Letter from the Editors
words by Jasmine Wang & Wendy Gao, art by Jenna Clare Trinidad
Dear Reader,
Many societies have creation or origin stories about the beginnings of this world. Listen—can you hear them? Storytellers and elders whisper to sleepy children, balanced on knees and sitting cross-legged on floors, the saga of the great Korean gods Mireuk and Seokga battling over an ocean of flowers; the mighty Vietnamese god Thần Trụ Trời building a stone pillar to divide heaven and earth; the Buddhist deity Lama stirring water, wind, and fire to forge life. We have been listening to them our whole lives, straining to hear and chasing after them in dreams.
One of the oldest cosmologies in the world is the Chinese myth of nothing existing before qì (breath, air). The tale goes that qì was the life that gave way to yīn and yáng, darkness and light, negative and positive, absence and presence. From binaries, our world was wrought.
Like the world, many of us were chiseled into existence from binaries. We know two-ness all too well. We slipped into roles as “Asian” or “American” based on the time and place, spoke English at school or our mother tongues at home, and delivered strict gender performances as “boy” or “girl.” Like children recoiling from fire, we memorized the boundaries that boxed us in after learning to cross them was to get burned.
These are the stories that fed us as we grew. Fed to us as we grew. Fed to make us grow a certain way. But we know that to exist as people of color, queer people, and migrants and refugees is to live outside, between, and in the midst of the very categories and structures that seek to erase our existence. This issue, our artists and authors take up Binaries and imagine breaking them open and cobbling together a world from the pieces.
Cayla Celis opens this issue with a return to a story of creation in her fictional reimagination of the pregnancy and birth of Christ in her piece, “Mary: Revisited.” Binaries collide as child becomes mother, pain consumes joy, and nightmares swallow daydreams. Evelyn Pak also attempts to reconcile the tension between mother and daughter in her fictional piece “Letters Never Sent Home.”
In her poem, “A Question on Where I Belong,” Aliza Susatijo also returns to family, now as a stranger in her own home, to ruminate on past closeness and present distance. Sarayu Kurra takes a different perspective on home in her fictional horror story “mansion noise,” exploring a home shattered, a family corrupted, a flame extinguished.
While binaries often pull at us like taffy, a few of our writers explore how contradictions can sometimes build intimacy. Melanie Chuh writes a piece to her best friend “In Every Universe,” grateful for the love her best friend has given her—a love that resonates across the cosmos. Bhavyasri Suggula also writes a love letter to her little sister, “better in stereo.” She reminds us that although our reflection is our complete opposite, we are still one despite our dissimilarities. Vaidehi Bhardwaj’s poem “MIRЯOЯ” experiments with form, twoness, and the weight of displaced longing lingering in the air.
Mia Tan searches for answers to the question of duality that many young Asian Americans feel—are we “Asian” or are we “American?” In her piece, “On the Invisible: a Conversation with Songhan Pang,” we come to realize that our identities are not so concretely defined. To exist as Asian Americans is to make a home in the sliver of space between “Asian” and “American.” Our relationship to our identity is one of both/and.
Adrian Alora also returns to his identity and his own coming of age story in his piece “IMDb Reviews About Myself.” The reviews leave us begging for some Hollywood directors to actually adapt their life into the blockbuster of the century.
Binaries are oppositional yet complimentary. One cannot exist without the other. As Cayla revisits the beginnings of life, Wendy Gao looks forward and envisions its end in her elegy “in death, for life.” Perhaps in death, we do not part. Jasmine Wang closes our issue with her fictional piece “The Shower” about a girl who is desperate to cleanse her body. She builds on this issue’s religiosity, questioning what is impure as she shines a divine light on grotesque shadows.
This issue is filled with stories that don’t fit into any one black-or-white binary—ones that revel in the gray and every color between. These are stories about families that speak Taglish, about best friends that form imperfect hand hearts, about moments that give birth to both pain and joy. Armed with these tales, we doused our cages with oil and fire and discovered that we had wings to fly all along. At the feet of our elders and the storytellers of old, we learned that we were never meant to be two. We are many things, not least peoples born from stories and clothed in legends, made to make the world see us in our glorious, fractured, beautiful chaos. This issue is our molding of creation, life, being, and aliveness from qì. May it breathe new life into yours.
To accompany your stroll through this issue, here is our playlist of songs that inspired our creative staff. We hope it inspires you as well. As always, we would like to thank our writers and artists—Angeline Phan, Hannah Nguyen, Jenna Clare Trinidad, Katherine Shi, Mariam Seshan, Sana Friedman, Tori Ochave, and Vivian Ho—for their hard work and heart that they’ve gifted this issue. Even more, we are beyond amazed by their unreal collaboration that has made this one the best yet. And our final thank you goes to you, reader. During this season of gratitude, we would like to extend ours to you for your relentless encouragement and loyalty.
With all our love,
Wendy and Jasmine
