WORD:
JOY
At the beginning of this month I started writing boy JOY and food. This is what I wrote:
“Something that's been on my mind SO MUCH recently are Hong Kong egg tarts (dan tat). Growing up my parents would get a whole box of them from a Chinese bakery from Oakland Chinatown, and after dinner they would pop them into the toaster oven. The outer pastry would get all toasty and crispy. And the sweet custard filling would get piping hot. OMG they were so good!! Or sometimes on a weekend afternoon, we would have it as a midday tea time.
I have so many memories like this that I don't want to forget. Memories that bring JOY. And so many involve food! I'm thinking about an ongoing series about it.”
THEN AT THE END OF THE MONTH…
During my trip home to the Bay Area, my cousin, Haley brought dan tat’s when we hung out at my sister’s house!! I got to sink my teeth into the delicious custardy sweet flaky dessert, and it did not disappoint. And the day before that, I got to interview my mom for Intersectional Fridays about what childhood food gave her joy and gives her joy recalling the memories - WATCH THE INTERVIEW. It was so special for me to have her be part of the project and to share the JOY of being with my mom with my IG audience.
“I was just talking with @alkellypoetry about how intense PMS can be recently. Literally once a month I have an existential crisis and internally freak out about my path as an artist and as a human. Once a month I get pretty depressed and detached from myself, and you would never know it from the outside. It’s really weird - many of the times during social encounters I feel like I’m pretending to be myself while looking at the conversation from the outside. 😳 Anybody know what I’m talking about??
I also hate how “are you PMSing?” has been used as a weapon for misogyny. It’s so gross when men use it to try to invalidate those who have periods’ experience! Aka gaslighting. I want to reclaim talking about PMS as a way to express real life hormonal fluctuation that influences real life experience of reality.
Random story, but this one time my PMS was really helpful for me. I had a hard time tapping into how I felt about a certain situation because I had all these walls up, but my hormones helped break them down and embody what was really there. Not to say that is common for me, but thinking about PMS reminded me of it. So it’s not all bad, but (for me) it’s mostly horrible.”
SO sometimes I’m surprised what resonates with people online - I didn’t predict the reaction from this one post. It resulted in so many women sharing in their thoughts about their own experiences with PMS and also the desire of wanting to reclaim the PMS narrative, which is drenched in misogyny. The reactions also showed how suppressed these sorts of conversations are. There is a lot of shame of us talking about our bodies, periods, hormones, emotions, and it’s sad. I’m hoping to reshape how I interact with these topics with others that reclaims the beauty of humans. I’m including this, because PMS actually does inspire me to connect with my body deeper and also it inspires me to create more helpful/growing conversations with people.
Sri lanka Bombing
Easter morning
Waking up to the attack of churches in Sri Lanka was absolutely devastating, heartbreaking, and enraging. 2019 Easter will forever be marked with this horrendous tragedy.
It made think about the privilege Christians have in America. There are so many privileges I benefit from, and that one is a big one that I take for granted all the time. And when I was having Easter lunch with people I loved, it made me so thankful for the life and relationships I had around me.
VISUAL:
Books:
Electric arches by eve l. ewing
Description:
“Electric Arches is an imaginative exploration of Black girlhood and womanhood through poetry, visual art, and narrative prose.
Blending stark realism with the surreal and fantastic, Eve L. Ewing’s narrative takes us from the streets of 1990s Chicago to an unspecified future, deftly navigating the boundaries of space, time, and reality. Ewing imagines familiar figures in magical circumstances―blues legend Koko Taylor is a tall-tale hero; LeBron James travels through time and encounters his teenage self. She identifies everyday objects―hair moisturizer, a spiral notebook―as precious icons.
Her visual art is spare, playful, and poignant―a cereal box decoder ring that allows the wearer to understand what Black girls are saying; a teacher’s angry, subversive message scrawled on the chalkboard. Electric Arches invites fresh conversations about race, gender, the city, identity, and the joy and pain of growing up.
Eve L. Ewing is a writer, scholar, artist, and educator from Chicago. Her work has appeared in Poetry, The New Yorker, New Republic, The Nation, The Atlantic, and many other publications. She is a sociologist at the University of Chicago School of Social Service Administration.”
