Rhena Writes

Tag: books

  • No more waiting for permission…

    Approximately 25 years ago, I moved to Thailand, my dad’s country of origin to teach English in his hometown at his old junior high school. After about a year of doing that, I taught students at Karenni Refugee Camp #3 on the border of Thailand and Burma (or actually, the region of SE Asia that Burma was attempting to occupy, thereby creating the need for refugee camps). I returned to the US after a total of three years in Thailand and started an MFA program in creative nonfiction writing.

    My thesis was about the Karenni, some of their history and some of their stories, and centered around my time as a teacher in the refugee camp. My hope was that my thesis would lead to a published book or at least some essays and articles. I did end up writing and publishing an article for a local alt-weekly and one piece in a SE Asian studies journal after I finished my MFA. (Both were about the Karenni people.) All these twenty years later, I’m still performing a post-mortem on my writing “career”, more specifically, what happened to my thesis and pursuing this topic?

    Here’s a bottom line that I’ve reached: these (largely untold)stories are important. And also this: I’m tired of waiting around to get “permission” to tell this stories. I’m tired of writing and rewriting and revising and guessing at what the gatekeepers (yes, in publishing) want to see in order to publish these stories. And I’m also tired of holding myself back on sharing these stories and truths.

    I’ve been reading Faith Adiele‘s Meeting Faith and this weekend I was lucky enough to be able to take a workshop with her. Her first book was about her time as a Buddhist nun in Northern Thailand, not too far from where I lived in the refugee camp. I’ve learned a lot from her book and her workshop about storytelling. As a result, I’ve been thinking a bit about telling stories about Thailand and also about living in places as an “outsider” and especially as a person in a position of privilege (as I was in Karenni Refugee Camp 3). In addition, Faith taught my fellow writers and me about how to unearth some of these stories from our past. As these things go, right away, I was dreaming about people in the refugee camp, recalling events that I had long ago forgotten.

    Here is one of them.

    I worked from time to time with a young Karenni woman (I’m going to call her Marie here) who was often charged with interacting with English-speaking foreigners. Her English was excellent and she’d grown up in places that were frequently visited by tourists (yes, there were parts of the camp that were open to outsiders because the women there were an “attraction” because of some of their cultural practices; but I’ll have to tell that story some other time). In any case, I ended up connecting her with a journalist from a big US news magazine program. The two of us took this journalist and her camera people around to visit a few different villages over the course of a few days. Marie served as interpreter and was also filling in a lot of the background and historical context. During the course of it, the journalist apparently noticed that Marie often wore make-up. If I recall correctly, she made promises to be in touch with Marie again. And some point, the journalist mentioned sending her a gift from the states. A few weeks later, I was chatting with Marie, getting caught up with her when she mentioned that the journalist had sent her make-up from the states. And it turns out it was used lipsticks, shades that the journalist no longer found fashionable.

    In my dream, I saw Marie and there was a table-full of used make-up that had been set out for people to use.

    Here’s the point at which I feel as though I need to make sense of this story. I need to extract some sort of lesson about how people behave towards one another and the ideas of “need” and “gifts”. But, well, I’m just going to trust that I can send this story out into the world and it will end up where it needs to be. And that it won’t require my further input, evaluation, and assessment. In other words, I’m not going to participate in gatekeeping these stories.

  • On receiving (yet another) rejection

    I think I’m up to nearly thirty “nos” on writing submissions over the past couple of years. And not a single “yes” from someone other than myself. I’m not going to sugar coat anything here: it’s rough to receive all those rejections. I’ve had more than one time when I’ve just felt like giving up. How have I not?

