Like most people, I tend to get hit with random revelations at any given moment in time. This revelation hit with a lovely dose of inspiration following a theatre viewing of the new Spider-Man film. Watching someone fighting with incredible strength and resilience made me think about the rigorous process that leads someone down that path. I’m talking beyond the movies, specifically the strength it takes to build oneself into becoming the character. All the actors that put in work and effort into physically and mentally forming themselves into the characters they seamlessly portray on the big screen.

It takes more than willpower. I honestly believe that willpower is not the means to anything, it is more like a push that triggers a snowball effect. The true power lies within discipline. To be disciplined is to hold power. When someone has reached a level of self-discipline, to where they are able to follow through their words with action, they are the most powerful people. All successful people have discipline. It is the secret sauce. Superhero’s are who they are due to that discipline as well. While they have superhuman strength, they still need to go down this path of hard grueling work to get to the level of ‘Super’, and I believe the same goes for us. While becoming an inhumanely strong being with spider-like abilities is out of the question for most of us, it is incredibly possible for us to become our ideal versions of ourselves. That ideal looks different for every single person, however, it is attainable. It is.

Reaching self-actualization is a lot easier said than done. Gaining that level of discipline that allows actors like Tom Holland to become Spider-man is not any easy feat. It takes a lot of work, not just physically. We need to alter the way we think. Our brains are wired in a way where they will constantly choose the easiest path. The easiest path is the known one, the one you have taken every single day of your life. To divert that path is to take the journey of discomfort, and your mind will fight you every single step of the way. That is what makes it difficult, however, we have proof from many incredible and successful people, that it is doable. If they could do it, so could we. Rome was not built in a day, therefore expecting oneself to go from one extreme to the other is not feasible. We need to start small and allow our brains to find comfort in being uncomfortable, until it becomes easy. Until your brain stops fighting you for the sake of comfort, because it now finds comfort in what allows you to reach self-actualization.

This revelation is one that has ruminated in my mind for a while, and I think tonight it took center stage. It’s time to put forth the effort to reaching self-actualization. I watched a video a few weeks ago where this girl was talking about how doing nothing is a choice that also leads to discomfort. We are uncomfortable whether we make that push towards becoming the person we want to be, and uncomfortable if we don’t. We just have to choose which discomfort we would rather live in. The discomfort of never reaching your fullest potential, or the discomfort of living in infinite regret. Abraham Maslow discusses this idea way further in his argument that suffering is unavoidable within the human condition. You either suffer through the regret of squandering your potential, or suffer through the inherent pain that comes with transforming oneself and growing into your ideal self. If pain is inevitable either way, I would personally choose the pain that is worth something, versus pain that leads to nothing.

If you were looking for a sign to begin working towards self-actualization, then take stumbling upon this as a sign. The right path is the one that makes you happy. Being a human is hard enough as it is, we do not need the weight of unnecessary future regret weighing us down too. With that said, it is important to note that growth is not a linear path, it is more like a swirly squiggle of sorts, one that goes up and down and sideways and frontways and all the ways. We have to be okay with that. Spiraling over a few sick days or lazy days or whatever it may be, is not going to aide you in any way. Take that time and then lock back in. To be human is not to be perfect, it is to try. Trying alone makes you a winner. I think we are winners regardless. I truly do not believe in failure. We never fail, we just learn. Learning is you gaining something, something that you could not have gotten without failing. Thus, leading you into evolving and becoming better than you were prior to the ‘failure’. When you stop believing in failure, an angel gains its wings. Truly. You free yourself of these imaginary shackles that force you into making the safe choices because you were afraid of failure. Embracing failure and rejection opens up so many doors. All we can do is try, and hope for the best. If things work out, then that’s amazing, and if they don’t, then you’ve simply learned and gained experience that you can use the next time you try something. It is so important to try things, you might surprise yourself, even if you suck at it. With that, I leave you to find your inner Spider-Man.

Have you ever looked at the hands around you? Every pair of hands is different; different colors, sizes, scars, blemishes, calloused or smooth. But each pair of hands has the same purpose.

If you want to know how much love a person has given in their life, take a look at their hands. Ephesians 4:28 tells us how we’re supposed to serve others, by working with our hands. Our hands shouldn’t be pristine, or neatly folded in our lap. Our hands are meant to be used to support others, not just physically, but spiritually and emotionally. The wrinkles, blemishes, and callouses on our hands represent not just a life well lived, but a life spent loving others well. Worn and battered hands indicate that we’ve spent our lives not just taking and serving ourselves, but that we’ve spent our lives giving ourselves to others.

Each one of the wrinkles, the blemishes, the callouses, the rough spots, reveals the ways we’ve given pieces of ourselves, to other people, to help fill in their brokenness, to help heal them, rather than to keep ourselves whole and perfect. The stains, the imperfections, and the dirt beneath our nails that our hands show, and let others know that we have lived and we have loved. For what good is life, if we do not have love? Without love, we are nothing. We can have all the riches in the world, but if we lack love, we have nothing.

Our hands are our way of showing that love to the world, to the people around us. The paint smeared across the palms of my hands means that I’ve loved the patients where I volunteer, by bringing in crafts for them to do, my hands gently guiding theirs along the paper. Dirt surrounding my fingernail beds means that I love my nephew by spending time with him, playing outside, and showing him how to dig a small spot to bury worms leftover from fishing in the garden. Scarred and calloused hands mean that I love my family and friends, spending time baking for them, taking trays of cookies, or pie and cake tins in and out of the scorching oven. The markings and blemishes on each of our hands show different ways we’ve given pieces of ourselves to others, the multitude of times we’ve chosen to love, in a world full of sorrow.

Dirty hands may not be acceptable to society. But they should be. Dirty hands are what make us human. Isn’t it love, that they say distinguishes humans from all other species? If our hands are grimy from the muck of all that is love, from wiping off the dirt of doubt off of others’ wings, so that they can have the courage to spread their wings and fly, then so be it. I’d rather have filthy hands from loving others, than a love of my own neatly folded, flawless hands placed in my lap, any day. For what good is love if we don’t choose to spread it on our hands to give to others?

Edited by Natalli Newman

Eve must have been so scared

Taking that first bite.

Knowledge dripping down the corners of her mouth with each rebellious swallow.

And with each bite,

Thirsting for more knowledge.

She could’ve stayed in “paradise”

But I believe something in her knew it was a lie.

The first display of female intuition and defiance.

Once consumed, her seven sisters sewed her a blanket of leaves to keep her warm.

They welcomed her without judgement,

For she had chosen to change.

She rejected the life of the obedient woman,

for one imbued with the power to shed her skin and give life to man.

Everyone always says growing is painful, but they never tell you how disgustingly embarrassing it is. As I have recently begun reconnecting with select family members via therapy and cultural ceremonies, I have become receptive to the fact that I come from a long line of very nuanced hogwash. I know I have come a long way—exponentially farther than generations of my family—but I have spent the last few years feeling farther than everyone else around me, like I am endlessly on a treadmill, just trying to catch up.

In just about every room I’ve ever been in, I have been the youngest, along with most of my friendships. Coupled with my arrested development, this has gotten me into quite a bit of trouble as I am trying to keep up. I have always—maybe on a minutely obsessive level—wanted to know more; to get closer to my idea of “the perfect human”. That well-rounded, calm, decisive individual who knows just what to say, exactly how to act, interprets every invisible rule, eloquently handles every conflict. With all the confusion youth begets, I wanted to be a part of the intellectual masses, not the young people still learning and growing; I wanted to skip the mistakes and go straight to the lessons.

At a young age, I began befriending professionals, professors, and anyone with lived experience that embodied the ideals of my imagined “higher self”. I have always worried about the knowledge lost between generations, and felt a deep compulsion to learn as much as I could from those with wisdom to share. This, of course, led to uneven power dynamics and unfortunate situations such as condescension, grooming, and manipulation. For the first five years of my twenties, I truly felt like my life changed every two weeks, and I just couldn’t keep up. I was so ungrounded. I don’t think I ever really had a plan, because I honestly never thought I’d make it this far. I’ve just been kind of bouncing around; surviving, adapting, and chasing the “next big thing”. Trying to find my footing while constantly on the edge of slipping.

While I have always had the best intentions, I certainly have not always gone about things the right way. My parents were practically kids when they had me. My dad was in a foreign land and didn’t even know English yet. Both my parents came from very complex upbringings that left them without the tools to handle the complexities of life. From a young age, I always knew it was up to me to set a good example. Being the eldest of my siblings, I often found myself playing the role of the family manager, acting as everyone’s emotional support system, despite my inability to do so tactfully. Not many liked what I had to say, as my attempts to help arrived in a very matter-of-fact way, but in my mind, I was simply assessing the situation and offering improvements where they seemed fit. Unfortunately, this was often taken as “I knew more” or “thought I was better”, which was far from my reality. To counteract this assumption, I began fawning—dumbing myself down and doubting my intuition.

I come from bipolarity. I come from yelling until you lose your voice. I come from violence. I come from a long line of things that are not okay and a long line of people who pretend they are.

I’m not sure if it’s the stereotypical latin passion that is behind much of my inherited behaviors, but despite my best efforts, I still found myself to be defensive, emotionally reactive, and just downright dysregulated. I constantly over-explained, often feeling that I was in sitcom-esque scenarios where too many things happen at once, nothing is what it seems, and I am somehow left with a tangled mess of wrong perceptions.

In hindsight—which is all this personal essay is—I can recognize the situations where a reaction was truly warranted, just not quite to the level of primordial abyss I delivered. On the other side of the coin, I can also recognize the situations in which I could have reacted better. Situations where I was fully in the wrong. Situations I would not have even been in had I not carried such a colossal amount of self-loathing.

In my Sisyphean pursuit of reaching my “highest self”, I have spent my lifetime surrounding myself with elders, working to feed the endless cycle of managing a family that still doubted me every step of the way. While I was trying to absorb wisdom left and right, I was constantly reminded that I was “just a silly young girl who doesn’t know anything.” Which, of course, only made me chase it harder. I had something to prove.

I remember the pride I felt when, as a postpartum 21-year-old, determined to prove I could be a mother and still do it all, one of the organizations that nominated me for an award told me I was the youngest nominee in their history. While this was a momentous high at the time, it quickly faded.

I needed more—something of a higher quality.

I still had proving to do.

I still sensed doubt.

I was stuck in a wash cycle of making up for the previous mistake, tripping over my feet across the stage of my life’s play, no guardrails in sight. Thankfully, this is when I became more embedded in my local queer scene, which is heavily composed of young activists doing their best to stay informed and foster healthy communities. They helped me to deconstruct the outdated, toxic, compulsively heterosexual settings I grew up in, as well as validating that maybe some situations were truly unnecessary to my character development.

These past few years have felt like an endless fall from a building whose height could rival that of the Burj Khalifa, down into the dark hole of Alice’s Wonderland — except instead of floating tea and books, I passed the different lives I could be living, too fast to reach. I was coasting on all of the what ifs and memories I did not fully savor, until one day, I finally hit the pavement. All within a mere second.

In what felt like asphyxiation, my metaphorically thrifted toolbox was opened to reveal a missing majority of tools. I had thought the box was heavy with equipment, but I came to realize that I was just carrying self-hate and distrust. I ignored my intuition, which led to a lack of discernment for how to handle difficult situations. I had spent years severely masking who I was, and in turn, masking my own intuition—even from myself. I listened to what others said I should be; tried to squeeze into their molds; tried to be who they told me to be.

So, much like the ancient tale of King Siddartha becoming the Buddha, I figured it was time to really commit and focus on my journey.

Buddha’s origin anecdote is the ultimate story of searching for purpose. He left his wealthy palace, visited every corner of society, and tried every path to enlightenment. He realized that the answers were not in extreme luxury or harsh suffering, but in a quiet, balanced mind. This felt like a mirror. I always felt that I never had enough and that I needed to suffer to progress further

On my path to enlightenment, I started by stepping back from every active conflict, analyzing ways in which I wasn’t thinking straight and causing more harm than good. I gave myself some much-needed time to breathe and get my mind right and begin processing what I wanted to fix. I needed to climb up above it all to get a better sight and sense of what I was dealing with. I discovered an inability to let things sit; I felt that an immediate response was owed, and I accepted that I was overdue for some shadow work.

Taking this step back was triggering to the people in my life who had become reliant on my predictable reactions. They felt I was avoiding them or their problems, because I was not healing or engaging on their terms—of which I could neither figure out nor compromise. For others, it took intensive psychotherapy before I finally accepted that there was no fixing the conflict, and that it was not a reflection of my best efforts or intentions. For the rest, I am still learning and processing and using these discoveries to become the person I am meant to be.

In all of these rooms, with all of these elders who had have had the time to screw up and acquired the tools to get it right, I had found myself to be afflicted with this plague: a rhythmic ocd loop of toxic shame and guilt, replaying in my mind, keeping me up all night to finish tasks that paralyzed me in the day. While some still believed I was far away in a world of avoidance, my reality was much dimmer. I was trapped in daily replays of every single mistake I have ever made, of every conversation where I was horrendously wrong, and every finite diagnosis on my character that arose from each. This made me shrink myself, both in my career and personally, as I thought every mistake or judgement would be waiting for the right moment to strike me. I feared that, no matter what changes were made, it would all be futile in the end.

I was drowning in the feeling that I am not seen for who I am, and regrets that I should have traveled the world more before settling down in my hometown that I never left. Fears that my son deserved a better mom who knew all the answers because she’s done it all and could open all the right doors for him. The complex cherry on top is that I truly love the little family that I have created. They are my world, my comfort, my reason for being—and I would not trade them or my life with anyone else’s for anything in this universe. I just couldn’t help but still feel so behind everyone and ill-equipped for them.

