegm, especially if it feels stuck in your chest, increase the orange peel. • If you have a sore throat, tender and swollen glands, or a lot of yellow or green mucus, increase the mint. • If you have clear, runny mucus and/or chills, increase the ginger.
• If the worst symptom is fatigue and that run-over-by-a-truck feeling, increase the brown honey. • If you have the blues along with your cold, add some dried Chinese red dates, which you can get at any Asian supermarket. I had a cold last week, and now I have a lingering cough: For a dry, hacking cough, simmer a diced pear in two cups of water for 15 minutes. Strain out the pear, mix in 2 tablespoons of honey, and drink. For a cough that brings up phlegm or is accompanied by a lot of chest congestion, simmer an orange peel or 2 tangerine peels with a thinly sliced 3-inch piece of ginger for 20 minutes. Strain, mix in a tablespoon of honey, and drink. I'm—ahem—not very regular lately: Stir a tablespoon of honey into a cup of very hot water. Drink this first thing in the morning (on an empty stomach ideally) and again before bedtime. Do this every day for at least a week to see results. I have nausea and/or vomiting (of any origin, including morning sickness, food poisoning, motion sickness, or stomach flu): The two critical objectives here are first to get your nausea and vomiting to stop and second to get some calories into your system to keep your blood sugar stable. Even if you haven't thrown up your last meal or two, while feeling nauseated you probably haven't been eating a lot. When you're feeling too sick to eat, sip a simple ginger tea. Peel and thinly slice a 2- to 3-inch piece of ginger and place it in a non-aluminum pot. Cover with 2 cups of water, bring to a boil, and then reduce to a simmer for about 20 minutes. Strain, then mix in a tablespoon of honey. You can make a larger batch and sip it all day to keep nausea at bay; it’s fine to drink hot or cool. This is absolutely a safe remedy for pregnant women. Once you feel like you can eat something, start with a rice congee. Adding ginger will help to manage any remaining nausea. Thinly slice a 3-inch piece of ginger and place it in a large, non-aluminum pot with Hawaii Women’s Journal | 32
photos by Ryan Matsumoto
a cup of short-grain rice. Add 9 cups of water and bring the pot to a boil. Stir, then reduce heat and allow the pot to simmer for 1.5 to 2 hours, stirring frequently, until the rice grains are no longer distinct and the congee is the texture of thick porridge. Eating the congee plain is best to settle the stomach, but if the blandness puts you off, try adding a little soy sauce and a couple drops of sesame oil.
I often suffer from motion sickness: When traveling, bring along a package of candied ginger. Nibbling this spicy-sweet confection before you start moving can often prevent an attack of nausea. Eating it during an attack can sometimes stop or at least significantly diminish your symptoms. My sinuses are congested: Both the ginger tea and the ginger congee described above are effective short-term remedies for sinus congestion and pressure. If you are a chronic sufferer of stuffy sinuses, try adding 2 tablespoons of roasted barley to the ginger-tea recipe and drink daily. You can also make the ginger-congee recipe with barley instead of rice or with a combination of barley and rice. I can't sleep: Simmer 2 heaping tablespoons of barley and a diced pear in 2 cups of water for 15 minutes. Strain through a sieve or cheesecloth, stir in a tablespoon of honey, and drink before bedtime. v
fiction
Oh, Baby by Keith Meatto
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s soon as she awoke on Sunday, Sheila reached for the phone on her nightstand, checked her socialnetworking site, and learned that her friend Michelle was pregnant. At first, she thought it was a hangover hallucination. But there it was, on the screen in capital letters: We’re pregnant, followed by three exclamation points. Sheila thumbed the screen to enlarge the image below the announcement. Moments later, she saw a fleck of white in a swirl of black—an ultrasound of her friend’s womb. She stared at the photo for a while, then scrolled down to see that 42 people said they liked this news, and below that, 24 people had written notes of congratulations. Sheila skimmed the comments, but before she got to the end her stomach rumbled. She dropped the phone, ran to the bathroom, and vomited. After she flushed last night’s sushi down the toilet, Sheila rubbed the stitch in her gut. How was Michelle pregnant? She had been married only six months. Had Phil slipped one past the goalie? In any case, it was official: Sheila was the last of her friends without a child and without any prospects, unless she wanted to get cozy with a turkey baster or shop from a Chinese catalogue. Now Michelle would be the center of attention again—only days, it seemed, after her last photo upload from her honeymoon in Cabo San Lucas. Not that Sheila had anything against babies. She liked them and all their gawkiness and wonder at the world. If only a man could hold her attention for longer than a month, before her ovaries dried like cranberries. For now, hearing her friends discuss the joys and pains of motherhood felt like watching a foreign movie without the subtitles. She brushed her teeth, then went back to the bedroom, picked up her phone, and, below Michelle’s birth announcement, posted a public response. Guess what? she wrote. I’m having a baby, too.