    1. I have a writing community now, to boost me up and keep me focused on what’s important when I receive another rejection. For a long time I was going at it without any real community support and that was when I pretty much gave up on submitting. I joined my community (The Sanctuary for BIPOC women writers) without any real intention of submitting again. I just wanted to write. Of course, having a writing community meant that I was regularly reminded of the importance of writing and creating. Paradoxically, it also reminded me that I’m first and foremost writing for myself. Which leads me to …
    2. The greatest and primary beneficiary of my writing is me. The vast majority of my words will never see the light of day — or at least I write them without the intention of them going beyond my own eyes. Yet these words are still valuable. And this practice still benefits me. By the time I get to submitting something, all of those words have already served their primary purpose of guiding me towards a revelation, a sense of self, a lesson, and/ or a healing. They’ve already done their work. What someone else thinks of them, whether they get “chosen” or not is irrelevant.
    3. I am a writer. I am a writer because I call myself a writer. In my case, I also happen to write every day. And this month I’ve been writing a minimum of words because I’ve been participating in a November challenge in my community. But to call myself a writer doesn’t even rely on that specific daily word count. It doesn’t even rely on myself writing every day. And it certainly doesn’t rely on someone else agreeing to publish my writing. A few months ago, I was on the metro and a man came up to me. He asked me if I was an artist. I said no. I turned out he was an artist and thought I looked like one too. We got to talking and he asked me what I do. My canned response in these moments is usually “stay at home mom” (which is also true) but this time “I’m a writer” popped out of my mouth. I genuinely surprised myself with that one. But the bigger surprise was that I didn’t equivocate and I genuinely believed it when I said it. I’m a writer.
    4. I write every day. And if nothing else, a rejection is a reminder to me that I’ve not only been writing every day, but in some cases I’ve sent my writing out into the world. That takes courage. My writing reminds me that I’m a courageous person and, yes, even the rejections remind me of that too. That daily writing is so engrained into my habit that I hardly notice these little rejection blips. Compared to the ocean of words that I’ve written over my lifetime, the few thousand that comprised that particular submission are a mere drop.
    5. I do a bunch of other stuff too and I’m also a bunch of other people. Yes. I’m also a mother (and a pretty good one made better by my writing; just this morning I had a talk with my daughter about a poem I’m working on). I also go on walks and have long, serious talks with trees and plants on my walks. I knit. I play guitar. I make really good chai. I read. A lot. For enjoyment. When I received my latest rejection, I was just about to do my daily yoga practice. For a brief moment, I considered putting it off to write or take a closer look at the piece of writing that had been rejected. I considered quickly figuring out some other places to submit it (getting back on the horse is also a beneficial practice) but I went and did my yoga practice instead. I’m grateful that I have it there to keep things in perspective.

  • I’m writing this instead…

    … of playing that game that was advertised to me on my language learning app. Those ads are a small price to pay for a free service. The one I got sucked into most recently is the one with the balls of yarn and the dragon going after the kitten. Did the algorithm know that I knit and what my eastern zodiac sign is? Sure I also have a cat allergy but that doesn’t make me a monster. I’m still going to try to save the kitten, right? I’m frightened by how much they know about me. It’s not really those little details about my hobbies and autoimmune issues that I’m worried about. It’s that they seem to know how my mind works. Like, how difficult a task has to be to get me and keep me engaged without it being so challenging that I give up altogether. It was so easy to just keep clicking “retry” — so much easier than putting down the phone. And the music? It just built the tension, made me feel like I was on an adventure that I needed to complete, made me feel like matching these colors was somehow important.

    I got sucked into it for far too long last night. My problem — or one of them at least — is that I didn’t prepare myself by having something else to do instead of playing the game when it was advertised to me. Next time, I’ll have a book on hand that I can just pick up and read while I wait for the ad to time out or whatever it does.

    I used to play Tetris as a kid and I remember that feeling of the little shapes falling in front of my closed eyes as I was trying to fall asleep. Last night, it was those balls of yarn and the fiery dragon.

    And somewhere in the back of my head, I think, “Well, games and playing are good for me and my brain. Puzzles keep my brain engaged and active.” But do they, really? Am I actually having fun when I’m matching these colors? Or is it just that the games are tapping into some primal part of my brain that developed when searching for patterns in the environment was tied into basic survival.

