S L I C K: King of Cups

S L I C K is an erotica series for A+ members about titillation, torture, fucking and getting off.

I pull a tarot card as I prepare for my bike-camping trip with Ozara. The King of Cups. It says “Healing” and has a figure hovering with illuminated blue hands caressing a floating body. I take a bath with honey, coconut milk, rose petals and salts. The playlist is Alice Coltrane, Megan Thee Stallion, Anita Baker. The falsettos of Marvin Gaye and Prince steam up the room, while my titties break the surface of the hot water and bubbles.

Illustration by Raisa Yavneh

I knew Ozara when we were in our twenties, in the early aughts. Like we oughta had fucked then. But, I didn’t know how to utter, “I want you” to a woman yet. She was a player then: both with the WNBA and amongst the women. We met at a mutual friend’s house party. She came in tall, muscular and cornrowed. We slow-grinded to Floetry, in a tight room with a blue light bulb. I went home and rubbed myself thinking of her. But, now, we’re almost 40 and today we’re biking through the woods to camp for two nights. My pussy gets soft and melts a little every time I think about it.

Ozara was my first crush in awhile. We began flirting after I stepped into her bike shop, Wheels of Steel, a couple weeks ago. I wanted to support a Black queer business in my community and the Outkast reference tickled me. When I walked in, I saw Ozara, an old acquaintance, amidst the wheels and handle bars, tatted up and smiling in her beanie hat.

“Yooooo, Delilah!” she said hugging me tight and lingering a little. She smelled like a mixture of grease, sweet cologne and good weed. My mouth watered.

“Ozara?!” I exclaimed. She showed me around her sweet spot. “We cater to every kind of ass!” she laughed, and my mind traveled. “I had played ball in Amsterdam and rode my bike everywhere. Bikes run that city. And of course the weed,” she says giggling.

“You still read a lot of books? ” she asked, and I was delighted she remembered my nerdiness.

“Sure do,” I say, and then a little flirty, “I write them now, too. Poetry.”

“Niiiiice. Of course you do. I know they have to be brilliant, girl. Imma check that out.”

“What do you do to occupy your time, now that you’re back in the Mini apple?” I ask her, just a tad thirstily.

“Shit, besides hanging with fam, I ride bikes and run my shop,” she says looking at the technicolor stable of bikes. “After years of traveling for ball, I like things to be chill.”

She helped me pick out a periwinkle, Dutch-style bike that was perfect for me. And we exchanged numbers.

We began marathon phone conversations and texting each other non-stop. We talked about everything: compost, meteor showers, shrooming, feminist death rituals, ancestral astrology, traveling while Black and gay. Her voice and mind turned me on.

“You ever been on a bike camping trip?” she texted one night.

“No. But sounds interesting…” I said, as I waited for my face mask to dry. I was watching a problematic, yet highly enjoyable reality show about desperate heterosexuals. I turned it off.

“What do you think about camping with me? Two nights…” she texted.

I sent a poem by June Jordan that said something about reaching for someone in the dark.

“YASSSSSS!!!” I said and started fantasizing.

My ‘fro and dark skin are glistening and all my things are packed in my pannier bag. I’m sitting on my stoop waiting for Ozara, wearing an outfit that is both practical for biking and sexy. Ozara rides up with a trailer and a Bluetooth speaker bumping Minnie Ripperton. She looks good, like a charioteer, maneuvering her bike between muscular thighs. A tank top, showing off the shoulders of an athlete, abstract tattoos adorning her brown, muscular arms. She kisses my cheek, shy and tender.

“Ready, girl?” she asks, and my clit pulses into my bike seat as we ride off.

I watch her legs, flex and cycle, into the winding road of tree canopies with her glorious ass perched firmly on her saddle. We enjoyed avocado and tempeh bacon sandwiches, mangoes and rosé for lunch. We sang nineties R & B for some of the ride, and then settled into the symphony of chirping crickets, birds tweeting, and leaves rustling around us. We got to our campsite, sweaty and buzzing and set up our tent.

“Wanna get a dip in before dinner?” she asks, taking off layers and jumping wildly into the cool lake. Afterwards, we lay drying in the evening warmth, digesting the gourmet salmon and green beans Ozara made. She pulls out a thermos from her bag.

“Remember how you said you were curious about trying shrooms one day?” she asks. “I made you some shroom tea with ginger, tulsi, rose and honey.”

“Oooh… yummy.”

We start sipping the elixir, and eating honey-coconut-cacao fudge. We watch the fire. I lean onto her and she wraps her arm around me.

Talking, snuggling and smoking a joint, we begin to feel each other from within.

“I remember the first night, I met you and you were reading that book Zami at Danisha’s. I thought that was hot. Just in your own little world,” Ozara say. Smoke leaves her lips and dances into the stars and amethyst night.

“You just got drafted to the Lynx, and all the girls were on your tip. You had all of this Big Dick Energy and a pretty-ass smile. Then you asked me to dance…” I said, feeling everything get vivid and then soften. “Hmmm, I think I’m starting to feel it…”

“Yup, It’s like everything went whoooosh. When I close my eyes, I feel it more.” We lie down and snuggle in our sleeping bags. I’m cuddled up into her torso, smelling her sweat, lavender and lake water. A delicious earth, layered and cavernous beneath us.

“You think Audre Lorde ever ‘shroomed?” I ask the universe. I feel so grateful for my body, for my erotic, for her erotic. For my ass on this ground and my heart facing the sky. I feel Ozara’s and my bodies blending.

“You think you would have kissed me that night, if I would have asked you? I always wondered,” she says her eyes gazing at the sky and into me somehow at the same time.

“I would kiss you now,” I say and we start giggling. “I think I’ve made love to your ass in multiple lifetimes, Ozara. And fucked you good too.”

Closing my eyes, a pink haze and indigo softness and a golden hum to the rhythm of Ozara’s breathing and body heat.

“I can see that,” she says, her hands gliding over my skin.

“I distinctly remember you eating my pussy on the banks of the Nile river, ” I say and we both waterfall into each other’s bodies. I climb on top of her and straddle her hips while she grabs my ass.

“You tasted good too,” she says, the fire glistening on her nose ring as she guides her hands to my hard nipples, pushing out through my turquoise lace bra. She plays with my heavy titties, while I grind my clit into her pelvis.

“Damn, girl, you can move them hips. Can I taste you?” she says kinda high, kinda shy. I bite my lip and nod yes.

She lays me down in the tent, and pulls her shirt off. Everything smooth and rhythmic with our bodies. Her breasts feel nice between my lips and my tongue plays with her nipple as she moans. I feel lifetimes of desire engorge my pussy as I wrap my thighs around her. Ozara grinds her pelvis into me, throbbing with her rhythm. I pull off her boxers and lead her to mound to my mouth. She is so hard and I suck and lick her hotness, holding her by the ass firmly to enjoy every drop of her nectar until she exhales. “Damn, unh, unhhh…” she sighs and shudders, her climax filling our tent. She lies down next to me, soft and wet.

“My turn,” she says as she reaches for my drenched pussy, and I react with a grateful moan. Kissing my chest and shoulders, feathering my nipples with her tongue. Finally holding as much of my big breasts into her mouth as possible, sliding her first finger in my pussy and then two. Her mouth is patient and eager. I lift my hips to give her more access to every morsel of me. She massages my inside with her fingers, and I release with each rub, unfolding around her rhythms as she licks my clit and juices me onto her hands. I clutch her close so she can go deeper as I rock myself into her and then my orgasm radiates all around me.

We shiver into the glow we made. I think of the King Of Cups card I pulled and the healing wetness of Ozara. We snuggle inside, naked, and the sky is blooming in darkness and stars. The night breeze kisses our skin as we hold each other.

Fatimah Asghar’s Got Game: Watch Her New Short on Anxiety at a Queer Sex Party

I know some of you have been out there Zoom clubbing in inventive outfits and brilliantly curated backgrounds, but I have to admit that I’d personally forgotten about those little tingly jolts of excitement that shoot through my body when I get dressed to impress, go out and walk into a well-lit party full of beautiful Black and brown queers. I got a quick reminder of that feeling upon watching Fatimah Asghar’s new short film Got Game, which takes place at a luscious-looking LA pool party — even if the protagonist, Khudejha, is not exactly feeling herself.

If you’ve ever had the experience of going into a party with high expectations, and then end up warding off the unwanted and seemingly putting-off the desirable, all while trying to ignore the rising, undeniable sense that it must be you, because everyone else is having a really good, sexy, kinky time — well, friends, this is the surprisingly good-humored short for you.

Got Game is produced by Hidden Pool Productions and VAM STUDIO, and is the latest creation from Asghar, a writer and filmmaker, who you should know as the co-creator of the series Brown Girls, author of the book If They Come For Us and co-editor of Halal If You Hear Me — among other things, including an elegantly thirsty Instagram account. When I asked her to introduce herself like she would at a party, Asghar laughed and replied, “Hi, I’m Fati. Yeah.”

Before I go any further, I’m gonna pause here and tell you to watch Got Game, so you can have your own picture of what Asghar and I go on to discuss:

GOT GAME? (Short Film) from HDDN POOL on Vimeo.

I asked Asghar to talk to me about what inspired the short. “I made the film after I’d been in a relationship for a long time and I was having that moment where you’re like, ‘Man, I don’t know how to do this, I don’t really know how to date and connect with people out here.’ And particularly I was thinking about the play party and kink party scenes, and queer hook-up culture. The protagonist goes on this journey, having this pressure to be like, ‘Who am i gonna fuck?’ And in the end, actually that’s not important. What is important is a genuine intimate connection.”

For Khudejha, our protagonist, genuine connection seems hard to come by at this party, which is something that filled me, as a viewer, with great discomfort, but also familiarity. I thought back (way back, now) to what I love about gatherings, and, it is always, the hope that from the unknown, some unexpected kind of connection will emerge. When Asghar talks about what she means to play with in the concept of a game, it’s clearly about subverting the narrative we carry into so many aspects of our lives: that winning is about going in knowing what you want, and then getting exactly that. Of her protagonist, Asghar says, “She thinks she wants a certain kind of connection, and that if she doesn’t do that, if she doesn’t have sex, she’s failed at this party. But she doesn’t actually want to fuck anyone at this party. And it turns out holding this girl’s hand was the most meaningful, genuine connection of the night.”

When we’re talking about game though, we’re also talking about smooth moves, suave lines, things that we assume make people good at getting laid, but don’t necessarily foster connection. “Me and my friends will joke a lot about how hard it is have queer game,” Asghar adds. “It’s like, ‘Hey I’m trying to get at you and I don’t really know how to say that, and so what you’re gonna get is all this awkward nervous energy.’ It’s so delightful to watch Khudejha trying to get at the first girl, and she becomes that person at the party you don’t want to be around — that is such a true thing, not really knowing how to approach! You know, all the odds are in your favor and it’s clear why everyone is there, and still, you don’t have a blueprint so you fuck it up!”

In so many ways this feels like the essence of being queer, and nothing excites me more than distilling queerness through a party. We do see that whatever well-laid plans other queers have made, they aren’t going to work for Khudejha. “She’s at her lowest moment when she meets this crush at the end,” Asghar continues. “And presumably the other girl has been having a shitty night too. But that’s what brings them together. It throws into question the idea of failure, of what it means when you get rid of the rules entirely. We’re not mimicking straight relationships, we’re carving our own path in uncharted territory. We all love differently. I’ve been watching Celine Sciamama’s Portrait Of A Lady On Fire, and thinking about the question, ‘Do all lovers feel like they’re inventing something?’ You can’t have a rulebook or a playbook for how to connect. When you’re queer, it’s about negotiating your own way, when the blueprint doesn’t work for you.”

I’d say making her own blueprint is one of Asghar’s major talents. The popularity and success of her series Brown Girls is so much about the fact that it is rooted in her life, and follows two young women, one Black, one queer and South Asian, in Chicago, IL through their world. One of the main things I personally stand for as an editor and a writer, is the deep importance of portraying the regular, daily lives that queer folks of color lead — in their total and universal mundanity, which is not to say boring, but is to say unremarkable. It’s what’s always drawn me to Asghar’s work: it feels like an intra-community conversation, a reflective inside joke. It was, for example, important for Asghar to feature Natasha, a really confident, Black character, in the kind of sexually powerful role that usually only goes to skinny, white, butch people.

Asghar is very conscious about creating work that speaks to her and her friends, and even the way she conducts a shoot, including the set of Got Game, is about reflecting the values of the people who participate in her work and share her community. “I’m a very mediocre person,” Asghar says, when I ask her if she always knew that her life was worth making art about. “I’m not very good at a lot of things, and I’m kinda bobo, and I think it’s important to see mediocre characters doing mediocre things. The only representation that we see of [queer POC folks] are people who had to be extremely amazing and exceptional or people who were villains. There was never really an in-between, people who just got to be and didn’t have to justify themselves. It’s important to just be me.”

Fatimah Asghar by Valentina von Klencke

So what can you look for next from this mediocre artist being herself? Asghar is currently working on a novel for One World, Random House that will be out in the next couple years. On what it contains: “It’s very poetic and very sad. It’s about childhood and a set of siblings coming into queerness, it’s a lot about sexuality and gender.” I look forward to seeing what element of queer life she’ll illuminate next.

Honor Trans Elders: Cecilia Chung Is the Mother We All Wanted

Welcome to Autostraddle’s APIA Heritage Month Series, about carrying our cultures from past to future.

If you polled Cecilia Chung’s friends and acquaintances about her best qualities, you’d find that “hilarious” is in the top two. When I think of her now, as I sit 3,000 miles away in Brooklyn, I hear her signature chuckle—her body leaning backwards, her glasses falling just slightly down her face. 

Behind that laugh lies many years of struggle. While she was figuring out how to survive, she was also laying the foundation of movements for justice today. 

Prior to arriving in San Francisco, the city she has called home for over three decades, Cecilia grew up in Hong Kong. Her early memories of childhood already demonstrated her divine feminine energy. She grew up obsessed with the stories of goddesses, especially Quan Yin, a Buddhist deity that reincarnated many times in multiple genders. Since her parents were rarely home during the day, she had the space to play with gender in skits with her sister. “I always played a goddess. And in primary school, I played a belly dancer when I was in the sixth grade.” 

But the older she got, the more she felt the need to hide her femininity. She was already dealing with racist harassment at her boarding school. “They called me ‘slant eyes’ and ‘socket face.’ I didn’t want to give them more ammunition.” 

She didn’t allow the goddess side of her to return until she started going to clubs in Hong Kong. During this period in the 80s, artists like Prince and David Bowie wielded androgyny against the strict rules of gender. But they were certainly not the only ones. Gender variance is well-documented among Indigenous societies globally, but that history is often buried by colonizing governments. In fact, many people who are called “trans” today were sacred people — shamans, priests, mediums. 

As if she were channeling Quan Yin, Cecilia dolled herself up for club nights. These instances helped ease her way into a gender transition, which began on the other side of the world. Her family moved to the United States in 1984. And her life continued to vacillate: role play then boarding school, club nights then college. When Cecilia began her undergraduate studies in San Francisco in 1985, she knew she was through with hiding. 

Transitioning can mean entering a new sense of self. It can also be the result of finally letting our inner child have the freedom we’ve always craved. While trans people get closer to who we are, our loved ones often position themselves further away from us. Cecilia became estranged from her family when she told them of her transition.

At the time, she had two jobs: at a finance company with a six-figure salary and as a language interpreter within the court system. She resigned from her finance job because she could no longer withstand the 16-hour workdays. She thought she always had security with her second source of income. But court judges took note of her physical changes due to hormone therapy and her contract was subsequently terminated. Without the support of her family and no way of supporting herself, Cecilia turned to the streets. She was a sex worker at a time when there were no digital mechanisms for screening clients to evade dangerous men, including the police. While she was homeless, she also self-medicated. That same year, she discovered she was HIV-positive. 

Cecilia in 1993, the year she became homeless.

Her life was filled with loss: starting with the loss of her family and her career. And now, she was witnessing her community being taken by a mysterious virus. “I remember some of the girls. You’d see them one week. And the next week, they passed away.” 

She experienced sexual violence during her time as a sex worker. Almost three years into her homelessness, two men tried to sexually assault her. She screamed for help and ran around their red four-seater, even jumping onto the roof of the car to be out of their reach. One of the assailants pulled out a knife and lunged at her. She tried to block the knife with her right arm and sustained a stab wound. When she eventually passed out from rapid blood loss, the two men kicked her until they heard sirens in the distance.

She was rushed to the emergency room with a punctured artery, a severed tendon, and nerve damage. When the nurse asked her for an emergency contact, she gave her mother’s phone number. Her mother arrived at the emergency room, finally realizing that her daughter’s transition wasn’t a temporary matter or a lifestyle. By then, Cecilia had already undergone years of trauma. 

“How does it feel to retell that story today?” I ask her.

“It gets a little easier each time. But it’s taken a long time to come to terms with it. I felt like I was the criminal. They don’t see sex workers as human beings.” She was a target for rape and murder simply for being a trans sex worker. And she couldn’t turn to the police for any help. In fact, police officers regularly profiled and arrested trans women as sex workers and as “female impersonators.” These arrests would lead to the Compton Cafeteria riots and the Stonewall riots that launched a national LGBTQ movement. To this day, the police continue to attack and imprison trans women of color under the guise of enforcing the law.

After that assault, Cecilia channeled her trauma in the service of her communities — trans communities, people living with HIV, and sex workers. In fact, even while she was homeless she served on the San Francisco Transgender Discrimination Taskforce. She documented cases of discrimination against trans individuals, while experiencing them herself. She became a counselor for people who use drugs at Baker Places Rehabilitation Center and a counselor for people navigating HIV at UCSF Alliance Health Project. She dedicated herself to community work at a time when there were hardly any services being given to transgender communities, especially those who were migrants, sex workers, disabled, or living with HIV. There weren’t yet national organizations like Transgender Law Center, where she and I are colleagues, fighting legislation and shifting cultural perceptions of trans people. There weren’t progressive policymakers who fought alongside community organizers to decriminalize sex work. She playfully recounts, “We’ve been advocating for sex work decriminalization since the Jurassic period.”

Cecilia organized and spoke at the 40th anniversary event for the Compton Cafeteria riots, which helped launch a national LGBTQ movement.

Over the next two decades, Cecilia Chung would move through too many roles at too many organizations and governmental bodies to name. In 2004, she produced the first Trans March ever, which is still an annual event during Pride Month in June. She was appointed to Obama’s Presidential Advisory Council on HIV/AIDS in 2013. In 2017, her life’s story was created into a series by ABC called “When We Rise”; she was portrayed by the brilliant trans Filipina actress Ivory Aquino.

Her will to survive and help her community thrive has been recognized by the Levis Strauss & Co. Pioneer Award, the San Francisco AIDS Foundation Cleve Jones Award, the Human Rights Campaign Community Service Award, California Women of The Year, and the Out and Equal Champion of the Year Award, among others.

But perhaps the greatest praise she receives is from the people she calls family. She became a mother to so many. She became the mother who so many of us were denied. She became the mother who wouldn’t abandon us. She became the mother who saw our transness as something that made us even more deserving of her love. Her impact is felt in the hearts of every person who has shared stories and laughs with her. 

As a daughter of Ms. Cecilia Chung myself, I indulge myself and ask, “What’s it like being a mother now? How does it feel to care for so many now?” 

She spends a moment reflecting. “I never knew I would live this long. I thought I would die when I turned thirty. Ironically, that’s when I got stabbed in 1995. I would not wish what happened to me to happen to anybody else… My role is to be there and show them it’s possible to have unconditional love. And it’s kind of my own healing space. Because that’s what I wanted at the time.” 

Like all mothers, Cecilia Chung was once only a daughter. She sought the same kind of love that her daughters find in her. 

For a moment, I imagine the world she thought would be her reality, a world where she dies at thirty. I imagine myself as a motherless daughter, alongside her other children. I explain to her why I’m struggling to speak through tears, as she observes me on her screen. This very moment, a mother-daughter conversation, was something she was never able to experience as a young person. At least for a while, she, too, just wanted the unconditional love of a mother who understands. Now, she’s helping end the cycle of daughters who are broken by a world always at war with them. The same world that came close to killing her years ago. 

Cecilia stands in front of the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial in Washington, D.C. in 2012. By this time, she had lived seventeen years past the age at which she expected to die.

This month, I implore you to celebrate the fact that you live in a world that’s been transformed by Cecilia Chung, alongside so many movement mothers. Mama CC helped set the stage for trans people to receive the proper resources in health, housing, and HIV care. She helped mold the landscape of individuals, organizations, and institutions that are making sure no trans person will go through what she went through. Her story has inspired the media and art that’s moved forward cultural ideas of who trans people can be. 

