New Wave Magazine (Spring 2019) by New Wave Magazine

NEW WAVE a feminist magazine built on community and creativity

Illustration By: Sam Nunziato

ISSUE THREE

WINTER 2019 MASTHEAD EDITORS-IN-CHIEF: Yusra Javed & Julia Mastroianni MANAGING EDITOR: Sherina Harris HEADS OF COPY/FACT CHECKING: Chelsey Gould & Katie Li ART DIRECTORS: Ruhama Dechassa & Veronika Wiszniewska

FEATURE EDITORS: Vanessa Quon, Emma Buchanan & Kiernan Green CREATIVE EDITORS: Maddy Hillis &Raneem Alozzi PHOTO EDITOR: Aya Baradie

LETTER FROM THE EDITORS Yusra Javed

In 2016 with my daily news intake coming from current affairs newscasts and the front pages of big name newspapers, I didnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t pick up magazines. Those, in my mind, were frivolous and contained fluff pieces that would never bother to associate with. Little did I know, that as a naive first-year journalism student with no published work, I would follow my friends into a feminist magazine meeting inside the Oakham House. Inside that room, I encountered smart, unapologetic women who shamelessly wanted to publish diverse and daring work. And within an hour, my perspective on magazines would completely change and I would gain a new sense of respect for what a feminist publication could look like. We would later transform into New Wave Magazine â&#x20AC;&#x201D; one of the hardest decision I had to make as an undergraduate student. But as I flipped through the bold and newsworthy pages of our first edition that would have otherwise never been published, I knew we had created something that would last a lifetime. Pride is the first thing that comes to my mind when I think of New Wave. Followed by disbelief that we would one day be able to pull off three printed magazines and an online platform. I am forever indebted to my team for all their hard work and look forward to seeing the New Wave of stories this platform will continue to tell.

Julia Mastroianni

I fell in love with magazine journalism pretty much immediately after I learned about it. In first year, writing for a magazine seemed like a distant dream, let alone running one. When I got the opportunity to do both for this magazine, it felt surreal.

Not only has New Wave been the ideal place for me to learn about what it takes to run a magazine, but by its very nature it encourages the kind of content I’d always hoped to play a role in creating. We are a feminist magazine, yes, but if I’ve learned anything from my time with this magazine, it’s that feminist issues extend far beyond the scope of what the word has traditionally meant. Our writers create work about subjects they are passionate about and issues that are personal to them. I believe now, more than ever before, that it’s a strength rather than a weakness to draw on the personal to explain all those truths that we’ve been told are objective facts. We don’t know what will happen to New Wave next year or how the provincial government’s funding decisions may impact our ability to publish print issues. But I know that what we stand for, and what our team has stuck with us for, won’t be extinguished by budget cuts. However New Wave continues on, it will be with the same mission and the same drive to tell stories that matter.

Sherina Harris

I’ll never forget running across the street, holding a brown paper bag with the first issue of New Wave inside of it. Yusra and I joked that we were about to cry, but I actually felt like I was. There was the product of months of hard work from a dedicated team, wrapped up in a lavender cover. I felt the same way looking at our second issue, and I imagine I’ll feel the same way holding our third. But our third issue has a special significance, in a sad way: we don’t know if it will be our last issue. For years, this magazine has been an outlet for young people to write and create. That’s why I felt so emotional holding our first print issue as New Wave — because I knew that contained within those pages were the innermost fears, hopes and thoughts of our contributors. It takes courage to put words on a page and to say, “This is what I believe. This is who I am.” But this is who we, as the community of readers, writers and creators, are. We are a group of people who, despite funding cuts and deeply political decisions, will not stop. The voices of our contributors will continue to speak their truths. And whether our next issue is printed or not, that is something of which I will always be proud.

CONTENTS My Hair

Mia Yaguchi-Chow

The Shrinking Woman

Daughter

Five and Pending

Ode to Winona Ryder

Deconstructing Gender Binaries

The New Definition of School

Raised on Fire

The Grandmothers

Hidden Homelessness at Ryerson

My Hair by Jada Muirhead

My hair silky, black and soo just like my moms. My hair curly when it’s wet. My hair black like the night sky. My hair keeps my head warm like a hot cup of cocoa. My hair tickling my face when I sleep. My hair long and straight. My hair the most important part of me.

“My name is Jada Muirhead. I am 10 years old, and live in Connecticut, U.S.A. I was given a writing assignment in class and my teacher told us we could write about anything so I took the opportunity to write about my hair, that I love so much…”

MIA YAGUCHI-CHOW By: Emma Buchanan

There is vibrancy in the clutter of Mia Yaguchi-Chow’s home. Just when you think you’ve seen everything, there’s another piece of eclectic art, another shelf of records, another old movie poster — or a spare giant pencil leaning precariously against the wall in the corner of the living room. Yaguchi-Chow says this is the only house she remembers.

“I’ve been living in the same house pretty much my whole life, so it’s kind of cool as I’m growing up to experience how the neighborhood changes, the house changes, [and] how me in the house changes.”

Yaguchi-Chow in her home living room. Her dad’s music equipment and record system are behind her. (Oskar McCarson)

aguchi-Chow is a second-year fashion communications student, a painter and photographer. She’s creative director and photographer for Ryerson’s design magazine, RADmag and she’s run two pop-up shops over the past year, selling t-shirts that she designed with painstaking detail and made on silk screen prints through her instagram and online brand, bitchfits. She says then name was originally taken from a scene in her favourite movie, White Chicks, but over the years it’s taken on multiple meanings, with her interest in fashion linking the word to “outfits.” “I don’t know, I feel like I’ve always been kind of a bitch.” Yaguchi-Chow says she is more of a rational, practical thinker than an emotional one.

“I like to share my work also to get any outside perspectives from friends and family, or anyone that I don’t know, and to see how they interact with things.” There is some of her work on the walls throughout the house, as well as her older sister’s paintings and many art pieces from her dad’s collection. The house is over 100 years old and the entrance is narrow. Yaguchi-Chow is generous with her descriptions of her home and her work, like she’s overflowing with the same creative spirit that fills the house.

“You know, you have practical thinkers, who are less emotional, and then emotional thinkers who may be less practical, and then everyone in between. My practical thinking may come across as bitchy….[but] who I am is subjective to everybody.”