    The other day, on my walk, I went to retrieve pinecones from a nearby tree. I was aware that this was the season when this specific tree would drop its pinecones that are the perfect size for the firestarters that we like to use and make. Searching around the base of the tree, it’s that same sort of primal lizard brain that the game activates. It’s the foraging brain looking for a specific shape and color against the grass. But outside in the open as my pocket filled up, it was easier to turn that off and walk away. Easier, anyway, than clicking “retry” on the yarn-dragon-kitten game.

    And this, too, this blogging … this writing and sending my words out into some unknown world … this is one of the ways in which I’m trying to replace the easy “retry” clicks. I leave my blog page open. I joined a challenge this month in my writing community to write a certain number of words each day. In this community I’m getting cheered on and supported in my writing endeavors. I try to remember every day that what I have to write and say is important. And in these ways, I try to make writing and blogging … if not easier than clicking “retry”, then certainly more rewarding. After all, the kitten is just pixels. I’m a real person.

  • Critical Response Process (aka “Gentle Workshop”)

    I learned this alternative process for a writing workshop from the poet, teacher, and writing mentor Ariana Brown. These are the five steps:

    1. The readers (viewers/ audience/ workshop mates) give statements of meaning.
    2. The writer (artist/ speaker/ performer, etc..) asks questions and can state their goals.
    3. The readers pose neutral (non-judgmental) questions and the artist can respond to those questions.
    4. The readers ask for consent to share opinion statements, ideas, suggestions. If the writer consents, the reader shares their thought.
    5. The writer can answer the question: “What are your next steps?”

    I’m going to delve a bit more deeply into how each of these five steps work and to give more information about my experiences with workshopping my writing both with a more “traditional” style of feedback and using Critical Response Process.

    I have an MFA in writing and a BS in English Education. I’ve experienced writing workshop since I was in elementary school and studied how to give feedback as a teacher and I’ve received feedback as a student in various workshops. For the most part the way that I’ve experienced feedback has been what I view as “traditional.” The workshop is comprised of a group of writers and one teacher/ leader/ expert writer. Each week (or however often they meet), writers turn in their writing so that the whole group has time to read ahead of meeting. In the meeting, each of the pieces that was shared ahead of time is “workshopped”.

    Up until this point, the Critical Response Process and the traditional workshop are the same. Here’s where they diverge.

    In the traditional workshop (as I have experienced it), each reader comments on the piece in turn. Other than clarifying questions, the writer is largely silent. In general, each reader shares their thoughts in a “compliment sandwich”: a positive comment, a suggestion, and then concluding with another positive comment. I’ve never had a workshop leader say that this is how it must be done, but it seems that everyone kind of just defaults to this way of commenting. Once everyone in the workshop has shared their thoughts, the workshop leader then usually wraps up the discussion with some sort of unifying overarching comments about the piece. At some point, the writer will have a one-on-one meeting about their writing with the teacher. (Of course, some writing workshops are peer-to-peer in which case there’s no private meeting and no one wraps up the discussion in a sort of “expert” way.)

    In retrospect, I can see how this format is not centered on the artist and their needs. The comments, at times, were rather arbitrary and based more on what the workshop mates wanted to talk about than what the artist needed.

    My experience with the Critical Response Process was very different. Here are some examples of how each step might be worded.