The state of trans lives is nowhere near what it should be. But without Cecilia Chung and the ecosystem of leaders who each played their part in changing the world, we wouldn’t be where we are today. Today, as I sit safely in my apartment, with enough to eat and a network of people and resources to support me, I thank Mama CC and so many other trans elders. I have many trans siblings who don’t even have that much, who are without the basic means to survive. And that is why the work of trans liberation continues. 

“There are others before me, too, who’ve been advocating hard, to make all this possible.” How fitting that in her closing words to me, Mama CC chooses to honor her own ancestors. 

Six Queer Asian Artists on “The Half of It” and the Future of Queer Asian Cinema

When Alice Wu’s The Half of It debuted on Friday, expectations couldn’t have been higher. The filmmaker’s debut, Saving Face, is inarguably at the top of any lesbian film canon. Most importantly, it’s a movie that centers the lives and desires of Chinese women and immigrant communities in ways that few movies have captured in the fifteen years since its groundbreaking indie release.

Alice Wu’s imprint is indelible on queer Asian art and media. And since The Half of It — following the life of lesbian teen and first gen kid Ellie Chu as she navigates adolescence, first loves, and friendship, in a majority white small town — is already quickly becoming a classic in its own wistful and moody right, we wanted to bring together some of our writers and editors, along with some friends of the website, to talk about the film, the incomparable Ellie, and their hopes and dreams for the future of queer and trans Asian American stories on screen.

When did you first encounter Alice Wu’s work? Have you seen Saving Face? Before you pressed play on The Half of It, did you have any expectations (or trepidations)? 

Himani, Autostraddle Contributor: I had never heard of Alice Wu before The Half of It started being promoted on Autostraddle. I watched the trailer after reading Malinda Lo’s article last week, and I honestly didn’t know what to expect.

Lia Dun, Writer: My friend N., who was my first queer Chinese American friend, introduced me to Saving Face our freshman year of college. It was the first movie I’d ever seen about queer Chinese American people, and even though the characters’ lives were very different from mine, it made me feel seen in a way I hadn’t experienced with a movie or TV before. When I heard The Half of It was coming out, I was so excited. Then I saw the trailer and was less excited. I’d been expecting another rom-com like Saving Face but instead, it seemed kind of funny but also sad because it was about a queer Chinese American teenager who feels isolated because she’s surrounded by white people. Too real! I didn’t want to spend my free time reliving my young adult trauma. My partner had to talk me into watching the movie this weekend, and I’m glad they did. It’s so good! Even if it did make me cry a little.

Kamala Puligandla, Autostraddle Deputy Editor: I remember being really into Saving Face at the time when I saw it. It felt like there was a whole world of queer Asian women that was just out there, and even though I’m not Chinese, that there might be something similar for me! Like Lia, had a lot of eye-rolly feelings about there being a white boy in this one, but everyone was going wild about it, so I figured it must have been fairly harmless. I didn’t really think about how it was going to be first and foremost an Alice Wu production, and so I did wonder, as a Netflix movie, how much of a teen bent it was going to take versus a more seriously thoughtful take. I was delightfully surprised to find it was the latter.

Leo Sheng, Actor (The L Word: Generation Q): I think I might have been in middle school when I saw Saving Face for the first time, just a few years after it was released. It was the first love story between two Asian women that I’d ever seen, if not the first queer Asian love story.

When I saw the trailer for The Half of It and that it was from Alice Wu, I got really excited. I was really hopeful for what it could mean in terms of young adult content and I really wanted to see how the story would unfold. I think a lot of people wanted or expected for it to end with Elli and Aster together, but I think on some level, I pressed play trusting that whatever ending it had, it would be the right one.

Xoài Pham, Autostraddle Trans Subject Editor:This was my first time encountering Alice Wu’s work! The trailer hooked me because I consistently long for queer and trans Asians in a high school context. One of my recurring daydreams is going back to high school and living as a trans girl who was entirely affirmed in her transition and her gender. While the protagonist is not trans, I had to see the film — as someone who one day wants to write for film and TV.

I expected a cute story about queer Asian resilience? But I got a messy, adorable tearjerker. I cried a record four times.

KaeLyn Rich, Autostraddle Writer: My Saving Face experience is as follows: Was I a college senior when I saw Saving Face? Yes. Did I think it was a good movie? It was ok! Do I generally love lesbian romance as a genre? Not really, sorry. Did I watch every lesbian romance movie available in college? Yes, of course. Can I still count on one hand the number of queer-directed Asian films I’ve seen? YES. Do I have Saving Face on DVD? Obviously, yes. I’m deeply appreciative of what Alison Wu brought sixteen years ago, which is like a whole generation ago in queer time. Saving Face was a story that needed to be told and I feel similarly about The Half of It. I’d say The Half of It resonated even more for me, because it felt like a place I know and a loneliness I felt growing up rural, Korean, and queer.

By the end of the movie, I really wanted more for Ellie… a whole bunch of QTPOC friends, partner, exes, and even people she doesn’t like that much! I really wanted to see her life in a few years — where she’s surrounded by friends and there’s not a single white person in the frame.

What did you think of our protagonist — and the hero of her own story — Ellie Chu (Leah Lewis)?

Lia: I related to Ellie Chu so much as someone who was also a nerdy Chinese American kid who still looks five years younger than all of their peers. But Ellie is much cooler than my teenage self — especially when she makes fun of Paul and the other white boy characters, who all look the same.

Leo: I also felt like Ellie was extremely relatable! She reminded me a lot of myself when I was in school (though I was a little more outgoing) and also of a few other young Asian folks I knew in high school and undergrad. I think her story was a little more complex than the general arc of a teenager finding themself, so I don’t want to diminish her story to simply that. I think she was finding more of herself and building on what she already knew and thought and felt, rather than starting out as some sort of unknown character or one whose journey is propelled by having to prove something to others.

Lia: By the end of the movie, I really wanted more for Ellie, not just one silly white boy friend but a whole bunch of QTPOC friends, partner, exes, and even people she doesn’t like that much! This wouldn’t have made sense in the actual movie, but I really wanted to see her life in a few years — where she’s surrounded by friends and there’s not a single white person in the frame.

Leo: Yeah, even if it’s not really on Ellie’s radar right now, I hope she finds some QTPOC to connect with.

Kamala: I thought Ellie was so adorable, and I enjoyed her mix of sharp wit and compassion. I loved the scene in the music class where Aster suddenly registers to her — the slow, long shot — that felt so much like me and the way that my crushes and my future loves just HAPPEN to me. So that was fabulous.

As protagonists go, I found her strength and resolve, her “over it” frustration, and ultimately her own faith in herself, a really solid foundation for the movie. I was so ready to find her betraying herself, and she didn’t really. Instead, she allowed herself to be opened up and changed by her closeness to people. Did I wish she’d had a better community to share that with? Of course, but I did find it admirable that she could do that even with these people here in her small town.

KaeLyn: I related very hard to Ellie. I was the only Asian person in my class and, as a Korean transracial adoptee, I grew up with white people in every role in my life: teachers, friends, crushes, parents, classmates, random people wherever I went. I felt hypervisible because of my race and simultaneously invisible, also because of my race, and that liminal space was my normal.

Leah Lewis really captured that rural Asian-American experience. I love that Ellie’s story is not a typical coming out narrative or Very Traditional Family v. Very Queer Kid story that so often is at the center of POC LGBTQ narrative films. Ellie is already on the path of knowing herself when we first meet her and it makes sense to me that she chooses herself in the end. I think I would have related to that a lot if I’d watched this on Netflix as a high school-age teen, at a time in my life when finding romance seemed impossible, but getting the fuck out of my town was the ultimate goal.

Xoài: I don’t know if I’d be friends with Ellie! She reminded me of the East Asians in my high school who thought that Southeast Asians were beneath them. She fit the archetype of self-sacrificing top student who kept her head down. But the marker of Alice’s great writing is I still related to her longing, the feeling of needing everything to be in control. The girl who had to grow up too fast. I think many young girls from migrant families can relate to that. I wish I had seen something like this when I was a young person — I had no idea being a queer Asian person was even possible.

The Half of It takes place in the majority white fictional small town of Squahamish, Washington. Ellie’s coming of age is marked with the racist name calling and various microaggressions, but also The Half of It makes room for celebrating a variety of Asian cultural touchstones — from drinking Yakult to Ellie watching the 2014 Bollywood classic Ek Villain. Did it have any stand out points of resonance for you?

Himani: I feel like the movie masterfully showed the isolation of being “the only one” in a predominantly white space.

KaeLyn: I related the name-calling and microaggressions and parents who were very supportive, but also didn’t really know how to help me through.

Lia: Yeah, it was kind of hard to watch the scenes where Ellie is at school surrounded by white people. That first scene where Ellie is in the corner of her choir class distributing essays to her white classmates made me sad because it reminded me of all the times I’ve found myself in majority white spaces. I felt this way about the ending, too, when she’s on the train full of white people heading to a small liberal arts college where her dating pool will probably be a bunch of white queers who talk over her because they’ve taken a critical race theory class. That’s not a happy ending!

But as my partner pointed out, the whole movie is also making fun of white people customs. From Paul’s “taco sausage” to the white girls who present Aster with a pink scarf to match theirs to Trig’s rock performance, Alice Wu does a great job of pointing out the bizarre, exotic aspects of white “All-American” culture.

Leo: I’m a Chinese American adoptee who grew up a non-Asian household and a predominately Black school district. I definitely related to being one of the only Asian kids in my class, if not the only one at times, though thankfully I didn’t have the same experiences in school as Ellie.

I think something that resonated with me was Ellie’s wardrobe? It looked almost identical to mine from middle school and high school: the plaid, the Converse high tops, the tee-shirts over long-sleeves, the muted colors. Although for me it was more an expression of my gender identity, I felt like her clothes really added to a sense of standing out.

Kamala: I have to agree with Leo that something about the practicality in Ellie’s wardrobe really just felt so real to me!

Himani: When it comes to Asian touchstones, though, I have to admit — I was a little underwhelmed? To be honest, I’m not familiar with Ek Villain although, admittedly, I don’t follow Bollywood avidly and thriller is usually not my genre of choice. However, given its use in The Half of It and that it was shown alongside Casablanca and Charlie Chaplin movies — it feels like an odd, albeit convenient, choice to me. If we’re talking about iconic Bollywood love scenes set to a departing train, I think Dilwale Duhania Le Jayenge is the more obvious choice. (Though it doesn’t neatly fit the parallel that Wu draws later in the movie for Ellie and Paul.)

I also think there was also an intentionality to some of the paucity of specifically Chinese cultural references, because assimilation creates further isolation, and disconnect with community makes it that much harder to hold onto culture. The focus on food felt relatable to me. I think food is one of the things our families do make a point of holding onto, even when other things get lost.

Kamala: Yeah, there weren’t many objects or items that were meant to say “this is Chinese,” but I imagine that this is also a certain version of reality for a lot of immigrants. More than Yakult, more than the Bollywood movie they watched together — what I saw being proposed as cultural touchstones were Ellie’s dad sitting in the chair watching the movies and not caring about his English improving, and Ellie taking it upon herself to start an essay-writing business that’s condoned by teachers, and the silent acquiescent acceptance of this white kid sitting on the living room floor during dinner, and the slow development of the dad starting to enjoy his company, and him talking to Paul, not Ellie, when he realizes that she’s sad.

Xoài: My favorite scene of the entire film was when Mr. Chu is speaking to Paul Munsky entirely in Mandarin. Other folks at this roundtable have pointed out the feeling of being the only Asian in a sea of whiteness. To that point, I felt there were parts were Ellie appealed to the approval of white peers. When she played her song at the talent show, she suddenly stopped being a victim to racist harassment. But the scene wherein Mr. Chu is speaking to Paul Munsky entirely in Mandarin displayed the most radical message to me: It does not matter if a white person understands, because my words hold inherent value.

KaeLyn: I loved that Mr. Chu spoke to Paul in Mandarin. It was both a reminder to Paul that there are things about Ellie he can never “see” as a white person and a show of vulnerability and trust from Mr. Chu, who I think really liked Paul and felt comfortable speaking Mandarin with him.

Leo: It really does show that there are just some things Paul can’t fully understand. Maybe the bar is pretty low, but I appreciated that Paul didn’t pout about it or make it about him.

Xoài: That “our words hold inherent value” is the lasting message I’d want every person of color to take away from this movie. In a country where people are harassed for speaking their native tongue, in a country where Indigenous languages are fading day by day, that scene delivered political resonance that expands beyond Asianness or queerness. Another layer of that scene that I loved was that Asian men are some of the first to assimilate within Asian communities; they’re tempted by the power of white masculinity. In this case, Mr. Chu did the exact opposite. I literally screamed at the television.

There’s so much that goes unsaid in Asian families, and you just learn how to read silence. The Half of It captures that perfectly.

Alice Wu highlighted one of the film’s final scenes between Ellie and her father as one of her favorites. In it, Ellie returns home to see him making dumplings and remarks there’s a lot of them. Her father nonchalantly responds that there’s a lot of meals at Grinnell to account for, acknowledging Ellie’s dream school. Of the scene, Wu reflected: “This is so Chinese. No one says ‘I love you.’ We all just do things, like cook or sacrifice for each other.”

How did you find Ellie’s relationship with her Dad?

Himani: I really appreciated the sensitivity with which the relationship between Ellie and her father was shown. Everything was so subtle but those subtleties said everything. There’s so much that goes unsaid in Asian families, and you just learn how to read silence. The Half of It captures that perfectly. For instance, there’s a scene early on where Ellie and her father share an awkward silence when Paul unexpectedly joins them for dinner; later, we have silence again when Ellie and her father try Paul’s taco sausage and you see them both surprisingly enjoying it; and a third time silence when Ellie’s father senses something is wrong but doesn’t know how to speak with Ellie about it. Each of those silences are so very clearly different, and we as the audience know it and feel it and see it. I also love the seamless interweaving of language because that is what happens in so many immigrant families.

Leo: Sometimes stories or scenes that really touch on what it’s like to grow up in Asian families make me a little wistful, because I can’t relate to that and I wish I could — it’s sort of an unintentional reminder that I’m even more of an outsider. In a way, I feel like I’m often watching what it’s like to be Asian (even though I know there are so many different experiences in Asian communities!!). That being said, I still gravitate towards those stories and I very much love getting to see and hear those experiences.

Lia: I relate a lot to what Leo said about feeling like an outsider when it comes to a lot of Asian American stories in movies and books. My parents are American-born chinese and only speak English. They’re also weird hippy artist people. As much as I love Alice Wu, I wish she wouldn’t say things like “that’s so Chinese.” It’s one way of being Chinese. There are many more.

KaeLyn: Oh, Leo, you said it! I love watching stories about Asian families and I also feel like a tourist or a guest when I try to relate. My experience is an Asian experience, even a typical one given how many Asian children have come to the U.S. through mostly transracial international adoption. I just know more about Italian comfort food and culture than about Korean culture. There was once a time when I was around Korean people all the time and the only thing I knew was Korea and I don’t remember any of it and I can’t get it back.

I felt joy watching that scene with Ellie and her dad, all the same, and how it was clear that he was telling her that he wanted her to be happy and that she didn’t need to feel guilt about living her life. I also loved the scene when he sprayed Trig with the kitchen hose and when he tried the taco sausage. At first, I thought the dad was going to be played as a melancholy spot in Ellie’s life, but that really wasn’t the case. He was a safe place, a home base, and he didn’t stand in the way of her happiness.

Alice Wu shared in her Director’s Note that The Half of It was inspired in part by her own intimate relationship and subsequent heartbreak with her straight best friend — “A straight white guy from the heartland, no less… But sometimes you meet someone and for whatever reasons, your ‘weird’ works together.” The relationship between Ellie and Paul Munsky (Daniel Diemer) is pivotal, did you think that their “weird worked together”?

Kamala: I think the “weird worked” in the way that most people looking for connection will find it wherever they are, even if they happen to be in Squahamish, WA. I don’t think there was anything particularly special about Paul and Ellie, except that they both shared an interest in the same girl, at the same time, who they liked for really different reasons. I liked their dedication to each other, it made me think that they were both really lonely and looking to be cared for, and it was nice that they had each other. I’m beyond the point in my life where I’m looking to extend myself and my interest to white men at all, but I remember being younger and entertaining them because yeah, we did like the same girls and we did listen to the same music. It was easy to hang out and smoke weed, and before I knew what intimacy looked like and how much I loved it, that ease seemed desirable.

Lia: Paul reminds me of a lot of white friends I’ve had in the past. In some ways we were very close and I trusted them deeply, but there were also parts of me I knew they wouldn’t understand. In one of the scenes where Paul is chasing after Ellie on her bike, my partner said something that really captures my feelings: “When talking to a white boy, you should always be riding ahead of him on a bike.”

Leo:  Like Lia, I’ve also had white friends (and partners) that I was close to and trusted, but felt like the part of me they couldn’t understand was just too big.

I think Paul leaned on Ellie a lot, and I understand why given that she was helping him in such a heavy way. I appreciated the moments where he tried to get to know her, like when they were playing ping pong. But then when he misread everything and tried to kiss her, and then said what he said, I was very quickly and comfortably done with him. The ending was sort of sweet, but I also think she forgave him quicker than I might have.

KaeLyn: It was hard for me because it started out so specifically transactional and with a fucked up power dynamic. Like, when she wouldn’t stop on her bike and he literally tipped her over trying to get her attention? I hated that.

Himani: … I actually really liked Paul and Ellie’s friendship? I didn’t come out until I was older and for so much of my life, I had no queer women / trans friends. I have also watched probably more hetero rom-coms than I would like to admit, so I appreciated what Alice Wu was doing with their relationship, in terms of taking a fairly classic rom-com formula (nerdy girl helps jock dude get attractive girl but actually jock dude falls in love with nerdy girl) and turning it on its head. It asks us to think about all the different kinds of love we can hold in our lives.

Xoài: I loved Ellie and Paul’s relationship because it blurred the line between romance and friendship. I think intimacy is fluid and shapeless. And that’s what makes it beautiful. The way we box intimacy into specific scripts — like partner, best friend, acquaintance, and so on — flattens the space we have to explore the intricacies of a human being relating to another human being. I think if we got a little weirder, we’d have better relationships with ourselves and other people. And we’d have a lot more fun.

Asian experiences and individuals are so vast and multifaceted. And no one in any of these stories is more or less valid as an Asian person. Each step we take to more inclusive representation is going to involve critiques and community dialogue.

Let’s talk about the broader pop culture landscape that The Half of It has arrived in! Thinking about Asian American and Asian diasporic representations in film and television, especially for queer and trans Asians, are there trends you’d like to see more of? Is there anything that you think works well right now? And what’s missing from the conversation?

Himani: When I think about the broader landscape of Asian and Asian American representation, in general, I think of movies like Crazy Rich Asians and Always Be My Maybe, and what I find so frustrating about representation like that is its fixation on and idolization of wealth. It feels so unrelatable to me, personally, and I think it taps into problematic stereotypes about Asians and money; meanwhile, Asians are “the most economically divided group in the US” per a 2018 study by the Pew Research Center. One of the things I LOVED about The Half of It, in contrast, is it centers an Asian family that is just trying to pay the bills, like everyone else.

When it comes to representing queer and trans Asians, one thing I think The Half of It does really well is show that even under a stoic exterior, Asian teens are struggling with the messiness of feelings and attraction and love just like every other teen everywhere. So often, I feel like we get reduced to the nerds who focus only on school and grades and are socially awkward. I love how the movie turns this on its head with Ellie using her brains to make a little extra money and, eventually, engage with her feelings for Aster.

Leo: I think about this so much as a queer and trans Asian actor, the choices I make about what auditions to go on and which to pass up. I’ve been feeling pretty hopeful about queer and trans Asian stories lately, though I think I’m biased because of my position. I want to see more queer and trans stories with Asian folks dating across the diaspora; more body diversity; more blended backgrounds.

One of the biggest things (and super complicated with lots of layers!) I’ve been thinking about the last few weeks is what it means to have lead love interests who are Asian. We hear the words “Asian American” or “Asian experiences” and it’s assumed to mean only East Asian. But Asia is a massive continent with almost 50 countries! South Asian communities are too often ignored or villainized in mainstream (white) media, and aren’t often treated much better in East Asian stories. Our stories and experiences are so vast and span so many ages, religions, careers, blended heritages, sexualities and genders.