“Constantly, things are rolling through my head, whether I’m out on the street doing things...in class, or at home. It’s something that is both a burden and a blessing, because I get some really good ideas from it, but… the switch that controls the thinking is always on...if I wanted it off, it won’t go off.”

Yaguchi-Chow says her godfather, friends and family got her excited to show her work when she was a kid, and that their enthusiasm has translated to things like her pop-ups and paintings.

Yaguchi-Chow lives here with her mom, dad and a 6-year-old husky named Mochi. She says her home and her family and have both subconsciously and consciously affected her art.

Yaguchi-Chow says she loves how her parents created the vibrancy of her house — everything from the orange dining room, the pink, purple and teal bedrooms and the blue hallways. The shirts from her first pop-up collection “coincidentally matched the house.” Large, striking, cartoon-like eyes are a consistent motif in Yaguchi-Chow’s work, and were the theme of her second collection of shirts. A painting of a singular eye with thick lashes and a star for a pupil hangs over her living room. The signature she’s been using for about a year is a stylized character that is written the same in Japanese and Chinese — which is Mia’s background. It’s also followed by a star to represent the A in her name. The eyes are representative of the concept of multiple perspectives for Yaguchi-Chow. “I did this sketch once, sometime last year. It was a girl’s face...I did multiple [eyes] on the top, multiple on the bottom.” “Just by chance I drew eighteen [eyes] total. So I’m like, you could have all these eyes, but still not be able to see everything in front of you, right?”

Yaguchi-Chow and her dog Mochi. Her mom named him after the Japanese food served with soy sauce on top, because of Mochi’s white fur and brown spot on top of her head. (Oskar McCarson)

Yaguchi-Chow in her garage, between a Chinese symbol and a Japanese flag. (Oskar McCarson)

For Yaguchi-Chow, this means that every person has the capacity to see a singular thing multiple ways — a theme echoed in her conversations about her mother. “How I think is reflective of how she thinks,” Yaguchi-Chow says. Yaguchi-Chow says she talks about everything with her mother, and that her mother instilled a sense of balance in her. Because of that, “I’m able to consider perspectives outside of mine,” she says. “My mom isn’t much of a stuff person, so her things don’t fill houses much. But I think she’s pretty artistic...she has a lot of creativity, but she works full time, so she doesn’t really have time to pursue any of it.” Yaguchi-Chow says her dad is the opposite.

“My dad grew up poor in Hong Kong...so he didn’t have much. I think now that he’s...an adult, and he has the opportunities and the ability to live more freely, our house is full of stuff. He loves stuff.”

he adds those things to the house it kind of impacts me too, how I experience the house,” she says.

Their house sits on a piece of land surrounded by the University of Toronto campus.

Yaguchi-Chow’s parents got it at a calligraphy booth at a Chinese fundraising event about a year ago where you could commission a word or phrase on a banner.

Their family moved to Toronto when Yaguchi-Chow was one. At the time, her parents owned a diner down the street called Room 338. “I wish I could have lived it,” Yaguchi-Chow says. Eventually the university forced the diner off the land. The walls of the Yaguchi-Chow home are filled with old 50s movie posters from the diner, mainly of her dad’s inspiration. “His taste is really good... I feel like

A large calligraphy banner sits high on the orange wall of their dining room.

“[My dad] asked to get ‘Ho loves Mariko’...because Ho is my dad’s name and Mariko is my mom’s name,” Yaguchi-Chow says. The calligrapher “got a good kick out of that, because people normally come for ‘beauty’, or whatever, and then this guy comes along and gets ‘Ho loves Mariko.’” In a photo the two took afterwards, Yaguchi-Chow says her dad and the calligrapher were smiling ear to ear.

The Shrinking Woman By: Emma Sandri

The heat was sweltering. It was June and the air conditioning didn’t extend into the grade sevens and eights’ hallways. My classmates clamoured to get their yearbooks signed, to have their last conversations and pick-up games before school was out. I was alone in our small corner classroom, savouring my last moments of middle school. “I’ve always considered asking you out,” my classmate Jonathan* said, interrupting my thoughts. “You’re really smart and pretty, but …” He paused. Over our last eight years in school together, I had never gone out of my way to talk to Jonathan. In fact, I did my best to avoid his company altogether. Yet, his admission would stick with me until this day.

I made myself dumber and smaller -I chipped away at myself to fit into the mold of perfect femininity. It’s a reality many young women face: the battle between being desirable or ambitious. That’s the feeling Liza* carried with her throughout her first year of university. “OK, well he just wants me to shut up,” Liza said of her ex. “Well he’s an ex for a reason,” Liza says. “He would put me down for wanting to go to school. Meaning, ‘Oh, I don’t understand why you should be putting in that much time and effort when in the end you’re just going to be caring for your husband anyways.’” Liza has a bachelor of life sciences from University of

“You’re just too smart,” he said. I felt his eyes on my face and I blushed. I had always excelled in school. I was the first to throw my hand in the air, the first to shout out answers, the first to finish tests.

My intelligence had been a badge of honour, and I wore it with pride. I had never once felt ashamed —until then.

That hot, icky feeling stayed with me as I started high school. It crawled under my skin every time a teacher called on me, when a test was dropped onto my desk, when I was partnered up with a boy.

about class and about the things that she had learned, hiding that part of her herself when she was with him. Liza left Steven because she said he made her feel like she shouldn’t enjoy things that he didn’t - namely, her program. Yet, it wasn’t just with Steven. There have been “multiple times” when Liza has had to make herself come off as less intelligent for both partners and friends.

Toronto. Today, she’s in a fast-track program for public health at Ryerson as she prepares for medical school. In her first year of university, she dated Steven, a sociology major she met in high school. During their relationship, Liza’s main academic interest was neuropsychology and neurobiology. “If I was talking to his friends or him, I [couldn’t] even talk about what I [was] learning in class because they passed it off as too boring. So, I always had to keep everything to myself.” Liza and Steven’s relationship lasted for just over a year. During that time, she says she felt pressure from him and his friends to make herself less intelligent.

So she made herself smaller.

