voices an asian american literary & arts magazine
discomfort
spring 2019
Letter from the Editor Dear Reader, When I was young, my 婆婆 always tended to my wounds with Chinese medicinal ointment. “It hurts,” I whined. She assuaged my pain and discomfort by telling me that it was natural—that pain and discomfort was something we should lean into, even necessary, in order for new cells to replace damaged ones, to help us grow. In other words, discomfort is a prerequisite for growing as a person. Denying this feeling of discomfort that accompanies being Asian and Asian American would be injudicious. And while our experiences with comfort and discomfort (and everything in-between) differ, Voices has been a living, breathing archive to capture all of those intricate encounters and aches. Since being involved with Voices as a first-year, I have seen this publication undergo changes in its leadership, its magazine spread, and even its style guide. Yet, it never fails to bring together the voices of Asian and Asian American students from various backgrounds and interests, providing a space for collectivity while recognizing that there is no universal Asian or Asian American experience. My college journey began in the dense forestry of Vermont, navigating the woods with nine other incoming freshmen. Over the week, we bounced from one question to another, and being the only person of color, of course, I had to face the dreaded question: Where are you from? No, where are you actually from? I had naively thought that we had outgrown these assumptions and however wellintentioned questions. But these kind of questions that routinely make us feel illegible or illegitimate are also what unites us. And perhaps more importantly, this magazine is about all of those times in which we were made to feel invisible. It is about our slanted-eye stories, the What are you?’s, the reflexive chuckle at an unfunny, racist joke; and it is in these moments of discomfort where we grow. With Voices, there exists an underlying comfort about sharing our writing, our art, and our work with each other because unsaid between us all is a mutual understanding of that pervasive sense of discomfort. And as this year’s Editor-inChief, I am grateful that so many Asians and Asian Americans have leaned into that feeling, felt inspired by it, and trusted me with their narratives that I can now share with you. Writing Asian and Asian American diaspora has everything to do with finding commonalities and contradictions, and making a commitment to listen and hold one another’s stories through discomfort. Indeed, figuring out what Asian or Asian American means to us individually requires a lifelong process, but I hope Voices has something to offer about that journey—about the discomfort, about growing, and about you. With much love, Wilson Wong
Mission Statement The Tufts Asian Student Coalition is a student-led political organization seeking to educate and mobilize toward progressive social change. We are unified in our agenda to challenge systemic powers of oppression, grounded in the Asian and Asian American experience. We hope to come together to love, support, and politicize our community of Asian and Asian American Tufts students. Recognizing the transnational nature and fluid identities of Asian populations, we also aim to create a space for Asians and Asian Americans to reflect on our collective histories and differing experiences. We are cognizant of the Asian American history in the Tufts institution, and are dedicated to socially and politically empowering community and strengthening race and ethnic studies on this campus. In our commitment to an anti-racist agenda, we hold our work with other communities of color and like-minded organizations to be vital.
FRONT & BACK COVER graphics by Pat Mahaney
EDITOR IN CHIEF Wilson Wong CREATIVE DIRECTOR Pat Mahaney
INSIDE COVER “Where is Mr. Fish?” pen drawing by Amy Chu 7”x10”
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EDITORS Ana Sofía Amieva-Wang Maria Fong Sung-Min Kim Jessie Lan Nora Li Issay Matsumoto Richard Nakatsuka Kelly Tan Celeste Teng Jules Yun
Table of Contents 4
Discomfort and Lost Senses or— When I Tell You I Want To Go Home Anonymous
20 What Spins Can Do, What I Can Do Haruka Noishiki
5
Elsewhere Tim Manalo
21 Plan of Chicago Bella Kiser
6
My Chinese Katherine Wang
