Category: Literary Art

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Reflecting on Migration

The strum of cascading xylophones are my parents FaceTiming us 7pm our time, 10am their time.

Creators:
Agatha Chiu 趙倩怡 (She/her)

Migration is often seen as a pathway to a better life – a chance to leave behind troubles at home, difficulties in one’s current circumstance, and burdens from one’s family. Unfortunately, the realities of migration are often very different from those that people imagine. Loneliness. Homesickness. Missing family. Missing food. Acculturation. Many things. People engage in all kinds of artistic pursuits to express their migration experiences. In this series of poems, Agatha details her own experiences of migration – whether it’s about trying to connect with family back home, or finding her place in this new culture by navigating a lot of self-doubt and lack of belongingness. Do her experiences resonate with you as well if you have a migration history?

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“Ten Years” Later…

Seeing all this unfold, I feel guilty that I can’t fully participate in the protests.

Creators:
Amber Lee 李瑋翹 (she/her)
Stephy Tsang

One of the most memorable and monumental moments in Hong Kong in recent history were the Anti-Extraditional Law Amendment Bill protests in 2019-2020; but that is only the latest installment of a history of protests and demonstrations in what had been a healthy democratic society in Hong Kong. The previous protests in Hong Kong were in 2014, more popularly referred to as the Umbrella Movement, which pushed for more democratic electoral reforms in Hong Kong, which went against that which was decided by the Mainland Chinese government. Much like in the 2019 protests, the 2014 protests saw violence against protestors perpetrated by the police and other pro-Establishment (i.e. pro-Beijing) groups. All of this has been seen as the quiet encroachment of China’s political influence on Hong Kong’s politics and civics, leading to the film called Ten Years. In their piece, Amber and Stephy co-wrote a series of fictional diary entries of two youngsters who went through the 2019 protests, watched Ten Years, and are reflecting on how accurate the movie was in depicting the backward slide of Hong Kong’s political landscape over the ten years since the 2014 protests. If you’ve watched the film as well, how prescient do you feel the film to be? (Note: The video plays very rapidly. When watching it, please pause with each screen to fully read and appreciatge this work).

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Astronaut Monsters

I am Taiwanese Canadian; the order of those words does not matter, and I get to pick and choose the best of both worlds.

Creator:
Carolyn Wang 王郁庭 (she/her)

A common experience among Hong Kong diaspora (but also other diasporic groups) is to be part of an astronaut family: a type of family configuration in which a parent move back to their place of origin while the rest of the family remains in the new home. The goal is for the parent who moved back to earn more money than they would if they had stayed in the new environment, allowing the family to have more money and purchasing power. Despite such advantages, this is an immensely stressful arrangement for everyone involved: The parent who went “home” becomes isolated from the rest of the family for an extended period of time; the parent who stays is forced to play multiple roles as the sole parent in the home, and the child(ren) end(s) up experiencing a significant lack of parental support from one parent. Altogether, these dynamics often lead to fraught relationships between family members, leading to conflict and even marital dissolution. Carolyn’s poem is an emotionally powerful account of her experience within an astronaut family and lots of other diasporic experiences that many other migrants have also had. What might allow for greater psychological and relational resilience between and within family members in astronaut families?

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