“If I’m doing super well in a course, I can’t go out and say it. I feel like I’m spraining their ego. Like if I got an 90 and they got a 70 or something like that, they usually get really upset over it and say I’m showing off or something like that. So I just keep everything to myself.” Research shows that Liza and I are not alone. A 2017 study published in the American Economic Review shows that single female students minimized their ambitions for the sake of their marriage prospects. The female MBA students reported less desire to travel and work longer hours when they thought their classmates could see their survey answers. They also asked for lower salaries.

They made themselves smaller.

“For him I felt like it was more of a threat.”

Women make up slightly more than half of the population in Canada, yet of the country’s top 100 listed companies, only 8.5 per cent of the highest-paid positions were held by women in 2015.

Consciously, Liza says she changed her behaviour to make things easier on her partner. She stopped talking

Today, only a record 27 per cent of the seats in the House of Commons are held by women.

“What we tend to see with young women who are high school or university age is that they will have lower levels of political ambitions compared to young men,” says Ryerson politics professor Tracey Raney. “Young women are less likely to be encouraged into thinking about running for office - by their mom, by their dad, by their other relatives, by their peers, by their religious organizations - compared to men.” A study conducted in 2014 showed that college women’s political ambition were significantly less than their male counterparts. The study suggests that college campuses in the United States are still “rife” with the traditional gender roles which can negatively impact the career choices women make.

“People are talking about the way [a female politician] wore her hair, or that the heels she wore didn’t match her bag, or her marital status or her status of being a mom...I think that sends a message to young women,” says Raney.

It tells them that they aren’t good enough, that they have to sacrifice their position as a mother, as a wife or a friend in order to be successful.

As women are continually told to be smaller and less threatening - whether it’s in their relationships or through a TV show - women continue to resist. They call out sexual harassment in the #MeToo movement and they make history in record elections. It is in their resistance I find comfort for the next girl - the next me - who is told to shrink. I hope she keeps putting up her hand first. *Names have been changed to protect individuals’ identities

“Pop culture is a reflection of where we are at in society. So you know, it will give us a sense of the level of gender equality in a particular society,” she continued. Raney’s own research, published in 2015, delved into the 2004-2009 revisit of Battlestar Galactica. According to the professor, an undertone of the show was that it was problematic to be a woman and in power. “What we saw with these female characters was there was always this undertone of them being unhappy,” says Raney. “[That] you can’t be a whole and complete human being if you are a woman and assume power in society…that it is problematic to be a woman in [a] position of power.”

In my experience, society makes women smaller.

Daughter

By: Jordan Currie

And so it seems that violation only brings out her titles case after case after case daughter mother sister wife She could have been yours diligent bones she’s grown out lived in skin now hung out on a washing line to dry blood soaked and stained gradual mind she owns bottling racing thoughts and still, still a barcode, still a label making machine always defined by conjoint marionette strings tied to grubby fingers (dance, dance, make her dance) Violation has made her seen and unseen visible only under correct lighting Think of the new titles they could apply to an unseen visible girl! slut whore bitch asking-for-it-shouldn’t-have-worn-that-should’ve-seen-it-coming a ghostly temptress Scroll through the facebook graphics copied-and-pasted tweets same old press-and-hold-to-repeat of “she was somebody’s daughter mother sister wife” (though not her own) Abuse after abuse after abuse and she receives abuse after violation only brings out the headlines

But she lives in her she has built her home constructed of bone and skin and mind and she is her own You are your own You have lived, are living through the living nightmares and you are your own.

BY: MADDY HILLIS

Part 1: Mothballs (January) The therapist’s office smelled like mothballs and cheap lavender candles. I sat on the worn leather sofa picking at a brown thread that zigzagged out from the armrest. The room was irritatingly “warm” with all the earthy tones that psychologists have concluded radiate a welcoming feel for a patient. That’s me by the way — the patient. I know; a ridiculous thing to call a girl who kept her composure so elegantly upon hearing the news, considering its delivery. My existence in this room is as useless as pre-peeled bananas in plastic wrappers. My mother, on the other hand, seemed to think that a small upset I had where I smashed a set of China against the wall of my apartment was some dire cause for concern. Can’t a girl smash some floral ceramic now and again without being considered “unhinged”? Aria, the shrink, floats in and sits across from me. She says “hello” with a voice that lulls like the silence of a first snowfall. Again, irritatingly “warm.” The next part is trivial and, from my memory, similar to the agony of getting a straight answer from a car salesman (that salesman being me). At the end of the session she handed me a worksheet to rate my family life, personal life, work life and overall sense of self, on a scale from

1-10. In green magic marker: -Family: 8 -Friends: 10 -Work: 10 -Overall: 9.5 She looked at me with eyes that had seen this before — cases like mine, patients like me — as if the transparency of my denial was her routine morning cappuccino. “Why are you here if everything is so perfect?” she crooned. I stayed fixed on my brown armrest thread. “Dunno. Seems pretty useless to me. Why don’t you ask my mother?” After 6 months of “treatment”, I would’ve told her the truth if asked again. I would’ve told her about the first Christmas.

Part 2: Lydia’s Facebook Message (November) It seems sickly millennial to find out your father died through a Facebook message. A Facebook message that contained an exclamation point nonetheless, as if saying, “Happy Birthday!” or “I ran into your mother today and she told me you got a job, congratulations!” It was November, quite cold and quite grey. What I can remember of that day is its humdrum mediocrity. The painful ordinariness of lives that continue

even when yours has paused: the Chinese takeaway spot with fogged windows dripping from condensation. The boy in the tight pants who walks at unusually high speeds. The street lamps that glow orange on Puget Street. I picked up chicken chow mein on my way home from school because, seriously, what can an oily bowl of noodles not solve? I opened my fortune cookie, expecting something profound. Instead, I got this: Now would be a good time to take up a new sport. In. Bold. Red. Font. I grabbed a set of China (I’m still unsure as to why I had China in the first place), and threw the parts, one by one, against the stucco wall of my living room. At this same moment my computer came to life, shining the ill-conceived Facebook message about my father’s sudden departure in my face like a cop with a flashlight in the eyes of a west-side woman about to get a DUI. I screamed something along the lines of “I’m going to murder that fucking landlady, what’s her name?” I then checked Facebook. “Fucking LYDIA and then email her daughter about it with a fucking exclamation point!!!” whilst holding a makeshift shiv from a broken teacup. My roommate got in from her restaurant job at about this time. She then called my mother. Who then called the shrink.

