The following is an auto-generated transcript of the Brazn Azn podcast Episode 22. It also includes affiliate links that do not affect the price you pay, but allows me to recoup some of our costs. Please excuse any mistakes or misspellings as we do not have the time nor bandwidth to edit.
Show notes
In this episode of the Brazn Azn podcast, co-hosts Stella and Virginia Duan sit down with poet Ophelia Hu Kinney. Ophelia shares her experiences of moving to Maine, co-owning 20 acres of land, and building a community as a queer Asian American. The discussion explores themes of change, the importance of community, the interaction of Asianness in predominantly white settings, and the symbiotic relationship between humans and nature.
- Tending the Land and Community
- Navigating Small Town Conservatism
- Family and Community Connections
- Lessons from the Land and Parenthood
- Community and Vulnerability
- Navigating Asianness in Maine
Follow Ophelia on her Instagram or website.
Listen to Brazn Azn Ep 22
Transcript
Stella: [00:00:00] Hello, brazen Nation. This is the Brazn Azn podcast. I’m your co host, Stella.
Virginia: And I’m your other co host, Virginia Duan. I am the entertainment editor for Mochi Magazine, which is the longest running online Asian American women’s magazine.
I’m a freelance writer and also a novelist. Yay!
There’s two of my novels out right now, “Illusive” and “Weightless.” You can get them on Amazon. And if you like slow burns, found family, recovering from trauma, all set with sexy times in K-pop. Yay! Then, please buy my book. Yay!
Stella: So today we have a really special guest with us. Virginia and I are so excited to talk to her.
And I’m going to read you guys her bio just to give you an idea of why we’re so obsessed with her. Ophelia Hu Kinney is a mother, wife, and sister, and she belongs to immigrant parents. She lives on Wabanaki land in a town named for its marsh grass. She’s a Tao curious Christian, [00:01:00] an evangelical escapee, and a queer Asian American.
She builds bridges with urgency because our souls are restless to cross the distance.
Virginia: She’s a poet, everyone. She’s so amazing. Please say hi.
Ophelia: Hi, Virginia. Hi, Stella. Thank you so much for having me on. Hi, listeners.
Stella: You’re the co owner of about 20 acres of woods just like out there, right? We’d love to hear more about this. Like, how, how did this happen?
Virginia: Yes, how did this happen? Why are you in the outside?
Ophelia: I think that what people find comfortable probably has something to do with the context from which they came. So when I think about the cities or more urban centers that some of my Asian friends live in, I think, wow, that takes a lot of bravery. And the way that we happened upon this land was that we were priced out of Portland, Maine, like a lot of people are.
We found a home that [00:02:00] was kind of a budding, attractive land. It’s protected for conservation purposes. And so between this privately co owned attractive land some other private land and a forest preserve, there is an enormous tract of land from which you can walk a, a decent amount of this area.
However, this little bit right here is a track that we get to tend. And I spend a lot of my time out there. At first when we moved in, it seemed kind of foreboding and like it was impassable, but we’ve really gotten to know each other in the last six or so years that I’ve lived there.
Virginia: Wait, getting to know each other, like you and the land know each other?
Or like, your neighbors, or both?
Ophelia: Both. Yeah, all of that at the same time. I was thinking just the land and me, me and the land, but now that you mention it, yeah. [00:03:00] Getting to know my neighbors has kind of happened alongside that. We’re at a point in our lives where we moved here right before the pandemic began, and at the time, I came with a lot of defensiveness and concern about what it would be like for us to live out here, where some folks may consider it the boonies.
But on the other hand, this town got Maine’s first Costco last year, so as far as Maine goes, we’re pretty up and coming now. One of my great joys lately has been to see the kids of my neighbors’ homes run through our backyards, or we’ll see evidence that they had been on the trails before us in the morning running into each other’s dogs, hearing one another.
Yeah, getting to spend the years together. I don’t know that I really had that experience growing up. So it feels particularly [00:04:00] magical and delicious to me now. I don’t want to over romanticize it, but it does feel very much like a special treasure right now.
Virginia: So when you say tend this track of land, what does that mean?