She paused a moment and stared out the window at the snow banks piled like fortresses on the sidewalk. Then she sent her news into the world. Soon, the screen started to fill with responses: first her aunt in Santa Fe, then her cousin in Phoenix, then an antique furniture dealer she had met at the Denver airport bar. She went to make a pot of coffee, and when she returned there was a private message in her inbox. Thunder-stealer, Michelle wrote. So who’s the lucky guy? Sheila paused, annoyed. She typed and erased several sentences before she replied. Nobody you know, she wrote. Talk soon. An hour later, there were comments from 87 people: former colleagues, acquaintances from high school and college, virtual friends she hadn’t seen in years. She had joined the social network with reluctance, pressured by Michelle to join the twenty-first century. But nobody had paid this much attention when she posted links about her favorite bands or her thoughts on the health care debate, the war in Afghanistan, and the earthquake in Haiti. Now, she felt like a celebrity. Around noon, a private message came from Brian, the balding bond salesman she had met online and slept with last week after they ate what he called the best Spanish food in Brooklyn. The tapas had been bland—but spicy compared to the sex. Hey there, he wrote. Saw your news. Anything I should know? She waited 15 minutes to reply, savoring the thought of him in a state of sweaty panic in his Battery Park condo. Then she wrote back to say the baby wasn’t his. THX, he replied. At least now she wouldn’t have to worry about a second date. When the responses slowed, she showered and reheated some curry for lunch. As she washed the dishes, the phone rang. She-bear, her mother said. What’s all this? Sheila steadied her voice. Hey mom, she
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said. I was about to call you. For a while, neither one spoke. Sheila cradled the phone and dried the dishes. I never should have let you quit Catholic school, her mom said at last. Sheila felt her heart climb into her throat. Relax, she said. I can handle this. Apparently not, her mom said, and before Sheila could reply the line went dead. Word spread. For weeks, Sheila savored the newfound attention. At Bao Wow, the Asian-fusion restaurant where she worked as a hostess, the waiters and kitchen staff treated her with deference, and her manager started to give her better shifts. The women in her ceramics class at Mud Drunk Love fussed and clucked and made her a set of glazed dishes. Cards and gifts arrived in the mail from the deep corners of her life. Every day, her social-networking page overflowed with comments and new friend requests. And despite their initial shock, her parents came around to the idea of being grandparents. Her father even offered to pay the hospital bill, since Sheila didn’t have insurance. At dinner one night, she almost blew her cover when she tried to order wine. What are you, French now? Michelle said. Do you want to smoke, too? Sheila laughed and steered the conversation back to Lamaze classes and midwives and nursing consultants. When people asked about the baby’s father, Sheila let her eyes glaze and said: He’s out of the picture. This only elicited further sympathy. A single mother? She was so brave. Eventually, she knew, she’d have to stop the charade and end the pregnancy. Abortion was out of the question—not with her Catholic family and her friends who were prochoice in theory but not practice. So Sheila got out her calendar and set a date for a miscarriage. No one would press for details. There would be sympathy and condolences and then life would return to normal.