Part 3: Oranges (November) I had a dream that night. It was half-time at my Silver A, U-12 Girl’s soccer match. It was sunny and I was shoveling down oranges in that entirely wasteful way I used to do — sucking out all the juice and tossing the remaining dehydrated endocarp. My dad was the coach. He pulled out his clipboard with its various x’s and o’s, and went on about the defense staying strong and watching out for number 12. I always liked that he took us so seriously. At a very young age I cared an awful amount about being taken seriously. His game plan speech cut short and I looked up from

my orange-eating frenzy to see

red in the velvet stockings not

him on his knees, grabbing at his

as rich. The juice of the turkey is

chest. His face was drenched in

non-existent because I thought

panic, an image a daughter should

it was wise to make it myself.

never have to see of her father.

Turkey-making was his area of

I dropped to the turf, grabbing

expertise for the past 21 years and

the Blackberry out of his jean

as his eldest daughter I decided to

pocket. The tingle and heat that

take on the responsibility, despite

plays footsie with fear itched at

every family member encouraging

my palms as I dialed 911. Before I

me otherwise. The recipe was

could press the green call button,

called “easy turkey crown”—

the acid of the oranges began

which, let me tell you, in retro-

to sear the skin off my hands. It

spect was entirely misleading.

bubbled up and along my arms,

Ingredients:

releasing a charcoal-like smell

-50 g butter, softened

that filled my lungs. I screamed

-2 kg turkey crown on the

for help but when I looked

bone

around, the field was empty. The

-Pinch of ground cloves

game was over. It was quite cold

-4 tbsp honey

and quite grey.

-1 tbsp Dijon mustard

I woke up, all sticky-sweaty and

-1 tbsp red wine vinegar

stressed.

I smothered the pimpled pink

I woke up suffocated in what ifs

flesh in butter and sprinkled it

and if onlys.

with spices. I slid the meat into the oven and sat in front of it,

Part 4: The first Christmas (December)

continuously checking its progress with that turkey temperature gadget he always used (I still don’t know what those numbers mean).

Here’s what I think; when you

As I burned my wrist painting on

lose someone you love, the world

the honey-mustard glaze I could

sucks out a bit of its colour. It

see his broad, certain strokes.

is Christmas Day and the green

As I hacked at the turkey with a

of the pine is not as deep. The

boning knife I could see his easy,

generous slices. As I passed around

overly sweet lemonade (hence

cold, sliced oranges will always

the casserole dish of moistureless

the wasps) and he told me about

be my 11-year old soccer games.

meat I felt the striking blow of the

the cabins in Muskoka. He would

Trampolines are water hoses and

presence of absence around the

drive up on the May long weekend

choreographed routines to (this

dining table of sympathetic eyes.

with “a couple buddies” and “many

My family mmm’d and aah’d at

beers.” They did young, dumb boy

the chewy meat that they doused

things that all young dumb boys

in thick gravy to swallow. It was

should do and all old wise men

polite of them to pretend.

should regret. He told me about

pains me to admit) Katy Perry. The name Lydia is Voldemort and now Voldemort will subsequently be broken China. Sports day is bee stings and the color blue. Humidity and curt/heart-wrenching goodbyes are my grandpa’s house in Toronto. Dublin is food poisoning. And The Tragically Hip is, and will always be, Dad.

I stood alone in the kitchen

one of his favorite bands giving

after dinner, accompanied by

an open-air concert one night —

Mariah Carey’s dreadful rendition

fireflies and all — then played me a

of All I Want for Christmas. Tears

song of theirs he thought I’d like. It

fell from my eyes and into the dry,

was Bobcaygeon by The Tragically

butchered turkey carcass. I couldn’t

Hip. We must’ve laid on that porch

feel them though — the tears. I

for an hour with the song on loop.

guess it is true that you can’t feel

It is one of my favorite memories.

rain when you’re underwater. Addendum (May): Six months in. I keep finding slivers of China

It is in this promise of always that I am trying to learn how to survive.

This gets me thinking about the psychology of associations. How

...Part 6: Pending

on my floor from my Lydia outburst. They seem to suggest that it is okay to be someone who is slow to move on.

Part 5: Highway 99 (August) Dusk is inherently nostalgic. I get to thinking of my father on the porch in August. We were lying on reclining chairs that I periodically had to jump out of when a wasp would fly too close. We drank cold,

Deconstructing

Gender Binaries The Power of Femininity Photos and Words By: Amber Dror

Growing up, we learn about two gender constructs: male and female. While sex is a biological concept, gender roles are something that was created by us. They consist of groups of adjectives that we believe correspond to different sexes. While the concept of gender can help us self-identify, it must be understood that gender isn’t binary, it is an extensive range of identities. But if gender is a human-designed construct, how come some of us fit the constructs and some of us don’t? Unfortunately, it seems as if women are required to exhibit socially constructed femininity in order to be perceived as feminine.

But if gender is a humandesigned construct, how come some of us fit the constructs and some of us don’t?

This photo series explores the concept of femininity and its associated strength and how to define what it means to be feminine. The concept of femininity is empowering. From the suffragettes to the #MeToo and #TimesUp movements, femininity has always represented an aspiration to question norms and fight for human rights. Femininity doesn’t mean having to choose nurturance over taking charge and empathy instead of self-sufficiency. Femininity is about the opportunity to decide who you want to be. Femininity is power. This photo series explores the concept of femininity and its associated strength and how to define what it means to be feminine.

By: Jordan Currie

Funny how monsters can keep praying on the bodies of the young and beautiful in exchange for spotlights (or, in exchange for nothing, nothing but bloody lips and vomit and runny mascara) but a shoplifting incident eighteen years ago while depressed and high and panic and a broken elbow can cut the stream a blemish which turns into a scar until the typewriters shout, “Comeback! Comeback! Comeback for the disgraced!” as though we weren’t the ones disgracing. Winona, princess of darkness and eye roll, ruler of lonesome goth girls in the cafeteria corner human woman whose pain was put on a display like pastries in a window sill branded crazy doe eyed and lashing out proceed with caution You did not need to “come back” you did not need relevance to breathe you did not need to tightrope walk on the edge of a pedestal while poked and prodded with pen caps and blinded by flash You were here all along.

