Tag: culture

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Flavours of Home

“Good luck with that!”

Creators:
Megan Kadzirange (she/hers)

One of the biggest tasks that anyone has when leaving home is to find food that reminds one of home – sometimes it’s not an easy task (see the number of Hong Kong-style cafés or Indian restaurants around Vancouver); but sometimes it’s a monumental task. Megan, whose heritage home is in Zimbabwe, created this food journal to document her arduous journey of thinking about what food from home means, and, most importantly, figuring out where to even find the ingredients needed to make all the hometown delicacies so she can feel that warmth and comfort again. From tapping into others in the diasporic Zimbabwean community to using her own resourcefulness, she ultimately succeeds in her plans and cooks up some amazing offerings. What you are craving for something from home, how do you go about getting it?

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But it’s too bitter! 可是太苦了!

[I]t gives them a sense of security and comfort…

Creators:
Jessica Liu 刘润芃 (she/hers)

People who grow up as Asian diasporic children likely have one unifying experience – having their parents push traditional medicine onto them (whether Japanese, Mongolian, Chinese, Indian, Persian, or others), and then having the children subsequently get annoyed, deciding to disavow traditional medicine. Regardless of one’s stance on these traditional forms of medicine, and regardless of the their validity, they all rest on consistent sets of principles. In this booklet, Jessica describes some of the principles underlying traditional Chinese medicine, and shares her personal connections to this ancient form of healthcare by tracing its practice through her family history. Traditional medicines play a huge role in the lives of diasporic folks – what kind of role has it potentially played in yours?

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Depression & Suicide

“[K]eep it in the family”

Creators:
Reeva Bhandal ਰੀਵਾ (she/hers)
Tracy Ngo 吴雯娜 (she/hers)

It is not a secret that Asian diaspora face particular challenges when it comes to mental health, particularly dealing with depression and suicide – both from within their cultures, and outside their cultures. From outside their cultures, they have to deal with a lot of racism, prejudice, and discrimination. Within their cultures, there is also a lot of conservatism and misunderstanding about mental health that prevents effective usage of mental health support. These complex problems require multi-faceted solutions – solutions that can greatly benefit from enough State-level financial support. In this letter to their Member of Parliament, Reeva and Tracy lay out the problems in detail, followed by impressively in-depth and well-researched solutions that they request from the government. Are there any other solutions not on the list that you’d like to see – whether from the government or from Asian diasporic communities?

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ASD in Asian Diasporic Children

A practitioner assessing an Asian child for ASD must be culturally sensitive

Creator:
Rue Adler (she/they)

Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) refers to a range of manifestations of neurodivergence, for which there seems to be a lot of cultural variability in terms of diagnostic and prevalence rates. While the reasons for this might be highly varied, one issue that warrants special attention is whether the diagnostic criteria for ASD are sufficiently culturally sensitive. In other words, the criteria for ASD were created in a Western cultural context, with particular cultural assumptions baked in; but those cultural assumptions might not hold in other cultures, like Asian cultures. Rue’s paper delves into some cultural issues that may pertain to the differential diagnostic rates of ASD, specifically involving Asian diaspora. What kinds of cultural differences do you think may interfere with current diagnostic efforts of ASD among Asian diasporic communities?

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Let’s Get Screened

Acknowledging that there tare cultural narratives around sex is critical

Creator:
Aysan Dehghani (she/hers)

One of the most important public health issues facing a country with a significant immigrant population is addressing sexual health among immigrant women, particularly those from more sexually conservative cultures. Such cultural conservatism, and an overarching cultural environment that treats public health in a culture-blind way, create access barriers for such immigrant women. This severely jeopardizes their sexual health specifically, and overall health more generally. Many cultures within Asian cultural spheres embody such forms of conservatism, which poses challenges for immigrant women from those cultures to have sufficient agency over their own health, especially when cultural perspectives significantly overlap with religious perspectives. Aysan takes on the specific issue of cervical screening and increasing health challenges facing Asian immigrant women in Canada by examining the cultural factors at play. If you were a medical healthcare worker, how might you try to help such patients address their concerns so they can have greater agency over their own health?

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Take care of me when I’m older

[H]ow can filial piety be a double-edged sword in the context of caregivers’ mental health?

Host:
Eunice Lai 黎孝詩 (she/hers)

In this podcast submission, Eunice dives into the concept of filial piety within the context of a Hong Kong Canadian family. In particular, filial piety entails expectations about intergenerational caregiving from someone from a younger generation to someone from an older generation, with common interpretations of it requiring an immense level of self-sacrifice at the expense (or disregard) of one’s own well-being. This kind of caregiver role strain becomes compounded when the caregiver themselves is having to manage other issues and demands on their cognitive capacity on top of caregiving tasks. In Eunice’s case, her father took on a caregiving role for his father; but the stress of that role became exacerbated by her father’s own concerns and emotions surrounding the Hong Kong protests in 2019-2020. How does one navigate such an emotionally difficult situation?

Downloadable file here
Transcript here

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Parallel loss of culture

It is important to support [cultural] neighbourhoods and business to keep them alive

Photographers and Storytellers:
Tamara Chang 陳秀明
Steffi Lau 劉晴昕

In a stroke of creative and artistic brilliance, Chang and Lau use their cameras as witnesses to the changing faces of two geographically disparate but culturally linked places – Hong Kong and Vancouver. Despite their distance and being on two different continents, the two cities are inextricably interlinked through history, culture, and migration – in both directions. Through these beautiful photographs, Chang and Lau weave a thought-provoking narrative that compels readers to consider how development, gentrification, and in some ways, capitalism, are pushing traditional and cultural neighbourhoods to the brink in both cities. With painful histories and rebellious resilience evident in both spaces, how do we go about protecting these spaces that have fostered and contributed to the growth of their respective cities?

Click on the following to reveal the photography project (Note: PDF viewer not compatible with some mobile platforms; but it is available for download or to view via mobile PDF viewers)

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