oct 2009 1:1
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issue 1:1 – decolonize this shit – oct 2009 SCHOOL magazine’s first issue is out and ONLINE now! ‘decolonize this shit’
Underrepresented artists and artwork you’ll want to learn more from. This premier issue is titled in dedication to the artist(s) who took back a mural beneath a bridge at the University of Toronto. The website’s banner currently reflects the take over of a mural originally depicting a white male student walking beneath images of floating greek gods to represent knowledge. Enjoy!
Kenji Tokawa Editor-In-Chief
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in this issue s napped
Gitanjali Lena
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It’s Never Too Early to Teach Kids about Racism n’ Colonialism (2)
Teresa Chun-Wen Cheng
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Things Move
Vishakha Gandhi
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(De)Constructing Home
Janice Goveas
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Sharline Chiang
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Angels The Coming of Aaron
Luka Sidaravicius
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Evolution of my Breasts
Gitanjali Lena
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A short story
MJ Rwigema
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At International Women’s Day
Aida Ashouri
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My All-Over Lover
Vishakha Gandhi
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Variations on a Brother
Mel Gayle
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the gardiner
Gitanjali Lena
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Sir Casimir Gzowski Park
Sammy Lao
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An interview with Maureen O’Hara, the mother of Elisha and Thea O’Hara-Lim
Elisha Lim
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Visible, once Invisible
Aida Ashouri
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Rachel
Vishakha Gandhi
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Artists of 1:1
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Gitanjali Lena snapped our feet padded down into the cool apple green room tucked under the stairs Monday underground my dam of reluctance broke all my energetic resistance snapped like a cello string and the rawness burst out of you too that room that cocoon with nothing but a bed we caved in blood sweat cum soaked sheets as if arteries opened and drenched them divulging many truths we tear each other apart rough with abandon then hold each other tangled with care laid bare for a moment like snake skin rubbed off it heals me if you want you can box it in
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measured by moments in rooms nothing in between but prairie snow thickly muffled quiet until I step amongst the pieces of my collapsed infrastructure call you absent expectation but tense with desire to take hold of the end of your rope pin you down and make you taste my rise i don’t care how it ends but i wish you would take me there
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Teresa Chun-Wen Cheng It’s Never Too Early to Teach Kids about Racism n’ Colonialism (2)
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Vishakha Gandhi Things Move Things move suddenly in this apartment: CDs fall off shelves, self-help books slide two inches to the right, steel spice box lids curl up, a sudden grimace of understanding. Fluid drips from the medicated shampoo bottle into the bathtub. A space that’s falling apart, the slow slide to disorder. I don’t know if it’s just me, Or the Other Person, a sulk, and the subtle trickery of one who’s unhappy. I have a bruise under my left eye. In the night, in our sleep, fists crunch into defenseless skin. Other Person is aghast, a bruise forming, but I like it there. I apply desoximetasone, to keep the colour, twice daily maintains the glossy purple pucker. It matches my shaking knee, fidgety fingers, and the blooming snowflake of whiteness on my upper left arm.
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Janice Goveas (De)Constructing Home
During my children’s first winter in Canada, I
She was there to skate with her two daughters, and
bought my sons ice skates and took them to one of
she asked why I did not join my sons on the ice. I
our local rinks. I had jokingly informed them that,
pointed to my own daughter, asleep in her stroller,
unlike the Americans they had been until then, in
as my excuse. I did not offer her the truth, which is
order to call themselves Canadian kids, they had to
that I do not know how to skate because when I,
learn how to skate.
some three decades before, arrived in Ottawa as a
Their first time on the ice made me nostalgic.
child immigrant to meet a life-defining encounter
The rink was hemmed in by snow-dusted pines.
