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Pride, Power &
Possibilities Issue VI Yale Asian American Cultural Center’s Student Annual Art & Writing Magazine
295 Magazine began in 2017 as a collaboration between the Asian American Cultural Center at Yale and the Yale Asian Womyn’s Alliance. As per the inaugural edition, the publication began as a collective project “between four friends who were inspired by the magazines found in the AACC archives, primarily literary magazines that interrogated Asian American identity through a personal and historical lens.” The magazine was named 295 to reference AACC’s physical location, 295 Crown St., with the mission of elevating the voices of the Asian and Asian American community at Yale. At its core, this mission has remained central to the stories we aim to share, and has been reflected in the 2023 volume with the theme of “Pride, Power, and Possibilities.” Now in its sixth year, 295 continues to be a platform for Asian American creative expression not only through prose writing, but through visual art, music, and poetry. We’re humbled by the privilege and responsibility of carrying on and expanding upon this tradition.
Yours sincrely, Eunice, Maheen, and Cynthia
Table of Contents Alicia Mazzura, visual art: “Zine” Aruna Balasubramanian, visual art: “Niimi” Aruna Balasubramanian, visual art: “Tameru” Eunice Kiang, visual art: “Lishui” Caroline Peh, writing: “Home” Amadie Gajanaike, visual art: “3 people” Amadie Gajanaike, visual art: “Web/plastic wrap” Amadie Gajanaike, visual art: “green background” Jamie Chan, writing: “Cleaving” Jamie Chan, writing: “Kilned” Hazel Kim, visual art: “6” Julia Zheng, visual art: “Where to?” Shreyas Raman, writing: “Nana’s Rotis” Kai Chen, visual art: “Story of Your Life” Tina Lam, writing: “The American Dream” Kai Zhang, visual art: “Dinner At Home” Lilly Chai, visual art: “大舅” Jamie Chan, writing: “White Grains” Luc Ta, music: “Sonata for Trombone and Piano in B♭ Major” Patrick Kho, writing: “The Violence We Never Speak Of: The Real Harm in a Universal ‘Asian’ Identity” Pinyu Hwang, writing (translation): “Three Poems by Hsiao I-Hui” Eunice Kiang, visual art: “Yale Korean Professor Angela Lee Smith’s Rosenkranz Award Project Website Banners and Syllabus Illustration” Eunice Kiang, visual art: “Good Est Me” Sebastian Chang, music: “Space Carpet Lyrics and Demos” Vyshnavi Thumbala Saikrishnan, writing: “A Tiller’s Toil”
Lep Lyrics
by Alicia Mazzura
Nimi
by Aruna Balasubramanian
Tameru
by Aruna Balasubramanian
Lishui
by Eunice Kiang
Home
by Caroline Peh When I’m with my family, I’m reminded of the different parts that make me who I am. Our kitchen is often a flurry of cultures both in food and sound. Homemade salsa next to a plate of dumplings with frijoles and rice on the side. My sister retrieves “los vasos de agua” while I reach for the chopsticks. My mom calls for our dog yelling “xiao gou” to feed him the leftover vegetables she cuts up for our meals. At the table, my dad brings up society’s most pressing issues he reads about in the newspaper, sparking discussion and deep reflection. The English language unites us, but Spanish comes naturally when my mom, sister, and I want to further portray expressions that cannot be described as deeply or accurately in English. The same is for my dad with the Chinese language as he presents short, yet clever proverbs packed with meaning that we like to dissect together. In the afternoons, I work out with my sister and by habit, we launch into the stretch and ab workout routines that were ingrained in us from our years of competitive dancing. We don’t dance anymore but our bodies succumb to the memory of the disciplined training and stretches they endured, the grace our limbs used to carry. In the early mornings, I’m in the backyard with my hands in the soil as I tend to our collection of flowers and succulents. I pick up fallen plant limbs and place them back into their pots with a little bit of water, recalling when my mom taught me to embrace the opportunities of regrowth and the patience that nurtures beautiful new roots and buds. The little moments at home bring me back to my roots, showing me how I’ve become the person I am.
