2019-2020 AACC 295 Magazine Issue III

29 5 iii

2 9

An annual multimedia magazine

by Asian Americans at Yale

Issue No. 3 Spring 2020

The Asian American Cultural Center at Yale

Letter from the Editors 295 began as a combined effort between the Asian American Cultural Center at Yale and the Yale Asian Womyn’s Alliance to locate and archive the contemporary experiences of Yale’s Asian and Asian American students.

While still a platform committed to elevating the beautiful poetry and prose of student writers, in its third year, we have endeavored to make 295 a space in which the works of other student artists and creatives, regardless of the medium they use, may be made visible.

This multimedia issue of 295 would not have been possible without the dedication and vision from our editorial team, our production team, our founders, and of course, our contributing artists. To you, we are ever indebted.

Published by

Special Thanks to

The Asian American Cultural Center at Yale

Dean Joliana Yee Sheraz Iqbal

Dear Readers, As we began to develop our third issue of 295, we had no idea what 2020 would bring us.

In light of the global COVID-19 pandemic, our magazine has undoubtedly transformed. What was once a curation of experiences dispersed and disparate has become a pointed and insistent collective reflection on what it means to be Asian and Asian American in the current moment — to live with our history, to navigate a political space, and to occupy our bodies.

Now more than ever before, we hope that this publication is reminder that you are not alone in your story. Take comfort in the words and sights of others, so you may find strength in your own.

With love, Katharine Li ’21 Vicky Wu ’21 Annelise Ratner ’22

Production Team

Editorial Team

Design Team

Annelise Ratner Vicky Wu

Katharine Li Sohum Pal Annelise Ratner

Katharine Li Vicky Wu

Table of Contents

Essays and Fiction 3 8 19

かえる, Kaeru, Come Home Brown Water Eating as Entertainment

Marina Tinone In Kyu Chung Sarah Moon

Poetry and Spoken Word 27 28 29 30 33 35 36

Winter Melon |冬瓜 Descendence Poem for the Neighborhood Twinkie 2 Poems by Yun Dong-ju My Culture is Not Your Prom Dress and Another Racist Joke Origin Story

Forest Abbott-Lum Sophia Zhao Lauren Chan John Choe Hannah Kwak Eileen Huang Isabelle Rhee

Music and Dance 39 44

55 Locke Street Reflection

Mohit Sani Amanda Zhang

Visual Art 49 51

Meiosis Fragmented Memories of a Life I Never Had

Postscript 57 68

Responses to the COVID-19 Pandemic Contributor Bios

Sophia Zhao Austin Lee

Essays and Fiction

n

Com by

3

295 Magazine, Spring 2020

かえる,

Kaeru, me Home Marina Tinone

I

kimasu, kimasu, kaerimasu.

Go, come, come back (come home). I remember Mom teaching me these words when I was six, back when she had wanted me and my brother to learn more Japanese. By the time I was nine, I was learning very basic kanji, knew how to order food at McDonald’s, and knew when to use the appropriate counter-words. I stopped learning Japanese when I was ten—which left me, as a twenty-year-old, fussing over the old Japanese workbooks I had filled over ten years ago. It was a paltry attempt to feel ready for my trip to Japan. My brother joked that the program funding the trip was trying to create the Japanese American version of Birthright.

He wasn’t totally wrong, ex-

cept for the fact that everything I did during the trip felt nothing like coming home. Without any real Japanese—holding just the remnants of what I still remembered—I went to Japan as a foreigner. Ikimashita, not kaerimashita. Went, not came home.

It felt safe to just bow as much as possible in Japan. Mom had taught me, when I was younger, to bow as I said thank you, as I said hello and good morning, because the bowing would help with my intonation and pronunciation.

She was right. The syllables roll off the tongue when the body matches the language. I taught this trick to my friend before she left for a linguistics conference in Japan—she was nervous about going there, because she didn’t know the language.

“You’ll be fine,” I told her, “Something about your curly red hair will give you away. Japanese people will know you’re a foreigner and be nice to you.”

“Then what was your excuse?” she asked. “What was your excuse when you went to Japan?”

I only know how to say the basic stuff. Hello, thank you, goodbye. Please, one moment please, just one please. But even then, after growing up watching all the Ghibli films in Japanese and listening to (and memorizing) 90s J-pop on every long car ride home, something about Japanese is more familiar than any other foreign language. I think, when I was three, and I watched とな りのトトロ in Japanese, I understood everything. I spent the first three years of my life in Japan before moving to the States—at some point, I must have under295 Magazine, Spring 2020

4

stood Japanese. It was an understanding that was more than just watching the movie over and over again. I think I knew Japanese back then.

My fellow Japanese American friends and I all lived in homestays in traditional houses in rural Japan. The house was just as my parents had told me it would be—the multipurpose tatami rooms, the bathroom designed for ofuro baths, the lack of central heating. My homestay father directed me towards the kitchen’s space heater before dinner one day. He smiled and gave me a thumbs-up when I pushed the green pause button. “I think you know more Japanese than you say you do,” Kendall said to me as we washed up the dinner bowls. I assured her I didn’t—I don’t know what our homestay father had said. I luckily guessed what button he wanted me to press because my parents happened to still own the same space heater.

My parents moved from Brazil to Japan after they married, and my brother and I spent our early years in Kawasaki. I realize that my parents’ efforts back then to assimilate away from Japanese Brazilian family norms into Japanese-only habits renewed my parents’ pride in acting and raising us with “more Japanese” values than the ones they had learned growing up. My fellow homestay friends did not have this assimilative re-upbringing.

Sumire is “full” Japanese and can speak the language fluently, but she didn’t know how to fold the homestay family’s futon or monitor the volume of her voice 5

295 Magazine, Spring 2020

the way my parents had taught me “a polite young lady” should.

Sayuri is “half” Japanese but had the most Japanese vocal tone and manners among us. Kendall is a “quarter” Japanese, but she had the best understanding of Japanese culture among us. But no matter—there was no excuse for any of us. No matter how much Japanese we happened to know or how Japanese we looked or tried to look, we were all gaijin.

Amerika-jin. Not Japanese.

Your first language betrays you. That’s what Dad tells me.

His Japanese teacher from years ago said that whenever a Japanese learner would say their country of origin, their pronunciation would fall apart, and the native accent would become obvious. For my father, it was Brazil—my father’s “watashi wa burajiru-jin desu” would fall apart at “burajiru,” Brazil. My father, when he was first learning the language, would slur the syllables together into something more Portuguese like “brajiru,” which sounded uncannily like “Brasil.”

Dad tried to coach my Japanese accent before I left for Japan. “It’s not too American, but it could be much better,” he said. “Your amerika-jin sounds too much like a gaijin. You keep saying amerikuh-jin! Amerikuh!”

I went to Japan and kept as quiet as I could. Americans are loud. I didn’t want to be that way—I looked Japanese, so unlike my more “white” and “mixedrace” looking friends, I knew that my social faux-pas wouldn’t be easily excused. It’s easy to keep quiet when you don’t know the language and don’t know what

to say. So I just bowed and kept going. I did such a good job at it that strangers assumed I actually understood them and would start talking to me more at length.

I don’t really know what they said, but I bowed and listened politely.

“

Your first language betrays you. That’s what Dad tells me.

But it wasn’t really just about listening politely. I wanted to listen, even though I didn’t understand. It’s a soothing language, Japanese. It’s the old nursery rhymes that Mom would recite with me. It’s the words of gratitude I gave before and after every meal. The melody of every 90s J-pop track that I loved.The voice of my favorite Ghibli characters, the ones that inspired my own life decisions. It’s the language I grew up with—it is a sound that doesn’t hurt me. The words fall soft around me. The words hold me, I realize, the same way my comforter wrapped around me after my first ofuro bath at my homestay. I lie awake in the dark tatami room, and listen to the soft, wordless peace of the night.

When I listen to words—lyrics in songs, class lectures, regular conversations—I feel the words. I visualize the words in my mind as I listen to them. I asked my family and friends if they also experience this “word feeling,” but

they don’t. They tell me it sounds like a mild form of synesthesia. I only mention this “synesthesia” because this word-feeling only happens for languages I know.

It always happens for English.

French too, because I studied it since kindergarten. Sometimes, especially now since I’m taking Portuguese classes, I get this feeling in Portuguese as well. But I have always felt Japanese in Romaji, the spelled-out pronunciations of Japanese in the Romanized alphabet, even when I was younger and Mom had taught me Japanese. I know and can recognize the Japanese syllabary in ひらがな and カタカナ, but in my head, it always gets translated back to English—hiragana and katakana. The trip helped with my recognition of hiragana and katakana—I would practice by reading the signage on the streets—but even that quickened syllable-reading didn’t help with anything. I had no idea what those syllables could mean. It made me into a babbling gaijin.

I knew I was saying and reading something intelligible, but I had no idea what it was.

The only moments when I understood what my syllable-babbling meant was when I was reading katakana, the designated syllabary for foreign, non-Japanese words. ミルク was milk, キウイ was kiwi, ブラジル was Brazil, アメリカ was America.

On my last night in Japan, I went to a curry eatery—if the colorful signs didn’t already give it away, カレー definitely meant curry. I sat down, I bowed, I perused the menu for katakana and ordered by the menu item number. I mur295 Magazine, Spring 2020

6

mured to the waitress, カレー, は い, ちいはい, トンコツ. It was the most foreign I ever felt, and I felt proud to have said these words.

Curry, yes, small, fried pork. An idiot gaijin, foreigner. But a happy one, a fed one. I counted out the yen and left the shop.

The next morning, before catching our flight at Narita International Airport to return home, my friends and I scoured Tokyo for cherry blossoms.

March was much too early for sakura—my parents told me that April was always the best time for

7

295 Magazine, Spring 2020

sakura—but we had seen on TV that a cherry blossom tree had already bloomed. It was gray and raining, but we eventually found one and took pictures of ourselves and of the cherry blossom tree like all the other tourists.

I told my parents about finding the tree, and they doubted me.