The next stages came in waves. Sobriety. Deactivating every account. EMDR and IFS. Multiple therapists. Community activism. Crying to close friends. Video essays. Self-curriculums. Self-help books. Reiki. Cultural spiritual ceremonies. Philosophy. Severe introspection.

All of it has led me to a divine level of disgust over what the fuck has been my problem.

It has felt like I’m a bird in a long-term molting process and I’m taking longer than my other bird counterparts. And it’s SO uncomfortable. I know that we are meant to make mistakes to become our highest selves, but I have to grit my teeth trying to be nice and hold hands with my past self, rather than stabbing her in some dark alley. I know there are people capable of genuine and profound change, I’ve seen it. Take the complete 180 turnaround of Jersey Shore’s “Mike The Situation”. If he can turn it around like that, I most definitely can.

Now, my journey is about making peace with myself and my past, while still prioritizing accountability. I allow myself to feel guilty, taking it as a positive sign, considering the lack of guilt we’re experiencing in the world at-large. I also understand that much of my shame has stemmed from prioritizing other’s feelings over my own, and because hindsight really is 20/20.

I was recently reminded of a quote by Frida Kahlo: “And in the end, I believe that we don’t need to do anything to be loved. We spend our lives trying to seem prettier, smarter. But I realized two things. Those who love us see us with their hearts and attribute qualities to us beyond those we really have. And those who don’t want to love us will never be satisfied with all our efforts. Yes, I really believe that it is important to leave our imperfections alone. They are precious to understand those who see us with their heart”.

I am praying that the changes I am experiencing are not only the fruits of my labor, but also my long-awaited frontal lobe finally dinging in the oven, “I’m ready!”

As Anaïs Nin said, “your reality expands or contracts based on your bravery and imagination.” I am embracing bravery with my community. I am leaning into imagination with my son.

Viola Davis said, “The definition of hell... on your last day on earth, the person you became will meet the person you could have become.” I am finally becoming the person I always wanted to meet.

I don’t want to be remembered for my worst mistakes and I don’t want to be on my deathbed with regrets. Who does?

So, I am choosing the harder path, leaning into the growing pains.

Yes, it is humiliating.

And then, all at once, you are free.

The other day, I heard about a theory that really stopped me dead in my tracks. It’s called ‘The Five-Year Stranger Theory.’ It basically states that in 5 years, most of the people whom you see daily now will become strangers. It made me realize that all of the people we try to impress: colleagues, friends, neighbors, gym buddies, the people we sit with at lunch, and so on, will become strangers. Our lives change; our priorities and dreams change. We were never made to stay the same.

This can make us feel sad, or hurt, when we think of all the things we did and tried to impress the people in our lives. But then, when we discover this, we can also realize something else. We can realize a freeing truth: that we don’t have to spend our whole life trying to please others, or shrinking who we are just to fit in with everyone else. We’re allowed to expand and to grow and change. Many people are in our lives for only a chapter of our story. So, we can learn to let them just be in that one chapter, and to not rearrange who we are, or our entire story around them. Because one chapter doesn’t define the whole book, and there are hundreds of other chapters waiting to be written and discovered.

Because no matter who comes into or goes out of our lives, we still have to live it; it’s still our story. We’re allowed to put our focus and our energy into what we love and who we want to be, instead of worrying about how we’ll fit into the mold with everyone else. When we live our whole life trying to please other people, we will one day look back and wonder if we ever truly really lived, if we were ever honestly who we wanted to be, or just who everyone else told us to be. In 5 years, most of the people around you now will fade into the background and become strangers again. Don’t live your life so focused on the background characters of your story that you forget to develop the main character in your story – yourself. Live a life that’s true to who you are inside, no matter who walks in or out.

Edited by Sonal Butley

Recently, I attended a women’s church conference at Fellowship Community Church. The keynote speaker was author Katherine Wolf. In April of 2008, a 26-year-old Katherine, without warning, just 6 months after giving birth to her first son, collapsed in her kitchen and suffered a massive brain-stem stroke. She spent 40 days in the ICU on life support after going through the surgery which saved her life but took away nearly each one of her physical abilities. She then underwent two years of intensive therapies to relearn how to eat, walk, and talk.

Even though she survived despite all odds, Katherine refuses to call herself a miracle. Rather she acknowledges that life, after all she’s endured, is hard, frustrating, and exhausting. In 2013, her neurologist discovered and operated on an aneurysm within her brain, and she developed multiple lethal vertebral artery dissections in 2017. In 2019, she was confirmed to have an incredibly rare and undiagnosable neurovascular disorder called Moyamoya Disease, in addition to Intracranial Stenosis.

Her book, ‘Treasures in the Dark’, was the book that Anchored in Hope, a bible study I attend at Fellowship Community Church for women with chronic illness, just finished a series on. At the conference, Katherine touched upon many of the lessons she covered in her book.

What she talked about that resonated with me the most was the verse Galatians 6:4-5, the Message Version, which reads, “Make a careful exploration of who you are and the work you have been given, and then sink yourself into that. Don’t be impressed with yourself. Don’t compare yourself with others. Each of you must take responsibility for doing the creative best you can with your own life.” Each line of this verse gives an instruction, a guide to live our lives by. Paul isn’t just telling us to look in the mirror, at what we see, and study our reflection. Paul is telling us to look at each and every piece of ourselves, the good and the bad, all the bits that make up who we are, even those that are the most broken parts.

If we look closely, we’ll realize that the work we’ve been given often correlates with who we are inside, with each of those bits and pieces that make us who we are. We are called to dig into that, because that work is how we will impact others who are hurting or in similar situations. If we pour our hearts and souls into first discovering who God made us to be, and why, we are better equipped to lead others, to allow them to find their true calling, their purpose scattered amongst the pieces of their own lives.

We are called to look at not only what we see in ourselves, but to—as Katherine put it—“cultivate ridiculous gratitude for what remains. For those of us with chronic illness, this verse isn’t just a list of instructions; it’s our way of life. We learn to redefine what a happy life looks like, and by doing that, we beat the devil at his own game. Because he wants us to think that because our life doesn’t look like everyone else’s, we could never be joyful, or praise God. So, when we, as Paul instructs us to, “do our creative best with our own lives”. We’re redefining what joy is, what hope is, what goodness is, by thriving, despite everything that tells us we can’t live a good life. Don’t let the devil win; get creative and inventive with your own life. Because when we are creative and make the most of what we have. Everything is not picture-perfect, but we’re showing the world that we can trust God in the creatively messy life we’re living, because he is the master artist and the author of it all.

The next lesson Katherine shared was the beauty of sharing our darkest places with others. She explained how we are living as a survival guide for others. Whether we know it or not, others are watching us navigate our own journeys. We may never fully grasp the impact that our story can have on someone else. Others may use our same battle tactics, or use our words as a map to help them out of the woods.

“While my suffering has no quota, neither does my hope.” This is one of my favorite quotes from Katherine’s book, which she discussed during the conference. She talked about how none of us is guaranteed that our days ahead of us will not be harder than our past. If we focus on only the hard things, that’s all we’ll see. She then mentioned that if we choose to flip this around, we can see that if something good has happened to us once, good things can happen again. She explained that if we’re willing to open our eyes to see the good things, our future can be full of them. While there may be an abundance of hard days ahead, there may be an abundance of good days ahead as well.

One thing that Katherine stated during her speech was that if we are here on Earth, we are supposed to be here. This really stuck with me. If we’re still here on Earth, we’re here for a reason. Our story isn’t finished being told yet. For those of us with chronic illness, we often struggle with the guilt of needing help from the people around us. We often feel like a burden to our family and friends. But we don’t have to feel bad about needing help from others. We’re a part of their lives, a part of their stories for a reason. If we’re on this Earth, we’re here for a purpose. God is still using us for something bigger than we could ever imagine. Just as Katherine said, “I might need help getting to the table, but I still have a seat there.” The same is true for all of us; we are still here, still alive, for a purpose, for a reason.

Another important note that this amazing woman remarked was that every one of us has a different brand of brokenness. We might not always see other people’s brokenness the way we see our own. They might do a better job at hiding it, or it might not be something so physically evident. But every single person has something that has broken their heart, leaving them frantically trying to glue the pieces of it back together before anyone notices. Whether it be loss and grief, addiction, disease, insecurity, etc., each of us is going through this world in physical or invisible wheelchairs. Every one of us is fighting to hold ourselves together inside, in fear of appearing broken to the world. Our brokenness, funnily enough, as empty as it can make us feel inside, is the one thing that connects all human beings together.

Katherine talked about redefining goodness, a concept that didn’t make sense at first when I heard it, but later realized it’s so essential to being able to pull ourselves out of this pit of suffering. You see, we can choose to see what was taken from us, in the midst of our pain and heartache, or we can choose to see the good that has come out of it, and will continue to pour out of our pain, if we just open our eyes and our minds enough to see it. Our idea of goodness might not look like what the world deems as good, but that’s okay. Our pain and our suffering have transformed our minds to be able to see the goodness in life despite the hard things we endure daily.

Another thing that Katherine communicated was that our trauma should be seen not as a diminishing of ourselves, but rather as an expansion of ourselves. We often look at our trauma and see how much we’ve lost because of it, how much of who we were before our pain has faded into the background. We tend to focus not on what we’ve gained, but what we’ve lost.

When it comes to trauma, it can often feel like we’ve lost part of ourselves, part of our identity is gone now. But at the same time, we’ve grown so much. One of the things I’ve often heard from my friends who have had brain tumors is that they wish their friends and family could see that they’re still the same person. I’ve often felt the same way. But Katherine opened my eyes to the fact that maybe, after our traumatic experiences, we’re not the same person. Trauma tends to give you a new perspective on what really matters in life, that the things we should be striving for aren’t the things the world tells us to go for. We grow from what we learn through our traumatic experiences, which is often more than we want to ever learn. So maybe, our trauma is not a diminishing of who we were, but rather, an expansion of who we were created to be.

One of the themes of her book, ‘Treasures in the Dark’, is this idea of a “good/hard” life. This is the idea that once again, while we will have many, many hard times in life, we will also have many good times in life. Katherine shared that “the good/hard life isn’t about ease, but about showing up scared to the ongoing hard in our lives, and choosing ongoing hope.” This is the idea that we don’t always know or see how the hard in our lives will turn out for our good, but choosing to hold onto the hope that despite all of the hard we face, something good is just around the corner. Also, choosing to fight through the hard to get to the good, no matter how long it might take, how uncertain our future seems, or how terrified we are.

The biggest takeaway I had from Katherine’s book and speech was that God can use our deepest, most hurtful wounds, to bring healing to the world. Through sharing our own story of healing in the world, through sharing our suffering, we can allow others to grab onto that tiniest thread of hope, that if we can pull through our darkest times, maybe, just maybe, they can too. One of the things that I loved about ‘Treasures in the Dark’ was that at the end of each chapter, she gives an affirmation, and then states, “If it’s true for me, could it be true for you too?” This is such a powerful statement, as simple as it may seem. Because what if we start not just encouraging others, but affirming that their pain will one day get better. By affirming that others wounds will someday be healed, that they will come out on the other side, is indeed how we change the world for the better.

Edited by Sonal Butley

Sources:

Wolf, K. (2024). Treasures in the Dark. Thomas Nelson.

Thus, some questions remained hanging in the air. The major being: do the queer venues stand a chance in the modern world that’s rapidly changing?

This photo project was conceived with an intention to capture the atmosphere of one popular meeting spot for Berlin’s queer community – Tipsy Bear bar, usually bustling and filled with music, sex, flirtation and dancing. But to see it not only in the party lights in the midst of its regular karaoke night, but also when its dance floor is still empty, the barman behind the bar idling waiting for the first guests, neon spotlights illuminating the darkness of the stage in vain, and an eerie silence reigning in the back corridors.

I was trying to imagine what would happen if the city were to lose such get-together spots. Where would the voices of the queer community be heard then? And what would the city and its residents lose as a whole?

Tipsy Bear acts as an important sanctuary for international immigrants, trans individuals, and diverse facets of the queer community. Known as a “no-frills” hideaway, the venue is celebrated for giving emerging and multidisciplinary queer artists a platform, providing opportunities for Drag Kings, DIY drag performers, and open-stage acts to hone their craft. The bar became a focal point for queer solidarity and local activism after its Pride flag was stolen and burned. The venue responded by hosting major street demonstrations against rising local queerphobia, turning acts of hatred into visible celebrations of love and acceptance.

As Wai-Tung realizes that his father is having serious health issues, he decides to fake a marriage with one of his tenants, Wei Wei. She is a Chinese immigrant painter in need of a green card to stay in the United States. As his family arrives in the states, and this said trio’s fake marriage, their lies, secrets, and patience start to wear thin on each other as the parents deal with more health scares, truths, and disappointments. Chiang describes the film as an open space for “gay people in homophobic Asian and American communities…it also calls to mind the co-optation of the gay male in the reconstruction of Asian patriarchy” (Chiang). Lee’s film, The Wedding Banquet, shows how the characters use performative heterosexuality to maintain power, most notably through the directorial choices of lighting and music that show the instability that the characters experience as they lose the power that they once thought they had.