Nana’s Rotis by Shreyas Raman
My grandparents, my mother’s parents, would visit us in Bombay once or twice a year. They would make the trip down from New Delhi, staying with us for a couple weeks at least. On these occasions, I was required to relinquish my bedroom and move into my parents’ room for the duration of the visit, so that my grandparents had a place to sleep in our house. Nani and Nana, as I learned to call them, would bring me traditional Bengali sweets, a new toy, and all the pent-up love and adulation of the last six odd months. These visits often coincided with festivals and celebratory occasions, and so I came to consider their arrival a kind of festival in itself. For the duration of their stay, I would be treated royally with spicy fish curry and hot daal and perfectly puffed rotis. Nani and my mother would alternate responsibility for dinner while I played in the living room. Nana and my father would sit on the sofa discussing cricket or politics or something called ‘the economy’. The old cathode-ray-tube TV would be turned to Aaj Tak or BBC India or some other mundane news channel. Even now my memories of that time are bathed in the white of the incandescent tubelight, whose occasional flickering we had learned to ignore. One such evening, Nani and Maa had gone out shopping at the bazaar and were delayed coming home. My father must have been away on work, because only Nana and I were at home by the time dinner was due to be served. Now, as usual, the daal and bhindi sabzi had been prepared in the afternoon and were ready to be heated and served. Rotis, however, were missing. Everyone knew rotis had to be made fresh and consumed right away. I don’t think I was too bothered by the delayed dinner that day, and was ready to wait until Nani and Maa
came home to eat. Nana, however, was growing quite concerned. He was set in his ways when it came to things like dinnertime, not for himself but for his growing grandson. He must have called my mother’s cell phone – that clunky old Nokia – a dozen times at least. Each time he prepared a gruff yet fatherly “kothay aachey?” he was met with no response. Now, Nana was never one to let a problem sit and fester. It was one of those traits that had enabled him to have a long career in government service, especially in those offices where apathy was a legitimate course of action. Taking matters into his own hands, Nana decided that he would make the rotis himself. It didn’t matter that he had never kneaded a ball of dough before in his sixty something years on Earth. Nine thirty p.m. was too late for an eight year old boy to be eating dinner. When he announced his intention to me, I remember being caught off guard, then extremely curious as to what the outcome would be. My Hot Wheels could wait; now was the time for Nana’s rotis. Anyone who has ever made a roti before, or even seen one being made, will tell you that it is no laughing matter. Making rotis is an art akin to pottery with all the scientific precision of a chemistry experiment. There is no room for hesitation in the roti making process. Muscle memory must be honed over thousands of lunches and dinners. Each step is deceptively simple. Pitfalls await at every juncture. The atta must be kneaded with firm yet delicate hands, shaped sublimely into a doughy orb. Flattening it out into a nearEuclidean circle takes a skill that Michelangelo could only dream of mastering. Ideal flip times cannot be measured with even the most precise stopwatch; they must be known inherently and based on pure intuition. And the final, most challenging step – exposure to naked flame – is the most brutal of all. Leave the
roti on the flame for too long and you would end up with a burned crisp “not worthy of a mongrel’s dinner dish”, as Nani would say. Not long enough, however, and the roti would be doughy and raw, and nobody likes a raw roti. All of this is to say that the task Nana had just signed himself up for was no joke. He knew this well, as did I. Lighting the stove itself proved to be a challenge. The spark ignition lighter was tricky to handle. But Nana was an engineer – an IIT engineer, no less – and he would not let such a petty obstacle defeat him. Bang – crack – zap – zzzt – hisss – fwoom. Fire, and a tawa on top. I was not allowed anywhere near the stove or the lighter, of course. But much to my delight, Nana delegated the task of rolling the atta into little dough balls to me. This task was exceedingly simple yet abundantly entertaining. I remember thinking how the balls of dough felt like squishier, stickier versions of Play-doh, or whatever off-brand alternative they sold at Asiatic Stores. Nana joined in too. His calloused fingers – used to gripping railings or walls but no cane, never a cane, too much pride for that – danced delicately over the dough. He Salt Bae’d the countertop with raw flour and then it was time to roll out the rotis. I watched closely, flour on my hands and my t-shirt and my nose, as my grandfather wielded the rolling pin like a natural. Little by little, the ball of dough grew into a flat disc. Ready? he asked. I nodded, buzzing with excitement. Bam! Flat on the tawa it went. Now turn the flame up, let it brown a little. Just like that. Okay, now time to flip it. Where are the tongs? Oh, thank you Babu. Yes, good, see the little spots? Just a little longer. Okay, now we put it on the fire – stand back. Okay…one, two…three! The disc inflated like a raging, doughy pufferfish, puffing, puffing, puffing until it looked ready to burst. A quick grab and flip with the tongs, on to the
other side. Charred black spots and the smell of fresh roti. And done! One down, two to go. And so the task was completed. Three fresh rotis, hand made by Nana just for me. When he asked how they were, I remarked that they tasted like tandoori rotis, crispy and smoky and so, so delicious. He thought he’d charred them a little too much, and he had, but they were fantastic. I wolfed down all three with daal and bhindi. By the time Nani and Maa came home, I had eaten two more, just plain. I think Nana got in trouble for pulling that stunt, first for letting me meddle in the kitchen and then again when I told my mother that Nana’s rotis tasted better than hers. I don’t have many memories of Nana now, but every time I see a roti that’s just a little too charred, I recall him clearly.
