Volume X Issue II by The Collective Voice

SPACES THE COLLECTIVE VOICE VOLUME X ISSUE II JUNE 2017

Radical Black Love and Expression BY SKY

SPACES THE COLLECTIVE VOICE VOLUME X ISSUE II JUNE 2017 27 February 2017 Part of me cannot believe what just happened. This is it. This is the camel that broke the needle’s back. This is the 5 second occurrence in my life that screams at me to write these happenings down. I am just trying to focus my heart in to my notes, but there are all these distractions: I’m sleepy, the floor below my room is blasting music, there are beautiful musical medleys on YouTube, some females are screaming bloody murder outside, and my hands are cold. I settle down and get situated. I begin again in my studies when one of my suit mates runs down the hall to the bathroom in her date-night outfit and wet hair. So, I’m known as a makeup person on my floor, because I am. I love makeup. Now, she calls out from the bathroom, “Is that Jacque? Is Jacque there?” She comes up to me and asks, “Does my lipstick look too overdrawn? Does it look bad like clownish, like chola?” In that moment, I looked like a mix of the petty Skai jackson meme and the WTF Obama meme. I respond, “Chola is bad?” She attempts a cover, “I meant tacky.” “Well, they’re overdrawn.” “Sorry. I didn’t mean to offend.” She didn’t mean to offend. She knows I’m not some politically daft dingbat, I’m a fucking political science major for fucks sake. She not only forgot to use the part of her brain that remembers basic shit, but she forgot to use the part of her brain that doesn’t make her sound like an asshole. Also, fucking petti pawtti pattiatrician patti’s bitch ass said I can’t do a smokey eye. Just to say I can’t do a smokey eye. She is a big fat lair.

23 March 2017 Four out of five finals FINITO. In 24hrs, I should be finished or finishing up with my last final. In 25-26hrs, I should be sitting in a car with my dad and my dad’s co-worker’s son. My stomach should be filled with ice cream. In about 30hrs, I should be around a bonfire with my Indio friends. That’s the plan anyway. Time trips me up, can you tell? The first time I experienced death tripped me up, and it wasn’t even someone I was that close to. He was more like a supporting actor in my life, but I always think of him from time to time. It’s weird. I think of him when I think of Chickfil-A, because the first time I ate Chick-fil-A, we were on our way to say goodbye to him at Loma Linda. I think of him when I think of how good Thea’s mom’s burritos are, because I downed two of them before his wake. I think of him at random moments. He was such a good kid, dreamt of going to college; he was top five in his class. For a time, I was in this fit thinking about how we would have hung out more than we did when it happened for different reasons. I felt cheated. He was so loved. It’s not fair.

BY JACQUELINE

SPACES THE COLLECTIVE VOICE VOLUME X ISSUE II JUNE 2017

Forgotten Soldier It happened over 40 years ago now, but it still affects the everyday, my here and now. Almost sixty-thousand soldiers died in dense jungles. Over a million human lives lost because the U.S. couldn’t be humble, chose to interfere out of fear of an ideology. So they sent me to kill VC, shoot them up with my M-60, napalm burning down all the huts you could see. A monumental loss of human life, and you can read the names of those killed fighting VC on a monument somewhere in D.C. I cut down women and children like fucking animals, bloody hands, I’m the fucking animal. My buddy and I, Kannibal, torched a village at night. The children took flight, set ablaze and screaming, and in a haze while fleeting Kannibal stepped on a mine that sent his insides flying up high. The next day, so soon, my platoon went to recover the body, so raw, but nobody could prepare me for the horror I saw. His intestines hung from the trees while children swung from them like savage monkeys. The war ended, the violence suspended, but just like that, my entire life was upended. I came home from a foreign land to another I didn’t understand. I stood in the airport wearing my uniform proudly like I should, but everyone around me denounced me. No one dared look me in the eye, they just walked on by. When they did look at me, it was out of scorn, God I was so forlorn. Across the street, outside a government building, I could see an angry crowd protesting. I felt so lonely, but finally, a man walked up to me. I thought, “A thank-you”, this must be for faithfully serving my country. But he looked at me coldly and vehemently he shouted, “Go die you child killing freak!” I never felt so shameful wearing a uniform I wore to be so faithful. Though what I did was so disgraceful, I only did what I was asked to do. I did my duty. I fought for my nation, but my nation didn’t fight for me. They left me to die all alone on cold streets. So now I wait to die on this street corner. I sit with my head held lower so I never ask for change because you don’t owe me anything. Though I gave you everything I know that I’m no hero. I’m a forgotten soldier who died a long time ago in a war I shouldn’t have had to shoulder

