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The Wave
Founders Eric Zhou, Jerrica Li Editors JuHye Mun (Poetry), Hyejee Bae (Visual Art), Jason Zhou (Visual Art), CĂŠline Vendler (Non-Fiction), Vanessa Hu (Non-Fiction), Julianna Kim (Fiction) Cover Artist Ramona Park Layout and Design Margaret Sun Managing Editors Jason Zhou, CĂŠline Vendler Website Vanessa Hu See more on our website: waveartsmagazine.com Facebook: @harvardwave Twitter: @thewavemag1 Instagram: @thewaveharvard wave.arts.journal@gmail.com 2
The Inaugural Issue Dear reader, We are The Wave. We are an arts magazine of the Harvard College Asian Students Arts Project, focused on publishing fiction, poetry, non-fiction and other artwork created by Asians in the English language (anglophone) from the Harvard and surrounding community. The undergraduates who thought of the wild idea that would become The Wave over lunch could hardly have imagined this beautiful finished magazine, an online website, our team of a dozen students passionate about art and the significance of our Asian backgrounds, and an enterprise that is growing - teeming - with bold voices and creative energy. What makes a wave? In American history, the very concept of immigration was tied to the word “waves”. In America, often that kind of “wave” made the immigrant a monolith, a threatening stereotype who destroyed and dismantled. That wave was built from a collective belief of prejudice and a widely accepted imaginative leap powered by ignorance that characterized the immigrant and generations. In America today, some still keep the monolith of the alien immigrant alive in their minds. Now, what kind of wave are we? Or else, what is it that ties our wave together—is it the immigrant, diasporic narrative? Is it racism? One thing is for sure: we are not here to outline the singular Asian experience because it does not exist. In our community, one individual might speak out about “Asian” masculinity in America—another the loss of their grandparents’ native language—another the norms of marriage shifting from one Indian generation to another. In fact, we are a wave of voices spilling from so many diverse backgrounds, sprouting from the margins of dominant English-speaking cultures. We are a flourishing movement creating art that speaks to our age, our race, our histories and our communities in the here and now. We are the ripples that propagate themselves through sharing and multiplicity and vulnerability. Our wave is not one monolithic force; it is made strong by individual voices giving their truths. 3
And as well, perhaps, there is a time to stop asking why and for what reason; and it is simply best to read and take this magazine for what it is—a collection of beautiful art by your peers. We hope you flip through these pages armed with a pen and with an open mind, ready to be filled to the brim with insights from our artists. And we hope you read something in here that inspires you to connect and to make new things as well. That is the ripple effect! Finally, in the spirit of making this space as open as possible, we have created an open online archive consisting of even more works of art submitted to this magazine. And we hope that this archive can store snapshots of what Asian anglophone art looks like at Harvard in 2020 and every year going forth. Thank you for supporting us for our first issue! We hope you enjoy!
- The Wave Team 2019-2020
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Celebrating There is Life in All Things by Kelsey Chen ......................... 6 Breakfast by Jenny Hong ......................... 8 comfort food by Emily Hong ......................... 9 Tom by Mai Nguyen ........................ 10 Another’s Smile by Mai Nguyen ........................ 15 thoughts from the other day by Michael A. Rosegrant ........................ 16 Deep Sea Girl by Anna Gong ........................ 18 RE:1982 by Kelsey Chen ........................ 20 Clown Kiss by Olivia Tai ........................ 27 K I M by Alexander Chase Arber ........................ 28 comfort by Claire Lee ........................ 30 Ars Poetica by Sammy Oh ........................ 32 Tohono by MeenaVenkataramanan ........................ 34 Book Finding by Yash Bhutada ........................ 40 did i make you laugh? by Olivia Tai ........................ 45 Chicken Feet by Kalos Chu ........................ 46
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“There is Life in All Things” is part of a series of oil paintings whose surfaces have collected the traces of calligraphic hauntings. Continentally dislocated and the bearer of genealogical traumas, each diasporic body is haunted by transcontinental spectres; the spectral Chinese characters and ghostly calligraphic moves hidden within the motion of paint on canvas mirror the profound anxiety of my own tectonically fractured bloodline.These ghosts leave their residue across my canvasses—partly confessional, my paintings are a collection of the fragmented memories and emotions that have come to figure my existence.
There is Life in All Things by Kelsey Chen
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breakfast by Jenny Hong
i awaken to the promise of eggs that burst open and bleed joy into the pores of toast, thick and inviting, spilling over the edges like a sunrise. my mother dries her hands on a yellow towel and brings out a basket of lychee, pushing a thumbnail into rough, leathery skin, and moon meets mesa as she peels back from the flesh a membrane pink and thin as an eyelid from sleep. she tells me i need to be careful out there, a morning routine, rattles off things i need to look out for and i know every word before she says it but i listen as i fill my mouth with the taste of home because every ten a.m. breakfast is a reminder that our lychees are numbered, that yolk leaks out of egg white too fast to hold onto, that no smudge of daylight peeks over the crust of horizon without intending to stay, and no sunrise is accidental. - j.h. While reflecting on my last few days of summer before leaving for college, I remembered seeing this anxious, sorrowful look on my mother’s face. I realized that while we anticipated the future, we were both trying to hold on to something, wondering whether breakfasts and lychees and our relationship would ever be the same.
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Having moved away from southern California for the first time, this piece was drawn in Cambridge, MA during a nostalgic time of my life. It’s a reflection of what it is to feel at home, and what it means to be away from it.
comfor t food by Emily Hong 9
Tom
by Mai Nguyen
After watching The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, I started to imagine my siblings and me as the ultimate first-generation American superhero dreamteam. While as the youngest of four I’d always admired my siblings, I began to see each of us as kings and queens like those in Narnia. We are all unique; we each contribute a distinct persona to the family. Rather than archetypes, all of us are protagonists and have special skills. Hang—the fiery warrior for social rights and our philosophical leader. Sam— the tech wizard and comedian. Tom—the unpredictable joker card and unconventional genius. And me—the artistic brain and ace. In The Chronicles of Narnia, Edmund is the odd-one-out of the four Pevensie siblings. From the very beginning, he strikes you as the worst kind of pre-teen brat. He excels in being consistently annoying. He constantly bosses his endearing little sister Lucy around. He even betrays his siblings to the evil White Witch! (Granted, he was under the influence of the enchanted Turkish Delight. But still.) Edmund is the character you want to pin all of your frustrations on--that is, until, reminded of his love for his family, he breaks free of the White Witch’s spell and emerges from his journey victorious, a symbol of redemption and inherent goodness. Until—reminded of his love for his family, he breaks free of the White Witch’s spell and emerges from his journey victorious, a symbol of redemption and inherent goodness.
