It didn’t come all at once, but in p i e c e s , the way dim sum arrives, one hot cart of bamboo steamers at a time. At sixteen, my boyfriend’s Romanian family claims he’s not meant to date an Asian girl. At eighteen, I perform the Chinese Nutcracker dance, my white peers beside me, gold and red Dollar Store lanterns swinging from blonde buns, catching the light. At twenty, I move to Italy, an alien from an exotic galaxy far far away…
I’ve been crying, often. Really, a lot of it. Crying because I dream of motherhood. Because ancestors are dying and I can’t catch up. Because I’m losing balance on this tightrope, my bloodline cut short. Wong, wasted, write, weep – last names & last words begin with W. Tough and tender, I love what I do and yet I cannot make myself do it. It is hard to be diligent, when it is the structure itself that harms me. I can grieve or I can be hopeful and I don’t know if either makes a difference. The White Space still confines me, eyes squint as it blinds me. Wound and wheezing with the grip of your chokehold, yet still I wring my wounds for words because truth is not an optional ingredient.
If you told me to go back home, I wouldn’t move an inch, not out of self-defense, but because I have nowhere else to go. So I stand here dripping, the weight of another universe’s gravity on my eyelids. There’s no ending. It happens when it happens but it’s also always happening anyways.
Sarah Wong (she/her) is an emerging dance artist, choreographer, and writer based in Vancouver, Canada on the unceded territories of the xwməθkwəy̓ əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish), and Səl̓ílwətaʔ (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations. Her work emerges from her lived experience as a queer, second-generation Chinese-Canadian woman, focusing on archival processes and accessing embodied generational knowledge. Her works have taken the form of score-based improvisational performances, ritual-based research, site-specific installation, poetry and multimedia zines. Her work has been presented in Vancouver by Arts Assembly, Number 3 Gallery, New Works, IGNITE! Youth Arts Festival, Vines Art Festival, and Boombox, and internationally at Mosaico Danza Interplay Festival (Turin, IT). Her writing has been featured in Queering Friendships Zine by Mixed Rice Zines, fever dreams by plastic orchid factory, and Mot Juste Magazine by Alexandrina Fleming. She recently completed an artistic mentorship with Justine A. Chambers through the support of the BC Arts Council Early Career Development Program and is now pursuing her Bachelor of Arts at The University of British Columbia.
We acknowledge that we live, work and play on the unceded territories of the xwmǝθkwǝy̓ǝm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish) and səlil̓ilw̓ətaʔɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) nations. We strive to learn from, and be allies with, Indigenous Peoples.