“Really, さくら? They shouldn’t be blooming this early.You probably saw うめ. Do you know what うめ is?” We didn’t see ume blossoms.

It was sakura, and I knew it, but my parents weren’t convinced until they saw the photos.

Brown Water by In Kyu Chung CW: offensive language

T

en years have passed since I left that place. Nothing about my current life, at home or at work, bears the stitches and seams that ran through those 21 months of my youth. How can it? Freedom and privacy, things that once hovered distant like an oasis—I now drink from them every day. But one soldier’s habit has stuck with me.

When I sit down at my office desk and look at my calendar, covered in bullet-pointed sticky notes and red circles, it sometimes feels like gazing into an old mirror.

From Day One in boot camp, I began each morning by crossing out another date. 600 days, 300 days, 200 days…Not that the countdown made time go faster.

This was simply how a drafted soldier survived. Without the constant reminder that life in the barracks had a termination date, all of us would have lost our minds.

In hindsight, it all sounds dramatic. After all, the military is a rite of passage for every South Korean man.You go in and come back out in two years. Get a little buffer, dumber, and a lot more disgusting. Sing songs about purging communism. Feel some patriotism, if it suits you.

Same deal with the ranks. You go from private—“cockroaches,” because their hands and feet will grace anything unhygienic ever imagined (and never imagined)— to private first class—“worker ants,” because they work a lot and get stepped on even more— to corporal—“tigers”, a fitting title for the practical rulers of the colony—to sergeant, a.k.a. “grasshoppers-who-give-negative-ten-shits.” But everyone does it. Wear the same clothes and get the same haircuts. Speak the same, sleep the same, celebrate and curse the same …And everyone gets bruised the same.

That’s how you learn. That’s how your spirit grows strong bones.

And so, the tug-of-war with time begins and tomorrow becomes a copy of today. The quicker you learn to find comfort in repetition, the better. Right around when I had crossed off October 31st to flip to November—right around when my count came down to 150 days or so—I had finally grasped this beautiful piece of wisdom. Even in an institution that left no room for the pronoun “I”, I gathered the little crumbs of privacy to 295 Magazine, Spring 2020

8

play my own beat. A cigarette or two after lunch, a short walk after dinner, thirty minutes of journaling after lights-out with the help of a portable LED bar I’d smuggled in from a vacation.

I was the only corporal that the privates didn’t need to shake awake at 0630; I’d already be up, savoring the godly voice of Kim Kwang-Seok touching my ears through a retro CD player. I’d be fully clad in uniform, complete with the three bricks on my left chest indicating my rank and the green epaulets for squad leaders.

I’d nod slightly at the two newest cockroaches, bowing and scurrying away to wake up fifteen more people. A nod of understanding, of approbation, of hard-earned condescension. I’d smile at my calendar and think, “Here comes another.” Yes—in that terrible cage, I had managed to build for myself a worthwhile and satisfying life, perhaps even happy. My modest garden.

Until he came to change everything.

“Cut it out, Joon. You’ve got plenty more days to torture him.”

“Fuck, I got his sweat on my fingers. Yeah, you’re right, he’s got other people to shit his pants for at the moment. Wait till you meet Private Kim Chang-hee, your direct senior. You’re in for a ride. He’s our Satan-in-residence.

See no mercy, hear no mercy, feel no mercy, you know?”

“So what’d you do in society?” I intervened. It was usually the responsibility of privates or PFCs to fetch new kids, but they were all conscripted that day for a massive roadworks; hence me and Joon. A few inches short of my height and tight in his uniform, the kid still panted from carrying his duffel bag to our barrack. Beads of sweat rolled down his round face and gathered at the tip of his chin. His nametag, overlocked onto his right chest a mere two weeks ago in boot camp, looked crisp and fresh. “Dong-ho?”

“Yes. I finished my freshman year in college-yo,” he answered in the informal honorific. I otato! He’s gotta cringed even before Joon clapped be Potato. No way his paw on Dong-ho’s shoulder. around it. Don’t you “Yo? Don’t boot camps these think, Corporal Lee?” days teach you anything? CorpoChoi Ha-joon was a towering ral Lee, it’s been six weeks since 28-year-old with cudgel-thick this motherfucker shaved his biceps and the maturity of a head and he still can’t speak like third-grader. Had I met him in a soldier. All your sentences end society, I would have peed my in nida or nika, you understand?” pants whenever he so much “I’m sorry! I forgot-yo.” as tapped my shoulder, as he “You did it again, bitch. What was doing to this poor new kid. are you, a fucking goldfish?”

Thank God I enlisted before “I’m sorry-nida! I’ll fix it-nida.” he did.

“And didn’t you learn to “Look at this beautiful pig- shout out your rank and name face. It’s a fucking potato! I’m whenever a senior touches you? telling you.”

Like this? Like this?” Joon de-

“P 9

295 Magazine, Spring 2020

livered a series of jabs against the kid.

“Private Park Dong-ho! Private Park Dong-ho! Private Park…”

“Seriously Joon! Let him breathe for the first week. Here, let’s help you unpack and settle in. This is your bunk.”

“OK, thank you,” Dong-ho said. He smiled at me. A big smile, unabashed and unapologetic.

Then, as he threw the duffel bag off his shoulders onto the bunk, he made a weird noise that sounded like a mix of coughing and moaning (admittedly somewhat like a pig’s squeal). More highpitched than his talking voice, as if to belie the fact that he had a talking voice. He quickly covered his mouth and pretended to wipe his nose. But I had no doubt that I had just heard laughter.

One of the many things you weren’t supposed to do as a private was smile, much less laugh.

You weren’t ever supposed to look like you were having a good day. Some assholes would crack you up on purpose just to beat you up. I once stood in the pouring rain for thirty minutes as four of my seniors hurled at me every invective ever known to the Korean language, because I had snickered at a comedy show on TV. Who would’ve known you weren’t supposed to laugh, of all things, at comedy? I still remember the scent of rotten milk and damp cardboard in the dumping ground, replete with heaps of recyclables and trash gathered from every echelon. The scent of disdain. My four villains took care to stay dry inside the roof-covered smoking booth. One of them threw ciga-

rette stubs at me and asked me if I found that funny.

As I now looked at Dong-ho organize his belongings in the locker, a knot tightened in my stomach. What could he have possibly found amusing? I glanced at Joon to see if he had noticed, but he was busy playing with a lanyard he found in the bag.

“What’s this, Potato? What does it say? Ber-ke-ley?”

“That’s my college-nida.

I’ve studied in America since elementary school.”

Both our eyes widened.

We had never received a kid from abroad.

“What the—so why’re you here? Isn’t there some crap law that says if you drink enough Yankee water, you don’t have to rot for the motherland?”

“Well, I don’t have US citizenship yet, unfortunately.”

Joon’s face crumpled up as soon as he heard “unfortunately.”

“Geez, lucky us. We got ourselves an American prodigy.

Isn’t that impressive, Corporal Lee? So how good is this Berkeley school? How much worse than Harvard?”

“It’s a pretty good schoolnida. Few people here would know, of course.”

“You must speak good English then, huh? What’s it like in an American college? Do they really smoke marijuana and fuck all the time? How many blondies have you banged? I wouldn’t mind some gold rag licking my ass.”

“Uh, Corporal—” Dong-ho paused to read Joon’s nametag.

“Corporal Choi Ha-Joon, that way of talking is, you know, kinda sexist.”

295 Magazine, Spring 2020

10

Silence fell over us like ice water. The lanyard slid from Joon’s finger and fell flat on the floor with a clang.

“What’d you say, son?”

“I said, you were being a bit disrespectful. Isn’t ‘rag’ a Korean slang for sluts-nika? We wouldn’t talk that way there. With my college friends, I mean-nida.”

Joon was as glib as he was bulky. Few and far between came the times when his jaw dropped in utter speechlessness. Right then, he looked like he’d just come out of a staring contest with Medusa. The knot tightened in my stomach; I almost groaned.

Instead I chuckled. “Nice, nice! You’re a righteous man, aren’t you, Dong-ho? Pretty impressive, making Joon freeze up on your first day.”

“Sorry, did I—?”

“No no, don’t worry. You know what, come out here for a second.” I grabbed him by the wrist and dragged him out of our barrack room into the corridor. I took us another good dozen steps away from the door.

I stood him against the wall and took a deep breath. Before I could say a word, though, he said, “Thank you, Corporal. I was starting to feel a bit uneasy.”

“What?”

“You know, for stopping the…”

He gestured vaguely towards our room. There was that smile on his pudgy face again. Bright and naïve, repulsively earnest.

“Yeah. Well, listen. I should— you should—” The smile just wouldn’t fall off his face. I imagined molding his chubby cheeks until the smile creased into a frown and then into a howling 11

295 Magazine, Spring 2020

grimace, like The Scream by Edvard Munch. I used to wonder how shabby I must have looked that night at the dumping ground, whether I could’ve sympathized with that stinking private drenched in rain.

“Yes, Corpoal?”

“Corporal Lee. Or Corporal Lee Min-su.”

“Yes, sorry.”

“You know what, never min. I think you’re going to have a nice time adjusting here. I think we’ll get along. You understand me?”

Dong-ho beamed. “Glad to hear that-nida.”

“Good, then. Hey, my hand is on your shoulder.”

“Oh, right—Private Park Dong-ho!”

“Okay. Go finish unpacking now. Tell Joon to come out here, would you?”

As I watched him hurry back into the room, I flinched as my nose caught a whiff of that unforgettable stench.

F

irst impressions are often uncannily right. This much I had confirmed many times during my time at the Maintenance Battalion under the 1st Infantry Division. I was right when I fetched then-Private Choi Ha-joon myself and saw a walking lump of muscles with minimal cerebral power. I was right the day I met our platoon commander, Master Sergeant Park, and saw a middle-aged man with no ambition save for any dim prospects of promotion. And I hoped I was wrong when I met Potato and saw in him, well, a hot potato. An American-minded kid with no

exposure to our culture of Yejeol, of humility and deference. America, the beacon of liberty! Where you call your elders by first name, where people burn flags just to say they can, where teens walk around half-naked on the streets.