with racism, my rebellious response was to make
Teenage girls with glistening hair glided up and down
sure that learning to do things that Canadian kids
the ice and chatted with each other. Teenage boys
did, like skating, was exactly what I was not going to
speed-skated around them, showing off their skills in
do. The nostalgia evoked by watching my sons on
daring swoops between toddlers and in hissing stops
the ice came from having watched my brothers skate
of blades skimming ice. Younger children raced with
when I was a child, combined, perhaps, with a
each other, the fronts of their open jackets flapping
remembered wanting to belong here even as I
against their arms making them resemble birds about
resented this place for excluding me from any claim
to take off in flight. In an adjoining rink, a group of
to it as my home.
boys, and still only boys, was engaged in a shinny,
Thirty years after first arriving here,
periodically sending their puck thudding against the
however, having returned to Canada with my
wooden divider between the two rinks. The
children after spending ten of those years as an
scenario was Canadiana at its most saccharine, made
immigrant, with Canadian citizenship, in the United
warm-and-fuzzy complete by the pixelating effect of
States, I found myself viewing this country through a
a thin fog, and I was warmed by the memories it
lens that was different from the one I had used
unlocked in me. I leaned back in the bench where I
before.
was sitting and melted into the bliss of being back home. My bliss was interrupted by a woman, originally from Zaire, who lived in the same building as I did.
When I left the United States to return to Canada, I did so partly because I was divorcing the American I had married, my marriage to him being the reason I was there in the first place, partly
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because I objected to the wars that the United
The Don Valley Parkway has become my
States was embroiled in, but mostly because the
personal fork in the road. When I head home west
places in which those wars were taking place, Iraq
on Highway 401 from visits to the United States, I
and Afghanistan, were disturbingly near the places I
always exit on the DVP.
had grown up in before moving to Canada: Bahrain
If I go north, it means I am stopping at my
and Pakistan. I had the luxury of Canadian citizenship
mother’s place in Richmond Hill, the pristine suburb
to act on my conscientious objection to those wars,
where she lives in a over-priced house in a soul-
but my reasons for leaving were also personal
deadening development. I have a key to her place
because of the particular places in which those wars
and can enter unannounced. The stillness that
were taking place.
greets me, ephemeral before my children call for
Returning here by choice came with an
their grandma and she shuffles to meet them from
unanticipated bonus: I discovered that I had
wherever she is in that massive space, is heavy with
exorcised the demons of my forced migration here
the poignancy of her living alone, since my father
when I was child, informed, perhaps, by the fact that
died, in a house finally big enough for them and their
my time in the United States was the only time in
seven children. It is the home they coveted as new
my life that I was considered Canadian by the people
immigrants, but could afford only when we had all
around me. I finally gave myself permission to
grown up and moved out into lives of our own. The
recognize that my presence in Canada was
high-end furniture they allowed themselves after
legitimate. It was no longer, nor would it ever be
having raised us is interspersed with some of the
again, something I needed to either resist within
tacky things they bought when we first arrived here
myself or justify to anybody who insisted that I was
and that she is now proud to have owned for over
from somewhere else.
thirty years. The smell of her house, however, the
My sons, by the way, believed me at first, but
smell of vindaloo and sorpetel that permeates the air
since we live in Toronto, over the course of that
always and around Fridays is mingled with the smell
winter they met several Canadian children who did
of fish, is a smell I recognize in the most visceral way
not know how to skate. They still learned how to
possible. It is the smell of every house and
skate, but they never learned to care about whether
apartment I lived in while I was growing up. I have
or not that made them Canadian.
never, however, replicated it in any home I, myself, have created. Home and identity do not intersect
*
*
*
here. I do not cook, or dress, or talk, or decorate or show affection in the ways she does or my father
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did; I do not look, smell, touch or sound like they
live. The building is a microcosm of one of
do.