“He excels in being consistently annoying.” Tom is the “Edmund” in my family. We’re only one year apart, and our lives have been closely intertwined since birth, literally. We all know my sister was a natural birth. Sam was a C-section; the permanent scar below my mom’s belly is proof of that. But when it came to me and Tom, the answer to the question “Where did I come from?” was just a bunch of giggles and “the toilet.” Tom and I don’t have much in common, but we did both grow up thinking we were found in the toilet like a bunch of doo-doo. Thanks a lot, Mom. I’m not exactly sure if that made us feel closer to each other, but we shared some tangible things, too. Each summer, my mom distributed SummerBridge Math workbooks to Sam, Tom and me and had us erase the answers scribbled in by whoever used the books the year before, her savvy version of recycling. I always inherited Tom’s from the year before and was tasked with erasing his quasi-chicken scratches. From an early age, I learned to recognize Tom’s handwriting. I can barely remember what my own handwriting looked like, but I do recall Tom’s gnome-like scrawl. When we were toddlers, we would play “Cat and Owner”. Basically, I would crawl around and meow like a cat while Tom humored me, walking 10
alongside me and pointing out imaginary stuffed animals on the “store” shelves. In particular, Mai Cat preferred flying pigs and small penguins. To this day, I have an ardent love for my still-growing stuffed animal collection. Eventually, we began to find Cat and Owner too childish and finding ways to play together was increasingly difficult. From stuffed animals we all moved on, to video games. Tom found multiplayer too stressful. He couldn’t handle the demands of other people in a time-crunch and their never-ending nuances in communicating, not in video games and not in real life either. So he shut them out. Over time, this tendency to turn away from each other when our speaking and thinking didn’t match created Tom’s own world. Insulated in an opaque bubble, Tom’s space was complete with humor and references and essential questions that none of us could access. It was a mental battle, whether we would try to see through Tom’s lens or see through what seemed like the lens everyone else was looking through. Conversations with Tom when he was in high school were like trying the last string on a frayed rope. He would berate me for not turning off the basement light, not washing the dishes, not closing the drafty doors, forgetting my key, forgetting my T-pass, coming home late (he would usually go straight home to play video games)—the list goes on. Always, being in the same room put both of us in a bad mood.
Me: Hey Tom! Did you just get home too? Tom: Yeah! Me: Ok... hey, can you wash the dishes? Tom: No. Me: What?!? Go wash the dishes right now or I’m telling Mom! You’re so lazy! Another example:
Tom: Kimmai, where did you go? Me: Oh, I was getting some extra clothes. Tom: Did you turn off the lights in the basement? Me: No, I forgot. Tom: What?!? You need to remember to turn off the lights in the base- ment—God you’re so stupid!!
Any situation would just about end like this. I couldn’t stand the pings and dings of his video games, and he couldn’t stand the sound of my flute disturbing 11
his sleep schedule. My life and what I considered valuable could never align perfectly with his, not even for a moment, and that fact made us angry all the time.
“We never bring these feelings of sibling love out candidly, together. Writing about someone I see every day feels like a breach of privacy.” When Tom’s interest in video games became a borderline addiction, I found myself writing letters to him and drawing sketches for him. One drawing I made in my precious sketchbook, complete with a rainbow of markers and pens, dates back to 6th grade. Among the doodles was one titled “Fun Things To Do Besides Video Games” along with a neat bulleted list underneath. I was so desperate to reach out to him, but I never found the courage to send them along (which was probably for the better, since I had zero tact in middle school and we still hadn’t found any form of communication that worked for us). Even now, of all of my siblings, I feel most afraid to show him this personal essay. We never bring these feelings of sibling love out candidly, together. Writing about someone I see every day feels like a breach of privacy. Eventually, the one-year difference became a true hindrance to our relationship, since our trajectories in school were closely connected. Tom’s love for the individual world of video games and aversion to outside pressure affected his schoolwork. On the other hand, I benefited from time limits and pre-planning. Tom would ignore me in the hallway, even when I said hi. Eventually, I just stopped saying hi. It didn’t help that we shared some of our classes. Despite general school policies that try to separate siblings in classes, we took AP U.S. History together. During parent conference week, my teacher came up to me and asked that I remind my parents to come during Tom’s conference slot. Oh, and they don’t need to come to mine; I’m all set. I also remember staying behind to finish up a post-essay reflection while our teacher was telling Tom to delete his computer shortcuts and use the school library computers. Listening in on their conversation, I learned that he hadn’t even started his essay. I left as soon as I could. I felt so small, so useless. What kind of sister was I to know so much about Tom’s struggles and not yet know how to lend a helping hand? Would I just make things worse? Whenever I talked about Tom to my classmates in passing, there was always a mixture of disbelief and surprise. My entire body would become tense, anticipating the inevitable response: “Wait—Tom? Thomas? Thomas is your brother?” “Yes. He is.” 12
“But we’re still brother and sister.” Sometimes, I’d feel a secret joy that they didn’t associate Tom with me, because he was “weird.” Even though I defended Tom at all costs against others, I also knew that I didn’t want to be like him. Through our time apart, when he went to college and I was still in high school, we both privately came to the conclusion that we’d never connect as best friends. Tom and I are much more like Tom and Jerry. Our senses of humor don’t match, and neither do our personalities, and our fights never, ever end. But we’re still brother and sister. ~ He took a break from college in his second semester, and when I found out he was coming home for an extended amount of time, I was sorely disappointed. No more calm dinners, just me and my parents. No more quiet evenings of flute music and the TV on low. Tom! He’s so annoying. Thankfully, we both mellowed out in the year apart. These days, whenever we sit in the same room, often because we’re snacking, our silence is comfortable. If we’re not silent, we’re offering food, usually fruit, to each other. Have you tried those bananas? They’re already ripe. Dad bought some grapes on sale yesterday, you should try some! Somehow, offering each other fresh, ripe fruit has become a sign of caring and love between Tom and me. It works for us. Soon after he came home, I took a serious mental note: even if Tom is the annoying, even infuriating “Edmund” of our family, he is still the most kind-hearted out of us all. I constantly fall asleep unknowingly leaving the dishes unwashed. Tom steps up and washes the dishes. He also helps cook dinner, which used to be my job, until I got too tired with music and school life.
“Maybe then, I’ll find a form of words that can speak between us.” On nights when I stay out late, I don’t bother to text my parents, because they’re mostly related to music events. My parents don’t want to hear about my music events. They’re too “stressful.” But I can always count on a text from Tom: Where are you Kimmai Even if his texts come across as stone-cold serious, I don’t take them too seriously. I know that even if I come home extra late and Tom is scowling at me, he’s still there to open the door. To know that someone cares about where I am—even if that caring comes in Tom’s signature, blunt style—makes me smile. 13
Ironically, unlike the rest of us Nguyen siblings, Tom rejects most typical classics of our childhood era, like Harry Potter and Narnia. Tom feels embarrassed by and tries to distance himself from those sentimental fictional worlds as much as possible, but I continue to keep them close to my heart. Since I can’t just throw out the words “Edmund” and “Hufflepuff ” and expect him to catch on, I privately flesh out my feelings and thoughts through moments and memories, letting them layer over each other. Maybe eventually, I’ll find a form of words that can speak between us. In the meantime, I am content. ~ These days, I still forget my key. But now, Tom is at home to open the door for me, consistently, every single day. He accepts our routine, and it means the world to me. I’m tired, and he’s home. When I stand on the doorstep, weary and wanting to throw my shoes in the trash, I see Tom racing towards the door. I feel at home even before I step inside.
“Tom” is excerpted from a collection of personal essays, entitled What Makes a World. Mai Kim Nguyen is a multi-media artist from Cambridge, MA. maikn.flute@gmail.com
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I found a picture of this woman on a scrap from an old National Geographic. I don’t know anything about her for sure other than that she was from Peru (based on the caption) and that she had a baby, who I decided not to paint because I was so captivated by the lady’s smile. I wanted the focus to be on her individual happiness.
Another’s Smile by Mai Nguyen 15
thoughts from the other day (when i was transcending gender) by Michael A. Rosegrant
Michael A. Rosegrant (any pronouns said w/ respect) is a storyteller whose work centers identity, family, and history as a way to combat oppression.They wrote this piece upon reconciling their gender with a buried history revealed to them by J. Neil C. Garcia’s article, Male Homosexuality in the Philippines: a short story.
