Asian American resistance art, folx v. folks + a brief and ongoing dialogue on haiku

Bots and babes, 

I hope you've been giving yourself some space to breathe, express yourself, and relax because this week was a lot. Check in on your Asian American friends and loved ones if you haven't already. Anti-Asian hate crimes skyrocketed during the pandemic and it's important to acknowledge that grief. 

To read more about Asian American resistance art, check out this article by Eda Yu (and her website!!!). Yu writes editorial content and poetry and has appeared on podcasts and in multimedia content across multiple platforms. She recently worked on 'Don't be a Xenaphobe' with photographer Mashael Al Saie and fashion brand strategist Christine Oh. Check out the shoot on Al Saie's website...or look no further (TW: anti-Asian hate crime descriptions). 

This collection does so much with color and props; blue and white bring our attention to the health care industry (i.e. masks, gloves, cleaning products, even toilet paper). Yu's makeup and costume pull on these same colors, connoting images of sterile/clean/untainted. Al Saie's artistic philosophy during shoots is to make sure the subject is comfortable. In an interview with womena® she said, “I really spend time with the person I’m shooting to get them in a place where they feel like they can be represented and can have a conversation. It shows when they are comfortable, they glow and I’m happy I can capture that.” She says, “Someone once told me, your work is like people are suspended in water." In the above series, though, I see something more angular. There is a softness, but there is also a strength. I am thinking particularly of the way Yu points her toes in the March 4 image, or the lines from the mask strings and her dress. These three are on Instagram so follow them! 

as promised...some extremely brief and insufficient (but ongoing) research on haiku

You probably wrote haiku in school as a kid, or maybe you didn't. But if you did, you probably learned the 5-7-5 syllable count: line one is 5 syllables, line two is 7 syllables, line three is 5 syllables. I have a feeling this a gross over-simplification of an ancient Japanese form, and I just so happen to be right. 

This is what The Big and Important Poetry Foundation says: 

A haiku often features an image, or a pair of images, meant to depict the essence of a specific moment in time.

Not popularized in Western literature until the early 1900s, the form originates from the Japanese hokku, or the opening section of a longer renga sequence. In this context, the hokku served to begin a longer poem by establishing a season, often with a pair of seasonal images. Unlike the rest of the renga sequence, which was composed collaboratively, the hokku was often created by a single poet working alone, and was subsequently used as an exercise for students. Over time, the hokku began to be appreciated for its own worth and became distinct as a poetic form, formally mastered by poets such as Basho and Yosa Buson.  

Of renga, Wikipedia (don't judge me, they use Japanese characters) writes:

The genre was elevated to a literary art by Nijō Yoshimoto (二条良基, 1320-1388), who compiled the first imperial renga anthology Tsukubashū (菟玖波集) in 1356. The most famous renga master was Sōgi (宗祇, 1421–1502), and Matsuo Bashō (松尾芭蕉, 1644–1694) after him became the most famous haikai master. Renga sequences were typically composed live during gatherings of poets, transcribed oral sessions known as rengakai (連歌会), but could also be composed by single poets as mainly textual works.

While I won't pretend to have any complex knowledge of renga, haikai, haiku, or hokku, I continue to appreciate these poems' abilities to mold the human experience to nature in radical (at least for American poetry) ways. Apparently, haiku made a massive impact on American and French imagist poets like Ezra Pound in the early-mid 20th century. Spoiler alert: these poets did not cite their Japanese influences. You can read more about it in Modern Haiku, should you be interested. 

The poet Basho (master of haiku, see above) has a rather intense body of work, which has been translated by many. The following are translated by David Landis Barnhill.

Dewdrop, let me cleanse

in your brief

sweet waters . . .

These dark hands of life

Must springtime fade?

then cry all birds . . .

and fishes

Cold pale eyes pour tears

Now the swinging bridge

is quieted

with creepers . . .

Like our tendrilled life

Not sure why these are four lines instead of three. Will return to this...

a lot of words on folks vs. folx

Maybe you picked up on this last time, maybe you didn't. Somewhere along the way, I said folx instead of folks. There is lofty debate over the x on interweb forums and such. I have seen from cis, trans, and queer people to use the x, and I have also seen from cis, trans, and queer people that the x is stupid/performative/transphobic. Until recently, folx seemed to me like a term created by cis people, like womyn or womxn, to differentiate non-cis people...it's like saying transwomen are not women, which is transphobic. Also, I was not aware of any gender-specific connotation for the word folks, making the x unnecessary anyways. HOWEVER, despite these personal reservations I used the term anyways. Why? Because people told me to. Did I really research/interrogate/criticize/consider it? No. So, here we go. 

Searched in gOoGlE: folks vs. folx and, like, a bajillion blogs and forums on why you should use the x including this one, and this one, and this one, and this one. Some of these sources also made arguments on why you should not use the x. AND HERE'S WHAT I DIDN'T KNOW BEFORE I RESEARCHED: the x is not only intended to be inclusive of trans, genderqueer, non-binary, and agender individuals but it's also meant to include people of color...bit there is no origin for this claim (thank you, Reddit users and Kaja from Yes.Please.More). Kaja notes that the x is a way of saying "people like us," bringing people into community, connoting a shared marginalized identity, and embracing resilience. In this way, the x recognizes white supremacy in the feminist movement, the invaluable contributions of feminists and people of color in trans liberation work, extremely high rates of homelessness, trafficking, and assault affecting trans youths, especially trans youths of color, U.S. Indigenous women overrepresented in sexual assault data, and countless other histories. The x holds a lot of power when used in these circumstances...but it also falls short. Centuries of genocide, imperialism, white supremacy, and colonialism cannot be literally or figuratively written away. Though incredibly valuable, language is only one piece of the puzzle. 

A few reservations: many of these articles make the comparison between folx and womxn or Latinx. I find this a bit frustrating for reasons already mentioned, but also because some terms like Latina/o are not already gender-neutral. So, Latinx is a no-brainer where womxn and folx are not. And, of course, all of this is made more complicated because we don't know where the x came from, who was intended to benefit from the language, or who initiated it. While Kells McPhillips from Well+Good ("this one" #3) cites survey results from non-binary respondents who largely appreciated the term, there was a fair bit of confusion and frustration, too. Furthermore, the survey had a puny sample size and can hardly represent a popular opinion. 

I guess it all comes down to context. At the end of the day, it is not my place to decide what is and isn't validating to other people as everyone's experience of gender and race are different. It's a big wide world out there, people. And this big wide world is beautiful and painful and deceiving and tragic and murderous and marvelous all at the same time. 

tl;dr I will alternate between folks and folx in this blog to validate both racial and gender diversity in all-encompassing language. I will keep this discussion open for debate because language evolves and sometimes (many times) I'm just an idiot. If you have thoughts on the x I'd love to hear them! 

Oh, and if you made it this far, Bad Friend by Rina Sawayama is a bop. Oh oh also literally anything by Ashnikko but Clitoris! The Musical is especially good. 

Eat well and take a nap ;) 

XO, 

your favorite sandwich