Where, apparently, “I prefer not to” suffices in response to “Why don’t you obey the rule?” Imagine folding up these thoughts into a soldier, small enough to fit into a three-foot-wide bunk. There was much origami to perform.

As it turned out, he adapted himself with surprising speed. He never forgot to bow to his senior soldiers and to salute the officers.

Come cleaning time, he would hurry to fetch a floorcloth and start wiping furiously—gunracks, window panes, shared cabinets, etc. Only after emptying out the trash bins and mopping the floor would he take a lightning shower before evening roll call, when the officer of the watch would inspect all cleaning areas. Not once did I get reprimanded for “neglecting the squad leader’s responsibilities as supervisor.” The hallways shone spotlessly; so did the bathroom and shower room. I checked the classic blind spots— the underside of the toilet seat, the door hinges to the reading room, the “dust factory” behind our TV—but they were cleaner than when I was private. That had always been the ultimate intergenerational test: Are they having it tougher than we did?

The one thing I did mind, though, was the way he looked at me. Behind the thick-rimmed glasses, his eyes twinkled knowingly whenever they met mine.

Each time I woke up for my

morning music, Potato’s face greeted me first. He’d be staring at me with a coy smile, as if we had a secret friendship going on.

It was of course natural for cockroaches to want to befriend tigers, though I had never played this game. I fell under the category that tried too hard to prove myself. I used to volunteer to shift in for my senior private’s night watch, sacrificing two hours of my sleep. So desperate was I to be acknowledged as the Star Cockroach. Siphoning off my duty to a senior felt like an unimaginable crime to me.

Which is why I was shocked one evening to find Private Kim Chang-hee hunched over a toilet, his body half-sticking out of the cubicle and jerking back and forth. I immediately recognized the motion as unclogging the toilet, the most despicable of all chores. Their renovation long overdue, the bathrooms boasted a woefully weak water pressure.

Too weak, indeed, to deal with the daily productions of thirty guys in their appetitive prime.

Which meant that almost every day, someone had to wrestle with a bowl brimming with brown water. We all knew who that someone had to be. Pumping your own shit is bad enough. Pumping someone else’s, though—don’t talk to me before you’ve had to do it for two months straight.You start retching every time you so much as hear an ice cube make a splash in a glass of water.

Kim Chang-hee, of all people! Joon may have been brazenly hypocritical when he called Chang-hee our Satan-in-residence, but he wasn’t exaggerating 295 Magazine, Spring 2020

12

much. Christened “Hawk-Eye”

by Joon, the soon-to-be PFC was notorious for his “hallway lectures,” whereby he would give a good scolding to his subordinate privates as he went through a list of spotted misdemeanors.

Common faults included leaning on one foot during roll call, not speaking loudly enough, and sitting with hunched shoulders. He could be an absolute tyrant when it came to enforcing discipline.

Even the PFC’s tiptoed around this guy. Yet here he was, splashing away at the toilet like a newbie just transported from boot camp.

“Chang-hee?

What are you doing?”

“Private Kim Chang-hee!”

The six-foot-tall guy turned around, a rubber plunger in one hand. A few brown smudges decorated his green undershirt.

I peeked behind him at the toilet and regretted it instantly. “Just unclogging this-nida!”

“Where’s everyone else?”

“They’re all occupied.”

“Occupied? With what? It’s cleaning time right now.”

“I can go find them if—” Chang-hee made as if to run outside, but I stopped him.

“Where’s Dong-ho? Do you know?” Chang-hee’s eyes darted sideways. He may have had a hawk’s eye for spotting others’ mistakes, but that didn’t mean he could hide his own.

“What’s going on? He should be on this, not you.”

“Well, Corporal Lee…he’s actually in the reading room.

Writing.”

“Reading room?” You weren’t supposed to use the reading room until you’d gotten to PFC. 13

295 Magazine, Spring 2020

The gym not until your third month as PFC, the karaoke not until your fifth. This wasn’t hazing for the sake of hazing. The incremental improvements in your quality of life played a key role in helping you endure the 21-month-long tunnel. Order served the military, and culture served order. Patience and reward: this was how the food chain stabilized itself, from cockroaches to tigers. Suck it up today, since tomorrow will be better. To flout these unwritten rules, therefore, belied not only selfishness, but also disrespect toward the mores of military life. “He’s been here for barely two weeks. What’s he doing there?”

“I’m sorry-nida. He’s working on something that I—you see, the English essay…”

“What?”

“Isn’t our battalion holding an English writing contestnika? The first-place prize is a five-day-vacation, so I thought…

Potato speaks English better than Korean, and I thought surely no one else in the battalion would, you know…”

I felt as if I had been hit on the back of my head with a rifle stock. Of course I knew about the writing contest. Every echelon had received the official letter introducing it as a special event planned “in order to boost military morale, reward outstanding talent, and spur intellectual growth.” In reality, the officers in charge of deciding the winner could barely order a hamburger in English. It was one of those stupid Potemkins for the battalion commander to award the vacation to anyone of his choos-

ing—his great-nephew’s friend, his daughter-in-law’s student, whatever. The winner would win even before entering his submission. Master Sergeant Park, our jaded platoon commander, told us as much in a meeting with all the squad leaders.

“

From the bathroom, I could still hear the thump, thump of Chang-hee’s plumber.

“So you asked him to write your submission, in exchange for exemption from cleaning duty?”

“I didn’t quite phrase it that way—” “How did you phrase it, then?

Let’s hear how diplomatic privates can get these days.” “……”

“Come on, Chang-hee. Let’s hear it.”

“I’m very sorry-nida. I shouldn’t have done it-nida.”

“Damn right you shouldn’t have.” I stormed out of the bathroom. The only reason I didn’t stay to reprimand Chang-hee further was because that very moment, I remembered something about Dong-ho from several days ago. I and a few other corporals were gathered in front of the TV, taking turns to diss the officers. One of my fellow squad leaders slipped up and started talking about the writing con-

test. I gave him the eye and the conversation shifted to whether Master Sergeant Park really deserved to get paid two million won a month. But right then, Potato was mopping the floor behind us, well within earshot.

Munch, I thought as I hurried to the reading room.

Just as I arrived, the door opened and out came Potato, not even bothering to conceal the lined papers in his right hand. I was about to have my way with him when I saw Sergeant Lee following him out.

“So what happened next? She dragged you into the bathroom and—oh hey Min-su, what’s up?” Sergeant Lee said cheerily. “Dude, somebody please get those ugly green epaulets off this guy’s shoulder. When I was a squad leader, I checked the cleaning areas for the first couple days and that was the end! Take a break and come to the convenience store with us. Potato’s telling me all about his wanton sexual life yonder in the land of freedom.”

Potato giggled. “It’s quite not like that-nida. You have to hear the whole story.”

“Thanks for the offer, Sergeant Lee, but it’s cleaning time right now and I’ve actually come to talk to Dong-ho about something.”

“Ah, forget it! You’ll learn to appreciate leisure when you’re wiser like me. Slave away, my friend, slave away—for how long now, 150 days? Not even, right?

Well, I’ll be out in a month, so let’s not be strangers when we meet again with longer hair! So Potato, how do you say ‘Suck my dick’ in English again?” I tried 295 Magazine, Spring 2020

14

to stop them, but they were already heading down the stairs, Sergeant Lee playfully punching Potato in the shoulder.

“Private Park Dong-ho!”

“Chill, don’t be so tight-ass with me. Let’s hear about this happy ending already.”

I stood still as the echo of their voices faded. From the bathroom, I could still hear the thump, thump of Chang-hee’s plunger.

H

ow was it that all the sergeants loved him?

How? And I mean loved him. Was it a deference to that superpower which has lit this world’s democracy, including ours, for the past couple centuries? Was it the occasional audacity with which he joked back, a flavor of American humor they’d tasted only through Friends and The Big Bang Theory? His stupid stories about Californian parties and marijuana and big-breasted “Valley girls”? I didn’t even think half his stories were true.

But what better entertainment than this for those empty-headed grasshoppers with less than 100 days of service left?

It wasn’t jealousy. Of course it wasn’t; better to be a corporal dissatisfied than a private happy.

Each time he greeted me with his secret crinkling eyes, however, I struggled against a strong urge to iron out that smile with my own hands. Why? Because even within that grey bubble of a world, severed from society and festered in tradition, rectitude had a place. And few people had the power to enforce it.

Hell, few people had the interest to enforce it.

15

295 Magazine, Spring 2020

Kim Chang-hee didn’t win the essay contest. He feigned nonchalance, but I had caught him multiple times pacing back and forth in the main hall, glimpsing at the bulletin board for new announcements. If he felt disappointed, he didn’t show it. Recently promoted to PFC, he had to keep himself busy with a truckload of new administrative duties anyway.

“Poor bastard. He really needed that extra vacation,” Joon murmured as he lit his cigarette, cupping his hand to protect the fire from wind. I joined him after saluting an officer passing by. We and a few other guys had been summoned to repair some Humvees from the Transportation Battalion that a group of idiots drove over the craggy mountain pass behind our unit. They might as well have decided to go hiking in flip-flops. The Humvees looked like a quick fix though, and any downtime that could be seized had to be seized.

“Hasn’t he gone out on his first official leave yet? I thought those were supposed to be guaranteed.”

“Corporal Lee, who the hell knows what’s guaranteed and what’s not in this shithole? Our battalion commander went berserk about a couple retards jumping the permitted district during leave, so he refused to approve any of the December vacations.

Poof. Just like that.”

“That’s too bad.”

“Anyway, I like Hawk-Eye. One of the rare champions of order, unafraid to wield power.” I liked Chang-hee too, though for different reasons. Or maybe I expressed the same reasons differently. Joon smirked as he released

the smoke through his nostrils.

“Did you know his mom’s gone through a spine surgery-nika?

She can’t even walk, let alone cook for herself. Hawk-Eye’s got a 12-year-old sister and a father who drinks Soju for water, so yeah, the old lady’s in really good hands.”