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Deep Sea Girl by Anna Gong 19
RE:1982 by Kelsey Chen
Here is a brief interjection. A story, not about me. About 1982, which is also the same moment as Now. About you. Not about you you, per se. About You, Vincent Chin. Not you. You are not him. You probably do not even know who he is. And that is part of his tragedy. His mother’s tragedy. Our collective tragedy. Is the cause of our sadness what is truly devastating, or that we do not know the depths of our own grief? But the sadness of this story is deeper than that, less universal. Not mine. Not yours, either, not really. Not your sadness. We were born in the year 1982, you and me both.
Last night you were straight out of college, I think, with a fresh new cut and everything—new suit, new job, new hope, new girl. I remember she was dressed in blue and very demure. I liked her, and your dad would’ve too. Last night you walked through the door of my apartment, leaving it swinging in that way I don’t like, and said, Ma, I’m in love. For some reason, our kitchen was painted a neon yellow so electric it was almost green. And then, millions of years later, the whole apartment flashed into a deep, dark magenta.You were gone and I was on the floor, face-down, unsure of how I got there. Those are the things I can remember. I can’t remember if you died. I don’t think you did—not in front of me, at least. This is different from the usual. This is the first time that you aren’t murdered in front of me. Every night, it happens almost the same way: you bring your fiancé home, and I like her.You leave her with me and head out. Time passes uncannily in the kitchen, me and her. She and the room both undulate for a while. The kitchen is always blue, she is always in red, and the clock on the wall above our dinner table is always glowing violet. Something always compels me to walk into your bedroom, the one that has looked the same since you were twelve, all baby blue and lined with these little baseball trophies from that one summer you played in the little league. I leave your fiancé and her red dress in the kitchen. And you’re there, and sometimes there’s no one else there, and sometimes there’s a hundred men there—all equally gruesome and pale—and you’re always dying.You die in different ways, but your skull always cracks in the same spot, right above your right ear. Tai Yang, it’s called. The acupuncture point named after the sun, my son. Unfailingly, I’ve dreamt your death every night for six years, so I feel disoriented at this sudden new twist. I never quite remember everything when I wake up, but your death, I never forget. So today I am particularly shaky, particularly unsure. The neon glow of this dream is still echoing when I climb out of my sheets. This is an uncertainty I cannot take, so I stumble quickly out of bed, still tangled in the sheets, and into the living room. 20
The System sits in the middle of the room, small and white, as it always has since its installation, and I grab for it with a desperation that I have felt only twice: the first time was six years ago when I told them over the phone they must’ve called the wrong mother of the wrong Vinnie; the second, also six years ago, was when you were murdered the second time, the first night I slept after your first death. I’ve spent more time with this little white box—and you—than any other living person since then. System’s in my hands, but I forget momentarily what I’m to do with it, so, instinctively, like a child, I cradle it against my chest and huddle my knees around it. By now, the urgency’s fading and a familiar ache returns, leaking a bit from my eyes, but mostly, I think, flowing from the cavity of my chest onto the carpet. And I hold System to me in that spot because it staunches the flow a bit and I don’t want to soil the rug. You are dead—I know that.You have been dead and dying for six years. I am not weeping because I think you to be alive, I am weeping because you are dead, but might no longer be dying. I feel the same way you probably did when you were three and burst into tears after seeing snow for the first time—terrified and desperately curious at the same time. I can’t bring myself to move, freezing in the same way you did at three, as if staying still would quell the frigid uncertainty quivering in the air. So I just sit for a while with you in my dreams in my System in my hands. It’s cold, here in the living room. System is something of a miracle. I remember my ambivalence and your fervor when it was first released: you were still alive then, and System wasn’t called System yet. I was in my old armchair draped with the knitted blankets your grandma sent us when you barged into the living room, jumping with excitement, a newspaper clipping clutched in your hands. Ma, you won’t believe this.You waved the paper, like satin in its sheerness (you know how cheap print companies are) in my face, yelling. SONY is developing a new product, Ma. Voyage, they called it then, and it was still in its beta stage.You waved it again, still hopping from foot to foot in eagerness. Ma, don’t you ever wonder what happens in your dreams? Don’t you wonder if you dream? I’ve always wondered if I don’t dream at all or if I just don’t remember—Ma, are you even paying attention? I had fallen into a daze, momentarily, distracted by the rhythmic fluttering of the paper. No, Vinnie, I don’t. What good does dreaming do you? Will it get you through college? Buy you a car? A house? Get you a wife? You huff in impatience. But, Ma, you don’t understand.You love movies, yeah? Those crusty black and white relics. What if you could upload and watch your dreams—or my dreams—like a movie? Better than a movie. We could live our dreams, Mama, you say.You’re thoughtful for a second.You look at the ceiling and say, I wonder if they’d be in color? So you apply to be a tester because you’re a quantum virtuality major, you say. It’s just for the science of it, for educational purposes, Ma. For networking. I could get a job with SONY. Think of that! I’d have you out of this tiny apartment and into one of those big houses by the seaside. 21
You were wildly ambitious, because you were young. On your first day beta testing, you left before I’d woken and came back past dinner time. I thought you’d be bursting with joy and filled with stories for me, but instead, you leaned against the doorway, framed by the night, and watched me with this strange sort of stare, disgruntled and furious and endlessly disappointed. Ma, you said, in a voice as distant as your expression, I really don’t dream. There’s nothing. There was nothing. We watched each other in silence for an indeterminate length of time. But you weren’t downcast for long, because you were young. The next day, you were happy again, dreaming up your next ambition. Who said my son didn’t dream? That was all you did. I put System back on the floor. Remembering the you of your lifetime I do on my own; it’s the you of my dreamtime that I need System’s help in finding. Reaching behind my right ear, I push my hair to the side so I can get to the little white nub attached to the base of my skull. It pops right off, like it always does, and I place it gingerly in its complementary cavity in System. It’s very white and very shiny, I notice. It’s a strange observation to make now and so obvious in its simplicity. I blink slowly, feeling my lashes against my cheeks. See you soon, child. Eyes still half-lidded, I press down on the nub; it clicks; System blinks to life, soft blue glow; it says: Good Morning, Lily. The time now is six thirty-five A.M., Pacific Time. Please wear your Accompanying Device to begin. I comply. I lift Accompaniment from the coffee table next to me where it sits; full, smooth, white, featureless mask snaps around my face; it clicks; System says: Welcome back, Lily. I don’t feel welcomed back. There is none of that necessary certainty that System usually has, none of the assurance that I will see you again, that you will die. That I will watch you die a million possible ways. It’s odd, I know, to have become so used to your continuous murder, but it was a constant, the one thing that I could never change, that would never let itself be changed.You left me, and suddenly, I was unsure of everything. But your dying-ness, your small mercy of lingering at the midpoint between dead and gone, I was sure of. I was grateful for. I was sure that you were still in the middle of dying, because I saw it every night. I knew you’d come back to me, so you could die again. If you stop dying, will you still be in my dreams? I’m not sure. It seems naïve to hope for both your presence and your life.Your dying-ness was already a compromise: always being murdered in exchange for always being there. If even the son of my dreams stops dying, what will I have left? What is left? What am I to do when you finally finish dying, son? It seems to me now (ridiculous and exaggerated, I know) that you are leaving me for the second time—no, the two thousand one hundred and ninetieth time, and maybe, terrifyingly, the last time. You’d have thought me to be silly, an old woman prone to overreaction. There is an indescribable pain behind my right eye. This is the first time in a while that I’ve felt so excruciatingly unsure of what System will show me. 22