And did you have any experience doing so, did you have to pass a course? Like what, what
Ophelia: does that mean? It really doesn’t mean much of anything official. The folks who own the tract of land beside ours. They have an actual forester on retainer, somebody who comes out every few years and decides which trees to cut down and sell and which trees need a little more space to grow up.
I don’t want to oversell my abilities. I mean, really what it means is like, I’m pulling bittersweet out.
Virginia: Wait, what is that?
Ophelia: It is a really aggressive plant that actually was long ago imported from China and has,
Virginia: we are pretty invasive.
Ophelia: [00:05:00] So I’ve been warned, but man, it’s beautiful and so, so aggressive.
And if you give it a couple of years, it can tear down fully grown, mature old growth trees, or strangle trees before they get to grow up. So I spent some time trying to rip that out. Untangling things that have tangled together, do you know birch trees can get so heavy that they kind of like curl over and they can make an archway with snow.
And then you’ve just like lost your path and your entire path has just been blocked by. Like a grove of birch trees that fell over, but like haven’t fallen over, they’ve just come to rest. I don’t really know what else to say except to just like see what might need a little extra hand and just kind of keep an eye on how things develop over the last few years.
Virginia: I found it so interesting. You’re talking about this bittersweet and the untangling things. I [00:06:00] feel like that’s kind of what you do in your job
Ophelia: too. Oh, I hope so.
On my best of days. Sometimes on my less than best days, I feel like all I do for money is email. I just email people professionally.
Stella: A job is a job.
Virginia: For some context, could you tell folks what you do for money?
Ophelia: Well, to state it less vaguely besides writing emails for money, I do communications for a nonprofit and They’re called Reconciling Ministries Network. They do LGBTQ justice work in the United Methodist Church. And you may be a little familiar with our work because there was a lot of coverage of what happened to the United Methodist Church this last year.
Stella: Mm
Ophelia: hmm.
And gratefully, RMN has for decades, since the 1980s, been kind of at the forefront of leading that advocacy work and also that longer taking, patience requiring work of like [00:07:00] changing people’s minds. So I guess what I do is that I try to put in laypeople’s terms why they should treat one another like fellow human beings.
And I specifically do that for a Christian audience. I’m I don’t come from a Christian background myself, but I became one when I was in college. I still think of the mother tongue of my soul being one that isn’t Christian and one that has a lot more expansiveness to it. But if I were to have to fill out a medical form, then I guess Christian is what I would put on there.
Virginia: Is the area you live in very conservative? I get Maine confused with Vermont. I’m very bad at geography, everyone. I know nothing.
Ophelia: Maine and Vermont are politically pretty similar. They’re both states where there are a lot of white folks who don’t want things to change and there are communities and pockets of resistance to white [00:08:00] hegemony. So, they’re both pretty purple. A claim to fame that the town where I live in has is that we were incredibly evenly split in the last few elections, for better or for worse.
I would say that the flavor of conservatism is maybe different from what I would expect, like as a stereotype of Southern California conservatism. If I were to be really reductionist about it, I would say there are a lot of folks here who would not bat an eye at the composition of my family.
That it’s me, a cis woman, married to another cis woman, and our kid. However, if we’re asking them to interrogate their diehard support of the police or their assumption that trade policies will always work out for the little folks who work at the docks, etc. Yeah. There’s just this [00:09:00] different formula that I don’t think is as prevalent in maybe some urban centers.
Stella: It’s really small town, right? Where it’s like, your business is your business and my business is my business. And we are neighborly, which means that we help each other out when we can. I think a lot of Americans in general, in my opinion, are people who want to be treated as people and mostly treat the people around them that they interact with regularly as people. And everybody else is just sort of this vague, amorphous blob, right? That’s why a lot of this rhetoric around immigrants is so easy, because if you don’t know a lot of immigrants, it’s easy to hate them. And if you do know some immigrants, well, they can be the good ones. And everybody else can be the immigrants you don’t want, right?
Ophelia: Yes.
Stella: Right. And so I feel like it’s, it’s [00:10:00] understandable that they would see you as a community member, but maybe not necessarily vote for the things that might be most impactful to you in your community.