“Crap. I had no idea.”

“Gotta care for your guys, Corporal Lee. You never know who’s thinking about slitting his wrist or lacing his neck.”

“Who won the contest then?

Some distant relative of the battalion commander?”

Joon dropped the stub and rubbed it hard against the floor.

“Haven’t you heard? Fucking Potato got the five-day-vacation.”

Instantly, the knot in my stomach revived itself. “I don’t understand.”

“He submitted something for the contest and, well, I guess if there’s anything the fucker’s good at, it’s Yankee-speak. The retard’s got to have one talent, right?”

“But you know the contest is bullshit. English essays? Are you kidding? These officers would fail my middle school grammar quizzes!”

Joon shrugged. “That’s almost verbatim what Master Sergeant Park said. He thinks it’s probably because Potato came all the way from America. The kid didn’t have to serve, you know, if he’d chosen to stick around in America till he got US citizenship.

He could’ve renounced his Korean status and just partied on with his Californian girlfriends. That’s the kind of narrative officers like to spin. A spirit of Aegook, true patriotism.”

What name did I have for the feeling that shot through my body then? Irritation? Rage? My mind raced back to the brown smudges on Chang-hee’s shirt, the same smudges that once decorated mine too. All I know is that I felt focused like I had never been before. I found an enemy that I could take on and I was not going to let him slip through my hands.

Here’s something else that I learned during my time in the military: All you need to demolish a dam is one tiny crack. Reputation builds up brick by brick, step after step. But it sure gives no shit about following procedure when it starts going down. One visible fault, and he’d be finished. I was so prepared to take this piece of wisdom and shove it up his ass.

Then I found what I needed.

A stroke of divine luck. Normally, I was a sound sleeper. But that night, God would have it that my eyes open at two o’clock.

Feeling thirsty, I got up for a drink of water. That’s when I spotted the muted flashlight of a phone screen emanating from beneath someone’s blanket.

Potato’s blanket.

A jolt of joy paralyzed me. I sat like a statue for a good thirty seconds, mesmerized by the fuzzy white light. I stared at it like a man at an oasis in the desert, trying to discern that it’s not a mirage. Wasn’t there some cheesy American classic about a rich man gazing out over the sea at a green light, a symbol of the American dream? American dream this, fucking cockroach.

He was going down like a wingless jet; I’d make damn sure of it.

295 Magazine, Spring 2020

16

I slid out of my bunk, as quietly as possible, and tiptoed across the room without even putting on shoes. My hands still remembered, from my months as a private, how to open and close the door with absolutely no noise. As I stooped over the water fountain and the cool water touched my tongue, joy gave way to anger. A phone. He smuggled in a phone. In this place where everyone got treated the same, he sought a way out just for himself. And to do it as a private! Breaking rules, instead of obeying them; clinging onto his grand liberties. This should put him in the guardhouse for the full 15 days. I would petition for longer, if possible. I wanted him to spend weeks staring at a grey, windowless wall and think about what he did wrong. And then he’d bend over. He’d beg for forgiveness. I would give it, or not give it.

Whom should I wake up? A matter as important as this needed to be handled by more than one squad leader. We should catch him red-handed, seize his phone, and report everything to Master Sergeant Park the next day. Proceed by the rule of order.

But what if Master Sergeant Park didn’t care? What if he liked Potato too, like those dumb sergeants giggling at his grand tales?

Maybe Park was in on the whole contest business; maybe he also thought highly of the American boy who forfeited his freedom to serve the motherland. As if the privileges of a rich and well-educated life received a higher price tag than the mundane youths of my comrades. Who knew what 17

295 Magazine, Spring 2020

was the rule and what wasn’t in this shithole?

“

Some assholes would crack you up on purpose just to beat you up.

When I reentered our room, I went straight for Joon’s bunk.

Once he saw the phone light himself, he didn’t need any encouragement from me. In a matter of minutes, we were dragging Dong-ho outside into the freezing December night; he had been texting something in English, to another friend home from America. I knew exactly where to take him. The scent of rotten milk and wet cardboard already wafted about my nose. He moaned and blubbered the whole time we took him there; he screamed that he be taken back inside. Joon wrenched the phone away from his hand and hurled the batteries into the mountain of waste paper. Dong-ho yelled “fuck” in English and said something about “basic rights.” Joon struck him on the head. I followed suit with a kick against the ribs. The noises that followed sounded a lot like toilet-pumping. Thump, thump, thump. In retrospect, anybody that happened to be passing by the dumping ground could have heard us. We started yelling things. I don’t remember

what I said, or what Potato said back to me. But if the officer of the watch had caught us, I know what I would have told him. That here, we all get the same haircuts.

We all wear the same clothes. “I got his blood on my hands,�

Joon hissed as he geared up for

another punch. I barely heard him over my own cursing. My hands too felt damp and sticky. I wiped them on my shirt. Under the dim moonlight which oversaw us that night, it must have looked like we were smudged all over with awful stains of filth.

295 Magazine, Spring 2020

18

Enterta by

19

295 Magazine, Spring 2020

Eating as ainment y Sarah Moon

I

n June 2018, the Dolan Twins posted a YouTube video titled “MUKBANG ft. James Charles & Emma Chamberlain.” In this 29-minute-long video that has accumulated over 17.8 million views, James, Emma, and the Dolan Twins, four of YouTube’s biggest stars (over 16.2 million, 8.5 million, and 10.6 million subscribers, respectively) colloquially known as the “Sister Squad,” laugh and chat while eating burgers and pancakes from American restaurant chain IHOP. This is what is now known, at least among YouTubers, as a mukbang.

Although embraced by numerous American YouTube stars like the Dolan Twins, the mukbang comes from South Korea, where it originated on Korean

streaming platform AfreecaTV in the early 2010s. The word itself is a Korean portmanteau meaning “eating broadcast” and is pronounced “moak-bahng” (as Korean language speakers say it), not “muck-bang,” as many Americans commonly say it. In its original, purest form, it is a livestream that usually lasts for a couple hours, generally broadcast during dinnertime, of someone devouring giant portions of food (four large pizzas, fifteen chicken legs, an entire ten-pound king crab). On AfreecaTV, broadcasters, colloquially referred to as BJs, can receive monetary support from their viewers in the form of donations; AfreecaTV takes a thirty percent cut and the rest of the money goes straight to the BJ. The most popular mukbang BJs on AfreecaTV amass thousands of viewers a night and can earn around $10,000 a month from streaming alone, in addition to sponsorship deals from various Korean food brands, which will give six-figure sums to famous BJs to promote their newly released sodas or special chicken sauce or jars of marinated crab.1 This sort of business model works because the viewers are directly engaged in the mukbang: during the livestream, BJs converse in real-time with their viewers by responding to questions and comments that viewers type into a live chatroom.

Often, these are requests to move the food closer to the camera or questions about how spicy the noodles are. However, some BJs run their livestreams like talk radio shows, sharing stories from their own lives and helping 295 Magazine, Spring 2020

20

viewers sort out messy or upsetting situations. In these sorts of livestreams, the chatroom is filled with viewers eager to share their own short stories and even give advice or comforting words for the anonymous viewer whose story is currently being read aloud by the BJ.

“

This unknown Korean phenomenon and its avid fans were immediately dismissed.

As with most viral cultural phenomena, it is hard to pinpoint exactly why the mukbang has become so popular in South Korea.

In Korea, the pressure to maintain a certain weight or figure is huge, meaning that many people undertake extreme diets, starving themselves.2 Many hungry Koreans will enjoy foods they cannot consume vicariously through mukbang livestreams. Additionally, the number of single households in Korea has risen over the past years, meaning that more often than not, many people must eat their meals alone.c In a culture based on Confucian values that emphasize the family or the group over the individual, people who eat alone can feel like loners or outcasts. However, eating meals “together” with mukbang 21

295 Magazine, Spring 2020

BJs and other viewers present in the virtual chatroom can create a sense of companionship and a welcoming community. There are also some people who see the mukbang as a reaction to the perfectly polished Korean pop music industry that has taken the country, and now the world, by storm. Korean celebrities are expected to be flawless in every regard: plastic surgery is the norm, public relationships are taboo, and one botched performance can mean career suicide.4 But in contrast to the artificial, carefully created, perfect celebrities of Korean pop culture, mukbangs are messy, expressive, and almost uncomfortably real.

Starting in 2014, America and other western countries started taking note of the popularity of the mukbang in South Korea. Online articles profiling famous mukbang BJs, like CNN. com’s 2014 profile of The Diva and NPR.org’s 2015 profile of Aebong-ee, characterized the mukbang as a “bizarre fad” and 5, 6 arguably not “natural.”

In April of 2015, YouTube channel TheFineBros, which has over 19.7 million subscribers today, uploaded a video called “YOUTUBERS REACT TO MUKBANG (Eating Shows)” that has since garnered over 6.7 million views. TheFineBros filmed famous American and Japanese YouTubers watching, commenting on, and recreating Korean mukbang clips. Some of the YouTubers who had never seen mukbangs before were supportive, comparing the phenomenon to video game livestreams or Food Network shows. However, many

immediately reacted with disgust or disinterest, commenting “Oh my gosh, shut your mouth when you chew!” and sarcastically, “Wow, this is really interesting.”

One YouTuber said, “People watching [mukbangs] are probably kinda creepy.” A YouTube comment on the FineBros video left by user Kris Brodie with over 1,200 likes states, “is nobody else disgusted by the sound of the eating? jeesh.”7 Never mind the supportive virtual communities created by mukbangs, or the pure enjoyment many people feel when seeing their favorite foods consumed; this unknown Korean phenomenon and its avid fans were both immediately dismissed as weird.