I lie down and roll to my side, exhausted, despite having just woken up. Time in the living room has become slow-moving and glacial. I wait to be pulled under. Limbs are sinking into the floor, which has suddenly taken on a spongey, carnivorous quality. It feels a little like I’m being swallowed alive by some large creature. I’m pondering what creature might be able to swallow a human, small now in her grief, when the dingy carpet of the living room consumes me entirely—and I fall through the paper-thin floor into System’s world, my dream-world. I’m seated now, at the small dining table tucked in our kitchen. It’s the exact same as it was before you left for college, but the colors are all off. The walls are a yellow so bright my vision wavers, and everything else, save the clock, is dyed with a faint suggestion of the same hue, as if the shade were so insistent that it had inadvertently spread a filter over the whole apartment. The clock is pink and pulsating. In fact, I now notice, the whole room beats like a heart. But it’s mistimed—it’s not my heart, it’s someone else’s. I smoothe the tablecloth in front of me, notice that it would’ve been a soft baby blue had the electric glow of the room not tainted it so that it appears a strange, unsettling green. It’s a velvet cloth, except, instead of changing into a deeper green when I stroke the fine hairs of its surface in the wrong direction, it turns red. My fingertips are leaving red streaks behind in the fabric when you walk into the kitchen and slide into the chair opposite me.You dangle your arm across the back of your chair indolently and grin at me. “Guess what, Ma? I got the job.” Your feigned casualness can’t mask the immense excitement in your eyes. I didn’t notice before what you were wearing, but now it becomes clear that you came straight from your interview, still in your suit and nice shoes. The yellow of the room is dyeing the white of your shirt a blinding, reflective shade. I want this moment to stretch a little longer, to look at you in your happiness a little longer, but that’s not the way System works. SONY dabbles in the business of exact replicas, not of chosen fantasies. Involuntarily, my fingers stop moving and my mouth opens. “Vinnie—I—that’s amazing—” I cut myself off and rise, lurching, ostensibly in excitement, towards you and clasp your hands tightly in my own. Bug in the system: I can’t feel the same emotions my dream-self feels. Or perhaps it was designed, to minimize the risks of watching nightmares through System. Replicating terror beyond conscious imagination, I suppose, would be bad for business. You smile at me even wider and laugh. We stay like this for some time, frozen, you mid-laugh, me tilting precariously towards you, held up by your grip and the strange physics of the non-physical world. I stare at the clock above the table. My mouth is still open from the sentence I never finished. If not for the pulsing of the room, I’d think I had accidentally paused System. The whole room is pounding—beating to the rhythm of my heart now, I notice suddenly. The second-hand ticks and I look back at what should have been you, but I see me instead. It’s strange to see myself cloned, but it’s a dream, so strange is normal. I watch myself open my mouth to speak. 23
“—I’m so proud. So proud,” the me across from me finishes my previous self-interrupted sentence, looking at me, impossibly moved. I am getting an odd feeling now, a budding suspicion, about this. My duplicate self is looking at me the same way I used to look at you. This vague discomfort intensifies when I open my mouth and your laugh comes out. I almost want to laugh—or cry, or choke—at the ludicrousness of this situation that System has managed to realize. I didn’t even think it possible to switch one non-existent consciousness, a bootleg one built from remembrances and code written by SONY employees, with a transplanted one, in two dream bodies. It’s not even a switch really, because there was only one consciousness in the first place—mine. Maybe that’s why it was so easy for System and I to inhabit you now, in this way: because your insides are hollow. This is wrong, and I want to cry, but I don’t know why, and anyways, I can’t because I’m in System. I should send a complaint to Customer Service. It feels blasphemous, like some sort of unforgivable violation, but I can’t think of what might have been violated. I’m hit with a wave of dizziness that feels like a strange variation of déjà vu, except I’m remembering—dreaming—something that didn’t happen to you, or to me. I want to stop this. System is scaring me. But I’ve forgotten how to pause System, because the goddamned pulsing of the room keeps distracting me. I feel more flustered than I have in ages, trapped inside this enormous neon metronome. The second-hand ticks again, the rhythm of the room is wrong again, and I’m looking at you again, back in my own dream-body. This is not as much of a relief as it should have been. The fading flash of a camera; afterimages quivering in the air; I feel like I’ve taken a psychedelic, even though the dreamscape is steady. I blink; I’m back in my seat at the dinner table again and you are gone. I smoothe the tablecloth in front of me. It’s a velvet cloth, except, instead of changing into a deeper green when I stroke the fine hairs of its surface in the wrong direction, it turns red. My fingertips are leaving red streaks behind in the fabric when you barge in through the front door, leaving it swinging in that way I don’t like. My eyebrows crease a little and I can tell I’m readying myself to scold you for being so aggressive with the old door to this old unit, but you look ridiculously, unbelievably happy, so I settle back down in my seat.You walk towards me in big strides. “Ma, I’m in love,” you say, “and she said yes.” You tremble a bit, hands clenching, and tell me, “I’m getting married tonight, Mama.” I cover my mouth and look to the entrance of our home, where a girl has appeared, having apparently been swept inside by the swinging of the door. She’s a little anxious and keeps flattening her already very pristine baby blue skirt. Disconcertingly, it’s not been dyed by the yellow tinge. You get up to go welcome her, arms outstretched. We’re frozen again. I keep close track of the room’s rhythm. It’s still off beat, thank god. I blink; she’s gone; you’re back in your seat. 24
“Ma, I’m in love,” you say, “and she said yes.” You tremble a bit, hands clenching, and tell me, “I’m getting married tonight, Mama.” I cover my mouth again and there she is at the door again, as wispy as before, this time in purple, still unmarred by the glow of the room.You get up again, arms lifting as before. We freeze; I blink; she’s gone; you’re back in your seat. “Ma, I’m in love,” you say, “and she said yes.” You tremble a bit, hands clenching, and tell me, “I’m getting married tonight, Mama.” I cover my mouth again but stay staring hard at you this time, probably equal parts reproachful (for telling me so last-minute), disbelieving, and exhilarated.You smile openly back at me and stand up, walking towards me, reaching with your arms to embrace me. But dream-me didn’t reach out last night, so I don’t either. You don’t know how badly I want to hug you back, how much I want to take you into my arms, how much I resent System at this moment for disallowing me the littlest, the most innocuous of freedoms. I stay in my seat, arms crossing stubbornly, glaring at you. This is probably because I am petty, probably because I’m holding a grudge for your last-minute pronouncement, probably because you’ve not asked me for my blessings—probably because of all of these, Vinnie, but most probably because I’ve already been granted so many mercies that the heavens have decided I should not receive another. “Aw c’mon, Ma. Don’t be like that,” you grin sheepishly, rubbing the back of your head. I’m still glaring, I think, but I can’t tell precisely what expression is on my face right now. Abruptly, you stop rubbing the back of your head. Frozen, again. This is a strange new innovation of my mind—you and I never used to freeze like this. I wait to see what happens next. The second-hand ticks; my eyes shut in the beginning of a blink; when they open, things are magenta and I’m looking at the floor and the side of the kitchen, left ear pressed firmly against the linoleum, deathly still. This is the magenta I remembered, kaleidoscopic and constantly shifting. It’s disturbing. I can’t focus. You’re gone, I think, but I can’t quite tell because I’m staring in the same direction and refuse to shift my gaze. I don’t know why I seem to have taken such a sudden interest in the floor. It’s white, tiled, and very clean. Suddenly, I realize I’ve been so distracted by the rippling violets and the pitch-dark crevices between the tiles of my kitchen floor that I’ve forgotten to keep track of the pounding of the walls. It’s slower, I think. Louder. A little irregular, maybe. Growing more lethargic. The time between beats is lengthening. I can’t tell exactly though, because the swelling and ebbing of the magenta tide has grown more violent, and there’s this strange pounding sensation in my head—an acute hammering ache in my right temple. I think it might be terribly painful, but I honestly can’t say if the pain is coming from my body or the endlessly colliding distortions of the purples crawling across the walls. The tempo of this rhythmic throbbing is the same as the room’s, I realize 25
with a jolt. And—and my heart’s. There is a jerking sensation in my chest cavity soon after I come to this realization, a small convulsion of sorts. The magentas have reached a crescendo on the walls and have begun to darken; it looks as though a dark wash has been inked across the room, like a ghost-print twice-after on a printmaking press. Another small spasm; a full-body shudder; three involuntary jerking motions in my right pinky; two in my left calf. My fingers are curling in and I think I’m trying to hold onto something but I can’t remember what and it is so important for me to remember but I can’t I just can’t there is a guttural panic in my veins and I know at this moment it is unequivocally imperative to hold on this will be the most important moment of my life and hers and his hers mine but my fingers are stuck, they are stuck. I cannot see the tiles anymore. The time now is nine forty-two P.M., Pacific Time, says System. How was your experience, Lily? I open my eyes, take Accompaniment off my face, lift the small round Dream-reader from System, place it back under my ear. My face and neck are wet. I’m freezing. It’s past nine and dark out again, so I pick myself and my sheets up off the living-room floor and head back to bed. I’m not shaky anymore, because I know you’ll still be there tonight, you’ll die tonight, and I’ll die as you tonight. Sun : light :: son : life.
