Shameless Issue 43: The Families Issue

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NEWS! ART! MUSIC! CULTURE! POLITICS!

TALKING BACK SINCE 2004

The

Families Issue

Inside:

Connect to your roots!

Choose your family!

Explore free play!

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$ 95 SPRING 2021

DISPLAY UNTIL SEPTEMBER 2021

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25274 07409

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A union for everyone.

Employed, self-employed or under-employed: everyone deserves fair wages, good benefits and a safe workplace.

Get to know us at unifor.org @Unifortheunion

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CONTENTS

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ISSUE 43: Spring 2021

18 Family Ties

The forces and choices that bind us BY LAUREN PRAGG

24 The Aunties We Grow Up With The portrayal of South Asian aunties in the media

BY ANMOL IRFAN 16

QUICK READS 02 EDITOR’S LETTER 03 CONTRIBUTORS 04 LETTERS 05 NEWSFLASH: Mexican women protest against femicide and

assault, Students in France lead social media protests against school dress codes 06 ACTIVIST REPORT: Lisa Marie DiLiberto 07 FIVE SHAMELESS THINGS TO DO 08 ON THE JOB: Cesario Lavery, free play childcare worker 09 SHE’S SHAMELESS: Introducing a cool Shameless reader

COLUMNS AND DEPARTMENTS

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10 EXTRA CREDIT: Family structures of Indigenous communities 11 COMIC 13 ADVICE: How do I create a chosen family?

14 BODY POLITICS: Family tattoos 15 MEDIA SAVVY: Lack of nuance in mother-daughter relationships

on screen 16 GREEN SCENE: Intergenerational knowledge in the era of the

climate crisis 17 SPORTING GOODS: A sense of place in the women’s hockey

community

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ARTS AND CULTURE 28 SHOW & TELL: Grade 8 class photos across decades 29 STIR IT UP: Hot Fudge Monday 30 BEST OF THE BLOG: What we’re saying online 32 ARTS PROFILE: Femmepire 34 DIY: Learning my family’s language 36 GET UP: Skills, style and traditions passed on 37 GEEK CHIC: Connecting with family from afar 38 REVIEWS: Books, music, films, podcasts 43 COUNTERCULTURE CLASSIC: The Family Under the Bridge

COVER: RAMAN SAJAN ART: MAIA GRECCO, ANNA DO, MAYA LEMAITRE, TIFFANY DANG

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editor’s letter

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ACTS OF FAMILY Content note: colonial violence, genocide

Dear Shameless readers, I am writing this on May 30th, the night before sending this issue to print. Three days ago, a mass grave was uncovered by the Tk’emlups te Secwépemc people, at the Kamloops Indian Residential School; 215 Indigenous children had been buried on the site.

I am a Tamil migrant settler on Treaty 13 land. My own history with colonialism and displacement is inextricably entwined in complex ways with Indigenous peoples here. In part, because the colonial project was templated and refined over centuries (with iterations on my own people), and in part because our inevitable displacement put us in the positions of settlers in an illegitimate state. I navigate with these tensions and contradictions and continue to try and work in solidarity to untangle the knots and find ways forward.

But, the past few days have been a lot. I have spent them in grief, and in rage, and I have been thinking a lot about the ways the concept of family has, and continues to be, a site of political violence: from the forcible removal of Indigenous children from their families, to the recent attacks on Asian elders, to the ongoing separation of domestic workers from their families of origin, colonialism, white supremacy, and capitalism have always known that the deepest wound is one that disrupts and destabilizes us in ways that we are still striving to heal from.

I made several drafts of this letter: one that talked about how COVID regulations here in Ontario last year allowed us space to think critically about the concept as family as we defined our “pods” or found our people (and how this year, that dialogue has been absent as the provincial government has fallen back into the idea that your family and your household are interchangeable terms). Another draft talked about the concept of family (both chosen and of origin), and the ties (both uplifting and painful) that exist across both time and space. A third draft was an intergenerational love letter that my ancestors never got to write (but perhaps my daughter will one day read). Each of these pieces expressed pain, grief, hope and bits of joy—messy messy threads that knot together in different parts of my own body when I think about how deeply we live, breathe and act on our different understandings of family.

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In reading this issue of Shameless as a whole, I want to highlight the ways in which our writers have unpacked the concept of family as a set of intentional acts: acts of reflection (p.15), acts of honouring (p. 24), acts of creating (p. 24). Acts of care (p. 8), acts of nourishment (p. 29), acts of reclamation (p. 34). In the same way the concept of family has been and continues to be a site of violence, has been, and continues to be a site of radical transformation — from creating your own definition of family, to reclaiming ancestral ones.

The Indian Residential School Survivors Society (IRSSS) has an Emergency Crisis Line available 24/7 for people who may need counselling and support in response to the announcement about the Kamloops Indian Residential School. Their 24-hour crisis line can be reached at 1-866-925-4419.

If you do not require support, and have the means, please donate directly to the IRSSS by visiting www.irsss.ca/donate. You can also write to your Member of Parliament to ask them about what their plans are to deliver on the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s calls to actions. You can do this regardless of whether or not you are eligible to vote (ie. regardless of age or immigration status). You can write again and again until you receive a response, and then you can write some more if you are not satisfied by that response.

Yours shamelessly,

sheila@shamelessmag.com

shameless

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Sheila Sampath(sheila@shamelessmag.com)

THE 2021 TALKING BACK FEMINIST MEDIA CONFERENCE

contributors

EDITORIAL DIRECTOR & ART DIRECTOR

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PUBLISHER

Julia Horel ( julia@shamelessmag.com) EDITORS

Features: Jean Boampong, Front of Book: Nour Abi Nakhoul, Columns: Sarom Rho, Arts: Rayne Fisher-Quann, Reviews: Gabrielle Marceau CIRCULATION MANAGER

Over the weekend of March 13–14, Shameless held our second annual Talking Back Feminist Media Conference—this time, in virtual form! Funded by the Toronto Arts Council, the virtual conference was a space to collaborate, co-create, imagine, celebrate, scheme and dream about the radical potential of feminist media as it relates to building a better, more just world.

Angela Guardiani (subscribe@shamelessmag.com) WEB TEAM

Below are some (Twitter) highlights from the weekend!

Web Art Director: Beena Mistry, Web Editors: Naz Afsahi, Sadaf Ahsan, Tina Zafreen Alam, Jackie Mlotek, Roxana Parsa, Andi Schwartz, Michelle Schwartz CONTRIBUTORS

Nola Boasberg, Maddie Beaulieu, Tharwa Boulifi, Madeline Cornacchia, Tiffany Dang, Shannon D’Arcy, Anna Do, Grace Evans, Amanda Farah, Maia Grecco, Jenny Harding, Cheryl Harrell, Anmol Irfan, Cesario Lavery, Amy LeBlanc, Maya Lemaitre, Tan Light, Zoe Maeve, Clementine Martinez, Victor Martins, Fiorella Morzi, Mikee V. Mutuc, Emma Paidra, Raiyah Patel, Erin Pehlivan, Emily Pettet, Alex Pospisil, Lauren Pragg, Katie Jo Rabbit, Denise Reich, Tiffany Royrock, Keeley Ryan, Raman Sajan, Ella Scheurell, Fariha Shimu, Kaitlin Stevens, Katie Ungard, Anke Weckmann, Aruna Zehra, Vivian Zhi COPY EDITOR

Lauren Perruzza ARCHIVIST

Frances Chepesiuk FUNDRAISING MANAGER

Liz Chornenki CO-FOUNDERS

Nicole Cohen and Melinda Mattos BOARD OF DIRECTORS

Shannon Clarke, Julia De Laurentiis Johnston, Ronak Ghorbani, Kate Miller SPECIAL THANKS

Alysse Rich Shameless is a feminist magazine for teens with marginalized genders, published by Shameless Media.

Views expressed in the magazine do not necessarily reflect the views of the publishers. All content copyright Shameless Media 2021. Reprinting without permission is totally uncool. Ask first.

ISSN 1710-2022 Printed in Canada by Thistle Printing on recycled paper.

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WE’D LOVE TO HEAR FROM YOU! PLEASE SEND LETTERS TO THE EDITORS, STORY PITCHES AND DONATIONS TO:

Shameless / P.O. Box 68548 Walmer / Toronto, Ontario M5S 3C9 talkingback@shamelessmag.com www.shamelessmag.com

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letters

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DEAR SHAMELESS, Write to us! Email talkingback@ shamelessmag.com or send snail mail to Shameless, P.O. Box 68548 Walmer Toronto, ON M5S 3C9. Please include your full name, address and age.

Letters may be edited for length and clarity.

My niece says the magazine is “cute” and “happy pride,” and that the articles are “interesting,” and. since she is 16, I’m taking this unrestrained praise as a success. :) Thanks for publishing a thought-provoking *print* magazine for teens — you are filling a void, particularly for Americans.

—A.

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Payment accepted: cheque, international money order or well-concealed cash. Send form with payment to: Shameless Media, PO Box 68548, Walmer, Toronto, ON M5S 3C9. Please allow 6-8 weeks for delivery. Shameless is published three times a year. www.shamelessmag.com

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Wallah We Can’s Anti-Harrassment Initiative Sexual harassment is a widespread phenomenon that affects everyone, regardless of gender. Wallah We Can, an apolitical and secular organization in Tunisia, is working towards youth empowerment through a new initiative that combats sexual harassment in schools. This initiative makes an anonymous WALLAH WE CAN online questionnaire available to teens who have been sexually harassed by a teacher.

Victims provide details Shameless news from around the world of their experience,

BY THARWA BOULIFI including the date, place, identity of the harasser and how it re-created hundreds of times in different impacted their mental health. Wallah We Can languages and across every continent. The 15, Mexican Independence Day, feminist also provides psychological and legal supactivists held a protest in Mexico City calling group was named among the 100 most influport for these young victims, who typically for justice and expressing their concerns. In ential people of 2020 by Time Magazine. fear speaking about their experiences. other cities, like Chihuahua and Quintana Roo, other women took up the protest.

Mexican Women Protest Against

NEWSFLASH

Chilean Feminist Group Las Tesis’ Viral Song

Femicide and Assault

Las Tesis is a Chilean feminist group whose song and dance, “Un Violador en tu Camino,”

In early September 2020, Mexican feminist activists occupied the National Commission for Human Rights building in Mexico and

went viral all across the world and became an international feminist anthem throughout 2020. The hit song, which translates to “A Rapist in Your Path,” was written to speak about the injustices survivors of sexual assault in Chile suffer. The song expresses righteous anger, and also calls out various misogynistic crimes. After being first performed in front of Chile’s Supreme Court in November 2019, the song’s refrain has been

announced they would remain there until the government addressed the rising rates of femicide and sexual assault. The activists turned the building into a shelter for women who survived violence. According to official data, the rate of femicide in Mexico rose by 5.4 per cent between January and July 2020. The activists also called out the lack of investigations, leading to many of these crimes remaining unsolved. On September

LAS TESIS

PHOTOS: WALLAHWECAN.ORG; THE GUARDIAN

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Students in France Lead Social Media Protests Against School Dress Codes In early September 2020, a student from the town of Dax in France was offended by a sign hung outside her high school, where “appropriate attire required” was written above crossed out images of crop-tops and miniskirts. She created an Instagram account to relate this experience. The account gained thousands of followers, many of whom were other girls complaining of being disciplined for their choices of clothing. Their testimonials went viral on social media and inspired two hashtags — #BalanceTonBahut (#DenounceYourSchool) and #BalanceTonProf (#DenounceYourTeacher) — with which students shared their sexual harassment experiences in the school environment and the administration’s inaction and complicity in the shaming of young girls. Students also rallied under the hashtag #lundi14septembre (#MondaySeptember14), where they encouraged fellow high school students to protest against the sexist dress code and inappropriate comments by wearing clothes considered “indecent” by their schools. This movement was supported by many French women’s rights organizations and international feminist organizations.

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activist report

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BALANCING ACT’S LISA MARIE DILIBERTO The performing arts industry has a toxic relationship with care and work-life balance.

Balancing Act is seeking to change that BY EMILY PETTET

“Being an artist is all about passion. You have to be willing to make sacrifices to accomplish your dreams. Keep going no matter how difficult it gets. Not many people make it, so snap up all opportunities. Burnout is part of the job.”

The above rhetoric, with its deep roots in capitalism, has informed performing arts practices in a way that often casts aside caregivers. With an industry standard of six-day work weeks, and technical rehearsals where artists can be called to work 10-hour days, it’s easy to see how there is little space for

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families to thrive. However, a healthier, more inclusive alternative is possible.

Lisa Marie DiLiberto, Artistic Director of Toronto’s Theatre Direct, is looking to discover and illuminate some of these alternatives with Balancing Act, an initiative focused on reframing the ways we think about and work with caregivers in the arts.

As DiLiberto notes, “a desire for a work-life balance doesn’t negate our passion for the work.”

As an ambitious artist and a new mother, Lisa Marie felt shut out of the industry and

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isolated. Through discussions with other caregivers working in the arts, she learned they were having similar experiences. Mutual frustration turned into a desire for action, and inspired by similar initiatives in the UK and the US, Balancing Act was born.

According to the Balancing Act website, 79 percent of artists report having turned down opportunities because of caregiver responsibilities, and 58 percent report never having been asked about their needs as a caregiver by their employer. Where does that leave artists who want to be parents? They are often forced to choose between their personal dreams and professional ones. Or, they take time off when having children, losing hard-fought momentum in their careers and shrinking the pool of talent in the industry.

Learning from the perspectives of both individuals and organizations, Balancing Act is focused on devising a set of industry best practices that will ensure caregivers are valued and not excluded. Which, Lisa Marie notes, will benefit everyone. “Supporting caregivers is really about supporting everybody,” she says. “Caring for others is key to our collective survival.”

Since the initiative’s inception, many performing arts companies have already committed to becoming more caregiverfriendly. Their logos are displayed on the Balancing Act website, as a beacon to artists that conversations about their needs as a caregiver will be welcomed.