Toronto’s most-touted statistics: it is the city with If I head south on the DVP, it means I am
people from more countries in the world than any
going straight to the apartment in which I live with
other in the world. In the laundry room, where I
my three children. I exit on Bloor Street and drive
often fall into idle conversation with other women
west past the Prada and Louis Vuitton stores, past
from the building, when I am asked where I am from,
the artsy coffee shops and health food stores in the
I say India, even though I have never lived there. It is
Annex, through Koreatown, past the fusion-food
the answer that makes the most sense here. The
and Ethiopian restaurants. I live a few blocks from
real story is too complicated and many of the
the Islamic Centre, the discount furniture stores
women are too newly-emigrated to value diasporic
owned by Pakistanis and the grocery stores with
notions like ‘South Asian’. They speak a host of first
bilingual signs in English and Urdu or Bengali. If I
languages, obvious ones like Spanish and Arabic, but
were to continue west, I would be next in Bloor
also ones with names like Harari and Ingala. We
West Village – home to trendy Thai restaurants,
bond around a sense of home that is defined by this:
Eastern European bakeries, and the admittedly
it is not here, not this country, but that Other Place
fabulous 300-acre High Park - where most people I
where the weather is better, where families are
know think I should live since I insist on raising
more intact, where food is more nurturing, where
children in the city, and, incidentally, where the
love is less complicated. When the building hosts a
schools my children attend are located. They do
potluck to which we are expected to bring dishes
not, however, take into account that my childhood
from our countries, I look at the flags decorating the
was lived among Muslims between the islands of
invitation and think: eeny, meeny, miney, mo, today,
Bahrain, where I was born, and the mountains of
I think I’m from Mexico. I bring an arroz con pollo,
Baluchistan, in Pakistan, where I went to boarding
which I can make much better than I can a vindaloo
school, that “Muslimness” feels like home to me, and
or a sorpetel. Once one of the women I met in the
that moving here was particularly reassuring since I
laundry room heard me speaking Spanish with the
did it after having left the United States partly
building superintendent in the elevator. ‘I didn’t
because its military was, if not directly bombing the
know they spoke Spanish in India,’ she said as if she
places of my childhood, certainly overrunning them
had learned something new, then got off on her
with troops as they bombed places nearby.
floor before I could explain myself. I comforted
I turn right on Perth Avenue and pull into the parking lot of the housing co-operative in which I do
myself for allowing her misunderstanding with the
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fact that if Columbus had not gotten lost, there
a space that is not solid ground, but shifting sands, black,
would indeed be an India in which we spoke Spanish.
brown or white like Latino skin, mine among them
Through the picture windows that dominate the length of my apartment, I have a grand view of a
brown. For as long as I have been in North America,
cityscape that includes the CN Tower. I pay more
people who have moved here from the Caribbean,
to rent this place than I can afford, but it is worth its
especially Trinidad, but also Jamaica and Guyana, have
therapeutic value in the assurance the view gives me
assumed I am one of them. I tell them that I have to
that I am no longer in suburban Pennsylvania. Smog
visit there sometime so I can find out what it is about me
or fog sometimes obscure the view, but if I squint, I
that seems so familiar to them. The truth is, though,
can see the blinking white lights atop the CN Tower
that I would rather embrace the fiction of what they tell
announcing its presence to airplanes flying overhead,
me, along with the fantasy of belonging to places where I
airplanes on which I do not expect to be a passenger
have never been, than risk going there and finding out
any time soon because, for now, this is home and I
that I disagree with them. I have never returned to either Manama, Bahrain
have little need to be far away from it. This is a place that is not what I do not want,
or Quetta, Pakistan. There is no childhood home for me
and much of what I do want right now, and like
to return to in either place and the places I did grow up
other places I have come to identify in that way -
in have long changed with changing times. The only
Mumbai, Montreal, Barcelona, Cali, New York City
childhood home I have is my memories, which, being
and much of Mexico – it allows me to continue my
their own fiction, would be torn apart were I to return to
journey to the home I cannot yet fully imagine even
the places in which they were formed and find them
as I covet it in my soul.