Ophelia: Yeah, you summed it up perfectly That reminds me Stella of a person who used to be in our lives my family’s life for whom like I was probably the first Asian American they’d ever met and definitely one of the first queer people he’d ever had a meaningful relationship with. And he said to Hayli and me something about how we really ought to consider having a gun in the house.
This was soon after Trump was elected the first time around in 2016. He said that it was for our protection. I wanted to respond and I didn’t say that it felt in that like very defensive, vulnerable time for me that he was precisely the quote unquote kind of person that we [00:11:00] would be seeking defense from.
Stella: Mm
Ophelia: hmm. And it did not seem like that was going to be the best form of home security for us. We opted to get a pit bull for our home instead. Very effective. So, he also had said something to a former partner of his about how, you know, Hayli and I were, he, he was quote unquote like fine with our relationship, but didn’t want to extend that kind of affirmation to other queer couples.
And it’s just like you were saying, like, we’re the good ones that he knows, and surely the other ones must be even worse than, whatever he sees represented here. Right, right, right.
Stella: And so in his mind, he thinks it’s important to keep you and Hayli safe. It’s important for you guys to keep your family safe.
Not recognizing that the attitudes he holds are the same attitudes as the people who [00:12:00] might want to harm you.
Ophelia: Exactly.
Stella: And like, it’s wild. It’s, it’s wild. It’s, it’s a mind trip.
Ophelia: Yeah. I don’t know what kind of mental gymnastics have to happen for that mindset to take hold, but I’m sure that they probably have a similar thought about me, too, and I don’t know what it is.
Virginia: I feel like a lot of times, it’s easy to like, for instance, when I was much younger, it was really hard for me to see other people as people. Unless if I cared about them, they weren’t people. Obviously I knew they were people, but it didn’t occur to me that people were actually people until I hurt them.
And then I’m just like, Oh. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. That was pretty shitty of me. It never occurred to me that I could hurt someone, right? Like, even though obviously I know I can hurt people, right? Or whatever. But like, it was So I don’t necessarily know if it’s like mental gymnastics that in particular they are doing.
I just feel like most of us are pretty self centered. And I’m [00:13:00] saying most of us because then it makes me feel better. But you just kind of see the people that are in your sphere as people, and everyone else is sort of, I feel like that’s how towns protected themselves, right?
Like, stranger danger. So, it totally makes sense to me.
Stella: But I also, but it’s surprising that, I think it surprises people when they go to small towns and become a community member, that once they’re accepted into the community, they’re one of them. This kind of goes into the question I was going to ask.
I know that your parents have moved closer to you to be with you and your family. What was that like for you? Did you have any concerns about them coming to live near you? How has it been for them to build community out there?
Ophelia: Oh, Stella, did I have any concerns about my immigrant parents moving halfway across the country to be closer to my wife and me?
Everything that stemmed from, is this a horrible mistake [00:14:00] for our relationship, and is it gonna saddle them with a place they don’t want to be in, and, like, relationships they wish they had never broken, to, do I have to fear for their safety and their sense of belonging? To your point, Virginia, they are people who are so adept at seeing just the close people around them and pouring all of their lives into those people, and then just like forgetting that the rest of the world really exists.
And, yeah, I do think that that describes a lot of people, and I think it’s not a value statement to say that that’s Just how they see the world. It is very different from how I see the world, but, yeah, I definitely embarked on that process with a lot of anxieties. We’re about two years into this now, and there are so many ways in which we’ve grown [00:15:00] together, and also so many ways in which we’ve gotten to exercise the ways that we’ve grown while we’ve been apart.
I can’t imagine what it would have been like if they’d never made that move. But, man, what an aggressive, incredible decision that, like, these two middle-aged people made. Like, just uproot their entire life and then move across, halfway across the country just for love.
That’s it.
Virginia: It’s so beautiful.
Ophelia: It really is. Sometimes I feel like, holy crap, how did I ever deserve to end up in this life? But I’m just gonna take it, because it’s the one I’ve got.
Stella: I think it’s incredible, because this is kind of a second chance for you and your parents. There was a time where you guys were somewhat estranged, kind of distant.