The next month, she missed her period. Her menstrual cycle had always been regular, and she hadn’t slept with anyone since Brian. She waited a painstaking day for blood to flow and when none came she went to the pharmacy and bought a digital pregnancy test. In the bathroom, she dropped her pants, sat on the toilet, unwrapped the plastic stick from the package, and removed the cap. Then she held the stick between her legs and peed on the absorbent tip, careful not to soak any other part. She counted to five and pulled the stick from the stream and watched the hourglass icon blink on the screen. The three minutes the instructions promised felt like a week. At last, the hourglass dissolved and the screen filled with a single word in lowercase letters: pregnant. Blood rushed to her head. The test was 99% accurate. She could be that one percent, right? But when she lifted her shirt and touched her stomach, she swore she could feel a pulse. She called in sick to work in the morning and went to her gynecologist at Beth Israel. The waiting room was packed with women and kids who zoomed around and threw toys and cried about being cooped up in the office. By the time the receptionist called her name, Sheila had read three magazines and her nerves were shredded. She went to the bathroom, peed in a cup, and handed the sample to a Filipino nurse, who escorted her to the doctor’s office, took her vitals, then left her alone to wait. Sheila sat on the exam table, her legs
sticking to the hygienic paper. The room was bright and windowless and smelled like paint. As she waited, Sheila breathed through her nose and studied the walls: photographs of windmills in grassy fields next to illustrations of female anatomy that looked like giant squid. At last, the door opened and the doctor, a black woman with dreadlocks and glasses, entered the exam room with a chart in her hands. You were right, she said. You are pregnant. At that, tears pooled in Sheila’s eyes and spilled down her cheeks. She took a tissue from her purse and blew her nose. For a while, neither one spoke. Then the doctor glanced at her cell phone and said she had to check on another patient. Sheila crossed and uncrossed her ankles, tearing the corners of the hygienic paper. After a while, the doctor returned and began her counseling speech, but Sheila was so numb she could barely listen. When she finished, the doctor gave Sheila a stack of pamphlets and told her to come back for a check-up next week. On the subway to Brooklyn, Sheila felt queasy. The train was full, so she asked a man in a seersucker suit if she could have his seat. When he made a face, she narrowed her eyes and said: I’m pregnant. She followed his gaze from her flat stomach to the other passengers whose eyes urged him to be a gentleman. Defeated, he sighed, moved to the center of the car, and glared
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at her over the top of his newspaper. Sheila sat with her hands on her stomach. Across the car, a Chinese woman fed granola to her child in a stroller. Sheila caught her eye for a moment and then looked out the window. As the train inched over the bridge, she stared at the seaport mall, the tugboats and kayaks that bobbed on the river, the bulldozers below the BQE. The city had never seemed so vast or so alien. Who could raise a kid here? And who could do it alone? Her girlfriends had partners and nannies and parents who lived nearby or rented pied-à-terres to care for their grandkids. Who did she have? At home, she inhaled a plate of leftover pork buns from Bao Wow and a tub of ginger ice cream. For a while, she sat at the kitchen island and swiveled in her stool. She wanted to confide in someone, but everyone thought she was already pregnant. She read through the pamphlets and fought back tears at her choices: single motherhood, adoption, abortion. As she read, her face flushed and she opened the window to let the wind cool her face. Then she had an idea. She ran across the room to her computer, logged onto her social-networking site, and typed as fast as she could type. Bad news, everyone, she wrote. I lost the baby. As soon as she posted the message, her hands flew to her stomach. She held them there for a long time and waited for the pulse to disappear. v
Symphony