pleasures are not from my culture. The Violence We Never these Filipinos are Asians, but the imagination of ‘Asian’ is not us. Speak Of: The Real These reductive practices have come Harm in a Universal to play in spaces marked by food. When you enter the gates of Boston’s Chinatown, one of ‘Asian’ Identity the first shops you see is a Vietnamese liquor by Patrick Kho
store. New Haven’s Hong Kong Grocery sells the same packaged tamarind paste my mom Growing up in the Philippines, our uses in her sinigang when she can’t buy the home cooked staple was Filipino pork fruit fresh. These only confirm that we forget sinigang. On weekday evenings, my mom the distinction between Filipino, Chinese, or would boil spareribs until they were tender, Japanese homes that cook sinigang, siumai, and later add tomatoes, onions, radish, or sukiyaki. Captured most clearly by their eggplant, and water spinach. When the pork’s signature home cooked dishes, we forget that fat emulsified, she’d finish off the soup with Asian households are different, but all our fresh tamarind, forming a sour, decadent stew cultures are confined to the singular banner of that fused the furthest ends of the food palate. ‘Asian’. But my family could never really cook other This goes beyond food. This Asian foods ‘authentically’. For example, my reductiveness represents a critical issue in the uncle’s siumai, while tasty, didn’t have the exact landscape of American identity politics. On a sweet bursts of umami found in the siumai recent trip to New York City, I was faced with from Cantonese kitchens. I love my Lola’s the reality that Southeast Asians have long beef sukiyaki, but I know it tastes different remained functionally invisible. I visited the from the sukiyaki in Tokyo because she adds Museum of Chinese in America (MOCA). a little too much sugar to appease our Pinoy I took special interest in one collection, tastes. If anything, food was how we knew with Responses: Asian American VoicesResisting certainty that we were Filipino. While we were the Tides of Racism, featuring a monumental Asians who really enjoyed other Asian foods, timeline of anti-Asian racism in America. The the home cooked dish we really mastered was collection documents the historic lowlights the classic Pinoy sinigang. of Asian-American communities throughout So when I came to America, I was history, ranging from American imperialism in surprised by how reductive the idea of ‘Asian’ Asia to McCarthy-era intimidation campaigns. was. Here, it’s distinguished by bragging But perhaps most significantly, Responses about how you use chopsticks more skillfully culminates in highlighting the spike in anti than white people, talking about how much Asian hate crimes over 2021. Plastered on the you enjoy Taiwanese boba, and eating at wall are gray calligraphy papers with the names hotpot Chinatown or barbeque in Koreatown and stories of victims, and the details of their when dining in a big city. But as a Filipino in attacks. Vilma Kari, March 29, 2021, repeatedly America, I can lay claim to all of these and kicked to the ground while walking to church; none of them simultaneously: because while Ke Chieh Ming, April 3, 2021, stabbed to I am proficient at using chopsticks, and enjoy death while walking her two dogs in Riverside; drinking boba or eating hotpot and K-BBQ, Sophia Enguillado, April 5, 2021, beaten
outside a hotel in San Francisco. The stories written in black ink are in English, but they only communicate in the language of tragedy. I’m left trembling knowing that a woman around the age of my grandmother was kicked to the ground in the streets of New York. And then I cringe. On an adjacent piece of gray calligraphy, each story in English is accompanied by a translated version in Chinese. But I’m Filipino, from the Philippines. Vilma Kari, a victim, is Filipino, from the Philippines. As are many other victims whose stories are retold in Responses. Our official languages are Tagalog and English; many in our country speak Bisaya, Ilocano, and others too. Besides Hokkien in Filipino Chinese circles or a Chinese creole in Mindanao, we do not speak any other Chinese language. So why exactly is the story of Vilma Kari written in Chinese calligraphy? Why is her story retold in a language she cannot speak? There is something uniquely sinister in the moment when a Filipino woman’s trauma is retold in a language foreign to her, something uniquely unjust when her identity is faded under the ink and calligraphy which were made into her culture when it was never hers in the first place. Whether this is done to convenience Chinese-speaking visitors or for a radical praxis of Asian-American cultural and political unity, the message remains the same. As Responses would have you believe, Vilma Kari is not a Southeast Asian; Vilma Kari is not a Filipino migrant. Vilma Kari’s visceral, agonizing pain is forgotten in the elusive fever dreams of American political discourse. It fades into the aesthetics of Asian American identity, because in America, Asian means East Asian. What this has come to represent is the inherent reductiveness of Asian-American
politics. In modern discourse, we primarily ever speak of the upper-middle-class AsianAmerican family, the stereotypical “modelminority” doctor-lawyer parent households with high-achieving children of Chinese, Japanese, or Korean descent. Excluded from these mainstream narratives, Southeast Asian politics are relegated to myth. We are sucked in this monolithic category that has come to be primarily defined by the experiences of our East Asians counterparts. So rarely ever do we talk about the underpaid Vietnamese nail tech workers, the 39.4 percent of Burmese Americans who live below the poverty line, or Thai women who are sex-trafficked into the US. And this only serves to distract Americans from the real complexities of racism. “I wish I went to high school in Asia,” an American-born Chinese girl once told me, “because there, Asian identity is just celebrated.” But nothing could be further from the truth. We do not celebrate, nor do we condemn the singular Asian identity. In Asia, it matters not if you are Asian, but what Asian you are. In the privileged classrooms of international schools in Manila, Philippines, almost all students there boast Spanish or Chinese heritage if they weren’t the child of an expat already. In ‘multicultural’ and ‘sophisticated’ Singapore, my cousins are at a systemic disadvantage because primary education systems overwhelmingly favor Chinese speakers. Even in the towering metropolis of Hong Kong—dubbed “Asia’s world city”—my younger brother was once told to “clean this you fucking Filipino”, because darker complexions, eating sinigang, and calling a developing country home automatically meant we could only be domestic laborers. Ignoring these complex realities is where the real violence happens.
