Mama Says Project / Asian Feminist Project Aotearoa (AFPA)

a late introduction, i was unsure of taking part in a project that will inevitably bring up many different emotions when considering the prompts 🫢 but i love to be vulnerable and i love @chinesegoth mahi so here i am 🤲🏼🫡🌼 prompt one to @mamasays.project and the rest will come soon 🫶🏼 the base image of this is a portrait taken not long after i was born 👶🏻 my mum is always embracing me in photos

My mum loves telling me stories from her childhood, they’ve become vivid scenes in my memory. i think my mum has been a dreamer since she was young, always getting distracted by big plans and getting lost in her imagination. there was a time when she followed some neighbourhood kids down to a creek, playing with them, eventually losing track of time. being so young, she couldn’t find her way back home. instead she wandered down to a local bbq shop where the owners gave her snacks to distract her. my mum was simply excited to have free kai. it wasn’t until she heard my grandmas voice crying out for her that she realised just how scared she was.another story she’s told numerous times was the time she almost ended up at the 1980 gwangju uprising which resulted in the massacre of civilians and young students who were protesting for democracy.

my mum continues dreaming; she is always giving me new ideas for how i could further my art, my career, and my life. every other month, she conjures up a new possible business venture she could create.my mum has given me her propensity to dream. i think had we met as little girls, we’d be best friends.

slide 1: mum under grandmas magnolia tree in the summer; one of the fondest memories from her childhood
slide 2: mum and grandma reuniting
slide 3: mum used to spend her tithe on street vendors selling 달고나/뽑기, a baking soda and sugar concoction that’s pressed with a shape. if she got the shape without any cracks she’d get another free one. but most of the time she got caught by grandma
slide 4: mum narrowly missing the gwangju protest
slide 5: i have barely any photos of mum before she had kids. one photo i remember is from her wedding day. she tells me she was daydreaming too much and didn’t study hard enough
slide 6: mum had her first kid when she was 24
slide 7: imagined me n mum under grandmas magnolia tree.

My mum loves telling me stories from her childhood, they’ve become vivid scenes in my memory. i think my mum has been a dreamer since she was young, always getting distracted by big plans and getting lost in her imagination. there was a time when she followed some neighbourhood kids down to a creek, playing with them, eventually losing track of time. being so young, she couldn’t find her way back home. instead she wandered down to a local bbq shop where the owners gave her snacks to distract her. my mum was simply excited to have free kai. it wasn’t until she heard my grandmas voice crying out for her that she realised just how scared she was.another story she’s told numerous times was the time she almost ended up at the 1980 gwangju uprising which resulted in the massacre of civilians and young students who were protesting for democracy.

my mum continues dreaming; she is always giving me new ideas for how i could further my art, my career, and my life. every other month, she conjures up a new possible business venture she could create.my mum has given me her propensity to dream. i think had we met as little girls, we’d be best friends.

slide 1: mum under grandmas magnolia tree in the summer; one of the fondest memories from her childhood
slide 2: mum and grandma reuniting
slide 3: mum used to spend her tithe on street vendors selling 달고나/뽑기, a baking soda and sugar concoction that’s pressed with a shape. if she got the shape without any cracks she’d get another free one. but most of the time she got caught by grandma
slide 4: mum narrowly missing the gwangju protest
slide 5: i have barely any photos of mum before she had kids. one photo i remember is from her wedding day. she tells me she was daydreaming too much and didn’t study hard enough
slide 6: mum had her first kid when she was 24
slide 7: imagined me n mum under grandmas magnolia tree.

Cooking as Resistance

i’ve been so bad with cooking for myself lately; ingredients seem just as expensive as buying take out. but one thing i’ve been doing consistently is going to the local markets for produce with my og @gabbbylowe ❤️‍🔥🫡✨ i’ve been feeling the autumnal vibes by eating persimmons. i learned from my mum, to leave them until they’ve ripened into an almost jelly like stage, and dig in to them like natures fruit cup.

she would say, “it becomes medicine”; one of my favourite lines from her and basically all asian aunties is “oh it’s so good, not too sweet” to anything that’s a dessert.

from what she’d tell us, mothers would have to cook endlessly. i tried making a bunch of banchan myself once and it was a huge ordeal i was exhausted and i think i only managed to prepare like four side dishes. my mum would always say be careful what man you marry, be careful with who becomes your MIL; they can make your life an endless cycle of cooking and cleaning for the man.

there was a time when we were younger, and us kids being picky eaters, she tried so hard to make sure we didn’t waste anything. she ended up eating all the leftovers and to this day, she tells me never to eat more than you need to.

eat slowly, chew well, and be healthy.

i’ve been thinking a lot of how my upbringing was looked through a lens of “tiger mother and her model minority children”. all our successes and failures attributed to stereotypes and misconceptions. it genuinely made me want to try LESS and i would joke about how i didn’t take “the asian 5” subjects during high school, that somehow this was groundbreaking. the way these comments affected how i presented myself, the way i tried to assimilate into western nz culture through anti intellectualism is so sad and stupid when i think about it now. i remember the publications, the racist illustrations like the backdrop of this collage (done by white men ofc), supposedly depicting how it feels and looks to be a child of a tiger mum.it doesn’t surprise me that the global west misunderstands the prevalence of the “tiger parenting”. it was a kind of survival mechanism.my mum just wanted to make sure i was happy, healthy, and safe. i don’t have to agree, you don’t have to agree, but at least get your information correct.

collage contains:
times article released 2011
new yorker illustration from 2012
reply1988 kdrama
pachinko tv series
everything everywhere all at once film