I think we’re seeing a steady shift from hyper-sexualization, fetishization, and desexualization of Asian characters; the first two being done of Asian women, the last of Asian men. Part of that shift is more love stories with Asian leads, which send the message that Asian folks can be seen as desirable and sexy; like Crazy Rich Asians. Still within this new wave of love stories, another challenge that I’ve noticed is being implicitly told who deserves to be loved or seen as desirable or sexy based on certain characteristics and features — specifically skin tones — which I think is often a consequence of the colorism that exists in Asian communities. I think it gets even more complicated when major release projects (theatrical or streaming) have Asian love interests who are white passing or have more classically western features, because those stories and experiences are valid and they don’t make the person any less Asian! But, it sort of then implies Asian people are only seen as desirable or sexy if they fit that category. I want to stress though, that this is a systematic issue — Hollywood and mainstream media — not just on the shoulders of the actors who take these jobs.

Kamala: I don’t feel like I have an informed picture of what the representational landscape of queer and trans Asian people and Asian American people in media looks like. I read more than I watch, and those issues are similar, but also different. I love what Leo has said about the need for a richer variety of representation. I also like his optimism, and find myself amused at the possibility of more stories about people who share shreds of my identity. I still think it’s absurd that “Asian” is a category — to me The Half of It is one version of Chinese American film, which should be held and compared and considered within a lineage of other Chinese American film.

Leo: Asian experiences and individuals are so vast and multifaceted! And no one in any of these stories is more or less valid as an Asian person. Each step we take to more inclusive representation is going to involve critiques and community dialogue. I hope that more stories hit wide-release theaters and streaming sites so that eventually, we have so many stories that we don’t have to worry about the implications of only certain narratives being uplifted. We won’t have to feel like we have to pick or prioritize communities and experiences. Movies and shows won’t have to carry the awful burden of the hopes and fears of Asian audiences because we want so much to be seen.

Xoài: I desperately need trans Asian women in film and TV being regular-degular. So much of the cultural perceptions of trans Asians was produced by colonizers and tourists who thought us to be exotic fetishes. So many Asian countries had lineages of gender variance before people even spoke the word “trans.” I can’t wait for the day that there’s an iconic trans Asian character that young trans people look to and say, “I knew I’d be okay because of her.” My hope is that queer cis writers fulfill their responsibility to their community by lifting up trans talent and bringing them into the rooms they never get to be in.

Ellie and Aster: Yay or Nay!? Did you get caught up in the romance? Were you rooting for Ellie to get the girl? Are you satisfied with the paths that the characters found for themselves?

Himani: I wish Aster had been fleshed out a little bit more in general. The only impression I’m left with is that Aster hasn’t figured out who she is or what she wants, whereas Ellie has. I think there was a part of me that wanted to see Aster more clearly reciprocate Ellie’s feelings, even though they clearly couldn’t be together. The movie does a fantastic job of showing us the path Ellie and Paul find for themselves, but Aster’s story is entirely unconvincing to me. Her father is conservative and gunning for her to marry Trig, but after she publicly accepts and then walks out on Trig’s proposal of marriage… somehow she’s applying to art school now? How did Aster and her family ever get there?

Lia said this earlier, but what leaves me feeling a little melancholy is knowing that Ellie will continue to be surrounded by whiteness at her liberal arts college in Iowa. I wish the movie had found a different place for her to go — a place where she can explore her queerness while also getting greater exposure to a variety of different people.

Lia: I agree with Himani. I don’t think Aster was fleshed out very well. For me, the romance was one of the least interesting parts of the movie. It was important to drive the plot forward, but I feel like the movie was more about being isolated in a very white small town and the two POC there, Aster and Ellie, trying to find their way out of it.

Leo: I agree, too. I think there were moments where we got a peek into Aster’s life, but mostly through the letters. I don’t think it was supposed to be about Ellie and Aster, and more about Ellie’s internal understanding and discovery.

I’m pretty content with them not being together. I think that their correspondence and Ellie’s feelings were more representative of the life Ellie wanted to lead. I think Aster was someone Ellie felt like she could talk to and who understood her in a way no one else in Squahamish could or would, and I think she definitely had feelings for Aster. But, I also think Ellie wanted to know more about the world than she wanted to be with Aster.

Kamala: It’s high school, so I get the allure of Aster: She’s pretty, she reads books, she seems not to have bought into the BS she participates in with her weird, ugly boyfriend — and she’s responsive to these gestures of romance that are being thrust in her direction. I loved the hot spring scene, because I feel like I’ve had SO MANY moments in my life where that is the fruition of the romance, and it’s no less satisfying that this was the biggest moment this relationship could unlock.

Like everyone said, is Aster ENOUGH for Ellie in the long run? Nah, but she’s a high school crush, she’s there to teach you about what you want. I was way more interested in Aster as a vehicle for Ellie to explore her desire and what love meant to her, and I thought it was a nice gesture for Aster to recognize that of course she could have seen through it all. As someone who did go to a small liberal arts college in the Midwest, I will say that there are still other people of color to date, though I’m not saying Ellie won’t get inundated by whites — it did take me a couple years before I convinced my half-Chinese college girlfriend to date me — but I have hope for her yet.

Xoài: All I’ll say is that the scene where they both wore long underwear in the hot springs made my entire life. That was better than the kiss for me.

KaeLyn: I’m glad they didn’t end up together, but you also need to remember I don’t love rom-coms. I’d say a big piece of why the genre isn’t for me is that in a lot of queer romances we LOVE TO TRAUMA BOND and true love is, well, boring. I mean, it’s a right of passage. And there was a time when we just needed more movies where the lesbians in love didn’t die. But I wanted more for Ellie in this the year 2020 and I’m so pleased with where Alice Wu left her and Aster.

I thought the chemistry was great from the start when Aster helped Ellie pick up her books and, like, casually flirted with her. I liked that we weren’t being queer-baited. Aster clearly had feelings for Ellie, too, even if she wasn’t sure what that all meant yet by the end. I loved that it ended with Ellie leaving from the station she worked for all her teen years to get to experience her own adulthood. Related/unrelated: I do wish Ellie had maybe tried consent when she kissed Aster, given how many questions she asked Paul about why he’d just go in for a kiss without asking, but you know, Aster didn’t seem mad.

I’d never change the storyline of a film to appease the insecurities of cis people or white people.

In talking about her 15 year hiatus between movies (we missed you!), and looking back on her mindset while exploring financial backing for The Half of It, Alice Wu told Autostraddle: “Eventually I will either find somebody who does [get it] or I won’t and that’s also okay. But what I don’t want to do is make compromises.”

Taking her words as inspiration to close out our time together, what would be the one thing you’d never compromise on in making your dream queer story come to screen?

Leo: I’m not gonna lie, I’m tired of the majority of widely released and highly talked about queer stories being about cis white queer folks. It’s kind of exhausting to hear certain movies or shows being heralded as, like, “peak queerness” when it’s only cis white queers. I think they’re important in the sense that they prove (to an extent) that audiences want queer stories. But also, a lot of queer POC stories are too quickly dismissed or critized in a white white ones aren’t. So, one thing I’d never compromise on is a story with queer and trans POC as the leads.

Kamala: I have to hard second Leo! In a lot of the fiction I’ve been writing recently, that’s one of the most important parts of the story. Because it changes the landscape, it inherently introduces different norms, it allows the characters to not have to contend with whiteness — and at this point, with room for very notable exceptions, the possibilities for stories involving white people feel overdone and limited. Another thing I want to see is not this quiet, bittersweet ending, but a complete and total gluttonous victory, like I was to see trans and queer POC just reveling in the kind of love or the kind of joy they spend an entire movie seeking, even if what that invovles turns out to be different than what they originaly set out to find.

Himani: I agree with what both Leo and Kamala. I want a queer Asian story, and I want a queer Asian story that is capable of imagining the kind of love-filled happy ending that all the Bollywood movies and all the rom-coms I have watched show me for heterosexual couples. But there’s an even more specific queer Asian story that I want to be told: I appreciate and value stories like The Half of It where a young Asian teen has the space to come into their queerness, and what Alice Wu said in her interviews about too many stories rooted in homophobia and violence really resonated with me. At the same time, I want to see a story that really delves into the cultural disconnect that leaves queer Asians, like myself, hiding from our own queerness well into adulthood.

Xoài: I would echo a lot of what other folks have said. I’d also never let a cis actor play a trans role. I’d never let a white actor play a role written for a person of color. But on a conceptual level, I would never change the storyline of a film to appease the insecurities of cis people or white people. The stories and characters that I want to see — and the ones I’ll write — will represent the future that I’m already seeing among my trans peers. We are actually building families, homes, and systems of care with little to no institutional support. And that wisdom must be unadulterated.

KaeLyn: I don’t think I’d write a very fun queer story. My favorite films are messy and weird. However, I’ve seen a ton of queer and trans films and when it comes to the rom-com genre, I want the BIPOC lesbian version of every Drew Barrymore/Adam Sandler movie. I want huge Hollywood budgets, less trauma bonding, no terminal illness diagnosis, no lesbian-feelings-but-I’m-married-to-a-man plots, less breathy yearning and more generalized horniness and just like, good acting and funny stories and big outrageous gestures and stupid happy endings with upbeat music. If I have to accept that falling in love with someone you just met a second ago is the answer, I want it to be FUN with HIJINX and PRIMO production value.

If I can be so bold, I just generally want cis white men out of the producer’s chair and out of the writer’s room. I want them to use their power and influence to open doors traditionally shut to BIPOC queer and trans writers and directors and producers and then get out of the way completely other than cheerleading and sending checks. The stories we have to tell are ones that white folks can’t even dream of and they will be so much richer, smarter, and funnier.

Four Transracial Asian Adoptees on Body, Place, Family, and Race

Welcome to Autostraddle’s APIA Heritage Month Series, about carrying our cultures from past to future.

I knew all the words to the original cast recording of Miss Saigon when I was in sixth grade. I’d sit cross-legged on my twin bed listening to the double-CD, memorizing the liner notes and singing along in what I imagined was a spot-on Lea Salonga impression. Miss Saigon is the worst type of white-savior-complex, virgin-whore dichotomous, colonizer-loving Asian representation. I also loved it. It was among the scarce Asian pop culture representation I’d found in 1994 in rural Western New York.

There was this one song, titled “Bui-Doi,” a Westernized version of the Vietnamese trẻ bụi đời, in this case referring to children born during U.S. occupation during the Vietnam War. (The term bụi đời in Vietnam refers to any person who lives on the streets, not just children or mixed-race children of American occupiers, but anyway.) The Vietnamese protagonist, Kim, has a child with a white American soldier and the climactic end of the musical comes when she, heartbroken that he has moved on and married a white woman back in the U.S., kills herself in front of her former lover to ensure her child can be “an American boy.”

This was my first exposure to an Asian adoption story, other than my sister’s and my own. Miss Saigon is just the traumatic tip of the iceberg when it comes to the United States’ racialized history with the transracial adoption diaspora.

Prior to the late 1940’s, white families rarely adopted children of color. “Race matching” was the typical practice, with agencies placing Black and mixed race children in Black homes and white children in white homes. That changed in the 1950’s, as interracial placements began happening purposefully, often into evangelical Christian homes with a literal savior complex. In addition to interracial adoption of Black children, international adoption and adoption of indigenous children by white American parents also began to rise.

Following World War II, international adoption became increasingly common as wars, famines, forced migrations, and other issues made children living in poverty more sympathetic and visible to Americans. Soldiers sent to war and occupations in Japan, Korea, and Vietnam in the years that followed both raped women and had romantic relationships during their deployment, resulting in children and mothers who were poor and stigmatized in their own countries.

In 1954, the evangelical Holt family adopted eight Korean children who were “war orphans” in what became a public spectacle. They went on to launch the faith-based Holt International, the first international adoption agency and one of the largest still operating today. For decades, Korea was one of the largest “senders” of children to the United States. Korea underwent an industrial growth period in the 1960s and 1970’s that created economic division, resulting in huge numbers of children being available from “unwed” parents, teenage mothers, poor families, and due to divorce and death.

At the same time, the growing civil rights movement increased the overall openness towards interracial families. Victories in reproductive healthcare like the birth control pill and legal abortion meant fewer white infants available for domestic adoption in the U.S.. White parents were drawn to the idea of “saving” orphaned children and were also more open to adopting light-skinned East Asian and Russian infants rather than Black infants available for domestic adoption. South Korean and U.S. adoption agencies worked together to funnel Korean children into the U.S. in the thousands annually.

The adoptee diaspora is lived by many people from many countries, including not just East Asian adoptees, but Pacific Islander, South Asian, African, South American, and Caribbean adoptees. Many of us are LGBTQ and the adoptee diaspora has unique ramifications on our health, our families, our bodies, and our future.

Lisa Kim is a bisexual Korean adoptee from San Diego, CA who came through Holt International to the U.S. in 1965. She was two years old when she arrived, with no information about her birth or early years of life. Growing up with four siblings who were biological children to her adoptive mother, her childhood was “wrought with physical and emotional abuse.” She never fit the model minority stereotype because her family was poor and she didn’t fit in with other Asian children or with white children. She remembers her first racial slur from a classmate at the age of seven. “Basically, as a Korean adoptee, your identity is always in question. You straddle two worlds—not white, not Korean.”

Feeling caught between two worlds or without a place to belong is a common experience for Korean adoptees. I also remember my first racial slur around kindergarten, when kids would whisper, “Chink,” to me in the hallway. As an adult, I think about where those kids learned that word and that’s more upsetting to me than my five-year-old peers’ first ventures into hate speech.

Like both Kim and me, Jake Abbott grew up in a white home, with white family members, deeply wishing he could be white. “Growing up, I thought I was going to be white,” said Abbott, a transgender 29-year-old Korean adoptee living in Rochester, New York, “Not literally, obviously I knew it wasn’t possible, but there was always this sense that I wasn’t the way I wanted to be… I think I focused a lot of my unhappiness with myself onto that unattainable goal, when the reality was that I had a different but similar unattainable, at the time, goal to become a man.”

Abbott feels that being adopted contributed to the length of time it took him to recognize his gender dysphoria. “Sometimes I wonder whether I would have recognized my gender dysphoria sooner if I had Asian male role models in my life. Even at the beginning of my physical transition, I felt that I could never look the way other trans men/trans masculine people looked. It was only when I made a conscious effort to consume content from Asian men/trans masculine individuals that I felt like I could see a future for myself where I didn’t hate my body.”

“I longed to be tall and blond, with blue eyes like my siblings,” shared Kim, “I saw being Asian as ugly and less than… The very idea that I saw being white as superior is such a sad statement. Today you couldn’t pay me to be white.” Living in this placeless racially complex space is common for transracial adoptees. We’ve been severed from our language, food, culture and our history and there’s no way to fully retrieve it, no matter how much healing we do. The politics behind so-called interracial adoption and intercountry adoption have always been bound up in Western imperialism, whether it was the “integration” of Black and mixed-race children into white households, forced removal of indigenous children to “boarding schools” across North America, or the “saving” of children from war-torn countries. Not all adoption experiences are bad, but all come with deep loss.

As Korea added new U.S. adoption restrictions in the aftermath of their public embarrassment during the 1988 Seoul Olympics, China became the global leader in international adoption in the mid-1990’s through today, followed closely by Russia. Overall, international adoption has been dropping since 2005 as more countries including Ethiopia, China, Russia, Korea, Guatamala, and Khazakstan have eliminated or reduced the number of adoptions to the U.S. and standards for international adoption have become more rigorous.

Kate is a 23-year-old queer and nonbinary Chinese adoptee who lives in St. Paul, MN. Per identified with per Chinese culture and also feels “there isn’t much room for [Chinese] queer and trans identities as the general population struggles to survive harsh conditions and, traditionally, trans and queer people aren’t acknowledged.” Per was able to embrace per identity by meeting other queer adoptees and other queer people of color who navigate multiply marginalized identities.

Queer and trans adoptees, who already grew up with a notion of being “chosen” by their families and straddle complex identities deeply understand the concept of “chosen family.” When asked what brought him joy about being a Korean person and an adoptee, Abbott replied that, “…’chosen family’ in LGBTQ+ communities is something that is not as easily embraced in other spaces. I find that other members of the community are more understanding of the different layers and nuances that can exist within a family dynamic and that it doesn’t matter who gave birth to you but rather who played a formative role in raising and supporting you.”

Kim recounted her “first trip home,” a home trip to Korea she embarked on as an adult after beginning to connect with other adult adoptees through a local meet-up group. The group “was the first time that I was able to connect with others who shared the challenges of being adopted into a white culture.” At 45, she took her first trip back to Korea, followed by a second trip the next year. “It was very powerful. I say that on a molecular level, my body knew that I was, ‘home’,” she shared. On her second trip, she was with a group that included Korean adoptees from Europe and she remembers, “sitting in an outdoor eating establishment in Seoul one night speaking French with KA women from France & Switzerland. It was absolutely surreal. I felt that I had died and gone to heaven! A truly magical experience.”

At 45, she took her first trip back to Korea, followed by a second trip the next year. “It was very powerful. I say that on a molecular level, my body knew that I was, ‘home’,” she shared.

Chosen family revolutionized my way of being in the world, too, but it’s mainly been my queer and trans family and aligning my solidarity with Black folks and people of color. I’m just beginning to forge real-life connections with other adoptees, dissect my adoption trauma and joy in new ways through parenthood, and grow my chosen family to include specifically queer and trans adoptees. This piece you’re reading is a real-time exploration of that journey.

For all of us in both queer and trans spaces and adoptee spaces, the concept of “family” is perpetually changing and changed. This comes to bear for many of us as we approach how we want to create our own families. For Abbott, not having any biological relatives or health history was a factor both in entering his transition without any idea of what male relatives looked like and his plans for having children one day. He shared, “While I was struggling to decide whether HRT was right for me, I would have appreciated the comfort of any information that could help me feel like I knew what was waiting for me on the other side.” He also has had to pass on having a DNA-related child, knowing that he would need a gestational carrier to carry his eggs, a costly procedure that would have been “too expensive and physically undesirable (for me personally) that I decided not to pursue it so that I could save money for top surgery and be able to start HRT sooner.” Abbott has made peace with his decision that will likely result in him never meeting a biological relative.

While writing Countdown to Baby T. Rex, I connected with several other adoptees who also chose to carry their own biological children. It’s something I never planned to do and it unearthed new levels of pain when I realized that I had never even considered the possibility of a biological child. It’s very much the reason why I’m thinking about and reading so much about and trying to connect with Korean adoption narratives now.

Having her own child was also a “turning point” for Kim. She shared that, “It was the first time that my being adopted bubbled to the surface. Up to that point, I managed to bury my feelings. While pregnant, I distinctly remember it hitting me that the child I was carrying would be the first person that I would be genetically related to. It was also the first time that I was struck with the thought that some woman carried me in her body.”

Adoptees are always grieving loss. That’s something that translates into queer and trans experiences, as well, and certainly the experiences of people of color. The losses are big and small, can be forced on us or uncovered through our own lived experiences, and they stay with us. Adoptees are up to four times as likely to commit suicide than non-adoptees. On top of that, more than one in five LGBT youth have attempted suicide and that number is higher for Native American, Pacific Islander, and Latinx youth. Transracial adoption narratives in popular media often focus on the adoptive parents, the “saving” or “civil rights” framing of adoption, leaving transracial adoptees feeling they have to show gratitude and that they’re alone in their feelings of loss.

There is certainly joy in adoption, too, not for all but for many. Kate shared an annual tradition per family has during which they have a celebratory dinner and look through photos from per adoption together. Per also attends Chinese New Year events with per friends from Chinese school. My sister and I had similar commemorations every year, which was kind of like a second birthday with presents and cake and attention from our parents. In fact, it’s my sister’s “anniversary” as I’m writing and I just sent her a note of celebration. OK, it was a gif. Because we’re all stuck at home during the pandemic, my mom now video chats with my toddler every day and we both get so much amusement out of the ways Remi reminds my mom of me at Remi’s age. I feel so close to both my mom and my child in those moments.

Because we’re all stuck at home during the pandemic, my mom now video chats with my toddler every day and we both get so much amusement out of the ways Remi reminds my mom of me at Remi’s age. I feel so close to both my mom and my child in those moments.

I believe my queerness makes my Asian-ness and my adoptee-ness stronger. I am more myself when I hold all these truths together than when I try to compartmentalize them. Kate also spoke to the joy and strength that comes from per multiply marginalized identities: “Since I identify in many ways, it can be disheartening to find out so many ways I might be marginalized. I also find that these different identities can have protective factors. I may be a minority, but I can speak up for myself and others on issues and ask for help. I might be queer, but I can pave the way for younger people who are also struggling and show them that it gets better. I may be adopted, but I can relate to other adoptees and form strong bonds and encourage their stories to be heard. There are many ways to see both sides of issues and I strive to find the strength in myself when confronted.”

Abbott added, “There is no right or wrong way to feel about your past or your culture. You don’t have to embrace where you came from, but you absolutely can. Be thankful for the ways that being adopted makes you uniquely capable of viewing class and race, and acknowledge when it makes life harder.”

