voices
an asian american literary & arts magazine
generations
spring 2020
letter from the editor Dear Reader, In my family, the oldest always take care of the youngest. When I was young, my eldest cousins took care of my sister and me, while our parents got a muchneeded break from us. My cousins fed us, played with us, and took us on wild adventures. In return, my sister and I would jump in our cousins’ beds and wake them up at ungodly hours, not sure why any college student would want to sleep in past noon. Today, I’m the overworked college student, and my cousins have tireless children of their own. It’s my turn to take care of the youngest ones—to feed them, entertain them, and make sure they feel safe and cared for. I have learned that Asian America is built through generations, not just of family, but of histories, diasporas, and love, as well. I first stepped foot on Tufts campus five years ago. Older generations of Asian Americans took me under their wing and taught me how to find my own voice when I was lost and without direction. Throughout my time at school, I have tried my best to pass down this knowledge to younger students. I have seen an entire generation of my friends and colleagues grow from apprehensive firstyears to confident college graduates. Admittedly, I was scared to return to Tufts for my fifth year, not sure what I would do without the community I had grown accustomed to. But I found that my community hadn’t left; rather it lived on in the friendships I had made along the way. I found that in my efforts to take care of younger generations, they in turn took care of me. Over my five years at Tufts, I have seen Voices grow and flourish in its efforts to best represent the stories of Asian and Asian American students at Tufts. As Editor in Chief, I am proud to say that this year, Voices received more submissions than any year past, and we have published our longest magazine to date. I am inspired by the many voices of Asians and Asian Americans who have captured the heart of generations lost and found. This year, we are faced with the realities of COVID-19, a global and racialized pandemic, and the structural and racist ramifications it brings. I am so proud of my entire staff and their resolve in working through the hardships and taking care of one another during these precarious times. As I sit on my bed at home, I wonder What will Asian America look like in a week from now? In a month? In a year? I wonder How will generations of Asian Americans organize, radicalize, and take care of our most vulnerable? I believe Voices serves an important role in bringing us together to share these stories and find joy in our solitude. I believe it will give us voice even in times when the world feels silent. With much care,
Pat Mahaney
voices: generations MISSION STATEMENT Voices is a submissions-based literary and arts magazine published annually by the Tufts Asian Student Coalition. We are a Pan-Asian student-led organization seeking to celebrate, educate, and mobilize toward progressive change. Recognizing the multiplicity of global diasporas, TASC aims to create a space to reflect on our collective histories and lived experiences. We publish Voices annually because our realities are inextricable from the wellbeing of communities of color beyond our campus gates—whether they be a few train stops or an ocean away. EDITOR IN CHIEF Pat Mahaney ‘20 FRONT & BACK COVER sumi ink by Emma Ishida
CREATIVE DIRECTOR Maria Fong ‘21 LEAD WRITING EDITOR Issay Matsumoto ‘21
INSIDE COVER collage by Kira Lauring and Kelly Tan
2 | VOICES
EDITORS & DESIGNERS Matthew Cho ‘23 Erin de Guzman Berja ‘20 Megan de Guzman Berja ‘23 Annie Huang ‘21 Lina Huang ‘22 Emma Ishida ‘20 Simon Jiang ‘23 Jessie Lan ‘21 Joanne Lau ‘22 Kira Lauring ‘20 Nora Li ‘21 Yumei Lin ‘22 Ansel Link ‘23 Richard Nakatsuka ‘22 Britnie Nguyen ‘23 Hannah Noh ‘23 Madeleine Oh ‘22 Varshini Ramanathan ‘23 Kelly Tan ‘22 Esther Tzau ‘21 Maddie Wong ‘22 Juliette Wu ‘22 Sohara Zafar ‘20
We thank Sandra Leung J’81, for her generous financial support of Voices, which made possible the print publication of “Voices: Generations” during this spring of many upheavals. We dedicate this special issue to Professor Emeritus Jean Wu, for her vision and mentorship which have inspired many. We thank previous generations for taking care of us. We thank those of future generations who might read this and remember our voices.
3 | VOICES
table of contents 6
Two Little Girls Min Seo Jeong
17 Banquet Maria Fong
7
Smurf Huangs Heather Huang
18 Undertones Priya Skelly
8
MobileHome Isabella Kiser
19 Mutability Anonymous
9
Good Boy, Anak Pat Mahaney
20 Flowerboy Keith Truong
10 Of Ripe Plums and Missing Syllables Britnie Nguyen 12 한복 Jen Kim
21 Do the Right Thing Anh-Tuan Le 22 Losing Identity Anna Yuen
13 Soju Bottle Madeleine Oh
23 你返唔返嚟? Are You Coming Back? Anonymous
14 Arbitrary Keepsakes Juliette Wu
24 Dear Mami Anonymous
15 Conversations with Family Jessie Lan
25 Untitled 余家豪
16 Cold Milk Ghazal Akbota Saudabayeva
4 | VOICES
ALUMNI VOICES (p. 26-33) 26 Sandra Leung J’81 28 Mai Du ‘99 30 Passing Notes Ana Sofía Amieva-Wang ‘19 & Celeste Teng ‘19 32 Death in Diaspora Wayne Yeh ‘16
47 A Glimpse at What It Means to Be Gorgeous Ian Nguyen (Seerung) 50 Longing Ansel Link 51 Photo Across the Sea Issay Matsumoto
34 Moab Kira Lauring
52 Things Still Happen at Home When You’re Not There Maddie Wong
36 The Shattered Glass Moumina Khan
53 Full Circle Theo Nunez
37 Empty Geometry Nasrin Lin
54 Wai Gong, Mei Mei & Wai Po Jiamin Li
38 What We Inherit Amy Chu
54 Something That Feeds Kelly Tan
40 What They’ve Taught Me Neal Chan
56 姥姥 Martin Gao
41 Unfinished Projects Elizabeth Hom
57 Portraits of Bà Ngọai Thao Ho
42 To My Mother’s Mother, To My お祖母さん Maxine Bell
58 Nana’s Poem Trina Sanyal
44 Creating Ritual: Colonial Unknowing in Asian America Emma Ishida and Sung-Min Kim 45 Collections Esther Tzau 46 Sitting Through Time Sung-Min Kim
59 姥姥家 Nora Li 60 Felicity Gifts Nuha Shaikh 61 Mano Po Florence Almeda
5 | VOICES
two little girls BY MIN SEO JEONG Apple Banana Camera documenting your first words Dreading already the day you would grow up, thinking that if Eternity could be now it would be in your short-legged waddles From our first encounter you were a Gift already too precious to hold in my Hands. And yet I couldn’t even say the words I love you instead I found myself Judging your every action Keeping you contained within my walls Limiting the directions in which you walked to block you from your Mistakes that were actually mine Needing a second chance through you. Wishing that I could turn back time Once and do it all differently. Because this is what I had meant to do: Protect you from everything, from people who would dismiss you as Quiet when you had so much to say, Relieve you of the weight placed on your Slouched shoulders and let you lift your chest, Teach you how to Unlearn the lies and claim your truths. But from the Very moment I met you my Words began to fail and I all but Exiled myself from Your life. And now our paths keep moving like Zigzags, our lines overlapping but always only for a moment.
6 | VOICES
smurf huangs
risograph print by Heather Huang 8.5”x11”
7 | VOICES
mobilehome
fiber by Isabella Kiser
8 | VOICES
good boy, anak
stop-motion animation by Pat Mahaney
9 | VOICES
of ripe plums and missing syllables BY BRITNIE NGUYEN I was the center of attention, according to my mother. When I was younger, I giggled at the stories of the curlyhaired, wide-eyed, shielded-fromthe-world child: myself. Engulfed by the masses, I was caressed by hands of which belonged to loved ones. Relatives. Strangers. Perhaps I descended into her narratives too deeply to compensate for having no recollection of these events, falling for them until the line between fantasy and reality coalesced into one. I was the author of a fantasy: lost in constructing edges and ridges, wrinkles and limbs, entangled in the grasps of artificial comfort. In this fictional story, I loved. The only evidence I was offered of these half-truths lied within the confines of my mother’s photo albums. They were well hidden, tucked away in closets and scrambled all in a big black mesh bag like Tetris pieces. Perhaps my mom didn’t cherish the pictures of her home, Vietnam. They resided on the cold cement floor, like fallen fruits besides their tree. They probably knew they were not of any importance to me too, rotting in quiet compliance. When I did seek after those leather books, they were ransacked out, 10 | VOICES
plucked with no second thoughts or careful concern. With every flip, each page was like reconciling with an old friend, or rather discovering an unpleasant truth. I felt like I should’ve known every story behind each picture like the back of my hand: every ridge and edge like my own wrinkles and limbs. Instead, I was getting out an ink pen again and writing chapter by chapter, piecing culture together word for word, naming uncles and aunts I never knew. Among the photos, I came across one that puzzled me the most. There was that curly-haired baby, smiling wide and toothlessly in a man’s arms. There were a total of five hands in the frame, my own two hands clenched by my sides. His two hands encircling me and one lone, unknown hand cutting in from the left side of the frame, resting atop my right shoulder, adorned with bracelets and rings. Seeing the face of that man, I believe I understood love. In frayed corners and missing memories there it prevailed in the most obvious form. His eyes crinkled as he looked down on me, grin wide and mimicking mine. His thumb was the size of my entire hand but he still held me with both arms. I was both the center and not the center all at once, cozy in white fleece clothes.