22 My Binary Identity Raissa Li
8
อย่าคิดว่าฉันไม่สำ�คัญ Reclaiming Thai Plearn Aroonchote
23 Twisted Words Raissi Li
9
Scales Kelly Tan
24 On Body Papers Grace Talusan on Her Memoir Wilson Wong
10 ঢাকা Myisha Majumder
28 Poems of Detention Issay Matsumoto
12 ご飯 Bloopie Maxine Bell
29 Boston Chinatown Nora Li
13 私は間違いなくて機械です Maxine Bell
30 Look Beyond Esther Tzau
14 Friend of the Family Maria Fong
31 A Commitment Ana Sofía Ameva-Wang
15 Jar of Umeboshi Emma Ishida
32 Yellow Fervor Ellie Locke
16 Fruit Bowl Priya Skelly
33 Formations of Desire Sonya Bhatia
17 A Somebody Nasrin Li
34 Mid-Flight Jules Yun
18 Cat City Amy Chu
35 Fractured.a. & Fractured.b. Madeline Lee
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discomfort and lost senses, or— when i tell you i want to go home BY ANONYMOUS when i tell you i want to go home whispered in between sobs and heartache homesick and grieving i don’t mean the city i grew up in the states i don’t mean america when i tell you i want to go home curled up against your shoulder trying not to shake from the nightmares i don’t mean the land of my parents i don’t mean the messy hixtory i rose from when i tell you i want to go home i don’t know where it is i know what home tastes like like rice porridge and braised pork like steamed fish and red bean paste i know what home looks like like paint peeling buildings washed out from the rain like rolling green mountains and muddy sidewalks i know what home smells like like incense in front of the shrine like tiger balm and cypress oil i know what home sounds like like hawker ladies selling their wares like an uncle playing erhu in the park i don’t know what home feels like i don’t know where it is i’ve never been home. 4 | VOICES
elsewhere
mirrored acrylic by Tim Manalo 2’x0.5’x0.25”
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my chinese BY KATHERINE WANG (AFTER MELISSA LOZADA-OLIVIA)
If you ask me if I’m fluent in Chinese, I will tell you that my Chinese is rendered meat. A carcass of usable parts, scraps of fish bones, my Chinese is paper towels wrung out and used over and over again. My Chinese is clumsy and naive every time it leaves my mouth. Laolao makes me jiao zi but when I’m already full my Chinese can only say: “I don’t want it.” Wo bu yao. What I mean to say is thank you. I mean to say, I’m just not hungry right now. My Chinese is kneading dough: letting it rise, then beating it back down again. My Chinese is at the tip of my tongue, dipped in vinegar, wrapped and folded in silky skin. My Chinese is paying $2.50 for a block of tofu in the aisle labeled “ethnic.” My Chinese is settling for less than it deserves. My Chinese is on my resume as a skill. My Chinese wonders if this is my father’s American Dream. My Chinese is a door hanging on a single hinge Awkward, broken, and something I have to skirt around. My Chinese is staring into a room with the lights turned off. My Chinese is having eyesight, but not being able to see. My Chinese loves the white woman’s home, a home with big and small zip-lock bags, Goldfish made of real cheddar cheese, a home that is plunder-proof. A home that knows how to call back a runaway dog, how to power wash the deck, how to ask for more than it has given. My Chinese doesn’t know how to ask for more than it has given. 6 | VOICES
After a while my Chinese feels sick. Knows that my Chinese is not Tilda Swinton. Is not the oil at the bottom of a takeout box, is not porn genre, is not pale and thin ricepaper. My Chinese wants me to make up my mind. My Chinese is listening. My Chinese can hear the Northern accent of my bei fang parents, can tell when they’re talking about me. If you ask me if I’m fluent in Chinese, I will tell you that nodding and smiling is not enough to sustain a conversation. If you ask my parents if I’m fluent in Chinese, they will tell you, like an apology, that I was raised here. They sent me to pre-school without a word of English and let me trade my words. My Chinese is a result of their generosity. My Chinese is assumed loss. How can loss be generous? If you ask me if I am fluent in Chinese, I will tell you My Chinese is understanding that there are stories that will always be out of my reach there are people who will never fit together the way that I want them to there are characters that will always stay tangled there are words that will always escape me.
