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 crip-made access
dear stacey,
today we took our first walk together in our neighborhood with my new homemade seat belt. You, in your power wheelchair and me, sitting sideways on your lap. My homemade seat belt made out of an unusable sling for the lift, rolled and fitted around me, and looped to your chair to hold me tight to you. it meant so much to me.
I don’t usually get to take walks and often only see neighborhoods from a moving car, often feeling outside of them. And if I am walking, I am usually staring at the ground in front of me, preparing for my next step(s). When I walk, I take the shortest distance from point A to point B and don’t stray. I plan out where I will stop to rest and catch my breath along the way. I think about slight inclines and declines the way one might think of hills. My focus is on the ground and how slippery, wet, movable (think sand, dirt or gravel), smooth, rough, squishy it is. I think about how any of it would feel if I were to fall down, which I do all the time. I am focused on balance and breath and the instinctual physics of moving my body through space. I don’t feel how hard my toes grip and how tense my back and shoulders get until after I am seated and they finally begin to thaw into a more relaxed state. I am thinking about how I am being read by those around me, always conscious of the threat of violence to people who are read as “disabled women of color.”
walking is always about purpose, never about enjoyment.
It feels so good to move together, since whenever we have to go somewhere we usually have to travel separately. You can use mass transit, but it is not accessible to me. I can use a private car, but it is not accessible to you. We rarely get to move together.
But today, it was so lovely to ride down the sidewalk and streets with you, getting to take my time looking at houses and stores and flowers and trees. You showed me your route home from the BART station to our house. I got to see pieces of our neighborhood for the first time today that I had always heard about, but never been able to see/experience. It feels completely different to be on the streets and to be with another crip, not having to navigate access with an able bodied person. To feel the luxury and privilege of being impulsive and frivolous, if we see something that catches our eye, we can go and explore it. I can look around; I can see where I am.
we shared access, created it, mocked it, flipped it on its head, made it our own. crip-made access. we watched people we passed stare long and hard at us. We were like our own goddamn parade.
we move together…with love,
mia
(image above: me sitting sideways with my legs crossed on stacey’s lap (she is in her power chair) with the rolled up sling wrapped around me.)
