Letters to Past and Future Selves is a collaborative zine created by the Lavender Phoenix community in honor of Trans Day of Remembrance 2022; through creative submissions including collage, illustration, poetry, playlists, and other offerings, our community sat in vulnerability to share our stories and lived experiences of being Trans and API. In creating this zine,
On the eve of my 18th birthday, in the starting-to-become-summer month of May of 1980, I got to sleep in the arms of my boyfriend Danny. Having spent an overnight with him, in a friends spare bedroom, making love (before AIDS), away from the prying eyes of our families and the ‘fag bashing’ we feared,
Growing up, I could not imagine anyone accepting me for my queer and trans identities. I viewed these parts of myself as a burden that I had to carry, something ugly and unlovable. Believing that I could never show my queerness to anyone, I hid and silenced myself. In order to keep myself safe, I
I grew up in a traditional Hmong household that practiced under a patriarchal system with gendered roles and a religious belief of Shamanism, the belief that spirits are intertwined with our physical reality. These traditions taught me that queer Hmong individuals do not have a place in our community because we do not fit the
I’m excited and proud to announce that we are changing our name. From today onwards, we will be known as Lavender Phoenix.
“What is healing?” is the question I have been asking APIENC’s Core Committee ever since we established Healing Justice as a key pillar of our new Theory of Change. In our movements, healing is all the buzz, yet what does that actually look like in community? The term “Healing Justice” also has gained attention, but
Dear APIENC Community, I started organizing around my identity as a queer kānaka maoli from a place of great anger. I was angry that my lāhui lived in such dire poverty in our own homeland. I was angry that the university I attended actively contributed to the desecration of our ‘āina. I was angry that