Working environments that are more inclusive could look like paid childcare during rehearsals, longer rehearsal periods with shorter workdays and task-based rather than hourly-based work, among other possibilities. It will definitely look like happier people who feel appreciated, seen and heard, because their choices are respected. What’s more feminist than that?

PHOTO: COURSETY OF LISA MARIE DILIBERTO

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BY ALEX POSPISIL

We’re living in a time when hugging grandpa could spell disaster. So, what are some safer ways you can connect with your family?

1. Food There’s something about food that brings people and cultures together. When it comes to your family history, though, recipes handed down from generation to generation are a great way to connect with your roots.

Even if they aren’t hand-me-downs, and you just look up regional or traditional recipes to make, it can still be a fun way to explore your history.

I love making Czech vanilkové rohlíčky and linecké koláčky cookies at Christmas, but have also made doubles, an iconic staple of Trinidadian cuisine. If you’re not a fan of cooking or baking, you can find traditional treats in a restaurant or shop!

2. Research The cool thing about the past is that even if the country of your ancestors is completely different today, you can still engage with and learn about cultural practices and traditions through research. The one thing all people inherit is history. While research can be tedious, and depending on your background, the difficulty will vary, tracing your own roots can be an excellent and eye-opening endeavour! There are many ways to go about research, from archives, books, ancestry and DNA platforms to simply asking around!

Another great way to research is through reading articles or books about the cultures you’re linked to. I highly recommend checking out fiction and poetry by others who share your ancestry and have written about it. Fiction reflects reality, and can be much easier to relate to than historical texts.

With archives, you never know! My dad found a short film online about “domestic scenes” of Czech soldiers in England and spotted his father within a few minutes. We are also very lucky to have our own digitized family photographs and films, which we’ve spent some time together watching.

3. Fashion

5. Sharing

Like food, fashion is intertwined with culture.

Take pride and don’t be afraid to mix your wardrobe up with some traditional pieces.

If you’re lucky, older family members might have clothes or accessories you can wear. If not, try to find those special items online, or find patterns and make them yourself! Make a bold statement with a modern hanbok or sari. Be mindful, however, that certain clothing can be historical or religious, and is not considered everyday wear. You usually can’t go wrong with accessories, so in that case it’d be a great idea to seek out artists who specialize in your culture’s styles.

Most importantly, you can do all the above with family. When I was a kid, I baked with my aunt, and it was my love of baking that eventually led me to try making traditional cookies and cakes as an adult. As much as I wish I could have learned from my grandmother, I still have her handwritten recipes in a binder, which I treasure. In fact, I’ve been meaning to ask my mom how to make curry. I hope that one of these days I can get to it.

Above all else, even if you can’t visit the elders in your family, you can still write a letter, email them or give them a call! Let them regale you with tales of their youth or homelands. Take notes, or better yet, ask if you can record these conversations. Our time is precious, and we can only benefit from spending it connecting to our family lineage and history.

4. Community Activities Get involved! See if there are cultural clubs or historical societies in your area; you can learn a lot, and feel more in touch with your heritage. It’s a great way to meet people with similar backgrounds or experiences and engage with your own history. The country of your ancestors is likely not the same place as it is now, but its history remains, and we can learn from that. Another way to get involved is to support working members of your community. Check out that Hungarian restaurant, buy some Cree beadwork, go to the Danish bakery!

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5 shameless things to do

Five ways to Shamelessly connect to your family lineage and history

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on the job

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CHILD’S PLAY Cesario Lavery’s atypical approach to childcare emphasizes autonomy, joy and connection BY JULIA HOREL Cesario Lavery never expected to work in childcare. As the youngest in his family, he didn’t grow up helping with childcare, and didn’t babysit much. It wasn’t until he started being around children as an adult that the career began to present itself.

“I started being at parties and gatherings where babies were freely present, mothers breastfed their children without covers or moving to another room and the raucous noise of kids was celebrated and affirmed rather than stifled or scolded,” says Lavery.

“The mothers and parents I spent time with did so much to alleviate my fears around kids; they showed me that kids belong wherever life is, and that they too are entitled to take

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up space.” Lavery began to help with his friends’ children, which evolved to babysitting and then to nannying as a full-time career.

“Nannying is tough work, but it was exactly what I needed,” he says. “I’d been working as a secretary full-time, and the office lifestyle was causing or exacerbating myriad physical and mental health problems. By contrast, nannying allowed and encouraged personal connection, play, spontaneity, variety and joy.”

Despite the positive elements, Lavery stresses that childcare work is chronically underpaid and undervalued. “Childcare is feminized labour. Because we live in a deeply misogynistic world, and because childcare is often done by women, it is seen as uncomplex,

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unskilled and the sort of job that could be done by anyone. How many times have I been told by well-meaning people that I ‘could be so much more than a nanny!’” It is important to note that childcare is also work frequently done by women of colour, whom Lavery says are often paid less than their white counterparts, and expected to do “truly limitless management of the households who employ them.”

Migrant live-in caregivers are particularly at risk of having their labour rights violated.

Lavery began to feel he might burn out from the intense emotional labour involved, as lines blurred and he became more enmeshed in the family lives of his clients. He recounts the fateful day he first learned about the free play philosophy of childcare, an idea that changed his career trajectory. One of his clients asked him to bring her kids to a free play session in a field near their apartment, where “playworkers” — facilitators of child-led play — had set out a bunch of old kitchenware, sticks, fabric, pylons and other unconventional play material. He watched as the kids in his care joyfully interacted with each other and nature, simply by playing and following their instincts, rather than participating in an organized activity with a prescribed set of rules. He joined the playworkers’ childcare organization shortly afterwards, and has been a free play advocate ever since.

“There is absolutely something political to me about free play,” says Lavery. He says that free play is one of the only domains in which children are granted autonomy. “In my experience, through trial and error, honesty and empathy, children are responsible when given responsibility that has been adequately explained to them. They are trustworthy when trusted. And it is truly incredible to see what kids are capable of when we stand back and let them figure things out their own way, at their own pace, and be there if they ask for help or need encouragement.”

“The unbearably cliché, yet still-prevalent idea that children should be seen and not heard — or neither seen nor heard — baffles me,” says Lavery. “They are part of our world.

We were all once children. A lot of people say to me: ‘Oh, you work with kids? I don’t like kids.’ Kids are not a monolith! They’re just people! Maybe we forget that. I remember thinking as a kid, as I’m sure many people do, that I never want to be one of the grownups who’s forgotten what it’s like to be a kid. If you have forgotten, it’s okay. If you learn how to listen to children, they will tell you.”

ILLUSTRATION: CESARIO LAVERY

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This young advocate helps homeless and at-risk LGBTQ+ youth through the non-profit Northwest Youth Services in Washington

BY JENNY HARDING Rowan Salton works for the Queer Youth Project (QYP) in Bellingham, Washington, an offshoot of local non-profit Northwest Youth Services. She heard about the QYP while working as a peer advocate for student survivors of sexual assault and recalls “hounding” the coordinator to let her become an unpaid intern. Rowan immediately took to youth advocacy and was soon hired as the QYP Advocacy Specialist, a role she says she basically created. As a person who identifies as queer, she says it feels right giving youth the support she wishes she’d had growing up.

The Queer Youth Project advocates for homeless and at-risk queer youth in

PHOTO: COURTESY OF ROWAN SALTON

a variety of ways. The project provides support groups, community gatherings, free counselling and gender-affirming garments for queer and trans youth. They also train healthcare providers in LGBTQ+ informed care. Rowan has an important role in making this all happen, and her day-today is varied. Some days she’s in meetings with the city, non-profits or school districts advocating for queer youth. Other days she’s consulting with teachers, parents, doctors and therapists, connecting people to resources or facilitating QYP events.

Through it all, she provides youth with ongoing direct service advocacy, which often just means creating a safe space for

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she’s shameless

QYP’S ROWAN SALTON

them to talk about what’s been going on.

Rowan works on behalf of her clients to help them get whatever they need, from supportive counselling to more hope for the future.

“You’re fighting for them to exist freely,” she says. “Advocacy is not holding someone’s hand, it’s being the cheerleader alongside them, helping them to live happy, healthy lives.” It’s all about empowering clients to meet their own goals. According to Rowan, youth often have more ideas about how to help themselves than you’d guess. “You can just ask and they’ve got 10 ideas.”

In addition to the QYP, Northwest Youth Services runs the Ground Floor: a lowbarrier, dedicated safe space for homeless youth to receive housing information, showers, food, laundry machines and quiet spaces to rest. Homelessness disproportionately affects queer and trans youth, so many of the minors who come to the Ground Floor are queer-identified. “We know that 10 percent of youth in the United States identify on the LGBTQ+ spectrum, yet 40 percent of homeless youth identify as LGBTQ+,” Rowan says of the disparity.

Rowan is only 24 years old, and was in college for most of the time she’s been at the QYP. At times her work was a balancing act that encouraged her to set boundaries.

The responsibility of having so many young people rely on her can be intense, especially when she feels like she’s in it alone. That’s why the QYP places so much importance on community building, creating a safety net of relationships to turn to when things feel like they’re falling apart. Rowan’s advice for struggling queer youth is to find a group of people they feel safe with. There’s a thriving queer community online that can offer young people a sense of connection to others who have gone through similar experiences. Rowan also likes to remind youth that there’s so much life ahead of them. Envision your ideal life and chase that vision.

Rowan recently graduated from college with a psychology degree, and was recognized as the department’s outstanding graduate of 2020. She’s interested in pursuing a PhD in psychology and wants to research advocacy. “Understanding what advocacy can do for people and communities in an individualistic world could help us grow to be more compassionate and willing to help each other,” she says.

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extra credit

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FAMILY TIES Niisookowa, All My Relations; the family structures of Indigenous communities BY KATIE JO RABBIT

If you have ever had the pleasure of having an Indigenous friend or relative, you probably know that their family structures can be very different from non-Indigenous families. Many Indigenous tribes hold family very dear, and it’s within family structures that community strength and resilience is developed.

I belong to the Blackfoot Confederacy, which is made up of the Kainai, Peigan and Siksika Tribes. Both my mother and father are from the Blood Tribe, and my mom belongs to the Fish Eaters Clan, while my father belongs to the Many Children clan. In the past, most Indigenous families lived with their clans, and clans were tied to the land they lived on. Within these clans, families were connected and tribes were able to keep familial bloodlines clear. Now that we no longer follow these norms, bloodlines are more muddled.

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My grandmother Rita Rabbit was a Day Rider, and she had four siblings, of which three were half-siblings. My grandfather Bill Rabbit’s mother was a Heavy Shields. He was an only child, which was unheard of, and no one knows why. Both my grandparents were in arranged marriages. Together Bill and Rita had six children and raised some of their grandchildren. They also raised two of my first cousins, who were like an uncle and auntie to me. It was common for grandparents to take on the care of the first born son and any grandchildren, to ensure that these

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children kept the family traditions alive, as well as to help their children with the financial burden.

My paternal grandmother was Emma Fox, whose maiden name was Panther Bone.

She was the second wife of my grandfather Steven Fox, who was a ceremonial man. He had two wives; the first Fox family consisted of seven kids, and the second had eight children, one of whom was my father. My grandmother also had two daughters from another marriage, and adopted two children from another family. I consider all of them aunties. My father was sent to live with his eldest sister and her family. His sister had children who were the same age as him, and so her children were like siblings to my dad, who was actually their uncle. Confused? So was I, until I was actually able to wrap my head around it.

When it comes to Indigenous families, there are many ways to interpret the structure. Every family is unique in the way they connect to the land, how they identify their matriarchs and how they decide who is considered for what role or roles within the family. Sadly, we have lost many of the traditional ways of being through colonization. After the reservation system was implemented, the clan system was deemed redundant and the nuclear family dysfunction of the Catholic residential school system started.

So why are Indigenous traditions of organizing families important to know? Well, knowing who your cousins are is crucial in avoiding a slip-up and marrying the wrong person. Big families are capable of making community decisions. If you’re ever in a bind, you can call on your extended family for favours. Plus, having more cousins just makes life more interesting.

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.15 advice with; identify what you want and ask for it!

There are a lot of lonely hearts out there, also wanting to make connections: sometimes you just have to ask!

Try various methods and places to connect with folks.

Get creative, ask yourself what type of connection would be most nourishing right now.

Have you tried online platforms for making friends? Have you contacted old friends from school, work or community? Neighbours that seem interesting? What about pen pals or other ways to start a connection? Remember: “chosen” family doesn’t have to always be a physical presence, they can also be in various places and forms!

Advice from ARUNA ZEHRA Dear Shameless, I often hear about this idea of a “chosen” family, and it sounds like something that I want in my life, but do not know where or how to get it. I’m afraid that no one will “choose” me and my family of origin doesn’t accept me. I don’t want to risk rejection again.

Before you begin reading this, take a deep breath. Deeply in through your nose, and deeply out through your mouth. When you inhale, remind yourself that you are deserving of love, care and connection.

When you exhale, let go of those ideas or thoughts that say you don’t. Connection is so hard. Connection with others, ourselves, community, families, friends, the land, the water, everything, can be a difficult thing in our world. We live in a capitalist world that thrives on isolation, but as social beings, we yearn for more. It can be hard to make connections now —especially during a global pandemic — and even afterwards, the stress and anxiety that will be left over from this experience will be challenging for us. Be

easy and kind to yourself in this process, and remember that even though it feels really lonely right now, it won’t always feel this way.

The concept of “chosen” family is a beautiful thing. It comes from knowing that the possibilities of love, family and care are endless and abundant. It also comes from hard places of feeling like our families of origin cannot or will not accept and love us as we are in all our complexities. Sometimes the idea of any “family” structure can be difficult depending on the ways we have experienced trauma in our lives. What it all comes down to is the need for connection. When looking for connections and family and kin, we need to also be able to ground ourselves in what we are looking for, and knowing that there are opportunities all around us, even when we aren’t actively noticing them! Here are some things I like to remember when I am seeking out connections with others:

Communication is key.

Ask for what you want and need and put it out there. If you are looking for people to hang out with, pod with, make music with, start a book club with, talk the latest politics

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Vulnerability is power.