    1. Statements of meaning might include particular phrases or sentences, lines or images that resonated for the reader. It might also include what the reader took away from the piece of writing. Not everyone must comment during this part of the process. I found this to be a very nurturing and supportive place to start the whole process.
    2. The writer or artist might ask how the readers responded to specific images, language, moments, the form, etc… of the piece of work. They might ask for help sorting through parts they found particularly tricky or if the reader needed more explanation. I found this very helpful as a writer because it allowed me to ask for help where I needed it rather than just waiting to see if someone else brought it up. In addition, as a reader, it was helpful to learn where the writer specifically wanted help.
    3. Some examples of neutral questions, “How did you choose this topic?” “How did you decide what form to use?” “Where did you get your inspiration for this line?” I experienced this part of the whole process as driven by genuine curiosity. As a writer, it actually felt good that the readers were so curious about my process and my decisions. And as a reader, this often lead to rich discussions about process and a way to learn about other artists and how they work.
    4. At first, I was confused about asking for consent, but once I saw it modeled for me, it made sense. “I have an opinion about the title of this piece. Would you like to hear it?” Or “A piece of writing that reminds me of your poem. Can I recommend something that you might want to read?” Or “I have an idea about where you might submit this work. Would you like to know about that?” It was all very gentle and, for the most part, it just gave the writer more ideas and just furthered the discussion of their work and often contextualized it in a very empowering way. And once I saw it in action, I understood the consent piece. As a writer, I understood how maybe sometimes I just wasn’t in a place where I wanted to hear an opinion about something about my work and it was empowering to know that I could disregard what was said. Also, as a reader, it slowed down my response and reminded me that the person on the other side of the Critical Response is a human being.
    5. It was very nice to end the discussion back with the artist rather than the “expert” or “leader”. To me that was an empowering part of the experience and it served as a reminder that, actually, when it comes to my writing, I’m the expert.

    I found this process of giving and receiving feedback to be much more focused on the need’s of the artist, gentler, and more supportive than the more “traditional” workshops that I had experiences. I’ve also found that I can use a similar process to edit and revise and look at my own work. I don’t always need a whole group. And this has made me much gentler with my own writing.

  • No. I do not remember my favorite childhood book.

    Daily writing prompt
    Do you remember your favorite book from childhood?
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    I do remember reading books. And I do remember specific books. I do remember the smooth crisp pages of, for example, Goodnight Moon. I remember sitting on the edge of the bathtub within a hand’s reach of a roll of toilet paper as I cried through certain pages of Where the Red Fern Grows (if you know, you know). And it was at a rental beach house where I similarly cried over Bridge to Terabethia. I can remember the school librarian’s particular way of turning the pages on picture books and the resonance in my dad’s chest as he read to me on the green chair in the living room. I know that it was The Trumpet of the Swan that one of my grade school teachers was reading to us when we got to go outside to listen to the story on one of the first suitable days of spring. But, for the love of me, I cannot remember the plot of the book at all. I know that I pictured the bathroom in the house I grew up in next to in the part of Stuart Little when Stuart retrieves his mother’s wedding ring.

    I’m fairly certain that it was reading Stuart Little that set me off on reading The Rescuers and The Borrowers. There’s just something about tiny creatures repurposing small household items for their own purposes. I’m sure it was that particular appeal of tiny objects that made The Toy Shop Mystery and The Doll House Mystery also enchanting.

    Apparently, EB White was quite popular because I definitely remember reading Charlotte’s Web. Although I think that I really only remember the details of the plot now because I’ve read it aloud to my children as an adult.

    But I don’t remember one in particular book as my favorite. It’s all just as well. It’s the way I truly do not have a favorite child.

    As is made apparent in yesterday’s blog post, (which was in response to the prompt to name three books which had an impact on me) I’m more widely read now that I’m an adult.

    Over the past week, I also wrote about jobs that I’ve had (Would a job by any other name smell just as sweet?) and how I unplug (from said jobs or from the internet?).

    The other three posts from this past week are quite short, but writing them spurred some breakthroughs for me about myself, life, mental health, and how to think about certain struggles.

    The first makes the case for centering myself, loving myself, and being my own best friend.

    The second is about the joy that arises when I trust my future self.

    Lastly, I thought about fear which, as an anxious person, is quite a feat in and of itself. But in the writing, I discovered a personal hack for cutting fear off at the knees in Starve Fear, Feed Joy.

    A one minute audio blog of a native English speaker, spontaneous, unplanned, and bare bones.

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    If you enjoyed what you’ve read here, please check out other posts. Likes, shares, and reposts help get my writing out to where it needs to be. I’m also grateful for financial support. Even though I post daily, I only send out a once a week summary email like this one to subscribers. Thank you!

  • Three …er… Seven Books

    Daily writing prompt
    List three books that have had an impact on you. Why?
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    I’m sitting here trying to narrow it down to three books. Because after all, what book that I’ve read hasn’t had an impact on me one way or the other? Isn’t that the point of reading? To be changed by it?