Yeah.
Ophelia: You know, when my parents first moved here to Maine, they hadn’t yet moved into the home where they live now, and I can tell you a little bit more about that in a bit, [00:16:00] but they moved into this temporary situation, and I remember my mom sitting amongst all of this luggage that she didn’t unpack because she was hopeful that she was going to find a home and settle down there.
There have been also so many just weird kindnesses that happen to them from like really random people. And I think now that that was probably one of the reasons why I started to let go of so much defensiveness about living here.
My mom would frequently tell me about like, she’s a garage sale, yard sale hound and I inherited that gift from her too, but she would come and tell me like, you would never believe what this white lady gave me at this yard sale. She’s like, I just told her I have a granddaughter and then she just gave me this truckload of things.
It has happened enough times now that I realized like, oh, The amount of worry that I had that my parents would be victims of hate crimes here. That sheer amount [00:17:00] of fear, I think I was using to try to protect myself from whatever bad could happen. But, like, I’m trying to just softly live into the fact that a lot of good things can happen.
And I don’t want them or me to be cut off from that possibility.
Virginia: Mm, that makes sense. So, so along with this what lessons do you think the land and the community around you have taught you?
It sounds so woo woo, but it’s cool.
Ophelia: That is a good question.
Probably the one that is hardest for me to accept and that I encounter the most frequently is that we just need each other. And frequently we need each other regardless of our differences, or where we come from, or what [00:18:00] kinds of attitudes we grew up believing that we needed? There are just so many ways in which
I’m learning by accident that often after the fact of an encounter with someone that was a stranger or someone from home, like I would have had the wrong preconceptions. I come away with such a, a depth of joy that is just only possible through human interaction. I see that repeated so often in other forms of creation.
There are so many symbiotic relationships between creatures and plants that depend on one another. And then there’s, kind of on the flip side of that, an equally difficult lesson, which is that, we don’t get to have everything. You know, we don’t get to take up all the space, and if we do, it’s at not only our community’s [00:19:00] peril, but our own peril as well.
For reason A, which is that, again, we really need each other. So sometimes it feels easy, or Maybe just instinctive to try and go at myself, but, there are so many things where I realize just because I can do something myself doesn’t mean that I have to. And for a lot of people, there is a joy in being a part of a helpful community or a community of symbiosis.
So, Those are some of the lessons, and then there are just so, so, so many others. You know, that like, things are beautiful, and things don’t last forever, and terrible things are happening, but that doesn’t mean that good things are not also happening. It is possible to overextend yourself, and then you will suffer.
I say to two, like, hard working parents of multiples who have a podcast. [00:20:00]
Virginia: Oh, I don’t know about this hard working business.
Stella: Virginia and I have entered our, our benign neglect years of parenting.
Virginia: Yes, entered. I’ve always been in them.
Stella: So, speaking of, speaking of like parenting and communities, you’ve recently become a mother for the first time. Congratulations. Thank you.
Ophelia: Yeah, what has that been
Stella: like?
Ophelia: Oh, you know. You both know. Well, it’s, how do you
answer that question? Like I’m,
I guess the way that I would put it right now in this particular moment is that I’m kind of fed up with this idea that people, quote, like, feel like themselves again, or like get back to normal or get back to who they used to be because you just don’t, and before is a nice fantasy, and it was beautiful while it lasted, and [00:21:00] it’s over
Stella: over, yes,
Ophelia: yeah, and like, there will be a new You, that gets to experience stability sometimes and contentment and joy, but those are all going to be in a totally different landscape from the landscape you had before.
So yeah, just, you know, everything is different. Nothing will ever be the same again. And I’m also realizing just how much of the world I did not empathize with before, like, I just didn’t understand, I think, how much mental capacity was required to think about the existence of another person, like, let alone
Stella: Right, a person who cannot do anything, who you have to provide everything that they, that they can, right?
It’s tough.
Ophelia: I mean, there’s all, there’s like everything that I feel like everyone has said before, like you are seeing the world for the first time [00:22:00] through a new set of perspectives. You have to humble yourself and do ridiculous stupid things. You have to exercise really weird creativity and silliness.
