Author: Benjamin Cheung

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Diasporic Guilt – A Story Book

…[O]ur narratives are not just about guilt, they are about love, resilience, and the quiet courage…to…carry the weight of our past while shaping our present and future selves.

Creators:
Summer Park (She/her)
Rita Lu (She/her)
Tracy Huang (She/her)

Diasporic guilt is a complex and difficult experience – it entails a sense of responsibility to people in the past, present, and future. That sense of responsibility can be for things that one has done, one hasn’t done yet, or one has no control over. Regardless of any combination of these components, diasporic guilt comes for most diasporic individuals. Across three different chapters, Summer, Rita, and Tracy detail the different sources of their diasporic guilt, the different people who are involved, and the different ways in which their diasporic guilt manifests. Despite their different cultural backgrounds and cultural/migration histories, all three ultimately have remarkably similar experiences because ultimately, diasporic guilt comes for most diasporic individuals. What miight have led you to experience your diasporic guilt, and what has that compelled you to do?

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Us Versus Them

[W]hile systemic changes are needed, …there is a lot of meaningful work that can be done at a personal level.

Creators:
Britney Ng 吳碧妍 (She/her)
Kelly Zhang 张薇 (She/her)

While there are commonalities among people with the same cultural/ethnic background, no one culture/ethnicity is a monolith. Everyone has their own individual experiences, preferences, and identities that are unique to others despite their similarities in other domains; however, sometimes these differences create tension even amongst people from the same cultural/ethnic groups. As Britney and Kelly detail in this podcast episode, one of the more insidious ways in coethnic diaspora harm each other, when it’s unity that is needed, is intra-ethnic defensiveness. This leads people to denigrate each other, creating harmful separations and divisions within the community. This often entails the use of othering terms such as “white-washed,” “F.O.B.s,” or even “international students.” What other ways do you think coethnic create divisions within their own communities?


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It’s Not One-Size-Fits-All

Everyone in Canada deserves to have the same access to healthcare.

Creator:
Samantha Wong 黃千殷 (She/her)

Mental health is a challenging concept to grasp at best, and downright seemingly intractable when considering the different layers of issues that can further complicate one’s experience with mental health. Too often, racialized individuals attempting to access mental health support are left with options and practitioners who do not share their cultural backgrounds, views, or practices. Without taking into consideration the numerous ways in which a client forms their identities (whether it’s gender identity or cultural identity), mental health supports simply cannot effectively address the unique needs of those clients. As Samantha details in her letter to her Member of Parliament, it is clear that the current state of mental health support is most effective at providing support for those who belong to the cultural mainstream, leaving racialized (and other marginalized) populations in a worse position to handle their mental health struggles. If it were up to you, what would and equitable mental health care system look like, and what challenges have you seen within the existing mental health care system?

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Make Health Care Accessible to All

Everyone in Canada deserves to have the same access to healthcare.

Creator:
Claire H.

Despite the ideals behind the Canadian healthcare system – that it is universal and accessibile to all, the reality reveals a slightly different scenario. This occurs for numerous reasons, including language barriers and geographical distribution of medical services. This is further complicated by the labyrinthine intersections of local, provincial, and federal approaches to health care provision, which means that any potential solutions will undoubtedly have to be difficult, multi-faceted, and subject to the partnership of all three levels of government despite potentially wildly different political perspectives and goals. In this letter to her Member of Parliament, Claire lays out her perspective of what lie at the heart of inequity in access to health care in Canada, and what may be done about it. Have you, or those around you, experienced difficulty in accessing health care, and how might that be related to people’s varying identities?

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On Asian Canadian Queer Activism

They compel me to fight a little harder for justice – for others like me, and even for myself.

Creator:
Anonymous

One of the most notable aspects about academia in a Western context is in its lack of diversity in terms of the “object” of academic inquiry, such as the lack of discourse around the experiences of various cultural/ethnic communities. This lack of diversity is pervades through various domains of academic study, including that of queerness in Canada. While plenty of work exists to articulate the experiences of LGBTQIA+ individuals within the cultural mainstream, the same cannot be said of those among cultural/ethnic minorities. This dovetails with the activism scene as well, where queer activism has long been seen as representing and benefiting queer White folks, with racialized queer folks feeling increasingly left out of activism spaces. It is then left to racialized queer media to highlight the work of racialized queer activists to showcase the history of work that has been done, and the work that continues to happen. In this paper, the anonymous writer profiles Orientations: Lesbian and Gay Asians, a documentary by Richard Fung, and showcases the struggles, efforts, and resilience that the racialized queer community demonstrated (continues to demonstrate) in Canada. What do you think queer liberation should look like if it were to achieve true equality, and how would queer spaces look different if that were the case?