transformed beyond my ability to recognize them or to claim them as my home. *
*
* *
I often quip that my most successful fiction has
*
When I was still living in Coopersburg,
been my own identity. I speak Spanish so fluently that
Pennsylvania, I had a conversation one day in my
even Latinos often (mis)take me for Latina; I tell them
sons’ school cafeteria with a parent who was there,
that I must have been Latina in another life. The home I
like I was, waiting to pick up his children after
feel in Spanish has no basis in history or geography. It is
school. He worked as an airline pilot; he was red-
a space where I am allowed racial and ethnic ambiguity,
haired, freckled, fit and had the plasticine energy of
*
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the privileged. We talked about enjoying traveling
the concepts that ground my identity are ones that
and about how flying had changed since September
have no actual solid ground, concepts like ‘South
11, 2001. I told him about my first time in an
Asian’ and ‘Woman of Colour’.
airplane, when I was eight, traveling from Bahrain to
The other frame is the one that has been normalized
the boarding school in Pakistan that I attended for
through the information systems owned by those
four years. He told me he envied me; he wished he
with power who, over history, often through wars
had grown up somewhere more interesting than
and invasions, have changed boundaries to suit their
Minnesota. I suspected he had become an airline
agendas and in the process destroyed the homes of
pilot to escape his life there.
the people who live there. They have thrown some
I became aware, however, as our
of the displaced into limbo and patronized others
conversation unfolded, that the broadest throw of
with privileges that suffocate the screams of loss and
his travels as an airline pilot was a Newark-Houston-
outrage. They have educated some of us into being
Mexico City-Rio de Janeiro run in the Americas and
on their side by promising us status if we will give up
several stops in Western Europe. The spaces of my
our languages and speak theirs, give up our religions
childhood were within his frame of reference, not
and practice theirs. They have colonized us,
because of he had traveled to them, or even wanted
displaced us, compromised us and then invested
to, but because they had then recently become
themselves with the arrogance to tell us where we
overrun with American militia in wars that have left
are from. Within the paradigms they make available,
all of us confused, some of us angry, and too many of
I am from India, where I have visited often, but never
us indifferent.
lived, because, despite my Canadian nationality, I will
It was the moment in which a notion I had
always be from somewhere else, and as a non-
been struggling with for several months finally
Muslim, claiming either Bahrain or Pakistan as my
crystallized: I live within frame-over-frame sense of
home is too confusing within the available paradigms,
identity and home, and in conversations like the one
so I choose India, the most diverse country among
with the airline pilot, I try to communicate one
those that South Asian, and which is, at least, I tell
frame and find I am often frustrated by the fact the
myself as I struggle to make my peace with it, my
person listening to me is interpreting my words
mother’s home country.
through a second one. One frame, the one I try to communicate, is
The irony, however, is that India, Goa in particular, is in fact my ancestral land, but the same
the one my diasporic self has created for itself. It is a
power and information imperialists who now tell me
frame in which geographic boundaries are fluid and
I am from there have, over the course of
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generations, physically, linguistically, and culturally removed me from my ancestral home there: I have lived my life in the Diaspora. My first name is English, my last name is Portuguese. The languages I speak fluently are English, Spanish and French. I was raised as a Roman Catholic, though I no longer practice the religion. After my conversation with the airline pilot, I tended the wounds of my outrage with the thought that as much as I longed to belong somewhere, as much as I longed to know what place I was free to call home, I preferred the home of my own fiction, constructed from my imagination, my travels and my memories, to the obligation of having to call a boring place like Minnesota my home. Š 2007
Sharline Chiang Angels The three girls down the street say I can watch when they play Charlie’s Angels but I can’t join because no one looks like me not even Sabrina the ugly one
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Luka Sidaravicius The Coming of Aaron Strange things have happened in this desert. Usually,
One night I woke up from another nightmare with
the wind blows any humanity away from bodies
the man and I decided I had enough. The sun was
already eroded by the caustic sands. However, once
just coming up. I could feel the hard morning wind
in a lifetime wind and sand play together, make
cutting my face. I didn’t have a plan. I only knew that
illusions and cherished dreams to come true.
my heart was getting away from my carefully guarded velvet cage.