Lee chooses to show who is lying in a different way than normal directors do. Throughout the film he puts a focus on who is lying in the family and is burdened by the secrets from the performative heterosexuality that many of them display by keeping them out of focus or darkened while in frame. One scene that relates to how someone is lying is the scene after Wei Wei and Wai-Tung’s courthouse marriage. In this scene Wei-Wei, Wai-Tung, and his family are walking forward as Simon rushes in front to take a photo of all of them together, Simon is in complete shade and darkness compared to the other characters. Simon is the secret that Wei Wei and Wai-Tung are keeping. He is Wai-Tung’s boyfriend and rightful partner, where Wei Wei is not. Compared to Simon, Wei Wei (also in the front of the group) is completely lit up, because she is the hope for all the characters. The beard to help Wai-Tung and Simon conceal their relationship from Wai-Tung’s family and present the hope for a grandchild for Mr. and Mrs. Gao. She holds hope and secrets in her hands, theoretically holding all the power within the parties. (The Wedding Banquet, 40:33).

Wai-Tung and his father on the other hand are shadowed on one side each, the side that faces Mrs. Gao and each other. This can be theorized to be a visual representation of their lies to each other. The side of which Simon is on is lit up for Wai-Tung, because Simon knows his secrets; he is not being lied to. While Mr. Gao’s lit up side is to a wall because at this point in the film, no one, not even the audience, knows the secret he is keeping. At 40 minutes 38 seconds, just 5 seconds later, we see Wei Wei completely covering Mrs. Gao in darkness. Mrs. Gao’s power as the matriarch of the family is now being replaced by Wei Wei, ultimately making Mrs. Gao obsolete in the care of her son (The Wedding Banquet, 40:33).

Earlier in the film, we see that Mr. and Mrs. Gao are shrouded in darkness in the car upon the first time being in America to see his newly betrothed son and daughter-in-law-to-be. The darkness on their faces is almost a little too literal in sense, because in this portion of the film, both of them are completely in the “dark” about the truth of their son and his “marriage.” They do not start to be shown in light until Wei Wei continues to explain about her family: the only truth they have heard so far in the film. (The Wedding Banquet, 25:27).

Ang Lee’s choice in music with the artist Mader, also helps show how performative the characters feel they need to be and the anxieties that come with it. In the same scene in the car when the parents are picked up by Wai-Tung and Wei Wei, a more “mysterious” roll of the song “Ma & Pa Arrive” at 2 seconds as the Mr. and Mrs. Gao look at each other knowingly and concerningly because Wei Wei is from the “mainland” of China (The Wedding Banquet, 26:00). This shows their own anxieties with the fact that Wai-Tung is marrying a Chinese girl, instead of a Taiwanese girl. Taiwan and China have been at odds for centuries due to China believing they own Taiwan and Taiwan wanting independence. Letting Wai-Tung marry Wei Wei and accepting her within the family gives up a lot of the power they sought to have as traditional Taiwanese citizens. This was further shown that this scene happens right after they mention a tradition they have towards the parents of the bride that Wei Wei ultimately dismisses.

Later, in the same song, a more jazz sound starts up with a trumpet playing at a more anxious pace as we see Simon hurrying to make food for the family and rushing to the door, while also taking off his earring. This scene is important, because it shows a hurriedness in Simon to make sure everything is perfect. The song, the food, the earring; it all gives to the performance that Simon is playing for the guests that don’t even see him yet. The jazz of the music makes this feel more like a dance as well as a welcoming. (The Wedding Banquet, 26:12).

Throughout the film, Mader chooses to mix in more traditional Chinese influences into the music. During really critical points of the film Mader chose to have more of a traditional sound playing, like “The Boiling Point” during multiple scenes: when Wei Wei drunkenly takes advantage of Wai-Tung (1:08:55) or during Wei Wei’s shower scene where she ultimately realizes that she is pregnant (1:13:37). These two scenes are pivotal to the story and around times when something big is happening for Wei Wei and Wai-Tung together when no one is looking, and Wei Wei still makes Wai-Tung put on a heteronormative performance, even though she does know the truth. These are also instances that Wai-Tung has no power at all, even though he is the man, he has unwillingly given control to Wei Wei.

The final kind of music that Mader chose to include, is music mixed with his rhumba and Chinese accents. His song, “Rhumba (end credit)”, at the end of the film mixes both of the sounds we hear throughout the film and this scene also shows a mixing of cultures. With Simon, Wei Wei, and Wai-Tung all shown as finally happy. Simon has been given Mr. Gao’s blessing to be with Wai-Tung, Wai-Tung is out to his mother and has made his father proud by giving him a grandchild, and Wei Wei has a family that will be there for her and a green card so she can stay in the states and be a painter.

The Wedding Banquet (1993) is a film that takes intergenerational relationships between two cultures and tries to find common ground between them. Ultimately, at the end of the film, they all realize they had lost the power they so desperately were trying to stay hold of with the lies they were telling each other and got the happiness they wanted when they finally started telling the truth. The only character to have seemed to have genuinely gotten everything and held power the entire time is Mr. Gao. Mr. Gao held all the power throughout the film, except over his own body. He’s dying, he is having strokes, and he is in hospitals, which is why any of this happens in the first place. The lack of power each character holds is nicely shown with Ang Lee’s choice of lighting and music. The anxiety, lies, and deceit are why they all are miserable throughout the film.

Works Cited

“Ang Lee.” Edited by Encyclopaedia Britannica, Britannica Academic, 2025.

Chiang, Mark. “Coming Out into the Global Systems Postmodern Patriarchies and Transnational Sexualities in The Wedding Banquet”, Q & A: Queer in Asian America. 1998, 374-395.

Mader. “Mao / Photos.” The Wedding Banquet (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack), 1993. Loon Music

The Wedding Banquet. Directed by Ang Lee, Bleeker Street Media, et al. 1993

Edited by Isabelle Hampton-Zabotti

Mary Shelley is the mother of Gothic literature ever since she wrote and released her novel, Frankenstein. Many people have taken an analytical approach towards this novel and Mary Shelley herself in comparison. In Kathleen Béres Rogers’s article “The Monstrous Idea in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein”, she says that “scholars have contributed valuable psychoanalytical readings of Victor Frankenstein’s various obsessions-be it the homosocial obsession with the creature, his filial obsession with his mother, or even his obsession with his father’s lack of love” (p356). On a further look into Frankenstein, one can see the similarities between Mary Shelley’s mental state and life and that of her main characters, Victor Frankenstein and the “monster. ” By focusing on Mary Shelley’s background and relationships she had with her family, friends, and the influences they had in her novel without contributing, it can be compared to Victor Frankenstein’s own relationship with his family and the “monster” he creates.

Mary Shelley grew up with her father, step-mother, and step-sister. Her mother, Mary Wollstonecraft, died shortly after she had given birth to Shelley, and it had been a guilt Shelley lived with her entire life. She had wished for her mother and visited her mother’s grave regularly, even into adulthood when she met with Percy Bysshe Shelley before they married. In “Mary Shelley as Frankenstein” by Elisabeth A. Waites, she describes in her introduction, “After a whirlwind of courtship of secret meetings with Shelley at the grave of her mother…” (pg. 583). Going into her relationship with her father, Mary Shelley and William Godwin had a strained relationship as she was growing up, as her mother was the reason he opened up into life and when she died, he became even more closed off than he was before. This grew worse when he married Shelley’s stepmother due to the strained relationship with the stepmother as well. And this worsened when she “slipped furtively from her father’s house in London to join Percy Bysshe Shelley who was waiting to elope with her to the continent” (Waites, pg 583). Waites then continues to describe the state of either side’s family during this, “[Percy Shelley] had recently left his pregnant wife and child, and had been angrily cut off by his father. Mary’s father, William Godwin, was also furious at the runaway couple and refused to be reconciled” (Waites, p583).

Mary Shelley is seen using her relationships as influence within her novel. Starting from how she thought of the novel to why she wrote it, and the comparisons between herself and the characters. Shelley felt a lot of guilt by feeling like she was the cause of death for her mother and felt even more guilt when she lost her first child after two weeks of giving birth. Waites explains that “Mary grieved her loss but was soon pregnant again…she gave birth to a son” (Waites, p583). The fact that she struggled so much with motherhood and birth can be related into the fact that in her introduction of the novel, Frankenstein, she calls the novel her “hideous progeny.” Her description can be seen as a reference to how much she struggled with motherhood with the loss of her own child and then creates Frankenstein during another pregnancy, where she could potentially have the same problems as her first child. Shelley’s struggles are analyzed by Stephen Bann who “interprets association by drawing a double analogy with Mary Shelley’s own ‘anxiety of authorship’ and ‘anxiety of monstrosity.’” (Onega, p126). In the book, this can be shown with her character Victor Frankenstein as well. Victor Frankenstein had a close relationship with his mother in the novel before she died. She then sets this guilt upon Elizabeth because “Elizabeth had caught scarlet fever…[the mother] attended her sick bed…Elizabeth was saved, but at the consequences of this imprudence were fatal to her preserver” (Shelley, p 65). Shelley is seen to have put a lot of herself into the novel’s characters.

Victor can be seen to the Creature the same way Dr. Jekyll can be seen the Mr. Hyde. Throughout the novel, both characters mirror each other in different ways. When being introduced to Victor, we are told that he wants knowledge. He consumes chem and alchemy even when his father and one of his professors tells him it is useless. He goes so far to create the perfect man, so that he can prove that he could create life. The creature on the other hand also wanted knowledge. He wanted to know how to speak the language, he wanted to know how to build a life, how to speak to people, and how to interact with everyone. He yearned for any kind of relationship with Victor and other people. But just like how Victor shunned his own creation, the creation was shunned by the world, and then shunned the world back. Shelley perfectly captures Victor’s feelings towards the creature, “instantly informed me that it was the wretch, the filthy daemon, to whom I had given life” (p 96). Continuing onto how the creature murdered those who had done him wrong. “Could he be (I shudder at the conception) the murderer of my brother...I became convinced of its truth…” (p 97). Victor’s brother, Victor’s friend, and Victor’s wife. After being completely betrayed and shunned by his creator he exacted vengeance on him and in return, Victor ended up dying because he wanted his own vengeance on the creature.

Victor’s own lust for knowledge can be taken back all the way to Mary Shelley herself. In the “Motherless Child in Science Fiction” by Steven Leeman, he states that “Mary Shelley’s grief over the death of her baby is refracted through the obsession of her “mad scientist protagonist”, Victor Frankenstein…underlying his megalomaniac hunger for power through procreative science” (p 49). Indicating Victor’s own want is reflected from the fact that Mary Shelley wanted her baby. The death of the baby turned Mary Shelley into a grief stricken woman which she put into Victor with his obsessions. His obsession with learning and with the creature. The creature also has an obsession, he was obsessed with the suffering of Victor.

Works Cited

Capri, Daniela, editor. “Monsters and monstrosity.” De Gruyter, vol. 16, 17 June 2019. Law & Literature, https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110654615.

Lehman, Steven. “The Motherless Child in Science Fiction: ‘Frankenstein’ and ‘Moreau’ (L’Orphelin de Mère Dans La Science Fiction: ‘Frankenstein’ et ‘Moreau’).” Science Fiction Studies, vol. 19, no. 1, 1992, pp. 49–58. JSTOR.

Onega, Susana. “Patriarchal law and the ethics and aesthetics of monstrosity in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein.” Edited by Capri. Monsters and Monstrosity, vol. 16, 17 June 2019, pp. 115–130. Law & Literature, https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110654615-007.

Rogers, Kathleen Béres “The Monstrous Idea in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein.” Literature and Medicine, vol. 36, no. 2, 2018, pp. 356-371. ProQuest, doi: https://doi.org/10.1353/lm.2018.0018

Soccio, Anna Enrichetta. “Victorian Frankenstein: From fiction to science.” Edited by Carpri. Monsters and Monstrosity, vol. 16, 17 June 2019, pp. 131–140. Law & Literature, https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110654615-008.

Waites, Elizabeth A. “MARY SHELLEY AS FRANKENSTEIN.” Psychoanalytic Review, vol. 78, no. 4, 1991, pp. 583. ProQuest, https://www.proquest.com/scholarly-journals/mary-shelley-as-frankenstein/docview/1310158072/se-2

Edited by Hannah Villegas

Have you ever questioned your own whimsy? I mean, with the up-and-coming trends of “upping your whimsy”, how whimsical are you?

For a recent college project, my assignment teammates and I created a reel named ‘Day In My Life (Teapot Version).’ The concept was really simple: show the kettle in situations it doesn’t belong in. Use it in ways it’s not meant to be. From being used as a flower pot in the living room space to being a pen stand in the office, in every imaginable situation a kettle was suddenly there. The tea kettle goes so far as to be a cuddle buddy for the owner.

It’s absurd, I know but that’s the point of being whimsical.

While creating the reel, I felt myself push the bounds of how whimsical the reel can be while also having a satirical undertone. Of course, logically, nobody would go to sleep with their favourite kettle, but that’s the point, no, what is stopping us? I mean, the whimsical culture is the next best thing. Indulging in it would only add to your happiness. Thinking creatively gets monotonous at times, what looks visually pleasing, what fits a specific visual aesthetics. I realised, things don’t have to be so serious. Life doesn’t have to be so serious. Being whimsical breaks those chains, once freed, creatively? The world is my oyster and maybe, things won’t feel so stressful anymore. I can be creatively ambitious without wanting to cry every 5 minutes.

The last few years have been so hyper-focused on minimalism; doughnut-glazed skin and nails, clean girls, type A vs type B girls. It’s time for playful, childlike and slightly nostalgic ideas to come forth. To be honest my desi ass could never do minimalism anyways, but whimsical is definitely something I encourage.

I’ve realised as we grow older, we get serious and lose what made us, US.

I had Tamagotchi to play, hopscotch till our very technologically advanced beeping watches told us it was time to go home; our childhoods are filled with what we very serious adults would consider whimsical. All of these activities were just natural for me when I was a child. Who knows, maybe if I had a favourite kettle then, I would’ve used it as a cuddle buddy.