You have to squeeze your free time and creative time out of a rock. Guard it like a rat. And then at some point my sleep windows get smaller. My own, I’m not talking about the toddlers. I’m talking about my sleep windows getting shorter and shorter and shorter. And I think I actually don’t like sleeping.
I really like being awake and doing things. I guess, it’s revenge bedtime procrastination.
Stella: I love that phrase. It’s so, it’s so useful. Yes. Revenge. Right? It so encapsulates what we all do when we’re doom scrolling or crafting or reading. Yes.
Virginia: What has it meant to you to be open to change? Like you mentioned a lot about learning lessons and it’s been [00:23:00] like kind of difficult. And, and I guess what has change brought about?
Ophelia: The first thing that comes to mind is that change has brought about the ability to be have the depth of relationships that I have right now. So to expand a little bit on my parents living here, they moved from Illinois to a temporary situation about 20 minutes from my home. We live in a very old house that used to belong to a very large lot.
Then some developers came and chopped it up into a million little pieces, and there are now eight other homes.
At the very end of our road where all the homes are was a ranch style house, and again, these were all built within the last five years. No reason for anybody to want to leave. That person ended up putting her house on the market right around when my parents lease was up. They ended up buying that [00:24:00] house.
That is three houses down from ours and when I say that I’m taking Z over to see her grandparents what I mean is we are schlepping her boots on and walking down the hill through some grass to get there. That is a life that teenage me would have been mortified to find out that we’re living, and I know that I’ve changed a lot and my capacity to love and forgive and accept change have increased a lot, but I could say the same tenfold for my parents but there are people who found a way to reach up through this.
It’s, it’s like they were planted in a really dark place and then just stretched up toward the light and thought like, well, we’re going to get there when we get there. And their capacity for change has been enormous. I [00:25:00] credit a lot of our functional relationship now to the fact that they were willing to change.
Being open to change I think also means not taking yourself too seriously. Especially amongst progressive people and folks who like to do creative things, there can be an allure to taking yourself too seriously or thinking too much of yourself.
I’m trying to let go of that. I’m finding a lot more ability to change, and to not hold onto any one part of what I thought was my identity too tightly. Also, having a toddler in your life will totally teach you how to embrace change because they are not the same person that they were two minutes ago when they said that they really needed to use the potty.
So
Stella: when they tell you that they want a banana, they want a banana so bad and then you give them the banana and they don’t want to eat it. No. Because you cut it wrong. [00:26:00]
Ophelia: Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. But
Stella: then if you cut it that way tomorrow, they’ll be mad at you because they wanted to peel it themselves.
Virginia: Mm
Ophelia: hmm.
Absolutely. Yep. Alright, God forbid I kiss all of the stuffies and dolls in the wrong order. There is a literal pecking order here. They change every day and so it also requires me to change every day. I remember very early on in newborn days. I did not do well with early postpartum. But one of the things that kept rattling through my head was like, How in the world am I going to keep this up for the next 8 months, 10 months, whatever?
And eventually it hit me like, oh, I only actually have to keep this up for the next three days because that’s how long this intervention is going to work for. And then we’re going to have to find another solution because she’s going to need one. So, yeah.
Stella: It’s life with babies.
Ophelia: Change is thrust upon you.
Stella: Agents [00:27:00] of chaos.
Ophelia: Yeah, and also like little carrier fairies of like, I don’t know, a version of me that doesn’t have to defend herself so much.
Stella: Mm. There’s, I mean, there’s a lot of vulnerability that you’re having to hold, right, like, of your, of yourself, like this tenderness towards you and towards others and towards baby.
Ophelia: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I’m having to learn for the first time what so many other people have already learned, which is, how do I negotiate things like my gratitude for the gift that you gave my child, my not wanting them to feel that they need to express that as someone who isn’t two years old yet or I want you to have this extra treat But our tradition is that we all [00:28:00] get one.
And how do I also show you that generosity is a, or fairness is a thing, and maybe that isn’t something I can teach, but I don’t know. I’m just admitting all the things that are occupying my brain space.