The photo elicited mixed emotions: I was overwhelmed with this adoration, I could feel it through the film; I was awed, thankful for him for reasons unknown; but mostly, I was ashamed. I knew he loved me, but ultimately, I did not know whose arms I was in. I did not know if he was an *ông, chú, or a bác. I will never see the face behind that fifth hand. The photo was my own personal muse. The ink pen started to jot down letters again, but I put a stop to it short. Instead of writing mindlessly, I tell my mother that it’s a dream of mine to go visit back home: to put names to the faces I never knew, to let them see how big those frail hands grew, to learn of their worries and sorrows. But, she merely scoffs, and with a single “Go alone” my wishes disperse too far from my reach, like dandelion florets I have once blown. When my mother gets calls from Vietnam, her eyes light up, her voice pipes louder, and she talks from hours on end. Urging me to speak, I would greet the other end with a wavering accent. I pray that the conversation wouldn’t advance further, silently sitting, uncertain of which words to say next. Occasionally, I still try delving into unspoken realms, pleading her to take advantage of life while it mimics the ripe plums that once grew in our backyard. I was eight, eagerly reaching up to fruits seven feet above, while my mother balanced on a step stool. The uneven Earth below awaited her rearrival. That plum tree—with no photographs, no sketches, no loose fragments—too, remains a distant memory now.
While envisioning those red plums again, aching neck forty-five degrees, arms lifted above my head, I realized she kept the photos concealed not because they were insignificant, like the dirt that lied beneath her feet, but because that dirt is as essential to this Earth and life as those photos are to her. The remnants of her childhood and her foundations remained within the bindings of a leather photo book and I could only guess the missing chapters were hidden well in her heart. My mother stepped away from the only home she knew in order to bestow me with one she was only able to dream of as a child. I can only stare down at these photographs now, wondering if my Vietnamese is enough—the Vietnamese that embodies a jigsaw, made of loose accents and missing vowels. I did not know whether this disparaged the name tag I’ve placed on myself or whether my roots had the right to hold its head up high when I knew it was feigning faux confidence. With such an essential part of me missing, I did not know if I knew myself. Faces I never have been able to identify live on through my mother’s replies after every sheepish “Who is this?” Knowing I was loved becomes enough. I place the pen down, musing if fairy tales could come true.
*Vietnamese pronouns to address males according to their age relative to you/your family.
11 | VOICES
한복 BY JEN KIM Hanbok (noun): a traditional gown, sacred layers of silky fabric, assembled in steps I do not remember The last time I wore a 한복 was in Seoul, but ask me when and my mind draws a blank. It might have been at school during a special assembly when I was six or seven, or perhaps during a family get together. The only date I can be sure of is October 23, 1998, my first birthday celebration. One day last October, halfway through “Asian America,” a class I took with Professor Jean Wu, I asked Mom to send me more baby pictures. “What age?” she asked. “Any age!” I replied. She sent me some photos that I had seen before, so I told her as much, and over the next two days she sent me over 70 new-old pictures that I had never seen before. For a moment, I was upset that she had been keeping these memories hidden from me for so long. There was so much I could learn about my own life from looking at them. The ones that captivated me most were those of me and my mother at my first birthday celebration. We are both wearing 한복s in vibrant shades of lime green and royal blue, and are surrounded by tall plates of fruit, a cake, some tulips in a gold vase. The tradition is called 돌잔치, or 첫돌잔치 for the one-year-olds. During the ceremony, children are presented with and encouraged to choose one or two of several different symbolic objects: a bowl of noodles for a long life, money for wealth and success, a calligraphy brush for intellectual curiosity, among other choices. This fortune-telling activity is supposed to predict the outcome of the child’s life, revealing what their future will hold. According to my mother, I chose the money, but she isn’t absolutely certain. Wealth is something I am accustomed to, something I have always known the feeling of, something I do not have to wish for. Instead, I dream about a future in which I can feel the silky sleeves of a 한복 caressing my arms, tie the sash at my waist exactly how it should be tied, and let everything fall softly into place.
12 | VOICES
“Soju Bottle” digital media by Madeleine Oh
arbitrary keepsakes
mixed media (ink on paper & digital) by Juliette Wu
14 | VOICES
conversations with family BY JESSIE LAN Our hands fold along the creases Holding the leaf tight Press down, More. Deft hands, sturdy twine, wrap around. A dense bundle. It’s strung up like A line of lights, or a bunch of grapes. Hard, pointed, cone grapes. zong zi Big aunt films me as my fingers stumble over each other. My other aunts glance up from their work, only occasionally, stringing And stringing. These are the folds my grandmother used to make— Now they are in her hands. Her hands are creased, skin wrinkled Pen shakes shoulders follow Or is it the other way around? Then a laugh, almost maniacal; The noise startles me. A choking, desperate quality I have to catch my breath, twice. Draw, I pushed her. Did I push too much? No, hearty— when I meet her face reassurance comes.
15 | VOICES
cold milk ghazal BY AKBOTA SAUDABAYEVA When dawn reaches its highest hover, the clouds spill like cold milk, staining the blue tablecloth, seeping in and soaking the satins in cold milk. Mind-chill Medford midwinter moves at the pace of murky metaphor. The air, jagged, raws my rosed cheeks and coats my eyes in cold milk. I boil the water in an orange room, peering out at the blueness of Boston. My throat, itchy from speaking stupid synonyms. I drink butter with hot milk. I miss my mother. Steady hand, she forgets when steeping black tea that I take mine raw, needing not the white pollutants of cold milk. A ritual: she refills to the rim, she pours in cream, she blooms the snowdrops. My nose scrunches up at the reflection: a black background and swirls of cold milk. People mistake us for twins: same heart, same skin, same scrunch of rabbit nose. She speaks in tongues and leaves me in the corner, anxious like spilled, cold milk. Nomadic me, I move and settle. I stay and sit. I watch the earth and wade forward to traverse topaz-blue waters, to return. Wear shapka and socks, she says. Are you cold? Milk is different at Ineshka’s house; cow and grass meet the tongue. Everything lost is found. The cashier with warm hands stares at you coldly. Here’s the milk. Hey, how do you say your name the right way? My mom says it the right way. Her warm voice on my ear: Janam Menam, Akbota. Comfort in the night’s cold milk.
16 | VOICES
banquet
colored pencil on paper by Maria Fong 20� diameter
17 | VOICES
undertones
screenprints by Priya Skelly 11”x15”
18 | VOICES
mutability BY ANONYMOUS The longer I spend away from my family, the more I forget that they are a little ridiculous, for there is no stiffness in tradition. It was through the absurd seriousness of my mother and grandparents’ daily evaluation of their morning coffee that I learned to appreciate the particularities of the drip filter and foaming filter kaapi. My father’s soapboxing taught me some sort of understanding of the tenets of Hindu philosophy, if only enough to know enough to argue against him. It was no different than my parents’ esoteric dinner-table conversations or my grandfather’s unabashed excitement when I learned trigonometric proofs. They were all just the quirks of the people who raised me, the values that seeped into my brain. And like any teenager, I fought it. I dragged my feet before my Indian classical singing lessons week after week. I rolled my eyes at the extra math packets foisted upon me when I began to struggle with algebra in middle school. And to both, my parents relented, because music and math alike brought them such an instinctive joy that they couldn’t bear for me to hate it. They’d given these bedrocks of their lives to me with revering hands and passion-bright eyes—filled with the hope that I’d understand, as they did, their fundamental beauty. The math I came around to, somewhere between my indignation at the 1:5 gender ratio in my calc class
and the smug satisfaction at being able to solve an integral my grandfather couldn’t. But I absolutely never could learn to stomach the singing. Even after I quit, no lingering fondness remained. I complained when my father refused to turn off the classical CDs in the car and sealed my mouth shut during temple visits. I learned my heritage from the smell of incense and the glow of vallakku and the greasy hands of cooking holiday sweets, but I sank it into my blood with the lighthearted debates and the coffee and the appreciation I finally learned for the fundamental beauty of things. So I really felt no need for music. And it’s only now that I’m grown that I wish I’d learned to sing. It’s only now that ethnic is cool and there are culture shows and identity centers and identity—the search, the shame—is not meant to be sheepishly, haphazardly stuffed into the corners of my ribcage but carved and polished and displayed. It’s only now, when I can feel that deep pure part of me being distorted by my presentation of it to the outside world, that I wish I’d learned to sing. There is no stiffness in tradition. There is no stiffness in tradition. But I feel it, the moment I try to speak meaning into these intrinsic and immutable parts of me. The moment I force heritage into song and song into heritage. The words dissolve into sickly-sweet falsehood, heavy-handed garam masala, turmeric added with a measuring spoon. 19 | VOICES
flowerboy
acrylic on matte photo paper by Keith Truong 17”x44” 20 | VOICES
“Do The Right Thing” digital by Anh-Tuan Le
losing identity BY ANNA YUEN I had spent over eight years with my Cantonese name prior to moving to the States, where I began using my English name. Four years ago, during my junior year in high school, my parents changed my English name to my legal name. Now my school documents and my passport all use my English name, except for my Hong Kong citizenship card. It seemed just a natural progression to switch to an English name, as some of my legal documents had my English name and some my Cantonese name. It would avoid conflict with my college applications if I had changed my name. I argued with myself that it was convenient to have one consistent legal name. Last winter break, I officially updated my Hong Kong citizenship identification card and it sparked a conversation between my parents and me, again, over keeping my Cantonese name or my English name. We ultimately decided to use my English name for convenience to match my U.S. passport name. This prompted me to revisit my past hesitations between choosing which name to use—both legally and in informal, everyday interactions with friends and family. On a few occasions in social media and in conversations, I’ve seen and heard other people’s reasons for keeping their ethnic name or switching to being called by their ethnic name, as opposed to adopting or retaining a conventional English name. In these conversations, I’ve felt subtly attacked for changing my own name to my English one. 22 | VOICES
In doing so, I’ve betrayed my ethnic background, they seem to say. I feel the pressure and shame of losing what my parents and family have passed on to me. I have come to realize that as an immigrant, I no longer identify as Asian but rather as an Asian American, constantly straddling between two identities. Being referred to and treated differently by my family compared to friends is a large part of who I am. My friends know me by my English name, but it is my family who call me by my Cantonese name that understands, and shapes, the weight of its meaning. It is indicative of the struggles I have had in immigrating to the States and being unable to completely turn back to my old identity. So as I proceeded into the immigration office, I was pleasantly surprised that they did not ask me for a U.S. identification to verify my name, and directly left my Cantonese name on the ID. A sigh of relief overcame me as I realized the last legal trace of my Cantonese identity had not been erased. I was still legally known by both my English and Cantonese names, and by holding both, without turning away from either, I could still hold a connection to my previous life.