It’s a place where we can invite our loved ones in to witness us, to see our truest selves, and learn to love ourselves and each other for who we are. Requiring and asking for vulnerability from our relations also means we have to share our own as well. It brings us together and makes our connections stronger!

Relationships are reciprocal.

They are nourishing and allow for everyone to grow. They require deep care, love and compassion, and also, accountability. It means that your family are your hype-people, but they are also going to let you know when you need to be more reflective on your words and actions. It requires trust.

Know that you are deserving of so much love and care. Whether or not people can show up for you is not a reflection of what you deserve. Remind yourself often that even though you may feel alone, it won’t always feel this way. Honour the type of relationships and connections you are seeking and nourish the ones you already have. You are loved and have everything you need. <3

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body politics

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INTERGENERATIONAL FAMILY TATTOOS There’s a strong bond in sharing a tattoo with your sister and mother BY AMANDA FARAH

A visible tattoo is always a possible topic of conversation. I knew this when I got a 12-pointed starburst inked on my right forearm; if I roll up my sleeves, it’s easy to spot.

But I like having it in my line of sight and I’m happy when people ask me about it. I delight in telling people that my mother and sister have the same tattoo on their right forearms.

It was my sister’s idea to get matching tattoos. We already had a few each by the time she sent the text message asking if I would ever consider it. This was her way of allowing us to feel connected across the globe; I live in Copenhagen and she’s in New Jersey. I liked the idea. I didn’t need convincing.

The only problem was that our personal styles diverge in many ways and our tattoos are no exception. I have an owl on one shoulder and a water tower on the other. She has a heart on her hip and butterfly on her heel. It became clear as suggestions started coming through — I nixed an otherwise reasonable suggestion of a plane and globe meant to represent travel and distance because of my fear of flying — that it would take some thought to find something that represented us both well.

On a visit home, the whole family took a trip to the Brooklyn Museum to see the

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David Bowie Is… exhibition. There’s a crossgenerational love of his work in my family: my parents bring up the time they saw him at Radio City in 1972 every time “Space Oddity” comes on the radio, and my sister and I are both children of the 80s who grew up with his biggest pop hits. It was on the drive to the museum that my sister suggested, “what if we get a Bowie tattoo?”

I agreed instantly, with one caveat: “I’m not getting those lightning bolts.”

Instead we went for latter-day Bowie, choosing the design from the artwork that graces his final album, Blackstar. The designer, Jonathan Barnbrook, made the vector art available for free after Bowie’s death, even suggesting a tattoo as something to do with it. My sister and I scrolled through the variations of star artwork before choosing the starburst design.

Our mother saw the drawing and said, “I like that, can I get one, too?”

How could we possibly say no? The three of us made the trip to the studio together.

But once again, visible tattoos are an opening for a conversation. Sometimes people want to compliment them, and sometimes they want to use it as a starting point to

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discuss their own tattoos. Sometimes they’re curious about what’s involved in getting tattooed. Sometimes they’re surprisingly critical, feeling entitled to an explanation, prying to see if you have regrets or wondering if the people in your life approve of your body art (and yes, I still get these comments despite being 35 years old).

That my mother and sister have the same tattoo on the same arm is a connection most are not prepared for. It’s also a chance for me to talk about my family. People accept tattoos as some kind of lifestyle choice from a writer; they are less prepared to hear that my sister has an office job and that my mother works at a children’s hospital. Even years after getting the tattoo, I still get a kick out of painting this unexpected picture of my family, three very different women bound together by the same ink.

People also love to tell you that you’ll regret a tattoo when you’re older: sometimes they dress it up by saying, “I know I would regret it.” I don’t regret any of my tattoos.

They’re all special to me. But there is something particularly special about my starburst.

Whatever happens in my life or my relationships, however my body or my ink may age, this is a permanent connection to the women in my family. And just like my sister first suggested, it does make me feel closer to them, even when we are thousands of miles apart.

ILLUSTRATION: MAIA GRECCO

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When the nuances of mother-daughter relationships are not reflected on screen BY MIKEE V. MUTUC

It didn’t matter whether it was the first or the fourth time rewatching the episode. I choked back a tear as if I were sitting smack dab in the middle of a Chilton Prep graduation ceremony, and not on my bed at 2 a.m. glaring at the night mode screen streaming my Netflix favourite. The protagonist, single mom Lorelai Gilmore, clenched her fists and whispered self-affirmations to prevent a spill of emotional gratitude over seeing her daughter propped behind the podium as the class valedictorian. Cut to Rory Gilmore, who sent her class off on a note that paid homage to her mother and best friend.

“As she guided me through these incredible 18 years,” she says, “I don’t know if she ever realized that the person I most wanted to be was her. Thank you, mom. You are my guidepost for everything.”

The moment itself is particularly touching. However, it is but a mere glimpse into an entire series dedicated to a duo whose relationship is strengthened through a mother-daughter bond that teeters between parent and friend. It filled me with envy. Far from my childhood reality, Gilmore Girls reflected a fantasy I craved. I always wondered, Why couldn’t my mom and I be like

ILLUSTRATION: CLEMENTINE MARTINEZ

this? It felt like this kind of television fulfilled within me what my mother couldn’t.

Moving to a new country in 2002 with no support system was the beginning of my mother’s slow burn.

I was introduced to my babysitter in the fall that same year, the daughter of a Filipino parent whom my mom met after school.

She was in Grade 7, and subjected me to television as a disciplinary tool along with the other kids in the neighbourhood she cared for. Meanwhile, my mom continued to work at Kitchen Stuff Plus during the day, Shoppers Drug Mart at night, and a cashier for a remittance company on the weekends, all while attending George Brown College part-time.

The unpredictability of life with an immigrant single mother confused me. Her split attention between to-do lists in Canada and financially providing for Philippine relatives on a consistent basis pushed me into a corner of neglect. When she was home, her exhaustion and depression resulted in erratic behaviour towards me that added to my lack of empathy and resentment around her absence. I was a young girl who needed her mom but she was never there. Who was

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media savvy

CONFESSIONS OF A LONELY IMMIGRANT KID

going to make sure I did my homework?

What about home-cooked food? If I had a problem with someone at school, would she be there to listen? Would she even care? Was I even a priority? So I grew into my teens feeling lonely, abandoned and bored.

In retrospect, it was no surprise that soaps like Passions and The Young and the Restless were narratives I didn’t take to. There was no resolve to feelings I repressed from my mother’s absence. I yearned for wholesome parental relationships over the years that showcased either a relatability toward the single-parent trope or the stability I desired in nuclear “complete” families. I sought hard-working caregivers who, regardless of stress or time, still bonded with their kids. I latched onto guidance from Alan and Amy Matthews whenever their children turned to them after they made mistakes in Boy Meets World. I felt grounded in the understanding Lizzie McGuire received from her parents over relationship troubles. I laughed with the Baxters on That’s So Raven. Basic cable gave me access to The W Channel where I felt kinship with the women in Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood. More recently, it was Netflix that introduced me to Jane the Virgin, where I fell in love with its similar kind of single-parent-only-child energy I found in Gilmore Girls.

Unsurprisingly, reality is rarely mimicked in mainstream media. Neither the nuances of my mom’s escape from poverty or her mental health issues are reflected in Lorelai Gilmore, a character who is an American white woman from old money, or Xiomara Gloriana Villanueva, a single mother with the luxury of family to support her. Now that I am entering an adulthood that is much denser in hardship than anything I’ve screened, there is a greater understanding between the two of us regarding our shared past. The safety of fiction the media introduced me to was only the other side of a story about a mother who wanted to give their daughter the world but did not know how to. Television was my solace, but some tales are better lived than seen.

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THE POWER OF INTERGENERATIONAL KNOWLEDGE Understanding how intergenerational knowledge has shaped our practices in the era of the climate crisis BY FARIHA SHIMU

My earliest memories include the feeling of the scorching sun on my skin as I helped my mother hang the laundry, the excitement that I felt when she would let me collect herbs and vegetables in my little straw basket and the way I watched with awe as my grandmother expertly made dried spices from scratch. This is how my summers have been, for as long as I can remember. Although thrifting and upcycling have only recently become trendy, for many of us, the little everyday practices that we unconsciously do today come from years of our ancestors learning to conserve their resources in order to survive.

I consider myself immensely lucky to have learned a wealth of intergenerational knowledge from the women who came before me — women who now recount with great enthusiasm how they learned to fully appreciate what they take from the environment. My great-grandmother, and later my grandmother, were born into a time when resources were limited in rural Bangladesh. Mothers and elders taught children to reuse and repurpose materials and find new value for them. Girls were taught to use reusable cloths for menstrual hygiene, handwashing them in local ponds after use. Clothes were never

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thrown out but rather sewed for repair or put into use for cleaning purposes, a practice that has stayed with my grandmother through the years. With no refrigerators, but an abundance of fresh produce in their fields and fish in their streams, food was dried or pickled, then stored in glass jars in underground holes for preservation. Reusing glass jars that previously held jams or sauces to store nuts and seeds, various spices and pickled foods is still a common practice in our home today.

Although much has changed since the 1940s, my mother has remained devoted to continuing the practices that she learned from her elders throughout her adolescence.

Despite growing up in the busiest urban district in her country and having access to a world of technology and resources that her mother could never have imagined in her youth, she reflected the lessons from my grandmother in her own life nonetheless.

Even after immigrating to Canada, with storebought spices at her disposal, my mother preferred to take her time to make her own dried spices and pastes, insisting that the taste is unlike any other when made from scratch.

In the frenzy of our fast-paced daily lives,

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my mother has always felt the most connected to nature. From helping my mother plant seeds and watching fervently as the vines of the plants climbed towards the window of my childhood bedroom, I too have become fond of nature. Simply being around the lush foliage of the plants that fills both our home and our backyard garden brings me a sense of unimaginable peace. It has become a family tradition to grow our own produce, which we never seem to run out of.

We dedicate our tender love and care into growing vegetables and herbs in the summer months and freezing or drying them for the winter. From squash, tomatoes and kale to spring onions, basil and coriander, my family has instilled in me an enduring passion for gardening and growing my own food.

Having learned from the resourceful women in my family and transitioning to a plant-based diet myself, I now perform my own mindful practices out of love for the earth. Whether it may be collecting scraps from a week of preparing dinners to make homemade vegetable broth or taking cuttings from the plants I already have so that I may repot and propagate them in empty food containers, I have learned how important it is to be conscious of how much we take from the environment. In a generation where climate change is immensely prominent and continues to deteriorate, it is paramount that this intergenerational knowledge continues to be passed down. Our ability to instil these values from decades, and potentially centuries ago, in our children gives me hope that future generations will take only what they need from the environment and continue to recycle, refashion and repurpose their materials the way our ancestors did.

ILLUSTRATION: ANNA DO

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How the women’s hockey community gave me a sense of place

BY EMMA PAIDRA

The dressing room is full of 12-year-old girls, sitting with our heads hunched over, barely emerging from our bulky hockey equipment.

One kid begins to cry, feeling the weight of our hockey team’s final loss, knowing that we will never play together again. Sure enough, the domino effect begins, and the whole room — myself included — starts crying.

I remember how our coaches awkwardly offered words of comfort. Even then, it was pretty clear to me that one of the last places middle-aged dads want to be is in a room full of crying girls.

After losing our final game, my Grade 6 girls’ hockey team felt that we were not only losing our team, but the community we had built within it. Thankfully both for myself and my ever-awkward coaches, aging made it easier to hold it together each time that the season ended. But that feeling of loss never went away.

Being part of a women’s hockey team provided an outlet like few others in my life could. For one, women in particular are often pushed away from sports. It’s assumed that women have little interest in physical activity, and that when we do take part, it’s for the sake of lighthearted fun. Within my hockey teams,

ILLUSTRATION: TIFFANY ROYROCK

should claim to be a part of the hockey community. But within my team, I never doubted my place. I just knew that I belonged, no qualifiers required.

I take pride in knowing that I belong within a community now, but as a young girl, it also made me very aware that my place within it rendered me a “tomboy,” and marked me as different. Being seen as a tomboy, though, was an identity I latched onto. In fact, it’s one I still hold onto today.

Being part of a team of women hockey players showed me that I didn’t have to be the only tomboy in the room. Particularly as a kid, I shied away from anything with strong associations to femininity: I hated pink, rebelled against my ballet lessons and loved going to sports games with my dad.

Finding myself and finding family through the girls’ hockey team made me feel like I didn’t have to prove my disinterest in anything considered girly. That the two parts of me didn’t have to be separate.

My interests were completely unremark-

sporting goods

FINDING COMMUNITY ON THE ICE

“Every now and then, that external doubt would creep up on me, and I wondered if I should claim to be a part of the hockey community.

But within my team, I never doubted my place. I just knew that I belonged, no qualifiers required.” it was a given that each one of us had personally faced that assumption. Knowing that our team offered a space that left no room for such narrow conceptions of women athletes brought us together.

Though I would like to say that I have never felt self-conscious about playing hockey outside of the women’s hockey community, that’s just not true. I have always been aware of the fact that my participation in the sport is not largely considered a typical interest. There have been plenty of moments when I found myself trying to prove that I really do play hockey.

Every now and then, that external doubt would creep up on me, and I wondered if I

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able. That sense of being totally average, of knowing that my boy’s sneakers didn’t make me stand out amongst my teammates, was a big part of what helped me complicate the mold of prescribed femininity and grow into an understanding of femininity that felt right for me. After all, I am a tomboy, and I am a woman, and proud to be one. I can love sports and competing, loudly, and still be a woman, just as loudly.

More than anything, though, my experience playing women’s hockey gave me the chance to connect to my identity through the power of sport. Thanks to that, I learned to take true joy in being the woman I am — and one who can take a slapshot, at that.

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Family Ties

The forces and choices that bind us

BY LAUREN PRAGG

ILLUSTRATIONS: RAMAN SAJAN

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Chosen families challenge the idea that family only includes the people you’re related to (i.e. the nuclear family). They disrupt the way we’re taught to interact with people in our lives in a transformative way. Despite this, the nuclear family still takes up so much space and excludes so many of us along the way. What does that say about how we view relationships, intimacy and care?