New

The Definition Of School By: Heather Taylor-Singh Photo by: Brent Smyth

Almost a decade ago, Chantel Chapman refused to do the final exam for an economics class she was taking. Her decision was undoubtedly a shock to her professors, but she was firm in her choice . “I was only [there] to learn and hear the lectures,” says Chapman. She says she didn’t need the validation from her professors. Instead, she just wanted to learn more about a topic she was already interested in. Now she’s the co-founder of School by Kastor and Pollux, an online platform started by Chapman and her business partner, Dani Roche. The pair met four years ago, when Chapman was a financial consultant for a client Roche was working with. She was impressed by Roche’s innovative ideas and the two kept in touch. School’s platform provides creatives with the opportunity to learn about different aspects of the creative sector that aren’t taught in post-secondary. School courses are taught by creators. Topics range from how to be mindful with money to tips on working for free.

she planned on pursuing. She also acknowledges that post-secondary isn’t always talked about, and having access to the right tools isn’t always easy. Claire McCulloch is a third-year creative industries student at Ryerson University.

“I was kind of thinking about my own personal relationship with post-secondary education and my own career path and then I was thinking about Dani’s career path,” says Chapman. Chapman says she grew up mainly in a single mother household and says her family struggled financially, so post-secondary wasn’t something

Going into a creative career can be challenging. But what if you aren’t taught the skills to sustain a successful career in that field? Chapman says even though she wasn’t sure of her future, she was always a bit of hustler and wanted to make the most of her experiences. Between working different jobs after high school, at 20, Chapman decided to go to university and take a licensing program to become a mortgage

broker, which led her to becoming a financial consultant. This is where she met Roche and found out about Kastor & Pollux, a creative agency run by Roche. Roche went to York University to study design. Chapman says Roche took some of the skills she learned in post-secondary, but also sought out education from different places.

fulfilling? In a study published by Ontario Universities in 2018, 72.3 per cent of graduates employed fulltime considered their work either “closely” or “somewhat” related to their program of study. Two years after graduation, the rate increased to 77.2 per cent.

“All of that combined is where she’s at today,” she says. Chapman says Roche connected with idea of becoming successful on your own and the pair wanted to create a platform featuring other creative people who may not have attended post-secondary, and didn’t necessarily have a straight career path to follow. Along with courses, School offers a one-for-one program. When a course is purchased, that same course is given to a marginalized community for two months. Accessibility is one of the platform’s main pillars, and creating an online platform was the best way to do so. “Instead of saying it’s one person to one person, it’s like one class, one community,” says Chapman. Chapman and Roche launched the School courses in October 2018 with the intention to help people interested in creative careers gain skills. The idea for School was something she had been thinking about for a while before bringing it up to Roche, who had a different post-secondary path than Chapman. The path to your career can start with your major, so how do you choose between practical and

Darian Ghaznavi is a third-year advertising student at OCAD University.

Sometimes, it doesn’t matter what you study, but how you implement your skills. “Everything is about our portfolio,” says Darian Ghaznavi, a third-year advertising student at OCAD University. One of the reasons Ghaznavi enjoys his program because of the amount of feedback he receives on his work in class. Since the advertising program at OCAD is fairly small, he says the students rely heavily on criticism and feedback, and it’s detrimental if they don’t receive it. School aims to give their students a platform to continue learning how to communicate with others in a creative position.

Ghaznavi says that in addition to school projects, “self-initiated” projects are what makes students stand out. Advertising students network in similar places and if they have the same bodies of work it won’t be productive. Being able to use these skills past the classroom is something Ghaznavi does with his friends when they critique each other’s work. “As creatives with your peers, you should bring them up rather than tear them down,” he says. Ghaznavi hopes to get a job in the advertising sector, and although he values his education, he is more interested than gaining skills than high grades. “With any of the arts programs, you go in to garner skills and also build up a body work,” explains Ghaznavi. “That’s the main purpose.”

“With any of the arts programs, you go in to garner skills and also build up a body work,That’s the main purpose,” explains Darian Students seem to be focused on contributing to projects that interest them, regardless of if they’re being taught the skills in their chosen program. Similar to School’s online message of self-made creators who became successful outside of the traditional education system. Claire McCulloch is a third-year creative industries student with a focus in printing and publishing. McCulloch recently started a fe-

male-based online publication called Common Mag with a fellow creative industries student and friend, Danielle Howson. Along with being the design lead of Common Mag, McCulloch is the assistant publisher of RAD Mag.

maintained this hustle herself and will continue into the future. “My whole resume is stuff that I’ve gone out and done by myself and applied to by myself,” she says.

She says the idea for Common Mag came about because the pair wanted to take control and have their own team. So they did.

“Your path is the right path, whatever that is. It’s like discovering what works for you and finding your own way,” says Chapman.

Both McCulloch and Howson are in creative industries with a stream in graphic communications management, but McCulloch says their motivation for the platform didn’t come from school. “When I’m planning Common Mag, I’m not thinking about the four P’s of marketing,” jokes McCulloch.

“Your path is the right path, whatever that is. It’s like discovering what works for you and finding your own way.”

Although Chapman didn’t pass her economics class and doesn’t have much formal post-secondary education, she has built a career path by herself, and hopes to create lasting experiences for others through School. Chapman hopes the platform can help young people who grew up like her, feeling lost and unsure of their future.

Select courses are still available to enroll in at schoolbykp.com.

Chapman (left) and Roche (right) started school in October 2017, and will continue to produce courses over the next few months.

