Toronto, Canada Claudia Yang (@blueinhername) is a multidisciplinary earth being processing life cycles through writing, performance and reconnecting with lineage. She was born + raised on unceded Coast Salish Territories to Hong Kong parents, now currently residing in Tkaronto.
0 Comments
Connecticut, USA
This morning I awake to birdsong outside my 6th-floor window and think about the springs of my childhood. On a run around my neighborhood, the trees are itching with pink and brown buds. Moss bursts in flurries of green and gray. I feel close to the colors of life. I feel close to these memories of insistent living, the birds with their oblivious music in the early morning. I text many of my friends, wishing them well, asking them to call. (I don’t know how to ask to be held, and it feels more inappropriate than ever.) As morning becomes noon, the cold sunlight of late March seems as good a greeting as any. How to dial a phone line through to life itself? How to send a voice memo to the sky? I start to make a list of things I’d like to share with someone on a walk someday in the future: an old, creaking house on Orange St. The open square the overflows with sunlight in midmorning. Some music: Modern Love, Come On Eileen, Daydreaming. I try to make do with dancing with the birds. Ananya Kumar-Banerjee is a third-year undergraduate studying Ethnicity, Race & Migration at Yale. My writing has appeared in Hyphen Mag, Paper Darts, the Indiana Review Online, and Pank, among other places. Bay Area, USA
There’s a few reasons why I might sleep under the covers with her. Sometimes because it is a bit chilly. Sometimes because she winds down like she is swimming through something thick. She stands in front of the bathroom sink a long time, with the cabinet open. Nights like that, her eyes are too shiny. I climb up and put my two front feet on her and she understands. She lifts the blankets and I burrow underneath, to lie down with my spine along her leg and sleep. I follow her all day, because as long as I follow her, she will keep going. She counted the cans in the garage again. She wrote numbers on the cans of food in the garage. Every morning, she picks one can and brings it inside and washes it in the sink. She eats from that can three times then throws it away. It’s been many days now that she stays at home with me. She used to turn on the radio before she left me, all alone, in the house, but she has not turned on the radio in many days. We used to go out the big door for walks but we haven’t left through the big door in many days. I sit up and put my front foot on her arm. Look at me. I pulled on her arm. Look at me. She didn’t. I will try to remember for later, tonight I should sleep under the covers with her. Lydia Kim is a writer and strategist born in Korea, residing in the Bay Area, horribly worried about the point of convergence, overwhelmingly grateful. Texas, USA
We celebrated Navroz indoors this year. The congregation leaders scrambled in primaveral panic to compose a virtual celebration and performance. It was the first time I slept in on a 21st of March; the sun persisted despite the homebody beginning of spring, and the new year, scuppered by the virus, began anyway too. I began the year wistful and touch-starved, texting “Navroz Mubarak” to family on WhatsApp and praying my Dadi and Dada would be safe in Karachi. May Allah bless us all and keep us safe, we prayed. Ameen, we replied. Personally, I am still trying to believe. The boy is Hindu, and his father just found out I am Muslim. Even if the virus was not lingering in all the corners of our packages, chairs, and doorknobs, we would distance. This is another kind of sickness, perhaps. When my father gets home, he puts his shoes in a plastic bag and walks straight into the shower — he doesn’t want the virus chasing him from the clinic to our home. He watches the news dutifully, and then asks for Disney. This is how the new year began: with our street-sick bodies home, and spring too far away. Sarosh Nandwani (@saroshnandwani) is a mechanical engineer and anthropologist. She reads for Anomalous Press, Periwinkle Literary Magazine, and the Longleaf Review, and is a contributor for Royal Rose Magazine. New York, USA Chaelee Dalton (@chaetrain) is a Korean-American transnational adoptee poet, educator, and activist.
Vienna, Austria Weina Zhao (@hamamelismollis) is an Austrian-Chinese filmmaker. Her directorial debut Weiyena - The Long March Home deals with her family history, transgenerational trauma and transnational identity.
New York, USA Vanessa Nguyen (@nessafiesta on Instagram) is a Vietnamese illustrator based in Brooklyn, New York. More spam/work can be found on nessanguyen.net
Hong Kong
Allergens I could smell typical summertime humidity as soon as the plane landed. Rain in Hong Kong feels different from that in London, where showers are frequent though subtle enough for Londoners to care little about holding an umbrella. But rain at home is heavy and suffocating. It is reminiscent of frizzy ponytails in teenage days. It is reminiscent of black t-shirts soaked in sweat and rainwater on a gloomy morning in Admiralty. On the long haul home, I wore a pair of yellow rubber gloves to avoid touching anything in the cabin. I was on a strict fast over twelve hours of flying for the same reason, but hunger was something I could deal with and compensate for. There were things I could not. My palms sweated so much some skin was peeling off from the tips of my fingers. A pair of sunburnt-looking hands except that they smelled of cheap plastic. There were red rashes on my wrist too as the 3-cm-wide tracking wristband suffocated my already sensitive pores. Last summer, I spoke to three doctors about my allergic limbs but none of them was able to offer anything other than steroid. Skin allergy was something I knew I had to grapple with once I came home to humid typhoon weather, remains of tear gas in every morsel of the uneasy summer breeze, and a high level of depression simply breathing the air of tyranny. It is a reminder of who and where I am and a vehicle for unspoken trauma to articulate itself. Harmony Yuen (@harmonyyuen) is a Hong Konger. She writes, translates, and curates. London, United Kingdom To be honest, repetition has been a reoccurring theme for me - it's something that pops up again and again in my own creative projects and drawings. But staying stuck in my flat, documenting the choreography of my repeated movements from room to room...it shines a new light on how it feels when it governs all my motions for a number of days.
Sophie Cook is a designer and creative living and working in London. San Jose, USA
A list of things I should have done before shelter-in-place: gotten my hair cut; waxed my brows; hugged a friend; visited my parents; said goodbye to thatha. * By strange coincidence, amma and Dad both unexpectedly ended up in India. Dad was there when thatha had a stroke, fell down, struck his head. The last week of February, amma traveled to Bangalore; thatha was in the ICU, in a coma. He died a week later. That day, a strange, fluttery twitch started in my brain. Like it was full of moths. Dad had asked me when I was planning on visiting India. He’d said people were getting old. I avoided it and avoided it, and now who knows if it will happen. Amma told me she plans to stay in India for a few months at least. There are funeral rites to take care of and grandma needs her more than we do. A week later, amma sends me photos of my cousin’s engagement ceremony. Dad doesn’t know what the big deal is, but most of the flights out of India have been canceled anyway and yesterday India issued a nationwide 21-day lockdown. People are saying Tamil Nadu won’t be as affected by the virus because it’s so hot here, amma says. I feel like screaming. * I keep wondering, where does my voice belong in all of this? People are saying the world will never be the same again so I think I should be writing all of this down. Remembering. Observing. Processing. Synthesizing. I am frozen with a sense of urgency. Archana Madhavan (@chanamuu) is an Indian American writer and translator. She’s writes about mental health, language & identity, and diversity in tech. Her work can be found at archanawrites.com. |
STAY HOME DIARYan online archive of diary entries by Asian artists and writers, recording our lives from March to April 2020. |