There was an innocence in that part of childhood which we all lost somewhere along the way into having to cough up 4 garments in the span of a few months or god forbid, get my drivers license. Can we go back to when nothing mattered the way it does now, everything had a story, and feelings. Nothing is stopping us from picking flowers on our way to the office, or wearing a princess dress for our next birthday. I vividly remember this dark pink DEEPLY UNCOMFORTABLE dress I wore for almost four birthdays in a row. I mean obviously comfort was a sacrifice all princesses made. That dress meant more than just a dress to me, I was literally Sofia The First in that dress. My mother didn’t even fight it, she knew that it was the only dress for me and god do I grieve that dress. It made me feel so at home.

To begin the whimsical journey, learn how to get in touch with your truest self and push yourself to get out of what you’ve nestled into, YOLO or whatever. Be the weirdo you are scared to be; you’ll never want to go back.

Edited by Hanna Villegas

Timing is everything. As cliché as it sounds, people rarely attribute our decisions and our destinies to timing. J. Cole understood this when he released an unexpected teaser single from his long-awaited album The Fall Off. The song, titled “Disc 2 Track 2,” is built entirely around the concept of time, how it moves, how it deceives us, and how we only recognize its value once it has already passed.

Cole raps in reverse, beginning with his death and working backward through his life. From his casket, to the height of his fame, to the birth of his son, to marriage, and eventually to nights in the club lusting after women, the song unfolds back to front. This structure is a clear homage to Nas’ Rewind, where the legendary MC narrates a story in reverse chronology. But where Nas focuses on a moment, Cole zooms out, using time itself as the subject.

Listening to the track pushed me into a state of reflection. As nostalgia drowned my thoughts, I found myself being transported back to some of my earliest memories of consciously engaging with music. Foggy 6 a.m. Miami mornings, the streets quiet, except for two pit bulls barking faintly in the distance, and J. Cole’s Born Sinner blasting through my headphones. At the time, I never considered how moments like that, which I dreaded at the time, would be the fuel for me to become everything I’d ever dreamed of.

I remember walking to the bus stop, my steps subconsciously matching the tempo of the song, as if the instruments were physically tethered to my body by invisible strings. Time kept ticking; I watched the clock, hoping I’d make it before the bus pulled away. That’s the cruel trick of time: while we’re busy noticing it, it’s already moved on.

By the time you finish reading this sentence, the moment you started has already slipped into the past, another fragment of history we can never get back.

In middle school, I wasn’t privileged enough to have my own phone. Instead, I inherited the remnants of my dad’s past and present in the form of a third-generation iPod Touch. Its library was loaded with late ’90s and early 2000s rap. Burned directly into the device long before streaming existed. Back then, you had to buy albums or illegally download songs, and half the time the files didn’t even include titles.

I would play hip-hop roulette, scrolling through randomly numbered tracks, hoping one would be the song I’d been humming to myself all day. Somehow, that uncertainty made the experience even richer. That was the moment that made me fall in love with music. It felt like no matter what song played, the enjoyment was in the unknown.

There are only a few things in life that can trigger nostalgia at that magnitude. J. Cole’s music has always been one of them. Disc 2 Track 2 doesn’t just talk about time: it moves like time, unfolding backward, reminding us that every phase of life is fleeting, and every moment we’re in will one day feel distant. This song is a declaration: “I came and gave this game all I got and became one of the best to do it”. The irony in this release is Cole’s emphasis on what the general population of hip-hop fans perceives as “falling off”. He views it as ‘moving on’, but before he does he’s determined to show how much greater he has gotten over time. This may be an exact depiction of the phrase, ‘being ahead of your time’.

In a way, this review itself mirrors the song. Written as a reflection on moments already gone, it exists as proof of Cole’s message: we don’t notice time passing...we only notice once it’s passed.

Edited by Lottie Bowden

Jah’mal Lapomarel is a storyteller at heart, someone who pays attention to the small details most people overlook. Growing up in Florida, he developed a natural ear for music and conversation, which slowly turned into a passion for writing and media. Whether he’s behind a mic, interviewing artists, or putting thoughts on paper, his goal is always the same: make people feel something real.

To read more, you can find him in the following places

Substack: @jahmallapomarel https://substack.com/@jahmallapomarel

Instagram: @jahmal.l

Website: Jah’mal Lapomarel

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jah%E2%80%99mal-lapomarel-177363213/

One concept I wish society didn’t push on Cancer, brain tumor, and chronic illness survivors of any kind, is the idea that once you’re out of treatment, you can go back to how things were before. I think when you are first diagnosed or enduring treatment, everyone rallies around you.You get offered all these resources, people bringing you and your family meals, get well soon cards and words of encouragement, and so on. You have this constant cheerleading squad by your side. You receive texts or cards with words of encouragement, prayer, and support.

Then once you finish treatment, and it all fades away, to quiet whispers, to background noise, then eventually nothing…

No one understands that just because treatment ends the hard part doesn’t mean the hard part ends. It’s only just beginning and it gets more difficult as time goes on.

After treatment, everyone just expects you to go back to how you were before, except you don’t. You now battle fatigue, anxiety, pain, and physical limitations, and so much more daily. According to a study done in 2020, 3 out of 5 survivors develop late effects. (Klonoff-Cohen & Polavarapu, 2020). While the study noted most of these effects were not life-threatening, they cause severe issues that affect health and quality of life. The authors of this article stated “survivors can struggle daily with: a) the complications of late effects (e.g., cardiomyopathy, central nervous system problems [thinking, learning, memory, fatigue], sexual health and fertility, and lymphedema) as well as risks of cancer recurrences, b) psychosocial difficulties of late effects such as anxiety, depression, relationship complications, body image disturbances, and poor self-esteem, and c) financial consequences of late effects including unemployment, medical insurance, and finances.” (2020)

Simply going back to your daily life after treatment is finished is an adjustment period in itself. When your pep squad leaves you on your own after treatment, you are left to navigate your new normal on your own, jumping over obstacles that are flying down your road to recovery left and right, all while grieving your past self. One of my friends, who is a brain cancer survivor, once said , “Everyone is worried, of course, when you’re in treatment with a bleak prognosis, but after the 5-year mark, or whatever, they’re like, ‘okay, move on.’ But we can’t, because this will affect us for our whole lives.”

After the treatments are done, everyone leaves you in the room, turning the light off behind them as they walk out. Your people don’t realize the darkness survivors face for years. The side effects that consume the entirety of our lives. Or if they do, they don’t know what to say, and the quiet becomes too loud, the darkness of it all is too consuming for them, and they leave you there all by yourself. I know for myself, even 18 years after my diagnosis, I sometimes just wish someone would have just sat with me through it all. But it’s like at the movies, the credits have started playing, so everyone leaves, not anticipating the bonus scene of late effects that will now start playing.

Edited by Hanna Villegas

Sources:

Klonoff-Cohen, H., & Polavarapu, M. (2020). Existence of late-effects instruments for cancer survivors: A systematic review. PloS one, 15(2), e0229222.https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0229222

In 1870, a woman by the name of Julia Ward Howe, an abolitionist, women’s rights advocate and peace activist issued what is now recognized today as the Mother’s Day Proclamation Act, originally called Appeal to womanhood throughout the world. Within this proclamation, Howe encouraged the idea of the creation of an international body of women who could find ways to avoid war and bloodshed:

“I earnestly ask that a general congress of women, without limit of nationality, may be appointed … to promote the alliance of the different nationalities, the amicable settlement of international questions, the great and general interests of peace.” 

This would go on to be ignored of course, which prompted Howe to then seek to establish an annual Mother’s Day in June which occurred inconsistently. The Mother’s Day we all celebrate today in May is due largely in part to Anna Jarvis who established the day to honor her own mother, Ann Jarvis, a woman who gave birth to over a dozen children, losing many to illness and diseases common during the 1800’s. Ann would go on to work tirelessly in her community to help other mothers avoid the same pains and losses she underwent. Organizing “Mother’s Work Clubs” and special days where women in the community would come together to collect trash and take on projects to improve community conditions and hygiene, things would get more serious as the Civil War rolled around, the women found themselves helping both sides of the war and promoting unity and peace. Her daughter, Anna, who would never have children of her own, in order to honor her mother’s work and legacy, sought to establish a national Mother’s Day on the second Sunday of May, the day her mother Ann died, encouraging people to write letters of gratitude to their mothers and to gift flowers, more notably white carnations. This would later be cemented by President Wilson with a proclamation of the first national Mother’s Day just before the start of World War I in 1914.

I write this as a mother myself, to a beautiful baby boy who is my reason for breathing, as most mothers will tell you. On this day I want to bring attention to mothers that have impacted me in my own journey, whom I feel encompass what it is to bring life to this world.

1. Mamie Till

I will never not be overcome with emotion when I think of Mamie Till, and I think about her very often. I have since I was a child and even more so as a mother myself. Mamie Till was an educator and activist, who marked history undoubtedly with how she chose to handle the brutal murder of her 14 year old son, Emmett Till. In 1955, while visiting family, Emmett was abducted and brutally murdered due to the white lies of a woman named Carolyn Bryant after Emmet was in her family’s grocery store. Part of Carolyn’s lies insisted that the young Emmett grabbed her around the waist, made sexual advances, and used vulgar language. Years later in a 2008 interview with Duke University historian Dr. Timothy Tyson, author of “The Blood of Emmett Till’, Carolyn admitted, “That part’s not true,” and stated regarding the rest of the alleged encounter, “Honestly, I just don’t remember”.

Days later after Emmett had been in the grocery store, Carolyn’s husband and his half brother abducted Emmett at gunpoint from his uncle’s home whom he had been visiting, took him to a barn and tortured him before throwing his body into the Mississippi river. Three days later, Emmett’s disfigured body was found in the river. The local sheriff’s department would then try to rush his burial that same day, an inhumane attempt to conceal one of our nation’s worst acts of racial violence to date, even prompting his uncle to sign an agreement not to open the casket. When Mamie caught wind of this, she called everyone she knew to bring her baby home.

With the help of individuals such as Civil rights leader T. R. M. Howard who provided vital assistance and financial backing, Chicago Mayor Richard J. Daley and Illinois Governor William Stratton applied heavy political pressure to ensure his body was safely transported back to Illinois. The Illinois politicians also sought assistance from President Eisenhower and his administration, to which they got no response.

The same train that took Emmett to Mississippi brought his body back home. Upon seeing the sealed wooden casket and despite the document Emmett’s uncle signed, Mamie cried out, “Well, give me a crowbar, give me whatever. What can they do to me? They’ve taken my son.” Mamie Till would mark history by demanding an open casket funeral, famously remarking “Let the people see what they did to my boy, Let the world see what I’ve seen.” I find myself echoing Dr. Tyson’s words that, “Nothing that boy did could ever justify what happened to him.” Emmett was Mamie’s only child. She would go on to channel her grief through life-long activism, building a 23 year career as an educator and touring the country with the NAACP speaking out against racial violence. She also founded the Emmett Till Players, a touring youth drama group.

2. Mary Wollstonecraft

Nicknamed by many as the “Mother of Feminism” (personally I think this title largely belongs to bell hooks) Mary Wollstonecraft was a writer, philosopher and foundational feminist who spent her life advocating for social and educational equality for women. Known largely for her landmark treatise, The Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792), which argued that women are not naturally inferior to men but only appear to be due to a lack of education. She wrote novels, a history of the French Revolution, travelogues, and children’s books. For women during her time she championed intellectual independence and challenging social conventions regarding women’s roles, was as impactful to later generations as her writing. She is also known as the mother of Mary Shelley, author of Frankenstein.

3. Eliza Berry

Growing up in a family very proud and protective of their African ancestry meant that we often watched telenovelas, movies, and shows that dealt with slavery. When 12 Years A Slave came out in 2013, based on the 1853 memoir of the same name by Solomon Northup, a free Black man from New York who was kidnapped in 1841 and sold into slavery in Louisiana, my family was sat. Right away I was affected by Eliza Berry. I watched this film again earlier this year and while I remembered being overcome with emotion as a child at hearing the children cry out for their mother as they were ripped apart, I was now watching it as a mother. Roughly 30 minutes into the film we see Benedict Cumberbatch as plantation owner William Ford at an auction for enslaved persons in New Orleans. As if seeing humans be inspected and sold like cattle isn’t horrifying enough, we see a woman by the name of Eliza Berry clinging onto her two children, Randall and Emily. During the auction, Ford purchases Eliza after Randall is sold to another, Emily is deemed “not for sale” by the cruel slave trader Theophilus Freeman played by Paul Giamatti. Eliza desperately begs that her family not be separated, crying and pleading to keep her children with her.

Ford appears to be uncomfortable and somewhat sympathetic in comparison to the other men in the room. The scene is devastating because while Ford is portrayed as more “kind” than many other enslavers in the film, yet he still participates in and enables the system of slavery. His failure to act fully, despite recognizing Eliza’s suffering, highlights one of the movie’s central themes: that even supposedly humane people were complicit in the cruelty of slavery. I could never imagine the anxiety and pain Eliza felt, being given the false hope of freedom for her and her children by her former enslaver and the pain of having them b e ripped away so inhumanely and not knowing what happened to them. This is only a crumb of what enslaved women dealt with as mothers. There aren’t shrines big enough or history books thick enough. Eliza spends the remainder of her life stricken with grief, which later is the cause of her death.