SPACES THE COLLECTIVE VOICE VOLUME X ISSUE II JUNE 2017

This is my voice and I want it to be heard. It represents strength. It represents beauty. It represents faith. It represents my identity. What is it? It is that piece of cloth covering my hair. I began wearing a headcovering June 6th, 2016 and why? Because I want to represent my community, I want to represent the faith that upholds love, peace, and happiness that I feel each day of my life. But besides wanting to represent my religion, I want to represent my actions. I want my impact on people to leave an imprint on their hearts. I also want others to know that I am not "evil". I believe that people of all religions and no religion are good beings. I believe that if each person has the ability to make others laugh, give a helping hand, opened the door for strangers, give people compliments, and lastly, would come in solidarity with people of all races and beliefs; YES, this world would be headed in a better direction. May 19th, 2017 was a day where I actually felt uncomfortable being on campus. There were two men who wanted to put their voice on display for others; but they did it in a derogatory manner. They had the audacity to bash all religions besides Christianity. People of the Christian belief do not disrespect other religions, they do not spread hate; they spread love just like every other practicing faith. I am a Muslim and I couldn't believe my ears and eyes on what that man was saying. My best friends are Christian. My aunt is Catholic. My cousins wife is Buddhist. My brothers girlfriend has no religion. Love all religions or even people who have no religion. Love all colors. Love all genders/ no gender. Love all races. Spread peace. Give Love. Do good deeds. Love your neighbors: that's what's faith is all about. That's what being a good human is all about. This man got to me. He thought that he could step foot on one of the most diverse and educated schools in this country and spread his "message"? No sir. What MAKES this campus are the people of All the religions, races, colors, shapes and sizes. We bring our diversity, we bring our brains, we bring our LOVE on this campus. He taught me one thing: after listening to him, not only as a Muslim but as a human being; I have never loved people this much. This man brought me closer to beautiful girls who were standing next to me when he brought me to tears. I was loved by my neighbors. I don't care what you practice. I don't care what color you are. I don't care if your straight, lesbian, gay, trans, homosexual: I LOVE YOU. Spread love by the smallest actions. Because this world will only get better if we spread our genuine love embedded deep in our hearts, one beat at a time. BY Fatemeh Jafari-roshan-zamir

SPACES THE COLLECTIVE VOICE VOLUME X ISSUE II JUNE 2017

Firsts Amy B Hoang

The first time I learned about America

It came before anyone provided me with a definition, before I learned in school what Independence

meant or who the Founding Fathers were. It wasn’t big. At seven years old, the larger history behind my immigration hadn’t concerned me yet. I didn’t care about nation, nor was I seeking opportunity. I didn’t know that I was “Asian,” hadn’t learned yet about race. I believed that Vietnam had been all of it, the entire planet. The only thing I understood was that we had moved far away and were never coming back, and that parents, my sister, and I were going to sleep in this room called a garage where my aunt used to put her cars but now there are beds. The first photo I took in America My parents, my sister, and I had just been picked up by my dad’s family at the airport. I was wearing a stiff plastic headband that tugged at my scalp but managed to feminize a bit my dull hair which had been cut short like a boy’s. I had thrown a massive fit at the salon, especially at the moment when the hairdresser scraped her razor along the nape of my neck. Later my mom would explain that she didn’t know when would be the next time I could get a haircut, that was why I had to endure looking like a boy. Over the years, I would closely study that photo of my family and my dad’s family at LAX. There was my uncle, my grandpa, and my aunt’s family, including my cousins Lucy and Sophie. Lucy was smiling broadly and Sophie wore a mischievous sideways glance, as if to foreshadow the legacy of biting, hitting, and hair-pulling she would later inflict on my toddler sister. As for my parents, I don’t have any post-Vietnam recollection of them looking as radiant as they did in that photo. It wasn’t so much their well-rested youth that was foreign to me. I wasn’t sure what I was seeing. Was it merely the combination of brazen optimism and wide-eyed alertness? It was something in their expressions, something which conveyed the impalpable quality of adult innocence. The first word I learned in America When we arrived at my aunt’s house for the first time, two things happened. One, my sister sniffled and sat down on a plastic blue stool in the living room. Two, within seconds Sophie pushed her off and yelled,