I asked Kim what advice she would give to younger transracial adoptees today and this is what she shared: “Never ever apologize for who you are. Don’t ever let anyone make you feel less than because society has deemed you as different. Embrace yourself—your full self. Speak your truth. Surround yourself with others who will love and support you. Never give up, and never forget where you came from. We are so resilient!”

We Deserve To Be Selfish

I learned at a young age that anger was acceptable if you were displaying it on behalf of someone else. I learned at an adolescent age that if I was going to be angry then I had better be ready to deal with the consequences. What I am learning at this somewhat moderate age in my early 30s, particularly at a time of staying home and really getting to know one’s self, is that my anger ebbs and flows like an inner tide, rises up and tumbles hard, like a toddler, trains for sprints as well as marathons, and floods through me as an undercurrent of unexamined ancestry. My anger contains multitudes, my anger is an Aries.

I often find myself considering a hypothetical History of Anger; I like to imagine that I can trace it back to the origins of all emotion. I am something of a prolific casual emotional historian, if you will. I imagine that at the beginning of time our anger originated toward the earth. In my knowledge of my Personal History, anger runs through my maternal bloodline, can be traced back to being taught violence and hatred during slavery and rejected by society in the aftermath of “freedom,” can be traced further back to being shown malice and treachery during the rape and pillage and takeover of the Americas. I imagine we have been shown violence and now it is all we are supposed to know. For me and mine, it’s a painful, palpable substance that has yet to be spoken of under proper conditions and as such runs unchecked in the pipes, within the walls, dismissed as fact and foundation. There are few stories passed down in our family that do not involve anger in some form: betrayal, deceit, abandonment, punishment. I imagine we were shown hideousness and expected to pass it on amongst our own, become our own undoing. I don’t actually do any research about it, have not read the book on Post-Traumatic Slave Disorder, certainly can’t ask my family about it. I imagine I come from a long line of taking issue with authority figures. It figures.

I learned around age eight that there was no room for my anger. It was not simply useless, but in fact quite dangerous, could trap me and did, many times, in my pursuit of my desires. I imagine my mother taught me to squelch my anger so that I wouldn’t grow up to be seen as an Angry Black Woman. But I found it quite effective when used in defense of others, befriending a bullied classmate, stepping in to prevent my mother from beating my little sister. Anger for others seemed to have a place, a function, afforded me a voice that I lacked for myself. Agency snuck in through the side gate and found stability along the neighbor’s fence. It never seemed safe to approach my own personal anger, so I developed a dance with it in which I could imagine it never really existed. What I did come to know about myself and those feelings developed through my obsessive journaling, the only practice I knew of that would actually hold my feelings without punishment.

It was getting to know anger in my 20s that proved most interesting. I was angry about my own work and its lack of reception. I had been writing flash memoir exercises, excising a single imprint in time and creating fullness in a brief space. Acquaintances who asked about this practice seemed puzzled, inquiring about its purpose. This was 2014, the same year I read an interview with a Canadian literature professor who proudly boasted his refusal to teach any works by female (and with no justification, Chinese,) authors in his course, and the same year publishing around the world was made up of nearly 80% male authors. The anger stirred within me organically. I felt the match strike.

In the late fall of 2014, my missive launched into the inboxes of approximately 50 creative women I knew. Smack in the middle of the call to arms was a bold(ed) phrase:

What would our world be like if women were encouraged to be selfish?

I was coming into my own as a fully fledged Woman in my own right, accepting myself where I had felt rejected in my younger years — denied full status and relegated to the sidekick position, the nice for a Black girl to whom boys only came around after battling their inner demons of inherited racism and figuring out how to contort them into a fetish. I was ready to declare myself and to bring everyone else who was ready along for the ride. I thought, I’m going to put as many women as I possibly can into one publication, and they’re gonna get to say whatever the fuck they want. And Selfish the magazine was born.

The funniest thing I’ve learned about anger is that it can burn out just as quickly as it’s lit.That the power it generates at the onset can leave a void after it’s gone. And mastering it doesn’t translate into the glimmering fierceness that the power of its image presents. Sometimes it just burns. Other times it is drowned by our disbelief in its potency, or our inability to find actionable purpose. For an idealist like me, I found that my anger lost steam when it encountered the oppressive environments it rose up against. Time and time again it was met with the patriarchal attitudes it wanted to dominate. My anger may be an Aries, but my heart is a Pisces through and through, and my drive takes time and trust. It feels incompatible, to be so angry and so sensitive. That my own fragile mixed race tears could be complicit in deflating my trajectory.

Several amazing things about Selfish are true: it caught right away, sold out its first issue, introduced me to friends of friends and community, gave me agency to speak my voice, drew submissions from around the world, launched a successful Kickstarter, spawned cross-country literary events. Several less celebratory things about me became evident through Selfish, too: that I buckled under the pressure to make it financially viable, had no idea how to ask for help when I needed it, recoiled at the rejection of supposedly forward-thinking art fairs, developed envy for my peers who were clever with marketing strategies, alienated myself from support because of the shame I developed. What happened to that fire that had set everything alight? When I looked for it, I came back with a deflated, whiny ego, my enthusiasm snagged on reality, my dreams of elevating literary society crushed by the persistence of backwards politics and my own lack of stamina.

Many of these obstacles were real. At the time of the launch of Selfish, I was dating an amab white man who was a staple at the best-known annual art fairs. I was present at those fairs only because he was willing to share his table with me, a table he was entitled to year after year despite the fairs boasting “diversity.” I had Black women come up to my table and purchase issues and merch because I was literally the only person of color vending, had amab white men blink at me as I explained why women, and all marginalized artists, needed a dedicated space to tell their own stories. Thin, able-bodied mothers asked me why it was necessary to promote nude images of plus-sized women. Privileged white girls submitted unwittingly racist stories in which they claimed to play sole hero to younger girls of color. Every misfire chipped away at my determined facade, pointing out to me the nuanced ways in which the world did not always want to make room for those trying to make a place for ourselves.

Some of the obstacles were indicative of my foolhardiness. I like to imagine that we’ll be able to change the game. I went in wanting to believe that the pure rebellion of our mission would be enough to elevate us to immense popularity. I wanted to believe that I could start with the fuel of fire and figure out how to keep it going along the way. I wanted to believe, too, that I could somehow maintain this evolving being on my own, that asking for help was weak. Most foolishly, I wanted to believe that niche interest in print and print alone was sustainable. When I saw other publications charging money to submit work, I balked and refused like a noble naif. When I saw others ramping up merch production, I cringed and doubled down on the integrity, making only what was essential to the cause. When I saw projects asking readership to commit to more than one round of crowdfunding, I judged and promised myself we would never go there. Instance after instance arose when I clung to my underdeveloped values, yet lamented missed opportunities, lapsed progress. I saw the miles stretch between Selfish and peer publications, their audiences expanding by the hundreds while we remained firmly in the hundreds.

I struggled to properly determine the identity of Selfish in a world of rapidly evolving standards and call-out culture. As my consciousness expanded beyond the experience of womanhood, as I explored queerness in me beyond my right to femmehood, so too did my desire to expand our demographic of readers and contributors. But I never landed on a strategy, and my tepid attempts to proclaim us different but united brought me questions from my POC community about representation. I responded as responsibly as I could while acknowledging my limited capacity to force engagement from desired demographics. I welcomed input and guidance, while accepting that it wasn’t anyone’s job to take the time to give it. I admit that this was perhaps the point of no return. It only took a handful of fractured relationships to snuff my flame. if I couldn’t represent our values, if I couldn’t reflect the voices and faces of our community, was I doing my job as editor-in-chief?

I only knew how to fight for a we and I was failing at it. My anger was shrinking by the moment, replaced with defensiveness. Without warning, three years into our run, I stopped responding to emails, took weeks to fulfill orders, and eventually dropped out of public view entirely.

Three years later, I’d assumed the fire was all but smothered, but I felt it again, a flicker, last summer.

It tasted different, curious, nascent. It had layers. I didn’t just feel the anger, I felt questions developing around it. How do other people process this? I realized I needed to hear stories. I hungered to see failures as well as successes. I wanted to see my experience contextualized by the experiences of others. And suddenly I found myself drafting another email.

I am interested in engaging in a conversation about how anger affects you as a person and as an artist.

I wasn’t the only one. The team was back. The artists were in.

My favorite response, from editor Kelsey Nolan:
“THANK GOD I HAVE BEEN WAITING FOR THIS EMAIL.”

Every step toward producing another issue has been tentative. I am still unsure that I can get the machine going again, that I have the drive to dig it up — especially now, at a time when nearly everything has become uncertain, and where money has become nonexistent. There is lingering shame about what came and went. But that little flicker keeps fluttering even on the days I let pass without addressing it. Perhaps this awareness is key to the very phenomenon I hope to observe and witness. I imagine we must each have our process.

Part of my process is letting myself understand what the process is day by day. There is the commitment to clearer conversations, to facing what can feel like a mountain and chipping it down to a molehill. There is accepting what is within my limits and embracing what I can allow myself to approach differently. Yeah, there’s some talking myself through it, too. Asking myself a volume of questions that one might receive from an insatiable child, at times. How can I guarantee I won’t buckle again? Is there still a place for this? What have I learned that will help me do this better the second time around? Do I have a thick enough skin to bear what I couldn’t before? But each patient step is a brick laid into a fireplace built to sustain an ongoing inquiry, a passionate search.

I stepped away from expectation when we opened submissions for the sixth issue. Whatever world is coming next, we will still need art. We will still need reflection, practice, a space to develop the self. A place to practice self-ish-ness. We will still need space to celebrate our experiences, to share our voices. I imagine we will still need process. I may not know toward what we are headed, but I’m excited to strike the match to light the way. 🌋

Edited by Kamala Puligandla

The Illusion Of Safety

Welcome to Autostraddle’s APIA Heritage Month Series, about carrying our cultures from past to future.

Just about two months ago, I was driving up the 101 to record a conversation with Nicole Kelly for her podcast, The Heart, and Asha Grant, of the Free Black Women’s Library LA (a branch of Olaronke Akinmowo’s Free Black Women’s Library project). That afternoon we had a conversation on the topic of people pleasing, and how it has informed our youths, and the kinds of queer women we have become now.

I highly recommend listening to NK’s series, Divesting From People Pleasing, for a deeper dive, but “pleasing” as we’re considering it, is not about being nice. It’s about all of the ways that we, as queer women of color, deny, curate, bury, criticize and otherwise create a public presentation of ourselves in order to move through the world. It planted a seed in my mind about what it means to be Asian American: about the values that are most important in my family, about the ways I was taught to protect myself and succeed, about how those strategies are perceived by larger American culture.

After the the podcast episode aired, I got a text from an artist friend, Chloë Bass, that said, “My response thought (IN CASE YOU WERE ASKING, which you weren’t) to something you said is that actually we are being protected using strategies that people in the past wished they had known before the bad thing happened to them. If they had known to protect themselves from that thing, they feel like they would have been ok. So they imagine the thing they wish they had (long hair, correct clothes, whatever) and use that as the protection into the future. But in the future, we face different problems that need different protections that we don’t know yet. And it’s always going to be like that.”

“Does it have to always be like that?” I asked Chloë. I couldn’t help but wonder: Is safety ever more than an illusion? What is true safety?

This was at the end of March and COVID-19 was buzzing like a low ominous bass line beneath everything, shaking out a hysteria that was erupting in all sorts of ways, from hoarding obscene amounts of toilet paper and water to a rise in brutal violence and open hatred of Asian Americans in public. Plus, there were just a lot of people dying from illness. I kept thinking about what Chloe had said. I kept thinking about this present/future that I lived in. I was well aware that it was different from the past that produced my grandparents and my parents, that I wouldn’t otherwise exist.

But it was also true that the same discriminatory sentiments against Asian people, from the past, had been carried on, as a kind of cultural protection among The Rest, which is how I consider everyone else who isn’t “Asian”.

But it was also true that the same discriminatory sentiments against Asian people, from the past, had been carried on, as a kind of cultural protection among The Rest, which is how I consider everyone else who isn’t “Asian” — a designation that of course Westerners would make to attempt to homogenize the majority of the world’s population. So am I ignorant or optimistic for thinking that I am less vulnerable than my Japanese American grandma Sumi — Betty, as she called herself to please in white company (a name I used at the milkshake shack at my summer camp because Kamala was too pretty to let them butcher)?

I wanted to track down the past-future protections that had gotten me to where I’m at now in my identities. I also wanted to know how to better face the unknown of my own future — I don’t want to be caught parading around in last generation’s false sense of security. So last weekend, I got my parents and my sister on a Zoom call to discuss the values that had been instilled in us by my grandparents, and what the culture of our family was about.

I had an idea of the general values in my family culture — I did grow up in it — but it was illuminating to have my parents put these things into context for me. It boiled down to four main values: education, family, pride in your identity, equity & justice. There is a way that all of these ideas meld together to create the general container of the world I know. If I think about them as one protective strategy, the goal is to gather as much knowledge and legitimized qualification as possible, use it to enlighten your family in a cultural and social way, gain access to money and opportunity, and then feel confident enough to extend this same protection to as many other people as possible.

When I see it laid out like this, I understand how easy it would be to create the narrative that Asian Americans are complicit in upholding white supremacy culture. I know a lot of Asian Americans who do. I also see how easy it would be to cast this strategy as simply protective, conservative, self-interested, rather than forward-thinking or inclusive.

When I was in high school I found my family strategy constraining in its singular focus on academic achievement, with some room for sports, as the most important value in a person’s whole entire life — “what about the way I feel?” I was always writing in my journals and my creative writing classes, “what if succeeding means sacrificing who I want to be?” Then, in college, having been radicalized by a winning combination of campus orgs and post-colonial theory, and also starting to come out, I found this strategy short-sighted and arrogant. “How dare we find a comfortable life within the systems that oppress us while people continue to die?!” was my totally cliched, self-righteous college vibe. Without understanding that comfort is necessary to survival, without looking at how lucky I was to have been gifted an extremely expensive experience of learning to articulate who I was, how I thought, and what I stood for.

My parents met in my dad’s dorm room at Oberlin College in the 70s because he was a popular calculus tutor, and my mom and her roommate needed help with their problem sets. When it was my turn to go to Oberlin College (and my sister would join me three years later), I didn’t quite understand what a huge accomplishment it was for both of my parents to have been there, but also how well it fit their own parents’ plans.

My mom is sansei and grew up in California. When I ask her about what expectations there were of her growing up, she says it was very clear. “Just like you, we were born with college funds, and the expectation was that we would go to college. Sometimes, as a treat, we got to work to add money to our college fund.” My mom’s mom had grown up on a strawberry farm in Oregon and she’d told me about how much manual labor filled her life. “It was extra for the women and girls because we also had to do housework and take care of the men — don’t get married to a man, unless you want to waste your time,” my grandma had told me. I’ve taken her advice to heart.

I know my grandma saw education as her way out, as a means to develop her own independence and to fortify herself against inevitable racism and discrimination. Sumi went to college, and then in the midst of internment, was one of the few Japanese American women to earn a master’s degree, and went on to earn a teaching credential, so that she could influence as many young minds as possible. I read an essay she published in the 80s in a UC Berkeley review about how, when she was applying for secretarial work, for which she was overqualified, she was told that they didn’t hire Japanese people and she should “go be a waitress.” But she would just not accept that. It occurs to me that my grandma was accruing an official record to back her up when she went to break the rules. I come from people who never intended, I see now, to accept safety as enough.

It occurs to me that my grandma was accruing an official record to back her up when she went to break the rules. I come from people who never intended, I see now, to accept safety as enough.

My dad’s family did not have the discipline, steady-paying jobs nor the financial-planning that my mom’s did. But my dad says his own dad clearly had designs on him getting an education, and leading an intellectual life. We’ll be generous and say first that my grandfather is a charming, intellectual powerhouse with mastery of both the sciences and the humanities, and was a professor of Eastern philosophy for many years. But what is hard for me to forget is that he’s also a narcissist, philanderer, misogynist, party monster and just generally irresponsible. When I ask my dad about his dad’s expectations of him, he tells me this story: “My dad, first of all, did not come to the graduation ceremony when I got my M.D. Instead he asked me when I was going to get a Ph.D. and I had to tell him I probably won’t! I think he saw medicine, and all professional degrees, as technical work, as not requiring a great mind.”

At the age of 7, my dad came to the U.S. with my grandma and his two younger sisters to join my grandfather, who was teaching math and physics at Yankton College, in that well-known American city, Yankton, SD. My dad says Yankton’s small town Americana made it a really smooth transition, people were welcoming and helpful. When my dad’s family moved to Houston, TX in 1964, it was the first time they had experienced segregation in the U.S. and it shocked them. My dad says, “We saw the U.S. from an academic perspective, as this place of innovation and new ideas, and especially my mom, was horrified to see African American people treated so poorly.”

As a dark-skinned Indian person, my dad lived in this liminal space, where he was technically allowed into places that denied Black people entry, but everyone was angry about it, convinced he was lying, that he had snuck in and wasn’t supposed to be there. Both of my grandparents, my dad reported to me, held gatherings with Black leaders from Texas Southern University, where my grandfather taught in the summers, to organize around passing the Civil Rights Act. My dad says of my grandfather, “He was always asking, ‘Why do people stand for this, why do you let them treat you this way?’ and they’d say ‘Well, if we resist they kill us.’ So that was sort of our introduction to the U.S.” That my family has long seen their own proximity to Blackness as a relationship to consciously cultivate and build power with was news to me, but also a message I grew up with, that was always implicitly there.

All of this reframes the narrative I had of what my grandparents and parents were doing with their lives, and with me, their latest iteration. Before I began this mini-journey, I thought I came from a family that hung on pretty tightly to protective measures. It seemed like the risks I was willing to take in my own life were bigger than the ones that people had taken before me: I’m very gay with a mohawk, I’m a writer who doesn’t write for white people, I’m not invested in marriage or the couple form. I am actively looking to discard a kind of superficial safety for another that was built around being exactly who I am, to living the change I seek. That is what true safety looks like to me now: being secure in my ability to adapt, to create my own path where there is none, to set goals that nobody else can see, to pick the people who give me strength and bring them along with me. I’m starting to understand now that so many people in my family before me were taking these same risks, building this same kind of security, it just looked different then than it does now.

I can’t claim that this is how all Asian American families work.That would be as absurd as believing myself to be performing the role of model minority when I achieve success — and I maintain that I would be just as smart, as funny, as hot, if white supremacy never existed. I recognize the ways that my personal Asian American culture is strange, in my family we’re all weird, but we are also a part of Asian America and I know we aren’t the only ones.

I’m very gay with a mohawk, I’m a writer who doesn’t write for white people, I’m not invested in marriage or the couple form. I am actively looking to discard a kind of superficial safety for another that was built around being exactly who I am, to living the change I seek.

What I think I am saying is that so much of American culture is a performance. I was working with a hypothesis that a good portion of what we call Asian American culture, is a fearful protective response to living in the U.S. That living under capitalism, that contending with the prevailing notion that we were all the same and all expendable, had produced a monolithic Asian American culture meant to prove our financial value and therefore human value, to commodify ourselves in order to buy our safety in white America. In essence, to pretend that we’re committed to their rigged game. I don’t know, now, that it was always based in fear. I think so many of the best parts of our cultures, the most safe and the most dangerous, are still protected, just for us. But the performance worked, they believe it.

Some among us apparently believe it too. There are an unseemly number of Asian American people who are fully committed to the violent, tragic cause of the original America. When I see Asian Americans suing Harvard to get rid of Affirmative Action, because they see it as the highest level of protection I think to myself, “Oh shit, these assholes forgot that complete assimilation is a performance.” And when I see Andrew Yang wearing an American flag around and telling us to “prove our Americanness” I think to myself, “To whom does he belong?” I think somebody needs to remind them. I think they forgot. That you will never be protected, you will never be safe here, not by accepting values that don’t value you.

I used to think it was my own security and safety, my privilege, that allowed me to decide that I didn’t want to participate in anyone’s monolithic culture — queer, Japanese, South Asian, literary, womanhood, romance. In many ways, it’s true. My parents and grandparents have a built all kinds of safety nets to catch me, should I fall, and as long as we’re alive, we will have each other. But it’s also clear that they also passed down to me the permission to live beyond the things we know, to take the risks that I see fit, and to invent my own version of security and comfort in the world, because that’s what they did. That’s my family legacy.

I still agree that we can’t know what protections our future selves will need, but maybe we just don’t expect to hold on to safety, especially not to find it in the status quo. The version of safety that’s an illusion is the one that pretends to protect you no matter what. Instead, maybe we just accept that none of us are safe unless all of us are safe, that to keep living our cultures and identities comfortably, we’ll always have to take risks and keep looking out for the costs of our sense of security.