你返唔返嚟? BY ANONYMOUS 你返唔返嚟? (Are you coming back?) This is the one question that is always on the mind of a person from Hong Kong. It’s almost as customary as a greeting, a 你好嗎? A 喂, 你最近 點呀? Put any two of us together in a room and it’ll inevitably come up, I promise you. Probably not. Too many bad memories here. There really is no place like HK, but I can’t see myself living here when I’m older...Think I’m going to try moving abroad. There’s no future here—there is no HK anymore. * I’d always been sure that I’d go back, but sometimes, the thought of leaving does run through my head. And as of late, I’ve been entertaining that idea more and more. Sometimes I get the feeling that I’m fitting in here in America. For the first time in my life, I can flawlessly communicate in the dominant language, never finding myself unable to translate my thoughts into words. My Cantonese-speaking barber tells me “其實你好似個ABC” (you actually seem like an ABC). I meet an alumnus from my international school living in Boston with his wife, and I feel like I too, could actually live here. Sometimes, it feels like I could have grown up here—like I was here all along. The pangs of the half-here, half-
there identity I’ve felt my entire life are quieter than they were before. I still miss home, but I miss it less. But then I find myself scrambling between classes to visit every CVS and Walgreens in a two mile radius, struggling to find surgical facemasks and hand sanitizer to send back to my parents. I’m terrified when professors make casually racist remarks about the coronavirus, but also angry at myself for not breaking the silence that I thought I had unlearned. Not that this wasn’t a new feeling. Last semester, I found myself unable to focus on class as I kept up with the protests back home, witnessing from afar the spaces I used to frequent fill with tear gas, uprooted bricks, and police blockades—old haunts made unfamiliar. I struggled to hold back tears on the T while watching videos of volunteer medics crumple to the ground outside blocked-off metro stations. I spiralled as I realized that I had nobody on this campus with a similar background to talk about it with. In fact, not even to talk—just to grieve together. In moments like these, my foreign status is fully highlighted, and that dormant floaty feeling reemerges. A friend once asked if I thought that my feeling of unbelonging would ever end. I’ve slowly been learning to live with it, but I don’t think that it will—or can—ever be resolved. But maybe that’s besides the point. For me, where home is is clearly defined. But what home is—about that, I don’t think I’ll ever be sure.
23 | VOICES
dear mami BY ANONYMOUS I know you don’t approve of my excessive volunteer work in Chinatown non-profits, saying that academics must come first. But the reason for my commitment to the community is because of our move from the cramped but homey Chinatown apartment to the predominantly White Charlestown. The new setting was so different. The people didn’t look or talk like us, and soon my Toisanese dulled. Your friends always pick on me for speaking like a jook sing. I know the aunties are only teasing me, but I cannot help but feel inauthentic and less than. However, my work in Chinatown has kept me grounded in my cultural identity, being the only opportunity to practice Toisanese and to re-familiarize myself with the rich history and traditions that you grew up with in Toisan. The community centers easily became a second home where I felt more comfortable than in Charlestown. But you and I both know that Chinatown looks different than before. We’re in a gentrification crisis. One day you visit your friend’s apartment, and the next day there’s an Airbnb sign posted. Corporations are invading homes and evicting immigrant residents, dismantling the neighborhood’s vibrant culture and displacing those who have paved the way for this enclave. Chinatown is not Chinatown without its people. The building down the street from our old apartment is now awaiting demolition. To honor the building’s history, I organized a mural project with the nonprofit organization Asian CDC. The mural depicts the many eras the building has lived through: the Combat Zone, the garment factories, the elevated orange line, and Sun-Kong Market. In each of these eras, the neighborhood remained resilient and fought to protect their space in Boston. It is necessary to build upon their legacy to ensure that future generations have a Chinatown to call home. When you immigrated here, you had no choice but to work at the electronic hardware factory. Like many other immigrants, mami, you exhausted yourself so that you could feed deedee and ngo. Your hard work paid off and today you work at a job that pays above the minimum wage thanks to a Chinatown family association that recommended you the position 20 years ago. The community has continuously supported you even as you grew indifferent to the gentrification destroying it. We have the obligation to continue preserving the places where we work, live, and play. Chinatown is a historic home that was built on blood, sweat and tears by our people and I will not sit idly and watch it slowly disappear before my kids are able to eat the same nai wong bao and woon hoon menh as I did when I was younger. Especially in this pivotal time, mami, I urge you to support me in this fight. With all my love, 晓琳 24 | VOICES
untitled BY 余家豪 I grew up in Los Angeles’s Chinatown, living in an apartment shared by a tightknit community of refugees, migrants, and other immigrant families. I have come to understand that the evenings I spent listening to Chinese proverbs and learning how to play Chinese chess were more than activities done for leisure—it was how the stories of my Chinese culture were woven into the fabric of my Asian American identity. As an only child, the children in my apartment became my siblings; the parents of those children, my aunts and uncles. While my mother worked late shifts as a seamstress, I spent most nights with the families next door. I understood early on that each family clung on to each other, pursuing a better life for their children with unwavering hope and determination. My apartment spoke to me about the hardships in the lives of immigrants, but also about their rich cultures and traditions: meals are to be enjoyed with people; songs are to be sung without consideration of respectability; unspoken words are the loudest expression of love. Even though I no longer live in Chinatown, the overarching narratives of triumph and resolve within my greater Asian American collective are still present wherever I go. These narratives are not only measured with reference to the strides that my Asian American community has made in this country—they are found in the wrinkles of my mother’s hands, the creases in the smiles of the elderly women at the park, and the histories that continue to be rewritten, reclaimed, and created to this present day. With these generational narratives that I owe my values and successes to, I hope to dedicate my life towards opening the doors of opportunity for others, just like my Chinatown community has done, for me.
25 | VOICES
ALUMNI VOICES
SANDRA LEUNG J’81 Working on Voices more than 40 years ago, I could not even conceive it would continue to exist today, let alone be an incredibly high quality and important publication. I am simply thrilled. I am grateful to and congratulate all the people who sustained and grew the vision my sister, Debbie Leung J’79, and I had to create a safe space for the Tufts Asian American community to express their “voice” in written and other creative forms. Growing up in Stamford, CT where my dad owned a Chinese restaurant, I had a sense of cultural “differentness.” There were very few Asians and on the rare occasions we passed one another in school hallways, we would avert our eyes from one another. We all wanted to fit in yet I never felt I did. Entering Tufts in the fall of 1977 and meeting other Asian Americans who had similar experiences and who wanted to hang out together changed everything. The Asian House at 17 Latin Way became our haven for cooking our family recipes, studying, socializing and debating anything and everything. My political consciousness grew, particularly on social justice issues. 26 | ALUMNI VOICES
These issues included upholding affirmative action, redress and reparations for Japanese Americans interned during World War II and anti-apartheid activities. I served as president of the Asian Student Club for two years and was determined we needed to do more than host social and cultural events, although these events yielded many benefits. I met Asian students at other universities in Boston through our many disco parties and athletic tournaments organized by the Intercollegiate Chinese Student Social Coalition (ICSSC). I also met students who were more politically focused through the East Coast Asian Student Union (ECASU). The idea of jointly publishing the 1980 edition of Voices was conceived by way of relationships formed through these groups. We felt we could have more impact with a joint publication. I also had a crush on one of the guys from Harvard and really wanted to work with him. I wrote “Nice Chinese Girl” with him in mind. My years at Tufts were truly formative and I am deeply thankful. I went on to law school and then served as an Assistant District Attorney (ADA) in Manhattan where I was the first Asian
American woman hired (in 1984) as an ADA which is ironic since the Manhattan DA’s office is located in the heart of New York’s Chinatown. I am now the Executive Vice President and General Counsel of BristolMyers Squibb Company, a global biopharmaceutical company. Having leadership roles at the Tufts ASC, ICSSC and ECASU certainly helped to shape my career. I am passionate about giving back and mentor many young people. I am an advocate for and speak frequently on diversity and inclusion. I also serve on the Board of the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund. As to my personal life, I dated the guy from Harvard for a while but it didn’t work out. Which turned out to be a good thing because I soon met my husband who encouraged and supported me without reservation to become the best version of myself. We’ve entered our 32nd year of marriage and we have two smart, successful and handsome (IMHO) adult sons who keep us up to speed on technology and fitness.