I’m going to a talk between Celeste Ng and Eve L. Ewing next week, and I am SO EXCITED!
sputnik sweetheart by haruki murakami
Another Murakami book this month! Loved it. It was a quick read, and I’m already looking forward to another Murakami novel.
Articles:
How can I help to promote diversity without relinquishing any of my power?
By chandler dean
SUCH a truth filled satirical article that makes me want to laugh and cry at the same time.
“As an upper-middle-class Northeastern American liberal college-educated cis straight white male, I’m aware of my privilege. And I’m willing to do anything to fight for progress — especially if it involves me telling you how aware of my privilege I am.
In the wake of winning of the 2019 National Magazine Award for fiction, at the precipice of our 21st year, and in anticipation of wonderment to come, we are bundling together a full subscription’s...
So make no mistake: I will do anything to uplift the marginalized. As long as uplifting the marginalized doesn’t involve diminishing my societal position in any fashion. That would, of course, be unfair.
I’m no elitist. I send my kids to public school. And I stay involved. For example, today I’m going to a town hall meeting where I’m going to scream at my school board representative because they want to redraw the lines of Aiden’s school to include… how should I put this… troubled neighborhoods.
The fact that the kids in those neighborhoods are mostly black and brown has nothing to do with my opposition to the measure! They just so happen to live in these troubled neighborhoods. It’s a coincidence.”
it ‘makes you feel invisible’ // when people can’t tell their coworkers of color apart
By rachel hatzipanagos // washington post
“Pilapil and Castanien’s experience is common. When About Us asked people of color on Twitter for stories about being misidentified in predominantly white places, more than 400 people replied, including a digital marketing consultant whose client kept calling him by his gardener’s name and a professor whose student turned in a paper with the wrong professor’s name.
The implication is that, while white people are seen as individuals, other groups are often viewed as a monolith, with their race or ethnicity becoming the defining characteristic of who they are.
“If we just identify someone as a ‘black person,’ then that is how we are going to see them,” said Kareem Johnson, an associate professor of psychology at Temple University.
While many on the receiving end of this phenomenon say it’s another example of every day racism, it does not necessarily indicate negative racial attitudes, Johnson said. Rather, it’s part of a larger cognitive problem called the cross-race effect — essentially, the impression that people of a race other than your own “all look the same.””
Netflix:
Brene Brown // Call to courage
Gosh I love Brene Brown. I remember watching her TED talk, reading Daring Greatly and listing to Power of Vulnerbility all in 2012/2013. Her work has been fundamental in my journey and has really shaped how I make decisions. I highly recommend you watching this special!
music:
Cuz I love you by lizzo
Lizzo came out with this BRILLIANT album near the end of April, but this has been the soundtrack of my life since then.
Intersectional fridays:
Week 14 of #TWintersectionalfridays! My featured guest is Jo from @lemonwearsclothes! Her writing made me tear up so many times. It really hit home for me, and reading it made me feel so not alone in this healing process. Every Friday I feel alittle bit more connected to this community of truly loving people who are embracing themselves and others in such a beautiful and badass way. I love how @lemonwearsclothes finished the interview: "I am learning to take up space. I am learning to be whole." We are doing it together!
INSTAgram account:
Teach and transform
Liz Kleinrock of Teach and Transform is someone I greatly admire. She is an incredible elementary teacher, social justice advocate, anti-bias educator, and a curriculum designer, TED Speaker, and a professional development facilitator. If you haven’t already, watch her TED TALK. Visit her WEBSITE. And support her on PATREON. I have learned so much from her and have been personally have been very encouraged by her support of me and my work. She really makes me feel supported and understood, which is so incredibly generous of her. For the month of May she is amplifying the voices of many Asian/Pacific Islander Americans as an ode to Asian Pacific American Heritage month. Make sure you’re following her and following her prompts of how to be more aware of ASI! I’m also one of the people she will be featuring this month!
Being home
Bay area trip
I was home for a couple days at the end of April, and it filled my heart up to the max. SO MUCH JOY. I got to spend the first day with my besties Lisa and Kayleigh. And the rest of the time was catching up and hanging with my family including some of my cousins. But obviously the highlight was my baby niece!!!! I am so in love with her!!! I’m so thankful to be her aunty and I’m looking forward to watching her grow up.
Thank you
I appreciate you and your support!
If my work has impacted you positively, I would love for you to share my PATREON with your friends and family. Every little bit of support helps me immensely.