Year of Our (Audre) Lorde: April’s Arithmetics of Distance

Year of Our (Audre) Lorde is a monthly analysis of works by queen mother Audre Lorde as they apply to our current political moment. In the spirit of relying on ancestral wisdom, centering QTPOC voices, wellness, and just generally leveling up, we believe that the Lorde has already gifted us with the tools we need for our survival.

This is dedicated to those who are just trying to make it through every day. Those peeling themselves out of bed, climbing uphill through daily tasks, Zoom catch-ups, and yet another day of being indoors. This month’s entry is not a call to action, but instead it’s a balm, a reminder that among the many things we must classify as essential, poetry is essential too. Last month, when I decided to focus on “Poetry is Not a Luxury,” it wasn’t in anticipation of all we might distance ourselves from, but rather because poetry can sustain us through each and every one of our circumstances.

We now find ourselves living in an era of indefinite social distancing, a phrase new to most people that’s become part of our everyday vocabulary. A way of neatly summing up the necessary actions and inactions we must take as a measure of care, and as part of a global community. Social distancing often feels like a series of “don’t”s that organize where we go and with whom we interact. Faced with an unprecedented global pandemic, many seem to find themselves spurred to action in a crisis, feeling the urge to do, to move. But as my partner recently said to me, being still is also an action.

It’s been gratifying on an almost cellular level to find that queen mother Audre Lorde can so frequently speak to the times and the places in which we find ourselves. Her final book of poetry, The Marvelous Arithmetics of Distance, is no exception. Penned from 1987 to 1992, The Marvelous Arithmetics of Distance emerged in Lorde’s last years as she contended with metastasized breast cancer that would ultimately end her life in November 1992. With those years spent between Berlin, St. Croix, and the United States as Lorde traveled, taught, and sought treatments for her cancer, each poem visits themes of death, family, desire, and womanhood.

In an interview from Berlin, Lorde said she wrote The Marvelous Arithmetics because she didn’t expect she would have another book. She said upon reviewing her journals and collections, “ there was a shape that was emerging. And it was exactly that, of […] how difference alters, in other words, how perspective alters the ways in which you perceive difference. From place to place.” She goes on to explain that she chose to call this process “arithmetics” because arithmetic comprises “the basic ways in which you combine numbers. I want to talk about the basic ways that distance alters the way we see. Mathematics frequently deals with theoretical relationships. But arithmetic deals with a kind of pragmatic actuality.”

Audre Lorde said 🗣 Stay In The House

For those who are like me — who have found the abrupt distancing from family, from friends, from loved ones, from sources of income and other forms of support to be overwhelming and isolating — let Lorde’s message soothe and embolden you. Even while facing certain death and the uncertainty of what comes after, Lorde lived what she wrote, confronting the fullness of her emotions and experiences to poetically transform them into something beautiful and healing.

Rushing headlong / into new silence / your face / dips on my horizon / the name / of a cherished dream / riding my anchor / one sweet season / to cast off / on another voyage / No reckoning allowed / save the marvelous arithmetics / of distance (from “Smelling the Wind”)

I love those last two lines about reckoning and distance. I think this is Lorde’s acknowledgement of the pain of any sort of rupture. Here I think to the platitudes offered when people don’t know what else to say in the face of pain: “This too shall pass.” Or, “time heals all wounds.” Rather than looking beyond the pain of the rupture, rather than looking into a future that resembles something we consider normal, Lorde asks us to consider what this rupture can teach us. How we might settle into the discomfort of distance.

There is a timbre of voice / that comes from not being heard / and knowing   you are not being / heard   noticed only / by others   not heard / for the same reason. / The flavor of midnight fruit   tongue / calling your body through dark light / piercing the allure of safety / ripping the glitter of silence / around you / dazzle me with color / and perhaps I won’t notice / till after you’re gone / your hot grain smell tattooed / into each new poem   resonant / beyond escape   I am listening / in that fine space / between desire and always / the grave stillness / before choice. (From “Echoes”)

When I first read this poem I thought that surely Lorde was referencing the voices of marginalized folks who too often go unheard, often brought together by our shared experiences of being ignored. And while this may be true, further readings got me thinking that these verses could also be read as a confrontation with one’s self, with one’s unspoken or unacknowledged desires.

One thing that has become apparent to me in the midst of this pandemic is that so many people are uncomfortable being alone with themselves. Distance in this case is the space they put between themselves and the mirror, clinging to whatever can provide the “allure of safety.” The poem’s sexual and sensual overtones are apparent, but I wonder if what is also at play is the choice between giving into those desires or making a more difficult, less safe choice of facing that which has gone unheard, perhaps within one’s own mind.

Through the core of me / a fine rigged wire / upon which pain will not falter / nor predict / I was no stranger to this arena / at high noon / beyond was not an enemy to be avoided / but a challenge / against which my neck grew strong / against which my metal struck / and I rang like fire in the sun.

I still patrol that line / sword drawn / lighting red-glazed candles of petition / along the scar / the surest way of knowing death is a fractured border / through the center of my days. (from “The Night Blooming Jasmine”)

This is yet another example of how Lorde’s living aligned so seamlessly with her writing. While Lorde speaks explicitly to her terminal cancer here, pain is no foreign concept to her as a Black lesbian woman and mother. For many of us, too, this pandemic hasn’t necessarily borne new pains as much as it has reopened old wounds. The feelings of loss, isolation, depression, and more that many of us are now facing aren’t theoretical or buried in some far-off past; they are proximal and constant.

Lorde’s bravery in facing her own pain, in deeply acknowledging death at the center of her days provides me with a measure of hope that my own pain is something I can face.

New Year’s Day 1:16 AM / and my body is weary beyond / time to withdraw and rest / ample room allowed me in everyone’s head / but community calls / right over the threshold / drums beating through the walls / children playing their truck dramas under the collapsible coatrack / in the narrow hallway outside my room

How hard it is to sleep / in the middle of life. (from “The Electric Slide Boogie”)

As hard as I’ve resisted the (mostly capitalist) imperatives to keep on moving, keep on working, etc. — what’s beautiful about this poem is the reminder that life goes on. I’m finding this refrain really helpful in gaining new perspectives on the circumstances under which we now live. Yes, there is death, and loss, and pain. But there is life, there is beauty, too, in the urges we feel to connect, to see and be seen, and to reach out and hold each other.

What poetry are you finding or creating to address our new reality? Please let us know in the comments.

“Vida” Ends as It Began: A Queer Love Letter to Chicanx and Latinx Communities

Tanya Saracho, perhaps my favorite writer in all of television, started first and foremost as a playwright. Maybe it makes sense then that, even if out of her control, Vida is leaving us in its third act. Starz gave Saracho fewer episodes to work with (we’re back down to six, after Season Two’s expanded ten), and a smaller budget to boot, but in a mythologizing moment, Saracho marched into her writers’ room and wrote on the whiteboard: “Six Masterpieces.”

Much like the Hernandez sisters, Vida is her bar, her nightclub — and no one gets to push her out before last call without a fight.

So, how are the Hernandezes for their final spin on the beer-slicked and sticky dance floor? Season Three picks up roughly two days after Season’s Two explosive finale, when Lyn (Melissa Barrera) was smothered in detergent on Vida’s steps by neighborhood anti-gentrification activists making a point that she’s a vendida — a sell out — and Emma (Mishel Prada) made the brave choice to let down her guard with Nico (Roberta Colindrez), the handsome heartthrob bartender with one too many secrets and puppy dog eyes. Right away, what’s most shocking is that compared to the previous two years, which involved mourning a death and the aftermath of a violent hate crime, respectively, the opening of Vida’s third season feels positively light. This isn’t necessarily a stark break in tone, Vida will continue to explore what it’s always done best — intimacy, grief, family, shame. However, there’s a brightness that feels both earned and welcome.

No where is that better felt than with Emma. In this season’s opener, Emma and Nico left me butterflying in my stomach. I never thought we’d get to see a version of Emma that’s this soft, this vulnerable. The incomparable ice queen contemplating what it might look like to thaw. After three long years of waiting and wading through the pain with her, watching as her red lined lips screw up into an self-protective armor, these quiet moments are that much more delicate and sweet. Season Three opens with Chavela Vargas’ once-in-a-lifetime Latinx and Latin American lesbian anthem,”Macorina.” Vargas croons “ponme la mano aquí,” put your hand here, as Nico uses her fingertips to outline where Emma’s underwear meets her hips. They are bathed in sunlight and Nico’s nipple ring glimmers while Emma’s legs twitch instinctively.

This isn’t the first time we’ve seen Emma soften with a lover, her previous girlfriend Cruz comes immediately to mind, but we’ve most often seen her fuck for power. This year is different. Season Three asks that Emma finally learn how to trust. It’s not hard for us to squint and see here an Emma from another timeline, one where she wasn’t marked by abandonment or even sent away as a child for being queer in the first place. In another series, this development might feel cheap or rushed — but thanks to the care Saracho has taken all along, instead it delights.

Lyn is also busy finding surer footing for herself, using her creativity to turn Vida’s into a profitable success, but also finding new paths for herself that for once don’t involve her falling victim to her her own imposter syndrome. Some of that soul searching takes the character down a plot line that I cared less for (though to be fair, Lyn’s never been my favorite to begin with), still it’s good to see what the former consummate screw up looks like with her most irresponsible days behind her.

It’s within this newfound stability that Eddy (Ser Anzoategui) woefully brings the news that before she died, Vida kept another family secret from her daughters. The realization quite literally spins Emma and Lyn out of orbit (did I mention how cinematic the last season feels? Especially considering its tightened budget). In picking up the pieces of yet another Vida-casualty, the sisters are viciously torn in different directions, thematically returning the show all the way back to the original mystery of exactly why Emma was sent to live with their abuela, and the aftermath threatens to implode their already fragile bond. It’s heartbreaking, but also smartly re-centers Vida onto Lyn and Emma’s relationship as the nucleus of its final bow.

Watching the Hernandez women be potentially shaken asunder reminds us that the larger the personal growth, the greater the threat for setbacks. Tanya Saracho, who also directs the final three episodes of the series, including it’s nearly hour-long finale, has never been interested in telling a story that’s linear or pretty. She doesn’t find purpose in narratives that can be tied up into neat pink bows. It’s a bittersweet final lesson, that growing up is never really over and being committed to becoming a better version of yourself requires unrelenting grit, but I’d expect nothing less from Vida. When Emma and Lyn first came back to Boyle Heights for their Mamí’s funeral, they never planned on staying around. They certainly didn’t expect to shed the skin of the women they once were to become women they’d never met. Who plans on having a painful, electric, exhausting coming-of-age story well after you’ve grown?

Which isn’t to say that Vida’s final season isn’t also joyful. We don’t talk enough about the joy pocketed within grief. The respites that remind us that life is worth it, growth is worth it, and sometimes yes — even saying goodbye can be worth it. In their own ways, Lyn, Emma, and Eddy each spent the last three years saying goodbye to Vidalia and now we find ourselves saying goodbye to them. Our one last ride together comes packed with queer fuckery, including drag kings dressed as Chicanx macho icons (Danny Trejo’s Machete, El Mariachi, and Erik Estrada from CHiPs among them) and a “queer-ceañera” thrown for Marcos (Tonatiuh) that’s right out of my dream book. This line’s also featured in the trailer, but its so great I’d be amiss not to include it: while closing a prayer, Marcus calls the names of “Oshun, de la Guadalupana, de Santa Selena and Jenny from the Block, Amen” — a dedication that brings together Afro-Latinx religion, Mexico’s most beloved saint, and sacred millennial pop culture icons like only Vida can. Vida ends as it truly began, as a nuanced and detailed love letter to queer Chicanx and Latinx communities first and foremost.

Vida’s able to pull that off not only because of Saracho’s famously Latinx and queer writers’ room, or its slate of POC directors, but because throughout the series, not once is “identity” ever painted with a broad brush. That distinction has never been drawn more sharply than in Vida’s final season. Being Mexican-American or Chicanx doesn’t mean the same thing to Lyn — who is constantly being called “whitina” or “Coconut Barbie” on her way to work by Chicanx protestors from her own neighborhood only to be turned around told she’s not properly “Mexican enough” by her boyfriend’s wealthy Mexican family who looks down on her for speaking weak Spanglish and coming from a working class single mom — than it does for Mari’s best friend Yoli (Elizabeth De Razzo), who protests outside of the bar while being a DACA recipient, or Eddy, who grew up in Boyle Heights and never left. Similarly, queerness is embodied differently for Emma and Nico and Marcos and Eddy. There’s high femme lipstick and heels, there’s binders, there’s a dress with a full goatee — jotería in all its finest colors. Vida succeeds where others fail not just because the characters are richly developed, and not just because its masterfully written, but because it is both — all the time. There is no better place to say “Thank You” than right now, while we are all still here together.

Tanya Saracho instructed her team to write a final “six masterpieces” and ultimately, it feels almost petty to nitpick if they actually got there. I wish we had spent more time with Eddy and Mari this year. Though Set Anzoategui and Chelsea Rendon each get definite moments to shine, their characters seem to have gotten shorted for the two sisters in a rush for time. Some of the storylines were a little more on-the-nose than I’ve come to expect from a show that thrives in complications. But when placed against the magnificent history of these characters that Tanya Saracho’s built for us — journeys that were hard, and sexy, and so, so beautiful — everything else feels small.

Few get to say that they’ve truly made history. That what they’ve touched won’t be the same after they’ve gone. Television won’t be the same after Vida. That’s just a fact.

Foolish Child #70: Karen

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Finding My Own Chinese American Community Through KTV

At KTV, my friends and I rented a private room and hid our alcohol in the bathroom because we weren’t allowed to bring in outside drinks. Between songs, we stumbled into the bathroom to find the bottles of various hard liquors purchased from 7-Eleven lining the sink and the top of the toilet tank. Then we would burst back into the room and join in on whatever song was up next. None of us could actually sing, which was what made it fun.

We sang a lot of songs in English, like “Fuck You” and “I Want It That Way,” songs that are fun to scream off-key while making dramatic arm gestures, but my favorites were the Mandarin songs. That year, I was living in Hong Kong, and my friend group was made up mostly of other confused Asian Americans, many of whom were Chinese American, like me. Yelling song lyrics in our broken Mandarin was a bonding experience. We always did “朋友”, “依然愛你”, “童話” and “對面的女孩看過來”, songs that would not have been considered cool by young people in Taiwan, Hong Kong, or China, but they were canon for Chinese Americans who pick up on trends years or decades later and like things that are easy to understand. Sometimes, we’d pick a harder song, like “那些年”or “紅豆” and get tripped up on the same characters because we’d all gotten to similar levels of college Mandarin classes. The other Chinese Americans and I were all Cantonese and had feelings about being able to read better in Mandarin (and therefore able to make out the lyrics easier for Mandarin songs), but in the moment, it didn’t matter.

When we weren’t at KTV, we spent a lot of time having angsty conversations about how we didn’t know what we were doing with our lives and felt guilty about being college-educated Westerners who could show up in Hong Kong and teach English without any qualifications. One of my friends liked to point at random things, like the double decker buses or the matcha soft serve at McDonald’s, and announce, “This is what diaspora stole from us!” We laughed because it was a ridiculous thing to say. With our U.S. passports and purchasing power, exempt from the city’s political and economic realities, we had no right to feel like anything had been stolen from us.

Photo courtesy of the author

This is what I told myself because I was embarrassed. I didn’t want be like white people who went to Asia to find themselves. On the MTR, I sometimes I felt comforted to be in a subway car full of people speaking Cantonese. Then I would think, I don’t deserve to feel this way. I have so much already. It’s selfish to want more. But it was also in Hong Kong that I began to realize how much I had been shaped by growing up in a country where I would always be considered foreign, where I became aware of all the slights and humiliations that I had absorbed into my body. And it was living in this city where everyone looked like me, where I could get drunk and KTV with other Asian Americans who were similarly privileged and sad, that I began to heal.

I grew up in a part of Los Angeles where there were many Asian Americans but few Chinese Americans. Most of the Asian kids I went to school with were Filipinx or Korean, and I went to after-school activities at a Japanese American Buddhist Church, where one of my parents’ close friends worked. My concept of Chinese American culture came almost entirely from my own family, especially from my parents. They consider themselves to be part of a “half generation” because they each have one parent from China and one parent who was born in the U.S. Both of them grew up hearing Cantonese and Sze-yap, but neither of them can speak either. When I was ten, my dad wanted to teach me some Cantonese, but the only thing he could think of was Diu neige ma, fuck your mother.

My parents also spent their twenties in the Bay Area during the Asian American Movement. They met because my dad was working at Chinese Culture Center and my mom was managing an Asian American women’s spoken word group that was using the space to perform. As a kid, I liked it when their artist friends came over because they were often better playmates than children my own age, pretending to be lions with me under the table of the Korean barbecue restaurant or enthusiastically analyzing each item in my toy kitchen because they were high. I didn’t like it when they sat at the dinner table long after everyone had finished eating and talked about the state of Asian America or whatever because that meant I would have to play by myself.

Even though my parents didn’t speak Chinese and were pretty Americanized, they did their best to help me feel connected to Chinese and Chinese American culture. My mom tried to teach me Mandarin from some old textbooks she had in high school (I would have preferred to learn Cantonese, but everyone said Mandarin was more “useful” and easier to learn since it had fewer tones) and told me stories about growing up in SF Chinatown. We did a lot of our shopping in LA Chinatown and in Monterey Park, where my parents also liked to eat at the different Chinese restaurants. It was only after taking Mandarin classes in college and studying for a year in Beijing that I found out my parents didn’t really understand the menus at these restaurants and usually ordered the wrong things. But college was also the first time I found myself in a predominately white space and faced the pressure to assimilate in a different way than I had growing up. My parents’ efforts to keep us connected to our culture were, I realized, admirable.

But college was also the first time I found myself in a predominately white space and faced the pressure to assimilate in a different way than I had growing up. My parents’ efforts to keep us connected to our culture were, I realized, admirable.

College was also where I started meeting Chinese American people my own age for the first time. Overwhelmed by all the white people at my school, I gravitated towards people I might have something in common with. But even with the other Chinese Americans, who were mostly second generation and from Mandarin-speaking families, there was a lot of culture shock. There were things I was familiar with, like boba and hording shopping bags. There were more things I’d never heard of before, like folding dumplings on lunar new year, jokes about tiger moms and being pre-med, Wang Leehom, and of course, KTV.

There were aspects of this type of Chinese American culture that made me uncomfortable. Many of my classmates seemed to equate “Asian” with “East Asian” and didn’t seem interested in grappling with the political aspects of Asian American identity. Once I was talking to a friend, a cis gay Chinese American man, about the fact that Asian Americans have high levels of income inequality. He said, “But there aren’t a lot of poor Asian people. Maybe people in Chinatowns. I don’t know a lot about them.”

I also felt like I didn’t fit in a lot of the time. When I told other Asian Americans at my school that I was fourth-generation and that my parents and two of my grandparents were born in the United States, they said things like “And both your parents are Asian? You’re not, like, half white?” and “Wow, I didn’t know people like that existed!” On top of that, I was still a long way off from coming to terms with being queer and nonbinary, but there was something that felt off about being in mostly cishet Asian American spaces, like I was always too weird or too much.

But there were also the friends who challenged me to consider my own privileges as a light-skinned East Asian person whose family had been here for generations and to think about Asian America in relation to anti-Blackness, capitalist exploitation, and imperialism. There was the lunar new year where we all crowded into my dorm to boil dumplings in our rice cookers and water heaters. There was taking the train to New York City so that we could spend all day eating at different restaurants in Flushing. There was my first KTV experience freshman year when we connected someone’s laptop to a large TV monitor in an empty classroom.

At the time, I hadn’t learned enough Chinese to sing any of the songs, but I liked watching my friends. They all had different Chinese levels, some of them stumbling on every other character, others singing fluently. I’ve heard so many times that Asian America is about being caught tragically in the space between, never fully accepted in the U.S. and too Westernized to ever be Asian. But listening to my friends, I thought there was something defiant about singing in languages that we were told would never be ours, languages that this country wanted to force us to forget. Cheering for them as they sang, I started to believe that the space between was not so lonely if we reached for each other.

These days, I see my friends over video chat. Many of them are Chinese or people who could be perceived as Chinese. We make jokes that aren’t really jokes about government collapse, mass death, and hate crimes. Then we watch Love is Blind with Netflix Party. I remind myself that I’m lucky to have stable housing and some money saved. I get anxious anyways and then berate myself for it. I spend a lot of time worrying about my family because most of my relatives are over the age of 60 and bad at staying home and because we’re almost all Chinese.

