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Friday, August 27, 2021
‘The Decameron Project’ remembers life and fiction touched by COVID-19 by Sadie Leite Arts Editor
Originally published March 16, 2021. March 2021 sits uncomfortably with many of us, a reminder of March 2020 and the start of the COVID-19 pandemic’s unsettling consequences. One year ago, in response to the massive changes taking place, a certain book began flying off bookshelves. It was Giovanni Boccaccio’s “The Decameron” (1353), a collection of short stories told by a fictional group sheltered outside Florence, Italy as the Black Death devastated 14th century Europe. The New York Times Magazine created their own “Decameron,” with short stories detailing COVID-19. On July 7, 2020, the magazine issue was published. Then, on Nov. 10, 2020, The New York Times Magazine released “The Decameron Project” as a print book, explaining the project and presenting the 29 stories. Victor LaValle’s “Recognition” (2020), the first story in the collection, dissects death by introducing past lives and their odd manifestations. The protagonist, unnamed, befriends a woman named Mirta. At the end of the story, Mirta explains through her door that she recognized the character because they met in a past life. Seconds later, Mirta’s door opens and she is found dead. She has left the protagonist a note, ensuring they would
meet again in another life. Culminating quickly, the story teaches that death, though jarring, immediate and unwanted, can also connect. In the fiction’s comforting claim, guilt is mitigated by the promised continuation of friendship, assured by a supernatural ghost or a festering deja vu. In the preface to the collection, renowned author Margaret Atwood’s story, “Impatient Griselda” (2020), is hinted to be genius. It is. An alien, sent as a part of an “intergalactical-crises aid package,” distracts quarantined humans with an atrociously entertaining story, all while berating humankind for its despicable qualities. Immediately, the alien’s translation device cannot interpret the word “vegan” in a request for snacks. The suggested and obvious solution, then, is to not eat. The “little young entities” don’t like the alien’s bluntness or that it looks like an octopus. It enjoys this, as its lack of skeleton makes oozing under doors manageable. Continuing with hilarious discrepancies in language and culture, the alien tells a folk story of sisters tricking and killing a duke. The story is almost believable until the alien nonchalantly states that the sisters ate the corpse, a more substantive and menacing translational glitch. Still, the alien insists that “storytelling does help us understand one another across our social
and historical and evolutionary chasms.” The story initially appears to prove the opposite. Yet, the ridiculousness of the misconceptions reveals human ignorance. Fiction does unite, especially during difficult times. Those who reject this pleasure because of their natural differences should have their corpses eaten. Etgar Keret’s story “Outside” (2020), translated from Hebrew by Jessica Cohen, features a character who has forgotten everything about his life before isolation. He goes outside, trying to remember if he was a social worker. His instincts are revivified by a beggar asking for food. He remembers to ignore them and walk with a head down. The story ends with the line, “The body remembers everything, and the heart that softened while you were alone will harden back up in no time.” The story is brief but insightful. Isolation stole our humanity. Yet, in the world before, were we more inhumane? Edwidge Danticat’s “One Thing” (2020) tells the story of Marie-Jeanne remembering the behavioral intricacies of her science teacher’s husband. She is “the love of Ray’s life,” talking to his unconscious body through a phone held to his ear by the nurse also regulating his ventilator. Danticat’s beautiful writing effortlessly paints the pain of losing loved ones to the debilitating effects of COVID-19. It is an intensely moving story to end the collection.
