(after mimi nguyen)

MOONROOT is an ongoing collaborative project about race, gender, and bodies that was born/e out of gchat conversations, love, and pure genius.   it was released yesterday at the baltimore zine bazaar and presented by (most of) the baltimore crew.

check it: READABLE PDF | PRINTABLE PDF

big ups to these homies for making this process beautiful: Sine Hwang Jensen (creator of our lovely lotus root stencil), Amy Dewan, Sun Hashmi, Marilla Li, Jess Kealiihoalani Toshea Mease, jackie wang (layer-outer of the zine! and the one from whom i got the bulk of the content for this post <3), mai c. đoàn, linda nguyễn, and Bhanu Kapil.

do you..

- want to donate seed money for future issues?
- want a copy with a fancy spray-painted cover?
- want to distribute the zine?
- want to give us feedback?

talk to us at moonrootzine@gmail.com!

also! if you self-identify as an API womyn/woman, trans, or genderqueer person, WE WANT YOU WITH US. please submit and/or collaborate with us, because we need your voice/vision/wisdom/story.*

Sine and Amy posing with newly printed zines

moonroot production factory (it’s worker-owned, y’all)

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*psst.. nonster, stacey, nisha, manasi, mandy, aileen, zena, claudia, and my sisters… i am looking at you. <3

at work, during research, i came across a man who had lost his wife last year in a blast in islamabad. he has a blog in which he writes about missing her and his first eid without her and his kids and how he has dedicated his life to building a community for those who had lost loved ones in similar situations. i am consumed with this. it is paralyzing. it is makes me feel like my knees are wooden and my fingers are weightless.

this is difficult. this is incredibly difficult.

01.
when my family moved to the bay from orange county, my mom started working for my uncle’s catering truck business in santa rosa, while my dad took esl classes at contra costa community college. eventually, they got their own lunch truck in hayward, with a route in milpitas serving a predominately latino clientele, service workers of the silicon valley. as such, my mom learned how to make menu staples like tacos and burritos from the previous cook. she did all of her prep work at home, which meant there was a lot beef being chopped on the kitchen table all the time.

and i remember she would make huge amounts of barbacoa in this fatty stock pot, and then sit on the floor pulling at the meat that fell apart on itself, it was so tender. she would feed it straight to me and my sister’s mouths like we were little babies. (she would do this with homemade meatballs too; who knows how much meat i ate as a child.) i didn’t actually learn that the meat was called barbacoa until i went to a chipotle for the first time in college and saw it on the menu. my mom picked up bits of spanish on the job, and spoke it quickly, pronouncing the ending syllable quà, like a gift.

02.
a few summers ago, i was at my aunt’s house in orange county with my parents, and there was kind of a food gathering going on, with my other aunt and uncle and grandmother over. they were making spring rolls, the usual kind with pork and shrimp, and i mentioned that bò bía was my favorite, which always comes with the special peanut sauce. so i asked one of my aunts what hers was, and she was sassy in her response and said to ask my grandmother–she only ever made boiled vegetables and rice for dinner.

i was confused at first, mostly shocked at her audacity, but also the truth of situation. my parents were farmers in rural viet nam, and they grew the same vegetables they ate, which has now become a novel concept in my life: “gardening.” my mom said she learned how to cook “traditional” (in my re-imagination) vietnamese dishes by eying them at the grocery store, just like how she watches the food network channel and can recreate meals from there without ever paying attention the recipe. and i sat there, the only person from my generation, reeling from my idea of culture and its connection to food and history–how diaspora doesn’t always work the way you imagine it to.

03.
last weekend i visited my sister l. in madison on a fifty cent megabus ticket. we hit up the farmers market where we passed on the cheese curds and tried our best to purchase from farmers of color, most ostensibly hmong. l. was super hyped on the butternut squash and bok choy offerings (her boyfriend j. says she has an addiction,) but we bought a few other things, including cải làn, which i never enjoyed because it was one of those boring boiled vegetables we had at every other dinner growing up.

but now, after college and separation from home, i have come to crave these foods. so l. and i called our mom that night to ask her for directions on how to cook the greens, and she was totally nonchalant about the affair, as always, saying to parboil them for a bit and then stir-fry it up with some sauce or whatever, and we’d have to interject and ask her to specify how long, and how much. she asked what else we were having for dinner, and after i rambled off some things, she remarked, what? veggies only? i had to reassure her, no mom, we have fish too. and it was then she said, good. you’ve done well. now you can come home and cook for me.

