Issue 3 Low Res

July-October 2010
Issue No. 3
Youth Speaks Hawaii!

The Lit Issue
Luminous Prose & Poetry:

Harmonie Bettenhausen
Suzanne Farrell Smith
Richard Hartshorn
Brenda Kwon
Caitlin Leffel
Zoe Matayoshi
Mindy Nettifee
Jocelyn Ng
Anjoli Roy
Lyz Soto
Alexa Yokooji
& More!
One on One with

Lynne Hanzawa-O'Neill
Hawaii-Born Uber-Awesome Fashion
Show Producer Holds onto Her Roots
in the Big Apple
Local Teens Use

Spoken Word
to Inspire
Paper bags never

looked so good
[from the contributing editor]
have a new favorite book: The Paper

Bag Princess by Robert Munch. Its only
42 sentences long and has as many
pages with illustrations as it does with
words. What the book lacks in character
development, it makes up in colorful
pictures and a damn good storyline.
The same thing that makes me love
The Paper Bag Princess is why I believe in
Hawaii Womens Journal.
If you dont happen to have keiki to read
to or work at a nonprofit that promotes
reading aloud (as I do), then let me bring
you up to snuff with a plot summary.
Princess Elizabeth is a smart, beautiful
girl engaged to Prince Ronald. He looks
like a jerk, huge jewels hanging around
his neck and nose in the air, as if
Elizabeth smells. She, on the other
hand, looks quite lovely, with a smile
on her lips and hearts floating in the
air around her.
Then a dragon comes, burns
everything, smashes the castle, and
takes off with Ronald. Elizabeth,
however, is a survivor. She finds a
paper bag and puts it on without
complaint because she has
somehow escaped the narcissism
and materialism that can come with,
well, being a princess. And she sets
off to rescue her fianc.
She uses her brains to outwit the
dragon, tricking him into using all of his
energy to prove how badass he is. He falls
asleep so soundly that shes able to walk
right over him to his cavern lair, where she
opens the door to rescue dear Ronald.
But rather than fall to his knees in
gratitude, he points at her with a look
of disdain and says: Elizabeth, you are
a mess! You smell like ashes, your hair is
all tangled, and you are wearing a dirty
old paper bag. Come back when youre
dressed like a real princess.
Elizabeth tells him to shove it and skips
off solo into the sunsetfrizzy hair, beatup paper bag, and alltoward her own
happily ever after.
This is not how most fairy tales end.
Just ask any five-year-old if happily ever

after involves a paper bag (and a plain
brown one at that) and princelessness.
Im going somewhere with this. Its that
HWJ is my post-Ronald Elizabeth.
Hawaii Womens Journal takes us
outside of the suffocating castle and
arranged marriages that we sometimes
forget exist (in grown-up terms: a
capitalistic society that supports
restrictive gender roles) by creating
an alternative platform. Minus firebreathing, castle-smashing, and death
by dragon. It challenges us to rethink our
wardrobe (grown-up words: surroundings
and lifestyle choices) and reconsider how
were using our best assets. If Princess
How do we give society a makeover?

We publish amazing fiction and
nonfiction pieces that confront body
image and encourage us to heal ourselves
(both literally and figuratively), because
society can be a powerful anti-Neosporin.
We celebrate movements that demand
alternative opportunities for style and
lifestyle. In this issue, we reclaim PMS,
fashion, and the myriad complications and
blessings of being a woman. All together,
our voices are redefining our room, the
world.
Not to mention HWJ keeps it real for
post-castle-and-ballgown Elizabethsjust
because we say no to forced gender roles
doesnt mean we dont love an innovative
fashion find, good manners, or tasty
home-cooked risotto.
As for you, dear readers?
Youre my princesses-gone-rogue,
too. (Men, its okIm not trying
to emasculate you. Embrace your
inner Elizabeth.) You dont just
wear your paper bag, you own
ityour red ribbon, your protest
sign, your TOMS shoesto raise
awareness in a world wearing
blinders the size of castle walls.
You confront inequalities and
photo courtesy of Anna Harmon
crises with volunteerism, vegan
Elizabeth didnt face that dragon, her cafs, works of art, and grassroots
brilliance would have gone untapped, movements, to name a few. You are
and shed still be sitting idly, fluttering her the seeds and the soil of community
eyelashes every time dear Ronald walked revolutions, including the platform HWJ
strives to be.
by.
Im proud of you. Im proud of our
When you face your metaphorical
fire-breathing dragon, you may lose your writers and artists of all ages, who are
pretty pink dress. But why are you in that turning their conflicts and insights into
dress to start with; whats wrong with a stunning stories, poems, columns,
paper bag? Enter, again: HWJ. This issue, artworks, and exposs. Which I now,
multiple queries from our writers revealed without further ado, will let you enjoy.
a universal need to address appearance
Hawaii Women's Journal: Where the
and its effect on our opinions, lifestyles,
and interactions. Lets face it, the way paper bag princess found her happily ever
we see each other matters; its a flawed, after. v
yet ubiquitous, part of our society that
Anna Harmon, Contributing Editor
is exploited and commoditized. Weight,
makeup, hair, muscles, clothes: we see
Hawaii Women's Journal
it, they sell it.
Our Room Is the World

July-October 2010
Issue No. 3
Page 11
FASHION THIS
Lynne
Hanzawa-O'Neill:
From the
Pineapple to
the Big Apple
poetry & prose
features
11
To Be Continued:
An Interview with Lynne Hanzawa-ONeill on

Not Being Fabulous and That Margaret Cho
Episode on Sex and the City
21
23
Ultraviolet
BY MINDY NETTIFEE
24
Christine
Because the Next Generation

Can Speak for Itself
28
Black, White, and Red
Gratuitous Love
from the Editor
39
A Second Look
at Providence
BY CAITLIN LEFFEL
BY MELISSA MATSUBARA
BY KRISTA SHERER
photo by Ryan Matsumoto
29
BY JENNIFER MELEANA HEE
BY JOCELYN NG
BY SUZANNE FARRELL SMITH
How to Sell Your Body

Parts ...and Still Respect
Yourself in the Morning
BY JENNIFER MELEANA HEE
34
35
Translation IX
BY LYZ SOTO
The Risk It Takes

to Blossom
BY MAYUMI SHIMOSE POE
Hawaii Womens Journal | 2
42
Here's Where It Takes

a Turn
BY HARMONIE BETTENHAUSEN
43
Flight
45
Walls
47
Sorry, Dani
BY BRENDA KWON
BY ANJOLI ROY
BY RICHARD HARTSHORN
contents
columns
5
The Prompt
The Wellness Manifesto
10
Kitchen Medicine
14
Surfacing
15
The Dame Game
17
The Domestic Diva
25
Balm for Being
Toxins and Chemicals:

That's What Pretty Girls Are Made Of?
Part One
BY IVY CASTELLANOS
Practical Acupressure
BY LORELLE SAXENA
Fashion Showdown
BY STACEY MAKIYA
Chasing the Zen

BY JENNICA GOO
Don't Rush the Risotto

BY JENNIFER DAWN ROGERS
When Being a "Good" Girl Is Bad: Identifying

and Recovering from Good Girlism
BY SUZY ALLEGRA
27
Nonprofit Corner
41
The Balancing Act
44
Ms. deMeaners
details
What Should I Wear? The Bella Project

BY ALI STEWART-ITO
Women with Pzazz

BY THERESA FALK
Fembodiment
53
Writers' Corner
From the
Contributing Editor
Contributors
young voices
RSVP- Huh?
A Refresher Course in RSVP Etiquette
BY von HOTTIE
51
19
Ponds of Jupiter
BY ZOE MATAYOSHI,
Our Period: Burden or Blessing?