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Because I Love You

Dahil mahal kita.

Creator:
Sara Laderas (She/her)

One very common experience among Filipino (both home and diasporic) communities is the presence of children living in the Philippines, and the absence of their parents around them, instead being Overseas Foreign Workers (OFWs) in different places around the world such as Canada, the UK, and the UAE. This kind of family arrangement can create immense friction between family members, resentment amongst children who long for their parents, and unsafe social situations for such workers as they become precariously employed overseas with no safety nets to protect them. These stories don’t make it to mainstream consciousness in Western societies; but that lack of exposure belies the extent to which Filipinos (again, both at home and in the diaspora) are affected by this OFW industry. There is a good chance that, in your day-to-day interactions, whether it’s with a nurse, a care-aide, a hospitality staff, or some other professional, you’ve come across an OFW who has a child and other family members waiting for them in the Philippines. I invite you to consider what life circumstances might compel you to take on this risky and difficult journey like them, and how this might impact you.





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Vegetarianism Through a Buddhist Lens

You’re just doing it because that’s what’s trendy among White people.

Creator:
Isabel Huang (She/her)

Dietary choices are often hugely personal, sometimes existing at the intersection of cultural identity, religious identity, and religiosity (among other dimensions). Whereas vegetarianism is an important way of life for many people who follow Buddhism, Sikhi, Hinduism, and other religions in many Asian cultures (particularly in East and South Asian cultures), vegetarianism has sometimes been associated with privilege and Whiteness in Western societies. This can create a conundrum for Asian diaspora growing up in Western societies where practicing vegetarianism for religious reasons may have those reasons be invisibilized, and instead be seen as secular Westernized Asians. Follow Isabel as she reflects on her experience being vegetarian as an East Asian, contemplating her cultural identity, her connections to her cultural community, and the secularization and commercialization of Eastern religious ideas for a Western market. What has been your relationship with your dietary choices, and what led you to eat food the way that you do?

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The Daughter Who Refused to be Silent

This is a story of becoming — not in spite of the silence, but through it.

Creator:
Lavleen Walia ਲਵਲੀਨ ਵਾਲੀਆ

For South Asian women, one cannot escape the clutches of izzat – a cultural concept (akin to “honour”) that dictates nearly ever aspect of their lives including how they carry themselves in the home and in public, who they are friends with, and who their partners are. Moreover, asymmetrical gender expectations in many South Asian communities (including diasporic ones) often mean that South Asian women and girls are held to a much higher standard for maintaining the family’s honour than are South Asian men and boys (who are certainly also subject to expectations based on izzat too). In a series of poems, Lavleen articulates the different ways in which her life (which is stereotypical of many other South Asian Canadian women’s), along with familial interactions and her connection with herself, have all been strongly impacted by izzat. Even if your langauge doesn’t include the concept of izzat, has your life been impacted by a similar concept?


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Perfumes on my Nightstand

Sniff well.

Creator:
K. Siy 施颖洁

We use all sorts of literary devices to describe ourselves and unravel our complex identities and experiences; but have you ever considered how our entire beings might be communicated by perfume? Just like how identities can have layers, complex tones, and sophisticated notes, so, too, can perfumes. In this anthology of poems, K. showcases how complex migration histories, multi-faceted cultural identities, deeply-rooted societal stereotypes, and a fight for individuality can be symoblized by culturally important scent notes such as calamansi zest, creamy ube, star anise, and ylang-ylang. If you were think of the different notes that can describe you in all your complexity, what would they be?


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Other(ed) Body At Home

A myth of the yellow body

Creators:
Royce Uy

The migration process is often hopeful one for everyone involved; but it is also often mired with obstacles – obstacles that have more to do with how others see them than anything that the migrants have done. Over time, the racialization of Asians has come to be intricately entangled with the model minority myth, which has driven wedges between Asians and other racialized minorities, and sometimes even among Asian communities. This is then also complicated by notions of racial essentialism tinged with queerphobia based on contemporary conservative notions of gender and sexuality. Royce’s collection of poems speaks to all of these phenomena, and invites the reader to think about discrimination both from outside and inside of Asian diasporic communities, especially from an intersectional perspective. What kinds of images and emotions do these pomes evoke in your mind?

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