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อย่าคิดว่าฉันไม่สำ�คัญ
reclaiming thai เพลิน อรุณโชติ BY PLEARN AROONCHOTE My awkward tongue rolled out the sounds of my native language in front of disinterested eyes and pitying smiles Present about your heritage, my professor said Present about the kings and temples and what it means to be Thai, she said I stammered, lost for words as I pieced together incoherent phrases to form a sentence. Phrases that aren’t meant to go together just what I pieced together from listening to adults talk. Translating from English to Thai as I went along. How I wished that I could be anywhere else at that moment Anywhere where I didn’t feel so fake and incompetent I wished to be talking about Shakespeare or World War II Anywhere but this no Thai only English Then I would feel at home, I thought And I still think, that my thoughts only flow freely in English The colonizer’s tongue enforced upon me as a building block for success But how can I feel free in the colonizer’s tongue? 8 | VOICES
A tongue that distances me from my family teaches me about Victorians and Romans and Greeks but never teaches me about me A tongue that makes me feel like an outsider in my own home How can I feel free in a language that taught me to reject my own. Now I grieve for my Thai my mother tongue that got overtaken a language that become less important to me due to a colonial education Thinking of all the stories and ideas and histories that I have missed out on because I disregarded them and looked down on them now fill me with sorrow. but not just sorrow also a need a burning desire to immerse myself in Thai’s rich knowledge base that I just discovered. hopefully not too late to take back what I have lost. I want to Reclaim my Thai. And maybe I’ll be more free.
scales
graphite and watercolor by Kelly Tan 10” x 12”
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ঢাকা
BY MYISHA MAJUMDER ঢাকা: We wake up as the sun begins to rise, to a city that once was swarmed with cars, rests for this one hour of the day. ঢাকা: where my mother was born, where my parents met, where my loved ones live, —where my heart is warm. Smog now hangs over a city, once spacious and green. Faces upon faces, one of the world’s busiest places—
—and yet, here is where I feel peace. Among the chaos I can make out the sweetest language in the world, my grandmother’s mother tongue, as she lulls me to sleep with a story of a princess and queen. ঢাকা: in her arms lie the stories of so many souls, familiar and unknown— in her arms calamity emerges but, she closes her eyes for this one hour— the warm of the sun makes her glow, breathe, look, listen.
ご飯 bloopie
sculpture by Maxine Bell
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私は間違いなくて機械です
mixed media by Maxine Bell 18”x24”
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friend of the family watercolor by Maria Fong 9”x12”
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jar of umeboshi 梅干しへ,
BY EMMA ISHIDA
I chose you because I have seen you in my home before. The brand name and the yellow twist cap is familiar. That day, I went on a run through ice, and mud, and rain to get you. Cold water cascaded down on me from cars speeding down Winthrop on my way to get to you. It was strange—no one in Ebisuya looked surprised to see me, dripping. I like to think now that they were waiting for me. That you were waiting for me. It’s 修行, I told myself. I only recently grew to like you. Foods like 梅しそ never tasted good to me. An absolute collision of sweet, sour, salty, bitter. I think I simply got used to, and even grew to like, this complexity, this confusion. I don’t think I would choose you if I could. You weren’t always sold in mass production. 梅干し used to be homemade, inherited, unique, inconsistent, a product of time and hands of mothers and mother’s mothers. This past winter break, my mother told me that when her mother got married, she brought a sample of her own mother’s 梅干し juice with her, to begin her own farm of fermenting plums. I imagine a jar in my grandmother’s hands at age 20, as she carried it delicately over to her new home with my grandfather. A seed to be planted in her new home, declare it as her new space. It was meant to be passed down to her children some day. 『 Why don’t you have your own, マミ？ 』I had asked. Offhandedly, my mother said that it wouldn’t go through airport security. I nodded. Made sense. I didn’t think much of her reasoning in that moment, but as I repeated it in my mind it sounded more and more poetic. You are what I carry now because of TSA, government, borders.
Yet, I still ran in the ice and mud and rain for you because
You are the compromise. I imagine now what it would’ve been like, had my mother smuggled it. Couldn’t be that hard. What is this? They might ask, holding up the jar. My family. She should’ve answered. Let us through. I wondered what it would taste like, and if I would feel a stronger connection with my grandmother and great grandmother and generations before that. I wonder if I could know a history that was tangible, that I could remember. But this is a place in which I’m not supposed to remember, where I’ve been taught that I have no history, just start from zero, they say, you don’t need seeds, they tell me, figure your own shit out.
I’m trying. But I wish I could taste a bit of their lives. Just a little.