BY SHINAN BARCLAY
20
Five Minutes with Kaui Hart Hemmings

BY MAYUMI SHIMOSE POE
AGE 8
My Life Falling Apart!
BY ALEXA YOKOOJI,
AGE 15
Cover & Youth Speaks photos by Ryan

Mat
sumoto
HOW TO REACH
HAWAII WOMEN'S JOURNAL
Our Room Is the World

PUBLISHER
EDITOR-IN-CHIEF
Jennifer Meleana Hee
MANAGING EDITOR
Mayumi Shimose Poe
CONTRIBUTING EDITOR
ART DIRECTOR & LAYOUT
EDITORIAL
editor@hawaiiwomensjournal.com
Anna Harmon
SUBMISSIONS
submissions@hawaiiwomensjournal.com
Kathryn Xian
EDITORIAL ASSISTANT
Andrea Devon Bertoli
PROOFREADER
PHOTOGRAPHERS
HAWAII WOMEN'S JOURNAL

a project of the Safe Zone Foundation 501(c)3
a Hawaii-based nonprofit organization
Kathryn Xian
ADVERTISING
ads@hawaiiwomensjournal.com
GENERAL INQUIRY
info@hawaiiwomensjournal.com
Rita Coury, Ryan Matsumoto,

Bianca Mills, Raquel Rhoads,
Lucas Stoffel, and Kathryn Xian
ARTISTS & ILLUSTRATORS
Suzy Allegra, Alice Mizrachi,

Dave Poe, and Kathryn Xian
CONTRIBUTING WRITERS
Suzy Allegra
Page 21
Shinan Barclay
Ivy Castellanos
Jennica Goo
Anna Harmon
Richard Hartshorn
Brenda Kwon
Caitlin Leffel
Stacey Makiya
Zoe Matayoshi
Melissa Matsubara
Mindy Nettifee
Jocelyn Ng
Jennifer Dawn Rogers
Lorelle Saxena
Krista Sherer
Mayumi Shimose Poe
Lyz Soto
Ali Stewart-Ito
e
u
s
s
I
t
i
L
e
th
von Hottie
Alexa Yokooji
MAILING ADDRESS
Hawaii Women's Journal
c/o Safe Zone Foundation
4348 Waialae Avenue #248
Honolulu, Hawaii 96816
DISCLAIMER
The Safe Zone Foundation (SZF) dba Hawaii
Womens Journal (HWJ), its Publisher, and
Editors cannot be held responsible for errors
or consequences arising from the use of
information contained herein; the views and
opinions expressed do not necessarily reflect
those of the SZF, HWJ, Publisher, and Editors,
neither does the publication of advertisements
constitute any endorsement by HWJ, Publisher,
and Editors of the products advertised.
Theresa Falk
Anjoli Roy
WEB
www.hawaiiwomensjournal.com
www.facebook.com/hiwomensjournal
www.twitter.com/hiwomensjournal
www.change.org/safezone
[the prompt]
THE
PROMPT
IT'S ALL ABOUT YOU
THEPROMPT@HAWAIIWOMENSJOURNAL.COM
We at HWJ realize that we have amazing resources. My favorite cure for a late night is lots of ice water and mac and
And were not talking about minerals, coconut trees, or hours in
the day. Were talking about the women and men all over the
country writing for and reading this magazine who are brilliant,
creative, thoughtful, and determined.
cheese, although this is all ancient history for me now. Months

ago, I began rising at dawn to get to the farm, and I dont
remember the last time I was awake past 10 p.m.!
Andrea, Editorial Assistant
We need your help to make this publication even better.
The night: Waitiki 7 plays NYC. (Note: Tiki cocktails do not equal
regular cocktails; theres extra hoo-doo voo-doo up in there.) The
cure: 7 a.m., waking to carousel operated by a psycho, DO NOT
GET UP. Drink quart of water; take three Advil; crash. 10 a.m., eat
three bread slices; crash. 1 p.m., down mug of yesterdays coffee.
Head toward nearest deli for greasy, delicious croissant wich of
bacon, egg, and cheese. And livebarely.
Mayumi, Managing Editor
So, every issue, were going to feature you. Thats right: Give us
your opinions. Tickle our funny bones. Set your metaphorical bras
(or liberated clothing item of choice) on fire with words. Because
youre the shit, and your forces combined are probably enough to
take over the worldor at least determine a fail-proof hangover
cure. Well start small. For the next issue, we want to know:
What is your must-have morning-after cure for a late night?
(Feel free to include the cause of one such late nightwere
curious little buggers.)
HWJ staff says:
Guacamole toast. Simple and hydrating, sometimes I start to
crave the cold and crispy guacamole + toast combo before Ive
even left the party. A rough chop of ripe avocado, tomato, and red
onion; squeeze of lemon or lime juice; minced cilantro and garlic;
and salt and pepper all frantically mixed together and lathered on
toast makes my queasy belly do a little happy dance instead of a
little vomit dance.
Jenn, Editor-in-Chief
Im always on the hunt for something bready after late nights;
2 a.m., 3 a.m., doesnt matter. I need a bready fix, and it usually
prevents a hangover from ever hitting me the next morning. My
latest: naan, brushed with olive oil, sprinkled with salt and fresh
basil, warmed in a grill pan. How I managed to chop basil in that
state is beyond me, but the naan worked!
Suzanne, Proofreader
Sleep, sleep, and more sleep. However, thats not usually an

option on weekdays, so the morning after the Fat Freddys Drop
concert (great concert, bad day of the week), I gave a 7-Eleven
slurpee a try. And I survived.
Anna, Contributing Editor
Okay, being that Im a proactive/prevention-minded smurf and a
total lightweight (yes, I get the Asian Flush, too), I take two aspirin
and drink one very large glass of water before I pass out. This was
taught to me by a Greek alcoholic named Left. True story. If,
for some reason, I pass out before I can do this, I wake the next
morning, eat pho, and then fall asleep on my shiatsu machine.
Kathy, Publisher
Submit your answer by direct messaging us on Twitter,
tweeting your response to @hiwomensjournal, posting
it on our Facebook wall, or shooting a quick email to:
theprompt@hawaiiwomensjournal.com
Your response may be edited to fit space restrictions. Aim
for 75 words or less. We will use your first name or Twitter
username. Should we choose to feature your response,
you may be contacted for more information. v
poetry
Ultraviolet
mandas recurring dream as a child was about a witch and a bathtub

and how hard it is, really, to strangle someone with your own bare hands.
Nevermind that the choked witch was her self, her own power.
She wouldnt know that for years, anyway, and until then she had to fall
asleep terrified each night and wake up sick with victory.
Until then she had work to do, to become beautiful and worthy.
We praise all who come out of hiding to claim their lease on the sun.
We reward pride in all its forms, throw parades for it so we can liberate
flowers from the straightjackets of our fists and call it Spring.
We dont talk enough about the difficulty of staying in the closet,
of disowning the only part of you that knows how to say your name.
What it takes to keep the struggling color of you quiet and reined,
when it was born to scream and riverit is an incredible feat of hesitation

to live with your hands around your own neck and smile about it.
What fierce love we have for our mothers and fathers
that we go to such lengths to return their protection.
Someday you will have your parade, Amanda, I have no doubt.
You will have streamers every color of every rainbow and the whole world
barely containing their pleasure at your pleasure, their shared joy
just zippered behind the warm closed ellipses of their lips.
But this one is for the little girl in the bathtub, preparing to fight.
I suspect she knows something about survival. You do what you have to,
live pinned beneath floorboards, crouched in attic closets.
You imagine every crumb is a wedding cake.
Guard closely what is most precious, and wait out the war.
Hold your breath when you hear another horn section warming up outside.
Shine the lock on the door. No one can tell you how to write your own story,
but I will tell you a secret: the witch cannot be killed.
We are so limited by the spectrum of what is visible.
How many things are dazzling in the dark? Are secretly thriving
just out of sight? v
photo courtesy of Mindy Nettifee
Mindy Nettifee
contributors
Suzy Allegra
Suzy is the author of several books

and articles. She is currently
shopping her most recent book,
Recovering Good Girl, to interested
agents. Suzy is also an artist who
creates vibrant art that hangs in
collections around the world, as
well as a professional speaker,
coach, and retreat leader. She lives on Maui and is an
adjunct faculty member at University of Hawaii Maui
College. email: suzy@suzyallegra.com
www.recoveringgoodgirl.com or www.suzyallegra.com
Shinan Barclay
Anna Harmon
A Rocky Mountain transplant living