4. Unnamed Palestinian Mother

This is one of the very first images/videos I saw that has greatly affected how I hug and kiss my child to this day. There is not one hug or kiss where I do not think of this woman. “In a touching video clip, the Palestinian woman warmly embraced her child for the last time after he was martyred in a violent raid carried out by the Israeli army on the city of Rafah in southern Gaza. In this farewell embrace, the mother cried bitterly and kissed her martyred child, then held him close in a heartbreaking scene.” According to analysis by the UN and international aid organizations, the rate and number of Palestinian children killed in the current Gaza conflict have surpassed the child death tolls of any other single global conflict in recent years. Never could we ever imagine seeing as many dead children as we have with this genocide. One would think more would be shocked, that more would be done. War is fought on battlefields, but its deepest wounds are carried by women and children.

5. Michelle Obama

I love this woman down. Part of the reason for the infamous D.C trip right before Kailon Magazine going public was me wanting to see Michelle’s painting in the National Gallery. Though that one is by Amy Sherald, I much prefer this one by artist Sharon Sprung, it’s just a bit more difficult to see as it is part of the White House Collection. Michelle made us all laugh in 2022 when she said that there was a period of about 10 years where she “couldn’t stand” 44th President Barack Obama, a comment blown out of proportion later by the internet. What she was really explaining was the emotional and personal strain that came from balancing motherhood, career sacrifices, and the unequal burdens that can happen in marriage while Barack pursued a demanding political career. Her remarks gave people a deeper understanding of the unseen sacrifices she made as a wife and mother during the years leading up to Barack Obama becoming the first Black president of the United States. Michelle Obama carried not only the pressures of raising their children and supporting her husband’s ambitions, but also the weight of public scrutiny, racial hostility, and the historic expectations placed on their family. Her honesty helped humanize their relationship and showed that behind a groundbreaking presidency was a family making difficult personal sacrifices that the public rarely sees. Never have we had a first lady more influential and a powerhouse in her own right. I was recently gifted her book, The Light We Carry, which I cannot recommend enough.

6. Jocelyn Hurndall

Jocelyn Hurndall is the mother of Tom Hurndall, a British photography student, a volunteer for the International Solidarity Movement, and an activist against the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories.

She became known after campaigning for justice following her son’s shooting by an Israeli sniper in Gaza in 2003. Tom Hurndall later died from his injuries in 2004. Jocelyn Hurndall also wrote the book Defy the Stars: The Life and Tragic Death of Tom Hurndall, documenting his life and activism. It covers profound loss, grief, and the struggle for accountability, while also highlighting the realities of life in the Gaza Strip as well as documents the family’s fight to uncover the truth after a cover-up by the Israeli Defence Force (IDF).

“A brief lull in the destruction of homes and houses had been shattered while children played on a mound of sand nearby to where Tom sat. Without hesitation we are told, Tom had jumped into the line of fire, coming from Israeli soldiers masked in their watch towers and hidden inside the turrets of their tanks, to rescue the children. He had managed to bring one child to safety but when returning with the second child in his arms, a young girl – like perhaps the one whose eyes had so beckoned him in Jordan to come to Gaza – the sniper’s bullet had hit its target. The sniper’s target was simply a man who dared to care, who dared to help, and a man who also dared to believe that surely a young soldier, unthreatened in his vantage point, would not really wish to shoot and kill children or those who try to move them to safety.”

His photographs and diaries documenting the Israeli occupation of Palestine were published in a book titled, The Only House Left Standing.

Honorable Mentions

7. My Own Mother

I could never fully comprehend the extent of the hardships my mother endured throughout her life, especially considering that she became a mother to me on her nineteenth birthday. Looking back now as an adult, and especially through the lens of motherhood itself, I realize just how impossibly young she truly was. At nineteen, most people are only beginning to discover who they are, yet she was already carrying the weight and responsibility of raising another human being.

For much of my childhood, I did not know I was mixed with anything else until I was a teenager. By then, I had already spent my most formative years surrounded by my father’s culture that my mother had worked tirelessly to preserve and pass down. Learning later that she had taught herself my father’s language while pregnant with me before I was even born moved me in a way I struggle to describe. I have been with my husband since I was 16, and I still struggle with his native language. It was not something she was obligated to do, nor something expected of her, but an act of love and devotion so deep that she immersed herself entirely into a culture, traditions, and even a syncretic religion that were not originally her own until they became part of her identity too.

She was still practically a child herself, navigating adulthood and motherhood simultaneously, and in many ways my father’s family helped raise her as much as they helped raise me. Yet despite her youth, despite everything unfamiliar and overwhelming that must have surrounded her, she embraced it all with an openness and determination that I deeply admire now. There is something profoundly beautiful about the way she chose love over fear, community over isolation, and understanding over distance.

When I think about mothers throughout history, I think not only of grand acts of sacrifice remembered in books or headlines, but also of quieter, deeply personal acts like hers, the unseen labor of reshaping oneself out of love for one’s children. The willingness to learn a new language, adopt unfamiliar customs, carry traditions that are not your own, and build a bridge between worlds so your child never has to feel disconnected from either side of themselves. Those acts may never be memorialized publicly, but they are no less extraordinary.

8. My Mother-in-Law

My mother-in-law became a mother at an age when most people are still children themselves. She had her first daughter at around fourteen years old, then a second daughter soon after, and finally my husband, the youngest, the baby of the family. When I hear the stories of her early life, I am often struck by how much responsibility was placed on her so early, and how she carried it with a kind of quiet endurance that only becomes fully visible in hindsight.

I have heard fragments of the life she built in those early years, small but haunting details that linger. The tiny house they lived in, the monsoon seasons, when the rain would rise and flood their space, and she would hold my husband as a baby in her arms while climbing to higher surfaces just to keep him safe and dry.

The most painful part of her story, though, is not only what she endured then, but what she has had to endure for decades since. When she made the decision to leave her two daughters behind and come to the United States with my husband, who was then only around two years old, it was not a choice made lightly or without cost. It was a separation born of necessity and hope, and one that would become permanent in ways no one could have fully understood at the time. Due to the long and often broken realities of immigration systems, more than twenty years later she has still not been able to see her daughters in person again. She has also lost her father while being over here.

That absence is a silence that has stretched across most of her adult life. A kind of grief that does not end, but simply learns how to coexist with daily responsibilities. And yet, in the midst of that distance and loss, she continued to build a life here. She taught herself how to read in both Vietnamese and English, refusing to be limited by language or circumstance. She worked tirelessly to support her large family overseas while also raising my husband on her own here, carrying the weight of two worlds at once with relentless determination.

She is, in every sense, a woman who has had to make strength out of necessity. Not the kind of strength that is loud or performative, but the kind that is built in quiet endurance, in sacrifice that spans decades, in love that persists even when it is stretched across borders and time. To me, she is one of the strongest women I know, not because her life was easy to admire from a distance, but because it has been unimaginably hard to live through and she has continued anyway.

As a woman who battles chronic illness, I also battle, much more often than not, the voices that come in the dark: the doubts of other people. Despite the obstacles I face, I still try to dream big and influence others for God, and in a positive way. I refuse to believe that God has brought me this far, just to let me sit here and be stagnant. So I keep pushing forward. I choose to dream the unimaginable.

Have you ever felt like people roll their eyes and shake their heads at what you’re trying to do in life? Like what you’re trying to do is impossible, and you’re stupid to waste your time fighting for it? But you can’t see their reasoning at all, because something deep inside of you is telling you to keep fighting for it.

This doesn’t come without people doubting me. I’ve had people nearly laugh at what I’m trying to do. I’ve been told that what I’m trying to do is pointless, worthless, even. They tell me I’m not strong enough, not smart enough – incapable, too exhausted, too broken to make much of a difference. When will I find the time to do that?

In fact, I’ve heard the question, “Are you sure you can do this?” an innumerable amount of times. I’ve let this stop me from doing things I’d dreamt of – from truly living out loud. But over the years, I’ve realized something: it doesn’t matter what they think. They’re not me. If I believe in something, if I love doing something, I should reach for it. Because for the million reasons people will give me for why I shouldn’t or can’t do something, I can come up with ten million reasons for why I can, and will. Instead of dwelling on the what-if’s, I think of all of the amazing things that could happen when I succeed.

One thing I’ve learned from my journey and my condition is that no one is promised tomorrow. Not one of us. We must live for today. If we sit and wait for others to put their stamp of approval on our dreams, we’ll never achieve anything higher than mediocrity.

You see, it doesn’t matter what others think, or whether they believe we can accomplish what we’re trying to do, if we believe in it and fight for it, with all our heart and soul. Especially when we’re struggling with chronic illness, we’re often told by those around us – doctors, coworkers, even friends and family – that what we’re trying to do is out of the question. We should just sit back and let someone who has more energy, more strength, or who is more qualified do it.

People often focus on the reasons why something hard is unimaginable, reminding you of all of the things you’re not seeing, or considering why you can’t accomplish something. If you believe in your dream with all of your heart, don’t back down, don’t give up, just because the world says it’s impossible, or it can’t be done. If you believe in something strong enough to fight for it, don’t let the world’s shouts of discouragement become your background noise. Instead, listen for that still, small voice inside, and repeat it enough to yourself, so that it drowns out everything else around you. My background noise is Philippians 4:13: “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.” Maybe your background noise is something different, but whatever it is, don’t let it be the shouts of doubt.

Edited by Jacquie Galvano

The concept of time banking largely originated with US civil rights lawyer and political activist Edgar Cahn in the 1980s to directly address social inequity and communal isolation. In the past decade, the number of individuals participating in time banking in the US has nearly doubled. This growth could be due to a variety of factors: the increased use of time-banking apps, the isolation of the COVID-19 quarantines, and the growing value placed on the invisible economy of simple acts of caretaking alongside companionship.

The fundamental rule of time banking is that one hour of providing a service equals one time credit or time dollar. Unlike traditional economic systems or bartering, time banks do not value one type of service over another—teaching someone Spanish is as valuable as fixing someone’s brakes—and you can bank as many hours as you’d like. But what keeps people engaged in communities that provide goods and services without any monetary exchange?

Power of Connection

“When I joined the community, and I joined the time bank, I didn’t know many people. It helped me connect with the community and meet other people because I felt lonely…What can I offer the community? My sign language, that’s what I like and love to do because of my daughter.” – Susana Santillan

Susana Santillan has been a member of the Mesilla Valley Time Bank since 2020, beginning her experience as an American Sign Language (ASL) teacher, a practice she’s continued to this day. Santillan noted the time bank allowed her to interact with people she’d otherwise never meet, something she was especially grateful for when she joined in the height of COVID-19 quarantines. Santillan, a very giving person, was immediately drawn to the time bank to strengthen connections with her community.

“I don’t count that time as money or anything like that… to me, all I concentrate on is that I give, and if I receive, that’s a big help… If I can help, I help. That’s part of me. I enjoy helping… I’m able to meet a lot of people that I wouldn’t have ever met if I hadn’t joined the time bank. I started meeting all these people, and it’s wonderful, and they have different skills. There are authors that have a book club, [and there’s] arts and crafts. I’m not very good at arts and crafts.”

Although Santillan began her time bank experience through giving, she has also received much in return. The service she offers naturally helps her and her daughter navigate the community, since her daughter is legally deaf. Santillan has received many time credits from those interested in her classes, and in return, she has used them for a variety of services and experiences, including fence repair, car service, yard work, and even joining a Dungeons & Dragons campaign.

“I like to do it because I like to be with people… Sometimes we say we’re volunteering, but we don’t realize how much we get back until you think about it. And some people are like, ‘I’ll go to the meeting once or twice and see how it is,’ but it’s hard at first, because, you know, there are people that think, ‘why would I do [this for] free?’ It’s because you realize people do stuff for free because they want to be around people, or just to help. The sense of helping people is a big reward.”

Time banks are highly effective at fostering a tight-knit community that values individual skills not for their monetary value but for their emotional value. Each experience Santillan shared revealed a new way in which people who would have been strangers could share a moment of camaraderie. Time banks strengthen community and deemphasize personal wealth by placing everyone on the same level; it doesn’t matter if you’re able-bodied or disabled, unhoused or housed, employed or unemployed. They focus on what someone can do rather than what they cannot.

Changing Perspectives

Patricia Mendoza currently serves as the Director of Doña Ana Communities United and the Mesilla Valley Time Bank Coordinator. Mendoza began her journey as a shy stay-at-home mom desperate to break outside of her tiny bubble and become involved in the larger local community. The time bank provided the perfect outlet for creating community, inspiring Mendoza so much that she quickly took on an executive role.

“It brought up the confidence in me to be able to talk and motivate others as a sort of ‘if I could do it, you can do it ‘ kind of thing. And honestly, it sounds cheesy, but I do believe everybody has something to offer… a degree is important, but just because you can’t afford one or didn’t have the time to get one doesn’t mean that you don’t have skills or something to give to the community.”

Mendoza further emphasizes how the time bank values all skills regardless of how much they would “cost” in any other economic system. Capitalism is so deeply ingrained in the way most Americans view the world around them that every act, no matter how charitable, is viewed with a dollar amount beside it: “time is money.” Given this mindset, one would not be able to exchange kitchen help for an astrological reading, but this is a situation Mendoza was happy to find herself in.

“One of the first ones that I exchanged was with a time bank member who is immunocompromised, so she cannot go to group gatherings and such, and she does astrological chart readings and tarot card readings and things like that. So I thought that was very unique and nice, that [the time bank] took that in as a skill. Because in other places they would be like, ‘that’s not a skill to be marketable,’”

As a first-generation graduate who placed much time and effort into attaining a degree and getting a job, Mendoza found herself holding biases toward the impoverished, unhoused individuals in her community. The time bank provided an outlet for these community members to engage with people of different economic statuses in a nonjudgmental exchange of skills. Mendoza’s exposure taught her to treat unhoused members as equals, and she kept in touch with some after they left the program.

