my grandmother by Preesha Jain
my grandmother
wears silk sarees
woven with soft threads from India
stained with rich indigo dye;
tiny peacocks perch in the folds
and flecks of gold adorn them like jewels
sparkling with every movement.
a red bindi sits between her brows – she’s a queen.
but in Tesco
she’s an obscurity in the spice aisle.
my grandmother
has silver hair
plaited in intricate patterns
with garlands of yellow marigolds
tucked into the strands
accompanied with a sprinkling
of sweet-smelling jasmine flowers:
the marriage of the sun and moon –
but in Sainsbury’s
she’s an oddity amongst the frozen chapattis.
my grandmother
speaks in hindi
the language of saffron mangoes,
and fragrant blushing lotuses;
it flows like the ganga with
praises like honeyed rose petals
and even the stinging cusses like a biting karela
sound like a nightingale song.
but her broken English
in Morrisons
reduces her to suspicious looks
at the pickle shelf.
Since 1998, The Poetry Society has run an annual international poetry contest called the Foyle Young Poets Award and, despite the circumstances, last year was no exception. With 15,966 poems entered by 6,791 individual poets from 118 countries, the Foyle Young Poets Award is considered the largest international poetry competition for high school students. Out of all those entries, 100 were acknowledged, 85 as Commended Poets and the Top 15 being published in an anthology called You Speak in Constellations. Preesha Jain's poem is one of those Top 15 and juxtaposes the beauty of her grandmother's culture, heritage, and background against the prejudices held by strangers who make unfair assumptions about her. Jain uses vivid and multisensory imagery to fully capture her grandmother's character while also utilizing refrain and repetition to reinforce the negative stereotypes her grandmother faces while in the supermarket.
Have you ever been judged unfairly by the way you looked?
Arrhythmia by Natalie Lim
in 1962, my grandparents left China.
they stood together on the bow of a ship and
watched the only shores they'd ever known
melt into darkness,
owning nothing but each other and
the clothes on their backs —
no, i'm sorry.
this story is a lie.
i mean, at least it might be.
i mean that i've
never asked how they got here,
or what it was like in those early days
raising three boys and a girl
in a shoebox house in a broken-glass city
in a country whose valleys were still haunted
by the driving of railways spikes,
one-two one-two for miles on end.
when i started school,
i stopped speaking Chinese.
i still know a little these days,
can manage phrases like
doh je
and
ho bao
that fall from my mouth
and shatter on the dinner table
while everyone pretends
not to notice.
i smile as i pick the shards out of my food,
hide them under a napkin,
breathe a sigh of relief
when the waiter takes my shame away.
sometimes i wonder if my children
will do the same —
i wonder if my popo feels each
stilted conversation like a
brick through a Chinatown window, like
a slur hurled from a moving car, like
one-two one-two for years,
for a lifetime, maybe
i miss hearing her call me
by my Chinese name.
Natalie, she says,
each syllable so carefully deliberate
as she passes me dishes piled high
with chow mein, hand-stuffed dumplings,
the best of intentions,
and i smile like always,
shake my head,
thank you
i'm full
here is a true story:
i was born in 1996
in a mid-sized house in a mid-sized city
in a country that proclaims diversity,
acceptance, yes i am from here,
yes i mean here, i mean how do you grieve
something you never really loved to begin with,
i mean my grandmother calls me Natalie now,
i mean i stopped speaking Chinese
when i started school so
all i know about China is my popo's hands
the distant echo of her pulse,
one-two like shattering, rebuilding,
like turning foreign soil
into survival, into homemade apple turnovers
and summer afternoons
in the back garden —
because of you, popo,
i have never gone hungry.
thank you for what you have given.
look at all you have made.
ho bao, popo,
ho bao.
doh je.
Every year, CBC hosts the annual CBC Poetry Prize, a national competition open to all Canadian citizens and permanent residents to submit a poem. At stake is a $6,000 grant from the Canada Council for the Arts, a short residency at the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity, as well as being published on the CBC Books website. In 2018, Natalie Lim, then an undergraduate student studying Communications at Simon Fraser University, won the national competition with her poem, Arrhythmia, written about her interactions with her Chinese grandparents who immigrated to Canada. In an interview with CBC, Lim mentions that she used the metaphor of the medical term arrhythmia, which means that someone has an irregular heartbeat, to mirror the jolts that a person of colour feels when trying to integrate into Western society. She also uses the metaphor to mirror the starts and stops and uneven conversations she has with her grandparents, who can only speak Cantonese.
Have you ever experienced a time where you felt as though you didn't belong?