愛真 15 | VOICES
fruit bowl
animation by Priya Skelly
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view more:
a somebody BY NASRIN LIN The rice in his plastic lunchbox, he ate it all. seasoned by overnight soy sauce, the off-putting burnt white marked him like the typhoon mud on hand-me-downs as he fiddled with the coins, worn in his pockets, clinking to the raindrops, drop drop drop on the rice paddies, choreographed to the clinking. (He wished he had pork, actual slices, you know.) but two yuans clinking make half a slice, only. one day, he was praying in the Three Mountains King Temple, a centuries-old Buddhist temple thirty footsteps from his front porch— he was kneeling, and his head was low. palm to palm, palms to chest, chest a breath away from the clay-tiled floor; the hazy white incense carried his prayers to the Buddha-land. a white wagtail then landed near the koi fish pond, there was music in its chirps, and in each chirp, he heard Buddha’s voice,
There are only two mistakes one can make along the road to truth; not going all the way, and not starting.
so he got up, walked out of the temple, took a last look at his village, left
and lives his truth. he lives his truth in literature and in science. the name badge on his white coat:
Yang Sheng Lin.
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“Cat City” ink drawing by Amy Chu 5.5”x8.5”
what spins can do, what I can do BY HARUKA NOISHIKI Sure, the sweater may get a little scratchy sometimes. It might be a little too loose at the start, seemingly made for someone else to wear. But then it starts to fit. It starts to shrink (because you forget that you can’t throw the sweater in the dryer, it needs a little bit more care and attention). Then you hang dry it (because, again, you forget that it needs more care and attention than, say, Hunter boots—I had to google that, apparently I did graduate from boarding school—or a Barbour jacket). It shrinks, elongates, stretches, shrinks back again. The sweater will hit the sweet spot sometimes where it will fit just right. It will be too tight sometimes, too exposing, too suffocating, and it will make me want to run and hide from it. Sometimes it’ll be too loose, too drowning, that it will not let me breathe, enveloping me in a large warm birdcage of air. But so and so, I, you—because sometimes, it’s just a little too tight or a little too heavy to pull it off on my own, peel the sweater off and then throw it in the laundry bag that Tufts gave me, yes, the one that probably about 1000 people in my class got and about 130 still have. And then I throw it in the wash. And I try to remember to care for it because, if I don’t, it’ll shrink or stretch. I’ll shrink or stretch it. I might take time off from this sweater sometimes. I might nudge it one day, feel a little static prick on my index finger, and pull my hand away. My 20 | VOICES
hand deserves better than that, I think. Shouldn’t the rest of my body, too? Right? Right. Right. And then I will wear too many t-shirts in a row, many more dresses—A-lines, of course—in a row, and then I will come back to staring at that sweater. Like a scared cat, because I, too, learn my lessons. I know that it prickled my finger. But then something, Then something tells me to reach out again. It might be someone telling me that they really liked that sweater. That they’ve been to the store I bought it at. That they met the seamstress or knitter who made the sweater. That they like the color. That they have a sweater just like mine. And then I reach back in to find the sweater, I reach back out to snag the sweater. It’s there. Of course it’s there. And then I slowly—static, in small doses, just prickles. But would it eventually hurt beyond repair? There are no repair shops for humans, for Asian girls, for Japanese women. And then I slowly—wait, because I’m still a little bit afraid, but remember that last time I did lay my sweater flat to dry, I didn’t put it in the dryer. And then I slowly pick up the sweater. It’s in my hands, and it’s okay. I slide it on, and it fits. It’s okay. And it’s a deep blue, no it’s a hummingbird blue, it’s the color of what home was for me, and how I will keep painting my home. This isn’t about self-love. It’s about
plan of chicago A recollection of places once frequented that no longer exist. Spaces that I once found comfort in continue to survive through remembrance.
