WAY TOO AZN
May 17 is the International Day Against Homophobia. To commemorate, I am releasing my audio-slideshow series of three youth who identify as lesbian, gay and transgender. Please take a moment to read, watch, and listen here.
I wrote a feature for Xtra West: Gay Asian youth more likely harrassed: study. It was based on a UBC study released on March 28 about the ‘double discrimination’ of racism and homophobia lesbian, gay and bisexual Asian Canadian youth experience, and what factors can mitigate the harmful effects of bullying and discrimination. I interviewed Darren Ho, co-founder at Our City of Colours. It’s a Vancouver-based group that produces posters featuring young LGBT people in various non-English languages. For the article I also interviewed Brian Wong, one of the Colours poster models.
I also recommend an incredible personal essay about Our City of Colours by Darren on PositiveLite. I was struck in particular by his anecdote about teaching English as a Second Language class downtown:
“Throughout my short stint teaching English as a second language in downtown Vancouver, I was constantly reminded of the negative impacts of this lack of visibility. Every time a gay topic like the Pride Parade came up in the classroom, I could expect without fail, a well-travelled, academically intellectual international student to say to me, “We don’t have any gay people in South Korea” – with “South Korea” being interchangeable with any country where English is not the native language spoken. This common attitude could possibly be because the concept of a same-sex relationship is unseen and unheard of to many Asian immigrant or non-English speaking families. These families have little or no positive images or role models as the basis of the idea that a healthy gay or lesbian couple can exist. Even though we have so many LGBTQ-positive images, information, media, and materials out there, unless it speaks directly to these under-served communities, they don’t get the exposure.”
If you’re moved by Darren’s story, and you want to get involved, they’re looking for volunteers and poster models! Email ourcityofcolours@gmail.com or visit their Facebook page.
By Nina Arsenault. Directed by Brendan Healy. A Buddies in Bad Times Theatre production presented by the Cultch. At the Cultch on Tuesday, February 14. Continues until February 25.
The Silicone Diaries is a series of monologues by transsexual writer and artist Nina Arsenault, about her lifelong obsession and pursuit of feminine beauty. The hour and forty-five minute show starts with low lights and fog, as Arsenault slowly crawls onto the stage on all fours. It’s hard to take your eyes away from the stage beyond this point, as Arsenault is a striking vision wrapped in skintight, see-through PVC topped with wavy brunette hair that would put a L’Oreal ad to shame.
The staging is tastefully sparse, a simple white circular stage with a transparent plastic stool and a small white table with a water bottle. Behind Arsenault, pictures and video clips on a projection screen contextualizes what we’re seeing: the beginning, the end, and the long journey in between. The first act is in 1977, as Arsenault recounts a memory of herself as a boy called Rodney, staring at a female mannequin in Zellers.
“She was so beautiful,” Arsenault recalls. “But I didn’t like that she had the word ‘man’ in her name.” It wasn’t until 22 years later, when Arsenault acted on her desire to become the vision that had entranced her: perfect, plastic, and beautiful.
Arsenault goes on to tell more stories, snapshots from particular years in her life that were flashpoints during her transition from a biological male to transsexual female. Because Arsenault is so visually striking, there is no need for much more. While each stage of her transformation is highly stylized, punctuated by bursts of near-stand up comedy humour and dramatic monologues, the rawness of her experiences seep through the structure. Arsenault is a skilled storyteller, and her natural stage presence made me feel as if I could just as well be listening to her stories over coffee on Main Street. However, from my seat on the balcony of the Cultch, I had to strain at times to hear her clearly.
While at some points the stories meander and become too tangential, Arsenault manages to reel back the audience’s attention with some zingers, such as this one about her attractive plastic surgeon in Guadalajara, Mexico: “I said to him, ‘make me look like someone you’d fuck.’”
The one operation Arsenault almost gleefully admits she’s never done: a penectomy. When asked in interviews why she kept her penis, she shrugs it off. “My boyfriend likes it,” she said in an interview with Xtra. Indeed, Arsenault isn’t interested in colouring within the lines of familiar trans narratives, or simply outlining her transition from male to female. Diaries is also a critical reflection on the commercialization of beauty norms, and the constructed nature of femininity in North American pop culture.
“Literal objects have been made out of women’s bodies, whether it be on billboards or magazines.” Arsenault said in an interview over the phone, a few days before her first Diaries performance in Vancouver.
Arsenault isn’t shy to point out during her performance and in interviews that she has two graduate degrees, and has taught critical sexuality to undergraduate students at York University. She also insists that her show isn’t intended to persuade anyone to accept her ideal of beauty. Over the phone, I asked Arsenault how she defines beauty. For her, there were two types: inner and outer beauty. Her definition of outer beauty is apparent through her appearance– a work in progress that she celebrates and exhibits through Diaries. Then, she addressed inner beauty.
“Inner beauty is about having faced your own darkness,” she said. “A fighting spirit is something that I’d definitely consider beautiful.”