Virginia: You know, a really I wouldn’t say easy way to teach fairness is to have a lot of children and to have limited resources and they’re very, very, very good at fractions.
So that’s one way.
Ophelia: This one cookie divided into five.
Virginia: Yeah. And then they all take it into account, everyone else’s preferences. So that is one way you could Lord of the Flies it.
That. I don’t recommend
Ophelia: it, but. That is commitment to the learning right [00:29:00] there.
Stella: Ophelia is someone I consider to be good at like everything, right?
She’s a writer, she’s a storyteller, she’s a model. And I hear lately you’re taking classes in watercolor.
Ophelia: Yes. Yeah.
Stella: What’s that been like?
Ophelia: Thank you so much for asking. This is a watercolor class that was offered by my local adult education program. Which is, by the way, a fantastic resource for any town that has that offered.
Because you end up immersing yourself with other people who just really want to be there to learn the thing regardless of skill level. And so there’s inherently a level of vulnerability there. This week was my last class session until spring. And wow, I did a terrible job. It was absolutely one of the worst paintings I’ve ever produced.
We had this show and tell time at the end of class. And I was like, [00:30:00] you know, I’ve got this other thing that I started working on. And that’s not finished, but it looks a little more purposeful than this poppy disaster I made. So, but, I was like, you know what, I’m just, I just gotta lay it out there.
Here’s my poppy disaster. And Ah, what I can say is that like, There’s something so dynamic and lovely about being in a space where people from your town, from all different walks of life show up to participate in something where they might never become an expert or fluent. And on your best days, what you get is the pleasure of creation and each other’s company. And on the worst day, you still get each other’s company.
I’ve met people I would probably not have had the opportunity to meet in depth. Otherwise I invited myself to a recurring [00:31:00] painting group at an assisted living home where some of the painters. Keep painting and our instructor, I can’t say enough wonderful things is someone who just unequivocally showed up every week with so much uninhibited tenderness toward us, she would always have something of value to say about everyone’s peace and efforts She would always write an email the following day saying what it was that we had learned and she told us one day that she lives an hour away.
She’s the one attendant who comes from away But she said that she thinks about us on her night drives home and that’s what keeps her awake is thinking about our progress and what we’ve done and what we need to work on. She says she doesn’t think about us as a class.
She thinks about us as individuals [00:32:00] and to have someone say that to you when so many of the people that I’m in class with and myself to spend a lot of time thinking about other people, it’s just really kind. So I felt a little strange at first, Giving her this unfiltered adoration via email.
And then I realized, like, oh, when she CC’s everyone in an email, other people, like, praise her too. And this is not weird. Like, she’s, she deserves that praise. And, so, her example has also kind of, like, set me off on this path of, like, why not just, like, be a little more chaotic and, like, unfettered and telling people how I think about them And it has done some really good things For me, I hope for other people too.
But, yeah, just a little more delight and a little more chaos.
Virginia: Immediately I am jealous of all these people.
Ophelia: [00:33:00] We are all really, really lucky. I hope that everyone gets an experience like that someday where they’re like, you know, I am never going to become an expert in this thing, but I’m going to show up and be as excited as everyone else is.
Stella: I think there’s also just so much joy in collectively being together and spending time learning something or doing something that is not for a product. Yeah. There’s no pressure there to excel or succeed. That’s not what the benchmarks are, right? It’s spending time together.
It’s, you know, combating loneliness.
Ophelia: Yeah. Combating loneliness, I think, is a big part of it.
Stella: And I think we build ties through joy. That’s something that I’ve discovered over the years is that in community building spaces, if all you’re focused on is this intentional community building sometimes you lose sight of the fact that we get along best when we’re having fun together.[00:34:00]
Ophelia: Yeah. Not to bring everything back to toddlers, but. What I’m learning is that, like, that works with kids too, that like, oftentimes our kiddos are like, no, thank you to the adults who are laser focused on them and tend to get along pretty well with the ones who are about their own thing and let the toddler have their own space and parallel play or just enjoy each other’s company at their own pace.
Virginia: So one thing that struck me while you were talking about, even from the very beginning about community and finding that your neighbors or the people in your community are much kinder than you thought that they would be. And I was just thinking about how much the terrain and weather might play a part into it, right?