Neglecting the multiplicity of Asian experiences allows us to justify systems which replicate harm towards the Vietnamese nail tech worker, reinforce poverty in Burmese American communities, and reproduce the sexual abuse towards Thai women. Overlooking the possibility that different Asians, in and beyond America, have different experiences is part of the violence committed on Vilma Kari. Her story, no matter how accurately depicted, is rendered invisible. Worst of all, even those at the MOCA, those who cry #StopAsianHate the loudest, might also be ignoring the real identities of those they tirelessly fight for. This reaches the crux of the issue. Because when another Filipino falls victim to hate, even if we write their stories in Tagalog, there will be other stories we forget. Perhaps they do not even speak Tagalog, and speak Bisaya or Ilocano or indigenous Ifugao instead. Perhaps even when we realize that sinigang is a Filipino dish belonging to a different cuisine from siumai or sukiyaki—that the pre-packed tamarind paste belongs to the Filipino grocery and not the Hong Kong grocery—we fail to remember that it is still a Tagalog dish. The sour taste may be met adversely by the spiceseeking tongues of the Bicolano in Visayas. The pork may be less favored in coastal Bohol and Boracay, where shrimp and fish might be preferred. Sinigang is still not a universal Filipino home cooked staple, and the Ilocano or Zamboangueño households in the Philippines have mastered other dishes instead. This is the relentless violence of identity politics, because America, the melting pot of cultures and identities, always melts. No matter how accurately we represent a victim as Asian, as Southeast Asian, as Filipino, there will always be an inherent violence in the stories we make invisible, the stories we forget.
Three Poems by Hsiao I-Hui
Translated from the Chinese by Pinyu Hwang About the Author Hsiao I-Hui 蕭詒徽 (1991 – ) was born in Tainan, Taiwan, grew up in Kaohsiung, and currently lives in Taipei. He writes largely about people, to people, for people: the self, others, the self being someone else, the intricate webs and tangles of the relationships between people. In addition to poetry, he has written many letters—what he calls “canned messages”—for others as part of a project started in 2014. Assuming the various identities of the people who commission each letter, he sees writing as acting, and composes these letters first through dictation before putting them down as text. Perhaps because of such literary exercises, Hsiao’s writing often feels probingly personal, even when it is clearly not autobiographical. Translator’s Note: Restraint Written in 2013, “Home Sweet Home” is split into three parts, each narrated from the perspective of a different individual. At first glance, the poem seems rather inelegant and disjointed—the opening line(s) of each part are abrupt and seemingly unrelated: “he said he dreamed about taking a bath with another woman,” “won’t you be my corpse,” and “in general / serious parents / raise willful children.” As we read, however, the portrait of this family starts falling into place piece by piece. Hsiao gives just enough detail to keep the reader intrigued without making them feel lost. The language is not especially refined: the syntax is simple, sometimes repetitive, and
the tone is often casual and conversational. The narrative is emotionally restrained, the writing unadorned and almost functionalist, and the strategic repetition of a few key phrases throughout the three parts serves as the structural basis upon which the narrative is built. Hsiao repurposes the forward slash that is used to quote poetry across multiple lines to function as the “line breaks” of this poem, giving the poem an additional, tangible compactness. This almost minimalist restraint lures the reader along through the disturbing atmosphere of the narrative, despite giving rise to a sense of confusion—or perhaps it is precisely that taste of ominous confusion that keeps the reader ensnared in this “unhealthy relationship.” When the pieces of this family portrait have all finally fallen into place, instead of the pure triumph we want to feel at having at last understood what was happening, we are left with a complicated sense of grim satisfaction at the completed picture that lies before us, far from the “home sweet home” of the poem’s title. I. Home Sweet Home crying in front of me he said he dreamed about taking a bath with another woman / and she started crying / he said it’s a dream / she said “to me everything you say is true.” / he said it’s just a dream / she said even when you’re awake you / don’t want to bathe with me / don’t you love me / how do I say this / I’m the woman he dreamed about / and it wasn’t like I showed up naked in his sleep on purpose / I said why are you here / he said I don’t know / well since I’m here / might as well take a bath / I said it’s a dream / and he started crying / what are you crying for / just wake up and you’ll be fine I said / he said “I really want to take a bath.” / I thought I understood / he also had a body that in /
