Historias de Una Pandemia

  Across the United States the Covid-19 pandemic presented many challenges and intensified racial tensions and health disparities in many communities, particularly minoritized communities. This public health crisis exposed and exacerbated many of the known...

Going on the Journey of Learning to Respect Our Elders

Growing up in the United States, in a predominantly white neighborhood and attending predominantly white schools, I experienced an identity crisis in my youth: I wanted to be Caucasian. I wanted to disconnect myself from my Chinese roots. I perceived all Chinese...

Documentation as Remembrance

  Devastating events of the past few years, from the Covid-19 pandemic to racism, war, and environmental crises, have been universally shared by people around the world, yet individually experienced. Reflecting on responses to these challenges can include...

Día de los Muertos Altars

I always carry my mother’s words with me, and I share them with everyone I teach about Día de Los Muertos. She said, “We all suffer three deaths. The first death is the day that we give up our last breath, the day that we die. Our second death is the day we are...

Make the Anvil Theirs

If you said poetry doesn’t matter, you would be wrong. Poems praise, preserve languages, name injustices, mock tyrants, and give voice. At this moment, we live surrounded by powerful short poetic forms doing just this kind of work: protest signs (“Science not...