    I’m also sitting here thinking about choosing three books that will make me look cool, or smart, or “in the know”.

    And then I’m thinking about the three books I’m currently reading on paper, e-reading, and listening to.

    They are, in paper, Research is Ceremony: Indigenous Research Methods by Shawn Wilson. I always appreciate books that take apart the so-called accepted conventions of the academic world.

    On my e-reader: Where They Last Saw Her by Marcie Rendon. I’ve just started this, but Marcie Rendon is one of my favorite authors. Each time I’ve started a new book in her Cash Blackbear series, I feel as though I’m getting caught up with an old friend.

    And, finally, I’m listening to Babel: Or the Necessity of Violence. I’m just getting into this book. I’ve also been working more seriously on my language learning right now and this book is the perfect companion to this kind of work — providing motivation for putting in the time and effort to something that doesn’t necessarily feel immediately useful.

    Because certainly in this moment, those are the ones that have the greatest impact on me. Or perhaps it’s the last three that I completed?

    Which were, on my e-reader, the Dreamblood duo logy by NK Jemison. (This includes The Killing Moon and The Shadowed Sun.) I wrote about this book in a previous post about dreaming. I definitely will be re-reading these in hard copy form. I find reading books I can engage more deeply with the text than on an e-reader.

    In hardback book form: Where Rivers Part by Kao Kalia Yang. It’s a stunning memoir written in her mother’s voice. It made me a better parent and mother.

    This is from a few months back, but Audre Lorde’s The Cancer Journals really made an impact on me. Specifically, it helped me make sense of what it meant to be sick with breast cancer.

    OK. This is more than three books, but books happen to be something I’m excited about. Check out my early posts with more Book Recommendations. If I wrote about them, they impacted me in some way.

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    If you enjoyed what you’ve read here, please check out other posts. Likes, shares, and reposts help get my writing out to where it needs to be. I’m also grateful for financial support. Even though I post daily, I only send out a once a week summary email to subscribers. Thank you!

  • Once again: me, myself, & these writers.

    Daily writing prompt
    List the people you admire and look to for advice…
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    I admire myself and I look to myself for advice. I’ve been through some stuff and I’m unlike anyone else in the world, so I’m the best person to look to for advice. No one else understands me as well as I understand myself.

    Just earlier today, I was feeling rather anxious. I asked myself what I needed and then, based on the answer, I sat down and wrote in my journal for a while to sort and sift through my anxiety and other feelings. By the end, I came to a sort of piece of advice for myself. This advice was uniquely tailored to me and this situation and yet, it’s something that I will be able to return to again and again when I feel similarly anxious in the future. And maybe at some point I’ll be able to share this advice through my writing and it will be helpful to someone else.

    I also admire and seek advice from a great many writers. Here are some blog posts I’ve written about books that have helped me over the past year or so.

    Hood Wellness by Tamela J. Gordon

    The Man Who Could Move Clouds by Ingrid Rojas Contreras

    Bad Indians by Deborah A Miranda

    Remember Who The F*ck You Are by Candyss Love

    Black Liturgies by Cole Arthur Riley

    Cancer Journals by Audre Lorde

    I will be writing about more books by writers that I admire and from whose wisdom and advice I’ve benefited, learned, and grown. If you’re interested in more book recommendations, please subscribe!

    If you enjoyed what you’ve read here, please check out other posts. Likes, shares, and reposts help get my writing out to where it needs to be. I’m also grateful for financial support. 

  • Read, Write, Redefine

    Daily writing prompt
    Write about a time when you didn’t take action but wish you had. What would you do differently?
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    I wish that twenty years ago, I had decided to read, write, and redefine on my own rather than going to an MFA program in creative writing.