I was born and raised in a tiny village lost in the middle of this desert. I was just a baby when a
I only stopped running when I went into a barber
sandstorm stole my innocent soul. I almost died.
shop in another village. I shaved my head, and sold
Months later, rare rain injected a new spirit in my
my long braid to a wig maker. I had a head for the
heart.
first time. I was weightless and free, but my heart and my head couldn’t stop running just yet.
I was my parents’ only child, their only daughter. I was pampered and kept inside. But, I never felt
I came across an isolated house in the desert. The
anything. No, don’t get me wrong, I was capable of
family was mourning the death of their teenager son.
loving and feeling every possible emotion. My body, I
There was a blue casket on the dinning room table.
couldn’t feel my body. My flesh was only a carefully made velvet armor- beautiful and delicate, but
Dead boys don’t need clothes, do they?
incapable of sensation. I asked for the dead boy’s old clothes. My shaved The only times I could feel the world around me was
head, his mother assumed I was a novice nun
when I dreamed. And, in my dreams, I was always
collecting clothes for an orphanage.
haunted by a young man who did all the things I could never do or enjoy. Maybe an older brother?
I left the family, and slept under the night sky. I woke
He was always running through the desert, and
up and took off my dress. The caustic sand had
feeling every grain of sand. I could never decide if
begun to corrode my breasts. I put on the dead
those were dreams or nightmares.
boy’s shirt, pants and shoes. All the muscles in my arms and legs came magically into existence. Moving.
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Never stopping.
erased by the smog.”
I ran and I ran until finally I ran right into a peddler.
I left, only this time I didn’t run. My newly found
“What is your name, boy?” he asked. My new voice
weight wanted to ground me. Besides, I was tired of
said the name on its own accord, “Aaron”. My
running away. Instead, I walked towards the big city.
scratchy new voice was like drinking hot chocolate, but in reverse. The warmth spreading through my
Everyone around me was running, but I just kept
chest, going up my throat, filling my mouth, wetting
walking. The big city was made of shopping windows,
my lips, bursting inches from my face and finally
mirrors and other shiny things. I didn’t look at
being carried away by the wind. I was running again,
myself in any of them for months. It was only when
but this time I was singing and shouting in the desert.
the hair began to grow on my face that I knew I was
I sang and ran until my voice was deeper and my
ready to face myself. I didn’t see a woman or a boy. I
body stronger.
saw a man. I saw the man who only appeared in my dreams to haunt me.
I reached a new town where everyone thought I was crazy- because I was wandering the desert and talking to myself. A young widow took me in. “You, poor boy, went mad. Hormones, I figure”. Beautiful woman. Smart too. She realized her mistake that night. The next morning when I woke up, she was still sleeping, her arms around my waist. I was hungry, thirsty and needed to pee. My body was filled with organs. I could hear them working. Their weight pulled me down, I almost fell. When I finally got up, I felt all the weight on my feet and I cried in pain. The widow woke up, and whispered, “You can’t stay here, boy. It’s dangerous. Your place is in the big city, where all traces of previous existences are
Gitanjali Lena Evolution of my Breasts
Our shape has changed Swells and shrinks With seasons of time We pushed up firm And round Lilies breaking the water With fat in youth Punctuated by dark chips We were examined by teenagers Exposed by strangers Flaunted as our mistress wished Measured by deliberate pleasure Engorged to heavy fruit In the months of building a child We had a presence Our next avatar Was as a constant food supply A breastaurant open all night We curled and flamed in those first days of feeding Presently we point south soft supple small our geography creased from nourishment given
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unrestrained vulnerable to criticism Now our shape only recalls old days When the moon calls my chemicals Making us wax full Sore and appreciated We have served our purpose We are ready for your gratitude
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MJ Rwigema A short story This short story starts with tears in my eyes. It starts with the tears that I cried, when I realized How much I have to deal with, How much you have to deal with How much we have to deal with How much we all have to deal with It’s the tears I’m crying for my teenage girl Who doesn’t want to be an addict For my parents Who met the wrong child psychiatrist Who gave the wrong diagnosis All outcomes of colonialisms We are all outcomes of colonialisms It’s the tears I’m crying cause we all have to finish school And ngugi’s ‘devils feast’ Gathering of international robbers Fela’s itt ‘international thief thief’ It’s the tears I’m crying Cause $5000 in the bank And savings towards my house Don’t make a damn difference for my health