27 | ALUMNI VOICES
MAI DU ‘99 If your plan is for one year, plant rice. If your plan is for ten years, plant trees. If your plan is for one hundred years, educate children. —Confucius Professor Jean Wu’s tireless advocacy—even in the face of dissent on the Tufts campus—for the necessity of racial awareness altered my relationships to pedagogy and even my own personal experience as an immigrant. My time in her racial and ethnic studies courses, housed in the American Studies Program, was one of my most meaningful and important academic experiences at Tufts. Her notion of education as a change agent as transmitted in her courses “Growing Up Racial/Ethnic” and “Asians in America” sparked a deeper motivation in me to continue my activism work with peers and youth in the Greater Boston Asian American community. Eventually, after having also taken several other life-changing courses taught by Professor Wu, including the most memorable and stimulating course in American Studies, “Race in America,” I went on to acquire my Masters Degree from the Tufts Education Department in General Studies. Though I had no desire to engage in the education path of teaching in traditional classroom settings, through my years at Tufts 28 | ALUMNI VOICES
and having been blessed with enrolling in all of the initial courses offered during Prof Wu’s early years from 1995 to 1999, I eventually learned not just content from her classes but also her approach to linguistically and culturally responsive pedagogy. To this day, the way in which I engage, teach, and mentor the young people around me upholds these basic premises: that I respect my students as whole individuals and spirits, learning and understanding their family and upbringing experience, and, when appropriate and allowed, that I account for the social, historical, racial/ethnic, and political influences around their sense of personal identity, family, and community, and then provide non-judgmental support to them as a whole being. Being a Boston-based student on campus, I was lucky to frequently extend Professor Wu’s classroom discussions to my family and home. I fondly recall a time when, in one of our countless and valuable class reflections, I shared with Jean and the class an exciting philosophical conversation I had with my father about education as a change agent. My father confirmed, “People transform society. Society transforms people.” This resonance of her message through multiple generations made it clear to me that I needed to be on
the same team as Jean and her allies, and continue the work of changing how race is perceived in society. I was grateful to see Jean’s clear footprints on my path; in so many ways she was decades ahead of the game. Even as her ideas found their way into my family discussions, somewhere along the way, Professor Wu also became “Jeanma.” She not only served as chair to my American Studies Honors Thesis committee, but she was also at my wedding. She surprised me at my baby shower, and both she and her lovely mother, Lucy, held my newborn son, Thomas, at Boston’s Beth Israel Deaconess Hospital. While a typical college student may not even remember what she or he had learned in a certain college classroom or even recall the name of a specific professor, my Tufts professor had somehow become my “mother.” Several weeks ago on January 25, 2020, on the Lunar New Year Day of the Year of the Rat, a committee of Professor Wu’s recent and long-time students came together and organized an appreciation day to celebrate her passion, legacy and deep impact in the lives of her students at Tufts.
witness the love and respect Jeanma has earned through her life’s work of teaching and building community wherever she served. My students celebrated their “JeanGrandma” and blessed her with our traditional Chinese Lion Dance for great health! The diverse team of young students who came with me that evening was a true reflection of the values that Jeanma had taught me and thousands of other Tufts students over the 25 years. Those years were no doubt filled with laughter, hugs, and success stories, but were also scarred by institutional racism, dissenters, and targeted hatred at all levels. After all, how dare an Asian American female continue, year after year, to teach and, together with students, speak out on issues of race and racism on the Tufts campus and in America? But now, through our hard work, future generations have the chance to benefit from her message. If you want to plan for 100 years, educate children. Thank you Jeanma for your passionate teaching and love to all your students over the 25 years at Tufts.
Though I was not able to stay for the entire party, I was ecstatic that my students from the Wah Lum Kung Fu & Tai Chi Academy were there to 29 | ALUMNI VOICES
passing notes ANA SOFÍA AMIEVA-WANG ‘19 & CELESTE TENG ‘19 ASAW: I am thinking about how, if we are the older generation in this little context, how I tend to remember us in the past. The connection that makes us a generation is a reference to memories of place and time that feel far away. I am thinking about how I wish that I could exist in the present in a dayto-day context for you, and for the “younger generation.” CT: The older I get the more I realise I don’t know about anything and anyone. It’s been difficult to hold multiple truths, at multiple times, together; maybe that’s why it helps to split “us” from “everyone.” Perhaps what defines a generation is a particular understanding of time. Soon I will be one year out of Tufts, out of the U.S., out of communities that have been so necessary to my life. Every time I meet someone new—and there have been many this year—I want to tell them everything about you (but of course I don’t). Like how I mention obscure miracles of connection, not always in the context of diaspora, but often, yes, because in Singapore most people are always already diasporic without thinking about it. And the diasporas coming together, finding points of contact, is the obscure miracle of connection to me. ASAW: I cherish that we carry the shared recognition of certain patterns of light —and I am sorry that I do not have a picture in my head of how the light looks like where you are.
30 | ALUMNI VOICES
CT: You have always had a wonderful eye. I can imagine the light where you are, but I can’t remember that kind of cold anymore. Weather changes our way of being. I’m not the same person in this humidity. I cut my hair short, which is much harder to do now that I live with family again. ASAW: When ‘community’ gets splintered, is what we hold on to only capable of existing in memories? CT: Would that be such a great loss, to still have those memories? ASAW: For this weekend it is perfect biking weather again. I am remembering how the first time I took my bike out from the basement last spring was with you. I remember we ended up by the Charles, there were so many gnats by the benches that overlook the water, and the Charles felt so far from school. I associate biking with you even though we didn’t bike that much together. The time with the gnats might have been the only time. But I know biking here meant a lot to you, and it started to mean a lot to me last summer too, probably just after you left. I started riding my bike to get places and my whole conception of place and distance started to change. CT: I’m moved to be associated with biking. It brings so many people to mind. The night I met Emily by the river—you remember. But also Emily
photography by Celeste Teng Ng, who would lend me her bike. Back then I was so afraid, I would have near-panic attacks getting on the road. I remember biking to the SMFA with Madeline; how much easier it was when I had someone to follow and learn from. And I sold my bike to Nora, who has given it a different life (crate and all), along with my remaining unused photo paper. And the bike paths we follow and make. Then again, we’re not exactly part of the local ‘biking culture.’ How has it helped you to be able to move in new ways? ASAW: Biking has taught me to respect the seasons, not push it on windy days; not to buy more groceries than fit in my backpack, or really how to squeeze a week’s worth of groceries into a backpack; and that cars are more likely to give you space when you bike with visible flowers or leafy greens.
CT: I like the idea that we can find a way of moving through the world that is also conscious of how others are moving. I haven’t wanted to practise driving. ASAW: I think biking helped me feel like I could find my own way. It helped me feel like I could learn enough to stay. I always think about this one time we called and you said, “Me staying here is not the same as staying there.” CT: What is possible here that isn’t possible there? What is possible there that isn’t possible here?
31 | ALUMNI VOICES
death in diaspora WAYNE YEH ‘16
As a child, I recall frequently attending funerals of elderly family members and family friends. When I was three years old and growing up in southern California, my 太婆 tai po, my paternal great-grandmother, passed away. I don’t have many memories of my great-grandmother, my gong gong’s mother, while she was living, but one of my earliest memories was her funeral. I vividly remember the image of our family members—my grandfather and his eight kids— slowly pacing the perimeter of the memorial hall during the service while toddler-me was held in somebody’s arms. There were two female Chinese Buddhist monks dressed in their rust orange-brown robes, chanting sutras while rhythmically beating a cymbal and wooden Buddhist percussion instruments. At age three, that was my first funeral. I don’t think I fully understood what was happening, even as I was carried in the arms of a family member toward my great-grandma’s casket to say our final farewell. As a toddler, I couldn’t 32 | ALUMNI VOICES
have understood what death or the loss of life truly meant, but what left an impression with me was the sights and sounds of the cultural and religious customs that I felt and witnessed my entire family practicing. Although my tai po was born in China in 1896 and died in America in 1998, her remains are neither in China nor the U.S. where our diaspora’s current generation lives. I didn’t learn until I was older that her ashes were brought back to Laos, where she immigrated with my gong gong and where my father’s generation was born before eventually coming to the U.S. Although the Chinese custom is ancestral worship with deceased family members being buried in the same ancestral cemetery, my family’s migration story marked a contradiction in our diaspora. Chinese typically bury their family members, but my tai po was cremated and had her ashes reunited with my great-grandfather, who preceded her in death, in a Lao Buddhist stupa on a temple grounds in Muang Khong, Laos.