“I was very biased against unhoused individuals. I was scared of them. And so the previous director taught me that they’re humans, and you need to treat them equally. They’re not gonna hurt you, like I know it sounds foolish now that I said it out loud, but… being part of the time bank opened my eyes to other parts of the community, and [it increased] my empathy for others and sympathy… There are a few time bank members who are not active anymore, because obviously they are going through their issues, but if I see them around town, I’ll give them a blanket or, you know, if they need extra cash… So I think that was a lasting impression for me when it comes to personal growth.”

Mendoza has obtained a great number of friendships through her experience in the time bank. “Grumpy” Ben, a notable time bank volunteer, first intimidated her with his loud excitement, a stark contrast to her usual quiet introversion. But over time, the duo became integral to time bank brainstorming. Kelsey is another member Mendoza mentioned because of her particularly interesting time bank service: group Pokémon Go hunting. Mendoza’s relationships provide a powerful example of what kinds of connections can grow after the initial awkwardness or nervousness of a time bank exchange.

“The biggest challenge is trusting people because they’re strangers, and the first reaction is, ‘I don’t want a stranger in my home,’ which I wouldn’t want a stranger in my home either… Our time bank’s goal is to reduce social isolation, so we focus a lot on connections and group gatherings. I would suggest, if there are monthly socials, monthly potlucks, a group exchange, go to those, even if it’s one or two, so you can meet those time bank members, and you get to meet others. Google them, search them online, on social media, make yourself feel safer around them, and meet them in a public space.”

As a leader within her time bank, Mendoza has had to learn to let go of her micromanaging tendencies and place great faith in the volunteers and team members. This collaboration has given Mendoza the opportunity to lean away from hyper-independence and allow herself to seek help from the people around her. It truly does take a village to uplift a single person in a community, and the time bank has provided the perfect outlet to create that village.

“It is harder to receive than to give, because we all have this mentality that I am strong and independent and I don’t need help from anybody... but we always need help from somebody at some point, and any small skill or help that we can get will make a difference and make the other person feel important and valuable in society.”

Learning to Give

McKenzie Yazzie-Martin found the time bank through his position as a program manager for the nonprofit organization “Brighter Bites.” Yazzie-Martin needed volunteers to help distribute fresh food to local families and schools, the time bank was the perfect place to find them.

“Sometimes I get more people who are willing and wanting to help… So I’ve had some people kind of just, not standing around, but wondering how they could help ‘Brighter Bites.’ Yeah, and in this case, I have people who I give a bag [of fruits and vegetables] as well as appreciation. I mean, overall, the challenge that I’ve had is managing a bigger team than I anticipated.”

As a volunteer coordinator, Yazzie-Martin found the time bank system particularly unique because it allowed him to reward volunteers with service hours they could use to receive services for themselves. Exchange of services creates a beneficial cycle rather than people feeling as if they are “wasting time” by volunteering because it has no monetary value. The time bank also provides “Brighter Bites” with a wide variety of skill sets, ranging from highly involved leadership to simply spreading the word about the organization.

“I see the skills of other people in terms of what they bring to ‘Brighter Bites.’ A lot of them have leadership skills or organization skills. A lot of them communicate, kind of elaborating on what the program is, and then sharing that knowledge with parents who are within the public or within the community schools… we’re helping the community create a more diverse nutrition aspect… [the time bank] also helps me bring up my skills as well with the leadership part and the management part.”

Overall, Yazzie-Martin has found the volunteers from the time bank to be extremely communicative, helpful, and loyal to the people they help. The interactions within this program have become less like transactions and more like a family. Members are deeply invested in spending time together and supporting one another.

“Everybody is super communicative, very loyal to the people that they help. It’s their own community, where it’s kind of more like a friendship, and the majority of the people think of it as like a family initiative, to the point where they spend a lot of time with each other.”

Although Yazzie-Martin hasn’t yet ingrained himself in the Mesilla Valley Timebank by providing his own services, the community has already inspired him to view his hobbies through a different lens. He has offered photography and yard work services to much appreciation, but he has struggled with asking for services outside of “Brighter Bites.” Sometimes, giving freely is a lot easier than receiving freely, but both are essential to the reciprocal nature of the time bank.

Redefining Wealth

The current political climate, especially in the US, is extremely divisive, frightening, and lonely. The most important thing to foster in this moment is community. Increased online connections have led many people to avoid in-person interactions, even when those interactions can arise from small, seemingly insignificant acts. Not every interaction within one’s local community needs to be a structured “hangout”; even being in the same space as someone, chopping some vegetables, can create a meaningful connection.

One does not need to be an expert on, well, anything to be part of a time bank. Think of the things you enjoy doing for yourself or others: playing board games, baking pastries, reading books, patching clothes, or planting flowers. All of these acts are given the same “currency” as an hour of someone else’s time. Just an hour of your time could be the first step in weaving together your local community. There is no bar of entry for a time bank.

There might be a time bank near you! Websites like “hOurworld.org” and “TimeBanks.org” could help you find one in your area. If you are unable to find one in your area, consider starting a chapter yourself! It only takes one person to make a real difference.

Almost everything in our lives is influenced by gender. Looking around my room, I can find a wealth of examples of how the things I enjoy or have been conditioned to enjoy are related to my gender. I have two bottles of red wine on my desk, which I am saving for a special occasion. I am more likely to enjoy this beverage because I grew up closer to women who relax with a glass of wine than to men who tend towards beer or straight liquor.

A glance to my left reveals my closet, where I hold far more clothes than I need. However, I have always felt the need to be especially fashionable to attract positive attention from those around me, and women have to try much harder than men to create a standout outfit. Men can just pull up some cargo pants with a tasteful button-up and receive applause for their ingenuity.

Even the giant corkboard displaying only a fraction of the pictures with friends I hold close to my heart is an extension of my gender. Femininity is tied to color, kitchyness, and a wider knowledge of aesthetics. All of these aspects can be found on this corkboard: saturated images, bright postcards, and sparkling pins and buttons. Also, I can’t help but wonder whether I would display these images with such fondness if I had grown up as a man, as another important and socially ingrained element of femininity is the profound ability to care for others.

I have struggled with my gender identity in the past as someone who doesn’t feel like they fully fit into female spaces, but also definitely does not fit into male ones. Sometimes I have wondered what life would be like if I were absent of gender. However, my mind can hardly comprehend the idea wherein all of society decided to leave gender behind. Gender structures run so deep in our contemporary world, but what if, with the snap of one’s fingers, we could leave the performance behind?

A Centuries-old Performance for Power

The system of categorizing people into two distinct groups is an act of control rather than a vie for individuality. We know this because, historically and currently, people assigned to the male category have been given greater social, economic, and interpersonal power. Those assigned to the female category are taught to be subservient, peaceful, and uncombative about the disadvantages imposed on them by men.

In our society, man is seen as the default while woman is othered. This means systems ranging from medical research to architectural design are framed around a man’s body, experiences, and needs. Many men do not actively seek opportunities to dominate women, but they all passively attain higher wages, gain more respect, and reap the benefits of heightened political representation.

Gender is a performance that all of us are born into, but there are some of us who attempt to reject it i.e. gender outlaws. Kate Bornstein’s ‘Gender Outlaw: On Men, Women, and the Rest of Us’ describes the idea of someone who defies the rigid binary of masculinity and femininity, and in turn heteronormative expectations. Bornstein proposes that gender categories constitute a class system that preserves power by forcing people into boxes, with one box being given significant privileges over the other.

“The gender outlaw is a person who has stepped outside the boundaries of the gender system,” Bornstein writes. “To the extent that we continue to maintain the gender binary, we continue to maintain a system of oppression.”

Bornstein argues that fashion has been turned into a semiotic system that allows people to infer one’s gender, class, and social role. To imagine a world outside of gender, we would have to remove all clothes from the gender they are associated with. Instead of wearing a skirt to appear feminine (submissive) or a suit to appear masculine (dominant), people would be more inclined to reflect their individual moods and aesthetic preferences.

This observation is interesting, especially in our current social media landscape, where everyone feels the need to fit into an aesthetic box. If one wants to be viewed as gentle, feminine, and sweet, they wear frilly skirts, pastel colors, and tons of bows. Still, not many allow themselves to move beyond their chosen Pinterest aesthetic, preferring to attach their identity and personality to a single style.

Within Bornstein’s framework, one could wear a drab pantsuit one day and a sequined gown the next without it being a statement about gender, but rather a simple change in mood and preferences. Personally, I yearn for a world where clothes are used for their comfort, aesthetics, and functionality rather than as an essential statement of one’s positioning in society.

How We Define Sexuality

The way we define our sexuality has always been attached to gender. Bisexual, heterosexual, homosexual— all of these terms refer to sexual attraction based on gender, attraction to both genders, the opposite gender, or the same gender. We base our attraction on the perceived gender, or lack thereof, of the other individual. How would this change if society removed gender completely?

According to Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick in ‘The Epistemology of the Closet,’ the gender of one’s partner is only one axis of sexuality that, if removed, would force one to focus more on other more descriptive axes of sexuality. Because our world is highly gendered, we treat one aspect of sexuality as the only one that matters, but there is much more that goes into sexual attraction.

“It seems to me that many of the most important things that can be said about people’s sexualities—about the textures of their desires, their fantasies, their practices— don’t have much to do with the gender of their partners,” Kosofsky wrote.

According to Kosofsky, instead of focusing on gender, our society would shift to focusing on power dynamics, sensory preferences, the number of partners, and the specifics of a sexual act. A small percentage of contemporary society already focuses on these axes; many people craft their online dating profiles around kinks—non-mainstream sexual preferences—or feel comfortable sharing their preferred number of sexual or romantic partners.

This non-traditional way of viewing sexual experiences is nearly completely detached from gender, as one may focus on the self-assigned label of dominant, submissive, polyamorous, monogamous, etc., as the core of their sexual identity rather than focusing on the gender of the other party. Further, this community separates its labels from the assumed power dynamics of heterosexual relationships where man is dominant and woman is submissive; any label is available to anyone regardless of anatomy or gender identification.

A shift in sexual identity would also change romantic relationships entirely. Outside of the bedroom, relationships would be centered on partner compatibility across all areas of life rather than on gender identification. Current societal scripts pressure women to take charge of housework and men to be the breadwinners, but without these expectations to fall back on, partners would have to communicate about all aspects of sharing a life together. Labor in and outside the home would instead be divided by one’s skills and schedule.

The issue of class and power disparity may still be present. Still, an absence of gender would lead people to seek out partners for their unique personality and skills rather than shallow, gendered aesthetics.

Technology as a Bridge to a Post-Gender World

Current technological advancements may be, in many ways, frightening, but many feminist writers have theorized about how humans interlinking with technology may lead to the desired post-gender utopia. Technology is inherently genderless, possibly one of the most gender-free human advancements, as language, agriculture, and economics have always been tied to gender.

Radical feminist Shulamith Firestone argued in ‘The Dialectic of Sex: The Case for Feminist Revolution’ that gender inequality is rooted in biology, specifically, the burden of pregnancy and childbirth. According to her, a society could never be genderless with complete equality if one sex is responsible for maintaining the entire species. The burden of pregnancy on women not only leads to inequality in health and well-being, as pregnancy comes with many risks and side effects, but it will also always differentiate those born as women from those not.

The central technology required to create this utopia is artificial wombs, which our society is coming closer and closer to creating. If gestation could occur outside of the human body, the biological necessity of female reproduction would be moot. This, in combination with the theories presented earlier, would lead to less necessary distinction between those born female or male, as pregnancy could be completed by a robot.

An alteration of this intrinsic part of female-male dynamics could also make child-rearing a less gender-dependent job. The common idea of the biological family unit would be completely erased. There is no “provider” or “mother.” With a lack of gender completely, children would likely be raised in a more communal environment with no emphasis on the child bearer completing most of the emotional and physical labor.

Technological advancements would not only affect pregnancy; this is only a glimpse of what could change in a technology-first society. The performance of gender would no longer be necessary, as the societal “stage” would be completely altered and adapted around the average person rather than the average man.

A world without gender is not a world without identity; rather, it is a world where identity is finally liberated from the constraints of a centuries-old performance. By dismantling the binary through social defiance and technological innovation, we move toward a society in which nature is no longer a tool of control. In this post-gender utopia, we are free to be gender outlaws, not defined by the boxes we fit into, but by the unique textures of our desires, the functionality of our choices, and our shared capacity to care for one another as equals.

Edited by Sonal Butley

There are innumerable examples of artists who have manipulated this pigment to tell an unspoken story to their audience, instilling the average museum-goer with a rush of intense emotion. In Caravaggio’s “Saint Jerome Writing,” the saint’s bright red robe contrasts with the dull, black background and harsh, Baroque-style lighting. The color emphasizes the figure’s passion, devotion, sacrifice, and crucial spiritual importance, the weight of which is further underscored by his hunched, almost pained position.

The power of red cannot be understated, and an artist who tamed the wild tone (or vice-versa) was the post-impressionist and widely proclaimed “master of color,” Henri Matisse. The man evoked emotions ranging from soothing serenity to energetic chaos, never shying away from the striking hue.

On the more peaceful end of the spectrum is Matisse’s “Le Bonheur de Vivre” or “Joy of Life” (1905-06), a mash-up of vibrant colors meant to represent a joy-filled, pastoral landscape. This painting exemplifies Matisse’s mastery of color, as one cannot confidently identify the primary shade of the piece: it contains striking greens, oranges, blues, purples, yellows, pinks, and the slightest tinge of red.