I make myself think about all the Asian American activists I’ve been lucky to know all my life, like my parents, like the queer and trans people who remind me of the resilience of our communities, who are making sure that in this moment we are working in solidarity with other communities to create a future where housing is considered a human right, where there are actual safety nets and a healthcare system that meets everyone’s needs, where we’ve completely changed our relationship to the planet.

At my most inert, I look at the pictures of friends and random images of dim sum that I’ve used to decorate my walls. I make pork and napa dumplings and text my dad for his fried rice recipe. I watch the videos for “紅豆” and “對面的女孩看過來”on my phone and imagine being at KTV singing in with my friends in our broken, perfect Chinese, the feeling of not just safety but joy that I’m trying to hold onto.

Enduring “Straight Time” to Build Our Own Radical Queer Utopia

Bear with me.

A standard recap of the world — it is on fire, from the roots to the sky. It is impossible to live, to survive; impossible to thrive. We keep treading. But I suppose the real question is: How can we thrive? Can we?

I, like many of us, feel the almost-hopelessness of it, the impossibility of it — as if the systems upholding the world as we know it are eternal; enduring, shaping and reshaping the world in a continuous, violent cycle. Pulling those systems down seems like an impossible task — we could more easily pull down the sky itself, could more easily hang it on the trees like a canopy, the sun a shining ornament. In his iconic work of queer theory, Cruising Utopia, José Esteban Muñoz tells us that this is “straight time”, and what a tale straight time tells us.

These institutions, these systems, this rotten, cored-out world: This is the way it is, they say; this is the way it has always been. Straight time not only does not see us, but is deliberate and violent in its blotting out of queerness; in its blotting out of a different past, a different future. For us queers though, we know that there can be something better. When we go to a queer bar — and I mean a proper queer bar, you know the kind, with heavy-liquored drinks lining sticky countertops; with peacocking queens and fearless pole dancers; Black femmes and Latinx dykes and trans men and women, the ever-present suave and turned out enby (and their sibling, the rolled-out-of-bed cryptid: just as hot); all fully embodied, all fully present, all seen — that, that right there, that’s queer time. Most of us know the feeling of going from queer time to straight time. When we stumble knock-kneed out the door and feel our heel go down further than we think it should — a moment of vertigo, a moment of unease: Oh, it’s still straight out here.

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José Muñoz, a queer Cuban immigrant who died suddenly in 2013, did much of his most influential work at the intersection of queer politics, performance studies, and visual culture. His work was foundational in the establishment of queer of color critique within academia, but his theories found their roots, first and foremost, within and for the queer community. Muñoz was writing for queers before any other audience. He urges us to recognize queerness as “that thing that lets us feel that the world is not enough, that indeed something is missing.” Queerness shows us the deficiency of the world, but more importantly it lets us imagine a world that is not deficient — the very shape of the thing that sees us whole; sees us free; sees us.

There are a lot of ways queer people escape straight time, but it gets harder and harder the more the world eats itself alive. Well. No, posiblemente no tengo razón. Maybe that’s wrong — maybe it’s always been this hard. We’re just having to find new spaces to carve out. Burrow-holes of freedom. Hollows of wholeness; the traces, what Muñoz might call ephemera, of something else; something better; something bigger and bolder than the thing we live in now. These moments don’t last – they can’t last — but we keep them close, right under our skin, right up against our beating hearts: There can be more than this, I can see it, just there. That is what Muñoz is talking about when he speaks of queerness almost as a second vision, an ability to see what isn’t, an ability to feel what can be. An ability to make the potential of your life come into being, if only for an instant; in small, protected pockets; in breathless, breathtaking, fleeting moments — held just there on the edge, held just there against the violence that waits at the doors.

See, when mi gente — mi familia, my “friendmily” — and I make plans, we make them like the only thing standing in our way is Time. “Plans”, I say, but maps, more like. Mapping out our future, mapping out our desire in the same stroke. Wanting is such a queer project. Wanting, wanting so much that through sheer wanting we believe it can happen (maybe; possibly; one day; but most importantly: It doesn’t matter). Want, whether it comes to you or not. Want like it’s just there, on the horizon; like you can taste it in the air. Hold that want on your tongue, in your throat, in the cavity of your chest. Want like it’s freedom itself. The world tells us that we should not want anything beyond what is here and now, right in front of us, but what’s in front of us is violent and harmful. What’s in front of us is killing us. Muñoz is urging us to want into utopia itself; to want like a pulling, like fighting, like a challenge. What a project — queers have always been good at wanting. Queremos muchísimo, siempre, siempre.

So, what does my queer found family want?

We want a piece of land, with plenty of trees, plenty of dogs, maybe an old, half-lame draft horse; one of us wants a herd of sheep, so they will have their herd of sheep; we’ll have chickens and some cats to keep the mice population under control. We’ll have herbs and fruits and vegetables. We’ll have dozens of small homes, walking distance, and a central hub, for cooking and family meals and family time. And yes, we do have every square footage of this mapped out. We want to open it to people who need haven; we want haven. We want to be self-sustaining; generous; welcoming; abrimos la casa, let in the sun, let in life, let in the wounded, the shattered, the angry, the damaged.

Muñoz says, “Take ecstasy with me…[is] a request to stand out of time together, to resist the stultifying temporality and time that is not ours, that is saturated with violence both visceral and emotional, a time that is not queerness. Queerness’s time is the time of ecstasy. Ecstasy is queerness’s way”. What we want, most of all, is to take ecstasy. We start with an empty piece of land, somewhere forgotten; we start with a piece of land that was once not empty, but is now blood-soiled; we start with a piece of land and honor the lives of the Indigenous peoples who were once there, now often forgotten, and we suffuse it with as much love and freedom and respect as we can; cut it out of the apocalyptic wasteland of capitalism and despotic government and make it something beautiful. Yes, queers can work miracles, can make ecstasy of the ruins. Bear with us. Just there, on the horizon, our haven is alive, and we are constantly moving towards it.

I believe that cultivating and building and tending to queer families, found families, is in and of itself, escaping straight time. It is “feeling queerness’s pull”, as Muñoz says. I want, in the end, to encourage queer families to move towards the horizon. To want it, to want whatever it is with everything in them — never mind straight time that reminds us that we’re scraping by, that the world is on fire, that the world is corrupt; está mal, está roto. We know that. We know. Ya sí, sabemos. But we know, too, that queerness’s pull is pulling us toward something, something that doesn’t yet exist but that we must, we must, want. In the end, I want to convince people that wanting is in and of itself giving into queerness — even when it hurts.

Muñoz tells us that “the future is queerness’s domain.” Within the queer body, the queer spirit, the queer mind, within queer vision, exists a potentiality for not just radical change, but radical joy, pleasure, and desire. It’s our job to want it. It’s also our job to work for it, to enact it. It’s a lot to bear, but what else is new?

And so I ask, not rhetorically: What future does your queer-found family want? 🔮
​
Edited by Carmen

In Love Wit Chu: Rapper Da Brat Has a Girlfriend, Is Dating Jesseca Dupart

Well y’all I woke up to some news today! Have you heard? There’s something going around, and no it is not the novel coronavirus. It’s girl-on-girl love!!

Welp Da Brat came out the closet. It’s a whole brand new day y’all

— Naps (@Nappy_Nina) March 26, 2020

Picture me, reading this, hair still in a bonnet, furiously scrolling through Instagram for confirmation. And lo and behold!!!!!! Rapper Da Brat shared some news on her Instagram about the new love of her life, haircare mogul Jesseca Dupart.

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A post shared by DA BRAT (da ONLY 1) (@sosobrat)

After Dupart presented her with the gift, Da Brat was so overwhelmed she tried to run away: “SHE HATES TO ACCEPT ANY GIFTS FROM ME… But she deserves the WORLD and so much more 🌎 I’ve never been SOOOO happy and honestly think that it’s not only because of our connection but also because we really been to ourselves.” Whew chile, we STAN a private relationship!!!

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A post shared by Jesseca Harris-Dupart (@darealbbjudy)

Y’all the world is not ending. Far from it! Black queer love is alive and thriving!! Girls are still buying girls extravagant gifts and presenting them with huge custom made bows just to say “happy birthday, boo” and we LOVE to see it!

https://www.instagram.com/p/B-LkeCwBfNm/

Happy early birthday to Da Brat, congrats to you and your boo, and I wish y’all marathon sex during your isolation.

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Year of Our (Audre) Lorde: March’s Poetry Is Not a Luxury

Year of Our (Audre) Lorde is a monthly analysis of works by queen mother Audre Lorde as they apply to our current political moment. In the spirit of relying on ancestral wisdom, centering QTPOC voices, wellness, and just generally leveling up, we believe that the Lorde has already gifted us with the tools we need for our survival.

Comfort, like so much other aid we seek, is in short supply. The relentless nature of election cycle coverage, of coronavirus and rampant xenophobia, are the symptoms, not the disease, of apocalyptic thinking that has come to organize so much of our daily lives. In the time between when this piece is written and when it’s published, who knows what the stakes will be. No longer a threat, the reality of a global pandemic has fully exposed how deeply unprepared the people who allegedly govern us are for such a situation; our very lives the potential casualties to their political hubris. Too often those who stand on the same side of justice fights fall prey to a divisiveness that threatens us almost as much as the ill we’re fighting.

One of the biggest lessons of Audre Lorde’s work, I believe, is the beauty and strength of coalitional politics. Building a coalition, a mix of people that spans races, genders, ages, and beliefs, is an inherently fraught process. But it’s also necessary work. How we go about the task of making this world inhabitable for us all matters. How is it possible to achieve freedom, from all forms of oppression, if we do not work together?

Queen Mother Lorde doesn’t divorce our need to feel from our need to act.

Audre Lorde’s life stands as a testimony to this, but she also delineates the cornerstone of her approach in the essay “Poetry is Not a Luxury.” Here, she defines poetry as “the revelation or distillation of experience, not the sterile word play that, too often, the white fathers distorted the word poetry to mean — in order to cover their desperate wish for imagination without insight.”

On first encounter with this essay, I resisted it, feeling unable to detach my understanding of poetry from that shit I wrote really badly in my teens. I couldn’t conceive of poetry as an approach, as an articulation, largely for the reasons she explains here: We’re so often taught to understand poetry as being purposefully opaque; one of the form’s primary objectives is not to directly state the meaning of your words. Reading that type of poetry can certainly bring on a particular sense of discomfort, but what Lorde lays out for us is the potential and proximity borne out of a shared poetic language. It’s an understanding of each other and of what each of us must do to better our circumstances.

“The quality of light by which we scrutinize our lives has direct bearing upon the product which we live, and upon the changes which we hope to bring about through those lives. It is within this light that we form those ideas by which we pursue our magic and make it realized. This is poetry as illumination, for it is through poetry that we give name to those ideas which are, until the poem, nameless and formless-about to be birthed, but already felt.”

I think that how a task, a movement, is executed is just as important, if not more so, than the fact that it’s executed at all. This gets muddied, and fairly quickly, when we begin to turn that gaze on our justice movements. The fuzzy outline is easy enough for most of us to agree on, but the fine point, contoured work of details is usually where the fabric begins to fray and thin out, to the detriment of those most vulnerable. Although Lorde specifically names women in the next passage, I think we can interpret these words for all marginalized peoples:

“For women, then, poetry is not a luxury. It is a vital necessity of our existence. It forms the quality of light within which we predicate our hopes and dreams toward survival and change, first made into language, then into idea, then into more tangible action. Poetry is the way we help give name to the nameless so it can be thought. The farthest external horizons of our hope and fears are cobbled by our poems, carved from the rock experiences of our daily lives.”

I need a movement that can hold my anger. I need a movement that can hold my contradictions. I shouldn’t have to qualify my rage when speaking out about injustice. We don’t have time or need to entertain tone policing and calls for respectability. Rage and condescension are not the same thing, yet often both are aimed at the wrong target. Our current political climate has crystallized this for me. The venom hurled between some on the left at others on the left is as baffling as it is sad and a waste of energy better spent elsewhere.

I take Lorde’s words to heart when she says “Possibility is neither forever nor instant. It is also not easy to sustain belief in its efficacy.” I believe movements, like people, require immense amounts of patience and fluidity. From the individual to the collective, we need to reflexively resist the stasis fashioning itself as ethical purity, self-righteousness, and over-assuredness that your method is the method. As the term “movement” implies, we have to always stay in motion, stay open to critique and also to better ways of carrying out the work of liberation. As she cautions:

“When we view living in the european mode, only as a problem to be solved, we then rely solely upon our ideas to make us free, for those were what the white fathers told us were precious. But as we become more in touch with our own ancient, black, non-european view of living as a situation to be experienced and interacted with, we learn more and more to cherish our feelings, and to respect those hidden sources of our power from where true knowledge and therefore lasting action comes.”

Lorde doesn’t divorce our need to feel from our need to act. I find myself tempted to read disavowal into what she is saying. But as with so much of her writing, Lorde instead extends an invitation to move closer to one another, to reject the comfort of putting distance between our thoughts and our actions.

“Right now, I could name at least ten ideas I would have once found intolerable or incomprehensible and frightening, except as they came after dreams and poems. This is not idle fantasy, but the true meaning of ‘it feels right to me.’ We can train ourselves to respect our feelings, and to discipline (transpose) them into a language that matches those feelings so they can be shared. And where that language does not yet exist, it is our poetry which helps to fashion it. Poetry is not only dream or vision, it is the skeleton architecture of our lives.”

How will you bring poetry into your freedom practice? How are you finding space for your full self, beyond problem-solving and productivity, in the midst of our present circumstances? Drop a note in the comments!

Roundtable: The Undocumented Activists Organizing a Strike and Building a New World

Community organizing always involves a bit of time travel. To win so many of the things that our people need right now, we must learn from the past and build for the future.

This process is not linear. As we fight and organize for the major political transformations that will make our world more just — such as permanent protection for all undocumented immigrants and an end to deportations — we also need to put our vision into practice on a daily basis, because our communities can’t wait.

For Movimiento Cosecha, the immigrant-led popular movement that I have been part of for the last three years, this work takes many forms. It looks like organizing undocumented workers to believe in and fight for a world where they can safely live with basic dignity and respect. It looks like studying our community’s history to better understand what immigrants need to win today. And it looks like finding new ways to work together that cultivate people power, reciprocity, and interdependence in a country that disempowers, exploits and isolates us.

Since 2015, Cosecha has grown a national decentralized movement of immigrant leaders supported by full-time volunteer organizers living in “voluntary simplicity.” There is no roadmap to our ambitious final goal: mobilizing millions of undocumented workers to participate in an unprecedented immigrant general strike. But sometimes you have to build the plane and fly it; sometimes you have to build a new world and live in it every day.

Today, our time travel is particularly acute: The conversation below originally took place on March 10, immediately following a week-long organizer retreat full of big and bright plans for the future. Brimming with excitement, I brought together some of the brilliant organizers I live and work with to reflect on the joys, challenges, and complexities of our movement building.

I’m writing these words now in another, darker world on March 16. To be honest, I don’t yet know what world you’ll be in when you read them.

It is surreal to write about hope and futurity amidst a global pandemic that disproportionately threatens the health, safety, and livelihoods of millions of undocumented workers. As our work and campaigns shift drastically, we — along with the rest of the world — are trying to find answers to unanswerable questions: How long will this last? How can we defend and support each other? If we make it through this, what world is waiting on the other side?

For now, this is my offering: a transmission from the past, which is also the future.

Ale. Born in the obligo de la Luna (the center of the Moon), Mexico City. Community organizer with Movimiento Cosecha. Creating power among WOC and QPOC. She believes that in order to continue organizing we must prioritize and practice self and collective healing. Ale is a guerrera with a free spirit fighting for liberation and the seed the seed that her ancestors cultivated so the world continues evolving with magic, love, kindness and compassion. You can follow her on Instagram @alejandraprimavera.

Camilo was raised in Atlanta, GA with Jewish ancestry and roots in Colombia. Camilo is a GNC poet and and organizer with Movimiento Cosecha, a movement working to win respect, dignity and permanent protection for all undocumented immigrants in the U.S. Camilo believes in the power of intimacy, dance and collective memory and care in making a new reality. You can follow their work and adventure on Instagram @pollen.boy_.

Cata Santiago is an organizer with Movimiento Cosecha. She is a dedicated leader from Homestead, Florida and Cata hails from the mountains of Oaxaca, Mexico, who builds power in her community with passion, humor and heart. As the daughter of farmworkers, Cata embodies the strength and courage of the communities that she supports. She inspires those around her to believe that change will come, and it will come from the leadership of those on the front lines, working hard and taking action. She has organized rallies, marches and actions around the country in the path towards dignity, respect and permanent protection for all immigrants in this country. You can follow her on Instagram @cata_morphosis.

Christine: Hey, friends! Let’s start off easy. How would you explain Cosecha and our volunteer organizer network to someone?

Ale: Cosecha is a nonviolent movement fighting for permanent protection, dignity and respect for all the undocumented people in this country. Permanent protection is about finally being able to be free to move, to return to our home countries, visit our families and not be scared in our daily lives. But we know even if we get residency or citizenship, people will not suddenly start to respect the immigrant community, so we are fighting for that too.

This country depends on the labor of undocumented immigrants. Our strategy is to organize our people and use our economic and labor power to win those things we need, ultimately with an immigrant strike.

Cata Santiago: The volunteer organizing network is a group of full-time organizers living in “voluntary simplicity,” which means we aren’t receiving a salary. This model has been used by other social movements in the past, like the United Farm Workers. All our basic needs, such as transportation, food, housing, are met through collective funds for the movement.

We believe in creating intentional community and something called relational culture with each other. That means we support each other, not only in our organizing work, but we’re also trying to create new ways of relating to each other that are reflective of a better world that we’re trying to build.

Our work isn’t 9-to-5. We need to actually support people in a holistic way and have each other’s backs. We are literally fighting against the U.S. government, which is working all the time to diminish our humanity. So we have to build a culture that can hold us together and be the glue for those moments that test us.

Christine: What does it actually look like and feel like to live that way? Are there any powerful examples that come to mind for you?

Ale: We live in communal houses together in different parts of the country where we are running campaigns. We have meals together and go to work together. And living together is the work, too, so we have roles within the houses. We use different cultural practices to really check in with people, not just about the work they need to get down, but about their lives, their feelings. We prioritize community time together — we’ll make dinner or go for a hike together.

Cata: Yeah, there’s something important about this idea of unstructured, organic time to build and deepen relationships. I used to have an organizing job that was very structured. I had a cubicle! I was very much in my own little square footage. It was rigid and you could just feel the caca energy. Here, we have intentionality around being together in different ways.

The organizing meetings we have with community members reflect that, too. We have meetings over tacos, you know? I think that has played a key role in why people actually come back. You build a commitment to specific people in your shared struggle, and that builds commitment to the movement. People feel seen and organically build deep connections.

Camilo: When we were first starting our campaign for driver’s licenses in Massachusetts and lots of people were coming to meetings, our communal organizer house was a place to invite people too. It was not just for the full-time organizers, but for the whole community growing around the campaign. I remember this night when a leader came over and cooked all this delicious Peruvian food. We had community members from all over come and it was just this space where we could express joy and celebrate over food together. There weren’t the strict confines of “this is organizing, we are in a meeting to develop you as leaders.” We just shared with each other in a human way.

Cata: Yes! I think there’s a paradigm shift around how people see themselves. Because a lot of messaging in the immigrant rights movement focuses on victimization. Saying, I am a victim. I think that actually increases the fear-mongering and the dehumanization and impacts how you see your value and worth. Here, people can have a different experience: I am joy. I am fucking happiness! I don’t have to constantly shed tears or tell my sob story to be part of this movement.

Ale: That is also how we connect more with the community. Even if we are immigrants, sometimes we can have detachment from the community. So what we are doing challenges the idea of a big separation between “organizer” and “community member” and helps us really deepen relationships.

Christine: All of us have been part of Cosecha for several years now. We are actually putting this ambitious, powerful vision into practice. What still resonates the same way as in the beginning? What has been really hard to live out?

Ale: One thing for me that was true at the beginning and is still so true now is our principle that “everything we need is in our community.” I see it whenever we organize big events. A few years ago, we organized a huge posada in Homestead, Florida and we were worried we would need to pay for everything ourselves. But then people let us use their space, and then a dozen people showed up with food, tamales, ponche, everything we needed. It’s like that in the campaign I’m part of now in Michigan, too. We sometimes worry, how are we going to get food for the meeting? But someone always brings it, always. That really stays with me.

Cata: Something that made me fall in love with Cosecha was a vision to go beyond what the immigrant rights movement had been doing for years, focusing on politicians in D.C. Trying to lobby for the Dream Act or comprehensive immigration reform. Cosecha didn’t want to be confined by the same strategies. We believe that power actually lies with the people. Our labor. Our ability to mobilize in the streets. So many immigrants relate to that. They don’t want to elect Democrats and lobby politicians. They want to build something else and imagine a new way to fight. That has stood the test of time.