The rest of my family members and the larger Southern California Chinese and Asian community rely on Rose Hills Memorial Park in Los Angeles County, which has now become the largest operating cemetery in the world. Rose Hills continues to expand their massive real estate, while marketing and catering their funeral services to Asian immigrant market of mourners, even charging exorbitant amounts of money for burial plots with better feng shui or plots that were landscaped to resemble traditional Chinese tombs in ancestral villages. Although a majority of my family members are buried at Rose Hills, I feel sad that the passing of our loved ones becomes a capitalist venture. Although our cultural funeral customs are centered around a loss of life, these practices not only bring comfort to the living but also give new life and meaning to future generations. My family’s immigration story—from a Hakka Chinese village to Southern Laos, to a Thai refugee camp, and finally to the U.S.—reminds me that
each degree of separation scatters the bones of diaspora further and further from ancestral homelands, yet another form of displacement for refugee peoples yearning to settle. I feel as if I have learned my family’s cultural and religious customs through funeral practices and ancestral worship, an amalgamation and reconciliation of both Chinese and Laotian beliefs and practices. The sights, smells, sounds, tastes, and feelings of mourning a loss have been influential in my racial and ethnic identity formation and consciousness—from the gilded Buddhist relics in the temples, incense burning, chants and chimes of Buddhist sutras, home-cooked food for a weeklong wake, and bodies of wellwishers and mourners packed in our home. Although we are far from our homelands, our cultural and religious customs follow, bringing comfort and reconciliation across generations.
33 | ALUMNI VOICES
“Moab” woodcut by Kira Lauring 24”x18”
the shattered glass BY MOUMINA KHAN
A crash, an explosion that shakes the sky (Does it count as a melody if no one will hear it?) How the sun bursts apart, setting the whole galaxy aflame How it shatters into a million billion trillion lonely photons Shards of light Broken blades slicing through the dark galaxy It is a lonely path, that of the fragments of the stars For they only know how to illuminate planets And spin peacefully in corners of the galaxy And provide light to the darkest corners of the universe When they’re together But when forces and gravities rip them apart And they twist, terrified, arms outstretched Reaching for each other, creating desperate supernovas Burning brightly out of fear of the dark that calls them away from each other But their hands come back empty And their photons dissipate like dust swept off an old window Creating lonely constellations no one will ever see Turning their heads each and every way to find those they used to shine brightest with But met with only the pressing, inky darkness They cannot outshine
An excerpt from an anthology exploring some of the emotions associated with keeping something loved, of having to leave it behind, of entering a new world with or without it.
36 | VOICES
empty geometry BY NASRIN LIN
Urges on gnomon fulling stallions flagged dancing shadows Yang Guifei must die. The stars cover their eyes as Du Shiniang sinks a savings twice. Sail the oceans drawn measured claimships bloodied on a fan paints a world peach -blossoming pathetic
37 | VOICES
38 | VOICES
“What We Inherit” ink on paper and digital by Amy Chu 11”x8” 39 | VOICES
what they’ve taught me When I was growing up my grandmother often told me, Hindi mein bolo. Speak in Hindi. The sentence is a microbyte of my childhood, filled with Bollywood films, afternoons at the ashram, and speaking our secret language of Hindi in public. My grandparents and mother wordlessly instilled me with pride for my culture, my faith, and my language. When I visited India, I found myself a tourist in the land of my ancestors. The bustling streets of Kolkata were packed with people, each and every one leading a life vastly different from mine. In a tiny clothes shop, my Hindi turned awkward and broken in front of the shopkeeper as I tried to buy a marigold kurta. As I watched my mother effortlessly pick out the kurta, I couldn’t help but feel shame burn my cheeks—it was sobering to be an outsider so ostensibly in the land my mother and grandparents consider home. Yet my relatives welcomed us with boundless hospitality, a reminder of the strength of family transcending years and continents. * My mother’s father, my Nana, spoke in a faraway voice when I asked about his mother, a half Russian, half Indian woman who lived in what is now Pakistan. “I still think about her every day,” he says with a half-smile, “and I will never forget her voice and her laugh.” Little by little Nana has told me about the partition of India that ripped his family apart, drove them from the family’s ancestral home, and rendered them refugees in their own country. His recollections were unapologetically vivid; the words “blood,” “genocide” and “rape” cut through the living 40 | VOICES
BY NEAL CHAN
room infused with holiday cheer. The journey on foot towards India, unsure of where his family was, still gives him nightmares more than seventy years later. I sat there fidgeting, my worries fading to trivialities in the face of the raw horror he witnessed. Here he was in front of me, sixty-five years after buying a one-way ticket to England where he worked during the day and went to school at night, fifty years after surviving assassination attempt for refusing a bribe, and forty years after relocating his young family to a new country. He is the living embodiment of perseverance and bravery; to emulate even a tenth of his strength— reinforced by steely self-assurance— would be a success. * One weekend in December, I found myself happily surrounded by my family in the warmly lit kitchen of my grandparents’ home in Edison, New Jersey. One set of grandparents had invited the other over for dinner. Mutton, cauliflower, homemade paneer, and fresh rotis filled the table, lovingly made by my Nana and Nani. My grandfather on my Chinese side was professing his love for Indian food, something he had done many times before. My two grandmothers, one from Kolkata and one from Macau, compared notes on cooking. It was no longer surprising, after many holiday gatherings, to see one side of my family embrace the culture of the other, but it was still joyous to watch. The scene was a reminder of my good fortune; I found myself filled with gratitude for my loving family, what they’ve taught me, and what I owe to them.
unfinished projects My grandmother is the most resilient woman I have ever met. Bordering 75 years now, her age is hardly an indicator of her ability and drive; with a youthful determination and worldly curiosity that one can only be born with, she will barrel down anything— or anyone—that stands in her way. Growing up, I’ve watched her take up countless hobbies, only to abandon them as soon as she loses interest. Maybe she would return to her unfinished creative projects in a month, year, or maybe never again. Her desk is covered in these moments in time. There is a pearl necklace laid atop the desk. The beads are round and shiny, nestled against each other in a neat row. I know she spent an entire afternoon sifting through a discount crafts store, scouring for the few perfect ones in a barrel of misshapen ones. There is a now dust-ridden arrangement of artificial flowers from Michael’s on her bookshelf. Next to it, are her Chinese dictionaries she hauled from Shanghai in 1990. There is an unsuspecting shoebox filled with handmade cards for every imaginable occasion: birthdays, thanks, graduations. Inspired by a free cardmaking class at the local senior center one day, the shoebox would slowly be filled to the brim. Each card is unused, but nonetheless lovingly adorned with stickers, flowers, and other ornate decorations. There is one hobby of hers, however, that has remained constant: knitting. She’s been knitting for as long as I
BY ELIZABETH HOM
can remember, and according to my mom, as long as she can remember, too. Our house is peppered with Ranch 99 bags filled with colorful yarn and knitting needles connected to sweaters in progress. A couple years ago, my mom was cleaning out her closet, organizing articles of clothing into “donate” and “keep” piles. She came across a plastic bin, coated with dust, filled with yarn sweaters that I’d never seen before. Peeling off the lid, my mom shook out a sweater, holding it out at arms length as she inspected it: these were sweaters my grandmother had knitted for her, but have since been forgotten. I remember her asking me, conflicted, “Donate or keep?” But she wasn’t really asking me; before I could answer, she had already refolded the sweater, snapped the lid back on, and slid the box back into her closet. We both knew she would never wear any of those sweaters, but it felt too difficult to let go of them. When I think of my grandmother, I think of resilience, determination, youthful curiosity. It’s odd to imagine her as anything but, and even more odd to imagine the reality that my grandparents won’t be here one day. That one day, I’ll return home, and the big house for my family of five will soon only be occupied by my parents. That one day, those unfinished projects will remain forever unfinished, probably hidden away in boxes to be discovered later, just like the sweaters in my mom’s closet.