reality could never be washed clean / and that woman / he didn’t want to bathe with that woman / so I put on clothes / gave him a hug. “don’t,” I warned him, “tell her / or she’ll get even dirtier.” / he disappeared in my arms / I thought he must have woken / I didn’t want to bathe anymore / it’s just a dream / the really normal kind / wet / dirty / a dream with a man
crying in front of her in general / serious parents / raise willful children / the odds of this / are almost certainly / as high as that of a high-achieving child / making the parents mediocre / I’m too high-achieving / my parents are fighting again / Dad said he dreamed about another woman / Mom told him to go die already / really why are they together / yet it’s because of me they haven’t separated / “if I hand my daughter over to them / she’s going to turn out like them” / they’re desperately trying to keep the other / from gaining another accomplice / they think it’s better for me / if they’re together / that’s true / after all the moment they fight / I’d go back to my room and study / then accidentally / I became a girl both / well-behaved and studious / really why are they together / one day I dreamed of a woman / who looked kind of like him / and kind of like her / I asked who are you / she said it’s been a while / I said what do you mean it’s been a while / and she disappeared / her clothes falling to the floor / it’s reasonable to infer / she left my dream naked / and just like this I was shocked / awake that night I understood sex and revolution / and for the first time changed my pants / washed my sheets / some blood on my body / made me think of corpses / and since he and she were still arguing / I decided to take a bath / then make the next day’s shopping list / a list that from now on / would contain one more item than a man’s / I stepped into the bathroom / the self in the mirror / cried in front of me / it came just like this / wet / dirty / adolescence
crying in front of him won’t you be my corpse / I’ve always wanted to collect / some dead people for myself / one to put in the fridge one to send back home / and one more / preferably male / alive / but being my good little corpse / it sounds boring / but I could play coroner / we could play a game / investigate your cause of death / honestly / being your coroner / is much better than being your woman / I could penetrate you with tweezers / I could poke you with knives / I could come back to our room every day / unzip your body / bag to find you haven’t changed at all / and your whole body is hard / making me believe / I’m an evocative woman / and I’d rather wonder every day who killed you / than ask every day whether you love me / even if I asked you / wouldn’t say a thing / it’s great / I really loathe the sort of lover who / says everything / and is alive / I’d get tired of him really quickly / and when I tell him nicely to go die / he would get mad / a corpse however / would never talk back / trivial things like / why should I go die / won’t you be my corpse / then I could put you on my bed / pretend to watch you sleep soundly / you’d have no heartbeat for me / to listen to but everything / else would be perfect / and even if there’s a lot of blood on your body / wet / dirty Translator’s Note: Fission / you still wouldn’t wake up / and say first thing / “I dreamed about taking a bath with another These next two poems, “Residual” and woman.” “Passenger,” were written for characters in Detention, a 2020 Taiwanese supernatural horror TV series set thirty years after the
White Terror, a period of martial law in Taiwan that lasted 38 years from 1949 to 1987. Just as he assumes the identity of people who commission letters in his “canned messages” project, Hsiao has also had to immerse himself in the minds of the characters as he composed these poems. The two poems explore the multiplicity of the self in today’s world—the hopeless simultaneity and dissociation of modern life. “Residual” depicts the constant partitioning and repartitioning of an individual; seeping through the lines is a sense of numbing and resignation towards the banal, hollow repetitiveness of being. In “Passenger,” we oscillate from today, to tomorrow, back to today. Hsiao litters the poem with images of everyday life—the train platform, breakfast, a loose shoe, the alarm—entrapping the narrator in an incessant and inescapable Sisyphean cycle of quiet, habitual despondence.
