Revolution
By Maggie Chang
Red qipao, dumplings in Chinkiang vinegar, and curling steam from hot mantou
Pig’s blood curd, chicken feet, and speaking too loudly at restaurants
We are the beautiful welcomed and messy unwelcomed Chinese
Chinese-Canadian.
Both.
Not just what they allow us to be but our whole selves
Embedded in our culture and marginally cultured, yet all still looped into one category
Forever other, outsiders, model minority, patronised, and passed over with a smile
until we stop
“behaving”
Then:
Yourkind arefucking disgustingthats justthetruth whatajokethatyourecryingracism
Itsjusthowitis
yourfault
Forbeingborndifferentfromme Nevermind
That I
am the one who is different
to you
IamjustbetterIamentitledIdeserveeverythingandyoucantwant
Anything
Ensured with violence
With your food smells terrible, but I will use it to fish for likes and
Having twice the experience but still only given the most gruelling jobs and
being stabbed on the street for the colour of your skin
But we will continue to celebrate us
For us
Lion dancing on Parliament Hill, coming together over loose-leaf tea
sharing mooncake, saving lives
Art and law and medicine turning our faces into advocacy
Building up our communities and holding our truths closely
the violence cannot corrode who we are
we keep our context alive
Because
Every time
we are unapologetically ourselves
it is an act of Revolution.
The Electric Palace
By Chloé M. L. St. Amand
Once we belonged to ourselves. We were the fire burning in lanterns at night, peacefully boiling water for tea, or igniting the bright and noisy firecrackers to celebrate Lunar New Year. The red of our flames reflected everywhere. From red envelopes used to welcome new babies and new graduates to red dresses and decorations at weddings.
The people in the Palace never liked us. After sailing into our societies, they deemed our fire reckless. We were lightning, a threat that could strike down their delicate “laws” and “civility.” But they needed our power to break through stolen mountains. They lied and manipulated us into turning our flames into the dynamite that took many of our lives. Those who survived were cast aside: displaced, abused, forgotten.
Some returned to our childhood homes. Others brought over family so that their children could grow up somewhere new. But the people in the Palace didn’t want our fire closer to them. They didn’t want us growing and thriving. They were scared of us and what we could do to their Palace, so they made us illegal.
Families were torn apart for decades. Everywhere we went we weren’t welcome. We could not be trusted, so we could not be hired or rented to or otherwise seen as anything other than a disposable eyesore. Instead, we channelled all of our energy into making steam for factories building goods we could never afford, or heating water to wash clothes that weren’t ours, or powering electrical stoves to cook pale versions of our food that weren’t “barbaric” so that they could be sold at a fraction of their worth. Just to survive.
The people in the Palace never liked us. But eventually they realised they liked us more than our darker skinned peers who were struggling just as much as we were. So they started hiring us. Slowly, they gave us more access to education. We became less expendable and more human. With each act of measured tolerance shown to us, we took one step closer to the Palace.
The Palace was alluring. We saw those inside as powerful and glamorous, rich and successful. It provided a layer of protection from blame and hardship; a promise of an easier life. Everyone who resided at the Palace was born into it, yet they told us that they worked for their place. They said we could work in exchange for a place of our own.
And so the red hot blood in our veins poured out of us, not as the flames of our ancestors, but as electricity coursing through the wires of the Palace walls, providing heat and light for them. We were inside the Palace alright, but not as residents or even guests. We were infrastructure. So long as we were in proximity to the Palace and its residents, they could point to us as props, our presence a justification for the continued suffering of others. If we could contort ourselves into something useful to the Palace, why couldn’t everyone else?
We upheld the Palace’s systems to keep its residents comfortable, clinging to the hope that their advantages would fall onto us as well. But we were only as warm and sheltered by its walls as its inhabitants permitted us be.
The people in the Palace never liked us. Today, the Palace continues to exploit us and our Black and Brown peers. We’re faced with a choice. Will we be the sparks in the guns firing bullets at protesters? Or will we unleash our flames onto the landscape of suffering to make way for new and just ecosystems to flourish?
Maggie is a poet and writer based in Toronto. Her work focuses on environmentalism, intersectional feminism, and identity – particularly the joys and sorrows of being Chinese-Canadian. She has performed at Stories of Ours and her work has also appeared in Cultural Weekly, The Herd Archive, and the forthcoming Faces to the Sun Anthology.
Chloé is a queer mixed-race Chinese- and French-Canadian woman living in Waterloo, Ontario. She holds a bachelor of Knowledge Integration from the University of Waterloo, where she’s pursuing her masters in Social and Ecological Sustainability. In her free time, she enjoys cooking and listening to Harry Potter feminist critique podcasts.