Within the last four years,YouTube opinion about the mukbang has changed enough that star video creators like Emma Chamberlain and the Dolan Twins have added it to their repertoire of video concepts (trying every coffee shop in Los Angeles, swapping credit cards for a day, booking a spontaneous trip to New York), and YouTube viewers are loving it. As the mukbang has spread from Korean AfreecaTV to the global-but-American-dominated YouTube, it has evolved. There are still YouTubers who produce the traditional longer videos with large food portions, like Korean-American creator Stephanie Soo, whose videos last usually 40 minutes and involve more food than the average person probably consumes in a day. With over 1.4 million subscribers, Stephanie has created a brand for herself that surpasses that of the typical AfreecaTV BJ; her videos

are cleanly and skillfully edited and her bright, peppy personality takes center stage as she retells murder mystery stories while working her way through a platter of fifty pieces of sushi.

Stephanie usually dramatically retells real-life crime mystery stories, with her own commentary, which keeps the comment section on her YouTube videos full of viewers engrossed in intellectual debates about the nature of psychopaths and the impact of a traumatizing childhood on adulthood.

Most YouTubers cap their mukbang videos at around twenty minutes, like Korean YouTuber Dorothy, who has gained over 3.5 million subscribers from her Korean food mukbangs, or Yuta Kinoshita from Japan, whose 5.4 million subscribers are frequently updated with videos of her chowing down on ten servings of cream pasta or 120 fried dumplings. A popular mukbang offshoot genre is the ASMR mukbang, where creators attempt to stimulate ASMR, a tingling sensation stimulated by sound or visuals meant to induce relaxation, through amplifying crunching and munching sounds. One of the most watched mukbang videos on YouTube is a black bean noodle and fried chicken ASMR video with over 33 million views: eight straight minutes of pure chewing and swallowing bliss.

SAS-ASMR, probably the most subscribed-to mukbang channel on YouTube with over 8 million subscribers, releases daily ASMR videos featuring any and all kinds of crunchy, squishy, sticky, or slimy food. SAS’s ASMR not 295 Magazine, Spring 2020

22

only provides pure entertainment but also comfort for her viewers, some of whom leave thankful comments on her videos like “your videos [help me] relax and fall asleep peacefully” or “who else has depression and anxiety and uses these [videos] to help them?” 8, 9 We have the internet to thank for both the creation of the mukbang livestream on AfreecaTV and its evolution into tightly-edited YouTube clips of feasting on food; now, even the most niche trends in any country can easily be discovered and popularized.

As with all things adopted from other cultures, the mukbang has faced its fair share of critics, like those in the FineBros video who might not have understood the Korean cultural conditions that could have contributed to the popularity of the mukbang. Even Frances Cha, “South Korea’s Online Trend: Paying to Watch a Pretty Girl Eat,” CNN (Cable News Network, February 3, 2014), http://www.cnn.com/2014/01/29/ world/asia/korea-eating-room/).

Haru Wilde, “EXPLORING KOREA’S 2 SKINNY OBSESSION AND THE PLUS-SIZE MODELS FIGHTING BACK,” Dazed, February 19, 2019, https://www.dazeddigital.com/beauty/ body/article/43369/1/exploring-korea-skinny-obsession-plus-size-models-fighting-back).

Tae-jun Kang and Alistair Coleman, 3“South Koreans Conquer Fear of Dining Alone,” BBC News (BBC, January 26, 2018), https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/ blogs-news-from-elsewhere-42830675).

Komeil Soheili, “Grueling Gym Rou4 tines, Restrictive Diets, and No Dating: K-Pop Stars Tell Us about the Dark Side of Their Industry,” Insider, December 1, 2019, https://www.insider.com/kpopdark-side-gym-diet-dating-great-guyscrayon-pop-2019-10).

1

23

295 Magazine, Spring 2020

those who embrace it are sometimes guilty of ignoring and abusing the Korean meaning of the word mukbang. In the Dolan Twins’ mukbang video, they say, “Let’s muck this bang!”, which, when translated into Korean, could mean “Let’s eat this broadcast!” or “Let’s eat this room!”

(It also doesn’t help that James Charles thinks that it’s Japanese, not Korean.) And yet the Americanized mukbang has so much going for it: it serves as a helpful tool for improving general mental health, connects diners across the globe through intellectual discussion, and provides wholesome entertainment for the internet masses. There is just something so heartwarming about the Dolans, wolfing down IHOP burgers with their best friends, telling you, “Welcome to dinner at the Dolans’.

You’re part of the family.”

Frances Cha, CNN. Elise Hu, “Koreans Have An Insatiable Appetite For Watching Strangers Binge Eat,” NPR (NPR, March 24, 2015), https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2015/03/24/392430233/ koreans-have-an-insatiable-appetite-for-watching-strangers-binge-eat).

7 TheFineBros, “YOUTUBERS REACT TO MUKBANG (Eating Shows).”

April 2, 2015, video, 10:25, www.youtube.com/watch?v=SG5WcKr4_m0.

8 SAS-ASMR, “ASMR ROTISSERIE CHICKEN + SEAGRAPES (EATING SOUNDS) NO TALKING | SAS-ASMR.” February 19, 2020, video, 10:36, https://youtu.be/53JwKLYBuyI. 9 SAS-ASMR, “ASMR FRESH MANGO AND SWEET COCONUT STICKY RICE (EATING SOUNDS) | SAS-ASMR.” November 15, 2019, video, 9:41, https://youtu.be/JkwPDvTr5p0.

5 6

295 Magazine, Spring 2020

24

Poetry and Spoken Word

n

Winter Melon |冬瓜 Forrest Abbott-Lum

The rooting wintermelon must have survived your same voyage; Seeds a talisman; pocketful of tender coins to sow.

You ate the bitter rind of immigration, the white pith of labor, the mild fruit of a fenced off house with wintermelon swelling on the vine; three daughters, double-yolk mooncakes when the autumn harvest comes, a facsimile of seasons for we live on the long arc of the Pacific in a constant state of summer.

You were an alchemist; printed paper into ghost money.

You folded the paper ingots when we burned them for your mother; your father; your sister.

We made ghost money for you too, but our ingots fell apart at the seams, revealing white paper bellies before bursting into flame.

27

295 Magazine, Spring 2020

Descendence Sophia Zhao

On the Mountains in Jiangxi Province How idyll that morning was— a summit of ryegrass musing over newcomer travelers, unleashing its land sheath-by-sheath in receiving gapes.

As father unwrapped the oranges, I considered my face, perhaps too soft for this occasion. All around me, the men and women slung compassion over their shoulders, lumbering through the mud without sound or affliction, sundering my motions into stumbling shapes.

It was the stones hammered into sable sternness that reminded me of some greater reckoning, a remembrance only recalled in epithet, less name. The slates that insisted a holy semblance as I shed their titles, blank.

But there I bowed; smoke rose like a flood.

Surely that mountain knew my confessions: terracotta urns severed at their necks, blood seeping from their carcasses and pooling up to my knees, rusted and cagey.

As I returned down the path I could have searched for the roundest of pebbles to be my tombstone.

Instead, I imagined an old deer half-dead on the ground— untouched, as if it was a shrine all along.

295 Magazine, Spring 2020

28

Poem for the Neighborhood Lauren Dominguez Chan

Whom do you seek? Is it the bald and bearded gardener scooping up non-trivial amounts of gingko leaves? They used to perforate the ground.

And what of splashing back into a friendship, fat mallards in a dirty creek alongside boats of paper birch, or grandparents and toddlers equally clad in bucket hats and sneakers? Is it here, life between parentheses, drought-strangled apricot trees, or this mobile home park where the poor and elderly live among each other and the rotten persimmons? Someone give me a sniff of vanilla extract, I’d like to remember why I’m crying.

In from the rain, Gung Gung snaps a rag and rubs me, jacket, pants, hair, cheeks, the way you’d towel off a dog before he shakes, sending droplets into lazy pirouettes. And it chafes, this awful grace. Home, you dab and dry what has been soaked.

Rocks may cry out, but I’m not sure if I can be anything like these smooth-talking stones or the crows that drop them for drink.

29

295 Magazine, Spring 2020

Twinkie John Choe

What happens to a dream deferred?

Maybe it doesn’t dry up, Like a raisin after all.

But ferments, Like a pot of kimchi.

Maybe it sizzles, Like a hot pan of bulgogi.

Does a dream deferred explode, like a Samsung phone Or last forever like a Twinkie?

Yellow on the surface and white inside, right?

A ching-chong chink painted with artificial colors, like a metaphor for racism itself: sponge cake injected with homegrown xenophobia that never expires.

Didn’t you call me a Twinkie, while you planted a funhouse mirror in front of me, the popular film Breakfast at Tiffany’s, casting white guys in yellow face, buck teeth, taped eyelids, a sibilant Asian accent.

Is this what you see in me?

Maybe we can pull the white out of whitewash, And pour in yellow to add more color.

I wanted to be the hero In the next Indiana Jones, hear my voice narrate like Ray Liotta in Goodfellas, but sweet cream-filled desserts should not play this role.

America, didn’t you teach me to be myself, And then make fun of me for being different?

295 Magazine, Spring 2020

30

Maybe we have enough Buddhas and Gandhis, And not enough Genghis Khans.

Did I just say we need more leaders who sip blood for breakfast?

Do I need to have a weapon in my hand, need people to fear my spite to get some attention?

Will the textbooks teach you who I really am then?

Does a dream deferred cut like a surgeon following dotted black lines on a teenager’s face?

To create a perfect double eyelid, or an Angelina Jolie nose?

Tell me The Face Shop, do natural Korean features not sell enough skincare routines for you?

Since apparently I’m so good at math, let me explain an equation I learned growing up: Stereotypes + self doubt = prejudice, the square root of which is irrational fear.

Now, multiply that by systemic discrimination and you get y over x to the power of racism.

But this equation is unbalanced.

Some of these variables don’t cross-cancel out.

America, we have a problem.

America, we have a problem, and it’s bigger than a multi-polynomial, more complex than E equals Mc squared.

America, we have a problem, and you can’t find the answers in the back of the textbook.

My mother always told me “아들, you have to fight your own fight before anyone will care to help you” So let me tell you who I am.

I am not a character you can play as I am not your religious symbol I am not your western-beauty follower I am not your model minority And I am not a Twinkie.