in Honolulu, Anna is an AmeriCorps
VISTA (Volunteers in Service to
America) at Read To Me International
and Contributing Editor of the Hawaii
Womens Journal. She has written
for The Post and Courier in South
Carolina and for Colorado College
Media Relations and was lead copy editor for Colorado
Colleges student newspaper. She recently discovered
the joy of picture books after years of English-major
assignments. email: anna@hawaiiwomensjournal.com
Richard Hartshorn
Shinan Barclay, M.A., is coauthor of

forthcoming Moontime for Kory, a rite-ofpassage, mythic story about a girl and a
dolphin who share coming-of-age (www.
bit.ly/moontimeforkory/fanpage). Her
memoirs have appeared in numerous
anthologies, recently: Grandmothers
Necklace and Chicken Soup for the
Positive Thinker. www.facebook.com/shinanbarclay
blog: www.moontimeforkory.blogspot.com
Richard is a fiction writer whose work

has appeared in publications such as
GlassFire Anthology and The Spell
for Rain. He is also a screenwriter,
playwright, and occasional actor,
and is responsible for writing an
award-winning indie film. He holds
an MFA from Vermont College of
Fine Arts. email: billyramoneftw@gmail.com
Harmonie wrote her first poems

when she was very small, living in
the Chicago suburbs. Her muses
included
overhearing
fighting
neighbors, discovering her fathers
stash of cocaine, and finding her
mother passed-out drunk on the
floor. She excelled at high school,
not at grades, but at being a part of her own teenage
years and wishes that she could recapture that rapture.
blog: www.ednaseyes.blogspot.com
Jennifer Meleana Hee is a vegetarian

cook and baker at Kale's Natural
Foods, a blogger for Peace Corps
Worldwide dot com, and the Editorin-Chief of the Hawaii Womens
Journal. She has been published in
The Smart Set, Worldview Magazine,
and innov8. She is the proud owner
of the only Bulgarian street dog in Hawaii.
blog: www.jennmeleana.com
email: editor@hawaiiwomensjournal.com
photo: Ryan Matsumoto
Ivy Castellanos
Brenda Kwon
Ivy is a freelance writer, currently

shopping her first screenplay
and finishing two unruly, very
insubordinate novels. She has
worked in the health and wellness
field for over ten years and holds
a masters degree from the Johns
Hopkins School of Public Health in Health Education,
Behavioral Health, and Health Communications. email:
ikcastellanos@gmail.com
Brenda Kwon is a poet, writer, and

educator born and raised in Hawaii.
The author of Beyond Ke'eaumoku:
Koreans, Nationalism, and Local
Culture in Hawaii and co-editor of
YOBO: Korean American Writing in
Hawaii, her work has appeared in
various journals and anthologies
including Bamboo Ridge. She teaches Language Arts
at Honolulu Community College.
Theresa Falk
Caitlin Leffel
Theresa Falk is a writer, director,

performer, and educator. She
teaches English at Iolani School.
email: theresa.d.falk@gmail.com
blog: www.msmanifest.typepad.com
Suzanne Farrell Smith has essays

published or forthcoming in The
Writers Chronicle, Muse & Stone,
Hawaii Women's Journal, Tiny
Lights, and In the Fray. She is
finishing her first book, a hybrid
of psychology, philosophy, and
memoir that excavates lost memory. Suzanne worked
for over a decade with elementary school children as a
teacher and language arts specialist. She lives with her
husband in NYC, where she now freelances as a writer,
editor, and proofreader, and hosts a writing salon.
email: suzfarrellsmith@gmail.com
Jennica Goo
Jennica Goo is an electrical engineer

in the SF Bay Area. She is currently
training for the SF Nike Women's
Half Marathon 2010 to raise money
for the Leukemia and Lymphoma
Society. She will be racing in
memory of her cousin, Jeff.
www.pages.teamintraining.org/sj/nikesf10/TeamGooMorrow
email: jenjengoo@gmail.com
Caitlin Leffel is a writer, editor, and

co-author of The Best Things to Do
in New York: 1001 Ideas (2006), NYC:
An Owners Manual (2008), and Flair
(2010). She is a runner-up in the
Southeast Reviews 2010 Nonfiction
Contest and will be published in
the next issue of Drunken Boat.
Her writing has also appeared in publications such as
Blackbook, Daily Candy, and Mademoiselle.
Stacey Makiya
Stacey Makiya is currently a

freelance fashion journalist and
stylist. After graduating from the
University of Hawaii at Mnoa with
a bachelors degree in journalism,
she has held editorial positions at
Hawaii Parent Magazine, SMART
Magazine, and Chromatic Magazine.
email: skmakiya@gmail.com
Zoe Matayoshi
My name is Zoe Matayoshi, I am

eight years old, and I attend Wilson
Elementary School. I love to swim,
cook, and play with my little sister.
One day Id like to be a pediatrician.
Melissa Matsubara
Melissa Matsubara is a graduate

academic advisor at Hawaii Pacific
University, vested in promoting
international education and studyabroad opportunities. She is also a
board member for www.KanuHawaii.
org and enjoys converting karaoke
rooms into dance halls whenever Spearhead, Journey, or
Michael Jackson comes on. email: mmatsub@gmail.com
Ryan Matsumoto
Ryan Matsumoto is a photographer/

videographer from Honolulu. He
is openly biased towards Hawaii
Women who Journal and is
notorious for over-customizing
his three-sentence bio towards
whatever magazine hires him. He
now realizes that he only needs two
sentences. email: hawaiianryanrocks@gmail.com
Mindy Nettifee
Mindy is a Pushcart Prizenominated

writer and performance poet. She
has competed in five National Poetry
Slams, toured across America and
Europe, opened for the Cold War
Kids and Meiko, and is the author
of Sleepyhead Assassins. Mindy is
also the co-producer of Drums Inside Your Chest and
is executive director of the Write Now Poetry Society,
working to build audiences for poetry.
www.writenowpoets.org
www.drumsinsideyourchest.com
Jocelyn Ng
Jocelyn Ng is a two-time Youth

International Slam Poetry Champion
and represented Hawaii at the
National Poetry Slam competition
this summer. She will also be
attending the University of San
Francisco this coming fall to receive
her degree in English. email:
jocelynkn@hotmail.com
Jennifer Dawn Rogers
A graduate of Harvard University

and a former film development
executive, Jennifer cooks and
writes in Los Angeles. In 2009, she
launched her blog Domestic Divas,
which focuses on local, organic
cooking and wine reviews. She is
currently writing her first novel.
email: domesticdivasblog@gmail.com
blog: www.domesticdivasblog.com photo: Jeri Rogers
Anjoli Roy
Anjoli is a recipient of the Myrle Clark

Award for Creative Writing. Her work
has appeared in the West Fourth Street
Review, Brownstone Magazine, The
Big Stupid Review, and Diverse Voices
Quarterly and is forthcoming from
Hawaii Review and ExPatLit.com: A
Literary Review for Writers Abroad. She
is coeditor of the recently reimagined online journal, ViceVersa: Creative Works and Comments, and is also coediting
the winter 2010 issue of Mnoa: A Pacific Journal of
International Writing. blog: www.anjoliroy.wordpress.com
Lorelle Saxena
Lorelle Saxena, M.S., L.Ac, is a licensed

acupuncturist
and
practitioner
of traditional Chinese medicine.
Originally from Honolulu, Lorelle now
lives in Santa Rosa, California, where
she maintains a private practice. She
welcomes any questions at:
lorelle@thesaxenaclinic.com www.thesaxenaclinic.com
[the wellness manifesto]

Krista Sherer
Krista, when not stuck in the stacks

during the day as a library technician,
is quite the wild flower, rabble
rouser, and foxy modern-day sage.
A freelance writer from the island
of Maui, Sherer is passionate about
poetry and is a neurotic writer/
defender of goodness in training. She
tries to proceed with caution, when she can remember
to do so. email: kristasherer@msn.com
Mayumi Shimose Poe
Mayumi is Managing Editor of Hawaii