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And don’t change What we’ve all gone through Tears that I’m crying Cause will my momma ever feel again? Tears that I’m crying Cause will I wanna ever sex again? Tears that I’m crying Cause of drama, and fear of intimacy Cause of the teenager that wants to be a junkie Cause of the mix up mix up of all the different issues Tears that I’m crying Cause no matter how many tissues I would give you We know this issue is not going to be resolved Today But maybe those tears that you are crying Will help
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Aida Ashouri At International Women's Day: What about female circumcision, what about high heels. I want to look good, I want to attract men, I want that semen poured into me, I want it to strangle me, I want the pleasure, I want the pain, I AM masochistic, I want to die. I want it to kill me, I am walking dead. I am alive inside. I was shot pregnant. I did die alone. I do want pussy, I am bisexual. I am subordinate. I don't love myself. I do want to rip off my hairy skin. I do condemn myself to hatred. I am good for nothing. I can not achieve anything. I cannot get any higher. from below, I cannot leave my girl friends, our legs are entangled, fists shoved up our vaginas, grabbing ahold of all that we can, that's left.
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Vishakha Gandhi My All-Over Lover you give me that familiar clench and wetness five am fucking your middle and ring fingers deep within curved upwards. you can’t sleep when you stay the night shifting in my bed your hands glide in circles over my body touch the curve of my belly the Gujarati tattoo on my back my thighs. your butch body in a white tank and briefs is slim, brown and lithe your salt and pepper hair your dark chai eyes. We listen to Talvin Singh while you nip me below my breast kiss the fold where my thigh meets my pussy you breathe in my scent.
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Mel Gayle Variations on a Brother HEN Everything I have ever held valuable has disintegrated. Heading homeward downward chin. My daylight hours are usurped now by Lasers and pixels. Years of social barrier construction now deride me. Beside me Her place in the portrait, and empty plate at the table. Returning home a broken man, I am met with the awkward comforts of those I have pushed away. Another deep breath. Inhaling essence of damp carpets and warping wall panels, The responsibility of my tandem position Slouches like wet clay between my shoulder blades. Sigh, and exhale a head held high. A life, now a lie. Threads bound together by force of will. JULES Today like every other he will wake and decide to start. Lying in bed Perpetually determined to showcase his genius Mocking daylight whittles the time further from his purpose. Anxious with failure Fingerprints rubbed smooth Already coarse pads peel, becoming raw from Constant corduroy friction. I am the fulcrum, he thinks.
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Joining us all together but I Have to hold the weight. Recalling golden locks Bleached white in summertime. But no, today I will succeed. Triumphant over his inertia, Pen poised between moistening knuckles The instrument of his defeat. DANE I am the last in line. The dregs of my genes hang listlessly, Protein Lace clinging to my bones. Relations refusing to recognize My disinterest in their farce. Attentions and flourishes lathered thickly on one and two. What’s left is myself A teabag twice steeped. When tasted first, strong and memorable. Once more, faded but bitter enough to rest Thickly on your tongue. Pour hot water thrice upon me My emissions weak. My contributions transparent. Compress tightly as I might, my blood will run clear. KIN. Everything I have ever held valuable will start. Again. Lying in the dregs of my daylight hours, The Sun, perpetually heading downward Mocks my genius genes. Anxious with social barrier construction, my
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Relations beside me whittle away my disinterest. Lathering what’s left of myself Thickly upon the broken man returning home To damp carpets, warping wall panel and corduroy. The weight of our golden locks hangs listlessly Between my shoulder blades. Our protein laced bones bleached white in summertime and, Head held high I sigh, triumphant; Binding the threads of defeat tightly between my palms.