controversy over McCammond alone seems to have received as much coverage as each of the brand solidarity announcements put together. Soon after Condé Nast announced McCammond’s hiring as editor in chief of Teen Vogue at the beginning of March, racist tweets that McCammond posted in 2011 resurfaced, such as “Outdone by Asian #whatisnew” and “now googling how not to wake up with swollen, asian eyes.” Just days after her hire, more than 20 members of the Teen Vogue staff expressed concern to management in a joint letter. Despite McCammond’s repeated apologies, disapproval of her position increased until she finally relinquished the role last week. This came just two days after the Atlanta shootings and before she had officially started the job. While it is good that companies are trying to combat racism, their steps seem largely performative considering the Asian stereotypes perpetuated by the fashion industry as a whole. The Atlanta shooter, Robert Aaron
Long, admitted that he was motivated by “sexual addiction” and “temptation … that he wanted to eliminate.” This reflects a larger dehumanizing effect of Orientalism upon Asian women, who are seen as both appealing and threatening, exotic and sexually submissive. “The Orient was almost a European invention, and had been since antiquity ‘a place of romance, exotic beings, haunting memories and landscapes,[‘]” a pioneering theorist of Orientalism, Edward Said, explained in his book, “Orientalism” (1978). “The Orient is not only adjacent to Europe; it is also … one of its deepest and most recurring images of the other.” In the United States, Asian women face dual stereotypes as both a fetishized “other” as described by Said and a submissive model minority. For several who work in spa services, this leads to assumptions that they are involved in sex work and creates a constant danger of harassment and assault. Far from just being incidentally involved through
VIA AMAZON
The New York Times Magazine’s “The Decameron Project” (2020) includes 29 short stories written during the COVID-19 pandemic. In the introduction to the collection, Rivka Galchen writes, “Memento vivere.” In Latin, it means, “Remember that you must live.” She marks this message as the meaning of “The Decameron.” We live through fiction, reading stories
that are so much like our own to remember our place in this new world. “The Decameron Project” is available everywhere and should be purchased by anyone impacted by COVID-19 — which is everyone.
McCammond’s individual racism, the fashion industry actively furthers these stereotypes. It frequently hypersexualizes models and appropriates cultural clothing, while depicting female garment workers as impoverished yet industrious laborers. Designers and brands have long appropriated styles such as the Chinese qipao, Vietnamese Áo Dài and Japanese kimono to represent a sexual, undifferentiated Asia. This phenomenon traces back to the first travels of Europeans to Asia, and to the resurgence of “Asian chic” in the 1990s and early 2000s — see Sandra Niessen, “Re-Orienting Fashion: The Globalization of Asian Dress” (2003) — as well as the embroidered qipao dresses of Urban Outfitters and other fast-fashion retailers today. This matters because fashion is key to how we see ourselves and others. A recent study suggests that even accessories as simple and necessary as face masks make it easier to see each other as threats and harder to recognize shared humanity. With racist assumptions connect-
ing Asians to Donald Trump’s dubbed “Kung flu” and “Chinese virus,” Asian Americans are made even more susceptible to violence. And while some Asians feel so embarrassed by monolids that they opt for double eyelid surgery, other non-Asians see no problem following the recent “fox eye” makeup trend which gives a more slanted eye appearance. As the Thai celebrity makeup artist Nick Barose explains, “People’s eye shapes are not trends. We’re not handbags of the season.” Both the fashion and beauty industries thus have extensive histories that persist today of capitalizing on Orientalism for economic profit and commodifying Asian people in an extremely harmful way. Brands posting about standing in solidarity with the Asian American and Pacific Islander community without mentioning this context come off as shallowly attempting to maintain face. Indeed, according to the firms McKinsey & Co. and Bain & Co., China has been the world’s largest
Canceling Teen Vogue’s Alexi McCammond won’t end anti-Asian hate by Phoebe Wong
Executive Arts Editor
Originally published March 23, 2021. Content warning: This article references racial and sexual violence. The fashion industry plays a key role in recent violence toward the Asian American and Pacific Islander community, but it goes far beyond the latest controversy over Alexi McCammond, who was set to be the next Teen Vogue editor in chief. Asians have faced an onslaught of racism and violence over the past year of the pandemic. Just last week, on March 16, eight people — six of whom were Asian and seven of whom were women — were shot and killed at three massage parlors in Atlanta. In response to the ongoing violence, brands such as Valentino, Nike, Adidas, Converse, Tommy Hilfiger, Benefit Cosmetics and U Beauty have expressed condolences and declared their support of the Asian American and Pacific Islander community over the past few months. However, the
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