On many counts, Arsenault’s Diaries gives the audience glimpses of both. While her outer beauty ideal is explicit on stage, her inner beauty ideal also shows through her storytelling. The candid discussion of her most triumphant moments are also tinged with self-deprecating humour and intelligence. For example, when she talks about her encounter with rocker Tommy Lee, she recounts gleefully the whisper-chain about her ‘secret’ that makes its way down the table where she and Lee are seated (or more accurately, where she’s seated on Lee’s lap). “I was aware that I gave him a physiological reaction to the idea of a woman,” she says in the performance. It’s moments like these, among others, that makes Diaries a stand out act, beyond the fog, lights, and projections.
I had the pleasure of chatting with Naveen Girn, guest curator and cultural researcher extraordinaire at the Museum of Vancouver. What takes most museums years the Museum did in 11 months with its current exhibition Bhangra.me: Vancouver’s Bhangra Story, an interactive exhibit connecting Vancouver’s Bhangra music and dance scene with politics, identity and diasporic life. You can read my feature profile of Naveen on Schema, and check out Bhangra.me as well.
After a walking tour of the Bhangra.me exhibit, Naveen attempted to walk me through some basic bhangra dance moves. You can’t tell from these photos how atrocious I was, but it was all good self-deprecating fun. All photos are courtesy of my homegirl Zi-Ann Lum.
It’s interesting that the two major news stories during my final week at the CBC revolved around Death and Taxes- starting with the death Jack Layton on Monday, and then the HST on Friday.
On a lighter note: As part of an informal tradition known as Interns Post Something Random on the Cubicle Wall, I posted my favourite Achewood strip of all time. It’s my small way of subverting the dreary news week with some colossal irreverence. Unfortunately, Comic Sans won’t be dying anytime soon.
Jack Layton died this morning. He was 61 years old.
I was listening to CBC Radio’s Early Edition in my kitchen in Coquitlam. It was 5:30 am. I felt a wave of vague sadness, the way I always do when I hear that someone I know, or know of, has died. I know that people die every day. There’s a person dying right now, somebody’s mother, father, daughter, son, grandparent. People are dying on the streets of Syria, fighting for the freedoms that I casually take for granted here.
The world keeps turning, but the death of one person ripples outward into the world, touching the lives of strangers like feathers on their skin, while brutally ripping into the flesh of those closest to the dead person like a steel-spiked flail. I often forget how soft and vulnerable I am under my tailored clothes, my dress shirts and shoulder pads giving some semblance of stability to my sense of the world as a structured, orderly place. Maybe that’s why I never feel at ease in business clothes.
I sometimes wonder about the day someone I love will die. In my third year of university, a friend’s grandmother died. I had met her grandmother in the summer of my first year, during a visit to Paris. I stayed at their house and ate her grandmother’s delicious food, celebrated my birthday with her singing Happy Birthday to me in Spanish. I didn’t know how to console my friend, because death had never torn my flesh the way it does when it’s someone you love dearly. She was devastated. She stopped caring about classes, stopped swimming at the pool, and stopped socializing with a lot of people except the very essential ones. As my online mentor Dear Sugar on the Rumpus would say, she was on another planet- Planet My Grandmother Died. I felt guilty sometimes talking with her, living my normal life on planet Earth, eating breakfast and checking Facebook and worrying about papers while she stared blankly out the window and said things like, “I know this sounds terrible, but sometimes I wish this would happen to other people, so they would know how it feels.”
It could be that my analogy of a loved one’s death as a steel-spiked flail ripping into soft, vulnerable flesh is completely wrong. I may read back on this entry later on today, or tomorrow, or several years from now when something dreadful has indeed happened, and realize that it was silly of me to even speculate on how it could feel on Planet My _____ Died. I can only write this crude homage as an outside observer, and feel a tinge of sadness at the death of others like a feather tickling the back of my hand.
Read my foray into board game night at OpenFile Vancouver.
Also, if you’re looking for something to do in Vancouver on Friday nights…check out board game nights at the following:
Strategies Games (3878 Main Street) from 6 pm to 9 pm
Drexoll Games (2860 West 4th Avenue) from 7 pm to 9pm
Who is a temporary foreign worker?
A temporary foreign worker (TFW) is someone who comes to Canada under the Temporary Foreign Worker Program. Under a temporary work visa, a TFW works in various skilled or unskilled industries including:
- Construction
- Tourism (food and beverage services, hospitality, residential cleaning)
- Seasonal agricultural labour (under the Seasonal Agricultural Worker Program)
- Live-in caregiving for seniors or children (under the Live-in Caregiver Program).
Read the rest at OpenFile Vancouver.
My first video report for OpenFile Vancouver on the Vancouver Table Tennis Club.
Follow my fascinating online journey tracing what politicians, news media, and Canadian citizens are saying about the ‘ethnic vote.’ To be updated daily until the election on May 2, 2011.
This week I mentioned on the radio that I’m white
A Song at a Million Hoodies at Grandview Park
Someone I know singing an Apartheid rhyme that white kids would use to make fun of him and other Chinese
1:01 mins of room tone from my window at 12:00 am 1/1/12
I perform at Writing North: Writing the Extraordinary, presented by the Saskatchewan Writers’ Guild
Dead Poets Night at the Art Bar at Paupers Pub
Adrienne Grubic reads about a tragic scuba accident at Project Space
10 things about Steven Galloway as read off Natalie Thompson’s shirt at Project Space
I read at the Ricepaper Double Launch Party