Like you have to be communal. If There’s so much snow. Or you have to be communal when the outside [00:35:00] is out to get you. What are you doing living there? Ophelia, run away. I’m just teasing you know, but like, if you depend on each other for mutual survival, it pays to be neighborly. I’m not saying that they’re only.
Kind to be self serving but I mean it serves a purpose. You are neighborly because at some base level, you don’t want, even how much you may disagree with them ideologically, you perhaps don’t actually want them to die or like be frozen. So even though that neighbor, that friend was like, you should get a gun.
I understand that that’s like sort of like, but you know, but we could also see like the goodness of it.
Stella: There was such a desire to keep to keep O and Hayli safe, right?
Yeah.
Ophelia: Yeah. Yeah. His intentions peaked through.
Virginia: Has living in Maine and in the area you are in made you feel more or less Asian? Or like same?
Stella: What a question.
Ophelia: That is a wild [00:36:00] question. I, I used to live in Portland, which is our big city. And gosh, Virginia, I really don’t know.
Stella: I mean, I guess, how do you quantify Asianness though?
Virginia: No, I guess I mean, it’s like when you’re hyper aware, because Stella and I have, have talked before about how she often feels very like you, obviously you can’t change the way you look, people looking at you, oh, you’re Asian or you’re a woman, right?
So she feels like she sticks out. Whereas I feel like, oh, but I’m an Asian mom. So I feel invisible because we’re just background, like moms are background and I almost always have a kid with me and then Asians are almost always background because we’re like the help or servers.
So, but when I’m in extremely white areas, or like whenever I go to the South, all of a sudden I feel hyper aware that I’m Asian, so I almost never think about being Asian, unless if I’m somewhere where I feel like my safety might be [00:37:00] threatened. I also think about it when I go back to Asia, because all of a sudden everyone looks like me, even though a lot of people look like me where I live.
Because it’s 60 percent Indian and 40 percent Chinese. So it’s like, alright, everyone’s Asian. But then I feel invisible in a different way. Like Oh, I’m just the norm here. But then I feel like my American ness stick out, you know? So that’s, that’s what I mean.
Like, do you. Maybe it, maybe it doesn’t, you don’t notice it at all. Like you’re just, you just feel the same in both places. So then, or.
Ophelia: I think that if I’m hearing you right, your question is also about the awareness of your Asianness and I think that I was much more aware of my Asianness when I first moved to Maine.
And for a few years afterward, and that also coincided with Trump’s election, so it’s hard to say exactly what led to what, but I definitely felt like I had to defend [00:38:00] myself more in large part because of my Asianness and
Virginia: I don’t know that I feel that to that degree anymore, perhaps because I feel more comfortable with where I live for better or worse, like I’ve adopted some of the habits of the locale, like, I never wear hard pants anymore,
Wait, what’s a hard pant? Like denim?
Ophelia: Mm hmm. Or like a chino. Because it’s cold?
You know, it’s really good against cold, but it’s also we’ve got this running joke, I guess, about like, oh, these are my These are my church sweatpants and these are my home sweatpants. And like that’s something that I fully embrace about.
Stella: I would live in sweatpants. Yeah. I would live in sweatpants.
Ophelia: Yeah. One time my kid said to me when I was wearing jeans. Mu’um, which is how she says mommy. I was like, you know, [00:39:00] mommy is not the only one who wears hard pants. Like once in a while, mama wears hard pants. But she immediately associated non sweatpant pants with like the other parent, not me. I think that my awareness has also perhaps gone down because my parents live here.
And we created another Asian in this house, so like, the Asianness of this neighborhood has increased like a really, a really aggressive amount.
Stella: I mean, you single handedly like tripled the,
Virginia: quadrupled, quadrupled, four times.
Ophelia: Yes, yes. There are nine households, and now two of them are occupied by Chinese people.
So, you know, like I’m speaking more Chinese than I ever have in my life. Speaking to this kid in Chinese only in Mandarin only means that level of awareness has kind of like melted into the cement mix instead of feeling [00:40:00] like it’s just this filmy layer on top. Yeah, maybe it’s just better integrated.