41 | VOICES
to my mother’s mother, to my お祖母さん BY MAXINE BELL I remember standing next to mom in her bedroom. We faced the picture of you and 火曜馬さん Both of you smiling in simpler times. The top of my head meeting mom’s hips I glanced up to see if I was doing it right, My flattened hands aligned in symmetry Coral beads hung from the hook my thumbs formed, Mimicking my mother, my hands met my chin I closed my eyes Then, in silence, we prayed. I never knew if you knew me If you could only hear the people you met People you saw Maybe you remember I said, I don’t know what I’m doing or if you can hear me or understand my English I’m sorry I didn’t speak to you in 日本語 Your tongue has never been foreign But it has never been easy I’m learning it now, and I hope you’re proud. Thank you for raising my mother the way she is I see you when she wraps your floral black apron around her waist You embrace her every time she secures its ties. You comfort her and remind her she’s an amazing mother You guide her every night in crafting meals with love I wish I could’ve met you You left us when my mom was protecting me inside her Fighting her loss so that I would be a healthy newborn Nurturing me the way you did for her Without you. I know you had no choice I just wish you could’ve seen me and saw yourself in me Please keep looking after us Mom has always been hurting Stomps upstairs and fights her tears Your tears. She misses you She doesn’t talk about it, because It’s too hard 42 | VOICES
oil on canvas by Maxine Bell 24”x36” She once dropped one of your favorite porcelain bowls, She convinced herself every shard pierced your skin. Please remind her she never betrayed you. That she wasn’t running away Remind her you’re proud of her That you don’t resent her for moving to the States. I know we never met, but I love you You smell like lavender incense to me You smile like my mother to me You watch me like my mother to me And you love me like my mother to me ありがとうございます I hope you know I still do this I hope you hear and see me I hope you know who I am. Bringing my hands to my side I bowed, slowly opened my eyes, and blew out the candle. I’ve been talking to you for as long as I remember. I always will. I’m your granddaughter. Love, Maxine 43 | VOICES
creating ritual: colonial unknowing in asian america BY EMMA ISHIDA AND SUNG-MIN KIM Course description: Let it be known that this syllabus is born from frustration and anger. It is in the exhaustion of constantly defending the existence of Asian American Studies within the university, and through that of Asian Americans ourselves both inside and outside of the university. It is in realizing the contradictions of what we’ve been told who we are, and tracing the ways in which we’ve been gaslit, invisibilized, and silenced. This syllabus is born from refusal to give in to business as usual. From choosing a garden to be our class space, to uplifting non-professional pieces of art, writing, and storytelling, we are pushing back against the traditional classroom, to subvert the hierarchies that have shaped our rigid understanding of legitimacy and knowledge. Our refusal stems from an acknowledgment that such hierarchies only work to destroy us. We’re running out of options here when we work with logic. So we fight back with dreams that sound absurd. This syllabus is born out of hope and desire. Through working creatively and thoughtfully together, growing together in the garden—both literally and figuratively—we intend to create a space in which we build critical and compassionate community. In this class, we will first move through an introduction to the history of Asian America, especially focused on how the shaping of Asian America has been informed by colonialism. With our hope to grow with the spaces we inhabit (such as the garden), we have divided the class weeks into elements as themes: water, earth, air, fire, spirit, and food. This is to acknowledge that we are inseparable from the environment around us, constantly interacting with a world much larger than ourselves. In thinking deeply about each element we honor the ways in which the elements absorb colonial impression but also have consistently resisted such forces. How has water been shaped by colonial movements? And how has it shaped colonial movements? What can we learn from water when we critically engage with it as a site of influence but also generative force especially for diasporic communities? What stories are generated from thinking through air, being within and between space and time? How do we make sense of those feelings that are difficult to articulate that are created by diaspora? How can we better understand fire, see it as both a destructive force and new beginning after utter devastation and loss? The garden stems from our desire for generation. We hope for the embodied act of cultivating life and community to continue far beyond these thirteen weeks of class. That, with every passing season and year, experiencing the elements, we will see new generations of those who have unlearned colonial ways of knowing who in turn pass their knowledge across to others. 44 | VOICES
collections
short documentary by Esther Tzau
45 | VOICES
sitting through time
photography by Sung-Min Kim
46 | VOICES
a glimpse at what it means to be gorgeous BY IAN NGUYEN (SEERUNG) It is when I am closest to death that I most want to touch, to feel, to enact, rather than declare, love. Maybe this is why the haunting details of my grandmother’s past were only revealed when making spring rolls, our hands occupied on the task of translating love through food. The silence after a sister’s death filled by the sound of oil crackling, the plea to send money to the hidden son buried under the precious mixture, a family secret only the deserving can know. Death, violence, and trauma are never closed, never cleanly settled. Violence circulates, it ruptures. Our existences are framed by death, by those who were never destined to live. Ocean Vuong’s novel On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous is a story of circulating violence. Vuong refuses to merely recount the past from one fixed point to another; rather, he writes in spirals, weaving the past together unexpectedly, never reaching a single point of Truth, but always inching toward something more. An epistolary novel, Vuong’s protagonist Little Dog writes to his mother to tell her everything he cannot express directly. It is a failed experiment from the beginning, a series of letters that will never be understood by their intended recipient because Little Dog’s mother does not know how to read or write. A moving meditation on the limits of language, On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous is a novel of beauty in the midst of violence, of love made (im)possible by trauma, of brief
moments when we are gorgeous, though we were never meant to live. It took me months to finish Vuong’s work. Each sentence hurt me. I found myself unable to keep reading at points, my body shaking, unable to contain my emotions. My mother read the novel in quite the opposite way. Unafraid to feel, she read voraciously, letting the beauty and trauma in Vuong’s language move her. On page sixty-two Vuong writes, “I’m breaking us apart again so that I might carry us somewhere else—where, exactly, I’m unsure.” To read Ocean Vuong is to be broken apart. To linger in the power of his art is to be transported somewhere different. After reading On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous, I felt the need to write something, to create some tangible archive of how much the novel meant to me, but it felt wrong to process these feelings in isolation, especially as the novel is centered around the all too familiar silences between loved ones. My mom, Terri Leonard, is a child of the Vietnam War, a product of migration, and an example of how beauty is made even in the most impossible situations. Born Nguyễn Thị Bích Lan, she is the reason I am alive and the reason I know we are more than the traumas we experience—that on this Earth we too have the chance to be gorgeous. Below is a conversation between us, reflecting on our experiences reading the novel. 47 | VOICES
IS: A question I have is that of names, Vuong on page eighteen writes “To love something, then, is to name it after something so worthless it might be left untouched—and alive. A name, thin as air, can also be a shield. A Little Dog shield.” I was wondering if this idea of a name being a shield spoke to you in any way. TL: Um, no, I can’t say that that stood out to me. IS: Interesting, because when I read that I first thought of you. TL: Because they [my parents] changed my name? IS: Yes. TL: Oh yes, maybe it just didn’t strike me because the reasons my parents changed my name and my physical appearance were more practical. When I was still in Vietnam and still a baby, part of Vietnamese culture, I think, is to shave the hair of one-yearold’s, but grandma told me that she always kept my hair short because she thought that if people thought I was a boy they would question less about my background. Somehow me looking like a boy would make me more Asian, because people thinking I was American would make things more difficult. IS: Wow, I had never heard that before. TL: I remember asking grandma about that because of a picture of me when I was young, and she said that she never put me in dresses to make me look like a boy so no one would question my background. IS: Let’s talk about the style. What did you think about writing letters that would never be understood? Are there things you want to express but where language fails you? TL: Oh yea, definitely, I think more than just language, I think that when you like have to live in kind of two different cultures, the culture that I 48 | VOICES
grew up with at home it was different you know than what I learned out in American society. There are just certain things that you follow and there is that cultural divide that makes it difficult for your grandmother and I to connect, just beyond language but also our world view and how we interact with people is so different. IS: In the novel, Little Dog learns that he was chosen to live while another sibling was not. Do you ever feel guilty, being the one child who got to leave Vietnam? TL: (begins to sob) Definitely. I um, especially now as an adult and having had children, I can’t imagine what that was like for your grandma or my sister. Growing up knowing that her children wouldn’t see their mother for who knows how long and at the time there was a possibility that they would never see each other again, so I definitely think about that and have questioned it. IS: Can you tell me about your first love, or maybe, just the feeling, what love has meant to you? TL: Umm wow, umm I would probably say that C was my first love, umm I think that there is a, there is, I don’t know how to put it. There is this glow over your first love, there is so much glow and possibility, for me there was this idealism, I thought that me and someone stuck together could take on the world, that nothing outside matters and would have this effect on you, me as a young person, I just didn’t have this firm grasp on like how strong outside factors could be and could affect you because you are just in this kinda little bubble that you create with this person and think that it will shield you from everything else. IS: Do you think that race, or coming from an immigrant family, or your socioeconomic status were some of those outside factors?
