Some of you may have noticed that fascinasiansblog.com no longer links to a working website.
I’ve been so lucky these past years to have been involved with a community so warm, so open, and so supportive. I really could not have gotten to where I am in life now without Fascinasians and I owe many many many of my friends to that blog.
However, as I dive deeper into working with the awesome people at 18 Million Rising and focus on life (taxes? vacation days? 3 cats? wut) it’s time to let Fascinasians go. I’m keeping the Tumblr, but probably won’t be updating it much anymore. I’m still online though, and I’ll be lurking around.
If you’re interested in bringing me to your campus or organization to speak, email juliet@18millionrising.org!
I could probably write essays upon essays about how meaningful Fascinasians has been to me and how large of an impact it’s had on my life. But…some things are better left unsaid. Thank you for learning with me, for teaching me, for guiding me. I love you all so, so much and I will forever be grateful for what Tumblr and Fascinasians have given me.
Thanks for a good run and an amazing 4 (almost 5) years.
On the evening of July 26, Zachary Hammond pulled into the parking lot of a Hardee’s in Seneca, South Carolina. Seated next to him was a young woman who had arranged to meet someone there to sell a bag of weed. It’s unclear what Hammond knew about the transaction, but neither the 19-year-old nor his passenger had any idea that the buyer was actually an undercover police officer. Moments later, another officer fatally shot Hammond.
?????????
The crazy thing about this story is that it seems to me that black people are more concerned about it than white people are & if that’s not irony, idk what is.
this some crazy shit
I heard about this a little while ago and I questioned why all the people who be like “UM SO WHAT ABOUT WHITE PEOPLE WHO GET SHOT BY POLICE?!?? #ALLLIVESMATTER” suddenly disappeared.
It’s only all lives matter when they tryna shut down black lives matter. They don’t give a fuck about no one tbh.
Join youth leaders from across New York City for the 2015 Chinatown Beautification Day (CBD) and Youth Conference! The two-day event consists of a conference day followed by a clean-up day and will take place the weekend of August 8th-9th.Registration for both days is completely free, and lunch will be provided.
Did you know that Asian American women have the highest suicide rate among all young adult and adolescent women? Join us this July in learning more about how mental health affects different minority communities.
If you’re a multilingual Asian or Pacific Islander American, you grew up knowing this fact. You’ve provided a vital link for limited English speakers in your family by translating newspapers, medical forms, and more. We sometimes forget the power of language, but we know what it makes possible – family stories, cultural heritage, and participating in a democracy.
We’re 18MR.org, and we’re building a solution to overcome language barriers and intimidation facing voters who are more capable and confident discussing complex ideas in their native language. It’s a translation matching app called VoterVOX – one part civic tech, one part grassroots organizing, and three parts cultural connection.
It’s the first app for human-centered voting, and you can help us bring it to life.
Shouldn’t democracy already be accessible to everyone?
Right now, our election system is messy and discriminatory.
Imagine voting as a new citizen. It might take years after coming to the United States in order to become eligible to vote. On election day, you make it to your polling place and make it through the line – only to receive an English-language ballot that you can’t figure out. You don’t know exactly what you’re voting for, or how to correctly fill it in. Poll workers give you the cold shoulder because they can’t really understand you, either.
Frustrated and intimidated, you give up your political voice.
Even if you’re fluent in English, struggling with bureaucracy is real. Add the layer of a language barrier, and it becomes nearly impossible. Voting is particularly difficult, and since Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) voters speak so many different languages and dialects, they are at special risk of being excluded.
We know that people with limited English proficiency are just as smart or smarter than people who are fluent in English – some may be our family elders. And AAPI voters want to vote, but they face barriers at every step. According to a 2012 exit poll from the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund, nearly 1 in 4 Asian Americans prefer to vote with help from an interpreter or translated materials. And while the Voting Rights Act mandates translated voting ballots and materials, it’s only sometimes enforced, and only applies to districts with a “significant” number of citizens, determined by the Census. Meanwhile, the last Census is already 5 years out of date, and AAPIs are the fastest-growing racial demographic. The American Community Survey estimates the number of AAPIs who speak English less than fluently at nearly 7 million individuals.
We can bridge the gap by connecting bilingual volunteers around culture and community.
Our project creates grassroots, scalable access to democracy in every language.
We’re designing VoterVOX as a matching app that connects bilingual AAPI volunteers with limited English speakers so that every eligible voter gets access to a ballot and voting information in their language.
VoterVOX is also a model for bridging generation gaps and digital divides. Through partnerships with community-based organizations, we reach limited English speakers where they’re at, places like libraries and grocery stores and social centers, and help them sign up for translation in-person. No smartphone or computer class necessary!