One of my favourite books growing up was Anne of Green Gables.

I loved the kind-hearted antics of the classic main character, but what especially moved me was the relationships, whether it was the bosom friendship of Diana and Anne or the loving home provided by Marilla and Matthew Cuthbert. This book was one of the strongest examples I had of family structures existing outside of heteronormative nuclear families. And when I really think about it, so many of my formative faves have the same themes of creating kinship with those outside of a dominant idea of family: the teammates in A League of Their Own, the main characters in Cereus Blooms at Night and, of course, Michael Scott’s insistence on workplace familial bonding in The Office.

All of these examples made me wonder: what does it really mean to be family? And is that the highest rung on a hierarchy of relationships? As a child of divorce, a queer person and someone who experiences chronic anxiety, these questions have followed me throughout life.

I first learned about chosen families in queer communities. This model is one of kinship, care and intimacy. According to the website Complicating Queer Theory: “A chosen family is a group of individuals who deliberately choose one another to play significant roles in each other’s lives. One

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definition of chosen family is a group of people to whom you are emotionally close and consider ‘family’ even though you are not biologically or legally related.”

With the power to choose and create our own circles of care, the possibilities for connection are endless because relationships are the key to lasting transformative change. Chosen families allow us to explore that. In school, I learned from Caribbean scholar Gloria Wekker about women doing mati work in Suriname. These women form same-sex and heterosexual relationships in ways that function as extended support systems and embrace a free exploration and expression of their desires. To me, this is a great example of the power that self-determination and interdependence offer relationships. It’s through relationships that we learn and grow. It’s through relationships that we discover the intricacies of experiences other than our own. They can teach us new ways of being and help to foster community, which is the building block of organized resistance to oppression. That’s why everyone should be able to choose who is a part of their family and who they create interdependent relationships with. I learned the importance of that early on.

When I was younger, my parents were navigating the end of their marriage. I knew I needed to feel the support of other adults in my life while that was happening. This mainly came in the form of aunties reaching out to me and my older sister. They reminded us that they were there for us and hoped their houses would feel like homes for us. I have to say, as a person with Indo-Trinidadian roots, this kind of open emotional communication and heart-to-heart was not something I was used to. For many racialized families, ongoing intergenerational traumas can lead to challenges or discomfort with

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“With the power to choose and create our own circles of care, the possibilities for connection are endless because relationships are the key to lasting transformative change.”

ILLUSTRATIONS: RAMAN SAJAN

vulnerability and communication. Mental health challenges and emotional needs may have gone unnoticed or unaddressed for our elders and ancestors, sometimes for a long time. It is often up to younger generations to learn and unlearn relational dynamics that allow for healthy boundaries and communication.

As I grew up and began to form my identity as a queer person, a lot of things changed. There was distance and misunderstanding between me and my parents. I felt a lot of fear when it came to extended family because I wasn’t sure those ties could withstand my choices and desires. Some marginalized people — women and feminine people, those with disabilities, younger people, and anyone who lives even the least bit unconventionally — can be frozen in the minds of other family members into times, places, and roles they may have already moved past.Many times, this can play out along the lines of domestic labour being undervalued, inequitable decisions about physical space and access needs or how comfortable family members feel in having friends or partners present in the home.

To feel whole, I eagerly formed relationships with other queer people in person and online. As I’ve grown, I’ve found other racialized queer people, queer people from similar backgrounds as me and those who share similar values and ideas of liberation. This has created joy, community, mutual aid and love between us. Finding others who have experienced some of the same ebbs, flows and emotions that I have has felt important in being seen and understood.

While there is no monolithic queer identity, having a shared cultural language — films, music, books — means we can dream together and begin to embody the kind of collective world that makes room for everyone.

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To me, this is family. A queer family, a radical family, a political family and a family based on love. A chosen family. This family isn’t limited to an exclusive, small circle or by a geographic location. But, this is the narrative that we’re told to accept because of what the nuclear family represents; the norm.

The nuclear family is the model that is most often held up as the beacon of connection, bonding and respectability; two parents, traditionally a cis man and a cis woman, two or three kids and maybe a pet. Some version of this family unit has been important in the development and maintenance of capitalism since the time of colonization. This heteropatriarchal form of social organization is a key feature of societies that focus on productivity and ideas of normalcy.

Nuclear families are good for capitalism because they ensure a stable workforce and a predictable consumer population (i.e., it’s easier to predict what they’ll need and how much so as to sell them specific things). By rewarding and representing a heterosexual two-parent family as the ideal, other forms of relationships are downgraded on the social hierarchy. For example, intergenerational families are discouraged by Western societal stigma, discrimination, taxes, unsuitable (and unaffordable) housing and a lack of health benefits through employers, which are only rewarded to one spouse or partner and children as dependents. This leaves no room for the care of extended family and certainly not for chosen family. Additionally, collective childcare and carework are important components of non-nuclear family structures, yet go unrecognized and undervalued, even outside of them. For example, personal support work is often outsourced to the lowest bidder — a long-term care facility or other institution — because it is not recognized or valued work. We continue to see the deadly impacts of this, especially during the pandemic: unfair wages, lack of health benefits, no paid sick days, outbreaks, deaths and despair.

We can also see how the nuclear family is normalized through cultural representations in movies and television shows, such as Schitt’s Creek, To All the Boys and Never Have I Ever. Often, these families are quirky and unconventional. There may be only one parent, in the case of To All the Boys, or there may be other family members who come and go, but the nuclear family structure remains. So a typical storyline includes a character’s journey to attain or maintain this norm. For example, the premise of Schitt’s Creek is to maintain the nuclear family after it experienced a devastating financial loss, and the family is rewarded with a happy ending because its members stuck together.

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In the To All the Boys trilogy, we see Lara Jean imagining her life with Peter Kavinsky mostly in terms of how she can attain the nuclear family model.

In spite of the overwhelming representation and supposed moral supremacy of nuclear families, I know that other models of connection and intimacy have always existed. But what defines a family?

Support, companionship, love? What does it really mean to have or participate in chosen family? There are as many definitions as there are families, but here’s what I’ve learned so far.

A couple of years ago I witnessed and participated in a conflict within my close friend circle. It impacted all of us deeply and can still be felt today. I remember talking to one of my friends about how we had all handled it and how we could do better for each other. We were talking about what it means to consciously show up as family. One of the things we settled on was a commitment to working through hard times through honest and loving communication. If this same conflict happened within a different kind of family unit, say a work family, I don’t think the same commitments and changes could easily have been made.

A work family is similar to a nuclear family in that there are clear and sometimes strict power lines, like the hierarchy of boss to employee, manager to supervisor etc. True compromise and mutual understanding are difficult, if not impossible under these circumstances. One reason is that a work family is not necessarily something you consent to. In other words, you don’t choose it. You are told that wherever you work, the people there are your colleagues and you have to work with them no matter what. Another reason is that you can be discouraged from advocating for the interests of your fellow employees against the interests of the company or organization. We’re seeing that now with Amazon employees trying to form a union and teachers in Ontario who have protested and continue to protest unfair pay and treatment. Without genuine power to choose your participation in a collective group, genuine freedom isn’t possible.

The beginning of 2020 brought me some hard lessons about family, commitments and communication. A medical situation came to a head and I got news that I needed surgery. My first surgery. The whole situation was unexpected and scary. How would I handle my anxiety? How would I handle the months of recovery? My understanding of family was about to be tested.

I really wasn’t sure what it meant to allow others to hold and support me in my most vulnerable moments. What I came to learn was

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“Interdependency is both ‘you and I’ and ‘we.’ It is solidarity, in the best sense of the word. It is inscribing community on our skin over and over and over again. It is truly moving together in an oppressive world towards liberation and refusing to let the personal be a scapegoat for the political. It is knowing that one organization, one student or community group is not a movement. It is working in coalition and collaboration.” that I knew I could count on my partner and two of my closest friends — my chosen family — to show up for me. Going through a medical procedure that required support in the form of company during intimidating appointments, food and visits allowed me to experience tangible ways of building networks of intimacy and interdependence.

A friend I consider to be my older brother gave me the incredible gift of asking me what I needed as I tried to wrap my head around my medical diagnosis. He sat with me and reassured me that all things mattered, from questions I wanted to be asked before and after the procedure to tools I used for grounding (essential oils, music, foods etc.). This was such a crucial moment for me in understanding that I was allowed to define for myself, and for others around me, how I wanted to feel care. My friend also offered guidance about how to care for my partner and our relationship while being in a pronounced period of care work. The interdependence of my relationships shone through.

Friends and family brought their strengths and gifts to my side and I was able to name what worked and what didn’t. Sure, there were bumps along the way, but never before have I been in the position to practice such deep vulnerability and accept care. I needed care, reassurance and support, and my family was there for me. My friend is my brother as much as he is my friend. I strive to offer the same love and support to others in my life whenever they need it. For me, this is what it comes down to; the hallmarks of liberation, justice and joy on a grand scale are also matched on a micro scale.

The concept of care networks is an emergent tool that stems from disabled communities. I learned so much about this concept from disability justice thinker and writer, Mia Mingus, who says: “Interdependency is not just me ‘dependent on you.’ It is not you, the benevolent oppressor, deciding to ‘help’ me. It is not just me

ILLUSTRATIONS: RAMAN SAJAN

who should be grateful for whatever I can get. (and we can think about this as it relates to service provision, as it relates to political organizing, right?)

Interdependency is both ‘you and I’ and ‘we.’ It is solidarity, in the best sense of the word. It is inscribing community on our skin over and over and over again. It is truly moving together in an oppressive world towards liberation and refusing to let the personal be a scapegoat for the political. It is knowing that one organization, one student or community group is not a movement. It is working in coalition and collaboration.

Because the truth is — we need each other. We need each other. And every time we turn away from each other, we turn away from ourselves. We know this. Let us not go around, but instead, courageously through.”

To me, this is family. There is no need for a nucleus. Sacredness is decentralized. Everywhere there are pathways to care and support, conflict resolution and joy. Committing to intentionally undoing these traditional familial structures is a powerful choice. It means sharing decision-making, resources and work. It also means an agreement to work through difficult moments of conflict and disagreement with love and kindness as the foundation. In queer communities this can look like a drag family, it can look like an art collective or it can look like a shared home. In all of these units, people must rely on each other and, through it all, find ways to go through together. Whether or not you consider someone a part of your family — family of origin, chosen or communal — they are a being having a human experience alongside you. Aiming to embody the values of self-determination and interdependence can lead to love, justice and joy in your direct and indirect relationships. Relationships are the key to lasting transformative change.

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The Aunties We Grow Up With The portrayal of South Asian aunties in the media BY ANMOL IRFAN

As a child in Pakistan, I was taught to never call an adult by their name. It didn’t matter if it was my mom’s best friend, a far-off relative, my second cousin’s mother-in-law or a random woman we knew; everyone was referred to as “auntie.” It’s a term used for most adult women that children come in contact with, making it less personal than it may feel for children growing up in other cultures. However, aunties are there from the very moment a child is born, playing a respected, important role in families from the beginning.

Aunties form important parts of family structures that extend networks, form relationships and shape futures. They are the secretkeepers, treat givers and advice sharers through all stages of life.

They arrange baby showers, give tips on pregnancy care and provide

ILLUSTRATIONS: MAYA LEMAITRE

both emotional and physical support when the baby is born. They give advice, help plan weddings and are shoulders to cry on for both mother and child as their role as aunties grows and evolves. It is these women who take the forefront in making decisions, who play a prominent role in domestic life despite not always being related to or knowing each other. Because they are often unable to depend on the men around them, they form greater bonds with the women in their social circles, and these bonds trickle down to future generations.

Their presence as aunties serves as a reminder of the support system present to both mother and child: from babysitters, to carpools and often even being another pair of eyes for the mother. They say “it takes a village to raise a child.” Aunties, whether related by blood or not, make up that village.

Unfortunately, how certain types of aunties are perceived is partially shaped by tropes, a lot of which are perpetuated by popular culture and media. There are also often certain stereotypes associated with each auntie title that can sometimes do more harm than good to families. These stereotypical ideas and portrayals lump the good with the bad, adding to problematic cultural norms rather than questioning

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them and allowing for improvement. Phuppos, for example, are often described as mean and nasty because of the stereotypical relationship between women and their sisters-in-law. Pakistani family culture is built heavily on the joint family system, and in an effort to shoulder responsibilities and stand out, sisters-in-law are sometimes pitted against each other. The existing women of the house are considered to be unwelcoming towards the daughter/sister-in-law. While these relationships are not all the same, this stereotypical perception of mother-in-law and sister-in-law (in this case, Phuppos) relationships can make the wife miserable. Many women are even forewarned in advance to be wary of their in-laws, which then shapes their relationships as well.

Constant jokes about these stereotypes, along with more serious comments and discussions, especially those they can overhear, are what often shapes children’s perceptions of their aunties as they grow up. These jokes can seriously harm the growth of their relationships with their aunties because they are often connected to underlying, problematic family politics. For example, side comments from parents about which side of the family is better, open gossiping behind other family members’ backs and even arguments between couples fueled by other family members can all have a huge impact. Even with all the love showered on them amidst those perceptions, children can be made to feel exponential pressure to gravitate to specific aunties, all because they are taught that some aunties are better than others.

All these are ways that add to children’s perceptions of what these relationships signify and how they need to treat them.

Perhaps one of the most important examples of aunties (outside of Pakistani families for many children) are Rishta aunties, locally known as women who have a penchant for matchmaking. While for most this is an informal term, some also take up the mantle of being a Rishta auntie as a business venture. Either way, they’re usually updated on youngsters who are single and of marriageable age in the community and are quick to come up with potential matches. Families looking for matches for their children reach out to these aunties to arrange meetings, despite them being complete strangers. In allowing these Rishta aunties to take charge of something as personal as arranging marriages, these aunties are often allowed a glimpse into the innermost dynamics of the family’s personal business when they wouldn’t be in a position to do so otherwise. Specifically, the acceptance of such treatment of young girls as mere objects who don’t have a say in the Rishta process gives aunties a kind of terrifying power over their young lives.