Womens Journal and American
Anthropologist by day, writer by
night. She has fiction, essays, and
poetry published in American
Anthropologist, Dark Phrases, Eternal
Portraits, Hawaii Womens Journal,
the Honolulu Advertiser, Hybolics, the
Phoenix, and Stepping Stones. She wrote the libretto
for Kaililauokekoa, a Hawaiian opera performed in
Honolulu in 2007. She currently lives in Brooklyn with
her husband. email: mayumi.shimose@gmail.com
blog: www.mayumishimosepoe.com
Lyz Soto
Lyz Soto is the Executive Director

of Youth Speaks Hawaii. She is a
performance poet, a student at
University of Hawaii at Mnoa, and
her chapbook Eulogies was recently
published by Tinfish Press.
Ali Stewart-Ito
Ali Stewart-Ito currently teaches

high school English and coaches at a
private school in Honolulu. Despite
a general state of rootlessness (shes
lived in three different countries and
several different states), Hawaii gives
her warmth in her belly. A lover of
travel, sport, and creating, Ali writes
to clear the utter mayhem that rocks her skull. email:
stewartito@gmail.com
von Hottie
Alexa Yokooji
von Hottie is performer, pinup,

and guru living in New York. You
can follow her many adventures at
vonhottie.com as well as on Twitter
@askvonhottie and Facebook. blogs:
www.vonoracle.blogspot.com,
www.vonhottie.tumblr.com
Alexa Yokooji is a fifteen-year-old

from Waimanalo, Oahu. She studies
writing at Naau under the tutelage
of Lois-Ann Yamanaka and Melvin
Spencer. She attends the University
Laboratory School. In her spare time,
she enjoys going to Waimanalo Beach,
where she cruises with friends, not
boys (yet). At home, she enjoys cooking Italian foods
like bacon-tomato pasta and garlic French bread. In
the future she hopes to attend her dream school, the
University of San Diego, and declare a major in nursing
specializing in working with children.
TOXINS AND CHEMICALS:

THAT'S WHAT PRETTY GIRLS ARE MADE OF?
PART ONE
y nine-year-old niece accompanied

me on a recent trip to the dollar
store. The moment the automated
glass doors parted, she made a beeline for
the makeup aisle and filled a basket with a
congeries of pretty princess paraphernalia:
iridescent tubes of glitter-infused lip gloss,
pastel pods of eye shimmer, and a pink bottle
of lotion, laced, of course, with princess
sparkles. I dutifully scanned each ingredient
label and discovered that within those
enchanting little plastic containers hid a
magical, whimsical concoction of glitter and
toxins. After a crash course on the dangers of
parabens and phthalates, I initiated my niece
into her first ever product boycott. She stared
at me pensively.
But what do you mean, its bad for me?
she asked. Cinderella uses it.
Cinderellas just a figurehead, baby.
But Aunty, she said ingenuously, it
makes her pretty.
*****
Perhaps its been a few decades since you
carried a tube of Bonne Bell lip balm in
your back pocket. But take a look at the
ingredient label on your favorite personal
care productthe retro red lipstick that
puts the pow in your pout or the deodorant
that allows you to complete your 6 p.m. spin
class without sneers and snickers from those
downwind of you. Chances are, unless you
have an advanced degree in chemistry or are
particularly skilled in decrypting cosmetics
ciphertext, the ingredients listed are as
foreign and confounding as a Coen Brothers
film. Beyond being impossible to pronounce
and printed in the smallest font known to
woman, evidence suggests that many of these
ingredients are hazardous to human health
and have been linked to cancer, birth defects,
and other health concerns. In fact, according
to the Environmental Working Group
(Houlihan 2007), a research and advocacy
nonprofit organization, more than one-third
of all personal care products contain at least
one ingredient linked to cancer. Sugar and
spice and everything nice? Not in this bottle.
Product Fetish
In the context of modern-day cultural
personas like the product whore and
by Ivy Castellanos
the metrosexual, grooming has become
a national pastime. We are a society of
compulsive primpers, obsessed with looking
good, staying young, and keeping fit, and
each obsession comes with an accompanying
product list. Even for those of us who simply
aim to be hygienic, theres a caveat: Many
commercial personal care products are like
amateur science experiments gone wrong
attractively packaged in sleek bottles and
kitschy containers, emblazoned with clever
marketing terms engineered to appeal to our
collective sense of imperfection and quick-fix
mentalities: ass-firming, tit-enhancing,
proven to increase fuckability. We assume
these products are innocuousafter all, they
line the shelves of our trusted and beloved
corporate storeswhen in fact, cosmetics
are among the least regulated products on
the market.
The issues of safety and health risk
transcend obscure antiaging serums and
cellulite creams. Were talking about
products of the everyday variety: toothpaste,
deodorant, sunscreen, soap. The question is,
how is this allowed to happen?
Lipstick, Lotion, and Loopholes
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration
(FDA) is the agency charged with oversight
of cosmetics, yet its legal authority over
cosmetics differs from other products it
regulates, such as drugs, biologics, and medical
devices. Cosmetic products and ingredients
are not subject to premarket approval (with
the exception of color additives), meaning
the FDA is essentially impotent in terms of
regulating what goes into cosmetic products
prior to consumer distribution. And we
thought Uncle Sam had our backs.
So, who is responsible for substantiating
the premarket safety of cosmetic ingredients?
The cosmetics firms themselves (dun-dundun!). The industry polices the safety of its
own products through a review panel called
the Cosmetic Ingredient Review, run and
funded by the industrys trade association,
the Personal Care Products Council (formerly
the Cosmetic, Toiletry, and Fragrance
Association). In its thirty-four-year history, the
CIR has evaluated only eleven percent of the
more than 10,500 ingredients in commonly
[the wellness manifesto]
used personal care products, according to

a report by Skin Deep, a cosmetics safety
database sponsored by the EWG.
The EWG states that more than 750
personal care products sold in the U.S. violate
industry safety standards or cosmetic safety
standards adhered to in other industrialized
countries, and ninety-eight percent of all
commercial products contain one or more
ingredients never publicly assessed for safety
(Houlihan 2007). Not surprising, as under
federal law, companies are allowed to put
virtually any ingredient they fancy into their
product. On its website, the FDA maintains:
The cosmetic firms are responsible for
substantiating the safety of their products and
ingredients before marketing (USFDA 2005).
Further, manufacturers are not required to
register their products with the FDA, nor is
the FDA allowed to mandate product recalls.
The result? Toxic materials are regularly added
into products that millions of Americansand
their childrenuse day after day, year after
year, throughout their lifetime, while our
government ensures the continuity of a flawed
and inherently risky system.
To Groom or Not to Groom
Personal care products encompass a wide
range of bath and body, shaving, cosmetic, and
baby products. The average American woman
uses approximately twelve different personal
care products per day, exposing herself to 168
independent ingredients. The average American
man? He uses approximately six products daily,
making contact with 85 unique ingredients
(Houlihan 2007). Think about the arsenal of
products you used just this morning.
Its ironic: companies spend billions of
dollars concocting magic formulations to
banish zits, defrizz hair, and erase under-eye
circles, while consumer safety is reviled as an
obstacle to innovation (and profit). Who needs
health when youre wrinkle free?
Pretty Poisons
Many noxious chemicals found in personal care
products are byproducts of the manufacturing
process, involving contaminated raw materials,
while others are added specifically to produce or
enhance an intended effect, such as increasing
the sudsiness of body wash or shampoo,
helping fragrance linger, or lengthening the