screen print on pillow cases by Bella Kiser 34”x23¾” loving others and therefore caring for yourself. Or is it about self-love? Must I love myself? But how do I, when the “I” involved cannot quite possibly put its arms around the entirety of the “I” to be loved, because the arms will never be included? Nor the head? What to do with the head? This is about love. Love, in its most primitive of senses, love, as in the paper bags that the to-go place gives you for free, love as in the person who’s sitting near the outlets who unplugs your charger when you look ready to leave. Love as in the fences they put up around construction sites, love as in traffic signals, love as in food your friend guides you through cooking, love as in the politically charged jabs you
make at your friend. Love as in the way your family tells you that you don’t work hard enough. Love as in folding cranes while waiting for a meal and giving it to the person sitting on your right. Love as in not talking about things that matter. Love as in talking about things that matter. Love as in the moisturizer you spread across your skin. Love as in the cream you never knew you needed. Love as in what makes the sweater wearable if that’s the only one you have not in the wash. Because the sweater is your sweater. Because my sweater is my only sweater. 21 | VOICES
my binary identity
pastel by Raissa Li 19”x24”
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twisted words
oil paint on canvas with paper by Raissa Li 16”x20“ 23 | VOICES
on body papers GRACE TALUSAN ON HER MEMOIR
Grace Talusan (A’94) is author of the memoir The Body Papers. She has published essays, longform journalism, fiction, and book reviews, and she received a degree in English from Tufts University and an MFA in Writing from the University of California, Irvine. Her writing has been supported by Fulbright, Hedgebrook, Ragdale, and others. We meet in Dewick because Grace bought too many meal swipes before accepting her new position at Brandeis University. “It’s like an Old Country Buffet,” she says between coughs. Still recovering from pneumonia, she apologizes, “I’m only feeling 80 percent better.” I’m astounded, taken aback by 24 | VOICES
BY WILSON WONG
how she has still managed to go from teaching classes to squeezing in a meal with me to immediately rushing to her therapy appointment thereafter. If the symptoms of pneumonia were looking radiant while speaking in a low, husky voice before embarking on a book tour, Grace certainly had it. Nestled in a quiet corner, we settle down on a long empty table upstairs. “Taking up space!” I say. She laughs and nods in agreement. “Immigrant families, Filipinx families, Asian American families, [and] families of color barely make up the space of what’s written out there.” Grace tells me that there is such little representation that she had even questioned her own stories while writing her memoir, understanding the weight they carry. “My version of my story is the truth, but is that damaging? It might be, but if we had 500 more books about our experiences, then mine would not be representative at all—mine would just be one family,” she explains. In the 1970s, Talusan’s parents immigrated from Manila to Boston. Her father, Totoy, came to the US on a student visa to finish his medical career. And when Totoy’s visa expired, Grace’s family, despite their newfound middle-class status, became undocumented. With a shuffle of papers, Totoy’s office, Grace’s two US-born brothers, and their entire livelihoods could have disappeared. At the time, Grace had no idea how precarious everything was; despite walking on thin ice, she continued to succeed in school. Until she didn’t. In the process of researching for her memoir, she wanted to follow a pa-
per trail that documented this change. Totoy kept a file on each of his children, comprised of important papers and school assignments. Talusan studied her file to find “all these other ways of experience, besides memory, to help measure or track this time period… I looked at old photos, and I can see the change even within my face in ways I didn’t [at the time],” she adds. Lastly, she tells me about something else she didn’t fully realize the implications of at the time—that her high school research paper topic was child molestation. Every summer for seven years, Totoy’s father would visit her family. And every night those summers, Totoy’s father would visit Grace’s bed. We talked about how Alexander Chee’s Edinburgh was the first child sexual abuse story we had both encountered
boils. “Every month, I pay the equivalent of rent toward my mental health: its own kind of home,” she writes in her book. Despite enduring trauma her entire life, she graduated from Tufts with a degree in English. It was September of 1990 when she first arrived, and in her first week, she received a typewritten letter. Addressed to “Babut” (Talusan’s nickname), Grace’s dad informed her that after dropping her off, her mom got mad at him after telling her there was no reason to cry. “You don’t understand how a mother feels,” he explains.