SPACES THE COLLECTIVE VOICE VOLUME X ISSUE II JUNE 2017 “No! You will get the chair sick.” My dad’s family laughed and insisted that of course, my sister was welcome to sit in the chair. Sophie scrunched up her face and, verging on the brink of a fit, insisted that she couldn’t. And so the adults relented in her favor, as they would in the future, even as my mom showed them the bloody scratch marks on my sister’s face. Kids will behave as kids, they explained. As for me, I would never protest hard enough whenever Sophie terrorized my little sister. I too wanted a spot in that plastic stool. This was my first lesson on the capacity of humans to be cruel when it came to territorial matters, and my own complicity when it came to my desire for inclusion.

We went to the garage where we were to live for very low rent until my parents could afford their own

place. My grandma showed me my bed, which had pink sheets with wands, tiaras, and the word “PRINCESS” printed all over them. She explained that “princess” was the English word for công chúa. “In my eyes,” she told me, “All my granddaughters are princesses.” The first toy I had in America She wore a frilly bonnet and a white onesie. She came with a plastic bottle. As I turned her on her back, her eyelids slowly closed, and when I turned her upright, she was awake again. When I picked her up, she wailed like a baby robot. When I pressed on her stomach, she wailed like a baby robot. When I accidentally dropped her down the stairs, she wailed like a baby robot. My mom’s friends had taken me to the theme park and gotten me a battery-powered baby doll. I used to dread those trips because we always had to sneak out the back door or else my cousins would find out and my grandpa would yell at my mom. Then we’d return home and Lucy would be mad at me for a day. “Waahhh! Waahhh! Waahhh!” My grandpa finally snapped from where he was sitting at the dining room table. He walked down to the garage. I stared silently at him, doll in arm, shame flushed all over the face. “Do you know that Grandpa hates that damn doll of yours? I hate it.” I knew. To this day I have contemplated why he hated it so much. I knew he hated my mom. I knew he hated the side effects of us living here. I knew he hated a lot of the things that I did, perhaps even me. I had forgotten to flush the toilet once and henceforth, despite my record flushing, he would complain that my excrement lingered and smelled. After we moved, his love for me grew, my love for him grew. Maybe he had simply resented me before, the product of my parent’s union, which had delayed my dad’s entry to the United States. Maybe his love for my two cousins had been so deep that he couldn’t love anybody else who shared their space. My aunt

SPACES THE COLLECTIVE VOICE VOLUME X ISSUE II JUNE 2017 cleaned my grandparents’ room last year and found a box of handmade cards collected over the years. Of the countless cards they received from all six granddaughters over the years, they had only kept the ones from Lucy and Sophie. When I woke up the next morning, I realized that my doll had gone missing. The first cheeseburger I had in America Lucy’s dad came home with McDonald’s after work. Lucy didn’t want the cheeseburger, so her dad gave it to me. I took it reluctantly, because I knew I hated bread. I only wanted the meat inside. I tried taking out the bread bun, but everything was stuck together. A fat slab of yellow cheese in the middle made the sandwich gooey like a string of boogers. I took a bite. Oh, my god. Little pungent and sour pieces, all over my mouth. Blech! I gagged. Disgusting. Not everything in America was better, after all. The first kiss I received in America

I was the tallest girl in the first grade. Rotsen was second-tallest. We went to the bathroom together at

recess. She wanted us to share a stall and take turns. After we were done she giggled and whispered, “You look like a boy.” Americans, she explained, kissed on the lips. “Do you want to try kissing on the lips?”

I did. We each leaned closer to the other and pressed our lips tightly together. No open mouth, no

pucker, just pressed lips, for some length of time. Her lips were dry and scaly like mine. Did I enjoy it then? I don’t think I felt any particular way about it. I simply found it intriguing that Americans kissed on the lips. It didn’t matter how little English I knew or how few friends I had; I always liked school at that age. I thought my classmates were fun. Second only to Nickelodeon television, they taught me most of the things I knew about America. The first friend I made in America I was sitting cross-legged on the cool, stony driveway of a stranger’s house. I thought I had walked some mean distance, but in reality it couldn’t have been more than three blocks away. I was fuming with anger. “I’m not going back,” I staunchly told myself, “I’m not going back.” They’ll be sorry. As an act of revenge, Sophie had spread toothpaste all over a stuffed bear my mom’s friend had just given me. Clamoring for justice, I went to my grandma, the same grandma who had shamed me for playing in Lucy and Sophie’s backyard even after I had resolved the argument with Lucy in which I told her I wished she