shelf life of a product.
The EWG reports that the average product
on the American retail shelf contains at least
one or a combination of the following: human
carcinogens
(cancer-causing
chemicals),
mutagens (substances that cause cell
mutations), teratogens (those that cause birth
defects), reproductive toxins (which are linked
to male and female infertility), developmental
toxins (those hazardous to an unborn child),
and numerous skin and sense-organ toxicants
(chemicals that may induce irritation and
allergic reactions).
Whether or not were aware of it, as long
as were using these products, were sleeping
with the enemy.
Safety Last
Small doses of harmful chemicals are unlikely to
cause adverse reactions. The issue, of course,
is bioaccumulation and the health effects
of regular, long-term exposure to multiple
chemicals. According to the EWG, scientists
have found cosmetics ingredients in human
tissues: phthalates in urine samples, parabens
in biopsy samples from breast tumors, and
synthetic fragrance components like musk
xylene in human fat. Unlike trace contaminants
found in food or drink on a part-per-million
scale, the chemicals in personal care products
are often base ingredients, meaning they can
constitute a significant portion of the product.
Chemicals stored in the body not only
increase individual body burden, studies
demonstrate they are also being passed from
mother to child through fluids, blood, and
breast milk. We must further consider the
environmental ramifications as these chemicals
are rinsed down drains, discarded in the trash,
and excreted in human waste where, research
shows, they are impacting wildlife and the
broader ecosystem.
Further research is clearly needed.
Nevertheless, the absence of conclusive data
should not be mistaken for a confirmation of
safety. The bottom line is this: chemicals linked
to cancer, birth defects, and compromised
health do not belong in any beauty product, at
any level.
Consumer Comeuppance
Perhaps granola isnt the image youd like
to project. Crystal deodorant and Patchouliinfused hemp shampoo peaked in the sixties, no
matter who tells you otherwise. Nevertheless,
its important to be conscious about whats in
the products you use.
As consumers are becoming more aware
of industry discrepancies and demanding
safer, more natural alternatives, a shift in the
attitudes of manufacturers is occurring. Some
companies have ceded to public pleas for
nontoxic products, responding with product
lines featuring safer alternatives. Over the
past few years, over 1,500 companies have
signed a pledge promoted by The Campaign
for Safe Cosmetics, a coalition of public health
and environmental groups, vowing not to use
chemicals linked to cancer or birth defects (see
The Campaign for Safe Cosmetics n.d.).
So whats an informed girl to do? Grow out
her pit hairs and abandon hygiene completely
while flipping off the cosmetics industry? Not
necessarily. Stay tuned for the next installment
of The Wellness Manifesto, as we continue
exposing the ugly truth behind big cosmetics,
while providing practical tips on how to be
a critical cosmetics consumer. We proudly
present the Pretty Poser Awards, honoring the
top ten most pernicious cosmetic ingredients
(i.e., ones you should avoid at all cost). The goal
is not to live product free but to be free of the
shit in the product. v
REFERENCES CITED
The Campaign for Safe Cosmetics
N.d. FDA Regulations. http://www.safecosmetics.org/section.
php?id=75, accessed May 28, 2010.
Houlihan, Jane
2007 EWG Research: Cosmetics with Banned and Unsafe
Ingredients. Environmental Working Group website, September.
http://www.ewg.org/unsafecosmetics, accessed July 29, 2010.
Environmental Working Group
N.d. Exposures Add UpSurvey Results. Environmental
Working Groups Skin Deep: Cosmetic Safety Database.
http://www.cosmeticsdatabase.com/research/exposures.php,
accessed August 19, 2008.
U.S. Food and Drug Administration (USFDA)
2005 FDA Authority over Cosmetics. USFDA,
March 3. http://www.fda.gov/Cosmetics/
GuidanceComplianceRegulatoryInformation/ucm074162.htm,
accessed May 28, 2010.
Practical Acupressure
[kitchen medicine]
by Lorelle Saxena
Disclaimer: This column is not intended

to replace the advice of a medical doctor.
With the exception of Nei Guan, these
acupressure prescriptions SHOULD NOT
be used by pregnant women.
n this edition of Kitchen Medicine,

youll be empowered to quickly and
easily address a variety of common
ailments using just your fingertips
and basic anatomy. Standing alone
or combined with the herbal
remedies from the last two
issues, these simple acupressure
techniques will have you
feeling better faster than overthe-counter medications, and
without the side effects that are
often worse than the ailments
themselves.
Well begin with one incredibly
useful point: He Gu, which
translates to Union Valley or
Joining Valley. To locate it, hold
out your hand as though you
were admiring a sparkly ring on
it, and then look at the knuckle
connecting your index finger
to your hand. With your other
hand, feel the thin bone, called
the second metacarpal bone,
that runs from this knuckle down
towards the wrist. Find the halfway point
of that bone, scoot over a smidge to the
thumb side of the bone, and press firmly
into the muscle there.
Another way to find this point is to
squeeze the index finger and the thumb
together, making the universal sign for
Stop! See that bulge that appears
just to the thumb side of the second
metacarpal bone? Thats your first
interosseus dorsalis muscle. The point
you want to press is in the belly of this
muscle, at the high point of the bulge.
If you have a headache, firmly press
He Gu on one hand with the thumb of
the other hand; it might feel a little bit

sore. Hold it for about twenty seconds,
then switch to the other hand. Next,
rub the areas on your head where you
feel the ache in small, gentle circles.
Repeat this series until your headache is
alleviated.
If you have sinus congestion, use this
acupressure series: First, press He Gu on
each hand for about twenty seconds.
Next, use the tips of your index fingers
to press along the lower corners of your

nose, about right where laugh lines
start, for twenty seconds. Then press
underneath your cheekbones, starting
from close to the nose and gradually
moving outwards. Do the same under
the bony ridge that you feel beneath
your eyebrows, starting from the center
of the face and moving outwards, and
then along the hairline, again moving
from the center to the sides of the face.
Finally, reach behind your head and find
the occipital ridgethat bony ridge
at the base of the skulland use your
thumbs to massage just below it in small
circles, moving in an outward direction.

For nausea of any origin, including
motion sickness, morning sickness, and
nerves, try pressing Nei Guan, which
translates to Inner Gate. To find it,
turn your hand so that the palm is facing
you. Make a fist. In the center of the
wrist, most people will see two parallel
tendons; if you don't see them, you
should be able to feel them just below
the skin. Nei Guan is between these two
tendons, about the width of two
fingers from the wrist crease, in
the direction of the elbow. (Ten
to twenty percent of people only
have one of the two tendonsif
you can only locate one, press
just to the pinky side of it.) This is
the point that seasickness bands
are designed to rest on. Press
Nei Guan gently for one minute
on each wrist, continuing until
the nausea dissipates.
If you feel like youre starting
to come down with a cold,
try massaging just below the
occipital ridge, as in the last
step of the sinus congestion
series. Then, use your fingertips
to lightly tap on your sternum,
which is the large, flat bone in
the upper center of your chest.
The thymus gland lies just beneath the
sternum, and the tapping is thought
to stimulate it into producing T-cells,
which are critical players in your line of
immune defense.
Lastly, heres a point to press when
youre getting drowsy and need to
stay alert in, say, a boring meeting or
long study session. Its located right
underneath your nose, about in the
center of the divot between your
nostrils and lips. Use a knuckle to press
firmly into this point, and you should
wake right up. Combine it with He Gu
for maximum effect. v
photos courtesy of Lorelle Saxena
To Be Continued:
[exclusive interview]
An Interview
with Lynne
Hanzawa-ONeill
on Not Being
Fabulous and
That Margaret Cho
Episode on Sex and
the City
by Melissa Matsubara
photos by Ryan Matsumoto
awaii Womens Journal doesnt

do diva. We feature successful
women in positions of power who
have earned diva status yet are so grounded
in spite of their success that they would be
comfortable at your familys dinner table.
You might expect diva behavior from
Lynne Hanzawa-ONeill, a New York
City fashion show producer. You expect
someone whose real-life persona has been
played by Margaret Cho on Sex and the
City to be too posh to sit down with HWJ
for an outdoor picnic during a windstorm.
You expect her to be like the antagonist of
The Devil Wears Prada, to catwalk all
over a new publication in Manolos from
2015 that Manolo Blahnik himself hasnt
even seennot thank you for the honor of
having her life and work featured. You do
not expect to meet a woman who may be
more down-to-earth than you, even though
major designers such as Betsey Johnson and
Calvin Klein chomp at the pav-diamond
bit to work with her.
Inspirational to fashionistas and