featuring an Asian American protagonist. In his autobiographical novel, Chee explains how sexual abuse is commonly misunderstood as someone robbing something from you. “Instead, someone leaves something with you that grows until it replaces you,” he writes. “I learned—or I didn’t learn—the right things, how to trust,” Grace says. “Even my nieces and nephews and niblings, the people I feel the most comfortable with, notice how awkwardly I hug them.” She gesticulates a half pat-on-the-back, a half arm hug while half-heartedly laughing. “They don’t know fully why yet, but they will soon.” Talusan herself would not know the full extent of her trauma until her adult years. With unrelenting and refreshing candor, she describes struggling with suicidal depression, dissociative disorder, insomnia, and recurring hives and
More than a decade later, married and paying off her student loans, Talusan had begun exploring the possibility of motherhood. However, her 30s, also known as the “cancer years,” marked a new reckoning. First for her niece, then her older sister, then her, and finally her younger sister. Totoy is a known carrier for the BRCA 1 gene mutation, which increases the risk of breast and ovarian cancer in women. There was a 50-50 chance of his offspring carrying the gene—Grace and her sisters all tested positive. Talusan went through with a double mastectomy, but the respite it provided was short-lived. She now faced the question of undergoing an oophorectomy, but was certain she still wanted a child. Her husband, Alonso, on the other hand, was not quite on board. As a child, he was abandoned by his father, whom he describes with three words: 25 | VOICES
“alcoholic, womanizer, narcissist.” His father told him, “Someday you will end up in the gutter where I found you,” she writes. For Alonso, the thought of becoming a father was scarier than having no child at all. When I ask Grace if there was any tension in the ways some people were portrayed in her memoir, she holds my gaze and nods silently. “[Alonso] worried that that was all of him and it’s not. It’s one story. We’ve been together for 20 years, there are other parts of our life that we enjoy—that’s why we’re together,” she says. “I really had strong feelings of wanting kids, but looking back, I wouldn’t be able to do what I do with my nieces and nephews, with my work, with the choices around my work, if I was taking care day-to-day of my own child.” “In terms of that trade-off, I’m fine with it,” she says. “But,” she continued, “that was hard and I thought about what it meant to share that part of our marriage with folks. He can have his feelings. People are going to think what they think. I can’t control that. I tried to be as fair as possible, but what’s more important is that people struggle with this question, and it’s not something we talk about very much.” When Grace turned 40, her dreams of motherhood ended—at least in what is most commonly understood as motherhood. When her niece Naomi was 12, she read her “Tita Grace”, a poem she had written for a school assignment. “A second mother / The person that plays with you, bakes with you and loves you,” she read. Talusan doesn’t think it’s productive to imagine a life without abuse, but sometimes, she admits she sees her future in Naomi. “I’m hoping Naomi sees what’s possible… I want her—all of them, my nieces and nephews and niblings—to know that they can survive a lot,” she says. “If you have the right 26 | VOICES
support and treatment and medication or whatever it is you need, there is a lot you can survive and live through.” The same year, Talusan received a year-long Fulbright Scholarship to do research in Manila. “A literary pilgrimage,” writers might call this. But for Talusan, it also meant returning and living in a place she hadn’t stayed in for an extended period of time since she was two—a home of sorts. (Imagine, an Asian American defining home). “It was a really profound experience, to be known, to be seen. Even Starbucks workers would recognize us and greet us by our names,” she says. Grace asks me if I felt similarly when I went abroad to Hong Kong last year. I told her that men I’d meet wouldn’t even bat an eyelash at a White man. “Isn’t that wild? That we live with this structure every day? It’s just part of the air we breathe here,” she responds. In the Philippines, she adds, everybody knew her name: Talusan. You can trace the Talusan lineage back to Grace’s second cousin, Alfrredo Navarro Salanga—a published author and prolific writer. “Here in the US, people can’t even pronounce [my last name],” she says. “Publishing is 80 percent White, and that’s power. That’s influencing a narrative, like what they’re interested in is different than what we’re interested in.” Getting her foot in the door of the publishing world wasn’t easy. Talusan is well aware of the structural issues she faces as a woman of color, but these factors have never discouraged her from writing. Early in her career, she kept a critic journal. “I had this file that has all that’s in my head that keeps me from getting work done,” she says. “I would say all that I wanted to say, like, ‘Who cares?’ or ‘Your writing sucks!’ and I would talk back in a different font or color.” It’s difficult enough receiv-
photos courtesy of Grace Talusan ing writing opportunities, trying to get paid, or becoming visible, especially as writers of color. “It’s going to be worse if we’re attacking ourselves,” she says. I first met Talusan in January 2016. She was teaching the first-year English course, “Asian American Perspectives”—a class she has taught for more than a decade. It was the first time I saw myself represented in front of the classroom, my readings, and my assignments. Compensating for lost time, I would later take all of the Asian American Studies (AAST) courses offered for the remainder of my undergraduate career, but none of these were taught by Talusan. “Because I didn’t have a PhD, I couldn’t teach a course higher than a first-year writing course,” she says. “Places that understand creative writing understand that you don’t necessarily have to have a PhD.” This upcoming fall, Talusan will begin her work as a Fannie Hurst Writer-in-Residence at Brandeis while still teaching courses at Tufts through Tisch College. Her departure from Tufts is a tremendous loss for both our com-
munity and its AAST course offerings. When I ask her if she is sad to leave, she immediately responds, “No.” At Brandeis, she will be paid more to teach fewer courses and will be teaching what she hasn’t been able to teach here: creative writing. “I’ve really appreciated everyone here, but I cannot volunteer my time,” she says. “I mean, I did, but the system is not set up to work in the way I want to work with people.” What’s next? “I’m working on my first novel and doing research on Jewish refugees moving to the Philippines before World War II,” she says. “I’m marketing, too. I’m doing a different part of the writing process where I’m like, ‘What does it mean to market myself?’” An introvert (like all good writers), Talusan feels weird about using Twitter and Bookstagram. “I’m not good at Twitter, I’m not, I’m really bad at it. I feel like Celeste [Ng] is really good at Twitter,” she says, referencing another female Asian American writer. But, aside from anxiety-inducing activities like navigating social media and making her next student loan payment, Talusan simply wants to write more. “When I’m working on something, and it’s going so well, it’s,” she pauses. “Almost like falling in love over and over again. You must know that feeling, you’re a writer, too,” she continues. I do know that feeling—a place no one can inhabit but you, unaffected by abuse or injustice. “I want to check up on it right before bed and then first thing in the morning. I want to make my coffee and get started, because I get really excited,” she says. “I want to have more of that, those experiences. I want to get more writing done so I can feel that.”