poetry
by Red Slider Your words between cement& sympathy chunks of private ceremonies ikebana for roses bitter tea in dirty glasses breaking through corrosive bands of salt dissolving hardened parts fusing intestines formaldehyde
I put a lamp inside to keep you warm to shine into the pale horrors of the world the dry skin stretched over frames lit from within hanging in the sun to dry your proteins still puddled on the gurney the guilt still dripping from her fingers her eyes of frightened jellyfish as I lean over & bite your toe off below the purple tag
vapors of tears drum rolls in your belly slow tar beats on sticky practice pads to shut out neighbor's screams the world sky oozing meadows leaking from the side of your mouth dry as violin resin flaking away the lips of your vagina speech less cracked& dry salt bands of colorless brick the mortician standing by; she has been probing the silence between your legs, your fame precedes you to this place your famous words flinging themselves into nights of drum rolls
and taste the sweet salty tears hiding from probings into your useless body cavities & tie it within the sash around my waist to hurry home to practice what you taught me about the timpani of trees while your toes fucked me in the tall leaves I pressed into blades of cement meadowgrass until quitting time and hurried home to find you there with a new work in one hand humming the second violins the other stirring my insides into swirls of Clara Schumann muffins your breath fumes bread-ethanol tongue rolls in imitation of oysters we will later funnel into each otherâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s mouths through leaking fingers stoppered with your slow-toed teasing
seamless as the petals of crushed frangipani your skin stretched over the stove of your body
"later, patches, go stir your kettles. boil my blood into cloud gathers." Hawaii Womenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Journal | 35
watching from the studio as my chain kettles affirm the meanings in second violins sustaining them offering them violas then cellos then tremolos rising falling woman shading the clouds rolling overhead firming tossing boiling into full arpeggios with the muted end of tomorrow night's performance your hums muting into words over felt covers that you insert into my body in eighth notes against my quarters sixteenths against eighths thirty-seconds sixty-fourths tumbling into polished black stones of coda swirling on the end of my favorite felt-core rollerball resolving your form your tears your oysters leaking from my eyes your name under a fluorescent smear of last night's appetizers her thumbprint whorled
your tears your inviolability to hurry home, to feel your rising hum your bread your oyster toe inside of me drinking from the well felt of my belly your rhythms your words your fine sense of control your tender orchestrations your scorings for timpani your felt-covered toe thumping inside of me your calling me "patches."
to hurry home in oyster dust her caught eyes following the trail of sash over blood lines leaking from the corner of my lips, her smile in rubber smock
& slip into seamless bamboo. v
as I sign for your effects, my fingers wet with the pale rose oils of you, smearing stains of you across the rising heat in buds of silk (the back of your hand brushingâ&#x20AC;Ś slipping my business card between her oyster-wet fingers smelling of you shedding the last tears onto the tile floor my smile leaking Hawaii Womenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Journal | 36
WEB EXCLUSIVE: Be sure to read the online debut of a new HWJ feature, The Backstory. The original inspiration for the feature, Red Slider kicks us off with the story behind "Symphony."
Mayumi Shimose Poe photo by Michelle Bassler
With you there was no headlong rush, no flash, no fall, not a flutter or a jitter about it.
the singular path one carves into Central Park upon entering—different each time— the red velvet wallpaper and mulled wine of a particular, favorite, bar.
I’d ride past your vacant motels and your homeless and be thinking of another: sun dappling leaf shadows onto West Village pavement, the grand Columbia gates, and the bodegas and bar lights of the UWS, the way even in alphabet city the grit had shine.