nonfashionistas alike for being a successful
woman who works and lives following
her heart, Lynne is at the center of major
fashion shows around the world yet hates
being the center of attention. Lynnes work
and life philosophy is the same: put others
first. Whether its taking a designers vision
and knowing she has the unique ability to
manifest it without breaking a sweat (read
about her Aloha Zen philosophy below),
or giving me a hand-crocheted Purell
caddy at our interview because she knew I
was about to leave for Vietnam, Lynne is
Hawaiian at heart. I try not to forget the
Aloha spirithow can I forget it? Im from
Hawaii, I take it wherever I am, she says.
Our interview was more like catching up
with an auntie, as she insisted on hearing
about my life before allowing us to focus on
her and turned two shades of red when I
alluded to needing to take her photograph.
Indeed, Lynne can best be described by
her own statement: Im all about not being
fabulous.
If only we could all be a little less fabulous,
discover a little more Aloha Zen, and live
our lives as vibrantly and thoughtfully as
Lynne Hanzawa-ONeill.
HWJ: How would you describe what you do?
LHO: I produce and direct fashion shows
[also known as calling the show]. I work
with designers on the concept of the
show; I review their collection with them
so I understand their vision and what they
want their message to be. Then I work
with production companies, lighting,
sound, stage, runway, if theres any kind
of AV [audio-visual], music consultants,
casting directors, and stylists. [A fashion
show] involves a lot of peoplethe show
is only eight or ten minutes, but it involves
a whole army of fashion people, all experts
at what they do. For [New York Citys]
Fashion Week, we start about two months
out, but it boils down to one week.
HWJ: Did you imagine that one day youd

be a fashion show producer in NYC?
LHO: No. Not at all, because I didnt even
know there was a job like this. I thought I
was going to be an occupational therapist
or a nurse. Id look at Vogue and fashion
magazines and was always interested in
[fashion]. I think I always dressed a little
bit differently. I didnt dress like anybody
else but I wasnt trying to dress differently,
I was just interested in other kinds of
looks. My grandmother and mother made
me outfitshow could I not [be interested
in fashion]? My mother was a seamstress,
my grandmother was a seamstress. I think
somehow I got all of that from them. My
mother, even now she looks at something
and says, look at how thats draped or
that seam is not straight, it doesnt hang
right. She always makes comments; I
think Ive absorbed it somehow.
I never knew what I was going to
be doingwhat Ive done and what I
do now. I didnt have a five-year plan; I
didnt understand what a five-year plan
was. I didnt know what Id want to do
tomorrow, how would I know what Id
want to do in five years? This kept me
open to possibilities. Thats the theme of
my whole lifedoing what I really love
to do. Ive made good decisions because
Ive followed my heart. Not blindly, you
know Ive always thought about it, but if
it felt right, I just did it.
HWJ: What are the best and worst parts
of your job?
LHO: It was never about me. With this
kind of business (or in life), its easy for
your ego to get in the way, and I prefer to
be behind the scenes. My job, its a service
business. Im there to make sure that the
designers collection is presented in the
way that they want, as far as collection
elements and all the details of it. Its also
really important that the process goes
smoothly. Designers have enough stress
about previewing their collection to the
press and world; they dont need to have
drama. I try to make it as dramaless
as possible. I take a very kind of Zen
approach to fashion shows. My husband
calls it Aloha Zen. Whenever everybody
gets stressed out is when I get really
relaxed. I love walking in on the day of
the show. Im so happy if I can do three
to four shows in one day. Thats a great

daythe best daybecause I really love
what I do, I love the people I work with.
I love to walk into the organized chaos
of the backstagetrying to work with
the production elements and the models
and then pulling it all together. Its really
exciting: you start off small with a group
of people and then it turns into this big
mass of 250 people backstage. We start
twenty minutes after the hour and the
show is eight minutes long. The show has
to be perfect. I love it; its kind of like my
drug.
HWJ: How do you stay behind the
scenes?
LHO: I love to stay behind the scenes,
I dont like to be the star. I dont like to
be the center of attention. Im actually a
very private person but what I do is very
public. Its really about the designers,
and my job is to make them and their
collection look good and to have it be a
good, positive process. People have tried
to ask me questions backstage and want
me to be on camera. Ive just avoided it
because I dont want it to be about me. Im
somewhat shy, so its really difficult for me
to talk about myself. I run from cameras.
HWJ: Is it true that Margaret Cho
played you in the Sex and the City episode
where Carrie Bradshaw was asked to
participate in a fashion show?
LHO: That kind of changed my world.
When they sent me the synopsis and
said Margaret Cho was going to play me,
I thought, Wow, Margaret Cho. I love
Margaret Cho. How fantastic is this?
Besides, I could be behind the scenes: I
didnt have to play myself, she was playing
me. I hired the casting director; we worked
on the models, the music, the hair and
makeup leads; I negotiated all of that. We
did fittings, the rehearsal, and I called the
show, too. After always staying under the
radar and not wanting to be in the public,
I thought, how did this happen? Its sort
of like a really great gift in life because she
was playing me; I respect her so much and
think shes so funny. It was a real honor
and it was so much fun.
It was very funny when I saw her
playing me on film. Very odd. I dont say
the F word like she does. I dont talk like
that, but thats Margaret Cho. People said

she has my mannerismsthe Margaret
Cho version of me.
When that came out, I didnt tell
anyone. It didnt really filter out until years
later. But its interesting that people, once
they got to know me, would say, Are you
that Margaret Cho character on Sex and
the City? Her name was Lynn Cameron
and at the time my name was Manheim
so the joke was Lynne Cameron, Camryn
Manheim.
HWJ: Who is the most interesting
current designer?
LHO: I always love Rei Kawakubo from
Comme des Garons. Even from the
early eighties, Ive been wearing Comme
des Garons. I follow her because I think
shes fantasticshes in a category of
her own because shes such a visionary. I
love the name of her company, Comme
des Garons: in French it means like
the boys, because when she started her
company there were no Japanese women
in Japan who had their own company.
I liked that because shes always been a
maverick without trying to be one. Not
only do I love her clothes, I respect her.
Because shes not swayed by the trends in
fashion, she actually creates them.
HWJ: We heard that Scholastic is
writing about you. Can you tell us more
about this?
LHO: Scholastic Books is doing a series
of books on careers. Twenty-one careers
for the 21st centuryits coming out in
about a year. Itll be for [students from] the
ninth through twelfth grades. Scholastic
wanted to feature new careers, because
in fashion its always about being about
a buyer or a designer, so they wanted to
branch out. [They want to write about]
what my path was to help young people
who are interested in fashion and fashion
shows. I sort of fell into [producing

fashion shows], but now theres actually a
book about it, so I feel like this is another
gift.
HWJ: What advice would you give for
someone wanting to get into the fashion
show industry?
LHO: The industry is difficult because
so many people are doing it now. Its
very competitive. When I started in New
York twenty years ago, there were maybe
a handful of people that actually did the
shows. Id say if its really what you love to
do, then try to intern. A lot of times people
know they love fashion, but theyre not that
sure what they want to do in fashion. You
should intern, volunteer. There are a lot of
Im actually a very
private person but
what I do is very
public.
PR companies, there are casting people,
and different production companies.
Whats exciting about producing fashion
shows is that its theatre. Its got all the
same elements: an audience, the stage,
the runway, the lighting, the sound, the
music, the actors are the models, and the
costumes are the collections. Once the
lights come on, its show time and the
show must go on. Fortunately, it only
goes on for eight to ten minutes. Thats
it! Eight to ten minutes! Its for the press
and buyers, and they dont want to see a
big collection so the collections can only
usually be about 38 [or] 40 looks. It goes
quickly, and the editors and buyers go
from one show to another, so it has to
be really well edited so that they can see
what the designers message is and then
go on to the next one.
HWJ: What is your connection to