The thin strokes of red outline the oddly shaped figures strewn throughout the dreamlike landscape. The choice to outline the figures in red rather than sticking to the less intense surrounding palette may have been to evoke a feeling of liveliness, motion, or division between the figures and the natural landscape. However, red was minimized in this piece to keep the mood tranquil and idyllic, evoking feelings of pleasure and contentment.

But what happens when red consumes the entire painting? This is the case in Matisse’s “The Dessert: Harmony in Red,” an overwhelming composition whose red is interrupted only by a female figure, a window, and blue accents. The painting was commissioned initially with the intention that the primary color be blue. Still, Matisse was dissatisfied with this rendition and repainted it in his preferred color of a radiant, raspberry-like red:

“Where I got the color red—to be sure, I just don’t know,” Matisse is quoted as saying. “I find that all these things... only become what they are to me when I see them together with the color red.”

The overwhelming use of the same fiery scarlet color reduces the painting’s dimensionality; the red fabric melts into the red walls, which are hardly distinguishable from the slightly darker red chairs. This lack of dimension may be because the piece was mounted as decoration for a dining room. The flatness of the red hues evokes a sense of comfort and warmth rather than chaos or tension due to the consistent decorative elements breaking up the excited hue. These feelings may also stem from the red being on the cooler side, meshing with the blue detailing and greenery seen through the window.

Looking at the last piece, at least one can say that the red table, chairs, floor, and wall are somewhat distinguishable. Matisse’s “L’Atelier Rouge” or “The Red Studio” brings the artist’s unrestrained use of red to its extreme. Similarly, the hues of this painting make the room feel flat, lacking the perspective evident in a traditional interior portrait.

However, this red is much more chaotic and aggressive. It is a bright, extremely warm shade that indiscriminately covers the entire six-by-seven-foot canvas. Further, the hue is entirely flat, with no shadow and extremely minimal linework, leaving no distinction among the wall, dresser, table, chair, and clock. These items are timidly bordered with negative gaps that often find themselves bleeding into the fierce background. The whole composition changes the viewer’s concept of space, clearly placing them at a particular perspective but refusing to allow them to feel a part of the room.

This painting represents Matisse’s workspace. The confrontational color screams at its audience to look at it, while the cooler hues of the items of importance in the space draw attention to their inclusion: pieces of artwork, a plate, art supplies, a plant, sculptures, a glass, and a small window. Notably, the grandfather clock is absent of hands, symbolizing a sense of time suspended as Matisse works in his oasis. This red background imbues his artistic space with an energy no other color could accomplish.

Matisse seems to have felt a deep, personal connection to this excited shade. He used the force of this color to resist traditional definitions of depth and reaffirm his position as a master of post-impressionism, a movement defined by bold colors, deep symbolic meaning, and personal significance to the painter. Matisse used red to an evocative extent, likely learning how to best harness the hue from his mentor Gustave Moreau, who saw color as a spiritual language:

“Colors must be thought, dreamed, imagined.”

Edited by Natalli Newman

The walls of Professor Nan Liu’s office seemed to breathe. Paintings, portraits, ink studies on rice paper, climb from floor to ceiling like living testimonies. Every inch is occupied, the quiet storm of a life spent translating his version of the world through brush and color. In his office and in spaces across Florida A&M University, there are glimpses of Tianjin, where he was born and first learned to draw, there are faces of his students at Florida A&M University, rendered life-size in oil. The effect is overwhelming and intimate all at once, one man’s lifelong conversation with art, unfolding in layers of ink and memory.

“I just draw and draw,” he says with a modest laugh, as if that simple truth could contain the decades behind it. “That’s my life.”

Liu’s journey begins in Tianjin, one of China’s largest and most storied cities. At sixteen, he was named Young Artist of Tianjin, a title that came with both local prestige and the kind of validation a young dreamer never forgets. “That was a big city,” he recalls. “My drawing was in the newspaper. My art teacher, she was so proud. I gave the certificate to her, and she displayed it in the art room. Later, the school invested more in art because of that.”

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As someone who has never had a valentine, I love to joke about how evil this time of year is for the chronically single. And as the resident chronically single friend, who loves to quote “I’m 27 years old. I’ve no money and no prospects, I’m already a burden to my parents, and I’m frightened” from pride and prejudice, the Kiera Knightly one. The quote hits harder when cupid’s arrow is actively piercing you straight through the heart. Picturing a big baby with an aggressively pink bow and arrow running around striking people down left and right is kind of funny, I won’t lie. Though, it is also weird, and the fact that that is the imagery associated with this day, is strange. It’s a strange holiday. Purely capitalistic by the way, but something about buying cutesy things with hearts all over them does make my grinch heart happy.

Don’t get me wrong, I love pink, and the general aesthetic of Valentine’s Day, it’s a very cute looking holiday. I dare say that I also love, love… (sometimes). It’s a complicated relationship. I love love, unless I’m at a coffee shop trying to enjoy my lavender vanilla iced matcha latte, and a couple is sitting in front of me being in love in a way that makes everyone around them uncomfortable. That is the only instance I hate love. You cannot be doing that in front of me or my matcha.

It is also a difficult thing to explain that I am not open to love, due to my being in a very committed hallucinationship. Now we need to take a little detour into learning the definition of a hallucinationship. We all know what a relationship is, now picture that but one sided, and very delusional. Just goes to show that at the end of the day, I am a very loyal person. Finding a father for my cat is something I do not take lightly. All jokes aside, I do think that Valentine’s Day is a time of year where it feels like salt is being actively rubbed on your wounds. Seeing everyone have someone and be happy, whether it is performative or not, will bring up weird feelings that we try to stow away. It is a weird time because there is this very stark juxtaposition of people being happy, and people coming face to face with all the hurt they’ve cached, like a squirrel hiding nuts.

Valentine’s Day was more of a pain in my formative years, it was torture via candy grams. My school did single roses instead of candy, but the pain was all the same. Seeing people with enough roses to start a garden, and comparing it to my barren desert… is funny in hindsight, but felt sad in the moment. No one wants to be the odd one out. It’s a weird feeling because it brings you back to those weird feelings. It’s inescapable, I mean, weird feelings are a major part of being human. And it doesn’t feel fair, I want to scream that into the ether from now til the end of Valentine’s Day. I am petitioning for boyfriends, girlfriends and they/themfriends to buy flowers for everyone, not just their significant others, its significant circle or nothing. So, do your single friends a favor, and adopt a single this Valentine’s Day.

Whilst this is all my bitterness put into words, I am a very big believer in soul mates. I think love in its pure forms is one of the most beautiful things in the world. Having never experienced it, I do have an overly romanticized idea of it. But what can I say? I’m a girl who loves to romanticize things. The only downside to that is the fear or idea that it may disappoint me… but in my little woo woo heart and soul, that simply cannot be possible. Especially noting that the reason why I’ve never experienced it is because I know my value, and the person I end up with needs to as well. High expectations yield great results (I hope). I’m not much of a gambler, more so a manifester. Is one synonymous with the other? Who knows! All I know is Valentine’s Day sucks, and we deserve the love and life we’ve always dreamed of.

Manifesting that for all of us, because we deserve that.

One last thing I will leave you off with is a question for you to ponder ever so deeply.. that question being,

Will you be my valentine?

Some artists speak loudly through the world, others speak quietly and let the work thunder on its own. Nikola Djukich is the latter. Even across continents with him answering my questions from the other side of the world, his presence comes through with a clarity you can feel. His words arrive with deep and true intention, not performance, but someone who lives by it and has lived it. Someone who understands exactly who he is, what he’s survived, and what he’s creating toward.

Born in Serbia and shaped by displacement, queerness, migration, and a relentless curiosity about the human body, Nikola’s work doesn’t just depict identity, it dissects it, reconstructs it, questions it, sometimes wounds it, and often heals it. His collages, portraits, and visual essays read like excavations, memory, archive, bone, lineage, and selfhood layered into something that feels both ancient and immediate.

What struck me most was not just the depth of his art, but the depth and stillness of his voice through his words. He answers like someone who has spent a long time learning the difference between truth and narrative, between survival and becoming, between the body that was inherited and the body he is actively building for himself.

This is Nikola—unfiltered, intentional, and deeply, defiantly human.

Personal & Artistic Roots

You grew up in Serbia, a place where every street, ruin, and phrase carries the weight of history. When you look back, how did that landscape shape not just who you are, but how you see the world and how you make art?

I think growing up in Serbia shaped me more than I even realized for a long time. It’s a place where everything carries some kind of heaviness — the streets, the faces, the stories people tell and the ones they never say out loud. You grow up surrounded by history that is both collective and personal, and it finds its way under your skin. Family life, for example, was never just family — it was a small reflection of the whole environment: the silence, the pride, the trauma, the shame.

I think because of that, I started to see art as a form of rebellion. My photographs, especially the erotic ones, were never about sex — they were about confronting that silence, about saying: I exist, my body exists, my desire exists, and I’m not going to hide it. It’s my way of standing against everything that told me to be quiet, to be less, to disappear.

When it comes to collage and mixed media, that comes from something else — from survival. Serbia teaches you to adapt, to make something out of nothing, to rebuild after things fall apart. So I learned to change mediums, to combine things that don’t belong together, to transform constantly — because that’s what you do when you grow up in a place that doesn’t give you stability.

And with drawing and painting, especially my self-portraits, that’s where I try to understand who I actually am under all of these layers — family, religion, nationalism, expectations, masculinity. My self-portraits are my way of asking: Who am I when I strip all of that away?

So, I think Serbia made me — but it also made me want to unmake myself, to rebuild who I am on my own terms.

At what point did art stop being a refuge and become a language in its own right, a way to speak across borders, across time, across silence?

I think art stopped being just a refuge very early — maybe even before I knew what art really was. Since childhood, I could feel that not everything around me made sense, that people said one thing and meant another, that love could exist in the same space as control, or silence, or shame. So I started building my own inner world where I could breathe, where things could finally be what they truly are.

At first, it was a kind of hiding — drawing, imagining, collecting fragments of something that felt more honest. But over time, it became a language. Not just a place to escape to, but a way to speak, to connect, to make sense of what was unsaid. It became the only language that could cross all those borders — between generations, between cultures, between the person I was told to be and the person I actually am.

Now, when I create, it’s not about hiding from the world anymore — it’s about translating it. Translating silence, fear, and desire into something that can be seen, touched, or felt. That’s when it stopped being a refuge and became a voice.

Do you feel that you or your work is still tethered to Serbia, to its past and its silences, or has it become a dialogue with the other worlds you’ve inhabited since leaving?

I think I will always be tethered to Serbia in some invisible way — not to its politics or its borders, but to its atmosphere, its silences, its contradictions. That place shaped the way I see everything: how I read faces, how I sense tension in a room, how I translate emotions into form. Even when I left, I carried that landscape with me — the heaviness, the beauty, the unfinished conversations.

But over time, I realized that I wasn’t just shaped by that place — I was also building my own. A world with its own logic, its own rhythm, its own language. Wherever I go, I live inside that world. It’s like an inner territory that travels with me. My roots are not in a country, but in that space I created — between what is real and what is imagined, between memory and transformation.

So, my work is no longer only about Serbia or about leaving it. It’s a dialogue between worlds — the one I was born into, and the one I’ve built for myself. And I think that’s where my art breathes: in that tension between belonging and becoming.

Life in Vietnam & Cultural Contrast

What brought you to Vietnam, and how did you know it would be a place where you could live, make art, and inhabit a new life?

A few years before coming to Vietnam, I was living in Shenzhen — a massive city, full of movement, lights, and noise. It was exciting at first, but over time, I started to feel consumed by it. Everything was fast — people, work, thoughts. I reached a point where I felt completely drained, like I couldn’t hear myself anymore.

Then a friend of mine told me she had moved to Vietnam — she described days by the sea, drinking coconuts, living slower, lighter. I remember that moment clearly because it sounded like the opposite of everything I was living. It wasn’t about running away, but more about touching the ground again, literally.

I came here because I needed to reset — to reconnect with nature, to breathe, to listen. Vietnam gave me that space. It allowed me to build silence around myself, a kind of inner quiet where new ideas could grow. It’s not just a place I live in now — it’s a space that reminds me that simplicity can also be a form of art.

When you first arrived, what struck you most, the textures of daily life, the rhythms of the streets, the smells, the sounds? How did it feel to land somewhere so different from Serbia?

When I arrived in Vietnam, I already had a sense of what to expect. After living for years in Shenzhen, I was familiar with the rhythm of this part of Asia — the markets, the colors, the sounds that never really stop. But Da Nang felt softer. The air was slower, and the sea was always there — that was new for me.

It wasn’t a shock, more like an exhale. Shenzhen had trained me to move fast, to adapt, but here I finally slowed down. I remember thinking that I could finally hear myself again. Compared to Serbia, it felt like I had already crossed that border long ago.

In what ways has living in Vietnam changed how you see the world, and how has that shift found its way into your work?

Living in Vietnam taught me how to slow down. Life here moves with a different rhythm — softer, lighter, almost suspended in time. In the beginning, I lived near the beach, and every morning I would watch the sea, drink coffee, smoke a cigar, and just be.

It made me realize how much I had forgotten the simplicity of existing without constant noise. That quietness started to appear in my work — in the pauses, in the silence between images. I think Vietnam gave me permission to breathe, and that changed the way I see everything.

Are there elements of Vietnamese culture, history, or daily life that have seeped into your visual language—colors, forms, or patterns that feel new to you?

I wouldn’t say I consciously use Vietnamese symbols or motifs, but I think the atmosphere — the colors, the humidity, the way light behaves here — slowly entered my work.