    I learned recently that James Baldwin read through an entire library on his way to becoming the writer that he became. I wish I had done something similar. I certainly read a lot during my time in the creative writing program, sometimes as many as five books a week. But these were chosen by professors and instructors who were already, more or less, part of the literati. There were few women writers that we read. There were even fewer writers of color. For me, I was reading for the class I was in, to pass or, sometimes, to try to “impress” the instructor. I wish I had been reading for myself. I grew so used to reading for classes that once I was done with my MFA, it was many years before I started to read for pleasure. Even now, I sometimes have the thought while I’m reading that I’ll have to summarize or answer questions about it or respond to the writing in some way that will be acceptable to an instructor. I have to remind myself that I’m reading for only one person now: me.

    A similar thing happened to me with regard to my writing in my MFA program. All of the writing I was doing was for an audience outside of myself. I spent a lot of time and energy on trying to get it “right” and almost no time exploring, having fun, thinking my own thoughts. I was fixated on being a “good” writer, on receiving praise so that I never focused on what my writing was and was not doing for me. (Praise that I was never going to get.)

    At the time, I fell for the idea that I needed an MFA in order to write, in order to be “successful” and in order to have a community of writers. I thought that the degree would be a stamp of approval that would open up the world of writing and publishing. In other words, I’d fallen for an elitist way of thinking: hook, line, and sinker. I worked while I was in the program (three research fellowships) in exchange for tuition reduction. This was less time on my own writing. I spent hours and hours each work reading and responding to my classmate’s work. This, too, was time away from my own writing. And, honestly, it sometimes feels like that sort of workshop set up is actually just having students doing the professor’s work. I rarely received feedback from instructors that was truly, well, instructive. Each of them seemed to have an image in their minds of what was “good” writing and I either wrote towards that, earning accolades by the second or third submission when I’d decoded what they were looking for or, well, not.

    For one of my admissions essays I wrote, in all my earnestness, that I was looking for a “community” of writers. I didn’t realize that this was just me parroting what MFA programs claim to not only offer but exclusively so. I truly believed that these elite institutions were the only place that I could get support in my creativity. How naive! I’m sitting now, at my desk, with music on my phone, a scented candle lit, the sunlight hitting a handmade vase of flowers just so, the breeze playing with the grass and shadows playing with the outside my window. And all those many years ago, I thought that I had to climb into an ivory tower in order to access a creative community and the support I thought needed. Like I said: naive.

    So the last action I wish I had taken was: redefine. What do I wish I had redefined twenty years ago? Success, community, expression, support, reading, and, perhaps most of all, writing. I wish I had sat a minute and thought about what I really wanted and needed and that I had had the courage at the time to just give those things to myself rather than looking outwards to these institutions to give them to me. Well, here’s to hoping that it’s not too late to give those things to myself now.

  • To rest or not to rest.

    Daily writing prompt
    Jot down the first thing that comes to your mind.
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    I’ve been thinking about rest a lot this week. Maybe it’s because the kids are on spring break and I feel like this is my opportunity to also take a rest. I’m conflicted between going out and doing and sitting around and not doing. I’m plagued by the idea that I might use my time poorly. And I suspect that this has something to do with the fact that in the society I live in we have little control over our time. When given the “freedom” to decide how to use it, I am paralyzed with indecision.

    And this might be because I don’t really know what rest is for me, yet.

    I find the idea of resting so that I can be more “productive” to be terribly off-putting. I don’t want to live for productivity. And, yet, on the other hand, living in a permanent state of rest is also unappealing. The other day, I read someone’s piece of advice for going through cancer treatment: to stay active during the day so that sleep comes more easily at night. And while I’ve experienced the truth to this, I find myself getting trapped on this mental hamster wheel, going around in a rest and productivity circle. I find myself at times floating out in space wondering: how much is enough activity? How much is enough productivity? How much sleep is enough? Too much?

    For a time, I’ve been relying heavily on my watch and phone to tell me these things. I gave up the sleep monitoring when I realized that wearing my watch (and knowing it was monitoring me) was making me sleep less well. I threw caution (or perhaps the need to have hard and fast sleep numbers) and stopped wearing it at night. I think I’ve been sleeping better.