When I lived there, it was five feet in the air on a homemade loft-bed, in a room, seven feet by eight feet, in a small apartment above a mediocre Italian restaurant. When we first moved in, we ate there often, having stayed too late at work, caught the 6 train at rush hour, been jostled and fondled, and trudged the four blocks home to smell marinara thick in the hallway and garlic by the stairs, fresh vegetables carried up the stairs by various Mexican chefs who would squeeze past at the mailboxes and flirt in broken English. Next door lived a quiet gay man who always had a roommate and often a lover. A few times these were even the same person. Up a few floors lived a man and his old, tired, and quite large dog that had been beaten. When I passed them in the hall, the man would stop to talk but the dog would panic and hide. Directly above our apartment (and my head when in the loft bed) lived a girl I’d never met but whom I’d be able to recognize by her shoes. I would hear her dress every morning, boots today and heels tomorrow clickclacking about two feet from my face. It was the best alarm, because if she was up, I should have been too, so I’d roll over, watch my head on the nipple of the light fixture, step onto my bookcase, and the small red footstool, then down to the ground. I’d drink the coffee my roommate had made while I waited for her to get out of the shower, or I’d brew it up if I was the first to wake. After a shower I’d throw on some clothes and some attitude, grab the coffee,
You are slow and steady, flannel and fog. You are ex-GI amputees begging and drivers of BMWs checking the locks on their doors. In you, I saw humanity nowhere: not where it is a travesty that some cannot buy a boat to match their waterfront home, others can’t make rent on their luxury apartment, and still others can’t afford even a sandwich in certain parts of town. Not where the home owners and renters can’t even meet the eyes of the homeless so instead eye the missing limb, the cardboard sign, the dirt on skin. I’ve tried to be romanced by you. I’ve driven your curviest street. I strolled your Japanese tea garden. I’ve ridden your streetcars. I’ve dined your brunch spots, frequented your museums, and shopped your boutiques. But you did not capture my heart all this time because it was not mine to give, being tucked as it was so deep in the memory of a hazelnut mocha from an Israeli coffeeshop in SoHo,
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How could I leave all of this and replace it with you? I didn’t dislike you, I just felt tepidly undecided about you, even with your intricate spiderweb of MUNI lines and the graceful and angry swans at the Palace of Fine Arts. But I had to continue to try because New York has forgotten me. It holds my heart, but I neither belong there nor does it belong anymore to me. I haven’t forgotten its streets or its subways but I wander, lost, just as surely for the places I have known and loved have closed their doors and others have opened; places that stood vacant for years are now so fully established in the neighborhood I question myself that they weren’t always there. I don’t know my way and I don’t belong and my New York years are over, but my heart is still so stubbornly rooted in pieces all over, deep in the Village. It wasn’t until tonight driving the Golden Gate Bridge at midnight the moon full the fog swirling and swallowing entire spans of cable and disembodied towers and the traffic far below gleaming strangely that I melted toward you the slightest bit. It was the first time in two years of residence and a handful of visits that your Golden Gate was actually golden. Perhaps it was something about the lighting, likely something to do with the clouding of the fog, but my heart warmed and this moment and this vision of you belonged to me as surely as I’ve begun to belong to you. v Hawaii Women’s Journal | 38
A Love Letter to San Francisco
and roll out the door … into what felt to me like the whole world. Thompson street was couscous then vacant and then fried chicken, falafel joints, a Cuban restaurant with excellent mojitos and a cigar-roller, and a Thai restaurant that kept changing its name and décor. It was the best damn laundromat with one dollar Coca Colas, a nail salon upstairs and the shady “Man spa” downstairs. When the laudromat/salon closed, we mourned by having our laundry sent out and delivered back. Thompson street was a vintage store with lady gloves and fabulous tutu skirts, a boutique of party dresses and large, flashy, fake baubles, and the 2am stumbling of NYU frat boys and drunken girls trying to find their dorm, having liquidized their wallets all over Bleeker Street. Around this street was every subway line one could possibly want, two hole-in-the-wall bars that often had Brazilian bands playing, a lot of brunch, a good cheeseburger, and the best damn 3am pizza of my life. Around this street was Washington Square to the north, the East Village to … well, the east, SoHo to the south, and both the sun dappled streets and whips, chains, and leather of the West Village. While I called it home, although I was but one in eight million, I belonged to New York and felt it belonged to me. In the way of many New Yorkers I was from everywhere but New York but felt at home there the way I’d never felt before. And there were all of my friends and charming roommates, not to mention the very darling of my heart, my Laura, and writers and artists and amazing women and everyone dreaming passionately some impossible dream.
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