TL: Yea definitely, for both of us, because C is also mixed race, also had difficult family dynamics that he was dealing with, and I think that part of it also was, you know, this idea that I think I’ve had in a lot of my relationships that you can see the good in someone and bring that out in someone and make them better, even though that’s not your job. And I think that someone who grow up in, Clifton Park, you know, is a very suburban, upper middle class, but I never really thought of myself that way, like I feel like I’ve always just seen myself on the lower end of that spectrum. IS: Do you think that part of that distancing from the other people you grew up with was because of race? TL: I think part of it was. I had people make fun of me sometimes thinking that I was the wrong race, you know because of how I looked. I think also part of it for me personally was growing up in a broken family when you know when I was growing up that was very much not the norm. TL: I have a question, what were your thoughts about the relationship between Little Dog and Trevor and even at the very end the deep denial on Trevor’s part? IS: I think it’s hard for me to answer because I’ve never been in love and I, myself have lived my life in a kind of perpetual denial. I was hurt, rather than uplifted, when Little Dog describes what it felt like to be truly seen for the first time, because I feel that I have always been on display, both because I am mixed-race and because I have grappled with the weight of ugliness for so long. In some ways I was almost satisfied by the tumult of their relationship; finally a vision of love I could understand, that I could cling to. Rather than some overwhelming force of happiness,
love is inextricable from the social conditions of Little Dog and Trevor, and in the end, love isn’t enough to conquer everything. IS: I guess just the big question to close: do you think we have a shot at being gorgeous in this life? TL: Uh yea, I like to think so. I like to think that, that if we are lucky enough, we find someone who sees the gorgeous in us and allows us to see it in ourselves if only briefly. And so, my mother ends with a glimmer of hope. I do not call home often, I fear too much what I will hear about my mother’s suffering, of my grandmother’s loneliness. We are a family that has nothing—by nothing, I mean that our lives can be plunged back into the depths of fear and precarity at any moment, and thus our joy, our successes, are always fleeting. Together and separately we are clawing our way to a sense of security, yet even in the promise of a better future, we are crushed by the overwhelming anxiety produced by living a life in which we have so little power or certainty. But, out of that pain, out of those acts of incomparable love—a grandmother picking dandelions to save from starvation, a mother whose silence makes my existence possible— there are moments of joy. Vuong’s novel is at times heartbreaking, raw, and difficult to read, yet it is also a human story, one of survival in the midst of violence, of beauty created by those meant to be in the shadows. The power of Vuong’s novel is that it speaks into the silence felt over generations; it had the power to break silences between me and my own mother. As he writes on page thirty-three: “It could be, in writing you here, I am writing to everyone.” A novel of refuge, a novel which is home. Cảm ơn. 49 | VOICES
longing BY ANSEL LINK Long face eyes turned my life is going in circles Longing eyes face turned she was going to the unknown, a story repeating again Where I’m from follows the future their stories ensnaring shape it but the deep disconnect divides foreign blood and white blood cells in constant conflict within Words manifest my mind filled with desire of uniformity a skin so perfect it doesn’t move Twisted faces lying eyes but which to choose, familiar or exotic A chronic condition of mistaken genealogy My background can’t be cleared as time past and time future are all time present. Our cell clock continues So long as I don’t know the past how can I know the present future I long to close the gaps within the invisible bonds above Turned face long eyes it’ll repeat again I know where I am but where am I drifting in the gap falling slowly to the end I only have myself to grab
50 | VOICES
photo across the sea BY ISSAY MATSUMOTO In a Hawai’i photography studio in the early 1920s, a woman with a face like the moon sat upright on a woven basket stool. She wore a striped yukata and her dark hair was pulled back neatly. She held her newborn daughter on her lap, wrapped in a floral patterned fabric. Following the instructions of the photographer, the woman fixed her bespectacled gaze to the left, away from the camera. The woman’s husband, a handsome and stern-faced man in a dark suit with a tightly buttoned vest and a shiny lapel pin, stood by her side. On the man’s left hand he wore a wedding band. He stared straight at the camera. This moment of splendor was captured in a photograph from my grandaunt Kimiko’s personal collection in Koiwa, Tokyo, Japan. The woman in the photograph, Kimiko told me, was her aunt—my great-grandaunt. My great-grandaunt did not have a name— neither Kimiko, nor my grandfather Masafumi could remember it. Kimiko told me over the phone that sometime before World War II, this nameless woman married a Japanese American nisei newspaperman named Asao, whose father had swam to Hawai’i. Kimiko’s family—the Yamagishis in Japan, with whom I share biological relation through my mother—had fallen out of contact with the Asaos in Hawai’i years ago. But the unbelievable story about the man who swam to Hawai’i remained in Kimiko’s memory. What was the name of this forgotten
relative, and how would I find it? I wondered while we spoke on the phone. And how long must it have taken to swim to Hawai’i from Japan? But I didn’t want to interrupt Kimiko with these questions I had on the other side of the world. I just wanted to listen for what she could remember. The woman posing in the studio was Teiko Asao, who before her marriage was Teiko Yamagishi. Although it is unclear how this portrait taken in Hawai’i ended up across the Pacific in Kimiko’s hands in Japan, it is likely that Teiko Asao sent this to her Yamagishi relatives almost a century ago. During the 1920s and 1930s, it was common for issei settlers in Hawai’i like Teiko Asao to send family portraits to relatives in Japan; in Hawai’i, there were at least 330 Japanese commercial photographers during the first half of the twentieth century to help these settlers document their lives in a new land and maintain ties to those they had left behind. By sending one photograph to the Yamagishis, Teiko could deliver good news to her parents, brothers, and sister, who would have wanted to see the prosperity of her marriage and the face of Teiko’s healthy newborn. One photograph could define the meaning of Teiko’s new life abroad for her family in Japan. Nearly a century after it was taken, this one photograph would begin a story incomplete in its telling.
51 | VOICES
things still happen at home when you’re not there BY MADDIE WONG Last year, I lost a generation in my family. It was spring semester. My parents wanted me to focus on my studies and not worry, so they didn’t tell me my grandparents were in the hospital. When I finally found out, it was the first time I felt the distance between Boston and New York. Over FaceTime, my dad told me Yehyeh didn’t know that Mahmah was being treated in the room next to him. The only time Mahmah got to see him, she wore her jacket over her hospital gown. Sometimes making someone worry is worse than any sickness. Two weeks later on a Tuesday night, my dad told me that if I wanted to see Yehyeh one last time, I’d better come home now. I barely slept and caught the 5am bus back home. Yehyeh was on morphine and machines were breathing for him. All I could do was squeeze his hand and have a one-sided conversation in broken Cantonese with my thick American accent. I told him that school was good and I was eating well and going to church every Sunday. He died on my 5:30pm bus ride back to school. Soon after, Mahmah moved into our house. For the summer, I returned to a home that wasn’t really home anymore. I cut her nails, helped her shower and use the bathroom, and was constantly boiling hot water. My Cantonese and cooking skills improved. She never wanted to be 52 | VOICES
alone, so I was home a lot. Then I returned for my sophomore year. Usually, I called home and just talked to my parents, but a couple of weeks before Thanksgiving, I called home because I wanted to talk to Mahmah. I told her about the steamed fish I cooked with my friends and that I was coming home at the end of the month. She told me hearing this made her really hoisam and that she couldn’t wait to see me. She died early that next morning. School didn’t stop for me when my family died, and no one knew what I was going through unless I told them. My last two semesters played out the same, so I felt like I was reliving the worst parts of spring semester. Living life in repeating cycles. Here I was again asking professors for extensions on work and exams, burying my emotions to get the work done, traveling back and forth for the funeral, and remembering to call home more often. Now when I go home, it’s weird to not be constantly hearing TVB or feeling the heat radiating off the oxygen machine. This year for Chinese New Year we went to a restaurant we’d never been to before and ate courses we’d never ordered before, but I saw the legacy my grandparents left behind: five children and seventeen grandchildren gathered around the banquet tables.