    I still rely on it heavily to monitor my daily steps and my activity (you know, those primary-colored rings to close in a burst of fire works when you meet your daily goal). I’ve reached a crucial crossroads where I’ve been meeting my goals every day for well over a month now. Do I increase the goals or, again, throw a bit of caution to the wind and decide to just trust how I feel, trust my body to tell me when I’ve had too much or not enough?

    My body happens to be a trifecta of identities that cause me to struggle to listen to it and to trust it: a woman, racially marginalized, and, now, a cancer patient. With all three, the society and culture I live in is often telling me about my body, trying to control it (more successfully than I’d like to admit) or the other extreme of completely ignoring it. And so it is that perhaps I rely on those little rings closing than I need to. And perhaps I spent a little too much time (meaning any time at all) on the internet trying to figure out my own body and how to take care of it.

    So back to spring break. We didn’t make any big plans even though I didn’t know I’d be in radiation treatment until a few weeks before it started. I also didn’t know how exhausting the treatments would be. Still, I’m trying to stay active. One of the funny things about radiation treatment is that you’re just lying on this table for the twenty minutes to forty minutes that it takes to complete it. It looks like rest. But it isn’t restful at all. The machine is whirring and humming and moving around you, the radiation techs are drawing on you, sometimes shifting your body a bit, but mostly they’re in the other room operating the machine. The position is awkward, the table is hard (in spite of the extra thick, cushiony sweatpants I’ve been wearing), and the whole thing is more mentally tiring than I give it credit. I’m trying to stay on top of taking care of my skin and sometimes a sore throat or just some discomfort in the area arises afterwards. Yeah, it’s not the worst of things, but it’s still not restful or fun by any means.

    So I guess that one lesson I’ve learned from going through it is just that rest can look myriad different ways to different people and in different times in our lives.

    The other day, I decided I had enough energy to go with my daughter to a Smithsonian museum one afternoon. It was a lot of walking and my feet were exhausted. But it was also, I don’t know, restful in a way. I got to turn off the part worrying part of my brain and just enjoy my daughter’s company and her excitement about history. I didn’t have to be a cancer patient. I didn’t have to make any real plans or major decisions. I did buy a book (George Takei’s They Called Us Enemy) and some chocolate before we headed home. And I closed all my rings, easily.

    The next day, I got to sit on the couch and read the book, which was stunning. And although I wouldn’t always say that reading has always been restful to me, it was very restful to read Asian American history.

    But I think that ultimately the aspect of these days of spring break that have been most restful have been that I’ve just let go and trusted. I didn’t feel like I had to make anything happen (exercise or trips or even time to rest and recover from radiation). I just let things happen. And the end result has been that I’ve been able to rest and (dare I say it?) be productive too.

  • Hawai’i

    Daily writing prompt
    What place in the world do you never want to visit? Why?
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    Here are a few paragraphs from an essay I wrote (and didn’t publish) a few years ago:

    I am not immune to the romance and draw of travel. In fact, I spent a fair portion of my twenties moving from place to place, exploring a few different countries and towns. My husband and I recently calculated that we had one year that we travelled twice internationally (Norway and Japan) and at least three or four domestic trips, all with our two kids, one of whom was preschool-aged. But in recent years, I’ve grown a bit more wary of travel and, perhaps, a little embarrassed at how thoughtlessly I travelled in my earlier years. Of course, I grew and changed as a result of traveling. I’m possibly even a better person because I travelled (there’s no way to know, obviously, as there’s only one of me and no telling how I would have turned out had I not travelled). But the question that I am really considering is this: were the people and places I visited better people and places as a result of my having been there? I’m having my doubts. At the very least, the carbon impact of the flights, cars, and even boats that I used to get places is irreversible. (The trains I travelled on feel not only more charming but less polluting per mile travelled.)