26
Clown Kiss by Olivia Tai
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KIM by Alexander Chase Arber
At first glance, K I M is reminiscent of a political satirical poster—one that would be plastered onto the wall by a disenfranchised citizen. I chose to screenprint this image of Kim Jong-Un conducting a humorous “loser dance” to critique North Korea’s conduct when it has been faced with international backlash. The colors that I incorporated (primrose yellow, orange, blue, and magenta) are not typically found in North Korean attire, and I wanted their vibrancy and lightheartedness to satirize Kim Jong-Un’s outward appearance of stoicism and power. I also wanted the bright colors to emphasize the Supreme Leader’s clothing and personal features. I reference the sanctions, specifically, that were enacted following North Korea’s nuclear testing program. To me, fashion is a medium that can manipulate others’ perceptions of our outward appearances; North Korean propaganda has served a similar function. By printing the congressional act that implemented the sanctions onto the Supreme Leader’s clothing, I am attempting to expose the fraudulence of North Korea’s purported international compliance. Regardless of North Korea’s alleged improvements (its “clothes”), I am asking viewers to remain aware of the country’s true status. I chose to print the sanctions onto alternating editions to point out North Korea’s consistency of action regardless of the international backlash and sanctions with which it is faced; with or without the sanctions, Kim Jong-un continues to dance. In addition to the broader implications of K I M, it also holds personal relevance for me because my maternal ancestors are South Korean. While most of my family has since left the Korean peninsula, one of my family members has remained. Almost six decades ago, my grandfather’s sister was visiting a friend in North Korea when the Demilitarized Zone was suddenly restricted. Stranded with only the clothes she was wearing, my great-aunt has been unable to contact the outside world since. Because of this, the emphasis on Kim Jong-un’s clothes serves a dual purpose. I chose to align my editions in a vertical line to recreate the imposing physical height of the Korean Demilitarized Zone and to recreate a sliver of the emotions that she might have felt when standing before it.
29
ii. we walked together smiling arm in arm looking back waving
i. A rich man came to our village he wore silk robes they told us he owns a factory Mr. Park asked me if I wanted to work at his factory would I like to honor my family send money home it’s near Beijing he said he was different was not the imperial beige uniform we heard whispered through cracks of paper-screen his eyes were dark like theirs but his looked kind how did we know I do not know 30
we were clustered in a train for days it was hot there was little water one girl died from dehydration we slept next to her she looked like she was sleeping too we went to a hut in Beijing Mr. Park did not come to greet us one girl read the sign she told us what it said Sixth Station Sakura House they took us separated us we did not eat we did not sleep
comfor t by Claire Lee
iii. a Japanese soldier took me Shimura-san he said
As a Korean American, I am drawn to the complex historical, political, and cultural issue of comfort women, the majority of whom were forcibly recruited Korean women. “comfort” examines the relationship between an unnamed comfort woman and the Japanese soldiers complicit in her sexual enslavement.
he came every day to see me he came back every night with his friends he had many friends they always laughed afterwards but sometimes Shimura-san left me a rice ball
iv.
after they left
when I seek comfort in my husband’s arms now I think of
I forgot their names
the white rice ball Shimura-san left me
that was years ago
molded together by his thumb 31
Ars Poetica by Sammy Oh
As I go through my day, I take quiet note of any funny situations that I find myself in.These are those situations that seem normal in the moment, but are actually ridiculous with added perspective. Like the moment an alarm goes off on the plane and the first thought I have is of my bags. My poetry gives me a way to pull together these disparate strands of images to highlight the irony of it all. I try to give the reader an authentic view into the thoughts in my mind so that they are swept up into the same moment I was in, only able to take a step back and reflect once the ride is over.
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writing poetry is like taking a flight, somehow you move thousands of miles/hour through the air, but all you really think about is the annoying baby crying in the seat behind you while the guy next to you tries to talk to you when you clearly just want to sleep, but no, you can’t sleep because the emergency alarm has gone off and before you know it you are fully aware of the speed because you’re falling, faster and faster, down into the real world, but soon enough you forget about the speed at which you fall and instead worry about your bags; what will come of your gifts if the bags don’t arrive on time? What will you say to your friends? Your family? You cannot return without them. The airline better not mess it up like they did that one time in Chicago. Such terrible memories.You prep yourself on what you’ll say to customer service when the bags don’t get in. Start a bit aggressive with a hint of desperation, ask to speak with the manager, no, demand it, but don’t be too demanding. It’s an art, the art of complaining. Like any other art it requires much patience and discipline in order to fall so fast without even a passing thought about reality. 33
Tohono by Meena Venkataramanan
As a freelance immigration and border journalist from Southern Arizona, I spent last summer exploring the U.S.-Mexico border and the hands that shape it. In June, I visited the Tohono O’odham Reservation, which neighbors my hometown of Tucson, Arizona, to speak to O’odham activists about their struggle against the proposed border wall and increased border militarization on tribal lands. I have been interested in indigenous issues for some time now, especially given the unique, shared history between American Indians like the O’odham people and Indian Americans like myself that has largely resulted from both the events of 1492 and the scars of colonization and genocide in America that continue to shape today’s political and social climate. This piece strives to explore this complicated, shared history through the lens of my personal experiences visiting the Tohono O’odham reservation in June and as an Indian American woman growing up on stolen land that is, has always been, and will forever be shaped by indigenous cultures and perspectives.
You are almost there when you get to the Border Patrol checkpoint. “Checkpoint Trauma,” as it is called by the Tohono O’odham people who are regularly pulled over, sniffed by hounds, strip-searched by chalky, uncertain hands under the glaring beam of their own headlights. 34
Our cameras are aimed squarely at the agents when our car rolls to a gentle halt that belies our tightening throats, pounding hearts. The four of us—all women, three Asian and one white—are not stopped. “Have a good one, ladies,” the agent, who is white, says after giving us a perfunctory once-over. We are filming him because we can. We park at the Sells 86 Diner. Neon Coca-Cola signs blink from off-white walls. The faint smell of cigarettes crawls in from the Shell gas station next door. Everyone here is O’odham, with the exception of the four of us and an elderly white man who works for Tribal EMS. The line cook wears a Washington Redskins hat.