I am a dreamer who teems with many great ideas, I am a Korean whose confidence comes as easy as 3 min 3 step ramen, I am East, And I am West, I will not trade my heritage for 31

295 Magazine, Spring 2020

scan, copy, control + P, clone models on billboards.

America, you have force-fed me pills to keep me asleep From my dreams through this land, But my alarm just went off, no snooze.

It is morning, and I can smell the sweet homemade banchan from my bed, I am ready to wake up.

Breakfast at Tiffany’s (1961)

295 Magazine, Spring 2020

32

2 Poems by Yun Dong-ju Translated by Hannah Kwak

Yun Dong-ju (1917-1945) remains one of the most celebrated poets in South Korea’s collective memory, yet relatively little is known about him outside the Korean peninsula. An aspiring poet, he lived during Japanese colonial rule and was imprisoned in 1943 for his participation in the Korean independence movement. He died in 1945, only a few months before Japan’s surrender in World War II. His poems were published posthumously in 1948 under the title The Sky, the Wind, the Star, and the Poem (하늘과 바람과 별과 시).

33

295 Magazine, Spring 2020

Foreword

To be clear of shame before the heavens Until my dying day, Even at the wind-ruffled leaf I suffered.

With a heart that sings the star I will love All that is dying, and walk My allotted way.

Tonight also the star is brushed by the wind

they go with closed eyes

O children burning for the sun Children who love the stars Dark was the night Yet go forth with closed eyes.

So long as you boast them Go forth sowing seeds.

Should your toe strike a stone Let your closed eyes fly wide open.

295 Magazine, Spring 2020

34

I wrote both of these poems to respond to racism happening both in the past in the present. “My Culture is Not Your Prom Dress” specifically references an incident in which a White student wore a qipao to her school prom, while “Another Racist Joke” expands on the history of anti-Asian racism in the US from an 1885 massacre of Chinese miners to racist “jokes” that we see on SNL, Oscars ceremonies, and more.

My hope is that, by pairing these two poems together, we can get closer to unearthing the true history of violence against Asian Americans: Are these two incidents, of qipao appropriation and the lynching of Chinese miners, related or separate from each other? Has racism against Asian Americans mitigated over the last few centuries, or do these two incidents merely different accounts of the same kind of violence?

295 Magazine, Spring 2020

Eileen Huang

My Culture is Not Your Prom Dress and Another Racist Joke

CW: violence

35

295 Magazine, Spring 2020

36

Isabelle Rhee

Origin Story This poem was inspired by Hanif Abdurraqib’s “A Genealogy,” which opens with: “I mean, no one is actually from anywhere.” It also came to fruition during a workshop led by the wonderful poet Louie Tan Vital, where the prompt she asked us was, “What kind of ancestor do you want to be?” Through “Origin Story,” I was able to reflect deeply on both the tangible and intangible markers of where I come from and what I have inherited.

Music and Dance

55 Locke Street Mohit Sani 39

295 Magazine, Spring 2020

295 Magazine, Spring 2020

40

41

295 Magazine, Spring 2020

295 Magazine, Spring 2020

42

43

295 Magazine, Spring 2020

295 Magazine, Spring 2020

44

Reflection Amanda Zhang

The music used in this piece, a variation of “Reflection” from Disney’s Mulan, was arranged and orchestrated

by Samuel Kim. His arrangement is based off of the 2020 live action Mulan trailer music by Rok Nardin of Really Slow Motion. “Reflection” was originally written by Matthew Wilder and David Zippel for the 1998 animated Mulan film.

45

295 Magazine, Spring 2020

295 Magazine, Spring 2020

46

Visual Art

5

295 Magazine, Spring 2020

295 Magazine, Spring 2020

6

Meiosis Sophia Zhao mixed media

49

295 Magazine, Spring 2020

295 Magazine, Spring 2020

50

51

295 Magazine, Spring 2020

Fragmented Memories of a Life I Never Had Austin Lee photo series also featured at front and end of issue

295 Magazine, Spring 2020

52

53

295 Magazine, Spring 2020

295 Magazine, Spring 2020

54

Postscr

5

295 Magazine, Spring 2020

ript

295 Magazine, Spring 2020

6

Responses to the COVID-19 Pandemic For many, the spring of 2020 has suddenly become the spring of a global pandemic. With little warning, phrases like “social distance” have become a part of people’s daily vocabulary.

Despite being amidst a crisis ­— ­perhaps because of being amidst a crisis ­— ­many have turned and are turning to writing, painting, singing, and other forms of meaning-making. They are published here as a testament to this strange time.

57

295 Magazine, Spring 2020

Quarantine Splay

pastel on paper

Ivory Fu

“The chaos, fatigue, joy and isolated thoughtfulness of quarantine.”

Water

and the noise of my music muffles. The overflow drain, though, sends a wet-ish mechanic sound to my ear drums. I’ve underestimated my volume, and the tub is nearly overflowing. I open my eyes. A blob of dirt drifts by. This is not the water I want.

I want the ocean.

I want to feel the way I do when I smell the ocean. That’s the first thing that you notice.

With that whiff of salty fishiness, you’re transported back to all the other times you’ve been at the beach. I think of the family vacations, of surfing and hiking with Kepa, of sand crab hunting, of exploration. I feel my heart rate lower, and my shoulders lose their hunch. You smell the ocean,

Grace Cajski Say: “This is water.” That’s how David Foster Wallace advised college graduates to think consciously about their lives.

He’s telling us that we must remind ourselves of our surroundings, otherwise we’ll fall into the trap of prescribing pointless things worth. In choosing what we implicitly worship, he counseled, we can choose what makes us happy.

I think about those words as I lay in a fetal position in my tub.

This is water. My hair floats limply. It’s a little crunchy from all the split ends. I submerge my head,

295 Magazine, Spring 2020

58

you’re excited. Your heart inflames as it tries to rush oxygen throughout your body in anticipation of all the joy and frolicking and ease and contentment and energy that will gush from your brain out into the world.

The next thing that happens is you feel the wind. It twirls your hair about and brings (oh, I hate this word—what a skincare cliché) rejuvenation.

With the wind comes the sound. The calls of the birds welcome you. The rhythmic crash of the waves serve as a metronome, giving each second a certain weight. A confirmation that time is indeed passing.

Finally, you are close enough to see it. Maybe you’re in the car on the side of the mountain and with just one more circle around you’ll be at the beach. Or maybe you’re walking, and that great blue expanse has finally come into view. You stop and stare.

What’s silly is that it always looks the same: blue with smatterings of lighter blues and hues of green, some waves interrupting the placid flatness as they thrust their frothy whiteness into the deep blue. I could stare forever, mesmerized. The little houses and and roads fade to invisibility.

There is nothing, though, that compares to being in the water.

That first dive in when your body is invaded by the taste of salt. The first glimpse into this concealed kingdom: vibrant colors, hidden creatures, explosions of movement and life. I remember the first time I put on a snorkel at Kiona Beach, in the little bay protected by corals. Humuhumunukunukuapua’a! Sea cucumber!

59

295 Magazine, Spring 2020

Rocks! Snails! so much life concealed beneath this blue blanket.

I paddled and kicked, exploring and observing. Then I tore myself away because my muscles were aching, that gooood ache of accomplishment. I marched ashore, and there was the awkward moment when the water is too shallow to swim in but too deep to stroll through. I plopped down on my sandy towel, gorged on a spam musubi. I remember the saltiness of the seaweed invading my mouth. The feeling of my body heating in the sun as it receives its warmth and light and love. Then it was time to go back in the water. This time there was no bodysurfing or splashing. Tired and spent, I laid back and float. I stared at the blue sky and the wispy clouds. The sounds of the ocean, it’s gentle lapping, lulled my eyes closed. I remember how the pores of my skin expanded in the water, how they soaked up the ocean. I felt its infinity. Its limitless power and grace and calm.

But that doesn’t matter, because all I have is this little porcelain tub and a couple of aloe plants balanced near the foggy window. I breathe in, but it smells like the Clorox wipes we use on the doorknobs every night. I try to lean back and let my clay mask breathe vitality into my skin, but the air is humid and dampens my soul. I place intention in my sight, and I try to find joy in the new details I’m noticing: the way the towels all match, the thoughtful design of the shelves, the height and slope of the ceiling. My eyes hurt, though, from lack of use.

When was the last time I looked

off into the distance? I submerge my head again, trying to clear it, but I keep floating up. I try to stabilize my body by pushing my legs against one wall of the tub and my hands against the other, but at this point, I’ve run out of air anyway. I resurface. I resume my fetal position.

I stick my tongue out, and I feel my own tub water lap into my mouth. I swallow, and I feel the lump of liquid move down my throat and plop into my stomach.

I do it again. It didn’t taste dirty, and I’m thirsty anyway.

This is my water.

Sunspots of the Lungs When Matt Song

Emily Li

Tap,

The worst kind of intake Exhalation Locks of light Mask misery.

Full filtered lungs, New Moans Crown new grief New?— Tap,

We’re all out.

Streams in,

Just in Tap, Tap, Tap, Homecoming, coming not Who knew celebrations stopped for breath?

YouTube: bit.ly/2z4h6Ib Presave: bit.ly/3aos1t7 “I would love to submit a new song I wrote amid the covid-19 crisis. Hope you enjoy! The cover art was done by Lourdes Rohan ’22. The video was edited by Ajit Dias (non-Yalie).”

January 29, 2020.

295 Magazine, Spring 2020

60

PSA: 650+ Peter S. Shin YouTube: bit.ly/3cF3Fgr Mixing English and Korean, PSA: 650+ is a quasi-public safety alert forewarning people of Asian descent of the hundreds of racist attacks reported every day due to COVID-19-related xenophobia. 650+ refers to the number of hate crimes reported on the first day the Chinese for Affirmative Action (CAA) #stopAAPIhate incident report went live. The musical atmosphere was inspired by the sci-fi film Blade

Runner (1982) about a dystopian future Los Angeles in 2019.