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poems of detention BY KARL YONEDA, ANGEL ISLAND, 1926-27 TRANSLATIONS BY ISSAY MATSUMOTO After coming here a few days fly by. My tears dry away and I am together with grief. * Through a window one can see the brilliant explosion of a bright red evening sun. * Writing poetry after a period of silence the worries in my chest disappear. * America is our fatherland but he won’t come to see someone like me. * Today passes me again always worrying about never leaving even until dawn. —
Karl Yoneda (1906-1999) was a Japanese American labor activist, teacher and writer born in Glendale, California and educated in Japan. Yoneda wrote these poems while detained in Angel Island, fleeing conscription by the Imperial Japanese Army. In 1942, he and his family were incarcerated at Manzanar under Executive Order 9066.
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boston chinatown
photography by Nora Li
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“Look Beyond” collage by Esther Tzau
a commitment; for my communities and especially for Ash BY ANA SOFÍA AMIEVA-WANG Lately, I have been feeling daunted by how we are constantly moving away from each other. Or maybe it’s that all the loss created by movement feels like it has become ‘business as usual.’ How will we continue to recognize one another if our distance is constantly normalized? I find so much meaning in what Grace Lee Boggs says about staying in one place as a radical commitment to growing together. A commitment to coming to know and love a place, and becoming part of the transformation of its communities. I am so grateful to those who have been able and have found the strength to do so. But in diaspora, a commitment to place also feels precarious. Knowing we are often out-of-place, I don’t want to take for granted the little moments crossing the street or reading a poem, in which I feel your presence or feel suddenly desperate to
come together as a community despite the distance. Maybe those longings are memories of the generations of labor that made possible our communities in the first place. I want to commit to a community in constant movement. I want to imagine a string that binds together memories and lived-realities. A binding that commits us to what Lily Cho calls “obscure miracles of connection,” that form at the intersections of history, memory, and our day-to-day lives. What is a community except a space we hold together in order to survive our realities? What is a community if not a commitment to each other and to our collective futures? See: “American Revolutionary: The Evolution of Grace Lee Boggs,” produced and directed by Grace Lee. And “The Turn to Diaspora,” (2007) by Lily Cho. 31 | VOICES
yellow fervor BY ELLIE LOCKE I like to tell people my mother saw my father first. That she spotted him from across the room and admired his wire-rimmed glasses and neon orange polo shirt. That she liked the freckles smattering his nose and the way he stood, shuffling his feet. That she asked him to dance, not the other way around. I like to tell people this because it’s true, but also because I worry what they may assume otherwise. My father did not approach my mother in a bar, interrupting her conversation to share a glass of sake. He did not bump into her in a Chinese restaurant and insist she try the wonton soup. And he did not sweep her off the streets of Taiwan and into a whirlwind romance that traversed continents. Instead, they met at a Tuesdaynight ballroom dance class in St. Paul, Minnesota. He proposed eight months later when she got a job offer on the East Coast. “It was either move together, or lose her forever. Getting married made sense.” I’m neither disappointed nor surprised my parent’s love story isn’t one filled with turbulence and longing and grief. Love doesn’t need to be painful to be powerful. But “sensible” isn’t how a child wants their parents love story to be described. Love isn’t supposed to make sense. I play the moment over and over again in my head, watching my mother make her way across the room. I can see it all so clearly: the brush of her dress against the floor, the glint of her earrings, the red of her lips. She’s