The Sells 86 Diner sits along the AZ-86 Highway in Sells, Arizona, one hour southwest of Tucson.
… In second grade, no one bothered to tell me I was a different kind of Indian. I wasn’t the kind we learned about every year around Thanksgiving, making construction paper cutouts of turkeys and colored-pencil cornucopias. 35
It was the time of year when we would write out a list of things we were thankful for, the first being getting three days off school to eat pumpkin pie and mashed potatoes with family (or, in my case, basmati rice and daal with my parents). The time of year when we were told we celebrate this holiday because, as the story went, it emerged from a truce between the Pilgrims and the Indians. I was the kind of Indian whose parents had come from a country on the other side of the world, as I eventually learned to describe it to my friends. At lunchtime, we would sit on circular red stools affixed to a long cafeteria table as I slowly spooned potato curry from my pink Thermos, trying to explain what I meant. This was Tucson, Arizona in 2006, and I couldn’t provide too many examples of where to find Indians like me, so I scrambled for sloppy frames of reference that would make some kind of sense to a group of fellow seven-year-olds. Apu from The Simpsons didn’t land well: most of us hadn’t watched the show, and it would be years before any of us understood the racism behind it. Those twins in Harry Potter, I would suggest, but, frankly, most of my classmates hadn’t yet read the series—or paid attention to its minor characters. Princess Jasmine was a compromise, and I offered up her name bashfully, hesitant to allow myself the quiet pride of implicitly comparing myself to a Disney princess. Still, my classmates would confuse me for the other kind of Indian—an indigenous person, the kind whom our teacher encouraged us to playfully caricature through our Thanksgiving-inspired drawings and fairytale discussions about colonial America. Whenever we spoke about Native Americans, our class would role-play, impersonating the colonists of four centuries ago encountering an unfamiliar people. (For those of us who were neither white nor indigenous, it was expected we choose a side.) When we weren’t simulating these interactions, we would read a textbook that consistently employed the past tense to describe indigenous communities, forgoing any mention of the brutal genocides of their people, the ceaseless invasions of their lands, the growing militarization of their homes, the trauma that still lingers. Each year, at the end of our class unit on the Pilgrims and Indians, I would bring home the beaded medicine bags and colorful dreamcatchers we made in class and proudly showcase them on my bookshelf like relics of something I imagined to be 36
long gone, swept into extinction.
…
Years later, when my classmates had grown old enough to fathom the difference between American Indians and Indian Americans—our inverted names a vestige of Christopher Columbus’s well-documented folly—no one told us there was a reservation just miles away from our homes in Tucson: the Tohono O’odham Nation. The O’odham had been here for millennia, of course, and along with co-opting the tribe’s historical lands, the city of Tucson had conveniently borrowed words from the O’odham language to describe its own, urban landmarks: the Tohono Tadai bus station downtown, the Tohono Chul botanical gardens up north near my house. In the O’odham language, Tohono means desert, and grafted onto this arid, unforgiving landscape is a city of half a million residents, many blissfully unaware of the intricacies of the stolen land upon which they exist. I was one of them. Reduced to a footnote of history in this desert are the tribe’s complicated past and its contemporary challenges: the loss of tribal sovereignty, increasing governmental occupation, missing and murdered indigenous women. Tucson is a city that has allowed itself to forget.
… Looking up at the menu sprawled across five TV screens, I am unsure of exactly what frybread is and whether or not to order it, so I Google the word on my phone when I am standing in line and learn that it originated from the U.S. government’s attempted ethnic cleansing of the Navajo people, known as the Long Walk. We place our orders and wait for the three O’odham women and tribal school counselor who have agreed to meet us here. As we wait, I become painfully aware of who we are: just another group of non-indigenous people on indigenous land. We have told ourselves we are here to learn, much like those who have come before us. I quietly fear how we will appear to the O’odham women as our collective ignorance is slowly laid bare, as our persistent questions about life on the reservation gradually expose the assumptions we do not yet know we harbor. We will ask them about life on the reservation as if it is something that can be packaged into neat sentences. We will expect them to feed us the stories of their 37
lives to us in a form we can swallow. Confession: I have come to detest the word “ally” because it represents a kind of loophole: the ability to adopt a struggle without actually experiencing it, the privilege to partake in a naïve brand of activism without enduring any sort of concomitant, existential threat. I hate that it is the best we can be in this situation.
The Kansas City Chiefs pennant hangs above photos of indigenous men and women.
April, Pachynne, and Hon’mana spend three hours talking to us against a backdrop of colorful NFL pennants punctuated with historical photos of indigenous women in regalia. We start with the usual questions about Trump’s border wall, which would bisect tribal lands, choking off sacred burial grounds and water sources straddling the border. We yearn to know of the O’odham community’s reactions to the wall—its fears, its ensuing fight. I imagine these are questions the women have answered countless times before, sitting in this very diner, their answers satisfying the hunger of visiting political 38
journalists on encroaching deadlines, erudite magazine writers who hit words together like song. But there are other things I want them to tell me, things that aren’t usually given the space to gestate during fifteen-minute conversations with reporters often centered on a single, premeditated theme. I know these things exist, untold, in the liminal space between our words. But I don’t know what to ask. As time crawls forward, I watch the barriers separating the four of us and the O’odham women dissolve ever so slightly. It feels natural, as though together, we have cobbled a patchwork of trust appropriate for this conversation to march on— slowly, and increasingly steadily, like a newborn’s heartbeat. April recalls the lingering trauma of being racially profiled and detained at a Border Patrol checkpoint with her children while trying to exit the reservation. Hon’mana speaks of compromising tribal sovereignty for the sake of a national security mandate, becoming desensitized to the robotic eye of a surveillance tower in her own backyard. Pachynne remembers the young asylum seeker who showed up at her doorstep, parched, asking for small amounts of food and water to support endless days of trekking through the Sonoran Desert after crossing the border. The women tell us of the tribal border gate that was welded shut after the Mexican government sold O’odham land to a private citizen who cut off access to sacred indigenous sites south of the border. They speak of state politicians who have never visited the reservation. Of presidential candidates who have reduced indigenous identity to a joke. Of feeling like phantoms in a land that belongs to them.
… It is three o’clock. Everyone is exhausted. We shake hands with the O’odham women, thank them for their time, and climb into the car. We sit in silence on scorching leather seats, shining tires tracing the skin of the desert beneath us as we drive east, back to Tucson, away from the reservation. The sun is behind us. In just minutes, the checkpoint will be, too.
39
Book Finding: A Catalog of Acceptance by Yash Bhutada
A — Acceptable You don’t bury yourself in books the same way other children do. They find themselves in the characters and homes of white suburban families. Where the dads watch westerns with their sons, the children uncover troves of treasure in their parents’ dusty trunks in the attic, and kids make brownies with their mom for school bake sales.Your peers who find solace in these written texts, and in TV shows too, are the ones who seem so confident in their identities. The ones who get to define what is normal, what is acceptable. B — Never Come Back You’re afraid to invite your friends from school to your home.You worry about the snacks your mom will offer or if she will cook a stew that bathes your house in cumin, turmeric, and curry powder, smells that waft past even your driveway. What if she speaks to them and they hear her accented English, or her mixed tongues when she asks you what your friend would like to eat.You’re embarrassed of what they might say and scared that they might never want to come back. Worse: that they will tell everyone else, and then you’ll never have anyone over again.