McCulloch says creative industries is “very broad,” but she takes courses in different programs, which she finds beneficial. However she isn’t too fond of the core classes, because she says she finds them a bit repetitive, being focused on business and entrepreneurship. She wanted to find something that combined business and art, and creative industries was “the only thing like it.” McCulloch says most of her opportunities started in school, but she

RAISED ON FIRE By: Zanele Chisholm

My head keeps spinning until I feel the blood-moon howling at me. Was it my mother? Begging me to come… Home. Could it exist in two dimensions? My own dimension seems to slip onto the tongues of scarred men, locked-jaws cracking the foundation and broken windows, cutting my skin, piercing their throats. You must break them in, grandmother Eve says. People have to be taught to destroy the things they love. My lover is a homebody. Fucked until extinguishment, blood drawn from the fullest lips putting out the flame. The lover lives in the dark. Hold on to me, I beg. I can’t stand to love in translucency with a lover’s touch disembodied. Her kiss, it’s spiritual. But my God is lost. And that is the most terrifying thing about love — the way it parks itself into your soul, spreads its limbs like the branches of a fig tree, filling the land of dirt with its bark and its secrets. Whispering them to you as you stare into passing mirrors until it is not only yourself you see but the face of the woman you love. Our love is performative. It takes the shape of women most desired by her. We become a part of endless bodies, floating from frame to frame performing acts of docility each night. Yielding ourselves to the half-crescent moon. Eve was the first woman to teach me how to become a craving, how to cement your voice into skin

,how to make a lover’s dreams your own. Their world, your world. Her bones laid me down, placed the floor onto my stomach and told my lover, “walk.” Concave ribs carved to make a love-ditch out of you. We begin as the sun sets. Our backs curled around the half moon’s spine, the weight of our ascendance toward the space in between born by women who came before. Eve says I must let go of all that commits me to the present if I wish to see where time rests and the grieved lay. This is not my first experience crossing into the ditch of stillness. Every woman feels the tug, the pleading of the soil, of the roots and seeds, to leave this life behind for the greatest sacrifices only asked of a woman. But we don’t all go. Those of us who stay, roam at night. During sex, after he comes and leaves her to create the child, she wanders. Those of us who leave only come back when our lovers are dead and the world has been rebounded around the fists of another great man claiming to know what it is to have the eyes of God watching you. I used to imagine him as a spider, with a thousand orbs cratered into the deepest layers of his flesh, but I know now that God is just as blind, just as small and quiet as the great men wailing in the wallows of stillness. Just as dead and lost as the women they leave to be killed in the grips of power. Eve was shivering. Nights like these are the hardest for her. Grandfather used to be her stabilizer, her constant. As if he had raised her to

belong to him, he was her father in so many ways. His eyes, how thorough they were, the way they dug relentlessly, shamelessly until she was undressed of borders, open land to reign free. They grazed on her, fed on her like wilted meat to a bull. She admired them, him, he had always been so careful, to fool her. His wicked tongue spinning the greatest tale of love she had ever known. Her father without a doubt. Her husband, too. When she begins to unwind the storyteller’s rhythms she finds the holes, the lies, the quiet, the anger. She fills them with earth from her garden, grows a different narrative. Ones where the children never heard the screams, where destruction did not paint his face, ones where the love was as true and as felt as his touch. She begged God to give their daughter her eyes. But she learned long before I did, all the things that God could not do. As she lay bones to the gravel, I hear them shake. She tries desperately to make herself a part of his home. Burying herself in the trenches of his yard till she hit the graves of past lovers—they are old friends. They hold her there, cry for her as she continues to dig deep as his eyes to find some truth hidden beneath all of his lies. The graves understand. But her bones and the dirt are pieces of her and of the world that he never reached. They did not know him as her mind once had. This is where the rage is held. “Let go,” I tell Eve. Let go of every place that he touched, get him out, Eve, tear him out.

Asia’s Grandmothers:

The Myth of the

TRIGGER WARNING: This articles details rape and sexual assault.

Comfort Women

I first learned about “comfort women” in

By:

Heidi Lee

my elementary school history class. In my textbook, they were only mentioned in one or two paragraphs. This incomplete narrative made them vague, tragic figures instead of real people in my mind.

According to the UN Security Council, sexual violence is used as a tactic to implant fear and to humiliate and dominate a community or an ethnic group. During the Second World War, the Japanese Imperial Army set up “comfort stations” all across Asia*. Hundreds of thousands of Asian women were kidnapped and raped in these “stations,” according to Pei-pei Qiu, co-author of Chinese Comfort Women: Testimonies from Imperial Japan’s Sex Slaves. Qiu says that if these women tried to escape they would be tortured or even decapitated by the Japanese army. The Japanese called these women “ianfu”; “ian” meaning comfort and “fu” meaning women. “Comfort women,” in other words. Young girls and women who were forced into sexual slavery for members of the Japanese Imperial Army prior to and during the Second World War were labelled with this term. These women were often slut-shamed by the locals after the war, which led to headaches, nightmares, depression and some even died by suicide, Qiu says. One of the survivors of the “comfort stations,” Hao Yue-lian, was raped by Japanese soldiers. After she was rescued by her parents, she was captured and put into the “comfort” facilities again by militants, as her hometown was occupied by the Japanese army. Qiu, who knew Hao from doing her research, says Hao experienced nightmares and felt the necessity to carry a knife around with her to protect herself.

Former “comfort women” from the Philippines

Photos By

Ahn Se-hong

According to Qiu, the term “comfort women” is inappropriate because it covers up the sexual abuse and exploitation local women experienced in the “comfort stations” built by the Japanese Imperial Army. “This term reveals the mentality of a lot of Japanese soldiers thinking that they are entitled to sexual services from women,” Qiu says. “They were being comforted while local women were raped multiple times.” While she says that this problematic term has become widely recognized in historical literatures, researches and international debates, her solution is to use quotation marks when referring to this group of wartime victims. Tiffany Hsiung, director of the award-winning documentary The Apology (2016), gives us an alternative form of address that is respectful and sweet. She refers to the “comfort women” as “grandmothers”, a courteous way to call your female elders in Asian culture. The Apology (2016) is a documentary about the grandmothers fighting for reconciliation and justice. It tells the story of the internal struggle the grandmothers still experience. Three grandmothers are the main focus: Adela Reyes Barroquillo from the Philippines, Gil Won-ok from Korea and Cao Hei-mao from China.

Cao Hei Mao, former sex slave for the Japanese Imperial Army, was holding a picture of herself when she was young.

The grandmothers are brave enough to talk about it, so we learn from them... Grandmother Adela wasn’t able to tell her family about her past. She kept this secret from her husband until he died. “There is a lack of stories out there about survivors not being able to come out to their family,” says Hsiung.

Director Guo Ke says the idea of this documentary came from the unique mother-son relationship of former “comfort woman” Wei Shao-lan and her half-Japanese son, Luo Shan-xue. Wei gave birth to Luo at a time when abandoning or killing half-Japanese babies was the norm; they were seen as a disgrace. Wei is now one of the only 14 surviving grandmothers left in China. Guo says it is important for future generations to remember the past by “getting to know” the grandmothers. “Once young people get to know them, they would definitely get emotionally attached to the grandmothers and develop an intimate relationship with them,” he says. “Our crew wants to show their human side to the audience and stop isolating them from our society.”

