Highlighting As[I]Am's Spring Issue Release: "Resistant Bodies"

This week, As[I]Am (my emerging Asian American social justice online magazine) released its first themed issue, on "Resistant Bodies"! Other than being wildly ecstatic that we have finished up the editorial process, it has made me reflect on the growth of As[I]Am since I founded it last year:

Even in this short year, there were many points when I wasn't sure it would even get this far. I started the project through a fellowship, where I was fully supported through the development phase. At the end of my fellowship, I applied for a grant that I didn't get and thought: "There's no way I can keep doing this on my own." Without funding and unsure of how to proceed as a one-person show, I took a summer hiatus and reached out to my lovely current co-editor, Amanda. She renewed the energy of the project -- we started building a new mission statement and read up on how to create a successful funding campaign.

It feels like we have been planning for this issue for just about as long -- at the end of the summer, we decided on the theme. We drew up our lofty goals and made executive decisions. The work multiplied on its own. We brought on Kyla, our incisive new editor, and all of us got really excited about the journey ahead.

There were highs, when we felt real cohesion. And there were lows -- when the rest of our lives became overwhelming or this "side gig" seemed like it was eating up our entire headspace. Being "on-call" meant that I would stop in the middle of the street to email someone back or stay up till 5am for an editor retreat. As with any project that I deeply care about, it became a part of me.

In some ways, As[I]Am was started for me to have an excuse to talk to Asian Americans beyond my own community doing meaningful work. And while that is still my favorite part of the experience, I am seeing more and more how media can serve our communities in more than just chronicling our struggles. I am seeing how it can, slowly, create community in the physical world as well as online.

This issue release makes me energized for the future -- more and more, our lofty goals don't seem so unreachable, and we are setting up a solid foundation. So, please click through and see the work of our amazing contributors and please get in contact if you would like to submit your own voice to the mix in the upcoming months. We'd all be so excited to hear from you!

New Zine: Loving Ghosts!

It's been quite a long time in the making, but I've finally finally finished putting together my art zine: Loving Ghosts.

The theme is on support networks - people in my life who have been invisible loving supports to me as I walk my journey. I wanted to do a lot of mixed media work, so I started out by doing pen portrait drawings, then adding colored pencil, and finally pasting them onto watercolor backgrounds. I added a little bit of cut-and-paste design to it, but not much.

Print copies of this zine will be on sale for pay-what-you-wish with a suggested $5 minimum per copy. All the proceeds will go to paying writers at As[I]Am, the Asian American social justice online magazine that I founded and currently edit. Please take the time to support us with your donation or just by reading the submissions! Speaking of which, we still have an open call for submissions for our spring issue on "Resistant Bodies." Check it out and get your work in by February 1st!

Thanks to everyone who was willing to be featured in this zine. It is really one of my greatest accomplishments in the new year.

(psst, you can now buy my zines on Etsy! Check out how you can get Loving Ghosts and back issues of my other zines there)

Once More with Feeling: Recapping the Queer Dreams Conference

Last weekend, I got the unique opportunity to spend time back at my alma mater (was graduation really that far off now?) at the Queer Dreams and Non-Profit Blues Conference. I've been writing about the experience in terms of the knowledge that I took away from it -- which you can read soon on the Barnard Center for Research on Women blog -- but I wanted also to talk about the emotions of that space.

I get easily excited by new ideas, especially when people are willing to continue the conversation during breaks and over lunch. Yet I definitely was more conscious than ever about being included or excluded in that space. Was I a part of it or was I just observing? This question comes up again and again in my activist work: where is the faint grey line between being part of a movement and standing next to it? What does the movement even look like nowadays?

Since the conference was centered around non-profits and whether they really serve our communities, I was extremely conscious of how I -- having worked in non-profits only for a brief time -- had believed they were ultimately a good solution to creating social change under US capitalism. I had heard before from disillusioned workers about the ways that the non-profit world was just "capitalism on broken legs," but the message didn't really sink in. Then the stories came rolling in. Unpaid internships and paper-pushing temp positions. Low stipends and extended hours. The tyranny of "experience." Suddenly, non-profits didn't look so rosy.

But community-based organizing runs into the same problems of requiring people to do social change work "in their off time." In between the day job and the family and going back to school. There lies that unanswered question: do you have to give up all that to devote yourself to the movement? Do you run yourself ragged trying to hold it all together? I have been fed the idea that movements are big masses of people all reaching for the same goal, but outside of Occupy, I have seen nothing like that recently.

I got to listen in on conversations that seemed as fabulous as they were romantic -- art projects I wanted to be a part of springing up for less money than I pay in rent. I felt inspired. And then I felt like I wasn't doing enough. Standing on the outside looking in at all the people I believed were doing more and greater work than myself, I felt both hungry and full. Hungry for the experience of creating something meaningful and full of satisfaction that I had the opportunity to be in that space where people were striving for more.

But I don't mean to make it seem like all my feelings were positive. I felt uneasy as I thought to how few spaces there are, outside and inside the conference, to address the work I want to be doing. As this week, my friend and I begin to revive my Asian American social justice website, As[I]Am, everything feels like it's in unexplored territory. Where is it going and how do I get there? And yet, as I see it take shape, I start to feel that same excitement -- even though I don't have the answers yet, wherever we're headed, it's certainly better than here.