Written in Los Angeles and commissioned by the Chicago Civic Orchestra for their 100th Anniversary in response to COVID-19. Dedicated to my Chinese-American piano teacher, Joyce Berg, who was recently a victim of a hit and run in my hometown of Kansas City, Missouri and is thankfully alive and well.

Untitled Aadit Vyas Since coming home, everyone keeps asking me how I feel.

There’s something ominous and unsettling about having to say you’re fine over and over again.

The question is fair—how am I doing? Putting emotions onto paper is hard enough, transcribing feelings evoked by a pandemic feels impossible. All of the rapid changes, transitions, and sacrifices made because of COVID-19 have forced me to think more about my identity.

Sometimes I feel sad.

Navigating Yale, many of us struggled with imposter syndrome; constantly needing to remind ourselves of our own uniqueness and sense of worth. To me, it has made college feel like a never-ending cycle of aspiration and the sub61

295 Magazine, Spring 2020

sequent not-quite-as-I-imagined materialization of reality. Whether it be rejections from clubs, jobs, or fellowships, there was always this implicit feeling of measurement against your peers. Senior year, however, seemed like a chance to leave behind this measurement— that no matter what our individual contributions to Yale and the greater community have been, we will come together to celebrate as a whole. Our celebration would represent moving beyond feelings of individual insecurity; it would be a collective acknowledgment of our individual successes. Now we face an uncertain graduation and a grim world battling this pandemic. While yes, we will still become graduates eventually, I fear that there won’t be this shared sense of

contentment. I fear that all that will be left will be lingering thoughts about what was and what could have been. A cloud hanging over our final memories of Yale. Foggy memories tinged by the drama and pain that embodied our departure from campus.

Sometimes I feel angry.

This virus has highlighted negative externalities that come from some core values of America and its people. In the early days of the virus, American exceptionalism filled the airwaves and social media. There were stories and videos of people trivializing the virus and not taking it seriously, acting like a country as strong and wealthy as America would never befall the tragedies we were witnessing in other parts of the world. Others claimed that COVID-19 was merely the flu, despite evidence to the contrary. Some turned to spew racist slurs at Asians around the country. In my home state of Florida, people openly disregarded social distancing guidelines, demonstrating an appalling lack of concern for both the public and for science; hoops had to be removed from the backboards to keep people from playing basketball in groups.

Others seemed more concerned about COVID-19’s economic toll than the invaluable loss of human lives. For those of us who were concerned with spread early-on, we would only hear about celebrities testing positive for COVID-19, but heard little of friends or family.

Issues around privilege in America made testing feel inaccessible. A fierce individualist, capitalist mindset made navigating the virus a personal pursuit for survival rather than a communal one and has left

those most vulnerable without the attention they need.

Sometimes I feel grateful.

Obviously, I am privileged. I am young and living in a stable household with my parents and brother. Things are going as well as I could hope for. With every feeling of self-pity comes feelings of self-admonishment. What’s my pain compared to those in the front lines? Or to those who have lost loved ones? While I know it is unhealthy to compare sorrows, I cannot help but constantly chide myself for feeling sad about the way my senior year has ended up, because it all feels insignificant when compared to the challenge humanity is facing right now.

These constant reminders are humbling.

Overall, I am numb.

It’s going to take some time to reach normalcy as a society and understand these moments that we are living in. What will we remember? It’ll take time to stop concentrating on these feelings of sadness and frustration. It’ll take time to regain the feelings of hope for myself and for the world that I once felt ready to take on after graduation—hope that has given way to shaken values and burgeoning cynicism about the world around me. Without any concrete end in sight, without the ability to grieve in-person with other people, without a sense of security that this kind of tragedy won’t happen again, I’m left wondering, how do I really feel?

295 Magazine, Spring 2020

62

Intimacy and the Emotional Spectrum Michael Libunao-Macalintal This particular sermon comes from my Radical Lives of Proclamation class with Dr. McCray, delivered April 2, 2020.

The text referred to here is John 11:1-45.

It is ironic, and perhaps, poetic in some ways, to hear John’s gospel – a story of resurrection, a glimpse of God’s glory in the midst of this moment. And yes I mean this moment.

See, when we encounter Jesus in this story – I don’t think that we encounter him at his best.

When Mary and Martha come to visit him to tell him of Lazarus’ condition – we get an unexpected response from Jesus. He says, “this illness does not lead to death; rather it is for God’s glory, so that the Son of God may be glorified through it.” I must admit – this is a BOLD statement to come from him. I know that deep down, the pastoral side of me believes that Jesus was trying to convey his support and do his best to lessen Mary and Martha’s worries.

“This is nothing to worry about, he will not die.” But my initial gut reaction felt differently. Upon reading it, I’m just like, “Damn Jesus, we can handle this more tenderly, can’t we?”

Imagine, upon telling the Son of God, the Messiah that your brother is dying, you get this response? It wasn’t just that Lazarus was their brother, but they empha63

295 Magazine, Spring 2020

size to Jesus, “he whom you love”, he whom you hold dear and cherish, he is ill. There is an urgency in their voices – time is running out for Lazarus. The only person that could give Martha and Mary even a sliver of hope and possibility is Jesus. But what do we hear from the Christ? Nothing we could have expected. See, the text tells us that Jesus heard it – but we’re not told that he listened to it. Jesus heard that Lazarus was sick, but he didn’t listen to Mary and Martha’ pleas. He didn’t listen to the urgency, desperation, and worry that was embedded into every word and plea. Instead, Jesus tells us that perhaps, this wasn’t anything to worry about. Even more so, upon hearing this – Jesus chooses to stay an extra TWO DAYS. We do not know where he was or why he was there, but he stays.

It is only after Lazarus dies, that Jesus decides to move and visit Bethany to console the two sisters. I can’t help but wonder if Jesus began to feel a little bit of remorse upon his decision – but goodness, like the true heroes of this story, when Martha hears that Jesus is coming, there is a wrath and anger in her movements as she meets Jesus halfway. She does not allow Jesus to come inside, oh no, not yet. For Martha, Jesus is too late. Two days, too late. The first words that come out of her mouth are striking: IF YOU HAD BEEN HERE, MY BROTHER WOULD NOT HAVE DIED. The anger and pain in these words Martha says are punches to the gut, bearing a weight that grows heavier and heavier as every word drops from her mouth.

it is like they say Katharine Li, oil on canvas

I cannot help but think of our own present moment – as people began to suffer from COVID-19, as this virus turned our world upside down – what was the reaction from our government? How did leaders react as many Marthas and Marys turned to their government and told them that their brothers, mothers, fathers, spouses, friends , children were dying?

What was it like then to hear them say that this wasn’t something to worry about – that everything was under control?

Jesus reassures Martha that Lazarus will rise again – and Martha understands that. She even reaffirms her belief in the eschatological hope of the resurrection – she reaffirms and reassures Jesus that she believes that He is the Messiah. What strikes me is that even in her grief, My God – she

still holds on to the hope that Jesus promises her.

What strength.

Unlike Martha, Mary bolts her way to Jesus, kneeling at his feet, and gives him the same words as her sister: If you had been here, my brother would not have died. Mary wasn’t harboring the same kind of fire and fury that her sister brought, but rather a smoldering ember, the kind left over after the fire. Words of loss and confusion bundled up with regret and pain.

There was no anger in Mary, but resignation.

And here I think is the turning point for Jesus. Because at this point – Mary and those around her are weeping and mourning.

Surrounded by pain, loss, and tears – I think, that for the first time in this story, Jesus is confronting grief in a way that he hasn’t done before. He is moved.

His spirit is disturbed. Disrupted.

James Baldwin writes that, “The greatest difficulty is to accept the fact that the man is dead. It is one thing to know that a friend is dead and another thing to accept, within oneself, that unanswering silence: that not many of us are able to accept the reality of death is both an obvious and a labyrinthine statement.”

I imagine that in this moment of disturbance, Jesus must face the acceptance of his friend’s death. Throughout the story, Jesus embodies the role of the pastor, the one who must stay steady and resolute. Never breaking, always whole. Even in his mistakes, even as he hears people project their pain and anger onto him, Jesus continues to remain 295 Magazine, Spring 2020

64

steady. But at the moment of hearing Mary weep – it disturbs Jesus. It moves him in a way that he isn’t used to. We don’t know how much time passes after he hears it – but I imagine that Jesus heard this unanswering silence.

I imagine that death became a reality for him in a way that we can understand.

And he weeps. He weeps and he mourns.

This I think, is the often forgotten reality of Death. Death moves us in ways that are not used to. Ways that we don’t like. It turns our world upside down. We are creatures born out of intimacy, we crave to be close to one another, it

Infinite Sunset Vicky Wu, acrylic on paper

65

295 Magazine, Spring 2020

is part of our very nature.

But death, death challenges our sense of intimacy.

It pushes us farther and farther away from each other, leaving a space between those who have passed and those who remain, and there is no bridge to walk across to one another. Today we are faced with this challenge to intimacy more than ever before.

Now, we know the ending to this story – Jesus raises Lazarus from the dead and we are able to catch a glimpse of the resurrection. We are given evidence that things do not have to be as they are. But I am also sobered by this – because I know that it is only Jesus that can do this, and it is only our belief in Jesus as the Messiah and the promise of everlasting, eternal life that would get us there.

Someday. But what about now?

In 1990, there was a pivotal Green Lantern story that redefined the series for years to come, called Emerald Twilight. (Pause – let’s do a quick lesson. Green Lanterns are considered to be the “space force” of the DC Universe.

Made up of all different races and species, these intergalactic explorers enforce justice and order throughout the universe. They have the ability to create constructs from their power rings.

Okay, we good?)

Emerald Twilight chronicled the downfall of Hal Jordan and his rise as a villain.

His home, Coast City, was obliterated by an alien attack – eliminating every person and place he had ever known into a mere crater. Out of his grief, he attempted to recreate his home by the means of his own power ring.

See it is his ring, that gives him the ability to create anything he wants, out of his own willpower.