SPACES THE COLLECTIVE VOICE VOLUME X ISSUE II JUNE 2017 hadn’t been born. Accordingly, I thought my grandma would like to be notified of this recent crime against me. Instead, she said, “Don’t you dare come to me again for matters like this.” So I tossed my slain bear into the trash and decided never to return to this horrible place. Sitting on the driveway beneath the blue sky, I was beginning to feel quite serene. Several minutes passed. My mom came around the corner and took a seat beside me. I didn’t know it then, but she had just been trailing several yards behind me. She said nothing, just held my hand as we both sat on somebody else’s driveway. A few days later, my dad took me to Toys ‘R’ Us and told me I could pick any bear I wanted from the stuffed animals section. There were primarily white bears dressed in pink tutus and coffee-brown bears dressed in bows and suits. I chose a rather large, saggy bear that someone had dropped on the ground, whose color was an odd beige that wasn’t quite brown and whose coat already looked worn and matted due to its excessive shagginess. My college friends have remarked that Beary looks very worn down. Is it because he had been loved for so many years? In fact, I tell them, he had always been quite an ugly bear. That night, I slept with Beary for the first time and told him about that morning when some boys at school laughed at the way I said “preschool” like “pri-SKOOL.” I didn’t want to be laughed at, but more importantly, I wanted to sound American. And so, in total darkness, and the company of a nonjudgmental bear, I contorted my mouth to make the sounds that I wanted to hear. “PREES-skool… PREES-skool.” On firsts

More than a decade has passed and I remember fewer things from two years ago than I remember

from my first year in America, which remains vivid in my memory.

I am not sure whether to attribute my memory to the effect of immigration. Immigration has changed

my life trajectory, splitting my ongoing reality away from the alternate reality of a parallel universe in which I grew up in Vietnam. Amy and Em My, we shared the same childhood up to the age of six, but since then have led entirely different lives. Immigration has shaped my vision; I had been a blank slate, mute and receptive, and thus my surrounding environment became the model for how I came to see the world, human nature in particular.

Yet I try to make sense of the first word, first toy, first burger, first kiss, first companion because I know

that they carry something separate on their own. Sometimes I convince myself that in moving, a new part of me had been born. In all of their particularities, my firsts provided me with the context from the life which I had entered. In all of their materiality, they made up the texture of the landscape where I had become a part.

SPACES THE COLLECTIVE VOICE VOLUME X ISSUE II JUNE 2017

What Cannot Long Be Hidden1

George Orwell once said: “In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act,” And with the amount of bullshit I hear on the daily, I feel like we stand to benefit from that kind of revolution. But where does truth reside? Where do I begin? … … The truth is… in the ridges of my palm, The scars on my arm, What difference does it make where these things came from? It’s in the ink on my back, The infinite fact, That when we feel most is when we feel lack, It’s in the curls of my hair, The beads I wear, The ghost of heritage at whom I stare, It’s in the smoke I inhale, The dimensions I sail, When I close my eyes and my mind reads the braille, It’s in the checkout line, The box of wine, The soulless magazines with celebrity sex headlines, It's in the chirps of the morning doves who perch on the dead tree not the blooming one, In the waning thirst for life that still wakes me up today, In the drugs I thought would get me closer, In the way my frantic brain dissects my heart just so I can watch that fucking blood flowing, It's in how I dance alone to Steel Pulse and ponder how the winner writes the history but--like Shelby V. Holder--sometimes the truth resides in the minority report2, It's in the NSA monitoring us when we jack off and shit and say "fuck the government," In the pine cones I kick on my way to the corner of Camino Ruiz & Mira Mesa Boulevard, In the raggedy man on the 237 bus who's yelling about 9/11, In the Muslim girl wearing a hijab whom I sit next to and chat with about books and aspirations, It's in the sunny days on campus with empty grass fields and a library full of people, In the way students walk with tunnel-vision towards the green light at the end of the East Egg dock3, 1

“Three things cannot long be hidden: the sun, the moon, and the truth” – Siddhartha Gautama “The sad irony of today’s decision lies in its utter failure to grasp why the [Voting Rights Act] has proven effective... Throwing out preclearance when it has worked and is continuing to work to stop discriminatory changes is like throwing away your umbrella in a rainstorm because you are not getting wet” – Ruth Bader Ginsburg on the Shelby V. Holder decision 3 “Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgiastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that's no matter — tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther…” – F. Scott Fitzgerald 2