Shelly and her Grandma’s family have the special talent of seeing ghosts and helping them move past haunting others and towards peace. But her mom has always been concerned about Shelly getting too comfortable around the dead and is against her daughter helping Grandma out with her ghost-related jobs. As the story progresses, Shelly realizes no one knows what happens after ghosts unanchor themselves and leave the living world and she struggles with newfound emotions after a life-changing event occurs.
Allison Mills grew up in Vancouver where she enjoyed spending time reading all kinds of books because her mother was a teacher and a librarian. Her fascination with ghosts came from her time spent scaring herself by reading spooky stories. She is both Ililiw and Cree, as well as a settler Canadian, which allows her to know what it’s like to be in between two spaces you don’t entirely seem to fit into. Allison wishes to create stories just like the ones she loved to read but with more diverse characters she can connect to.
Have you ever felt invisible even in a room full of people? Have you ever felt disconnected to people you should feel connected to?
In 2016, Globe and Mail reporter, Ann Hui, hopped into her car and drove across Canada. Her mission? To visit as many small-town Chinese restaurants as she could to learn about their owners and their backgrounds. Along the way, she discovers that her own family once owned a Chinese restaurant themselves, in Abbotsford, and her journey across Canada also becomes a journey into her own family's history and how they immigrated to Canada from Guangdong province to start new lives. Hui learns that Western, "chop suey", Chinese food is much more than a cheap imitation, but a reflection of the ingenuity and adaptability of 20th century Chinese immigrants to Canada, immigrants like her grandfather. Chop Suey Nation has received numerous awards, including the Dr. Edgar Wickberg Book Prize - Best Book on Chinese History in 2019. (Content Warning: at least one instance of mature language).
Ann Hui grew up around Vancouver and has been a reporter for the Globe and Mail for 11 years. She is their National Food Reporter and has been twice nominated for a National Newspaper Award.
Food is such an important part of culture and heritage. What dishes remind you of yours?
Kelly Yang is an Asian American writer who immigrated to Southern California when she was 6 years old. Yang attended UC Berkeley and studied law at Harvard, though she eventually gave up law to pursue her passion of writing and teaching. Her childhood experience working at motels with her parents inspired her book Front Desk, which tells the story of Mia Tung and her parents’ struggles of running a rundown motel. In the book, Mia’s character is reminiscent of Yang, specifically her dedication to writing and fierce opposition to racism. When faced with injustices, Mia is quick-witted and courageous. She often uses her trusty thesaurus and sparkly green pencil to advocate for those who have been silenced - in the form of letters. From Mia, we learn that no matter one’s age or background, only one brave voice can bring about change. If you wish, recount a time that you used your voice and submit a response below on the difference that it made.
Is there an issue you wish to stand up for?
In recognition of National Indigenous History Month, the next four weeks will feature stories written by or about the Indigenous population of Canada. Published in 2020, Highway of Tears - A True Story of Racism, Indifference, and the Pursuit of Justice for Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls was written by Canadian journalist, Jessica McDiarmid, who investigated the decades of murders and disappearances along Highway 16 in British Columbia that disproportionally affect Indigneous women living in northern BC. Through interviews with the victims' family and friends, McDiarmid not only shares their stories, but frames them within a broader context of the estimated 4000 missing and murdered indigenous women and girls in Canada and the failure of Canada to provide justice for them. Highway of Tears was a finalist for the RBC Taylor Prize for Canadian non-fiction and a finalist for the Hubert Evans Prize for the best non-fiction book written by a British Columbian author. (Content Warning: Mature themes throughout the book).
What has your school or community done to recognize Indigenous history in Canada? What more could be done?
Everyone deserves a voice and a safe place to use it. BASA has been developing voices and providing a safe space to explore them for over 30 years, but it is clear that more is needed. Especially in a time when we can not collaborate and congregate to share our voices and our strength, we need a place to be able to share our hopes, our fear and our frustrations. We hope this will be that space. This is a space for sharing our written work as well as a platform for our voices, promoting the exploration and expression of what makes us come together and what can make us feel alone. This is a place to celebrate our diversity and build strength in the exploration of voice and identity.
We will use this space to share, celebrate, and reflect on works by under-represented voices in literature. These voices will include, and are not limited to, those of Asian, Black, and Indigenous descent, as well as those from LGBTQ2S+ communities. As we celebrate the diversity of our BASA community, it is important to acknowledge the diversity of those in our greater community, and this space is meant to do just that.
This is how it works: read the written piece below. Then, we invite you to share your thoughts in a written response using the form at the bottom of this page. We will publish a small number of responses, and there will be a brand-new prompt every week.