Here’s how VoterVOX works:
Let’s say you’re fluent in English and Vietnamese, and you value the wisdom elders share with you. You get the VoterVOX app and it connects you to a person that local community partners identify as needing assistance. You meet them at a library to help translate their ballot and hear stories. You say goodbye to your new friend, and they send their mail-in ballot themselves (because that is the law). Democracy!
In grassroots organizing, one-to-one connections like these are the building block of strong, healthy communities. And by uploading your ballot translation and jargon clarification, VoterVOX makes the effort that much easier for the next volunteer.
We’re 18MR.org, and we strengthen grassroots power with technology!
My earliest memories of even thinking I might be depressed were met
with warnings by my mother that if I ever dare seek professional help
for depression, even as a kid, my employers would one day find out and
fire me. It did bother me that being depressed-but-employed versus
happy-and-unemployed was the better of the two (and only two) options,
but I heeded her advice and never sought professional help. God forbid
anyone know I was once a crazy 12-year old kid.
So I hid it for years. And not very well. Even into my college years,
I managed to turn club meetings, sleepovers, friendships and intimate
relationships into my own impromptu therapy sessions. Anything to avoid
the stigma of actually seeking professional help! When I introduced
myself to a circle of new friends, somehow unsolicited emotional clutter
would always spill out with it. Sometimes my friends were halfway
decent at playing Freud, but very often, they were so mired in their own
messy lives that my problems just exhausted them.
In high school, my best friend was a white girl named Siobhan. She
told me about her therapist. How much her therapist listened to her. How
much her therapist loved her. I wanted a therapist to listen to me and
love me too. But I didn’t have $50 an hour to pay for that kind of love.
Instead, I settled for casually asking for help from friends who would
jokingly dismiss me with: “You’re a crazy weirdo, Kristina Wong.”
Being called a “crazy weirdo” was enough for me to not show signs of
weakness again. So I’d call out other people as “crazy.” I decided that
as long as I could call somebody else crazy, I was doing just fine.
Siobhan didn’t seem to care that one day she would be found out as crazy
and never get hired for a job. Somehow, she passed off her crazy as
cool. In fact, she relished in being “the bad girl with the shrink.” I
think Siobhan fed off the energy of everyone thinking she was the so bad
she needed help. Being handed the brand of “bad girl” was easier than
trying to carve out her own identity.
In retrospect, it may not have even been that I was actually
clinically depressed. I think I was just very isolated in a
predominantly Chinese American community that shunned ever talking about
anything that might be going wrong. My family was so insistent that I
project only the best that during car rides en route to family
engagements, my parents prepped me with which highlights of my life to
talk about with the rest of our family. It was as if I was a political
candidate being prepped for a campaign speech. Except, the people voting
for me were from my own family.
I was constantly being introduced by my accomplishments (“This is
Kristina, she wins trophies and has a perfect GPA”). This confirmed that
the only value I had to the world was my net worth. I was never
introduced as who I was… because who was I but my accomplishments? I was
living in a fictitious world where the only life worth living seemed to
be the one that moved along a specific storyline of success. Simply, I
was a living cliché of Asian American teenhood: Get good grades, go to
the best college, go to the best med school, marry a Chinese doctor, buy
the biggest house on the block, and then have Chinese doctor babies.
Supposedly, after that storyline was complete, I would be successful.
And successful would equate happiness. Nevermind how unhappy the whole
journey was because how could a six figure income and a Chinese doctor
husband not make anyone happy? Right? Right?! Nobody talked about what
would happen if I diverged from this storyline, but I could only imagine
the worst…. Poverty! Obscurity! A single woman surrounded by cats! I
lived in so much fear of failure and struggled to both meet an
unrealistic prescription of success. I’d break down crying over the
unwritten fate that lay ahead if I failed my parents’ expectations. The
misery was becoming undeniable even in high school. I went to a Catholic
all-girls school in San Francisco. At the start of religion class, we
could go around and set an intention for prayer. Girls would pray for
relatives dying of cancer or the victims of the Oklahoma City bombing.
I’d pray for God to bring me the same thing in rain or shine: “Please
God, help the babies dying of cancer and whatever, but especially help
me ace that Trig test!”
Photo credit: Corky Lee
Now I’m a grown woman and I’ve learned that having a liberal arts
degree does not cause you to self-destruct the moment you graduate. And
as evidenced by many of my fellow Asian Americans thriving in a whole
range of professions, there is indeed, life outside of medical school.
And no, you won’t get fired from your job for having gone to therapy at
12, 32 or 65. In fact, I’ve learned you can actually make a career out
of addressing the crazy that nobody will talk about in graphic detail. I
am now gainfully self-employed as a solo performer and writer. I tour
the country and make a living talking about all the things I never got
to talk about as a kid, in front of packed audiences.
