Mia Mingus and Stacey Milbern are two queer disabled diasporic Korean women of color in the process moving from the South to the Bay to create home and community with each other.
This tumblr documents their journey. For more info about Mia, visit her blog at chuseok
mia,
as we wait to hear if this place you visited yesterday will be our new home, i am dreaming of our place being home for community.
today is chuseok (korean harvest holiday). in some ways i have so much access to korean culture — i live with my halmoni, eat korean food often, and sit in a house surrounded by korean furniture and art. at the same time, it has been easy to be scooped up into whiteness, and then later folded into people of color community that didn’t reflect me. when i think of reaching out towards korean community, hesitancy bears down on my shoulders and fear tenses up in my neck. my mind goes back to memories of being kicked, pinched, prodded and teased, of feeling so far from ever being able to pull off korean womanhood, and of how my parents chose to leave korean spaces for white ones because the korean community didn’t know how to create room for their disabled daughter.
i am lost in what it means to have to leave community, specifically the way that disabled people of color are pushed out because our communities lack the resources to keep us and queer people of color because our families do not always accept us. after i left, i learned to make home happen in spaces that weren’t ever mine (that’s what you and i are: home-makers). i sat with tokenization, isolation, and white supremacy because at the end of the day, at least it resembled belonging.
even though i am scared shitless, i want to try wading into korean community. i think that’s why you mean so much to me: we can wade together. we dream a crip qtpoc community that includes us. we will do this work together with other korean/API community.
this what i propose for next year’s chuseok:
koreans friends coming to our house from as far as seattle. since most of us don’t know our family lines, we can make our alter to ancestors who have taught us resiliency. afterwards we can fold songpyeon rice cakes into pretty little crescents and steam them over pine needle. everyone will feel home.
stacey