apart / the train doors before his eyes open or close, seeing him, seeing but not taking him away. / everything’s fine but the same road he walks every day / has forgotten him again. oncoming air drifts awake / joins him for breakfast, once more / shoving today into his body / they haven’t spoken in a long time, these days and him / that person seems to be me. another me / waiting for a train with me on the platform. another morning reduced to procedure / I carry relics of yesterday / find the body that left the house on its own a little earlier, not daring to greet it / my face so new on his face, still unused by others’ / stares, like a car window aged by the mileage / we once saw continuity as comfort, comfort / as a kind of plagiarism. now he kneels / to tie a shoe that keeps coming loose he’s even willing to forget why the knot’s there in the first place / anyone’s been arrived by tomorrow. another set of procedures / reduced to a conclusion. another II. Residual person reduced to the self in the mirror: / swallow pills, sip water, like watering flowers / a wall slowly growing more difficult, a room sunlight resides in my body / a single person paced smaller and smaller / rushing every day split / into thirty days by september. then to board myself, I fear my body / fears today / split /into fallen leaves and the ocean. / i am has already missed my body / another morning only ever half me / the other half is stumble, I don’t ask myself where I want to go / that someone / forgotten by precipitation, butterfly person’s wearing earphones, sees but can’t / morning, and some dirty things / then dusk. hear me / unmoving, but growing farther a dusk shared with someone who doesn’t love and farther from me / the alarm clock wakes me / dusk resides in my body / swallowed him and he decides to go first / proceed along pills, sipping water. wait for next time like a paths that don’t recognize him to places he still flower / waiting for a brand new sun. in reality recognizes / wanting to go faster, to catch up to nothing is brand new / they’re just adept at him faster / to catch up to but not follow after simultaneously disappearing and returning. him / embrace him, but not become him every day i have half / of me dying / i’m just tell him that sunset isn’t the most dangerous / adept at the other half / a flower’s / unattractive tell him the best / best thing has yet to happen half. unattractive / but living on but the next train’s coming /the whistle sounds, III. Passenger reminds me it’s almost too late / I need to pat yet another morning that person hasn’t him on the shoulder, say / I’m back. I’m back. forgiven yesterday / on the platform, he and his not tell him / another morning we’re still body stand a good distance apart someone else
Two Poems by Jamie Chan Cleaving Gong-gong sits, sleeps, spits out the plant fibers he cannot chew into her open chopsticks, mangled stems and gnawed cartilages, the mounds multiply in a ceramic dish. My po-po chuckles, old age! She has not known a bad mood. All afternoon, the wok hisses as she shucks shrimp shells, searing their empty heads with garlic. / Her fingertips pick the spines off snow peas, douses lotus root slices in a cornstarch slurry. / Her cleaver is steady as time, its blade striking wood, chopping, dicing, silencing gong-gong’s grunts: not enough salt, meat too tough. He resists his failing tastebuds and worn out gums, no, the food is the one ageing. She smiles and agrees, adds a dash of soy sauce to his spoon. Duty or love, it does not matter, their flavors join together when stewed, boiled so tender that where one falls apart, the other begins. Kilned Wearing my mother’s dress, I jump and feel the hem billow at my shins before pooling around my feet. She tells me to pin it up but I prefer when the fabric drags behind me, sweeping my footprints away so I don’t leave a trace. I do the same with my voice,
pinching my vowels until I no longer sound like my mother but another girl of the diaspora. She orders her boba unsweetened because that is what her mother would do and pierces her nose because that is what her mother would never do. The news reports another arrest back home, a student my age who said the wrong thing at the wrong time and so I try my best to say all the wrong things all the time here in this place where I can bare my teeth when I am pushed even if my instinct is to cower, walk away. An escape act. Tell me, which is resistance––to leave behind a life of limitations or to hunker down despite them? I was not born into the diaspora but every day I am kilned by it. My sister, a ceramicist, says the pots need time to breathe before the fire, if not the clay implodes into small, broken shards.
3 people
by Amadie Gajanaike
Capsizing Reality by Amadie Gajanaike
by Amadie Gajanaike
White Grains by Jamie Chan
Under the sink, our uncooked rice stilled in a plastic tub. For perfect portions each time, we kept a measuring cup floating among the white grains. I was taught to stir the rice with it, every so often, even if I had no plans to cook a pot. Turbulence maintained vigor, and if undisturbed for too long, as we found out after a brief hiatus away on a family trip, out of the granules emerge these horned creatures. Black rice weevils burrow their eggs inside the endosperm and when they hatch, the entire store spoils magnificently with tiny crawling critters, animating the dead husks like a ball pit of scampering children. Keep rice in an airtight container, we are told, to ward off corrupt infestations. Their only transgression is sharing our taste in this hardy grain that when boiled in enough water can stretch one meal to fill four bellies, sustaining a generation through Mao’s famine. These buggers, like my grandparents, preferred the cool, dark, dry places, best for keeping cache fresh and critical thoughts concealed from the hand that stirs. I know that letting a whole vessel of rice kernels overwhelm with insects is to be flagrant with abundance, yet I can’t help but root for life, disruption, the little monsters.