It is no cake life to make a living as a performer and writer. I keep
late hours, often wonder where my next paycheck is coming from, and I
have an extremely difficult time assuring the people I am dating that
they will not be part of my shows.
I implode… on stage, and people pay to see it. For the most part,
unlike implosions in real life, I can put myself back together again. My
show Wong Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
addresses the stigma and shame around depression and suicide among
Asian American women. Asian American women have some of the highest
rates of depression and suicide in this country. It’s the kind of
factoid that simultaneously shocks some and seems intimately right to
others.
In the show, I critique the insanely unrealistic pressures some Asian
American women have to please everyone and the dangerous cultural
pressure to hide that anything is going wrong. In the show I use the
“Dramatic arc of Fiction” to critique the fictitious lives women like me
were expected to live out. It’s been a wonderful poetic justice to take
a whole lifetime of angst and confusion and find a way to channel it
into something creative.
In my talking to women about their depression and getting audience
feedback after my shows, I didn’t anticipate how many women would “out”
themselves as depressed and suicidal. Nor did I anticipate that so many
of these women would be the women I thought least likely to show their
vulnerability. They were professors, professionals, and community
leaders. Where were these emotionally open women in high school? Would
our lives have been less depressing if we knew we each other more
honestly? What if we could have been so vulnerable with each other?
Would this problem even persist?
I feel this so hard. I’ve struggled with depression and suicidal thoughts since adolescence and even though we “talk” about mental illness a lot, it still doesn’t quite feel like we’re talking about it. We can spout statistics and facts and studies, but we also need to openly destigmatize depression and mental illness.
Honestly – sometimes it’s okay to not be okay. It’s okay to feel what you (and I) feel, and it’s good to talk to others and get help. What feels like the end is not the end.
When we have failed at solidarity work we often retreat, struggling to convince ourselves that this is indeed the work we have been called on to do. The fact of the matter is that there is no other work but the work of creating and re-creating ourselves within the context of community. Simply put, there is no other work. It took five hundred years, at least in this hemisphere, to solidify the division of things that belong together. But it need not take us another five hundred years to move ourselves out of this existential impasse. Spirit work does not conform to the dictates of human time, but it needs our courage, revolutionary patience, and intentional shifts in consciousness so that we can anchor the struggle for social justice within the ample space of the erotic.
M. Jacqui Alexander, “Remembering ‘This Bridge Called My Back’, Remembering Ourselves,” Pedagogies of Crossing
The human body’s ability to experience and endure pain is at
once beautiful and terrifying.
Some pain we cover up with bandages and wait, slowly feeling
it fade underneath and harden into a scar.
Some pain we turn into anger and use it to power ourselves
and provide amplification for our voices.
Some pain we hide away because it is so deeply intertwined
with shame and regret, there’s no way to fully process it.
I’ve seen it reflected in my mother’s eyes from across the
room one night, with the sun slowly stretching up after a night out. I was
sixteen and wildly infatuated with the idea of assimilating through rebellion.
Her, sitting on the bed wholly defeated with red rims around her swollen eyes.
Me, wearing a glittery top and covered in fluorescent paint.
I expected anger, screaming, even violence. I had acted out,
gotten caught, and it was time to face the consequences. But when the silence
filled the room and left no space for anything else, my instinct to fight back
curled up somewhere in my chest and disappeared. My grandfather, my yeye, was
in his last days. I knew this, but it was a kind of knowledge that I only
briefly acknowledged and then archived away.
He was the man who helped raise me as a baby, who let me tie
his thinning hair into ponytails that looked like palm trees. We would sip our
coconut milk together out of the black cans in Shanghai, sometimes treating
ourselves to a simple block of vanilla ice cream. There are photos, but no memories, of us
napping together in an armchair. My tiny body a boat floating on his ocean.
It was the time of my life when I wanted to be known for
being bad. I stood there, eyes downcast on my paint-splattered legs barely
covered by fishnets, and felt true shame for the first time. I think I saw my
mother cry but to this day, I’m not sure. I try to recall the memories from
those years and struggle – knowing that I locked them away to try and forget.
Some pain we put in a box and seal it, hoping that it never
resurfaces. It does though, it always does. It seeps out from the crevices of
my grandfather’s tombstone when I clean it with water and a cloth. It’s there
in the lines around my mother’s smile when we pose for a picture – never sure
if we should smile because he loved us or look sad because he’s gone.
Yeye turns 100 this year. My mother turns 60. I am 23.
7 years ago, I should have apologized. I’ve kept it buried
deep inside me, doing my best every day to make up for that night, that year,
that era.