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Gitanjali Lena the gardiner
You better stay off the gardiner ms lena Exhaling your disapproval Your head wags like an old dogs tail I tell you those people don’t have a hope in hell if they keep this up Sir, Those people have spent the night Ear up to a radio Pouring out names of their dead relatives They don’t have a hope in hell if they stop being seen They are faster than cars Bringing your highroad to a
stand
still
Disrupting your mother’s day plans
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Sammy Lao Sir Casimir Gzowski Park On a cold day Lake Ontario turns green Like tropical waters. The weatherman talks again of the last hurrah of winter. The gulls and the waterfowls swimming, Lakeshore Boulevard seems far-off. The horizon of the water turns yellow, green, and near-blue. Here, it is a little colder than elsewhere in the City. Our Lord of the Lake Bound with streets Condos. Highway burning strips on his surface. Cut off, long ago, his birthright to the waters. Out here, It is almost nature. A wilderness no more wild than the municiple sign. Warning: Trail Unploughed
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The weatherman deceived and deceiving, in uncertainty, convinced and conveying one more tale, transmuting nature's raw and random cruelty to a manageable risk advisory. Lies. The lake is colder. It's temperature unfelt only by the fowl -- always moving. Cold. Too cold to enjoy. The waters green and deceiving beckons the watcher to come out, step-by-step, to the seemingly reachable horizon.
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Elisha Lim An interview with Maureen O’Hara, the mother of Elisha and Thea O’Hara-Lim “You Are A Disgrace”
Elisha: Improvised stolen art material! And didn’t we
Elisha: I’m a pretty big fan of my sister, she’s a
also make drawing books from scratch?
published author and a well-respected regular
Maureen: Yes, we would take pieces of paper and
correspondent to the authoritative anti-racist blog
fold and staple them, and then on each page there
Racialicious. I’ve developed some kind of incredibly
was room for a drawing.
flattering fan-base too myself, with my comic book 100 Butches coming out in April.
Elisha: Did you ever try to expose us to Asian artists, or art that reflected our Chinese
How did you raise two robust Canadian women
background?
artists-of-colour?
Maureen: Well there was Lim’s painting entitled “My
Maureen: I thought it was a healthy thing to let you
Grandmother’s House”. But otherwise I didn’t think
express yourselves and make a mess. I would cover
about that at all. I just didn’t see you as different.
the whole kitchen with paper, the walls and the fridge and counters, and then put plastic bags on you
Elisha: Not ever?
and bowls of paint on the floor, and you would go
Maureen: Your sister’s been asking me about this
around and just daub everywhere. Or do you
too. And sometimes I would think about it, like
remember making forts?
when people would stop the pram on the street and look at you. Then they’d look at me, and then back
Elisha: And didn’t we make little proto-comic books?
at you, and then back at me.
Maureen: I got you to illustrate my children’s book “Ice Cream Moon,” do you remember? I wrote a
Elisha: [laughs] How do you think you contributed to
story about two little girls who float up to the moon
our style? Did you ever direct our art?
and discover that he’s made of ice cream, and when
Maureen: Who can direct a child’s art?
we went to the ice cream store I stole their huge
Elisha: Our teachers did.
cone-shaped menu, and then we constructed that
Maureen: Yes, and I would get very mad at them. Do
into an illustrated book and you did the art.
you remember that scathing letter I wrote to your teacher about failing one of your paintings?
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Elisha: [laughs] What did it say? Maureen: The teacher had said that it was ugly. I wrote a memo that said: “My daughter may not be very good in art, but she put her heart and soul into that drawing and do you have any idea how you have damaged her selfesteem? You are a disgrace.” Elisha: [laughs] I’m a half-Asian artist with a white sense of self-entitlement! Tell me another one! Maureen: Well once Thea got marked low for music in Grade two. I was flabbergasted at that. What is there in grade two? There was only singing and clapping. How do you mark someone down? So I went and made an appointment with the principal, I was so mad, and I said, “How can you measure a child’s response to music? Music is in them! It should be taken off the curriculum. It should be a fun thing. You are a disgrace.” Elisha: That should pretty much be our artist mission statement. It’s our entire motivation: “You are a disgrace.”