Picture this: a young girl attends a close family wedding. She hears

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whispers behind her: “she used to be pretty you know, look at how much weight she’s gained.” She turns around to see an older woman, not-so-subtly taking pictures of her without her consent. Suddenly, she’s too conscious of eyes on her to enjoy the event any longer. The next time she’s at a wedding, she may start looking over her shoulder, watching out for cameras and comments. She will likely be less receptive to these aunties because she’ll now associate their whispers with them as people who try and police her life. While these interactions may seem small, in a society that is defined by appearances, they can have a lasting impact on the way young girls perceive aunties and who they choose to interact with and allow into their lives, especially as they find their own place in the world. Many young girls may give in to the way these aunties treat them or resign themselves to being less and less available in social gatherings, simply because they hope to avoid such aunties.

Rishta aunties are only one kind of auntie that exists on and off the big screen and in real life. There are the uber cool aunties that’ll always turn their nose up at anything that’s not good enough. They’re the ones you’ll always find frequenting the hottest new café for their weekly Get Togethers (GTs) and committee parties. Then, you have the fun, never-grow-up aunties that get along better with kids than adults because they can’t be bothered to put on a face. There are also the aunties that are close enough to stay “aunties” but are still the ones parents warn their children about. “Close but not too close,” they say. Talk, but don’t let up too much information. Auntie to all, they are at every gathering, every social commitment and on every social media platform. They will show up in a whiff of perfume and smiles, and possibly disappear just as fast once they have the information they need. Then, worst of all, there’s the more conservative, but equally judgemental ones that like to visit far-off relatives just to share comments on their household later.

Even mainstream media reflects this. If you’ve seen the latest trending show on Netflix, Indian Matchmaking, or heard about its infamous auntie to all, Sima Taparia, you have seen an example. The show follows popular Indian matchmaker — or Rishta auntie — Sima Taparia as she finds potential matches for clients who hire her in the hopes of settling down. Despite not being related to anyone on the show, and with most people even being her clients, she is respectfully referred to as Sima Mami. She is treated like a family member and is equally made a part of the weddings she arranges. Being a stranger to the families she visits doesn’t stop her from being invited into their homes and becoming privy to every aspect of their lives. In the

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popular Pakistani drama Humsafar — which follows two families from different backgrounds bound together in marriage — the aunt-in-law of the young girl protagonist is involved in a plot to break up the young girl’s relationship. Yet, her comments and nosy behaviour are seen as normal behaviour for an auntie. When those norms are seen as law, they become restrictive and are no longer questioned. Another Netflix show, Never Have I Ever, depicts the auntie to all who shows up with a whiff of perfume and smiles and likely disappears quickly once they’ve gathered enough information. When Devi and her family attend a religious festival, they are immediately hounded by a group of women who ask all sorts of nosy questions and pass judgements.

They are the same women Devi’s mom tells her to be wary of and as it is later revealed, the same ones who have also ostracised a young woman in their community because she married outside of the Hindu community. The aunties refused to accept a decision she made. In the end, it is still their approval she looks for.

These portrayals allow us see aunties in one context, but aunties are not a homogenous group. The problem here isn’t with aunties themselves but rather how they are portrayed. These auntie tropes push a very specific cultural narrative, one that showcases aunties in individual settings away from the family, which downplays their importance. It is a narrative that plays into a very Western, dominant ideal of who aunties are. When we start generalizing different cultural narratives about aunties, we run the risk of losing out on how aunties play specific roles in different cultures. For example, there’s the surrogate parent auntie trope that’s popular on screen. These aunties are depicted as cover ups for parents who are either not around or simply don’t do enough. This is often depicted as a source of conflict between aunties and parents, making it seem like both can’t fully exist together in their own capacities for the sake of the family. It misrepresents how aunties exist in families and downplays the way that aunties can and do show up for parents when they are struggling. In cultures around the world, including Pakistani culture, this is simply a sign for aunties to play a bigger role in maintaining normalcy in the family and supporting the development of the children. This is especially true because of how general the term auntie is in many cultures.

In America, the concept of letting people into your personal life is seen as a big deal and so, the aunties that do develop those relationships do so on a much more individual level. There’s the cool auntie who develops relationships specifically with the children. There are the cheerleader aunties, who are possibly the most openly affectionate. They are the ones that show up to every game, cookies for every

ILLUSTRATIONS: MAYA LEMAITRE

win and ice cream for every loss. Think Mamma Mia: the two aunties who show up to their honorary niece’s wedding to shower her with advice, love and lots of fun. Compared to the mom, the two aunties are seen to be much more accepting of anything and everything.

There are the cool aunties. Think Aunt Stephanie on Fuller House.

She’s the one the kids go to when they need a non-judgemental shoulder to cry on or even just to have a good time. However, there’s still some boundaries she’ll stick to. Parenting in Western cultures is often limited to the parents, in contrast to the places around the world where many cultures find it much easier to open up their lives to honorary family members and self-anointed relatives. Much like Sima Taparia from Indian Matchmaking, aunties love being involved in personal affairs. In Pakistan, the idea of privacy from strangers is harder to come by, perhaps because anyone with the title of auntie is no longer a stranger. Guests coming to visit and touring houses and even your bedrooms are seen as normal. In fact, aunties showing up unannounced are seen as a sign of love and closeness with the family.

When couples are married, groups of aunties will often go to set up the couple’s new room in advance, and even those who aren’t close enough to be involved in the decorating come by later to see how it’s been done. While Western cultures may see this as an invasion of privacy, in many South Asian cultures it is seen as the norm.

There’s a common saying used to justify letting strangers access our personal lives: “advice brings blessings” (Urdu: Mashware mein barkat hoti hai). When young children’s lives and decisions are exposed to such a large group of people they may or may not know, it opens them up to a lot of scrutiny that shapes the way they live their lives. Fauziya Kassindja’s book Do They Hear You When You Cry is an example of this. In the book, a young Togolese girl fights against the expectations of an entire society that believes that for her to be worthy of womanhood, her body has to be subject to changes that she cannot refuse. It’s not just her parents involved in this decision.

In fact, her father rarely interacts with her on the matter. Instead, it’s the women in the neighbourhood whose lives and beliefs are used as examples of the life this young girl could create for herself. Women the protagonist barely knows, who are indirectly titled aunties, are not only a major influence in what is expected of her but also have such a presence in her life. But like most things, auntie is not a term or position itself that can be termed good or bad automatically. Auntie is a role to be embodied. It’s important to dig a little deeper beyond the stereotypes, perceptions and popular ideas to find the true essence and importance of these relationships.

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show and tell

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GRADE EIGHT These class photos of my mom and I were taken across decades, generations and borders, but they show me our similarities clearest of all BY

My mom’s class.

Zhongshan, Guangdong, China, 1984. She is sitting in the first row, first one on the right.

She still has short hair, as she finds it easier to deal with, though it’s not that short anymore.

VIVIAN ZHI It is strange to think that even the concept of Grade 8 meant something different to both my mom and me. In China, Grade 8 is the second year of middle school. In Canada, Grade 8 is either the last year of elementary or the last year of middle school, with high school as the next step in your journey of growing up. That’s the last year you and your schoolmates are together, and it can be emotional to leave, especially if you’ve been with these classmates for years, as it was in my case. For my mom, she had at least one more year with her friends.

Looking at our Grade 8 class photos, I am reminded of the vast differences between my mom and me. I grew up in an environment she wished she could have. I attended a private school where I got to wear a uniform and sign up for clubs after school; she wore hand-me-down clothes from her older sisters and worked on her family’s farm. These photos are a reminder of the privilege I have today. With that privilege comes gratitude, but also a sense of guilt for having what she never did. Whenever my mom laments about all the things she could have accomplished if she were as privileged as I am, I feel pressured to do better and make the most of the opportunities I have. Refusing to do so would mean wasting my mom’s effort to give me the same opportunities she wished she had growing up.

Coming from a big yet tight-knit family with five siblings, she insists my older brother and I should get along. Even if they teased each other from time to time, her siblings always had each other’s backs. My brother and I don’t get along very well, and

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My class. Markham, Ontario, Canada, 2018. I’m in the front row, fifth from the left. Luckily, this picture was taken before my unfortunate decision to cut my own hair with a pair of safety scissors.

if I had that many siblings, I would never have a quiet moment to myself—important to me, an introvert. My mother, who is a social butterfly, is mystified by my introverted nature. I remind her that being introverted isn’t the same as being shy, but she tries to “fix” my “anti-social” ways by encouraging me to reach out and talk to people. I suppose that has helped me in some ways, so, thanks, mom?

It wouldn’t be fair to look at these photos and not see the similarities in us as well, and not just in terms of physical appearance.

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Sure, we’re both short and always stuck in the front row of class pictures, but there’s so much more than that. We were both at the top of our class academically. We will both wreck our sleep schedules to see a task through. Although we don’t admit it, we are both secretly competitive. There are so many similarities that I could list, that I think listing the differences would be faster.

When my mom looks at my school photos, she sees a younger version of herself. While it’s not exactly like looking at the mirror, it’s pretty close.

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HOT FUDGE MONDAY Ever since I was a child, this delicious and unique recipe has connected my family through thick and thin BY GRACE EVANS

RECIPE The serving size is debatable, but we used to cut it into four.

Cake: • 1 cup flour • 1/2 cup brown sugar • 1 1/2 tbsp. unsweetened cocoa powder • 2 tsp. baking powder • 1/4 tsp. salt • 1/2 cup milk • 2 tbsp. oil

Making Hot Fudge Monday was an act of care my family members did for each other. When I had period cramps, when my sister had a bad day. . . . . . when my brother was tired from his 5 a.m. shift at Tim Hortons, when my mom was exhausted from working three jobs, we always made each other a pan of this warm, chocolate pudding cake. We ate it when we were happy or sad, busy or bored.

The genius in the recipe is that it is made from inexpensive ingredients we always had on hand: brown sugar, flour, milk, cocoa powder. It’s satisfying and delicious, and only 45 minutes away from being in your stomach at any given moment. Over the years, I’ve lightly adapted it from the original version in Greta and Janet Podleski’s Looneyspoons to

ILLUSTRATION: ANKE WECKMANN

Topping: • 3/4 cup brown sugar • 1/4 cup unsweetened cocoa powder • 2 cups boiling water

be less sweet and a little more moist, but it’s mostly the same, comforting dessert. Don’t have oil? Use melted butter. Use gluten-free flour if you need to. Any kind of milk will do: whatever percentages of cow’s milk, oat, soy, almond. I’ve even used whipping cream. It’s great hot out of the oven, warmed up later, or even eaten cold over the sink the next morning. Hot Fudge Monday, or HFM to my friends and family, is forgiving and generous.

My family started to fracture when I was a teenager — abuse, divorce and ultimately estrangement — but this recipe carried on for us. Since we don’t live together anymore, my mom, my brother and I mostly make it for ourselves, but we often text each other when we do, and I feel like there’s some magic imbued in the recipe from all those years of making it for each other. I’ve shared the recipe with friends and even gifted baggies of the mixed-up dry ingredients. Sharing my ritual and recipe of HFM has become a way for me to share my past and strengthen friendships, as well as care for myself.

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1. Preheat oven to 350°F. 2. To prepare cake batter, combine flour, brown sugar, cocoa, baking powder and salt in a medium bowl. Set aside.

3. In a small bowl, whisk together milk and oil. Add milk mixture to flour mixture. Using a wooden spoon, stir vigorously until well blended.

Pour batter over the bottom of an ungreased 8’’ x 8’’ baking pan. Spread evenly.

4. In a small bowl, mix together second amount of brown sugar and second amount of cocoa. Sprinkle mixture evenly over batter.

5. Pour boiling water over top. It might seem tempting but DO NOT STIR! 6. Bake about 30-35 minutes, until top of cake feels dry to touch.

7. Remove from oven and let stand 5 minutes before serving. Spoon sauce from bottom of pan over individual servings of cake.

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BEST OF THE BLOG Check out the great debates on the Shameless blog.

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HEY, PROGRESSIVES: PLEASE STOP BEING JERKS ABOUT DISABILITY (EXCERPT) Originally published on February 12th, 2021

by Denise Reich

Dear fellow progressives, If you advocate for positive, inclusive advances in society, believe in equality and social support, think science and climate change are real, support LGBTQ+ rights and do not believe religion should dictate public policy, I’d like to chat with you for a moment.

We need to talk about ableism and lack of accessibility in progressive spaces. There’s still too much of the former and not enough of the latter. We’re supposedly on the same side, striving for the same ideals, but some of you still treat disability as a flaw, an insult or an inconvenience. It’s been four long years since the original charter of the Women’s March referred to disability as a burden. It’s now 2021.

Why are we still doing this?

What made me angry? Maybe it was the the U.S. congressman who claims he respects his constituents, but made a video – filmed by his kids – mocking hand tremors.

Maybe it’s the way a podcast with a transcript is as rare as a unicorn.

Maybe it’s the way words like “crazy” and “dementia” are freely thrown around as pejoratives.

Maybe it’s the people who insist that illness can be cured by diet and exercise, so if we all followed the Paleo Carb Free Super Seaweed Probiotic Diet, bought only organic food and did yoga, we wouldn’t need healthcare.

Maybe it was the non-profit supposedly about “self-acceptance” that gaslit me when I requested accommodation for an activity, and then made public passive-aggressive comments about it.

Maybe it was reading of that New Zealand restaurant chain that tried to “start a conversation” by substituting an ingredient – that was a potential allergen – without informing its customers.

Or that Manhattan restaurant that deliberately served food with high-gluten flour to customers who requested gluten-free meals.

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Maybe it was hearing about companies that refused to accommodate disabled people’s requests to work from home but, when the pandemic began, arranged full-time telecommuting for every single employee.

Maybe it’s all of the above. Maybe it’s the collective negative impact on the disabled people who experience these slights firsthand or witness them, and the way it contributes to stereotypes as a whole. Maybe it’s the painful realization that the negativity and stigma surrounding disability are often fuelled by those who claim to be allies.