Hsiung says Grandmother Cao’s story shows love through action. Grandma Cao adopted a girl because she was unable to give birth after she was raped. She never shared her past with her daughter because she believed there was no need to pass down the painful history to her daughter. “But there is a cost,” says Hsiung. “The next generation would not know [this] if we Hsiung says “the correct way” to connect with the grandmothers is to understand the obstacles they have been living refuse to tell them the truth.” through, and that learning about the grandmothers’ stories can “break the cycle of shame silence.” Grandmother Gil was protesting on the frontline in front of the Japanese embassy in South Korea when Hsiung first met “The grandmothers are brave enough to talk about it, so we her. learn from them,” she says. “If we don’t choose to learn from “She is an activist, a fighter fighting for the apology,” says Hsi- them, we are enabling decades more of silence.” ung. “Not only she is an advocate for herself, she is also doing Many have heard of the term “comfort women” but few have [this] to prevent history from repeating itself.” asked about what actually happened to them or cared about their lives afterwards. Educating yourself is a way to tear off Another documentary, Twenty Two (2015), shows the grandmothers’ lives after the war in rural areas. It is named after the the degrading label that was stuck onto the grandmothers. After ripping off that label, I can now see them clearly. number of survivors left in China.

Hidden

Homelessness at Ryerson By: Giulia Fiaoni

At 18 years old, Emily Wright was an expert in knowing where she could and could not sleep outside on Ryerson University campus. After many attempts at sleeping in other locations, downtown and around Ryerson, she found that the northern Gerrard St. E entrance of Kerr Hall Quad was the only location where security did not bother her. Her usual setup was to lay underneath the arch of the entrance, on top of flattened cardboard boxes, using her bag as a pillow. “There were times where you didn’t know if you were going to wake up in the morning, because it was so cold outside…you just had to pray that you were going to be able to wake up,” she says. She remembers sleeping on the cold cement ground. “I guess there’s something comforting, when you are lying down on the ground, to slowly move your fingers over the cement to ground yourself a little bit. To remind yourself that you’re safe. I remember doing that in the middle of the night.”

“No matter what my life was like with no one talking to me, I heard that the world was still moving; I heard people talking, I heard traffic, I heard cars, I heard families laughing and talking about their lives. It was always interesting to realize that my life felt like it was going nowhere, but everyone else’s was still going.” Besides the sounds of a bustling city, she details the persistent smells of exhaust fumes, crisp winter air and food cooking at nearby restaurants. “When I was really hungry, I swear I could smell the pizza from the Big Slice pizza store, which was located on Yonge Street, billowing down the street, right into my nostrils. It seems like those food scents were almost stronger the hungrier that I was…even if it was three blocks away, I swear I could smell it, and I needed it.” There were nights where she stayed with a group of around six other people. Wright remembers one person staying up to keep watch while the rest slept. She says the nights where she slept alone were especially challenging. “The whole world was ending their day and mine, I felt like was just beginning. I had to make it through the night sleeping on the streets, which meant sleeping with one eye open and constantly on guard.” She says she made sure to always sleep with her shoes on because there was a high possibility that they would otherwise be stolen by morning.

During that time, she says she was encompassed by feelings of being stuck, isolated and broken in world that was continuously moving around her.

Wright found comfort in knowing her things were with her at all times and consistently woke up panicked throughout the night, thinking that her possessions had been stolen. “I was always having my hand on my backpack, making sure that those things were close to me.”

For months, Wright slept rough and unsheltered on the campus she would be attending as an honour student, eight years later. “To flash forward to later on as a student there, it was pretty empowering to be like, I once slept here and now I’m a student here.” *** Pascal Murphy has been teaching the Homelessness in Canadian Society course at Ryerson University for the past 10 years.

homelessness. He has always made himself available for having one-on-one talks with students outside of class. Murphy’s advocacy for social justice goes beyond the classroom. Alongside being an award-winning instructor, he is also president of the St. Clare’s Multifaith Housing Society board, a non-governmental and nonprofit affordable and supported housing provider. *** Wright took Murphy’s class seven years ago, after she had experienced homelessness.

“People often understand homelessness or think about homelessness as something very much that is ‘out there’,” he says. “The reality is that this experience that we know people unfortunately go through is very much connected to us, it’s not something separate from us.”

She says she experienced homelessness as a teenager because she was addicted to drugs.

Murphy says it’s not uncommon for 20 to 25 per cent of his class to have experienced homelessness.

“I guess my journey really started when I was bullied as a child and that really sort of set my confidence,” she says. “It really pulled a part of me, sort of broke a part of me, being bullied at a young age.”

“In a class of 40 people, I’ve certainly had it where at least 10 of them have at some point in their life experienced homelessness.” Approximately 2.3 million Canadians aged 15 and over reported having to “temporarily live with family, friends, in their car, or anywhere else because they had nowhere else to live” at some point in their life, according to Statistics Canada. Murphy says that there’s a difference between “houselessness” and “homelessness”. He defines homelessness as someone experiencing a home environment that is some combination of lacking in safety, security, health or affordability, not just a lack of access to physical shelter.

Growing up in Toronto in an affluent family, she attended a variety of private schools across the city.

She says her experiences of being bullied emphasized the feeling of never really fitting in. “On my journey just before high school began, I had my first boyfriend and was sort of thinking, maybe things are going to go really well with my life. I started high school and I ended up getting raped by my boyfriend.” The following day at school, Wright was ignored by her peers. She says she was soon considered to be the “slut of the school.” “I didn’t tell anyone about it and that really spiraled me into

Murphy says people’s lack of understanding of who experiences homelessness, and how it’s experienced, contributes to the overall stigma surrounding the issue. “Sometimes it’s the very person you might be sitting beside in one of your focus groups, studying for your exam, and you will never know because it’s such a stigmatized reality that people will be very hesitant to disclose because of the stigma.” He says that since the beginning, his classroom has acted as a safe space for students to share their experiences with

experimenting with drugs and alcohol when I went to a new school,” she says. Julia Martin*, a current Ryerson social work student, was 15 years old when she first experienced homelessness.

you can’t be in a house where someone had just died and then the other person is almost dead and doesn’t remember who you are.”