    Let us take a closer look at the example of Hawaii. In July of 2021, a former Hawaii state representative Kaniela Ing tweeted, “Stop coming to Hawaii. They are treating us like second class citizens.” According to an August 13, 2021 article in SF Gate by Libby Leonard, locals on Maui were facing water rationing and shortages due to water supplies being diverted to support tourists who were traveling to the islands in numbers which exceeded those pre-pandemic. I observed out-spoken indigenous Hawaiian activists on twitter asking mainlanders to stop visiting as those who live on the islands were facing both water shortages, which in turn impacts food security, as well as housing shortages. Of course, the response from many is that tourism brings in money and creates jobs. According to the Hawai’i Tourism Authority’s website, visitor spending in Hawaii in 2019 amounted to $17.75 billion and typically accounts for approximately a quarter of the state’s economy. But what is the trade-off between dollars and quality of life for the local people? In the same SF Gate article Napua-onalani Hu-eu, a Hawaiian activist and kalo (also called taro) farmer indicates that before water was being diverted away from farming, “much of Hawaii’s food was grown in east Maui.” Today, 90% of the food on the island is imported. Former Representative Ing also tweeted, “Tourism is a servants’ prison that keeps local people in a permanent underclass, in our own home. It’s a system that literally only works when the people who play here are richer than us who live and work here.” 

    I went to Hawaii about twenty years ago, before I’d taken the time to inform myself about the dynamics of the tourism industry there. It was beautiful and relaxing and I felt at home, in a way. Primarily, this is because being a multiracial-Asian person is not unusual there — or at least it’s not as unusual as in other places. When you’ve spent most of your life feeling like a bit of an odd duck because of the way you look, it’s very comforting to be amongst people who look like you, even if it’s just surface interactions.

    Still, my comfort is not a good enough reason to go back and visit when the indigenous folks there have asked that we not and when the dollars I would spend there wouldn’t necessarily be going to support and help locals.

    This daily writing prompt came at just the right time for me, as I’m currently reading the last few pages of issue #119 of Bamboo Ridge, Journal of Hawai’i Literature and Arts. This issue is titled, Kipuka: Finding Refuge in Times of Change and was published in 2021. From the introduction:

    “When volcanoes erupt, variances in topography create kipuka, islands of turf untouched by the flow of lava. While Pele’s fiery rivers caress its borders, its plants and seeds remain. It watches lava cool, then blacken. It witnesses pahoehoe break down into rich volcanic soil. And when the time comes, it seeds its surroundings, sets free former boundaries as genesis and legacy join. Na kipuka preserve and regenerate. They survive and persist. They anchor and hold life, ensuring in the end that nothing is forgotten.”

    While I was going through chemotherapy last year, I was often exhausted but paradoxically, I also experienced a bit of insomnia. This was possibly due to the steroids I’d been prescribed to help with the nausea. Regardless of the reasons, I often found myself awake late at night. This can sometimes be a lonely time, vulnerably time. I suppose it’s possible that it was in this state that I reached out on line. I don’t remember what I searched for specifically, but I found Bamboo Ridge on the other end of the line I’d cast out. In a flurry, I ordered six of their volumes and promptly fell asleep. Since then, I’ve read two of the six that I’d ordered.

    I’m not going to say that I feel as though I’ve vacationed in Hawai’i each time I’ve read one, because it’s something much deeper than what I could have experienced in a few weeks in a resort. I feel like I’ve come to know and connect to the parts of Hawai’i that the tourism industry ignores or, worse, feeds off of.

    I visited Pearl Harbor when I went to Hawai’i. The way that it’s set up now, for tourists and visitors, it feels as though Pearl Harbor is some sort of historical past. That it actually doesn’t exist in the present. In his three poems, Lee A. Tonouchi, brings the reader into Hawai’i’s militarized present.

    I’m sitting here typing, trying to figure out how to finish this post in a meaningful way. But the truth is that I’m in the midst of radiation treatment which has made me very fatigued. And I just took one of my anti-cancer medications that, if I don’t time it out, causes waves of nausea. Even if I wanted to travel somewhere like Hawaii, even if locals had not requested that tourists not visit, my body is currently demanding that I stay home. So I’ll retire to the couch to finish the last pages of this issue of Bamboo Ridge which I ordered in the lonely dark of the night. And art, words, poems, and stories will distract me and, yes, in a way transport me right when I need it. And for that I am grateful.

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