Still, I think we do face questions about the sustainability of full-time voluntary simplicity in our organizing network. It’s challenging. In the vision of not receiving salaries, we are also committing to try to meet our needs in different ways, outside of the market. We’re still navigating what those support systems can look like, to care for people in all their complexities and to really center our own well-being. If we don’t balance it well, it can look like martyrdom, or the savior complex you tend to see in non-profits.

Camilo: To be honest, a lot of other challenges come from cohabitating with people you’re organizing with. We know that we’re there together not because we chose each other as friends or roomies, but because we believe in certain values and have a shared vision for liberation. That’s a very different way to live and co-create. And I think it’s a very beautiful experiment. But I don’t want to romanticize it either, because it can be very challenging. We also come from different cultures and levels of privileges and lived experiences. Knowing that we’re all here for something larger is what pulls us through those challenging moments.

Cata: Sometimes, with all the attacks on our community, we’ve had to work at such a fast pace. We’ve responded to big national moments in powerful ways, but that shit is tiring. I’ve seen a lot of us extend our capacity or not know how to say no. Taking care of ourselves as a collective is still something we’re figuring out. We won’t win if we’re just tired out and spread thin and overworking ourselves — that’s just capitalism working at its finest.

Christine: I want to go back to what you said earlier, Cata, about joy. I really loved that. What are things that have brought you guys joy, hope, and excitement?

Camilo: Right now, we are in the process of really trying to expand the intentional community we are creating. Our relational culture is not just for full-time organizers, or even just for the top immigrant leaders leading our campaigns, it’s for everyone. Everyone can be part of our culture of collective care. That’s what gives me hope. We want to truly reflect a world where we see each other in all our humanity and with care.

Ale: In our last few years, we have experienced some real challenges around personal conflict. We can only move at the speed of trust. If our culture is bad and we don’t trust each other, we cannot organize. We have to be vulnerable so that we can do conflict resolution and restore our relationships. It brings me a lot of hope that we are slowing down to do that.

It also brings me a lot of joy and hope to see the community leading. Our people are ready to be leaders. They aren’t waiting for someone else to bring them a plan. Oh, and the deep relationships I’m creating with people, which I know will continue after la huelga, after we win. These organized communities will continue to fight towards liberation; that’s beautiful and joyful to see.

Cata: I think the process of putting your belief system into action lets us live out our fullest lives. We’ve confronted a lot of challenges in the last few years. When space is created to let pain breath and have a seat with it, it’s transformative. And it’s hard, but we’re leaning towards it. We are grappling with a lot of our challenges by loving up on each other and valuing those relationships.

Like Ale was saying, being in the struggle together fosters trust, and trust goes a long way. I feel hope in knowing that we are fighting for our community to have a dignified way of life and that does not end with winning citizenship.

Christine: Alright, final question. A lot of people see elections as a major part of creating change, and we have an extremely anti-immigrant president and an election in November.

But, as you all know, Cosecha doesn’t support political candidates or get involved with electoral politics the way that many other organizations do. Why is that? And in this political moment, as people directly impacted by this administration in many ways, why are you choosing to do this work?

Camilo: One of the core beliefs of Cosecha is that political power comes from the people. Real changes in society will always come from popular mobilizations, not this vertical view of top-down power. Regardless of who holds the presidency, we know the work is with the people. In many ways, an election is not as important as the work we’re doing on a daily basis.

I know heteropatriarchy and capitalism will continue to exist and shape our lives and the ways we relate to each other. For me, my work is around learning to take care of people in a collective way, learning how to be accountable, learning how to see people through conflicts and pain and hold them in their humanity and understanding ways to practice restorative justice.

Cata: When it comes to candidates and the immigrant community, we know who this two-party political system serves, and it’s not us. Obama strengthened the deportation machine and deported 3 million people. We genuinely don’t believe the answers for our community lie in the White House. They lie where the community is. It’s about people power and how people can enact change by taking matters into their own hands. We have to continue what we’ve been doing, which is building at the grassroots level, strengthening our relationships into fully living out interdependence within the volunteer organizer network and our whole movement.

With the community we are working with, the immigrant community, we are not U.S. citizens, we cannot vote. But that doesn’t mean that we don’t have power, not at all. We can do so many things to build the world we want to see. That work is much deeper than just elections. Our work is constructing communities, creating relationships, dismantling white supremacy and dismantling patriarchy. At the end of the day, our work is about learning together.

To directly support undocumented workers and families during the pandemic, please contribute to Movimiento Cosecha’s new Undocumented Worker Fund. We truly believe that all the resources we need, including financial, are already in our community now. Chip in whatever you can to help immigrants buy food, pay rent, and meet other basic needs in this difficult time. 🔮
​
Edited by Carmen
​

Four Ways the COVID-19 Pandemic Is Affecting the LGBTQ+ Community

These last two weeks the news has been tuned to the COVID-19 pandemic nearly constantly. There’s really no understating how serious the disease is or the havoc its wreaking on so many people’s lives and livelihoods.

Around the world, but especially in America, we are watching the compounded failures of capitalism and narcissistic government play out. We’re seeing issues that primarily target marginalized communities, including our own, getting hit even harder than before.

The COVID-19 pandemic is disproportionately hurting our community because of structural issues that affected the LGBTQ+ community in so many different ways before any of this started. To get some perspective on this, I spoke with Karen Lee, who works at the NYC Department of Health and Mental Hygiene and is the co-chair of Q-Wave, a NYC-based organization building strength and solidarity among queer Asians who identify as women, nonbinary, and/or trans.

LGBTQ+ People Face More Barriers When Accessing Healthcare

Health care is really the only defense we have against a pandemic, from the individual level all the way to the global. And yet, in this most basic of human rights, the LGBTQ+ community faces not one but two hurdles.

We know that the cost of health care in America is egregious and prohibitive. Compared with the rest of the country, though, the high cost of care disproportionately affects members of the LGBTQ+ community: 15% of LGBT adults are uninsured compared with 12% of the non-LGBT population. CDC data from 2015 indicates that bisexuals have higher rates of being uninsured than lesbians/gay people, and a 2017 survey conducted by NPR, the Robert Wood Johnson foundation and the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health found that 22% of transgender Americans are uninsured.

An even greater proportion of the LGBTQ+ community has foregone healthcare because of the cost. According to a Monmouth University poll conducted in May 2019, 27% of Americans indicated that they or someone in their family hadn’t gone for needed health care because of cost in the past two years. In contrast, on Autostraddle’s Politics Survey, conducted December 2019 to January 2020, 63% of respondents had to make that same, difficult decision. This is consistent with the NPR/RWJ/Harvard survey, which similarly found that 56% of LGBTQ+ American adults have not gotten health care because of the cost. Based on Autostraddle’s Politics Survey, this issue disproportionately affected our bisexual and queer respondents and respondents who were transgender or non-binary.

(As a reminder, Autostraddle’s Politics Survey was completed by queer people who identify as women, nonbinary, and/or trans and for more information on who took Autostraddle’s Politics Survey, see the first post on results.)

The recently passed COVID-19 relief package includes free testing and increased federal funding but falls far short of any kind of coverage for treatment. And none of this addresses the discrimination that leads members of our community to not only forego but also be denied health care.

In Autostraddle’s Politics Survey, 11% of transgender and non-binary respondents indicated they had been refused services by a medical professional because of their gender identity or presentation and another 21% were unsure if that had happened to them. These results are also consistent with the NPR/RWJ/Harvard survey, which found that 10% of transgender Americans had been discriminated against in a health care setting. Unfortunately, this issue isn’t all that unique to the US: transgender and non-binary respondents on Autostraddle’s Politics Survey reported similar rates of being denied services and being unsure if they were denied, regardless of whether they lived in the US or in another country.

Under normal circumstances, there’s no place for transphobic health care providers who deny services, especially services that have nothing to do with a person’s gender. During a pandemic, making sure everyone has access to affordable and inclusive health insurance only becomes more urgent. Yet, we know that much of the world has a long way to go with protecting trans rights. In the US the Trump administration continues to eliminate protections for transgender people in many arenas, including health care, and trans rights are not protected in many European countries as well.

In a situation like this, Karen emphasized the importance of community health centers for LGBTQ+ individuals, which, depending on the location, may also offer services to people who are uninsured or underinsured. Community efforts are also a critical in supporting and providing services for transgender people, in particular.

A Greater Proportion of LGBTQ+ People Live with Health Issues

COVID-19 is of particular concern for people who are older or have existing health conditions, including heart disease, diabetes, asthma and lung disease. Currently, there’s no information on how COVID-19 affects people with HIV, but this population does have a higher prevalence of other health conditions.

Research has consistently shown that the LGBTQ+ population has a higher prevalence of these health conditions or risk factors associated with them, in part because of the difficulties the LGBTQ+ community faces in trying to access health care. These rates also differ for subpopulations within the LGBTQ+ community; for instance, some evidence suggests that higher rates of lesbian, gay or bisexual African Americans have diabetes than other populations and that more transgender women are living with HIV. Altogether, this puts a greater proportion of our community – and some of the most marginalized members of our community – at higher risk for serious complications if they contract COVID-19.

In addition to physical health concerns, social distancing and quarantine can have lasting, adverse effects on mental health. Here, again, the LGBTQ+ community is especially vulnerable. Prior to the pandemic, our community was already experiencing disproportionately high rates of mental health conditions, psychological distress and suicidal ideation, particularly among transgender people and bisexual people. Social distancing for the foreseeable future to prevent the spread of COVID-19 will take a serious toll on the mental health of LGBTQ+ individuals.

Karen spoke about this during our conversation:

When you already have a community that is, they feel they’re already isolated, they already feel marginalized and now government – whether it’s federal, it’s state, or local governments – are telling and recommending people to stay at home, “don’t be around other people.” I can’t even begin to imagine how incredibly lonely this can be.

The isolation is further exacerbated by the closure of community centers and universities. While these measures are taxing for everyone, they are particularly harmful to LGBTQ+ people because so many are often distanced or estranged from their families. Many LGBTQ+ individuals also rely on these organizations for their social networks, mental health services and in the case of some college students, housing.

Acknowledging this challenge, mental health professionals and community organizations like Q-Wave are transitioning their services to remote platforms and teleservices. For some people living in abusive, toxic or unaccepting circumstances, though, these services may now become inaccessible. Given the circumstances, though, there are few viable alternatives.

Here at Autostraddle, we’re providing COVID-19-specific resources to build even stronger online connections during this time of social distancing.

The LGBTQ+ Community Experiences Greater Economic Vulnerability

The COVID-19 pandemic puts into sharp relief how unsustainable it is to attach people’s livelihoods to consumption. Tens of thousands of people have lost their jobs in the US alone because of the pandemic, and there is probably no quantifying how many people have lost additional income streams that they needed to live. Economists fear that globalization itself my be at risk, and though I’m no big fan of the global economy, I can’t deny that as global economies tumble, low income people around the world will be the hardest hit.

Economic inequities have always disproportionately affected the LGBTQ+ community worldwide, and the COVIDI-19 pandemic only escalates the situation. In the United States, for example, nearly a quarter of LGBT adults have household incomes below $24,000, compared with 18% of the non-LGBT adult population. Lower income jobs are often blue collar or in the service industry, where “remote work” is not possible so workers are either getting laid off and losing their primary sources of income or being put at risk as their employers recklessly proceed with business. Neither option is great. Sex workers are especially vulnerable to the health risks and the economic impacts of the pandemic.

The recently passed COVID-19 relief legislation in the US includes paid sick leave for most employees at companies with 500 or fewer people, including part-time and gig economy workers. Democrats are already looking into passing additional legislation to extend paid leave to more workers (as in their original bill).

The situation has become dire enough that even Donald Trump and Boris Johnson have expressed support for universal basic income although the question of whether either government will actually deliver on this in a meaningful way remains open. Justin Trudeau just put forward a relief package that includes payments for lower income households.

All this economic uncertainty takes a further toll on the physical and mental health of the LGBTQ+ community. While governments may step up and offer some relief, the community is already coming together to support each other through mutual aid projects. Vanessa provided information on many of these earlier this week and will continue to update the post as more becomes available. Shelli compiled a list of resources for paying bills and will continue to update the post as more information becomes available.

Queer Asians Are Facing the Dual Threats of Racism and Homophobia

Trump’s a racist, and I have no expectations of that changing. I am, however, incredibly disappointed that widespread racism against people of Asian heritage, which started long before COVID-19 ever spread outside China, has not subsided.

Part of what makes racism so pernicious is its inescapability. Asians who grapple with, or in some cases internalize, the model minority myth experience this through the lens of their families having made countless sacrifices to “belong” and that simply never enough. Even in times and places where Asians are used as a cover for anti-black racism, Asians’ standing in the racial hierarchy is eternally precarious. One mispronounced word or one strong smelling dish or one virus can unravel it all.

Karen shared how she thinks about some of the racist attacks against East Asians because of the COVID-19:

So you take East Asians, or any Asians because people don’t know the difference between Chinese or any other Asian groups. You have – this might be a generalization, but – you have this one ethnic group who tried so exceptionally hard to assimilate to the fact where they were willing to give up their citizenship to their countries, they’re willing to teach their children and their grandchildren to not speak their native tongues. They tried so hard to assimilate into America and be upstanding citizens and not to offend others. And, then this happens and it’s almost like this racism is just resting underneath your skin.

These experiences of racism have led to isolation of Asians – again, long before COVID-19 spread outside Asia – as Asians circulated messages within the community about attacks that were happening, felt apprehensive about coughing or sneezing in public and cautioned each other not to go out when they were sick with regular cold symptoms.

But racism and discrimination are even more challenging for queer Asians to navigate because of the seeming incompatibility of queerness and Asian-ness in both mainstream queer and mainstream Asian culture. Queer Asians experience an even greater sense of alienation, as Karen describes:

I grew up on the West coast; I grew up in San Francisco and moved to New York and so I’m always, I’m always searching for this idea of belonging and what is home. And when I came to New York, I recognized my privilege because I grew up in San Francisco where being queer and Asian – there were spaces for that in San Francisco. But, I can’t imagine many other cities or places in the United States where there are safe spaces for being queer and Asian because often times you think of queerness as a white thing and then when you think of Asian-ness you don’t see any room for queerness in that.

All of this has also laid bare some of the fissures within marginalized communities. Karen recounted that some of the recent attacks against Asians were instigated by other people of color and how disheartening that was to see. At the same time, these experiences of discrimination and hate-based attacks are experiences shared by many other communities as well:

This is daily life for some people who live on the margins, such as trans women, people of color, black folks, refugees, Jewish people. They face this on a daily basis, so it’s kind of like if people can understand – if Asians, East Asians can understand that there is this racism, this discrimination, this hatred that exists every single day for other folks – I’m hopeful that we can build solidarity.

Ultimately, that solidarity is the only thing that will get all of us through these uncertain times.

Lesbian Meme Culture Normalized My Abusive Relationship

At 28 years old, I was deep in the throes of my second adolescence. I didn’t know how to dress or flirt or what kind of sex I liked. It felt like there was an entirely different language I had to study to even talk to queers and the more I tried to live my desires and learn from experience, the more I did it wrong. I remember when the first person I slept with gave me a post-sex lecture on why real queer people call themselves gay, and not lesbian, because “lesbian” is inherently transphobic but “gay” is not. I anxiously stayed up all night wondering where these definitions had come from and how much research I would have to do in order to not offend lovers. Everyone else suddenly became the authority — by dating a man, it was as if I’d negated my lifelong queer friendships and organizing work. The next day, I called my queer and lesbian friends crying, deeply ashamed. They gently explained that that person was speaking for themselves, and that anyone who wants to say that ‘lesbian’ is an inherently a transphobic term was erasing trans lesbians along with decades of lesbian history, activism, and trans solidarity.

I was so ashamed about what I didn’t know, what I hadn’t tried, and, most terrifyingly, what I was feeling. Every time I tried to date, flirt, or have the kind of sex I wanted, there was someone on the other end to make fun of me, talk down to me, or tell me I was doing it wrong. I felt out of sorts and insecure, I had a constant low-grade vulnerability hangover.

I’d been single for over a year when I was at a writing workshop in California. It came at the end of a four-month storytelling tour, where I’d been flirting and fucking and, despite the heartbreak and instability along the way, I felt like hot shit. On the first night of the workshop, this short, qtpoc babe approached the podium barefoot. To an audience of primarily white, straight women, they announced they were drunk, introduced the faculty reader in lush, adoring terms, and talked for way longer than anyone else. I felt an immediate energetic pull — this person was being goofy and subversive and taking up space in front of a bunch of stick-up-their-asses white folks, and it was hot.

Over the next few days, I found NJ. They invited me to go to the beach with their friends. We laid on my yellow sarong just inches from each other and gazed into each others eyes. They were cute and funny and obviously adored me. I was so flattered that a queer, gender nonconforming, POC was attracted to my baby-gay ass and, maybe that feeling of being desired and validated in my queerness shielded me from seeing them for who they were. After the workshop, I visited. After I visited, I took a job close to them. Because U-Haul.

Newly in my first serious queer relationship, I felt all these things I hadn’t felt before. Some days, I felt so seen and adored that I wondered how I’d lived without this kind of devotion before. Other days, I felt enraged, jealous, betrayed. I was obsessed and in a full-on emotional rollercoaster. I could barely keep up with what had just happened before a new onslaught of confusing emotions hurled my way. I didn’t have any coping skills to move through this strange and confusing emotional landscape.

NJ had a decade’s worth of queer relationships under their belt and pinned themselves as an expert on what I was going through. When I shared my surprise and fear about all the intense, scary feelings I was having, they said, “That’s because gay love is different from straight love. You’re gay and you haven’t known what gay love is until now.” In the depth of my own obsession, I couldn’t see that they were re-writing my romantic history in a way that put themselves on a pedestal. They needed to invalidate my previous relationship because they needed my identity to hinge on their approval.

As I subtly resisted, insisting that I knew myself to be queer and bi and to have a sexuality that lived beyond binaries like “straight love” and “gay love,” NJ used queer culture to prove their point. Specifically, they sent memes showing that it was normal in gay love to be jealous, codependent, possessive, and completely lose track of your life. And, because I had no other queer reference point for relationships, I bought into it. I wanted to think they were right because I didn’t want to leave a relationship that had become a surrogate for a queer self-acceptance I hadn’t yet developed.

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A post shared by 🏳️‍🌈𝒮𝒾𝓁𝓁𝓎 𝒮𝒶𝓅𝓅𝒽𝒾𝒸 𝒮𝑜𝒸𝒾𝑒𝓉𝓎🏳️‍🌈 (@sapphicsigh) on Nov 23, 2019 at 9:06am PST

Six months ensued in which NJ slowly, but persistently, tried to control everything I did. I had to ask for permission to sleep after my 12-hour night shifts, to go for a run, to hang up the phone. If I didn’t, NJ whined, cried, started fights, or insulted me, saying they were allowed to act that way because they felt emotionally abandoned. (This sounds so over-the-top but it’s true: they once called the police to check on me, a person of color living in rural California, at my house when I went to sleep without calling them back.) When I questioned the ways they’d taken control of my life, they’d share memes about U-Hauling or how lesbians go everywhere together. They tried to prove that in gay love, it hurts to be apart, so it was my responsibility to be with them all the time.

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A post shared by yikesdyke (@yikesdyke) on Aug 7, 2019 at 11:47pm PDT

I got used to cancelling plans with queer friends because NJ persistently said, “You don’t know it, but that person wants to fuck you.” It was a subtle form of telling me that my value only rested in being fucked. They gradually minimized my worth and cast suspicion onto all of my queer friendships. If I insisted that the person didn’t want to fuck me, they accused me of wanting to fuck the other person. Once, they lashed out when I scheduled a phone call with a queer friend to talk about a book we loved, saying I was cheating on them. I’ve always believed in the lushness of queer friendships and, even though it went against everything I knew I wanted from my life, I cancelled the call.

I got used to cancelling on myself — when I scheduled time for writing, or put my phone on airplane mode, I was emotionally punished for days through fights, criticism, and being regularly told that they needed me to teach me how to love because I didn’t know how.

When I got out of the relationship, I felt like all my skin was burning off. Leaving was one of the most painful parts of it. I didn’t have this language then: I didn’t know it was emotionally and sexually abusive. I hadn’t put together that I was part of NJ’s pattern of preying on women of color who’d only had relationships with men, love bombing to gain their trust and set them up for abuse, and eventually raping them. Instead, I thought that if I couldn’t make it work with NJ, I was rejecting gay love. If all-consuming obsession is what being queer is about, then maybe I deserved this pain for being so incapable of loving.