Stella: Yeah, I was going to say, you’ve also integrated into the community, which I think allows us sometimes to integrate ourselves a little better too, right? Like internally. Yeah. The pieces of us don’t feel so disparate anymore.
Ophelia: Mm hmm. I’m really grateful, as you say that, to realize like, I guess in that I didn’t lose too much of the parts of myself that were important to me.
And I would have mistaken that process of integrating into a community with losing something of myself, but you’re right. Like it has been a process that has given me more peace and also given me some assurance that the other people in my life who might also stick out are gonna be okay here, too Thanks
Stella: You’re welcome
Virginia: Okay, so I had [00:41:00] asked if, so everyone, Ophelia is an amazing poet.
Stella: Yes. Correct. Just stunning.
Virginia: And then she always pairs her poetry with like really cool, cool is the wrong word, but like very spot on images. And then she’s really good at describing them in the alt images, which I find very admirable.
Could you read us a poem?
Ophelia: Okay, this one is a poem about crows.
Stella: I love crows.
Ophelia: They’re so lovable. Yes,
Virginia: they are. We love corvids.
Ophelia: Yes. They could love you too.
Stella: Big fans of Corvids.
Virginia: They could.
Stella: Magpies, ravens.
Ophelia: Corvid nation. All right.
So when I start I’m talking about Z. The little one crawls out onto the porch. Ah, ah, ah, staccato. Mimicking the call she heard [00:42:00] from the maple at the edge of the woods. I say it too, both of us on all fours under the sun. One of us knows a snowstorm is coming, but she reminds me wordlessly, to splay my fingers on the warm ground today.
Ah, ah, ah, I say, wu ya, which is a crow, which she already knows from watching them, and which I didn’t need to say. A family of wu ya, four of them. Ah, ah, ah, alas, all right, alight. All things for which she has no language, which is to say, she has language that I cannot understand. The family of wu ya has lived here as long as we have.
Maybe longer. The maple tree beneath their feet has been here a hundred years. All of us silenced, despite [00:43:00] our many languages, into awe, awe, awe.
Stella: I love it.
Virginia: I love it.
Ophelia: Thank you.
Stella: Thank you for sharing it.
Ophelia: It’s a pleasure.
Virginia: It’s just so descriptive and vivid. And of course I have a special soft spot for anything that uses Chinese in particular. Mandarin in particular.
Stella: But what a joy it must be to watch Z. learn from the land in a way that, if you grow up, I mean , the city has rhythms, too, neighborhoods have rhythms, but I think there is something really special about recognizing that living creatures are not just humans, right?
Ophelia: Hmm, yeah. The term that I often hear in the eco spiritual world right now is the more than human creation, which is so long and bulky, but for the moment, it seems descriptive enough [00:44:00] that there’s us and we are just one facet of creation. That’s not just like a woo woo thought. That’s just observable fact.
And. Sometimes we are also the really beautiful invasive species and that doesn’t make us deserving of death. We still get to have life in a contained and disciplined way. But, yeah, we have to figure out how to be in relationship with, with our other creation.
Virginia: What a lovely circle back. I love it when things circle back nicely. This is what we get for having a poet as a guest.
Stella: Right?
Yay!
Incredible.
So, Ophelia, if people wanted to be able to follow more of your work or see what you’re up to, where can they find you on the internet?
Ophelia: I would love to chat with people on Instagram. They can follow me there @OrdinaryOffering, all one [00:45:00] word and especially if you belong to a faith community and just want some prayers or liturgy to throw into the pot so you don’t have to write everything or just scout everything yourself, I’m happy to help provide some of that.
You can also find my website, opheliahukinney.com. Otherwise, find me on Facebook and I’m sure that there will be a way for us to become friends there.
Stella: Well, thank you so much for joining us, and we’re so glad that you’re able to be here. So Brazn Nation, this was the Brazn Azn podcast.
I was your co host, Stella.
Virginia: I’m your co host, Virginia.
Ophelia: And I’m Ophelia Hu Kinney, and it has been a delight to be with you both today.
Photo credit: Alyssa Soucy
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