The Cambridge Dictionary gives a simple definition of ally: “Someone who helps and supports someone else.” With allies like these, do we need enemies?

As a disabled person, one comes to expect that allyship is tenuous at best. Disabled people are welcomed when we’re “inspiring” in a way that makes abled individuals feel good about themselves. If we can conceal all evidence of our disability or illness so those around us don’t have to consider it, we’re golden. However, if we request accommodation of any kind or share concerns that we’re not being treated respectfully, we’re shunned.

Worse, people often react viscerally if we don’t laugh along with our own denigration.

They don’t even consider the possibility that they’re doing any harm or alienating disabled people.

On the right side of the political spectrum, we have people actively trying to kill us by removing assistance for disabled people or insinuating that our lives are “expendable.” The pandemic has made that even more painfully obvious. The death toll from COVID-19 is often downplayed with the rejoinder “but they had pre-existing conditions,” as though that makes lives less valuable.

On the left we have you, our supposed allies. However, when it comes to interaction on a personal level, your allyship often seems to exist more in theory than in practice. Sure, you’ll vote for that law expanding benefits for disabled people, but then you’ll turn around and share ableist memes on social media

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or accuse someone of “faking it” because they are an ambulatory wheelchair user. Do you even realize the dichotomy there?

This has not swayed me in any way from actively supporting progressive political ideals and candidates, because the goals are still very important. I am hopeful that the majority of people who support progressive platforms actively strive to do better. Doesn’t the label inherently reflect an openness to progress?

As time goes on, I find that, for my own self-care, the majority of my support for the progressive movement occurs in the absence of meaningful dialogue and social interaction with the non-disabled community. I don’t trust you anymore, and I’m exhausted by the casual ableism many of you exhibit. After all, if you have not bothered to make your events and outreach programs accessible, you clearly don’t want me there anyway.

Progressive community, do you actually want to be inclusive, or just claim that you are because it sounds good? I’d like to believe it’s the former.

If you want to truly be allies to ill and disabled people, you need to start paying attention to the harm it does when you denigrate disability. Stop talking over disabled people. Listen more. Let your allyship be something tangible, not meaningless words.

No love whatsoever, Denise LEARNING TO BE AN ALLY IN INDIGENOUS ACTIVISM (EXCERPT) Originally published on April 8th, 2021

by Raiyah Patel

Kindness and fairness are simple, basic ideas taught to most of us at an early age. But I only began to understand what they meant after hearing about Shannen Koostachin.

Shannen, a member of the Attawapiskat First Nation, wanted to attend a school with adequate facilities. She pleaded with the Canadian federal government to build a school in her community, but her initial demands were met with silence. Shannen tragically died in a car accident in 2010, but her activism led to the building of the Kattawapiskak Elementary School in 2014.

Her activism also inspired the youth-led campaign “Shannen’s Dream” that contin-

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My most important mentor has been Dr. Cindy Blackstock. Dr. Blackstock is the executive director of The First Nations Child and Family Caring Society of Canada. Cindy successfully launched a human rights case against the Canadian government arguing that they discriminated against First Nations children by underfunding the on-reserve child welfare system. Dr. Blackstock helped me understand that you don’t need to experience injustice to recognize and address it.

She continues to encourage my activism and welcomes contributions I make to Indigenous-led movements.

Cindy’s mentorship combined with my growing activism made me see that social movements succeed only with help from the larger society. Cindy and Shannen are not just victims of injustice. They are the storytellers that define injustice and motivate us to advocate for change.

Allies are needed for these campaigns. If you want to become an ally to Indigenous activism, here are some Indigenous-led movements that you can support: Jordan’s Principle honours Jordan River Anderson and addresses the inequities faced

by Indigenous children when they seek

public services. It ensures public services administered to Indigenous children take into account the cultural needs and history of a colonized peoples.

The Assembly of First Nations has a policy initiative dedicated to addressing the disproportionate amount of violence faced

by Indigenous girls, women and two-spirited people. They seek the development of a national action plan to end violence against Indigenous women and girls.

The Spirit Bear campaign engages youth activists by providing resources to learn about discrimination against Indigenous children. Spirit Bear has a book and a movie to teach children about The Human Rights Tribunal and how they can support the campaign.

The most important part of being an ally is knowing that learning and growing is a process. My understanding of unfairness was nurtured and deepened when I learned about those in our society who are not as privileged as I am. I also learned that those most harmed by injustice welcome the help of others. My journey is not complete; I continue to learn and listen on my way to becoming an effective ally.

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ues to advocate for equal education for all Indigenous children.

Shannen’s story found me in Grade 2, and forced me to question why I don’t have to worry about schooling, while others – like Shannen – have to fight for basic rights that should be guaranteed. It seemed obvious that Shannen’s struggle was a result of unfairness, or what I later came to understand as injustice. Shannen’s work inspired me to advocate for Indigenous children who faced similar injustices.

I had good intentions, but quickly learned that I could not understand Shannen’s struggle. I could never experience the pain and injustice caused by colonization’s legacy, or the unfairness of having inadequate schooling. So how could I confront the injustice I witnessed? This question helped me realize I could ally with Indigenous-led movements.

First, I found a mentor within the Indigenous community. Finding a mentor is an important step to becoming an ally because it encourages listening and learning.

Indigenous cultures place great emphasis on the storyteller as part of an oral tradition that passes knowledge down to younger generations. We can learn from these traditions when we engage with Indigenous cultures.

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Voices from the margins.

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arts profile

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FEMMEPIRE Meet the Hamilton- and Toronto-based arts collective that puts community first BY MADELINE CORNACCHIA

“When I think of Femmepire, a few words come up,” says Kitoko Mai over Zoom.

“Intersectional and responsive.” Though they hesitate to use hierarchical titles, Mai is founder and co-artistic director of the Hamilton/Toronto-based arts collective.

Born out of the COVID-19 pandemic, having lost work contracts and needing a way to stay connected with friends, the antioppressive, community-first arts collective publicly launched in May 2020. The group of eight friends had been toying with the idea of starting an official collective for a while, having been artistic collaborators for upwards of four years and frequently undertaking new projects together. While their website (thefemmepire.ca) will soon provide their own definitions of Femmepire and what they stand for, it’s the ways in which they

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cannot be defined that make them stand out.

Mai recalls reading in university that the myth of identity in what is often referred to as the West is built around white male masculinity, therefore everyone else is defined by their difference from it. Femmepire aims to reframe femininity as something that is intentional and powerful, rather than a fabrication or costume that deviates from this masculine default. In Mai’s view, feminine people are forced to navigate the world while always curating their appearance, constantly hyperaware of themselves and their communities, so they want to redefine these traits to represent leadership, not weakness.

Femmepire does not associate femininity with a particular aesthetic or gender, but rather with caregiving, authenticity and selflessness, adds Claud Spadafora, co-artis-

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tic director. Mai explains that masculinity, when removed from gender, is more like a dominant force that wants to take over, while femininity is the objects or bodies that get taken over. Femmepire roots itself in the idea of the marginalized taking charge. “It’s an opposition from these dominant oppressive powers, regardless of their genders,” Mai continues, which brings them to the meaning behind the name Femmepire.

Someone once questioned the collective’s choice of name, pointing out that empires are violent and colonial. It led to a serious discussion within the group about what the name means to them. The collective ultimately decided that Femmepire makes sense, because the mixture of the words “empire” and “femme” inherently changes the meaning of both: adding power to femininity and removing violence from empires. “If femme is deviant, if femme is the other from masculinity, then a Femmepire cannot be like what the United States is,” Mai says, “because it’s just literally impossible in this alternative universe that we live in, where a Femmepire is like a forest and not a prison.”

The collective calls themselves “multieverything art bitches,” in two senses. The first is their multidisciplinary approach to artmaking: visual arts, video, theatre production,

ART: CARE COLLECTIVE

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uPpiNg the anTI a journal of theory and action

no. 21

IN THIS ISSUE: GARY KINSMAN ON QUEER REMEMBERING AND ANTI69 ORGANIZING • GORD HILL ON THE ART OF RESISTANCE • ZACHARY DARK ON THE ROOSTER TOWN BLOCKADE • MELISSA HARRISON ON RADICAL COMMONING IN BERLIN • MERLE DAVIS ON RESISTANCE TO MINING • ROUNDTABLES ON THE 2018 CUPE 3903 STRIKE & 20 YEARS OF ORGANIZING • BOOK REVIEWS AND MORE...

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music, zine-making and the intersections between those art forms. The second is the multiplicity of their own identities and being able to exist authentically. Femmepire creates a space for marginalized artists to make art for art’s sake, without fixating on perfection.

Mai feels like marginalized folks are often not afforded the same freedom to fail and continue to get opportunities as, say, a white man with a trust fund would be. Femmepire is a space where they can “revel in failure, weirdness, chaos and imperfection.” And that’s a big part of Femmepire’s ethos: prioritizing people over product, community care over personal gain.

Mai compares Femmepire to a tree, dropping acorns to the ground and planting the seeds of an ever-growing forest. The metaphor extends to their associate artists, called Buds, and their mini collectives, called Sprouts. Femmepire’s four Sprouts create art around specific focuses, like sex positivity, performance as research, creative design and the lived experiences of trans people and sex workers. The larger collective vows to nurture their Sprouts until they flourish into forests of their own and do the same for others. “That’s the commitment people make when they join Femmepire. It’s a commitment to continue nurturing other people after you leave,” Mai says. “Like we don’t own you, we don’t own each other, we barely own the art we make, it’s more about the community and the people and growing this beautiful forest.”

This people-first philosophy shows up in every aspect of the collective, including their decision to be non-hierarchical and collaborative-based, “rejecting expert status.”

Because their roles are fluid and interchangeable, they can accommodate various levels of health and ability. In other words, if someone gets sick or needs time away, other members are equipped and ready to take on more responsibility. Spadafora says this model doesn’t make their collective slower or worse, but rather more successful, because they don’t burn out as quickly and are able to produce better work in turn. Femmepire wants to share knowledge and skills rather than silo them, so its members document their creation and learning processes by writing them down or making videos to teach others.

In May 2020, the collective hosted a virtual movie discussion and a trivia night. That June, they curated a zine for and by Black

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femmes and folks, hosted a livestream discussion about racial trauma and healing and held virtual book club meetings deliberating adrienne maree brown’s Pleasure Activism: The Politics of Feeling Good. July saw the Femmepire team produce three different theatrical performances for Hamilton Fringe, host a livestream series called Hamilton Theatre Speaks, as well as launch their Wellness Kit Initiative — a collaboration with The Artists Mentoring Youth (AMY) Project to create self-care packages for Black femmes and non-binary youth — and crowdfunding over $6,000. The packages will contain various wellness products to alleviate the mind, the body and the heart: things like incense, art, gift cards to grocery stores and spas, menstrual products and even homemade zines with recommendations for entertainment about Black joy.

Despite the time and effort put into Femmepire, the artists in the collective aren’t yet able to make it their full-time jobs, though that’s the hope of Maddie Krusto. “I always think about the things we could achieve if we were able to pay ourselves a salary,” she says, reflecting on all they have accomplished since May 2020. The co-general manager balances Femmepire duties with her master’s degree and working for several research and theatre projects, while other members maintain equally busy lives. Although the collective has successfully fundraised for their website domain and the Wellness Kits, they don’t currently have a way to pay themselves for their work. However, they do accept donations on their website which go directly to the artists.

Aside from monetary contributions, Mai says another way to support the team is to follow them on social media, engage with their posts and be active community members.

Krusto hopes Femmepire will contribute to a sustainable arts infrastructure in Hamilton so that artists don’t need to move to Toronto to further their careers.

“To me, Femmepire is radical care,” Spadafora says. “It’s just a radical undoing of the priorities I’ve learned all my life and trying then to extend that undoing to other people, for the betterment of ourselves and specifically for the betterment of marginalized folks. And doing that through art and expression.”

Follow Femmepire on Instagram: @xoxofemmepire

arts profile

Anti-capitalist, anti-imperialist & anti-oppressive writing by activists and organizers in Canada and around the world.

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LEARNING MY FAMILY’S LANGUAGE After years of alienation, the process of learning Cantonese helped me realize my identity BY NOLA BOASBERG

I learned how to smile and nod along over the years of dim sum outings with my grandparents. I would pour them tea, wait for my mother to translate from Cantonese to English that I was too this or too that, and in return I would attempt what I hoped was a graceful curve of my lips. My main job at the family dim sum outings was to corral my siblings into putting on as convincing a show as possible of well-mannered, respectful grandchildren in whom my Guangzhou-born grandparents could take pride.

Both from rural farmland outside of Guangdong (Canton), my Popo and Gonggong fled to Hong Kong during the Great Leap Forward at 12 and 14, respectively, propelled by widespread famine to leave their hometowns. Enforcement of Mandarin as a mandatory national language had not yet taken strong enough effect for either of my grandparents to have any real knowledge of the language, so they grew up speaking almost exclusively Cantonese and their local dialects. The two met and were married in Hong Kong before immigrating to San Francisco as young adults, ready to give their children better lives than what they had endured so far.

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This linguistic history was impossible to ignore at the dim sum table, with everyone (my white dad included) but myself and my siblings chatting away in fluent Cantonese.

One of my parents would occasionally lean down to murmur “Popo says…” or “Gonggong wants to know…” to which I would try and answer the way I thought a good Chinese girl should. Here was the part that I struggled with the most: demonstrating to my grandparents that I was Chinese without being able to speak to them in their language. I felt a need to prove my ethnicity to them, a need that stemmed from a lack of connection to the cultural elements in my childhood that had withstood acculturation to become points of ethnic pride, elements like language. For 10-, 12-, 14-year-old me, half Chinese by blood, noticeably white in my mannerisms save for using chopsticks and never wearing shoes indoors, my Chinese identity became more of a question than a fact. I began to wonder whether white America had inappropriately labelled me as something that I wasn’t out of a combination of ignorance and the need to put me in some kind of non-white box.