How do you navigate the contrast between the cultural memory you carry from Serbia and the reality of life in Vietnam? Do they clash, blend, or quietly inform each other?

For me, the cultural memory I carry from Serbia and life in Vietnam don’t feel like they clash—they quietly inform each other. Surprisingly, people here share certain similarities with those from Serbia. Despite being on another continent, there’s a traditional and conservative thread, but also a sense of openness to others. I think years of historical challenges, conflicts, and resilience shape people in ways that feel familiar. So even though I’m thousands of kilometers away from home, I notice echoes of Serbian mentality here, and it makes navigating this new life feel more natural than I expected.

Are there ways in which Vietnam has challenged or reshaped your understanding of identity, community, or belonging compared to what you knew growing up?

Vietnam hasn’t necessarily changed my understanding of identity or community, but being far from home has reshaped how I experience them. I realized that my sense of home isn’t tied to a place—it’s something I carry within myself. Living here, slowing down on the beach, drinking coconuts, and seeing life at a different pace is something I didn’t have growing up in Serbia.

I’ve also met people who travel the world, building communities far from their countries of origin. Seeing how they navigate belonging and connection reshaped my own perspective. Even though I’ve been more stationary here in Vietnam over the past couple of years, being part of this broader, mobile world has expanded how I think about home, identity, and community.

Do you feel your work is now in conversation with Vietnam itself, or does the country serve more as a lens through which you see and reinterpret your own roots?

I would say Vietnam mostly serves as a lens through which I see and reinterpret my own roots. The environment, the slower pace, and the cultural context give me space to reflect on my past, my family, and my experiences growing up in Serbia. It doesn’t directly dictate my work, but it offers a perspective and a distance that allows me to explore my identity, memory, and heritage in a different way. Vietnam becomes part of the process—not the subject—but a place that shapes how I see and translate my own story.

Looking back, what has been the most surprising lesson from living in Vietnam, something you didn’t anticipate that has altered your art or your perspective?

The most surprising lesson from living in Vietnam has been realizing how much slowing down and simply being present can change perspective. Being able to go to the beach, relax, and enjoy the moment gave me space to focus on my mental health and reflect on past experiences—something I didn’t have the time or space for in Shenzhen or in Serbia. That slower pace allowed me to understand myself better, and it immediately influenced the way I approach my art. Just having the chance to pause and be centered has reshaped both my perspective and my creative process.

Identity, Language & Cultural Memory

You often layer Cyrillic and Latin scripts, two alphabets that seem to carry centuries of tension and belonging. What does that weaving mean to you now? Is it reconciliation, resistance, or something more porous?

I don’t use both scripts very often, but recently I started exploring Cyrillic more. I’ve been experimenting with writing my name in Cyrillic and combining it with my name in Latin, sometimes in collage works. I’ve also been incorporating some prayers and images of religious symbolism into these pieces. It feels like reclaiming a part of myself I wasn’t really in touch with before. In some of my recent projects, which deal with family and generational trauma, using Cyrillic for my name and these symbolic elements felt more natural and meaningful—it adds another layer of personal and cultural resonance to the work.

Language is intimate and political. When you use typography, scripture, fragments of text, are you reclaiming your own voice or documenting the fractures of diaspora?

For me, using different scripts and fragments of texts is both intimate and political. It’s a way of reclaiming my own voice, but it’s also about documenting the fractures of history and family—the layers of diaspora and generational trauma that shape me. By combining Cyrillic and Latin, or layering prayers and personal writing with visual elements, I’m exploring identity in a way that’s deeply personal, but also connected to cultural memory. It’s a balance between asserting my presence and reflecting the dislocations and gaps that exist in my own story.

In your art, where does personal memory end and collective memory begin? Are they distinct currents, or parts of the same river you move through?

For me, personal memory and collective memory are part of the same river—they constantly flow into each other. My work often starts with very intimate experiences, family stories, or my own body, but those personal fragments inevitably connect to larger histories, cultural memory, and the experiences of the diaspora. When I use scripts, prayers, or symbolic imagery, I’m tracing both my own path and the broader currents that have shaped my family and culture. The line between the personal and collective isn’t fixed; it’s fluid, and I move through it in my work.

Generational Trauma & Sexuality

Your work often circles inherited trauma, the things we carry but do not speak aloud. How do you approach that weight without letting it define the entire piece?

Until recently, I didn’t approach generational trauma directly in my work. My earlier pieces were more rebellious—they were shaped by anger, frustration, or the residual shame that trauma brought into my life, but they weren’t intentional explorations of it. That anger, that rebellion, was how the trauma surfaced indirectly in my work. It defined the energy of the pieces without being the explicit subject.

Only recently have I started engaging with these themes consciously. I’ve begun creating works—like collages and layered compositions—that directly reflect on family history and generational trauma. These pieces aren’t about victimhood; they’re about witnessing, understanding, and representing what shaped me. They are literal in a way my earlier work wasn’t, telling stories of inherited weight while still leaving space for complexity and nuance.

Approaching trauma this way allows me to carry its weight without letting it dominate everything. I’m not defined by it, but I acknowledge it, explore it, and translate it into a language that feels honest. It’s a balance between confronting difficult truths and maintaining the full spectrum of who I am, both in the work and beyond it.

Queerness in your work feels like a pulse, fluid, coded, layered. How do you translate sexuality into form, into texture, into symbol?

I don’t usually think of queerness as a separate topic to explore—it’s just part of who I am. Being gay naturally informs the way I see, create, and experience the world, so it becomes part of everything I do. I’m not defined by my sexuality, but it shapes the perspective from which I approach my work.

How it shows up depends on the medium. In collages dealing with family abandonment or trauma, it’s less about sexuality in a literal sense and more about witnessing and processing experiences that are deeply tied to my life as a gay person. In photography, it can be more explicit and openly sexual. In music or portrait work, sometimes I’m channeling not just my own sexuality but also the sexuality of the people I photograph or collaborate with.

Queerness in my work isn’t a theme I impose—it emerges naturally. It’s in the forms, textures, and symbols I use because it’s inseparable from my perspective and my way of being. Without it, the work wouldn’t feel honest or whole.

Does being both queer and diasporic offer a particular vision, a kind of double consciousness, inside the tradition, yet outside of it at the same time?

I have to admit, this is a really interesting question because I haven’t thought about it explicitly before. But looking back, even when I was living in Serbia, I never felt fully part of society. Being queer meant I was always somewhat on the outside. In that sense, I think this double consciousness is something many queer people experience from a young age—we learn to adapt, to live in two worlds at once.

For me, it’s also connected to tradition. There’s one part of myself that exists within cultural norms, and another part that rebels against them, that creates its own space—my artistic self. These two currents coexist constantly. I carry the tradition and memory of my culture, yet I interpret and transform it through my own lens. Being both queer and diasporic gives me that perspective: rooted in, yet simultaneously outside, a framework that I both inherit and challenge.

Body, Myth & the Cover Art

For the Kailon cover, you described a work that touches on body image, acceptance, and Nike, the goddess of victory. How did those threads of flesh, divinity, self, come together in this piece?

For the Kailon cover art, the piece came from a very personal and transformative place. I started with an image of Nike, the Greek goddess of victory, as a kind of structural and symbolic anchor. From there, I layered different images of my body and my friend Nika’s body—photographs we had taken over the years, fragments of ourselves. It was very much about the body as a site of experience, vulnerability, and identity.

The work emerged after a conversation with my friend about our experiences with anxiety and panic attacks. For months, I felt like I was going through it alone, but reconnecting with him and hearing his story made me feel seen, understood, and less isolated. That relief, that shared experience of struggle and survival, became central to the piece.

Through this layering—of flesh, of personal history, and of the goddess Nike—I wanted to capture a sense of transformation, acceptance, and victory. It’s about witnessing ourselves, acknowledging the challenges and the trauma, and still celebrating life and resilience. The threads of flesh, divinity, and self come together as a reflection of survival, friendship, and the reclaiming of personal power.

The body in your work often functions as both image and archive. How do you approach it as a repository of history, memory, and desire?

For me, the body is inseparable from memory and history—it’s both an image and a living archive. Each body, including my own, carries traces of personal experience, family history, trauma, desire, and identity. When I work with images of the body, or even fragments in collage, I’m engaging with that archive. I layer moments from different times, different experiences, and different bodies to reveal not just physical form, but the emotional and cultural narratives embedded in it.

The body becomes a way to witness and hold stories that might otherwise remain invisible. It’s about desire, vulnerability, and memory coexisting with form, creating a record of how we’ve been shaped, who we’ve loved, and what we’ve carried. In that sense, the body in my work is never just a body—it’s a living repository of self, history, and connection.

Nike represents triumph. Do you see this piece as a kind of victory, over self-doubt, over expectation, or over the gaze of others?

Yes, I see this piece as a kind of victory, but not in a literal or final sense—it’s more about self-recognition and resilience. It came out of a conversation with my friend Nika after a few years of not communicating. The timing felt almost fated; we reconnected right when we both needed to share our experiences with anxiety and panic attacks. Through those intense exchanges over a couple of days, I realized how much we had both endured and survived.

That inspired me to immediately start working on the collage, intertwining our bodies into the form of Nike, the goddess of victory. The connection between our names—Nika and Nikola—made it even more symbolic. The piece represents a triumph over self-doubt, over isolation, and over the anxiety that had weighed heavily on us. It’s about two people witnessing each other’s survival and claiming that, despite the chaos, everything is going to be okay. That was the emotion and sense of triumph I wanted to capture.

Artistic Process & Visual Language

Your collages feel like layered landscapes of memory, history, and desire. How do you decide what must appear, and what remains hidden?

Most of the time, I don’t consciously decide what must appear and what remains hidden. When I’m making a series of collages, the other works in the series often guide how each piece evolves. Sometimes, when I feel a collage isn’t working, I start over, tear it apart, or reassemble it in a new way. I’m constantly seeking balance between memory, history, and desire—each element informs the others, and the work emerges through that tension. It’s less about strict control and more about finding harmony between what is revealed and what remains concealed.

How do you know when a piece is complete? Is it closure, or simply a pause in an ongoing conversation with the work?

I struggle a lot with closure, and sometimes I even have to push myself to finish a piece. In an ideal world, I could work on something indefinitely—some of my works, like a self-portrait I started in 2014 or 2015, have evolved over ten years with countless layers of paint and faces. That piece is very intimate, something I don’t show publicly, and I keep adding to it whenever I feel like it.

When it comes to presenting work, I try to be more realistic and intentional about finishing. Sometimes, a piece in a series might feel unfinished on its own, but it makes sense in the context of the series as a whole. Other times, I have to remind myself to stop, even if it doesn’t feel “perfect,” and accept that it’s enough for now.

This struggle extends to how I present my work, like on Instagram. I often delete and restart my entire feed because I can’t decide how to show the work, which isn’t ideal, but it sometimes helps me gain a new perspective. Ultimately, I see completion less as final closure and more as a pause—a way to step back and continue the ongoing conversation with the work.

Material itself, paper, ink, texture, carries meaning in your hands. How do these choices help you translate the intangible: memory, sexuality, grief, joy?

Since I recently started working with collage, I’m still exploring how material itself—paper, ink, texture—carries meaning. In my previous photography and drawing work, symbolism and meaning were always central, so I was used to finding it in purely visual elements. With collage, I’ve had to translate that same understanding into tactile materials, to feel and manipulate the meaning through texture, paper, and physical layering.

Not every paper is the same, and each surface has its own qualities. Most of the time I use cheap black-and-white prints from a simple printer, and I layer them with old notes, family photographs, or scraps from my scrapbooks. I explore textures, contrasts, and subtle symbolism—mostly monochromatic, sometimes punctuated with gold to create a sense of depth or reference to icons and memory.

Through these choices, I try to make the intangible tangible: memory, sexuality, grief, and joy all find expression in the material itself. The process is about discovering the emotional resonance in what I can touch and manipulate, translating feelings into a physical language that speaks as clearly as images alone ever could.

Wider Reflections

Your work resonates strongly with queer and diasporic audiences, yet it also reaches beyond those circles. Do you see art as a bridge or a mirror or both?

I see my work as both a bridge and a mirror. For queer and diasporic audiences, it can reflect shared experiences, struggles, and memories—a mirror that validates and witnesses. At the same time, I hope it can also function as a bridge, inviting others outside these communities to engage with perspectives and histories that might be unfamiliar. I try not to create work that’s didactic; instead, I aim for honesty and intimacy, and through that openness, people from different backgrounds can find connection, empathy, or even just a glimpse into experiences that aren’t their own.

What do you hope lingers in a viewer, beyond the visual, in the body, in the spirit?

I try not to hope for a specific reaction from the viewer. Early in my photography work, I was focused on provocation and knew how to elicit a reaction, but over time I realized that’s not the point. My work is about expressing myself authentically. If a viewer finds something meaningful, relatable, or inspiring in it, that’s wonderful—but I don’t create to satisfy anyone. I make the work I need to make, and whatever lingers with someone beyond the visual or into the body and spirit is a gift, not a goal.

If you could leave one message for the next generation of queer artists, anywhere navigating layered identities, what would it be?

If I could leave a message for the next generation of queer artists, it would be to stay true to yourself and your authentic voice. Especially today, when everything moves so fast and social media often sets the pace, it’s easy to get caught up in trying to please others or meet expectations. But the most important thing, at least for me, is to make work that is honest and meaningful to you. Be a little selfish in your art—create because it matters to you, because it expresses who you are. That authenticity is what gives your work life and resonance, and it’s the best guide not just for art, but for living fully and truthfully.