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one time when i was eleven, i got in big trouble. i probably couldn’t recount in satisfying detail what i did or what the repercussions were, but i know that it was the kind of trouble that left me marinating in my own guilt. i remember feeling helpless and anxious and what made it worse was that my dread was steeped in drowsiness. as the day inched along, i found myself on the verge of falling asleep at every turn–nodding off in class over passages of lord of the flies, while gripping my styrofoam tray in the lunch line, and at the handball courts in our fenced-in school yard. i was a narcoleptic delinquent pre-teen, threatening to pass out on you, but not before putting glue in your hair and writing mean things about you on my aol homepage.

later that day i got desperate and confided in a teacher about both sins and sleepiness and she said, you’re stressed out. sometimes, when we are out of tune emotionally, our bodies react by shutting down. this is its way of protecting you.

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the summer that i turned eight i made an ill-timed turn while wearing ill-fitting shoes during a game of tag. i fell on a pile of glass. it was from a broken car window, one of those things that feels normal when you’ve only ever lived in new york city but realize later in life that actually, in many places people don’t often go around breaking into other people’s cars. after i got over the disappointment of being “it,” i started to pick myself up until i noticed that my left knee looked like mount vesuvius on a bad day–gaping hole, lava spewing haphazardly, a smattering of particles from the sidewalk like fallen ash on pompeii.

before i could react, a neighbor scooped me up and carried me into our second-story three-bedroom apartment, where my mother made sounds of dismay as she transformed the couch into a hospital bed with firefighter-like efficiency. she cleaned my knee with rubbing alcohol, sterilized a pair of tweezers, and dove in as if she was merely removing an ingrown hair. i felt the searing pain for a split second before i blacked out.

a few hours later, i woke up. the only evidence of the fall was my bandaged knee and the too big, blood-stained shoes placed in a corner of the room. i laid back down and asked my body, how did you know not to let me hurt anymore?

i woke up feeling a mixture of indignation and amusement.  wahhhh that was so boring!  what was the point of that?!  i don’t even use pencils wahhh!  and then i remembered that two years ago i regularly woke up with inch long scratches on my arms from dream crime fighting.  for nine months, every time i closed my eyes i transformed into the victim of a grisly murder.  next to a dream within a dream in which i’m killed in a bathtub and then “wake up” only to die again, three pencils is kinda nice (if on the dull side).

i believe the point of that (totally boring) story was to illustrate that i’ve been trying to practice serenity.  and what i mean by this is that i’m learning to appreciate stillness, to be present, even when it means embracing the parts of life and love that are unenticing.  this is no easy task, folks.  growing up, i didn’t have any cool kid toys so i spent my time watching pbs shows and reading books that instilled in me (mid)westward expansion dreams and a desire to churn butter.  i learned to keep myself up for hours every night with pioneer girl adventures and made up games and little kid theorizing.  you know that feeling when your mind won’t turn off even though you’re telling it to shutupshutupshutup, and it’s exclaiming, i’m your imagination! i just want to be wild and free!  i stumble into that space all the time.

especially during lulls, i’ve been known to hop on the crazy train and ride it to the last stop, sometimes staying on and letting it loop back around.  no, my mind won’t shut up and my body will not stay still.  i like movement.  i like to fight crime and tell stories about it after.  i want to churn butter!!! in work, love, play, and organizing, i tend to dive deep, come up for air, and then move on.  a few months ago, in an attempt to break the pattern, i decided to stay planted in baltimore.  i even started a blog post about it:

it’s true; i am the kind of person who runs.  my friends are used to my flitting around and chasing opportunities that bring me far from home for long stretches of time.  i’m young. i’ve spent the last five years living life in terms of semesters, bouncing from place to place every three months or so. i’ve always been the kind of person who could define myself by my work, who only took jobs that i loved and let myself be consumed by them.

but maybe now i want to be the kind of person who learns how to walk with stilts and make soap on the weekends. the kind of person who has time to eat brunch and go for runs.. who learns languages and cooks dishes for potlucks.  maybe i wanna be the kind of person who loves as hard as she works and has time for side hustles.  maybe i wanna be the kind of person who sticks around.

without getting into how successful i’ve been at doing any of these things (short answer: mostly not), i have to say that now i’m antsy.  can you be still even as you are going balls to the wall?  can you practice serenity when all you want to do is fuck shit up and dance?  how much of me can stay planted and present while the rest makes cross-country moves?  can’t i stilt walk and make soap in california? would i love less fiercely if i left?

two years from now, would i rather be telling the story of my inception-style bathtub murder or remembering the time i found three pencils?  can’t they be part of the same story?

when i was done, i walked over to the nearest bus stop–one that i had never waited at before–and found myself looking at this:

n. charles st & north ave, baltimore

THANKS!  you’re right.  we are okay.