And with his own sheer will, Hal recreated every person, building, and place that made up Coast City. Every memory that he had held dear came back into his life, but – as green constructs, mere shadows of the very things they once were. His relentless effort to try and bring back what he lost, to fill the unanswering silence, failed.

And his failure overwhelmed him.

It drove him deeper into his grief until he had gone mad.

It is far too easy to lose ourselves in the darkness of grief lately. People have lost spouses, partners, siblings, friends, colleagues, loved ones. We have lost graduations, ceremonies, rituals, and celebrations, the very things that

draw us together and remind us that we are bound to one another.

Hugs and high fives become part of an increasingly long blacklist of social interactions that we are barred from.

So what do we then with our grief, loved ones? Because we are not God. We are no intergalactic superheroes. Every effort at this moment to try to recreate what we had lost will only be mere outlines and shadows of what once was. It is here that I turn us back to the wisdom of the Lanterns. See, it was long held that Green Lanterns held a special place in the DC universe because they were fearless. Their oath was ICONIC: In Brightest Day, in Blackest Night, let no evil escape my sight. Let those who worship evil’s might – beware my power, green lantern’s light!

It is a phrase I’ve muttered to myself and to my loved ones, especially in the most harrowing moments. See, the power of the Green Lantern doesn’t reside in their lack of fear, but rather their ability to overcome great fear, the fear of uncertainty, death, loss, pain. Will is having the strength to be able to move through those things and beyond. Forward. That willpower? It rests on HOPE. Out of all seven in the emotional spectrum in the DC Universe, Hope, is the strongest emotion of them all. It is the fuel that eradicates fear, the antidote to rage, and the wave that can wash over pain. It is what gives Martha the ability to continue to trust Jesus even in the midst of her own sorrow. Hope.

295 Magazine, Spring 2020

66

“In fearful day, in raging night. With strong hearts full our souls ignite, when all seems lost in the war of light, look to the stars for hope burns bright.” The Oath of the Blue Lanterns.

For them, Hope was found in the stars and skies.

For us? I wish I could say what hope is supposed to look like these days. To be honest, I don’t know. Some days it feels harder to look for. In a time of social isolation, we are forced to not look at the skies but to find hope within the walls and between the lines. It feels like a more arduous task than anything. But the Lanterns remind me that hope is nothing without the willpower to enact on it. And I think that’s true. I think that the willpower to act on hope means believing that things can and will be made new again. Maybe not today, or tomorrow, but again. That is what burns bright.

67

295 Magazine, Spring 2020

And so perhaps hope today means we got out of our beds and put something on other than a pair of gym shorts that have made it through the week.

Maybe it means we sleep in just a little longer, and turn off our alarms. Maybe it means cooking a new meal, reading a good book, talking to friends whom you may have lost contact with, telling your partner your love them – even if it’s through a computer screen.

Maybe it takes all of our energy and then some to just hold on to hope today, because our worlds feel too heavy to do anything else.

These days do not need intergalactic space cops or great, great miracles for hope to be found.

Sometimes, it isn’t the booming sound of will that roars through the uncertainty that we need – but the whispers and delicate softness of hope that can cut through the silence, reaching the smallest corners of our universe.

I think, that is good enough.

Contributor Bios Forest Abbott-Lum is a Master of Environmental Management Candidate at Yale FES. She was born and raised in Hawaiʻi, and has since worked in the environmental sector in Beijing and New York City.You can find her tending to Yale Farm’s compost pile or searching for her favorite kimchi brand around New Haven.

Grace Cajski is a first-year from New Orleans. She grew up spending

her summers with family in Hawaiʻi, and she has always loved the ocean. She plans to work in marine conservation. When she isn’t writing, she is swimming with Club Synchronized Swimming, dancing with Shaka, or hanging out with friends!

John Choe is a Korean-American student from Los Angeles, CA. John has competed in the nation’s largest spoken word poetry competition for the past three years, advancing to the finals each year. John has been awarded the Recognition of Advancing Justice through Writing award from the state of California two years in a row, and John has collaborated with the United Nations, March for Our Lives, City of Los Angeles, TOMS, and Hudson Jeans. He enjoys spending his time exploring new places with friends and most recently, trading stocks.

“Twinkie” is a response poem to “Harlem” by Langston Hughes.

In Kyu Chung is a senior who hails from South Korea, where he served in the army for 21 months to complete his mandatory military service. His short stories have been published in the Yale Literary Magazine, Kalliope, and Eunoia Review. As a philosophy major, he feels obligated to spend at least ten minutes every day musing over a new existential crisis. In his free time, he enjoys socializing at Bass library, playing the obscure game of Go, and taking long walks around campus.

Lauren Dominguez Chan is a junior studying English, particularly

the convergence of religion and literature. Outside of class, she enjoys working with the college chaplaincy and other faith communities at Yale and in New Haven. Lauren loves tea, forests, and long breakfasts in the Hopper dining hall.

295 Magazine, Spring 2020

68

Ivory Fu is a junior studying art and MCD bio. She’s been trying

to fit everything into her brain these past few weeks. She’s also tired of seeing female figures depicted as doormats in art, so she drew a portrait of a lady in Cubist style with unshaved armpits, half-asleep and half-alert in bed, to express the fatigue, joy and isolated thoughtfulness of quarantine.

Eileen Huang is a sophomore studying English at Yale College, where she serves as the president of Jook Songs, an Asian and Asian American poetry group, and as a board member for the Asian American Students Alliance. Her work has been featured by NowThis, The Adroit Journal, The Kenyon Review, and is forthcoming in Hyphen.

Hannah Kwak was born in Seoul, South Korea, and immigrated to the United States with her family when she was eight years old. She is now a senior at Yale University majoring in Comparative Literature and is writing her senior essay on Korean modernism. She is interested in resistance literature and has chosen Yun Dong-ju’s poetry as the object of her first serious venture into literary translation for the quiet struggle it evokes.

Austin Lee picked up a film camera just over a year ago and has spent

his last year exploring different subjects and developing a certain style in his images. While the following pictures are predominantly landscape, his favorite style to shoot thus far has been fashion photography, finding the interaction of models, clothes, and backgrounds a visually compelling and challenging aesthetic. Currently in the works is a zine that he and a few friends are soon to launch.

“All photos were shot in various parts of South Korea. In each photo is a dear memory I have of my extended family.”

EMILI (Emily Li) is a pop singer-songwriter who is currently a soph-

omore atYale University. Born and raised in New Jersey, EMILI started singing and performing when she was 9. After getting third place in Chinese Idol in 2015, EMILI started pursuing music seriously in China and America. She released two singles on Net Ease Music which have over 100,000 streams. While at school studying cognitive science, EMILI also posts on Youtube once a week with covers and original music.

Katharine Li ’21 is an English major in Franklin College. She loves opera, paintings, poetry, and her friends.

Michael Libunao-Macalintal is a third-year Master of Divinity Student at Yale Divinity School. Born and raised in New Jersey, his time at Yale has been centered around elevating marginalized and silenced 69

295 Magazine, Spring 2020

voices in both theological and public spaces. A second generation Filipino American, Michael’s drive to recover lost histories and stories of his ancestors is a crucial part of his work. He loves comic books, coffee, and running. Feel free to check out his reflections on his blog, lookinginspeakingout.wordpress.com.

Sarah Moon is a first-year undergraduate in Benjamin Franklin. In

her free time, she enjoys solving jigsaw puzzles, crocheting, and eating good food.

Isabelle Rhee is a sophomore studying Ethnicity, Race, and Migra-

tion and human rights. She proudly hails from Honolulu, Hawaiʻi.

Her interests include writing and performing poetry with Jook Songs, Yale’s premier Asian American spoken word group, editing for The Politic, watching Korean tv shows, and making angsty Spotify playlists.

Isabelle values writing as a critical means of expression, healing, and learning about herself and others.

Mohit Sani is a graduating Senior quarantining in New Haven.Walden Peer Counseling is open until April 24th at 8am and has published a set of available resources here: tinyurl.com/waldencovidresources.

Peter S. Shin (b. 1991) is a composer whose music navigates issues of national belonging, the co-opting and intermingling of disparate musical vernaculars, and the liminality between the two halves of his second-generation Korean-American identity. The New York Times described Peter as “a composer to watch” and his music “entirely fresh and personal” following his premiere at Carnegie Hall. Born in Kansas City, MO, Peter is pursuing his M.M.A. at Yale and will begin his Ph.D. at UC Berkeley this fall. For more information, please visit: peter-shin.com.

Matt Song is a first-year from Michigan. He lived in Hangzhou and Shanghai throughout his high school years, and is currently trying to find a new home at Yale.

Marina Tinone grew up in West Hartford, Connecticut. At Yale, they are a member of the 2020 graduating class and an English major in Silliman College. Their work primarily focuses on language, identity, voice, and genre; they create the things they wish they could have held when they were growing up. You can find them online on most social media platforms [at]mtinone and on mtinone.com.

Aadit Vyas is a graduating senior in Pierson College studying CS and S&DS.

295 Magazine, Spring 2020

70

Vicky Wu ’21 is an Architecture major in Pierson College. She’s got a real soft spot for birds and is very into color theory. Her favorite pastime is simply chilling with the pals.

Amanda Zhang ’21 started dancing at age 5 at the Atlanta Professional Dance Academy where she trained in ballet, modern, jazz, and Chinese folk dance. Though she was never the best dancer, she fell in love with the community that dance fostered and the creative outlet that it provided her. She has missed being able to engage with Chinese folk dance (her favorite form of dance!) and is grateful that 295 gave her an opportunity to reconnect with the art form.

Sophia Zhao is a first-year in Pauli Murray college and hails from Newark, Delaware. She is a prospective Molecular, Cellular, and Developmental Biology major but loves all things English and art. She hopes to create and share more of her work in the years to come.

“This piece is a self-portrait of a face, a name, and a couple of found objects I’ve kept while growing up.”

71

295 Magazine, Spring 2020

295 Magazine, Spring 2020

72

The Asian American Cultural Center at Yale