Hawaii?
LHO: I was born in Hawaii and I lived
here for three years, then we all moved to
Los Angeles. My parents sent me back
every summer to stay with both sets of
grandparents and my aunts and uncles.
My heart has always been in Hawaii.
When Id go back to Los Angeles, Id
always feel misplaced. My earliest and
fondest memories are here in Hawaii.
Even though I lived in Japan, L.A., San
Francisco, [have] traveled all around the
world, and have lived in New York for
whattwenty years?I still feel like
Hawaii is home. I feel like this is the
person that I am, when Im in Hawaii
that thats the real [me].
HWJ: Do you have plans to return to
Hawaii permanently?
LHO: My heart is always in Hawaii. Ive
been lucky enough in the past few years
to spend four to five months a year in
Hawaii; I break it up in between Fashion
Weeks. Im able to spend time with my
parents, friends, and its just so wonderful
to be here. Ive really talked about living
here, retiring here, but not yet because I
still have things to do. Thats the exciting
part, the end of my story hasnt been
written yet. I feel like Im only really at
the beginning. Im very excited about
whats in the future and Im really open
to it, but I do know that Ill retire here. I
may still need to keep a little apartment
in Greenwich Village because I want to
continue workingI dont really know
what the word retirement means. Im
hoping Ill be able to work here too in
Hawaii, I dont know doing what. Im sure
itll be challenging, but Hawaii people are
the best people in the world. Who doesnt
want to live and work surrounded by all
of this Aloha spirit? To be continued! v
[surfacing]
Fashion
Showdown

by Stacey Makiya
rowing up, the only good thing

about the end of summer was
back-to-school shopping. I would
wander around the girls department
of Sears and picture nonmatching,
nonconforming outfits in my head. I
walked to the beat of my own runway
my style was a jukebox of 80s melodies.
A little Bon Jovi, a little GoGos, a little
Lauper, and a lot Madonna (without the
cone bra, could never have sneaked that by
my dad). I loved to mix trends, and even if
the world (i.e., my mom and sisters) didnt
get it, I didnt care. It was my style.
That attention-getting sixth sense
for stylewhile not always positive
(Cavariccis and Daisy Dukes: need I say
more?)followed me to where I am now.
While I guess I could have ended up a
hooker, I choose to get my petty cash by
dressing people, not undressing them: I
became a fashion journalist and stylist. I
often push the suffocating limit on whats
appropriate within Hawaiis world of
aloha-print fashion. I love scarves in the
winter and don boots anytime of the
year. Unless Im planning to hike Mauna
Kea, you might ask, whats the point?
Its FASHION! Its creative expression,
just ask the Lady known as Gaga. Do
we always understand and want to
replicate her style? No. But it definitely
is recognizable as Gaga-ish art, and she
owns it.
This year, I had my first opportunity
to style a spring fashion show for one of
Honolulus malls and was eager to push
my own eccentric style onto the reserved

shoppers of upper-class Hawaii. But
years of writing and styling for fashion
publications did not prepare me for the
runwaywhich I quickly decided should
really be called the run away. My original
thought was: How hard can it be? I watch
The Hills, The City, Rachel Zoe, and The
Real Housewives of New Jersey (the latter
being, of course, a crash course on what
not to wear). Its women walking in a
straight line, not rocket science.
At our first fashion show meeting, the
malls marketing department was just as
excited as I was. Eager to push the mygrandma-shops-at-this-mall stereotype
out the window, they were on board for
a fashion re-vamp. But just as my eyes
started to light up like a starved fashion
journalist on the Mag Mile in Chi Town,
they started to shovel on the warnings
and apprehensions we would be facing.
Besides limited spacing and a high
schools talent show budget, I realized the
biggest problem I could foresee would be
working with the tenants of the mall
any merchant could participate, even a
candy store. This wasnt reality TV; this
was reality.
After several drawn-out meetings, I
knew this wasnt fashion freedom, this
was corporate couture. Some tenants
welcomed us with open arms, mainly
because pulling clothes for a fashion show
and fitting models was torture they were
eager to avoid. Creating a head-to-toe,
I-want-that-right-now outfit is not easy,
and big department stores know this. So

they welcome creative persons who are
willing to take this load off of their shoulder
pads. With other tenants, walking into
their boutiques was like walking into diva
dens, where the lionesses wanted to prey
on fresh meat. Their pride was at stake,
and no one was going to stroll in and take
over. At first, I wanted to challenge the
condescending attitudes and adamant
(and abhorrent) fashion views, especially
since some of the garments would only be
seen in a Cher or Diane Keaton fashion
show, but Al and J (my partners, who
are much better in handling the politics
of the runway) constantly reminded me,
Your style is not everyone elses style!
I couldnt believe that: Why wouldnt
everyone want their clothes to reflect a
uniquely fabulous approach instead of a
mainstream mediocre one? Showing the
same cookie-cutter catalog look offended
me deep down in the eclectic mix of my
Goodwillsmashingly-meets-Gucciwearing soul. I needed a second opinion.
So, I contacted Lynne HanzawaONeill. She produces fashion shows for
New York Fashion Week and has worked
with top name fashion designers and
the Sex and the City girls. Since she lives
a bicoastal life, I reached her via phone
and left a message. She called me back
within the hour; no matter who you are,
Lynne never makes you feel insignificant.
It didnt matter that she was the Yoda of
fashion shows, and I was a Jedi knight,
she always offered herself as a resource.
Maybe she regrets that now, as I didnt

take her offer lightly. At any rate, her
advice always made me feel like the force
was with me. What she said during that
first phone call in her sweet-as-sweetpotato-pie voice confirmed two things:
Fashion shows are part of the service
industrythat is, you are there to please
your clients and showcase their visions
and nobody likes a bitch in this business.
It wasnt the answer that I wanted, but
it was the advice that was given. And
I thought about this for a long while
which in the fashion world is about ten
minutes. I suddenly realized that my
creativity wasnt being stifled by others
interpretations, it was just being given a
new path. Instead of putting our visions
on the runway, my team and I were faced

with the challenge of adding inventive
details to each merchant-selected outfit.
A deep-ocean blue mother-of-the-bride
silk cover-up was instantly transformed
into an Asian-inspired kimono jacket
worn over a tomato-red bikini. Stationary
paperlike I said before, anyone who
paid mall dues could participatebecame
color-popping boutonnires. We were
creatively challenged to say the least, but
when you get lemons, pair it with some
sugary sass, refreshing hues, and voila,
youve got a quenching style that satisfies.
I also realized that when you work
with people instead of against them,
the tasks at hand are less stressful and
everyone is happywell, almost everyone.
A few complaints came in after the show

that our choices may have been a bit too
risqu (typical, unappreciative fashion
cattiness). To them I say: a fashion show
just wouldnt be a fashion show if there
werent some outr elements to expand
ideas of what is not only possible but also
fashionable.
So, I guess in the end, the fashion
show was a success. I may have lost battles
and reached a draw on some, but the
experience I gained was a win. Would I
do all of this again? Definitelyand I
will, as we did get asked back to do the
next fashion show. And the reality is, this
is the stuff that makes up the great Lynne
ONeills of the fashion worldand being
a part of all that is my style. v
[the dame game]
Chasing the Zen

Z
en gardening. Star gazing. Prozac. Everyone has their own

way of maintaining equilibrium. Me? I keep it simple. I
run. You dont have to purchase expensive equipment
or pay for lessons to learn how to do ityou just strap on your
sneakers and go. You dont need a special moisture-wicking
sports bra or compression socks. You dont even need an iPod.
You plus an old t-shirt and fairly decent running shoes equals
game on.
Whats not simple about running is learning to listen to
your inner coach and silencing the inner anti-cheerleader that
says, Really? You chose this over watching old reruns of The
Cosby Show while munching on a box of Junior Mints?
Even after eight years of consistent pavement pounding, I
occasionally still ask myself: Am I a runner? A real runner?
In high school, my world revolved around flexing my brain
and stretching my vocal chords, so I became the chubby
kid. And let me tell you, shaping up is the last thing on your
mind when youre the chubby kid sporting a damp buttondown shirt in the humid mid-80-degree Hawaii weather.
Apparently, sweating out buckets of water weight didnt count
as exercise.
In my college years, it was more of the same, except with
the added stress of homesickness, rebuilding a social life,
and finding unique ways to not waste the meal plan. Ah, the
foundation of the Freshman 15: ice cream and waffles for
dinner. Becoming discouraged by the weight I was gaining and
by Jennica Goo
seeing how calm and put together my runner friends seemed,