I had always understood that being able to

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engage in the dim sum table conversations would help me gain a better understanding of Chinese culture and how that factored into my identity. Language being the primary way in which information is packaged and communicated interpersonally, and culture being an influential force in deciding how those packaging and communication processes are structured, it was no wonder that I saw learning Chinese as integral to fully understanding my ethnic heritage.

I made the decision to take a gap year in China for the express purpose of language study: language was key to contextualizing my ethnicity, and, by extension, my identity.

This was a time to explore who I was as a Chinese woman, not a woman modified by her Chinese-ness, but a separate concept altogether. In other words, my Chinese identity and my femininity are not two discrete facets of my identity, but rather, my femininity is influenced by my Chinese identity and my Chinese identity by my femininity to the point that the two are inextricable from one another. Until I left for China, I felt that my identity as a Chinese woman had been defined for me by white America, defined on the basis of how Chinese women fit into the racial and gendered hegemony. I wanted to have time and space to define a Chinese womanhood for myself, and learning Chinese in an immersion environment would give those to me.

And so it was that I graduated from high school and moved to China by myself at

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17 years old. I had chosen on a whim a small town called Dali, in the mountainous southwestern province of Yunnan. I had also chosen to start by learning Mandarin, planning on taking advantage of my university’s Cantonese program in the coming years.

Since they use the same writing system but have different syntax and pronunciations, I figured learning Mandarin first would enable me to travel throughout the mainland and make the later addition of Cantonese to my language arsenal easier.

The process of learning a new language fascinated and captivated me, especially one so different from my native language of English. The first five months were spent soaking up grammatical structures and vocabulary words like a sponge. At my parents’ suggestion, I moved to Taipei in the spring. I ended up enrolling in the same language program where my parents had met, which brought the importance of this place — this language — to the foreground of my mind. With this importance came the pressure of a kind of “reverse acculturation,” borne from the aunties’ tsk tsk at my all-too-white behaviour. Discarding those behaviours felt like it was necessary to prove

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not just the validity of my Chinese identity, but that I deserved to claim it.

It was 10 months in total, living in China and then Taiwan. On my way back, I stopped to have dim sum with my Popo during a layover in San Francisco. I showed her my textbooks, all that I had been learning, in no small part an attempt to demonstrate my filial piety and hope that we might be able to communicate easier. She picked up a passage from one of my books and started to read it aloud in a mix of heavily accented Mandarin and Cantonese. I couldn’t understand her.

My Popo was clearly interested in what I had been studying, and looked through the books thoroughly, but it was, in many ways, foreign to her. I felt guilty for having invested so much time into becoming conversationally fluent in Mandarin but was still unable to communicate with my Popo in her own language. I understood the frustration of struggling to articulate one’s thoughts in a foreign language now more than ever, and felt a deep sadness that she wasn’t able to communicate freely with her eldest grandchild because of this linguistic barrier.

My choosing Mandarin felt emblematic of

the time that had passed since Popo left her hometown all those years ago, time in which Mandarin had come into vogue as the Party pushed for a national, linguistically unified identity. Decades of history separated her China from mine, making my experience there — paradoxically — a way to reconnect with my heritage but not my family.

In the two years that have passed since I started to learn Mandarin, I have continued to use language as a way to become secure in my Chinese identity. I feel a certain sense of agency and ownership over it now, in large part because it is something that I have built myself instead of the identity that white America had assigned to me: a reclamation of sorts. And while the identity I have created for myself is one informed in part by my family, it is informed in larger part by my experiences abroad. I had always imagined my ethnicity as something inextricable from my family history, but the two remain for now intertwined but discrete.

The last time I that I went out to dim sum with my family, the smiling and nodding, passivity born out of linguistic incompatibility, was still there. But, an achievement in and of itself: I was able to read the menu.

A new year of high school is full of excitement and potential—but three teens didn’t expect it to bring such a dark change to their lives.

This smart and intense play about the complexities of relationships and community opens up a muchneeded conversation about the nature of consent.

“Quintana’s writing is natural, bitingly funny, and heartfelt . . . by deconstructing rape culture and exploring consent in smart, engaging, entertaining, and emotionally fulfilling ways . . . this is required theatre for everyone. ”—Andrea Warner, Georgia Straight You can find Selfie by Christine Quintana at playwrightscanada.com or at your favourite local bookstore.

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MADE TO MEASURE Skills, style and traditions passed on from my mom

BY ERIN PEHLIVAN The sound of my childhood is my mom’s sewing machine, clicking mechanically at a high speed as she sits in our cool basement finishing the seams of my new pair of dogprinted pants. The sights of my childhood are large rolls of satins, linens, tulles and georgettes sitting next to shelves stacked with cookie tins holding buttons, needles, zippers and rows of evenly spun spools of thread.

As an immigrant from Turkey, my mom influenced my personal style from an early age. Before I was born, she built the tailoring business where I grew up in Mississauga, advertising Sue’s Dressmaking in bakery windows and the Yellow Pages. Being a new immigrant often meant trying to save money,

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so my mom handmade a lot of my clothes in those days. My memories are rife with hand-sewn garments that reflected her vivid imagination: she made me a red cotton skirt embellished with hand-embroidered, googlyeyed bunnies, and sweaters with animal- and fruit-shaped buttons sewn across the front.

Growing up, fashion seemed to be everywhere. When we went fabric shopping on Queen Street together, I’d gaze into shops crammed with rows of jacquards, poplins, taffetas and endless displays of sewing notions, captivated by all the possibilities. At home, I spent days not only enchanted by the evening gowns and tailored suits she created for her clients, but also by her collection of framed textile prints and fashion illustrations

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she had designed at university in Istanbul.

On Sunday evenings we watched Jeanne Beker host Fashion TV. At seven years old I shrieked anytime I saw an exposed nipple through a sheer ensemble on the runway, which never failed to elicit laughter from my mom. My family raised my brother and I in a modern, liberal, Turkish household; there weren’t any dress codes, though living with the influence of an older brother meant swapping traditionally feminine clothes for hoodies and jogging pants, the easy staples of 90s North America.

Even then, I stood out from the other kids with my custom outfits. In middle school, I begged my parents to buy me things my Canadian peers wore from big brands like The Gap or Adidas. They occasionally succumbed to my wishes, if the items were marked on sale: my mom knew how to make almost everything from scratch and often criticized retail prices. By high school, I began to reject mainstream fashion, looking for thrift store wares to mix and match with my jeans and sneakers from the mall. In university, my mom would make knock-off outfits by designers like Marc Jacobs, whose images I found in Teen Vogue. I still sometimes send her pictures of skirts and dresses, in case she has the extra time to make me something.

My personal style these days is a mix of second-hand clothes and mid-range brands, with a healthy immigrant-sized dose of guilt for buying anything at full-price. I never learned to sew quite like my mom, but she’s the reason why I love the creativity behind fashion and cultivating a personal style. Still, I yearn for the proficiency to tailor my own pants or add darts to a dress, to pin materials to a mannequin and drape them a certain way. Somewhere inside of me, there’s a desire to learn the skills to carry on these traditions, and surround myself with the raw materials needed to create my own made-to-measure world.

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I spent my young adulthood thousands of kilometres away from my family, but technology kept us close BY KEELEY RYAN

When I was 18 years old, I moved away from home by myself: 4629 kilometres and five timezones away, to be more precise.

Originally, it was meant to be for just one semester. However, I ended up staying around a lot longer to study and settle down, which has meant that most of my contact with my family has been through technological means.

After spending the first few months topping up my phone with credit every other day to make sure I was able to talk to them, I realized that we’d have to figure out another way to stay in touch.

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Over the years, we’ve gone through a dozen different kinds of tech to contact each other, and to try and make the physical distance between us not quite so big.

We have celebrated Christmas over Skype and good exam results over Facebook video calls. We marked quarantine birthdays with surprise parties over Zoom. And we have near-daily catch-ups on day-to-day life over WhatsApp. There have been countless shopping trips conducted from thousands of kilometres apart, flinging photos of items we need a

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CONNECTED FROM AFAR

second opinion on from continent to continent over Facebook Messenger; and evenings (and early mornings) sending WhatsApps with updates about hockey games playing out on separate screens.

And we even celebrated my engagement with a teary WhatsApp call (two of them, actually: the first one caught them a bit off guard).

Staying connected to home has always been very important to me. In part, because I knew the back-and-forth wouldn’t always be possible, and in part because, as I eventually learned, homesickness strikes when you least expect it.

In fact, I don’t think I would have been able to stay abroad as long as I have without technology. While at school, I usually went five to six months without seeing my family in person; at one point, it was even years before I could get back home. But I knew that no matter the time where I was, all it would take to reach the people I love most was the press of a button.

Thanks to technology, my parents have been present for every single important event in my life since I left home. Even during the times that they haven’t been able to physically be there, they have always made sure that I felt their love, their support and their presence.

Not even the mumps were able to keep my dad from (digitally) attending my graduation from grad school. He was getting a stream of updates from both my mom and I, each from opposite corners of the auditorium, and it almost felt like he was in the room with us.

Even though it’s been more than a decade since I first moved away, I often get asked the exact same questions about being away from home: “How can you stand being so far away from your family? You must miss them so much!!” The answer is that I do; I definitely do.

But between digital brunches, catch-ups about day-to-day life while walking the dog and sending memes that made me think of them, it feels like I’ve got a constant line to them.

And I’m not the only one. My mom’s always told me that when people ask her about me — and in particular, about whether she misses me — it’s a simple response: she talks to me more often than some people who live in the same house. While there may be an ocean between us, advancements in technology have made sure that I’m closer to my parents than ever. And being able to hear their voices or even see their faces whenever I want has made it feel like I never really left.

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WITCH PROPHET DNA Activation Heart Lake Records

Witch Prophet is the current musical project of queer Ethiopian/ Eritrean singer-songwriter, Ayo Leilani, who describes her sound as “Erykah Badu meets Lauryn Hill meets Jill Scott.” After releasing a couple of well-received EPs and a debut album in 2018, Witch Prophet released her sophomore album, DNA Activation, just as we began shutting down due to the pandemic.

The cover of DNA Activation is a vibrant, eye-catching portrait of the artist, photographed by Brianna Roye. Against a rich pink background, Witch Prophet sits basking in the light of the sun, looking serenely off-camera. She’s surrounded by green plants and draped turquoise fabrics, and is wearing traditional robes in a deep blue. The image is at once evocative of her East African heritage and decidedly millennial in its execution.

As a follow-up to 2018’s The Golden Octave, DNA Activation is intensely personal. The 10 tracks — co-produced with her partner, Toronto-based artist SUN SUN — are named after Witch Prophet’s family members, some of whom are credited on the tracks with her.

As the title suggests, the songs on DNA Activation explore heritage, family bonds and drawing on those ties for personal strength and growth. The lyrics from “Etmet” tackle the album’s themes directly: “Pressure’s trying to take me out/ I’m on my knees/ Feeding my inner doubts/ I need peace/ To find my way/ Back Who am I? /(Etmet my child, know who you are)” Fans will find a familiar fusion of jazz, hip hop and R&B instrumentation layered with Witch Prophet’s vocal work. The lyrics are inspired by biblical stories, mythologies and her Ethiopian and Eritrean roots and are delivered in English, Amharic and Tigrinya. Notes that accompany the lyrics to these tracks provide a key to the names and myths, as well as English translations for the lyrics in African languages.

Moving from track to track on DNA Activation, I found that the instruments selected to compliment the backbone of drum and bass were used to different effect. Trumpets and xylophone punctuate the haunting vocal quality of “Musa,” soaring to articulate questions as the singer seeks guidance. On “Roman,” the main metaphor is the pomegranate, considered the fruit of life and associated with fertility rites across ancient cultures. The sounds on this track are slippery, the saxophone and vocal layers occasionally slide into dysphonic tension.

Yet, on “Elsabet,” the saxophone’s voice is completely different, adding a chaotic jazz element to what is otherwise a neat layering of vocals.

On “Darshan,” Witch Prophet opts for a more mellow jazz-piano to articulate what seems to me to be a mother’s song of joy at the miracle of her son.

DNA Activation is a beautiful collaboration between an artist and what grounds her; traditions, family and hope for the future. You can find her on Bandcamp, where she’s posted a couple of remixed tracks from DNA Activation for fans. TAN LIGHT

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BOOKS THE SUBTWEET Vivek Shraya ECW Press

It would take multiple reviews to properly appreciate and dissect all the relationships that Vivek Shraya has masterfully represented in The Subtweet: between racialized musicians and the Canadian music scene, between an artist and their art, between friends and between individuals and social media. These relationships are explored through the notes of a burgeoning friendship between a fan and an artist. Neela and Rukmini seem at odds at first, but come to form a bond that — as the title suggests — is more fragile than either would like it to be. Depending on who is reading the book, one of the relationships will speak to them in a way that will likely make them re-evaluate that relationship in their own lives. If they are white, they will inevitably be confronted with the relationships they have with racialized artists and the way those relationships can be tokenizing.

And for many, perhaps the book will make them feel seen in a way that Canadian literature until now has not. SHANNON D’ARCY THE ALLSPICE BATH Sonia Saikaley

explore and shapeshift from morning to night. At the end of each day, Miu Lan’s mother tells them that they are loved, and they can be anything they want to be. But when they start school, Miu Lan finds it is hard to make friends who will accept them as they are. This sweetly illustrated and lyrical story gently explores exclusion, gender identity and the magic of being your unique self. KATIE UNGARD DISFIGURED: ON FAIRY TALES, DISABILITY AND MAKING SPACE Amanda Leduc Coach House Books

Inanna Publications

Adele Azar was born in Ottawa in 1970 to a strict Lebanese family with strong opinions about a woman’s place in the world. At a young age, Adele finds that she doesn’t fit the mold of what’s expected of her, and she often feels like an outsider to her own culture.

She learns to navigate her father’s anger, who despises her strong opinions, tears down his daughters at every chance and instills constant fear in his wife and daughters. It takes Adele a trip across the world to peel back the layers of her father’s anger and to discover her love for her close-knit family, flaws and all. Adele is curious and fearless, a protagonist to root for. She and the other characters will stay with me for a long time.