C
C — Career Day You never invite your parents to open houses or career day, or to be volunteers on field trips or sleepaway camp.You don’t know what they might reveal about themselves, about you. If they’ll speak at all. If they’ll smell like your house — some combination of incense, your pantry, and mothballs.
D
D — Doctor Since the age of ten, you tell everyone you want to be a doctor when you grow up. You want to be a doctor, you think. Or at least someone thinks that would be a good idea.
e
E — Erica W. The first time you’re made acutely aware of your skin color is when Erica W. from your first-grade class promises that she’ll trade you a holographic Pokémon card for one of yours. But when you initiate the exchange at recess the next day, she tells you that her mom said she wasn’t allowed to give cards to poop-colored people.
f
F — Forgetting You start forgetting your mother tongue.You don’t use it at school. Never with your friends. At home, you use it more sparingly. Part of it is natural, just a product of the human brain acting like a sponge, absorbing new information and skills, and squeezing out the old like its drainage. But part of it, you recognize years later, has been purposeful all along.You were shedding your past, any part of you that was incongruous with the place in which you were assimilating. 40
G
G — Good or Bad You wonder if Mindy Kaling is good or bad for South Asians in this country. She’s trailblazing a path for the community, but doesn’t she share a greater responsibility in how she represents us? But then again, why do you have to give a shit what she does when the majority of Americans never have to consider how a single person represents them as a collective?
H
H — Helpless You and your parents are crowded around a beach chair only a few feet away from the ocean tide.You brush your hair with a towel when a woman approaches you. Those are our towels, she says.You glance at your white towel, the one you brought from the hotel, the kind that everyone else on the beach has also been using.You know they’re not hers.Your parents don’t swim, and they’ve been with them the entire time. But your rejection of her accusation leaves the woman helpless. The best she can come up with is to tell you to go back to your 7-11.
i
I — Identity For many years, people’s only touch-point with your identity is Apu. The Simpsons, you believe, is the only institution that has regularly acknowledged your existence. You don’t own a Kwik-e-Mart and your parents don’t say “Thank you, come again.” Their accents sound nothing like Apu’s. But when a white voice actor has finally given voice to a character the same color as you, you hold onto it.You believe, then, that this is as good as it will ever get. And while some use Apu’s accent to elicit conversation, and others profess their love for Indian food, you laugh along and feel thankful that they know you exist.
J
J — Jealous You envy your classmates who go to tailgates at their parents’ alma maters. Who go to their parents’ offices on Take Your Child to Work Day. Whose parents regularly speak of their pasts. Whose parents make the best boxed brownies and cookies (while your mom can offer only dozens of Indian desserts made from scratch — much more laborious, complex, and time-intensive — but never good enough). You begin to wish that you had a blank slate. That you were absolved of your history. That you were white. K — Kiss You never tell your parents about your first romantic anything.Your first crush, first date at Panera Bread, first semi-serious hand-holding partner. Definitely not your first kiss.You hide it all because your parents came here — they sacrificed everything — for you to find stability, to study. Not for you to find some American distraction who will whitewash you and whisk you away from your family and culture. 41
L N O
m
L — Love You do things for each other implicitly.Your parents toil over their work, the house, your access to opportunities. That is how they show you their love.You hope that you can love differently. To express it to your partner and your kids and the important people in your life.You don’t know how to say it to your parents, though, so you too will not tell them you love them. M — Money All they ask of you is to find your footing in this foreign country, to do what you need to in order to plant your feet in its harsh and impenetrable yet fertile soil that is now oceans away from the soft, warm dirt back home. N — Namesake You find the first book that finally speaks to you. There have been others that let you run away with your imagination, the worldbuilding and emotional arcs so compelling that you didn’t need to identify with any of the main characters. And even though the characters you did identify with served as mere plot devices, they resembled you—their names even came from your mother tongue. So, no matter how underdeveloped or irrelevant they were, you found joy simply in seeing text that acknowledged the existence of your ancestral background, text that used the same sweet sounds that are also used to pronounce your name correctly. O —Opinion You wonder how much space you should be taking up when it comes to issues of race. Do your microaggressions matter more than all of the other shit happening in the world? P — Panic Attack You have your first adult-adult panic attack when you discover your kids will be devoid of almost any connection that you had to your ancestry or culture.Your tots will never hear you speak your mother tongue to them (oh my God, they’ll grow up monolingual). They’ll never identify with a single cuisine, one they can trace back to their ancestral lineage, to centuries of history, to trace recipes and any semblance of connection to your own father’s farmland back in your birth country. They’ll never befriend the children of your first cousins who are still in India. Will they even go back to visit any family still there? You start to realize that everything you were doing to fit in here meant pulling further away from your first home. That you were slowly losing all connection to that first home. And even if you held onto a semblance of that memory or had enough ties for yourself, your children likely never would.
42
q
Q —Question You start by questioning your parents, their decisions to raise you how they did. Their stoic recollections of the past, the pressure they put on you to do well in school, the friendships and experiences you forwent to make the sacrifices they made worth it. Eventually, however, you start to question the countries that never accepted you — the one you feel is supposed to be home now and the one that was once your parents’.You question your elementary school teachers, your textbooks, and the compounding number of subtle and overt manifestations of racism that you have been sitting with all this time.You start to question. R — Rules There are unsaid rules in your household.You don’t know where they come from, but it isn’t until you “rebel” and take a literature elective over a math or science that the prioritization of subject matter becomes explicit.You’ll have to get an “A” in everything, even reading and history, but let’s be clear about where you must excel.
S
S — Sex No, your family never talks about this. But as soon as you’ve said your version of “I do” they’re asking you for their grandchildren.
t
T — Test New revelations about your community test your loyalties toward it. As you grow older and your circles diversify, you finally start to listen to the subtle, sometimes subconscious, layering of language that was always there. How praises of your success implicitly criticized other communities’ values. Or assumptions about similar access to resources. Or believing an equivalence across histories. You learn that even though you share experiences with other communities of color, your own community has deep prejudices towards these very communities. And so, you’re tested in feeling both gratitude and guilt, and in how to remain connected to yet critical of the community in which you grew up. U — Ubiquity You’ve been consuming turmeric and clarified butter for years, well before they were stocked at exorbitant prices in Whole Foods.You learned yoga at religious summer camps well before your practice was codified into downward facing dogs and child’s pose. But even after its mass commercialization, you never give credit to your parents and grandparents for what they have always sworn by.
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Wy
V
V — Validation You look for validation — the smallest sense that you’re doing something sound — in books, TV, your peers.You find hints of it but never quite what you’re looking for. And in a moment of vulnerability, you look for it from your parents. Only to find yourself disappointed because affirmations have never quite been part of their vocabulary.
x
W — Wonder You wonder why all these people in America feel forgotten when the same people have always ignored you — your history, your worth, your voice, your existence. X — Xenophobia You finally learn the words you need to express why you’ve never felt whole, never felt like enough.
Y — Yearning You yearn for the day when wishing you were white won’t be synonymous with wishing you belonged.
Z
Z — Zindagi Bit by bit, you start living your life, your zindagi.You find affirmation in blips of references, in online communities that could never have been connected before, in books that finally talk about you. Books that talk about your parents, at once giving perspective on your past trauma and painting optimistic portraits of what you and your family can still become.You learn, however, that no one has told your story entirely yet, or at least not precisely enough. That there are still unwoven threads in your patchwork of a story that need stitching together before being put out into the world. And so, you pick up your own pen and napkin and begin writing what remains untold.