full circle BY THEO NUNEZ Right before Tatay turned 16, his father passed away and Tatay abruptly became the man of the household—as a means for survival, he attended the Philippine Military Academy and went on to become a 3-star general Right before Nanay turned 16, Nanay was getting ready to start at Cebu Velez College of Nursing—she spent every penny that she made from being a nurse to support her 3 children, working the night shift and watching them during the day As for their grandson at age 16, he was living it up at a private boarding school in Massachusetts detached from his family but thinking about them constantly A family “fun” day at the San Francisco Exploratorium, planned by their one and only grandson - what’s it like for a first generation Filipino immigrant couple to spend their day at such a place? All of their sacrifices and hard work and their grandson wants to spend the day at a place with a $30 admission fee, with an overpriced cafeteria, where you just walk around and look at stuff They definitely never had this opportunity when they were kids and neither did their own children, so how did this day play out? Well, it turns out that learning and curiosity are universal Nanay read the detailed (and boring!) descriptions in all the exhibits and soaked in the information, and Tatay admired the engineers’ workshop, a place that could’ve been his own had his circumstances been different How did they end up at the exploratorium anyway? They surely didn’t pay $30 a person—because of their sacrifices, their grandson made a connection at boarding school that got the whole family into the exploratorium for free
53 | VOICES
wai gong
something that feeds
54 | VOICES
mei mei
wai po
oil on canvas by Jiamin Li each 26”x30”
acrylic on canvas by Kelly Tan 16”x20”, 16”x20”, 20”x16” 55 | VOICES
姥姥
BY MARTIN GAO
Author’s note: 姥姥 means “maternal grandma” in Chinese. There is a divide between the old world and the new. My 姥姥 is an inhabitant of the old world. The old world is the pungent smell of star anise, the layer of yellow grease that stains the counter tops; the cardboard boxes full of old textbooks and newspapers; the supermarket plastic bags stored inside of supermarket plastic bags. The language of the old world is 湖北话. The old world exists within the confines of our crowded apartment on the third floor of our building. Most of all, the old world is made up of waiting. Waiting for the crack of dawn to prepare breakfast; waiting for me and my brother to come home from school; waiting for night to cook an elaborate dinner; waiting for the impatient knocks on the door when mom comes home from work, exhausted from a long day at the office. I wonder what she did in all of those hours in between. Those hours must have dragged on. Maybe the hours were sticky and slow like cough syrup. In those hours, the apartment must have seemed so empty. * 姥姥 would slice a tomato in her bare hands, cutting the tomato above the pot so that the precious juices ran down into the pot instead of onto a cutting board. She would lay the tomato on the open palm of her left hand and lower the knife. The flesh gives away without much resistance, but the translucent skin of the tomato is surprisingly tough. So, she had to draw the knife along her palm to split the skin. I 56 | VOICES
remember being terrified as I watched 姥姥 run the sharp edges of the kitchen knife against her palm. The red, pulpy meat of the tomato was alarming. I could never tell where the palm of my grandmother ended and where the flesh of tomato began. It always seemed like 姥姥 had sliced deep into her left palm, her blood running along her hand and into the wok. * One day, my 姥姥 joined our apartment complex’s dancing troupe. From that day on, every morning, she would put on her outfit and dance in the plaza. I think she made a lot of new friends. I remember seeing her get ready in the morning. She wore a red silk button down with pink flowers embroidered around the waist. A small drum hung by a red silk thread from her left shoulder. She was practically glowing. She had a smile so wide it ran from ear to ear. Dressed in bright colors and giddy with excitement, my 姥姥 reminded me of a child, and there was something unnatural about seeing her that way. I realized that I had never seen her this way in all my years of living with her. I realized how much sorrow usually occupies her face, how all the sadness had marked deep crevasses on her face.
portraits of bà ngoai The golden sunlight illuminated the daffodil walls. The kitchen was still, interrupted only by the occasional chirping of birds. On the cherry wooden table, various bowls held all the ingredients for the best dumplings in the world—a white dough made from tapioca flour, minced pork and shrimp, and a can of Sprite. With her fingertips, bà ngọai would quickly roll the can over a small piece of dough and soften it to a flat circle. Pork and shrimp were wrapped around this circle, enveloped into a nice dumpling shape. Bà ngọai would make hundreds of these dumplings in one sitting. But that was when she was healthy. Now, she sweeps the house with weak knees and a tired soul. Even though so many people ask her if they can place an order, her dumplings have become a neighborhood delicacy, dedicated only for special occasions. She makes them slowly, filling each one with the love and care she once shared with the whole world. * Bà ngọai sleeps as if in a world far from our own. Her chest heaves as she inhales and trembles with every exhale. When I was my brother’s age, my mom would suddenly wake up to bà ngọai’s yelling, kicking, and shouting. She would bring bà ngọai from the depths of her dreams back to our home. In high school, it became my turn to walk over when bà ngọai started having nightmares. My mom would joke that I was taking over her job. The dreams are never the same. Sometimes, she is a child in Việt Nam, running away from something, somewhere. Sometimes, she is in the
BY THAO HO
midst of the War, alone again with her five children and no husband. Always, she fears for her life and the forces that may rip her apart. I try to shake her awake. Unconsciously, she pushes me away, grabs my wrist, and says, “Đừng nữa, đừng nữa”—no more, no more. It is dark, but I see her face change as I keep shaking her. Slowly, her contorted face takes on its soft wrinkles, her fear becoming a slight frown. Bà ngọai dạy đi—wake up. I shake her harder, just to get a response. Ok, ok—and I walk back. I want to hold all of her pain. To crush it with my heels and press it deep into the earth below me, to silence it the way it silences her. But I know that in the world she enters every night, I am nowhere to be seen. Instead, I stay up each night to wake her up. Ok, ok. * She dips her feet into the water. The sunset drifts over the summer shores. Khi nào ngọai đau chân, ngọai ưa ngâm chân trong nước mặn, she says. Whenever my feet hurt, I like to soak my feet in saltwater. The ocean ripples around her feet as she lets it heal the aches that come from the soles of her feet. As she stands in this large body of water, I think of all the waves she had to walk through to come here, to remain here. What it took to fly over this water. Does it recognize her? Has each drop of water touched a soul like hers? I watch her stand out there, all alone, with a smile on her face as she rolls up her pants. Here, where she is no longer bound to this painful land, she is happy. And in this place of my imagination, she is free. 57 | VOICES
nana’s poem BY TRINA SANYAL Nana, amaar shubho bijoya’r pronam nao, amar durga puja’r ashirbaad diyo It is autumn, your season, this is the only way I know you Through the mandir and diya and night coming too quickly When Ma and Nani talk about you, they never mention your depression They tell me you loved Kaju Barfi, that you thought Macy’s was the best department store That you always got lost When Ma & Nani talk to me, they tell me you and I would have gotten along Which makes sense because I love Kaju Barfi, and think Macy’s is the best department store and also Always get lost, and feel lost The same words have brazed us both, the way fire melts rubber, slowly and quickly Shakti is strength; bhagwaner doya is belief in God I imagine this is what you heard a lot of too, whenever you couldn’t see a reason to Get out of bed to do any bazaar, or when you had to cross a border twice Lose your home your life, your place, you— Must have heard Kapal e lekha ache—it’s written in fate Amader korthai hobe—we must do it Tomar bhago bhalo je etai ache—be grateful you have even this Were you taught to be brave this way too? Were you taught to be silent this way too? Nana, amaar kana pai shobshomai, aami aar pachina ami aar shaash nithe patchina I think you would understand that these are all the words we have to say “sadness” Nana, ami bhishon aaka aaka hoygachi, lokhedera kotha bole aar ami shudho awaaz shuni And I think you would understand that these are all the words we have to say “loneliness” I make lists so that I remember to eat and sleep and shower and to remember that there is a day after this one to make a list for And I wonder if you ever had time to make yours If you cried for every time you had to leave like me And if you could still eat Kaju Barfi, after, and go to Macy’s and ever learn how to use a map It is autumn, your season, and this is the only way I know you When our paths cross one day I will ask you for your blessings in person Nana, amaar shubho bijoya’r pronam nao, durga puja’r ashirbaad dao And I dont know how to say “I’m sorry you felt that way, and I see you, and I love you” in Bengali But I know that when our paths cross, we won’t need this language or that one to hear each other
58 | VOICES
姥姥家
photo by Nora Li
59 | VOICES
felicity gifts BY NUHA SHAIKH
Show me the flower hidden within the apple. Can you find it? Apples keep their fragrance while we keep our flowers. Cut to split apart the fruit for a north and south that share seeds as best they can. This is the flower. These five seeds are the legacy of the white apple blossoms that left behind branches heavy with jeweled fruit. One for the other, the switch of the ages. This is how we continue to live. One day mama will be gone, she told me, And you will be alone but still I will be with you. And little me did not understand how that could be And cried and cried. But I grew to know the gifts she gave me. And when it rained, she stays close by.
60 | VOICES
mano po
watercolor painting by Florence Almeda 9”x12” Artist’s note: Offering “mano” is to hold the hand of an elder and press it against one’s forehead as an honoring gesture in Philippine culture; “Po” is a frequently used word of respect.
61 | VOICES
the zoomers clockwise from top left
writing editors
layout designers
Matthew Cho pretends to waterbend in the shower. Erin de Guzman Berja: “if anyone wants feet pics, my venmo is @erinberja.” Megan de Guzman Berja misses riding a tricycle. Maria Fong was taught to eat corn row by row. Annie Huang’s memoir: Refined by Wok Fires Lina Huang: “So, was I ever able to access my club penguin account or nah?” Emma Ishida made foul potions as a child. Simon Jiang: “Ohio is the only state that doesn’t share any letters with the word ‘mackerel.’” Jessie Lan wanted to 3-D print edible food. Joanne Lau misses brunch with her closest friends. Kira Lauring misses her preschool’s cream of wheat. Nora Li’s memoir: no thoughts head empty Yumei Lin’s memoir: tea, crossword puzzles, and a whole lot of laughter. Ansel Link: “Imagine what your voice can do!” Pat Mahaney: “I am proud of you.” Issay Matsumoto’s memoir: What Was to be Done: How We Destroyed Boba to Save the World Richard Nakatsuka wanted to build a rollercoaster. Britnie Nguyen misses tastes of street night markets. Hannah Noh misses little things that made her smile. Madeleine Oh: “Act like you always have a full bag of Hot Cheetos.” —my mom Varshini Ramanathan misses fifth grade recess. Kelly Tan: “Remember to put on sunscreen.” Esther Tzau: “We love you!” Maddie Wong’s autobiography: so draMADDic Juliette Wu’s childhood dream was to live in a cottage decorated with jars of paint. Sohara Zafar: “Everything will be okay in the end.”
62 | VOICES
staff portraits by Juliette Wu
No answers. Only a ghost in the form of a question. —Vinh Nguyen