Aida Ashouri Visible, once Invisible You don’t bat an eye to the slowing breaths of my sisters back home, I know because you close your eyes to the sisters in the streets. So why did you think you’d see me?
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Vishakha Gandhi Rachel
Rachel was exhibited at Linuxcaffe in November 2008.
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Artists of 1:1 Aida Ashouri likes to challenge borders and point out the facades that surround us. She has been writing poetry for half of her life and was recently reborn at a VONA Voices poetry writing workshop. She is currently working on a collection focusing on eyes and the body politic. Aida was born in Esfahan, Iran and currently resides in Brooklyn, NY. Vishakha Gandhi is a grad student, artist, and writer who lives in Toronto. She believes in lip gloss and grassroots social change equally, and is loathe to prioritize one over the other. She has recently started the food blog, Croissants and Alphonso Mangoes (found at croissantsandalphonsoes.blogspot.com), to reconnect with food and food culture. Vishakha has displayed her visual art at Linuxcaffe in Toronto, and is currently working on a new exhibition, to be displayed in January 2010. Teresa Chun-Wen Cheng is a queer Chinese-Taiwanese writer and artist. She has spent half of her life in Taiwan and the other half in Canada. She currently resides in Toronto, where she spends her time making zines, writing stories and drawing comics. She is a blogger for Shameless Magazine and 8asians.com. She is the creator of zines Dykes & Their Hair and Upskirt: Dirty (Un)feminist Secrets. She aspires to be a children's storybook author. Sammy Lao works in Brampton and lives in North York. He likes to drive down to the lake sometimes and look at the ducks swim in the winter. This piece was rejected for a recent anthology submission about the city. He is not upset and will probably submit again to the same anthology next year. Sharline Chiang is a writer and journalist based in Vancouver. Born in New York City and raised on the Jersey Shore, Sharline has reported for the New York Daily News and L.A. Daily News. A graduate of Rutgers, she holds a master’s from Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism. As a member of the Voices of Our Nation Arts Foundation for writers of color (VONA) she has studied with Ruth Forman, Junot Diaz, Chris Abani and David Mura, among others. Her poem “Nu” won third place in the 2009 national Women Who Write poetry contest. Currently she works for the network for social change, www.4REAL.com.
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Mel Gayle is a Toronto-born Jamaican-bred writer/performer/Buffy enthusiast who found her love for sharing words while spending her formative years in a collectively written play about body image in the media. She now spends her days among book shelves and cat toys, writing poetry, theatre and to-do lists all to the dulcet tones of Bjork. Gitanjali Lena says, “I am a Sri Lankan queer woman of Tamil/Sinhalese blood. I'm an activist in the spaces of neighbourhoods, primary schools, law courts, parking lots and community kitchens. I'm a magic marker public poet. I also love the domestic spheres of gardens and kitchens. My ideal job would be as a cellist in a small multigenre orchestra.” Janice Goveas works in fiction and playwriting. A collection of her plays, Margaret in Search of Herself and Other Plays , was published by In Our Words Inc, in December 2008. Her short fiction has been published in The New Quarterly, Pitkin in Progress and Icarus Ascending. Her plays have been staged in the US and Canada. During the 2008-2009 season, she was the Artist in Residence at Rasik Arts in Toronto She has facilitated the Desilit-Toronto Book Club and the Desilit-Toronto Writers’ Group, and has read her work at Masala! Mehndi! Masti! every year between 2006 to the present. She has an MFA in Creative Writing from Goddard College in Vermont and an MA in Spanish Literature from Syracuse University. Luka Sidaravicius MJ Rwigema