Out of the relationship, I could look back and see what had happened with new eyes, without the fog of their voice controlling my narrative. When they told me that I wasn’t giving them enough — even when I spent every single day off with them, even when I spent hours on the phone with them when we were apart, even when I called them on every break from work and answered their texts immediately — the only thing I thought I had left to give was my body. In the days before they raped me, they’d said, “I’m willing to give you my whole life, but you aren’t willing to do anything for me. If this relationship is to continue, I need you to love me more than you love yourself. I need you to be willing for you to give me at least what I’m willing to give you. That’s what love is, that’s what a relationship is.” I gave up agency to my body because I believed them when they said that’s what made gay love different — I didn’t have a self anymore, I didn’t have a right to say no.

Even though I knew they’d violated me, even though I knew the violation was rape, I stayed with them. They had the memes to prove that in gay love, we process together. We work through the hurt. We stay with people who cause us pain. We’re all traumatized, and it’s okay if someone else’s trauma causes me trauma, it’s not their fault.

I didn’t leave when they raped me but when, a few months later, I asked to go to sleep and they refused. While I’d had my right to my body stripped away, there was something inside me that still acknowledged that taking away someone’s right to sleep was a close to torture. My inner voice told me I didn’t have to remain in a relationship that felt like torture.

I had, and still have, so few representations of people like me, who are queers, femmes, and people of color. I was, and still am, starving for any possible representation. I know this is true for so many of us, and I know that one way queers build accessible cultural work is when we create memes. We are looking for images, for humans who look and act like us.

As the relationship became increasingly emotionally and sexually abusive, NJ weaponized lesbian memes against me. So many lesbian memes normalize giving up your entire life for a pretty girl or a hot backwards-cap wearing babe, spending every minute with your girlfriend, and the kind of violent jealousy that makes you want to hurt anyone who looks at your partner. So many lesbian memes make a joke of codependence, U-Hauling, and possessiveness, so many normalize femmes as automatic caregivers and emotional saviors of shy butches who can’t express their emotions directly.

And, so many of these lesbian meme accounts are by and for white women, so there’s little nuance when it comes to the complicated experience of being an immigrants’ kid severed from homeland and how culture plays into gender, sexuality, attraction, and communication styles. Coming into the queer dating world as a femme of color, a child of Malayali immigrants? It felt damn near impossible for me to figure out how I was supposed to exist in a relationship at all, let alone a healthy one.

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I had to unfollow lesbian meme accounts in order to begin healing from an abusive queer relationship. Once it was over, once we stopped talking, once I blocked NJ, once I started to realize how abusive the relationship had been, lesbian meme accounts felt dangerous. Whenever I’d see them on my feed, I’d think, “Wait, but that’s actually not healthy! That’s what happened to me in my relationship!” I noticed memes that made me think that I had to be friends with my ex, that I had to work through their emotions with them, and that I had to remain intertwined even after leaving the relationship. The memes didn’t feel like a joke anymore, they felt like a manifestation of unhealed queer relationship trauma.

I knew I had to get these toxic messages out of my brain or I’d always associate love with abuse. I’ve learned to seek intentionally different kinds of messages, ones that affirm my wholeness, ask me to heal my own trauma rather than someone else’s, acknowledge the importance of boundaries, and do not pin down queerness as one thing. I ask myself questions when consuming any cultural product, like music or movies or memes: Is this healthy? Why am I drawn to this, and what would love look like if I didn’t consume toxic messages?

Since then, I’ve sought healthy representations of queer love that centered my experience as a femme of color in a way that white queer memes could not, like through @queeringdesi and @femmecollectively. I’m also a huge fan of @gayslutswhoread because the four queer thots on the podcast are *so* different from each other that it validates moments when I feel different from the queer stereotypes I might trap myself in. There might not be a singular cultural representation that fits my multiplicities, but I now know that I don’t have to compare myself to other queers on the internet in order to be seen.

In my healing process, I’ve realized that the difference between this relationship and all the others in my life wasn’t that this was “gay love.” It was that my previous relationships were relatively healthy: I hadn’t felt this whirlwind rollercoaster of emotions because I’d never been in an abusive relationship. My ex used the term “gay love” to normalize their abusive patterns. When we normalize abusive tendencies and call it queer culture, we are traumatizing ourselves and our lovers.

I’m in a deep process of unlearning unhealthy behaviors, avoiding chasing dynamics and obsessive tendencies, and learning how to move towards people who are good to me. Who treat me well. Who are not obsessed with me and who have their own lives. Who are not willing to give up everything in some grand romantic gesture from which they’re looking for an emotional payout. Who aren’t trauma bonding. Who are as deeply invested in healing as I am. And if that means I have to reject big portions of queer culture in the process, that’s okay. My queerness doesn’t hinge on anything outside of myself anymore.

This Checks Out Is Our New QTPOC Newsletter: Let Us Slide Into Your DMs

Please allow me to paint you a picture.

You know when you and your friends are sitting around on a lazy day — maybe you’re at the tail end of a lake hang on a blanket, maybe you’re on the couch with your feet up or on a forever-long train ride — and your mind starts to pick up the same old cycles it wants to rerun — like how much money is in your bank account and is this really a relationship you want  and are you doing enough with your life? And then somebody, thankfully, interrupts with a thought-provoking story, after which, you’re like “mhhmm, exactly that” or “bahahahahaha” or “I was just getting into that with so-and-so!?!”

This Checks Out Is Here For That.

You can now sign up for our bi-weekly newsletter, curated by Carmen and Kamala, that features work by queer people of color FOR queer people of color — because isn’t that the dream?

We are that somebody (yes, Aaliyah) dropping you something relevant, thoughtful or just purely entertaining. We want to save you from anxiety about laundry or that white lady at work or your latest identity crisis. We want to remind you that we’re part of a dope community — with inbox candy that includes:

• Great writing from Autostraddle and the broader internet by the baddest queer writers of color — dare we say, the true voices of our generations?
• The delightful music, podcasts, videos, and more that we’ve got in our queues
• Smart, hot, queer Black, Indigenous and Brown creatives, activists, nerds, who are impressing and inspiring us
• Anecdotes and MAYBE even the occasional joke from our lives out in the wild world

We’re really proud of the amazing body of work by queer writers of color that’s been gracing the homepage of Autostraddle of late. You don’t want to miss these gems. And you don’t need to dig for them.

Join our party! Get This Checks Out delivered to your inbox every other Wednesday. We will do our best to blow your minds, because YOU are the ideal QTPOC audience we’ve always wanted. And let us know if there’s something you want to see in this newsletter — it’s yours too!

It’s Chika 1, Rap Industry 0 With Her Debut EP “Industry Games”

“I’m about to change the world/ … I hope this music makes you think,” begins Jane Chika Oranika, better known as CHIKA, on “Intro,” the first track from her debut EP, Industry Games, out today. It’s a provocative mission statement, to be sure — and the six songs that follow genuinely bear it out.

Chika’s sonic and lyrical mainstream peers are J. Cole and Chance The Rapper, and to a lesser degree Rapsody and Kendrick Lamar. Like them, Chika toes the line between “conscious” and “corny,” (more successfully than Cole or Chance, in my opinion), attempting to inspire over bombastic, maximalist beats, chopped-and-screwed gospel and oldies, and pleasantly arranged strings and bells. She has the typical boasts — title track “Industry Games,” for example — but it makes sense to me that, in my opinion, it’s the weakest track on the EP. Not coincidentally, it’s also the trappiest. I don’t feel like that’s Chika’s lane.

Her first viral fame came from a hard-as-fuck freestyle takedown of Kanye West. He’s clearly a major influence, especially on songs like “Crown,” which could have easily fit on The College Dropout (and it’s about … dropping out of college but still having self-respect and chasing success). The biting, incisive commentary of that freestyle — her rapid-fire, chameleonic flow, and her thoughtful, critical, uplifting lyricism — are where she shines and stands out. And that’s not just among the women in the field. Much of mainstream rap right now seems to be mumblers riding the trap wave and/or rhymes written exclusively in couplets and punchlines, and that’s not Chika’s style (though she does have excellent ones: “They doin’ shit I ain’t fonda/ It’s like my name isn’t Jane“. I gasped audibly at that one.)

She’s at her best when she’s rapping about real-ass shit. “Songs About You” and “Balenciagas In The Bathroom” both temper boasting about her success — which is fair — with an honest takedown of her struggles with handling that success and fame. On “Balenciagas”:

“The whole world is conversating ‘bout your waistline/ And mental health days make you guilty ‘cuz you waste time/ I’m fighting everybody demons but can’t face mine/ Baseline use all that pain and anger and just make rhymes/ How I’m uplifting your whole life but still I hate mine?/ How I get rich but still get pissed about the money?/ Now everybody wanting me to wear a fake smile/ How I’m supposed to fake a laugh when ain’t shit funny?”

Chika’s other lane? Lovely songs about women. Chika’s lesbianism is, refreshingly, both simultaneously front and center and incidental. I put her “Can’t Explain It” on my Best Lesbian Love Songs of 2019 list. But I didn’t know about “Want Me:”

Neither of those delightful love songs is on Industry Games but “On My Way,” a heart-filling piano and soft drumbeat ballad, is:

“I wanna thank you for being my person/ You say that you need me/ and that feeling is mutual/ I’m so glad that you see me as beautiful/ I think you one of a kind/ I promise all day you done been on my mind/ … I love your energy/ you and I we got synergy/ And it’s like we the same/ They don’t fuck with you?/ Then they just made two enemies.”

There are no pronoun games here, but Chika doesn’t make being gay a big deal. There aren’t any songs about homophobia or lesbianism to be found here. There are many schools of thought on this; some people want queer artists to be super out and to explicitly discuss sexuality in their music, while others feel like normalization is the key. I think Chika rides the latter wave, and that’s her right.

And while Chika’s songs can be sexy — see “Want Me”— she’s never objectifying or disrespectful. There’s a time and place for lesbian fuckboidom (well, Young M.A’s got that lane pretty occupied) but that’s not Chika’s speed.

Overall this EP is excellent. Taken along with her singles — “High Rises” and “Can’t Explain It” especially — this is an incredibly auspicious start. Chika has announced herself with a major bang; with luminaries like Erykah Badu, Cardi B, and Missy Elliott counting themselves as fans, she is about to blow up big time.

And I can’t wait. We’re in a golden age of women in rap right now, and Chika adds a much-needed conscious, thoughtful, craftsperson-ly lyricism and return to blustering, pre-trap positivity that the industry needs. I hope she leans even further into what she does best, and that the industry doesn’t play any games with her.

Industry Games dropped today, stream it now.

“Twenties” Review: Lena Waithe Writes Herself Into Her Groundbreaking New BET Series To Mixed Results

Last week, Lena Waithe’s new half-hour comedy Twenties premiered on BET. In it, Hattie, a 24-year-old masculine-of-center black lesbian struggling to break into the television industry, lives and loves in Los Angeles with her two straight best friends, Nia and Marie. Part romantic comedy, part sitcom about the ups-and-downs of chosen family, and part Hollywood satire — Twenties brings A LOT to the table. Not to mention that it’s historic, with the FIRST black masc lesbian to ever serve as the protagonist of a television comedy.

The soundtrack and beautifully lit skin tones of Twenties promise to stay with you long after you’ve clicked away from the show. It also finds itself squarely within a “black renaissance” (to quote Hattie’s own words) of television that begs the question: Where do we go from here?

Carmen: In a recent interview with The New York Times, Lena Waithe described her Twenties protagonist, Hattie, as entering “our world post my character on ‘Master of None;’ it’s a world post ‘Get Out’; it’s a world post ‘Moonlight'” — that feels like as good a place to start our conversation as any.

We both loved Denise in Master of None, in fact we ranked her in the Top 10 of Autostraddle’s The 100 Greatest Queer and Trans Women of Color Television Characters in TV History list. Of course that role, and the writing of her famous coming out episode which gave Lena Waithe a historic Emmy win as the first black woman to win for comedy writing, skyrockted her career. Looking back to 2017 — did you, like Lena, find connections between Denise and Hattie?

Natalie: I think she sees Master of None as a stepping stone, right? Like, audiences fell in love with a masculine-of-center lesbian character in “Thanksgiving,” so now let’s give a masculine-of-center lesbian character more of a prominent role and see if we can replicate those results.

Just a little Thanksgiving dinner small talk. pic.twitter.com/INoVWJFuSo

— Master of None (@MasterofNone) May 19, 2017

I guess I’d ask if you see that rhetorical leap — from Master of None to Twenties — as a logical one?

Carmen: To be honest, I’m not sure! If you look at the very short history of black butches on TV (there’s been just 22 of them in all of television, according to Autostraddle’s database) then sure — there’s a leap to be made between Master of None and Twenties. If only because there’s so few too begin with! Even as television and film gets queerer with every passing year, there’s still not nearly as much growth as I think we’d all like for black masculine-of-center characters that aren’t… well… played or written by Lena Waithe (or in some other cases, Samira Wiley, if we’re keeping it real with each other).

At the same time, I think making that leap shortchanges that part of what sets Twenties apart is, as you pointed out, it’s the first time ever that a black masculine-of-center lesbian is the PROTAGONIST in her own comedy series on television. And we can add to that the fact that this series exists on a historically homophobic black network.

I’ve said before that I think that what Lena Waithe’s doing at BET is game changing. That’s going to be particularly true this spring, when she has an hour of television on the network completely to herself with two half-hour comedies that have prominent black lesbian roles! Shout out to Lala Milan’s Tia in Boomerang; I still believe she gave one of the best and funniest performances in gay television last year.

Natalie: I’m so excited for the return of Boomerang on Wednesday night and I’m looking forward to seeing how it pairs with Twenties. Like you, I think the queer representation on Boomerang — from Tia to Rocky to Ari — was 100% the best I’d ever seen on BET and, honestly, some of the best black queer representation I’ve see on any network.

Carmen: Talking about queer as hell things happening over on BET…. oh my Lorde, Twenties’ opening sex scene!

Natalie: What can I say, Lena certainly knows how to get my attention?

Carmen: I LOVE the song! “I Got Melanin” been stuck in my head for days thanks to this show.

Also, if you had bet me like ten grand and a pair of VIP Rihanna tickets that I’d live to see a full-on lesbian sex scene on BET in my lifetime, I would’ve taken that bet in a heartbeat. And I would’ve played myself. I never — and I mean NEVER — thought we’d end up here.

Part of what really struck me was is that it’s so clear these women are having sex — and for a long time! BET is very likely always going to be more conservative than some of the other cable networks that we’ve come to associate with lesbian sex, say for instance, Starz or Showtime. But that said, these women aren’t giggling and kissing necks, you know? They aren’t laying on their backs with their sheets up to their necks.

And the way all that brown skin is lit and shot by the camera? My God! Damn fucking sexy.

Natalie: There’s a frankness about the scene that kind of announces, before you even get to know Hattie, how unapologetic this show will be in its queerness.

Carmen: YES! I was just thinking about that! Because we are living in Hattie’s world, there’s no limits around her blackness or her queerness.

We rarely get to see that on television, because so often — particularly on black tv shows — when there even is a queer character, she’s a best friend, sibling, or otherwise sidekick. Centering Twenties on Hattie opens up an entirely different world of opportunities, you know?

Even from an aesthetics point of view! Sure, I think there’s probably one or two (or a dozen) too many vintage Whitney Houston shirts on Twenties, but at the same time, the reclamation of Whitney as a queer icon is about the most black and queer statement that a show could make — one that feels very real to pretty much every queer black person I know in my life. Also, every stud I’ve ever dated has a James Baldwin collection, to the point that it’s now something my friends make fun of. (Yes, I have a type! Yes, my type is Hattie! Yes, this show called me out.)

PS: Hattie’s kicks collection is flawless. Which really shouldn’t be overlooked.

Natalie: Ok, but if you get evicted, are you leaving your collection on the sidewalk while you go see All About Eve? No, you are not.

The Whitney references are plentiful! T-shirts, the sing-along…

Carmen: I think we’re actually stumbling into what I find to be one of Twenties greatest weaknesses — it’s entirely too much of Lena Waithe’s actual, well-documented life, barely re-painted and put on the screen.

Obviously writers are encouraged to write what they know, but a little creative distance never hurt anyone. Lena’s a well-publicized Whitney fan, her favorite movie is All About Eve. And of course there’s the assistant job for the fictional black TV powerhouse Ida B. (I assume we were going for a play on Ida B. Wells here, but that’s a swing and a miss for me). Lena’s spoken extensively about spending her twenties working as an assistant for black women in Hollywood powerhouses Mara Brock Akil (Girlfriends, The Game), Ava DuVernay (Selma, Queen Sugar, When They See Us), and Gina Prince-Bythewood (Love & Basketball, Beyond the Lights).

There’s a line between autobiography and satire, and Twenties trips it all the time. I don’t get the feeling that the murkiness was intentional. Ugh! Did you also find that off-putting?

Natalie: A little, yes… because Hattie doesn’t feel like a new character to me.

She feels like the Hattie we originally met in Lena Waithe’s Twenties Pilot Presentation back in 2013 that’s still available on YouTube (though, obviously, she’s masculine-of-center here whereas she was very femme in the original). She feels like the Lena Waithe we’ve met in interviews over the years. It puts us — as members of the queer community who’ve really watched Lena’s rise intently — in a weird situation of spending an hour with a new character that we already know.

I understand why you’d say that the murkiness was unintentional but it also feels like because we know Lena, we don’t have to know why Hattie wants to be a writer. Because we know Lena’s story, we don’t have to know why her conversations with her mother feel simultaneously close and distant.

Like, they’re using Lena as a shortcut to avoid telling the story in holistic way?

Carmen: I think you’ve really nailed why I didn’t connect to Twenties, and I WANTED to. You know that there isn’t a black butch character on television that I can’t find my heart towards. Especially one with those dimples and wearing Air Force Ones. But try as I might, Hattie left me cold.

I suppose there’s a lot about Twenties that’s exciting and brand new if you haven’t been closely watching the latest wave of black television, especially that coming from either Lena or her frequent co-conspirator Justin Simien (who directed the 2013 Twenties Pilot Presentation you’re talking about, in addition to directing and co-executive producing Dear White People the film with her in 2014) — but watching it, all I thought about was Netflix’s Dear White People, or Spike Lee’s She’s Gotta Have It. These are black shows that premiered within the last three years, have queer black women characters, and use similar “woke Millennial black aesthetic” visuals as a means of not having to dig deep into actually writing black characters that feel real.

I also thought a lot about what Lena has been doing with Boomerang, her other BET creation. Boomerang has an overlapping vibe with Twenties, but based on the episodes I’ve seen thus far, goes much further in authentically showcasing multiple black points of view that doesn’t depend on obvious catch phrases and t-shirt slogans.

Twenties feels like it’s cutting corners. It wants to satirize black Hollywood, but no so much that you loose track of Hattie’s earnest dream to become a writer. It wants to write a love letter to the friendship between black women, but without having to take the time to build up the characters first. Why do these women love each other? I have no idea.

Natalie: They must love each other because if Hattie was at a table across from me and outed the details of my sex life to a room full of people, we would’ve been fighting!

What were your first impressions of Hattie’s friends, Nia and Marie? Thus far I feel like we haven’t really gotten to know them.

I recently rewatched the original Twenties presentation and its interesting to see how much of Hattie has been transferred over to Nia because they’ve chose to center a MOC character. There’s a shot in the BET version where we’re left in a dressing room with Nia staring intensely at herself in the mirror — for what? we never find out — but in the original that moment happens with Hattie

Carmen: That’s really interesting to point out!

Yeah, mostly I just hope we get to know them better. If I struggled to connect to Hattie because she feels badly drawn, then Nia and Marie are cardboard cutouts. They’re Regine and Synclaire from Living Single; they’re Toni and Lynn from Girlfriends. They haven’t been given a voice of their own.

Natalie: So, during the first episode there’s an exchange between Nia and Hattie that struck a cord with me. Nia says, “We need to support black shit.” and Hattie answers back, “No, we should support good shit that just happens to be black.”

I think, if we were talking about almost anything else, I’d side with Hattie. But that’s a conundrum with Twenties — because I don’t actually think it’s “good shit.” At least not yet. So now I’m back to Nia’s side, supporting queer black shit just because it is queer black shit… and hoping that this show eventually lives up to the bar that Lena Waithe set from the outset of her career.

I couldn’t figure out if that line was the most self-aware or the least self-aware thing I’d ever heard! What do you think? Should we be supporting Twenties just because it’s queer black shit or….

Carmen: If I knew how to answer that question, I’d go ahead and retire.

You can find Twenties on BET, Wednesdays, 10pm EST.