Today I let it go – not because I want to forget, but
because I know that I’m living his legacy now. The pain has turned into a scar,
reminding me always of what’s important in this life.
Hi – it would be great if you could post this. I can send you photos of the authors quoted. I tried to insert one photo, but I don’t think it worked. Thanks. Helen
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The new anthology, TALKING BACK: VOICES OF COLOR, edited by Nellie Wong (Red Letter Press, $15.00), features a number of LGBTQ authors whose writings address the whole universe of issues that affect their lives, families and communities. From education to police violence, immigration to social justice movements, cultural critiques to employment battles, these queers of color show that their struggles will not be resolved by a simple wedding band. Their issues of concern cannot be boiled down to just one or two simple demands, and as Norma Gallegos says, “We go to the mat for everything we are.”
From an activist in the fight to save City College of San Francisco from closure:
“One of the learning services that was eliminated [at City College of San Francisco] was called the Gender Diversity Project. We made presentations on campus about the importance of safety for transgender and non-gender-conforming students. The class was such a success in discussing safety that many stayed in the group after they were no longer paid. What City College used to have, the inherent essence of what has changed so many lives for those who were able to attend, was that it was quality, affordable, public education — inclusive to the working-class community in the Bay Area. Due to these cuts and attacks, that which made City College has been damaged… “We as a community refuse to allow our school to be taken from us, we refuse to allow these walls or attacks to diminish us, and we will continue to face the problematic changes being implemented on our school. City College belongs to us and though the fight for it will be tough, we will not stand down.” –Duciana Thomas
The words of a queer Salvadoran immigrant:
“Capitalism blames gay marriage for destroying families. I blame capitalism! Families are separated daily on both sides of the border because of desperate economic conditions created by so-called free trade agreements like CAFTA and NAFTA that benefit only those at the top. In countries like El Salvador it is difficult enough to find work that pays a living wage. Harder if you’re older than 35. And forget about it all together if you’re a woman over 35. “More and more, the only way out is for people to emigrate to where the jobs are. When they arrive they are often treated as subhuman invaders. “…I never expected to learn so much, so fast, about the social conditions and hidden history that affect my daily life — where I come from as a woman, as a Salvadoran immigrant, as a queer person of color.” –Karla Alegria
The “disappearance” of queers from a book on Black women’s activism:
“Fabulous history fills Want to Start a Revolution? Radical Women in the Black Freedom Struggle … Profiled are indomitable, courageous Black women leaders of the 1930s through the 1970s who provided the organizing backbone in many movements… “[But] it is appalling that a book published in 2009 doesn’t give credit to the Black lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender movement and its leaders for theorizing a Black revolutionary feminist program. Pat Parker was ignored completely. Audre Lorde is referred to primarily as a poet. And the Combahee River Collective is mentioned briefly, without saying they were Black lesbian feminists — who explicitly stated the need for a socialist revolution that is feminist and anti-racist. “This omission is all the more unfortunate because of the many militant queers who, due to their rock-bottom social status, devoted their lives to the movements the book discusses but could not be ‘out’ at the time.” –Merle Woo
A groundbreaking fight against discrimination at University of California – Berkeley in the 1980s:
“Our next step was to file complaints in federal and state courts charging violation of my free speech rights and discrimination based on race, sex, sexuality and political ideology. Students, unionists, and community activists supported my case. But there was opposition too. Some Asians, women, and gays hated my radicalism. Some feminists were racist and some labor bureaucrats didn’t see discrimination as a labor issue. But we refused to compromise on any of the issues or to be limited by an identity politics approach. This was our strength.” –Merle Woo
The satisfaction of finding one’s political home:
“I was hungry for revolutionary politics that were feminist and spoke to who I was: Chicana, queer, poor, and a born-and-raised San Francisco city gal. “… Socialist feminism dismantles patriarchal, racist, sexist, and homophobic institutions. It gives us the power to educate, learn, live, breathe, eat, sleep, work, love and take care of each other.” –Norma Gallegos
Along with their other co-authors, queer and straight, of all colors and backgrounds, these genuine, committed and engaging individuals have much to share. You will enjoy being part of the conversations in TALKING BACK: VOICES OF COLOR.
I’m so tired and so not ready to take my 7AM flight to New York tomorrow for a whole bunch of reasons, but if you’re reading this – thank you. I know I’ve really slowed down my posting, forgot to renew my domain, and have more or less switched over fully to 18mr but I love y’all.
Seriously. So much love.
Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about the internet, community, relationships, and how we all kind of found each other and you know what? Everything I learned and all the people I’ve met originated from here. The little Asian Tinychat groups, the ridiculous black lists, the conversations that made us snap in solidarity at 2AM…everything.
Grateful for y’all. Support tnproject if you can. Life is good.