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beautiful. Then the view shifts to my father and guilt begins to creep through my chest, growing like vines through my veins. * Sitting across from a boy in a coffee shop, I explain I’m part Taiwanese. “So, you’re like…part Asian? That’s hot.” A smile springs across his lips. I imagine the same glee in this boy’s eyes reflected across my father’s face. My dad watches the way Mom’s long, dark hair sways as she walks. He admires her pale skin and almondshaped eyes. Does this projection make sense? Plastering the lust of another over the gentle face of my father? Another coffee shop, another boy. “Your Mom is Taiwanese? How’d your Dad pull that off?” I watch the thoughts pooling in this boy’s mind drip onto my father’s image. They splatter across his face and run down his cheeks, distorting my view. This version of my father doesn’t make sense. My real dad makes dinner and washes the dishes every night. He does the laundry and packs my brother’s lunch. When I was young, he changed my diaper more often than my mom and rocked me to sleep singing binary code. All these things fathers should do, and all these things my imagined father refuses. And yet I can’t see my father’s first flutter of love. I only see my mother making her way across the room.
formations of desire BY SONYA BHATIA When I first met you, I noticed your socks above your ankles and rolled down slightly The first word that popped into my mind: kindness The real beginning transpired out of a moment that should have been filled with pain (and it was). Then I looked into your eyes: simultaneously, I was hurt and felt closer to you. *I still barely know you I think about you now on late night walks home (me, a repressed inner romantic cannot stop thinking about you and I do not know why). Somewhere the lines all blurred into one fleeting feeling, an ambiguous inarticulation— the remnants of which morph into a yearning of your acquaintance: to be wrapped into your arms, lying in bed to wake up in the morning and see how the light from your window falls on your face and watch the shadows form on your body. to lay my head on your chest and hear the vibrations of your voice. I am fragile (I rather stay ignorant than shatter). So, instead, I will look at the morning light coming from my bedroom window until time works to fade and all that remains are shadows.
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mid-flight
BY JULES YUN
Every night I made a nest out of the jumbo-carnival-teddy-bear-sized beige pillows that matched my mom’s bedding. I would lay down cuddling with April and Katherine and Lenny and talk to the three switched-off eyeballs staring down at me. I was invisible nestled in this enclosed sanctuary. It was the only place I felt safe. My parents used to tell me they fought because they loved each other I reminded myself it was love when my sisters and I huddled behind the fortress of mattresses comforting each other waiting for the yelling to stop. Pretending everything was fine in the morning letting silences linger in the cracks of our conversations. Yesterday my sister called me crying our parents had told her they were disappointed I told her we will never live up to their ideas of us. We were destined to disappoint in the most beautiful ways. I find it fitting how the Dutch word for brother transformed into the English word bully the way family can turn into hurt or father can mean fury or mother and suffocation or children and Hate how I can’t blame the invisible how I feel saltwater and shallow breaths every time I see them. I learn to navigate the line between love and bitterness The other day my mom asked me when did you become a wounded animal? Can’t she see? I am a bird without wings whose only wish is to reclaim a nest. 34 | VOICES
“fractured.a.” wire sculpture by Madeline Lee
“fractured.b.” mixed media by Madeline Lee 16”x20”
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the family Ana Sofía Amieva-Wang ‘19 enjoys squatting in front of the AAC heater. Maria Fong ‘21 is musically gifted at the nose flute. Sung-Min Kim ‘21 feels cozy in fuzzy pajamas. Jessie Lan ‘21 enjoys hugging pillow pets. Nora Li ‘21 <3 natural light and fried eggs. Pat Mahaney ‘20 is the coolest heelys rider on the east coast. Issay Matsumoto’s ‘21 mother thinks he looks like an ostrich. Richard Nakatsuka ‘22 can do the clover thing with his tongue. Kelly Tan ‘22 thinks strawberry-flavored snacks > everything. Celeste Teng ‘19 values unconditional & honest love (she’s a pisces). Wilson Wong ‘19 loves oat milk and queer asian american community. Jules Yun ‘19 feels comfy in their korean electric heating bed pad.
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