SPACES THE COLLECTIVE VOICE VOLUME X ISSUE II JUNE 2017 In how I smile when I see one of them look up not ahead, It's in the way the clouds endlessly, flawlessly fly over the cliffs at Gliderport, In the wind underneath the chutes of wealthy La Jollans with the money and time to float around all day like Thoreau on a lake, It's in the night sky and the way the stars don't shine over cities, In the pen which communicates words across time so I can play Charlie Parker and have Nietzsche and T.S. Eliot on the lyrics, In the dream where I whisper "amor fati4" to the patient who's etherized upon the table5, It's in the color of my skin and the assumptions people will make because of it, It's in my hesitation to exploit affirmative action and in the pubescent voices of middle schoolers who'd call me a terrorist, It’s in government print that so often labels admirable men as such, It's in the bullets in the chests of Martin Luther King and Che Guevara, In Chelsea Manning’s jail cell and in Edward Snowden's Rubik's Cube, In Allen Ginsberg's beard and Abraham Lincoln's top hat, It's in a casual letter from Thomas Shannon to Keith Alexander about economic espionage, It's in the bombs our military drops from the sky onto Middle Eastern villages, In the dollars of mine which keep that terror going, In the eyes of the Iraqi father whose son was "collateral damage," In the unwavering hands of a suicide bomber who watched his own home burn, It's in the guns we cling to hoping for safety, In the graphs which show a discouraging correlation, It’s in the four-year-old son who accidentally shot his mother, It’s in the acquittals of Eric Garner's murderers, In the gold badges and green paper that shield guilty men from justice, It's in the basements of banks in New York City, In the freedom of Wall Street to fuck the poor with no retribution, to tank the world’s economy and bankrupt millions of Americans and then get bailed out by the same people they economically raped, It’s in Brock Turner’s three-fucking-month sentence, It's in the reality TV version of Hitler, who wants to make this country great again by getting all the “bad people” to go, It’s in the distress of the Latina mother in Arizona who drives her kids to school instead of letting them walk, after hearing a loud pair of lips label them rapists and murderers, It’s in the dejection of the Persian teen who’s ostracized by his peers because his name is Hussein, It’s in the way the news media plays fucking court stenographer as a man runs his mouth off about how Muslims need to be banned from the country until we “figure out what’s going on,” It’s in how Omar Mateen shooting up a gay nightclub is obviously terrorism but—according to FBI Director James Comey—Dylan Roof shooting up a black church isn’t, 4

“My formula for human greatness is amor fati: that one wants nothing to be different, not in the future, not in the past, not for all eternity. Not only to endure what is necessary, still less to conceal it—all idealism is falseness in the face of necessity—but to love it” – Frederick Nietzsche 5 “Let us go then, you and I, When the evening is spread out against the sky Like a patient etherized upon a table;” – T.S. Eliot

SPACES THE COLLECTIVE VOICE VOLUME X ISSUE II JUNE 2017 It’s in firehoses and rubber bullets battering and bloodying the bodies of Native Americans as our nation feasts in celebration of a fabricated harmony that never was, It's in the knife I hold to my neck as I gaze upon it all, In the knowledge that if I gouge out my own eyes it’ll just be one less pair that sees this shit for what it is, And as I open myself up to the whole truth of the world, I try my best to love it, to accept it, Yet I cannot help but hate it... They say the truth shall set me free, But it feels like it's pressing down on me, Holding me to the ground more effectively even than gravity, No, the truth alone sets no one free, knowing is just awakening, And—like when the sunlight streams through our blinds in the morning— Step two is... Getting the fuck out of bed. PRAVIN WILKINS 10/14/16

SPACES THE COLLECTIVE VOICE VOLUME X ISSUE II JUNE 2017

INSIDE BLACK AND WHITE DICHOTOMY JOURAL ENTRIES BY JACQUELINE THE LAVENDER-WALLED ROOM FORGOTTEN SOLDIER WESTERN MEDICINE THIS IS MY VOICE FIRSTS WHAT CANNOT LONG BE HIDDEN

Thank you to all who made this possible. The Collective Voice 2016-2017 Courtney Loi Maha Zubaidi