This is a book about big themes: the imperfection of family, what it means to be a woman, how to both love and loathe where you come from. The Allspice Bath is at times angry and introspective, though at others revels in the softness of familial relationships. CHERYL HARRELL

FROM THE STARS IN THE SKY TO THE FISH IN THE SEA Kai Cheng Thom

In Disfigured, Amanda Leduc takes an eloquent and extremely well-considered look at the role of disability in fairy tales and its parallels in modern representations and perspectives. From Oedipus to Beauty and the Beast, the themes remain the same across the millennia: health is seen as the ideal, disability is depicted as a character flaw or punishment: and characters often transform by “overcoming” disability through effort or virtue, mirroring the modern trope of inspiration porn. Those themes strongly reflect how society considers disability. Leduc takes a special interest in examining Disney works, and points out that there isn’t a single disabled Disney princess.

I was intrigued by Leduc’s exacting research into the history of fairy tales and nodded in understanding at many of her observations. By the time I was 13 I myself had internalized negative perspectives on disability to the point that I routinely hid symptoms of my genetic illnesses, even when they were serious. And as Leduc mentions, when disability is presented as a shortcoming without any positive representation, it marginalizes the disabled and ill kids who never see themselves as the hero and builds negative stereotypes in society they will have to contend with for a lifetime. As Leduc says, “the stories we tell need to be different.” DENISE REICH

Arsenal Pulp Press Ages 3-8+

From the Stars in the Sky to the Fish in the Sea is the beautiful story of Miu Lan, a magical gender variant child. When Miu Lan is born, they look a little like everything: boy, girl, fish, bird … even tree and star!

As Miu Lan grows, they cannot decide what they want to be. They

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WHERE THINGS TOUCH: A MEDITATION ON BEAUTY Bahar Orang Bookhug

Deceptively slim in your hands, Where Things Touch is anything but slight. It is dazzlingly clear that Bahar Orang has thought about beauty for some time, and how lucky for us. This is an exploratory work that reads like a lovely ripe pear, hanging heavy on the branch, asking to be eaten. Orang’s experiences as a queer woman of colour, student of medicine, writer, reader and lover shape these meditations. Through them, a story begins to form in small prose poem pieces. Orang introduces us to a beauty inseparable from an ethos of care vis-à-vis Sappho, colour, clinical training and pleasure, among other things. Meanings here are delicately, sometimes tentatively, made; for me, this reveals a distinct feminist consciousness and a deliciously palpable wisdom in and of itself. A unique, and indeed beautiful, book. FIORELLA MORZI BEYOND SURVIVAL: STRATEGIES AND STORIES FROM THE TRANSFORMATIVE JUSTICE MOVEMENT Editors Leah Lakshmi PiepznaSamarasinha and Ejeris Dixon AK Press

Beyond Survival is in equal parts a guidebook and personal essay collection to help explain not “why but how to do transformative justice.” Those who practice Transformative Justice (TJ) believe in alternative models of accountability and community reparation that do not rely on punishment, force, confinement or intimidation (i.e. police and prison systems). The book’s sections move from where we have been to where we are going, while taking detours into personal and community histories, past mistakes and advice for the future. This book is an ideal resource for grassroots organizations or anyone wishing to make change from inside their communities. Some of the essays are difficult to read because of the subject matter, so take a deep breath before you dive in and prepare to learn new skills and new perspectives on community. If you enjoyed Kai Cheng-Thom’s I Hope we Choose Love: A Trans Girl’s Love Notes from the End of the World, you will absolutely love this book. AMY LEBLANC

WOMEN AND WORK: FEMINISM, LABOUR, AND SOCIAL REPRODUCTION Susan Ferguson Between the Lines

In Women and Work, Ferguson guides us through a thorough history of women and labour, bringing readers on a journey from the changing status of women as European society transitioned from feudal to capitalist, through to the height of the American Civil Rights movement.

Ferguson’s time as a professor is clear while reading the text.

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Throughout the book, she asks questions as she answers others, though her language is academic, making the book less accessible to non-academic readers. Women and Work brings its readers into university lectures, discussing race and gender, economics and labour, feminism and Marxism, while remaining engaging and heartfelt.

This book is deeply academic, intelligently written and incredibly important for understanding feminism and what the world thinks of women and our work. MADDIE BEAULIEU B. B. FREE #3 Gabby Rivera, illustrations by Royal Dunlap Boom! Box

“…you got a whole wide universe waiting for you, sweet babe.” Thus opens the intriguing third issue of b.b. free, a comic about a teenager in the dystopian Floridian swamps of the Fractured States of America. b.b. runs a radio show called b.Chula Radio with her best friend Chulita X-acta, described as a “Black trans Boriqua queen on a motorized dream machine.” Youth in the Fractured States are allowed to leave home independently and pursue their own goals when they turn 15, referred to as the “Freedom Fifteen.” Both b.b. and Chulita are about to embark on their own Freedom Fifteens, intending to travel and bring their radio show to a larger audience. b.b. is simultaneously contending with formidable energy powers that emerge when she is upset or angry, but are not yet under her control or understanding. Within a few pages, Gabby Rivera’s sensational writing and Royal Dunlap’s energetic illustrations drew me fully into the narrative. I found myself looking forward to the next issue to see how Rivera’s storyline unfolds, what b.b.’s powers can do and just what’s wrong with ACW’s peaches.

DENISE REICH

GIRLS WILL BE BOYS WILL BE GIRLS WILL BE… Jacinta Bunnell I didn’t know this was a colouring book until I opened it. Inside, I found pictures of people in dresses with facial hair, boys baking quiche with their grandfathers and women in wheelchairs working as mechanics. There are people with hairy legs and muffin tops wearing crop tops and shorts and young Black boys smiling and hugging with the words “Boys need hugs too!” spray-painted on the walls behind them. A group of children asks someone to tell them about drag kings and queens, and people march down a street holding signs. Jacinta Bunnell understands that children don’t need stories of trauma, bullying and pain to empathize with others and love themselves. All they need is for stories of togetherness and difference to be normalized, and to be taught by parents and teachers who represent and understand the beautiful, endless differences between us. And it certainly helps that these lessons are taught in such playful books.

MADDIE BEAULIEU

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MUSIC HUA LI Dynasty Next Door Records

Having only released an EP (Za Zhong) and a few singles beforehand, Hua Li makes a strong debut with Dynasty, her first full-length album.

Exploring her past relationships and her journey to bridging her eastern heritage with her western upbringing, each song has a different beat, texture and feel that merges together to make an overall smooth listening experience. Her voice flows suavely in the choruses and delivers sharp bursts of rap in her verses. With 80s synth-pop, R&B and lo-fi influences, the album immerses you in an atmosphere that reminds you of a dimly-lit bar, where the party hasn’t quite started.

Although there weren’t any standout songs that caught my attention, I still appreciate the consistency of quality between each song.

VIVIAN ZHI

OCTO OCTA Resonant Body T4T LUV NRG

Octo Octa’s latest album, Resonant Body, is like a tasty buffet of musical treats with something for every desire. Listeners are taken on a satisfying sound voyage that has been carefully crafted to uplift and energize.

As I worked my way through the tracks I felt compelled to move my body in a way that encouraged a sense of release.

“Imminent Spirit Arrival” starts us off with a burst of energy, including the repeated refrain of “Come on,” inviting us to play. “Spin Girl, Let’s Activate,” one of the most liked tracks on her SoundCloud over the last year, is also one of my favourites; it made me want to put on a flowy outfit and spin as though I were four years old again.

With Resonant Body, Octo Octa has captured the power of dance music to move us, not only physically, but spiritually to another place and plane, producing joy and a sense of collective healing. Its name is no coincidence. EMILY PETTET

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FOR THOSE WHOSE

OTHER BLEED WITH ME (FILM) Varsha Gill Bleed With Me is a colourful and visually engaging short film featuring a diverse cast of participants who have varying opinions and experiences with menstruation. By approaching this subject openly, it allows the cast to discuss menstruation in various lights: positive, negative and neutral. In the video, the interviewees reflect on their experiences with menstruation, encouraging the audience to destigmatize this issue by having their own discussions at home.

Due to its educational and entertaining value, this film should be shown in classrooms around the world (and not just to femaleidentifying students in sex-ed classes). No one is too young to learn about periods, especially because some people bleed at a young age.

While menstruation can be a pain and an inconvenience, this video is a reminder that even if you can’t bring yourself to see it as a celebration of your body, it should be treated as just a normal phase you go through. VIVIAN ZHI

SUNSTORM (PODCAST) Alicia Garza and Ai-jen Poo Stitcher Podcasts

During this time of pandemic and threats to democracy, Sunstorm highlights how we can “be our most powerful selves in the midst of complete political chaos.”

Launched this January, Alicia Garza and Ai-jen Poo interview women who continue to shine during this storm in their podcast; but the hosts are just as interview-worthy as the women featured in the show. Alicia Garza is a co-founder of Black Lives Matter and heads Black Futures Lab. Ai-jen Poo is an author, labour organizer and Director of the National Domestic Worker’s Alliance, where she works with Alicia. The hosts’ friendship and accomplishments are part of what make this podcast so enthralling.

Sunstorm lifts up voices of resiliency and embraces tough subjects.

My favourite episode, “Getting Into Good Trouble,” highlights the importance of protest and of connecting with community as a way to regain our voices in a time when many of us feel isolated.

This is a feel-good podcast that covers a wide range of topics such as colonialism, astrology, politics and how to be comfortable in your own skin. CHERYL HARRELL

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HarperCollins

counterculture classic

THE FAMILY UNDER THE BRIDGE

By Natalie Savage Carlson and Illustrated by Garth Williams I grew up poor, in a garden apartment that was rent-controlled, surrounded by plenty of neighbours in the same situation. All of our families took care of each other, our parents peering out through their respective windows to keep watch over each other’s kids playing in the parks and courtyards of our community. On hot summer nights, my dad would grill burgers on our little drugstore-bought grill outside and feed all the kids my siblings and I hung out with, even if it meant he had to forego a burger himself. Much like my dad, there were times my friends’ parents would stretch their meals to feed me, watering canned tuna down a little more to make it spread onto a few more slices of bread, or sharing a McDonald’s dollar menu burger and fries.

As a poor kid, much of my entertainment came from reading books borrowed from the library. A book I read as a child and have re-read countless times, called The Family Under The Bridge, became a quick favourite, as it drove home the values I was already practicing at home. The book follows a homeless family of a mother, her young son and two daughters in France, who unknowingly move into the territory of a homeless old man under a bridge. While the mother peddles for money and food during the day, the children stay under the bridge and occupy themselves by drawing with charcoal. This always sounded so cool to me as a kid: I used to take the old coals out of our small outdoor grill and doodle on the sidewalk, pretending I was a kid in the book. At first, the old man is resistant to their charms, but he quickly changes his tune and takes them under his wing. One of the most visceral moments in the book is a stroll the old man takes the children on through the city to find food. He has mastered the act of imagining he’s tasting a feast of all the city has to offer when he is simply smelling the various aromas escaping restaurants: it’s a hauntingly beautiful image.

In the book, the old man and the children also befriend Gypsy families. I am Romanian-Gypsy (Roma) and to see my people represented in a book that isn’t about our genocide in the Holocaust was an unexpected but welcomed surprise. While the term Gypsy is loosely used in literature and popular culture, it wasn’t used here to describe this group negatively, as it often is. They were just travelling families, making homes wherever they went, much like the homeless French family in the book. They were welcoming to their visitors and made them feel comfortable, sharing whatever they had with them — in this case, food and joy — which I could relate to.

Both my own life experience and The Family Under The Bridge taught me that family is more than just the people you’re related to by blood; family is everyone around you and the responsibilities they take on to make sure you have enough, even if they don’t have much to give themselves. This idea of the family largely shaped the way I grew up, how I navigated the world and took care of my friends and strangers who often became my family. I often tell people that I didn’t need to be radicalized to believe in the power and strength of community because I was lucky enough to be raised on those values, born into them. KAITLIN STEVENS

spring 2021

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“I believe in encouraging young people to be shameless. A huge thanks to our 2021 lineup: MOST VALUABLE PLAYER When I was younger, I was a card-carrying member of Ann M. Douglas The Good Girl Club. It took me 42 years to give up my SHAMELESS PRO Martell membership — to realize that it’s better to be outspoken Allison Amy Painter Morzi than to be bullied into silence; better to be part of a group Fiorella Heather Cross Kathleen Horton of passionate people who are working for change than Laura Brady Linda Marleny Dow to be alone and scared. Investing in Shameless means Lo Fine Cohen investing in the next generation. I am proud to take my Nicole Nicole Popper place in the Hall of Shameless because speaking out for a Tan Light SHAMELESS ROOKIE better world is nothing to be ashamed about.”

Aliza Amlani Andrew Townsend — Ann Douglas, journalist, author, mother, activist Carly Boyce Erin Klassen Marie Stewart JOIN THE HALL OF SHAMELESS Sonia Lawrence Since 2004, Shameless has been publishing on 100 percent pure volunteer power. But Thalia Bock to keep publishing this independent magazine, full of the smart, feisty content so many Wren L.R. Pragg have come know and love, we need your help.

SHAMELESS PAL Alice Gauntley Join the Hall of Shameless, our new program designed to ensure Shameless keeps publishing for years to come. For a small monthly donation, you can help Shameless Mel Mitchell fulfill our mandate of creating a magazine that empowers youth to be curious and Vicky Tan brave, to think critically and creatively and to trust themselves.

Let’s keep talking back. Join the Hall of Shameless.

Members receive an ongoing subscription to Shameless and other Shameless perks, like free entry to all our events. Find out more at www.shamelessmag.com/hall-ofshameless.

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CUPE – MAKING PROGRESS FOR WORKERS SINCE 1963 cupe.ca

CUPE helps workers move forward through progressive bargaining, political activism, mobilizing on important social issues and building fairness and respect for all.

We are proud to help build a more equal and inclusive Canada every day.