Yash Bhutada is a writer and designer based in Cambridge, MA. His work can be found at www.yashbhutada.com.
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did i make you laugh? by Olivia Tai
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Chicken Feet by Kalos Chu
There’s a sort of primal satisfaction that comes from eating a chicken foot—biting around for the knuckle, pinching off a joint with your incisors, sucking ferociously at what little cartilage, skin, and sauce can exist on a centimeter-long segment of chicken toe. I have no way of knowing how satisfied the Paleolithic man felt lounging by the fire after his dinner of freshly slain mammoth, but, as I admire the mound of chicken bones on my plate, I feel that I’ve come pretty close. Of course, some would disagree: those who would prefer a drumstick or the sterile civility of a chicken nugget to the jagged realism of the chicken foot. These are the people who cut the crust off their sandwiches, who don’t like onions on their burgers, who call themselves sushi-lovers but only ever order the California roll. I know, because I went to high school with these people. Despite being one of three Chinese kids at my high school, I never really thought about race. I didn’t get called a chink or have my lunch money stolen or anything—the Hydroflasks plastered with “Bernie 2016” stickers precluded such behavior. The only time the cultural rift manifested was when I—as countless immigrant kids before me—brought lunch to school. Even my staunchest white liberal peers couldn’t resist commenting. “What is that?” “That looks disgusting.” “Are you going to eat that?” (No, I was actually going to blend it up and make a face mask). My friends were even more direct. In four years of after-school homework sessions, sleepovers, and birthday parties, never once had they come over to my house for dinner. The most common (and most eloquently worded) reason: “Hell no, your mom’s gonna make chicken feet or some shit.” If I were more oblivious, I wouldn’t have cared. Chicken feet isn’t exactly my family’s typical dinner, and not everyone is a hardcore hunter-gatherer like me. But it was never about the chicken feet.1 It was about their conception of Chinese food, of Chinese culture. The dirty Chinatowns and shady Chinese restaurants. The squalid, authoritarian, communist police state on the other side of the Pacific with surveillance cameras on every corner and portraits of Xi Jinping in every living room. The depictions of China that color the collective American imagination and—despite what CNN or Fox News or even The New York Times say—were far from the truth, far from the China that I knew. Of course, I couldn’t expect them to know that. Liam didn’t grow up watching Chinese cartoons and Ryan never ran up and down the snack aisles of H-Mart. Nonetheless, it still bothered me. These were my friends. These were 1
It also couldn’t have been. Preparing chicken feet, according to Wikipedia, requires frying, steaming, stewing, and simmering—more effort than my mom would have been willing to put in even at Chinese New Year.
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my best friends! Sure, they didn’t have Chinese parents, but they had me. I studied abroad this past summer in Beijing—a polluted, aggressive, energetic, wondrous city that actually does have surveillance cameras on every corner, but also, more importantly, the equivalent number of restaurants. With me were a few other students, all Chinese-American, who, as one does when the dining hall serves the same thing every day, ate out whenever we could. We ate Japanese food made by Korean people and Pakistani food made by Chinese people and lots of Chinese food made by Chinese people—those who say America is the immigrant capital of the world have yet to visit a night-market in Beijing. One night, we ate at a dim sum restaurant, and someone suggested we order chicken feet. For the first time in my life, I heard not one, not two, but an entire table of nineteen and twenty year-olds proclaim, “I love chicken feet!” I felt validation, pride—I had found my people. The feeling, however, was short-lived, because not two seconds had passed before someone asked: “But have you tried duck intestine?” Then, someone else: “Yes, that’s so good, but once I had pig brain!” “Not as good as pig blood though.” “What about fried crickets?” “Snake soup?” “Sheep penis?” It was like this culinary cold war, a pissing contest for who’d eaten the weirdest animal appendage. Of course, it was more than that: it was a contest to see who was the most in touch with their culture—who was the most Chinese. I was hurt, not just because I had lost the war (my mom was never able to find frozen sheep penis at the grocery store—not even at Whole Foods), but also because we were fighting it in the first place. We were like Remus Lupin and Sirius Black, squabbling while Peter Pettigrew escaped unnoticed. The schoolyard bullies and whitewashing Hollywood producers and xenophobic politicians—they were the real enemy. We should have been touting our Chinese culture to them, not each other. We should have been calling out our peers’ snide remarks and challenging the biased media coverage of China and asserting our Chinese-American identities in America. Because if we didn’t, who would? Most of the Chinese-Americans at that table were second generation, which means our parents were the ones who first immigrated to the United States. They carried with them the thousands of years of culture of their ancestors—the history, the values, the food—but they faced challenges much more pressing than cafeteria taunting. They had to survive, to adapt to this odd country where people say exactly what they’re thinking and eat rice with a spoon and don’t take off their shoes indoors. Our parents still face that struggle: my mom, to this day, never feels confident enough to go to the doctor alone. We, as Chinese-Americans, are the Avatar, the bridge between the two worlds—it’s right there in the name. We dress and talk like Americans, but we also grew up in our parents’ homes and, often, in China. We’re the only ones with that ability to share and translate not just language, but also culture. So why weren’t we doing that? 47
I did, however, sympathize with them. The feeling of being too Chinese to be American and too American to be Chinese? It sucks. And people cope by picking a side, or trying to. Some choose to talk to their parents in English and order Starbucks instead of Boba. Others study abroad in Beijing and master sheep and pig anatomy. Balancing two identities is hard, and being an ambassador for one of them is even harder. I think about those high school lunches often, about what might have happened if I hadn’t ignored the comments, if I had called out my peers, if I had brought a chicken foot to school and offered them a sweet, delicious toe. Sure, they might have spit it out and called me crazy. But I like to think they also might have had an epiphany, a complete change in worldview, a spiritual transformation that could be triggered only by the singular primal satisfaction of eating a chicken foot.
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Acknowledgements We want to sincerely thank the people at the Office for the Arts at Harvard (OFA), the Harvard University Asia Center and the Harvard Undergraduate Council (UC) for funding this project and making it possible. We especially want to thank Professor Ju Yon Kim in the English department, Stephanie Troisi and Alicia Anstead at the OFA, Julie Story at the Asia Center and Eleanor Craig at the Committee on Ethnicity, Migration, Rights (EMR) at Harvard for advising our project. The Wave is a hodgepodge group of people passionate about the creation and inclusion of Asian anglophone art now and today. As such, we have had no rigid structure of roles in this magazine but have each poured our own time, effort and love into making this vision a reality.
For this we say alleluia! to our founders Eric Zhou and Jerrica Li for rowing the canoe from beginning to end. Top hats off to the impeccable designers Margaret Sun and Jason Zhou for making this book a beautiful work of art. Glory to the cover artist Ramona Park. A hundred hoorahs to the webmaster Vanessa Hu for creating a lovely digital abode for these pieces and more. Mahalo to Céline Vendler for copy-editing the entire magazine and to each and every one of our genre-specific editors, JuHye Mun, Hyejee Bae and Julianna Kim. Praise be the fairy godmother Memie Osuga who said “let it be” and it was. Deep gratitude to everyone who poured life into the enterprise: Ria Modak, Alison Chen, Kang Lee, Chloe Yu, Nina Chandra, Tim Im, and our friends at the Asian Students Arts Project (ASAP). To everyone who gave this magazine their energy, our submitters, our artists, our happiness officers, our angels, our readers, our humans, this work of art is yours now. 50
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