Sonata for Trombone and Piano in B Major by Luc Ta
大舅
by Lilly Chai
“where to?” by Julia Zheng
this photo was taken on a bus while exploring my parents’ hometown in Hangzhou, China with my grandparents. my grandparents ground and shelter my sister and i with their love and strength and self-sufficiency, connect us to our roots and give us a sense of place. but recent years have reminded me of their fragility.
by Hazel Kim
Yale Korean Professor Angela Lee Smith’s Rosenkranz Award Project Website Banners and Syllabus Illustration by Eunice Kiang
The American Dream by Tina Lam
I looked out from where I was, the body, the skin that encloses who I am. That I did not know could be hated for no reason. For the eyes that laid on you differently and made your body wince. For the moments that you lay flat. Wishing the ground would slowly envelop you. But you, only having yourself to bring back on your feet. And it was the first time you know the fairyland you imagine only lives in your mind. The dream they sold high and loud but nowhere to be found. You know well it was no homeland. In fact, far from homeland. But it was since when that the wind that brushes you on the skin seemed hard to bear. And since when the ticking of clock, the slamming of doors, the footsteps slaps on your ears with such hostility. You listen in silence and yet them, being deafening. Because the no that needed to be said was swallowed. The outcry that needed to be heard was silenced. The clinch that was so hard but poof! Only air it was holding on to. And I wonder, Would the words unsaid made it back home, Or do we bury it here?
Dinner at Home by Kai Zhang
Good Est Me by Eunice Kiang
spacecarpet Lyrics and Demos by Sebastian Chang
verse (buzzy and eerie, autotuned frank, formant double, jacob collier harmony layers) ‘kapchida’ mal haetdeon, abeoji (stacked n eerie) didn’t understand what he meant then just knew that i was goin somewhere, not if, we were coming back, soon times i hid inside the cupboard playing hide and seek with (upper melody stacks) my-creep-ing-ver-te-brae (harmony stacks) pre i cried just to feel better so gravity could fill the holes in time—and space too early and too small he’s got a universe inside him (air) chorus (vox with high layer and normal layer, bringing more emotion in) don’t go (fry) don’t go and never grow up, never say goodbye to him don’t go, don’ttell him not to sell your house tell, tell the kid to make a few more friends and tell him that they’ll stick around verse 2 (pheobe stability/eerie, almost spoken, rambling. speak it.) —man stuffed with socks, branches and rocks, blood on your prin-cess-dress climbing walls, with sweaty palms, and lost lego pieces that glow in the dark and that carpet, with the planets and the star shaped, lumination
Please scan this QR code to listen to the song demos.
A Tiller’s Toil
by Vyshnavi Thumbala Saikrishnan Seasons of the year, different of its kind, Brings snow, fall, blooms or grains to grind; The sun shines, the early cocks crow, A lad equipped with his spade, sickle and harrow. Tills and mixes his rich land of soil, Now is pulverized, after hours of toil; Enhancing the flavour of the land, Adding manure to this enriched sand. He is an adept weatherman of his own, Aware of the right time for his crops to be grown, He sows the seeds of life from paradise, Either wheat, barley, corn or rice. The elixir of life flowing through the field, Irrigating meticulously to maximize the yield; He works his fingers to the bone and slaves away, Under the blazing sun, even during a holiday. He toils for a living along with his farmhands, A story of blood and sweat, which he only understands; Not just for a day or two, but the entire year, Fighting bravely against the catastrophes of fear. Be it drought or flood, he stands true to his values, Pays tribute to his land and strives as he continues; A back breaking métier, but never grumbles, So that his legacy and passion never crumbles. He milks his cows, rears his sheep, His loyal farm friends, along with his reap; Season of harvest, one to endear; Euphoric celebrations fill the atmosphere.
Struggles forgotten, his tender heart satisfied, As he looks at his fruitful produce with pride, The food is on our plate, little do we realize, His vigorous efforts of ineffable size. Leave it or throw it, we only know to waste it, The sad and disturbing fact, quite explicit; For he is the man who feeds the nation, But we do not have an ounce of consideration. US.
Contributor’s Bios: 295 Magazine 2023
Her diverse upbringing has provided Caroline with the understanding and insight that allows her to foster deep connections with people from all over the world in any setting Alicia Mazzurra and it is all thanks toher parents. This piece Alicia Mazzurra is a junior studying English is dedicated to her parents and her sister who and Education Studies. She loves Jook Songs have taught her so much and continue to shape Spoken Word, reading books outside on sunny who she is today. days, and big bowls of Basil’s drunken noodles. Eunice Kiang Amadie Gajanaike Eunice Kiang is a junior in Berkeley Amadie is an international student from majoring in Computing and the Arts. She Sri Lanka and first-year in Ezra Stiles. She is passionate about using the combination expresses art in the form of abstraction of technology, storytelling, and art, such as and photorealistic grief through acrylic design and animation, to encourage selfpaintings. Her pieces tell the story of the reflection and compassion. Moreover, she is sacred superstitions in her Buddhist mother’s deeply inspired by her Korean and Hong Kong upbringing, the security guard uncle who lived heritage, interweaving its histories and cultures away from his family, and a tribute to Manuel into her artwork as well as working on the Adrianzen. AACC’s Communications and Design team to promote solidarity and positivity. Aruna Balasubramanian Aruna Balasubramanian is a first-year in Saybrook from Philadelphia, studying Anthropology and History, with a focus on East Asia. Her artwork is inspired by her travels and her childhood memories. She is a digital illustrator and an oil painter. In her free time on campus, she makes landscape paintings for a gallery in Santa Fe, plays the sitar, and works as a Student Guide at the Yale Center for British Art.
