> the boiling of an egg is heavy art
You're tuning into Cheers, a newsletter made by Tiffany Xie. This week: reparations for Aunt Jemima, yellow dragonfruit, COVID-19 yearbook spreads, and pandemic pods.
Hello friend,
> Listening to: Still Processing's episode on the distance between symbolic gestures and actual justice—"Reparations for Aunt Jemima."
> Making: cinnamon rolls, a true delight.
> Eating: yellow dragonfruit, and thinking about how my father bought a case from the Asian supermarket but the fruit is indigenous to the Americas, how food is so much about exchange, colonization, the opposition between foreign/native.
> Reads: Matthew Salesas' essay, "Fate and Desire in Asian America":
It starts when your daughter asks how she can stop hitting her baby brother, which she claims she doesn’t want to do. How can she control herself?
You tell her that there is no she separate from herself, that this is only a story people tell. You tell her that the story she is telling is that, if her brother annoys her, even though he is three and she is nine, justice is to take revenge. It isn’t easy to change that kind of story—a story about why and what you desire. You have to do more than just decide to want something else. Even if your daughter manages not to hit her brother, the story still has power.
> High school yearbook spreads on COVID-19. Given that a kid tested positive on the first day of school in Greenfield, I wonder what kind of yearbook spreads we'll have this year…
> I'm not going back to school this fall, and the step back is making me think about what school will look like. I'm reading about affluent parents setting up pandemic pods and how it makes an already unequal educational system even more unequal. I'm angry, but I'm not sure what I'm upset about, exactly—is it because my school district will have in-person classes while our neighboring district won't? Is it because I'm thinking about how the affluent parents here, my own included, can buy academic success through prep books and tutors and private classes? Is it because teachers aren't paid enough? Is it because I grew up with these privileges? Is it because I am complicit? I'm thinking how affluent parents engage in "opportunity hoarding" because they want their children to succeed in school. I'm thinking about the last paragraph of this op-ed:
All parents want the best for their children, but a key goal of public education is to create citizens with a vision of a common good. Upper-middle-class parents are understandably anxious about the futures of their children in an increasingly competitive global economy, but not every issue is worthy of a fight. Parents should think about what matters in the long run and reflect on whether their actions might be contributing to greater inequality. Affluent parents bring powerful resources to schools. They should also model thoughtful civic engagement that considers collective, rather than simply individual, benefits.
> Our new cat scratched me for the first time a couple days ago. The little hairline on my wrist feels like a rite of passage.
> "The Egg Boiler" by Gwendolyn Brooks:
Being you, you cut your poetry from wood.
The boiling of an egg is heavy art.
You come upon it as an artist should,
With rich-eyed passion, and with straining heart.
We fools, we cut our poems out of air.
Night color, wind soprano, and such stuff.
And sometimes weightlessness is much to bear.
You mock it, though, you name it Not Enough.
The egg, spooned gently to the avid pan,
And left the strick three minute, or the four,
Is your Enough and art for any man.
We fools give courteous ear––then cut some more,
Shaping a gorgeous Nothingness from cloud.
You watch us, eat your egg, and laugh aloud.
> Floating brought to you by Nadine Ijewere (h/t Something I Saw)
Cheers,
Tiffany