“My father was extremely abusive, more physically...meanwhile, my mom was abusive times ten, a million times worse; emotionally, physically, psychologically, and every year it got worse,” she says.

She says that she would walk for hours throughout the night.

Martin says she was about 15 years old when her mother kicked her out of the house and told her she never wanted to see her again. A day later, her brother was kicked out too.

“Outside was a better alternative at that time, not sleeping outside because as soon as I sleep outside, then I am bringing myself down to that stereotype that I couldn’t be a part of, so I would rather walk.”

“I took 10 minutes to grab anything that I could in plastic bags. And then I left. That was the last time I saw my mom.”

Martin is now 24, and says she’s the closest she’s been in five years to experiencing homelessness again. She says this uncertainty is causing her to have “constant breakdowns.”

Martin couchsurfed from house to house for about two years, and when she was around 17, she made enough money to share a townhouse with two other strangers who were in their 30s. She lived with them for roughly six months.

She applied for about 40 different jobs in the month of January and struggled to find work because she is a full-time student.

Martin continues her story carefully. She warns that she might get emotional when recalling the following details.

“I knew that by next month, I would be homeless if I didn’t start having an income. So I got a job, part-time, something I would never do, like food prep work. But it’s cool. I don’t give a fuck. Give me any job.”

“The roommates I had to live with at that time...the first one committed suicide and then a month later, the next one left me a suicide letter…”

“That’s also a thing; if you’ve been homeless, you’ll fucking take any job in the world. Any job. I didn’t care. I was like, sign me up. I don’t care...I just don’t want to be that again.”

She explains how the second roommate attempted suicide. Martin explains how the roommate’s brain damage from the attempt was so severe that she could not remember who Martin was when she returned to the unit.

Martin says that even in the midst of financial instability she still manages to do volunteer street outreach to help those who are currently experiencing homelessness, like she was five years ago.

***

Martin pauses and continues speaking more slowly. “So from that moment, I would be walking outside because

*** Wright and Martin, although at different times, both took

Murphy’s course. They emphasize that them being white and identifying as female gave them privilege that may have helped them escape homelessness quicker than those who are not of the same demographic.

an increase in students disclosing their experiences with homelessness. Bruce says she thinks that this increase is not a reflection of more people experiencing homelessness than previously, but that more people are choosing to talk about it.

Murphy says his course challenges popular assumption and illustrates how homelessness exists across all demographics. He does this through guest speakers who bring in a variety of different perspectives.

Ryerson currently does not have free housing readily available without a reference for students experiencing homelessness, but they do offer support through the Ryerson Safe House.

Wright says that Murphy places her guest lectures towards the beginning of the semester to demonstrate that privilege and oppression can and do co-exist.

Safe House provides free short-term housing for Ryerson students living in unstable or unsafe conditions.

She says she was challenged by some of the guest speakers she listened to during her time enrolled in the course back in 2012. “He had all of these guest speakers, and...I remember one day I left a little early and he emailed me just to check up on me and I was like ‘no I’m not OK.” Wright says she told Murphy the lecture content about experiencing homelessness was triggering for her because she had lived it. Wright says that Murphy was not aware of the fact that she had experienced homelessness prior to emailing her to check in. “You know, he was really understanding, really great. He bought me lunch. And I was like, just don’t tell anyone [about my experiences],” Wright says starting to laugh. Both Wright and Martin are now consistent guest speakers in Murphy’s class. “He’s a very non-judgmental, open person and so is his partner, Sarah, who I talked to also many times. When you’re speaking, they’re really listening, they’re there, they’re attentive, they’re caring,” says Martin. She says how the accepting environment of Murphy’s classroom is why she is sure guest speakers continue to come back to speak. *** Valerie Bruce, assistant director of Housing Operations and Administration at Ryerson, says this year she has witnessed

With a referral from a Ryerson counselor, Safe House provides up to two weeks of free housing within Ryerson residence. Bruce says that she encourages students to continue reaching out, specifically saying, “we can only help who we know.” *** Now 33 years old and a successful youth advocator, public speaker and early childhood educator, Wright reflects on her first day attending Ryerson in 2011 as an undergraduate student. The first class she attended was an English literature course. “I never imagined in my entire life I’d make it to university and so to actually stand on the campus, realizing that I might actually have a future and have a purpose, filled me with this joy that I don’t think that I had felt in a long time,” she says. Wright says it took her a while to “walk with confidence.” She says she was still looking over her shoulder, fearing the security guards that were now looking out for her safety, not kicking her off campus. Wright graduated from Ryerson in 2014, a decade after she was sleeping at the entrance of Kerr Hall Quad. “I don’t know how to describe it other than surreal. It was from one extreme to the other.” *Name changed to protect identity.

CONTRIBUTORS

EDITORS-IN-CHIEF Yusra Javed & Julia Mastroianni MANAGING EDITOR Sherina Harris ART DIRECTORS Ruhama Dechassa & Veronika Wiszniewska FEATURE EDITORS Emma Buchanan Kiernan Green Vanessa Quon CREATIVE EDITORS Maddy Hillis & Raneem Alozzi HEADS OF COPY/FACT CHECKING Chelsey Gould & Katie Li WRITERS Maddy Hillis Jada Muirhead Jordan Currie Zanele Chisholm Emma Buchanan Heather Taylor-Singh Heidi Lee Giulia Fiaoni Emma Sandri COPY EDITORS Jordan Currie Aaliyah Dasoo Samantha DiBendetto Lisa Lam

Rosie Leonard Randeep Mandar Hannah Oh Sofia Ramirez Simran Singh Asmaa Toor FACT CHECKERS Lisa Belmonte Emily Kung Lisa Lam Hannah Oh Asmaa Toor PHOTOGRAPHER Amber Dror PHOTO EDITOR Aya Baradie LAYOUT TEAM Serina Choi Therese Sevilla Sam Nunziato Michela Cousin Ruhama Dechassa Mahtab Abghari Veronika Wiszniewska ILLUSTRATORS Sam Nunziato Yvette Sin Heidi Lee

New Wave Magazine issue three//winter 2019