Hazel Kim
Caroline J. Peh
Jamie Chan
Caroline J. Peh is currently a first-year graduate student at the Yale School of Medicine Physician Associate Program. Her parents are Chinese immigrants, father from Singapore and mother from Costa Rica, who raised her and her younger sister in Southern California in a household that honored their Chinese roots in values and celebrated their ties to Costa Rica through language.
Hazel Kim is a sophmore in Berkeley double majoring in Economics and Art History. She has a passion for painting and a long-standing interest in astrophysics, she created her piece as a statement of minority women who’ve been historically underrepresented and uncredited in the field of astrophysics.
Jamie Chan ’23 (she/her) is an Anthropology major from Hong Kong. Her interest in poetry began as an anthropological inquiry into ambiguous spaces, and how imagination, uncertainty, and poetics might help us navigate an increasingly calamitous and unpredictable world. She enjoys climbing, cooking, music, and stories.
Julia Zheng Julia Zheng (‘23) hails from Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, birthplace of Peeps and iron pigs. She finds root in the late-June lotus blooms and rowdy dialect of Hangzhou, China. She enjoys wondering about many things, photography included. Kai Zhang Kai Zhang (he/him) is first-year in Davenport College hoping to major in Computing and the Arts. At Yale, he is a part of the Chinese American Student Association, Yale Design for America, and Yale Children’s Theater. Coming from one of New York City’s Chinatowns, he grew up exploring his own Asian-American identity, and, as a budding graphic designer, he hopes to share his stories through impactful visual narratives and mediums.
Patrick Kho Hailing from Manila, Philippines, Patrick is a writer of food, identity, and online cultures. He is an avid Joan Didion fanboy and visiting international student in Davenport College. On campus, he can be found either chowing down on Chobani yogurt in the Underground or in the Yale Herald office editing the publication’s newsletter. Pinyu (Pearl) Hwang Pearl grew up in Taiwan with a childhood spent alongside night market pinball machines, scooter-congested streets, and 7-11s around every corner. She is fascinated by the ways language becomes art, visually and linguistically, through its shapes and its meanings. She’s fond of desserts, crafts, tea, stories, and language.
Lilly Chai
Sebastian Chang
Lilly Chai is from Long Island, New York. She is a first-year in Jonathan Edwards studying Economics. At Yale, she is involved in the Chinese American Students Association as a Communications Chair. She’s interested in the visual arts—especially oil painting, graphic design, and video editing. In her free time, she loves listening to music, taking walks, and drinking iced chai lattes.
Seba (styled ‘seba chang’) is a KoreanIndian-American artist who’s still a bit afraid of the dark. Producer, dancer, poet, and rapper/vocalist, seba tackles themes of identity and self-expression with a nostalgic and lyrical sensibility. seba’s evolving sound draws on alternative hip-hop, Korean r&b/indie, and vintage funk/pop, paired with rap verses in multiple languages. His unreleased album, ‘spacecarpet’, is an ode to growing up out of place and coming to terms with family, love, and identity.
Luc Ta Luc Ta (he/him) is a sophomore in Hopper studying Mathematics on the intensive track and Ethnicity, Race, and Migration. Luc taught himself to play the clarinet and write music in middle school. As a composer, he is interested in resituating Baroque and Classical forms through the vernaculars of jazz, video game music, and Vietnamese music
Kai Chen Bio not provided.
Shreyas Raman Shreyas Raman is a senior in Ezra Stiles College, born and raised in Mumbai, India. Majoring in Mechanical Engineering, he spent a year working at a Formula Electric racing team in the UK while away from Yale. In his free time, he enjoys creative writing, the color red, and sharing his octopus obsession with his friends. Tina Lam Tina Lam is a graduate student at the Yale School of Management, pursuing a Master of Advanced Management degree. She is passionate about expressing her thoughts and feelings on issues of race, sexuality, gender, and class through poetry, literature, and acrylic painting. In her work, “The American Dream,” inspiration was drawn from influential writers such as Amiri Baraka’s “An Agony. As Now.” and Claudia Rankine’s “The Citizen,” as she attempts to verbalize the feelings of discomfort and dissociation often experienced by Asians living in America. She is committed to exploring and raising awareness of the marginalization experienced by these communities, and her work reflects this dedication to amplifying their voices. Vyshnavi Thumbala Saikrishnan Vyshnavi is master’s student in International and Development Economics at Yale University. Even though Mathematics and Economics are her favourite subjects, English Literature holds a special place in her heart. Since middle scool, she has always been interested in writing poems and short stories, and each poem she wrote would be inspired by something she saw or experienced that day.
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Yale Asian American Cultural Center
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