I decided to try running. Predictably, I discovered that running
did help melt away the pounds and stress. What my friends
didnt tell me was how empowered running would make me
feel. With every step, I was finally making myself a priority.
For me, what makes running special is the paradox at its
core: you have to speed up to slow down. As a society, weve
become so fast-paced that we never actually look at the
world. It takes something simple to make you focus and truly
appreciate your surroundings. Even runners sometimes take
the sports simplicity for granted by concentrating too much
on cadence, breath, stride, and so forth. We can all benefit
by taking a step back to relax and actually live in the now.
Its very zen. Its the same basic concept that makes running
appealing to begin withup until people start taking the sport
way too seriously. Running is mechanical: you put your body
on automatic and instead of predetermining your thoughts,
they come to you while you watch the fall leaves turn, smell
the salt of the sea breeze, or take in the sightslike the cute
backside of the runner in front of you.
So here I am, a mid-pack runner in my late twenties, setting
my own unique training runs for my yearly half-marathons.
Each run has its own purpose and story. While I do focus on
one technical improvement per run, I try to let that fade to
the background in the constant struggle to turn my brain
off. Sometimes Im able to quiet my mind for thirty whole
photo by Raquel Rhoads
minutesand I take that as a success. Much like meditation, pride of lions. Its our primitive, competitive nature to want to
you have to accept whatever happens rather than seeing it in be faster and not dead (literally, in the case of the wildebeest)
terms of success or failure.
last. I couldnt help but beat myself up for my performance
Of course, its also crucial to have points in your training even if I tried my best.
where you measure your general fitness, pace, and endurance.
On the other hand, the 5K reminded me of why I run.
I had one of those days recently.
Running is for me. Its something that I do
Enter my companys 5K. Also known as
for my own self-improvement; its time
the day I got left to be eaten by wolves.
to cultivate fresh ideas while maintaining
Naturally, the other people who showed
my physical abilities. As Haruki Murakami
up to run were serious athletes, because ...if youre the slowest writes in What I Talk about When I
who else would be crazy enough to give up wildebeest in the herd, Talk about Running, In long-distance
their lunch hour to exercise in boiling heat?
you become dinner for running, the only opponent you have to
Even though I knew keeping up with my
beat is yourself, the way you used to be
colleagues was going to be a challenge, I a pride of lions. Its our (2008:10).
needed to prove to myself my own athletic primitive, competitive
Even as a recreational-but-serious
nature
to
want
to
be
mettle.
runner, I still have wake-up calls: for
Now Ive always considered myself to faster and not dead example, my pace is still slower than Id like
be a mid-pack runner. It never concerned (literally, in the case of it to be. But herein starts my official speed
me when massive, muscled hulks loped the wildebeest) last.
training. Naturally, the reward is not going
past. But if the whole pack actually leaves
to come without a lot of hard work and
me behind, my ego definitely takes a hit.
determination. But that determination is
Which, unfortunately, is what happened.
not fueled by wanting to beat the head of
My coworker pumped up my ego before
the pack, it stems from a desire to improve
the race, and after we burst out of the start line, I managed my personal 5K time by just six minutes. If I set a goal that I
to keep up with him for the first mile. But when my legs and know is in reach, I wont give up.
lungs began to burn, I helplessly watched the distance grow
So, watch out, Self, because Im going to kick your ass. v
between us. It was like high school PE all over again.
The 5K ended up being an exercise in calming my competitive
REFERENCE CITED
nature. Why did it bother me to be the slowest runner in the
Murakami, Haruki
race? Consider this: on the plains of the Serengeti, if youre
2008 What I Talk about When I Talk about Running:
the slowest wildebeest in the herd, you become dinner for a
A Memoir. New York: Random House.
The Domestic Diva
Don't Rush the Risotto
he first time I heard the word

risotto, I was twelve years
old, and my mother had just
returned from her first trip to Italy (a
journey undertaken on the advice of her
psychic, but thats another story). She
breezed back into our house refreshed,
with a healthy fear of Italian drivers
and full of culinary inspiration. The first
recipe she prepared for our family was a
Roasted Beet Risotto, a slow-cooked rice
dish, stained the color of rubies. To my
childish eyes, it looked like something
cooked up in Willy Wonkas factory, not
a rustic Italian dish. After some coaxing,
I dug in, marveling at the rich, sweet,
creamy texture of this rice. Rice-A-Roni,
this was not.
Time passedI went to high school,
then college, graduated, and moved to
Los Angeles, where I experienced the
shock of being an adult, out in the real
world, living on a shoestring budget and
lacking necessary survival skills. Namely,
I couldnt cook, and I was pretty sure I
couldnt live off Koo Koo Roo for the rest

of my life. Fortunately, a naked stranger
came to my rescue. No, I didnt land a
job in the porn industry (though the
first apartment complex where I stayed
in Canoga Park was overrun with porn
stars). Rather, I discovered The Naked
Chef, Jamie Olivers imported cooking
show. (He doesnt cook in the buffits
blatantly false advertising.)
Jamie Oliver is many things
roguishly handsome, a sustainable
superhero (check out his latest television
show Food Revolution), and a master
of risotto. After watching him whip up a
chicken and pea risotto on television, I
stocked up on ingredients at the grocery
store and then undertook this culinary
challenge. Then I stirred, and stirred,
and stirred some more until my arm felt
like I just did 5,000 single-arm fist pumps
while watching a Jersey Shore marathon
on MTV. You see, if theres one thing
Ive learned about risotto, its that you
cant rush it. It takes time. Its like the
Vegetable Risotto with

Asparagus, Savoy Spinach,
and Fresh Goat Cheese
Directions
Serves 4 people
Cooking time: 40 minutes
Ingredients
2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil, plus
more for drizzling
4 cups vegetable stock (preferably
homemade)
3 leeks, tender white and green parts,
chopped
2 garlic cloves, peeled and chopped
1 cup arborio rice
1/2 cup dry white wine
3 cups savoy spinach, julienned
1 cup asparagus, cut into thin slices
1/4 cup fresh goat cheese (chevre)
salt and pepper
Heat the olive oil in a heavy bottomed

pan over medium heat. Add the leeks
and saut until softened, about five
minutes. Add the garlic and cook for
one more minute. Then, stir in the rice,
coating it with the oil, and cook for
another two minutes. Pour in the white
wine and stir until absorbed. Once the
wine has been absorbed, slowly add
the vegetable stock a half cup at a time,
stirring until absorbed before adding
more stock.
Once the rice is beginning to soften,
stir in the asparagus and the spinach.
Continue adding stock and cooking until
the rice is al dente and the vegetables
are tender (note: you may not use all of
the stock).
foodie version of meditation, the slow

stirring, the smells percolating up to
your nostrils, and finally, the culinary
enlightenment that comes when you
take your first bite.
Since that day, Ive never looked
back, cooking up all manner of risottos,
from red wine with bacon and radicchio
to chard and black cod, but lately Ive
been making mostly vegetarian risottos.
I stock up on the freshest produce at my
farmers market, make a homemade
vegetable stock (see sidebarits
easier than you think), and then finish
the risotto with a dollop of fresh goat
cheese in the center and drizzle of olive
oil. I love serving risotto family style,
letting everyone dig in to the bowl and
watching as they finish their portion
and then return for seconds. And thirds.
And fourths.
Now, thats culinary enlightenment.v
by Jennifer Dawn Rogers

Once its finished cooking, season the
risotto with salt and pepper. To serve
family style, spoon the risotto into a
large bowl. Place a big dollop of fresh
goat cheese in the center of the dish,
drizzle with olive oil and sprinkle with
fresh cracked pepper. Enjoy!
THE FINANCIALLY CHALLENGED EDITORS

CHEAP, ECOHAPPY VEGGIE STOCK
THE DOMESTIC DIVAS QUICK VEGETABLE STOCK

Nothing will make a greater difference in your cooking than
using homemade stocks. Heres a fast way to make vegetable
stock.
Roughly chop two celery stalks, two carrots, two small onions,
and one leek and place them in a stock pot. Add a teaspoon of
peppercorns, a bay leaf, and a few sprigs of thyme to the pot.
Cover with filtered water and simmer for at least one hour.
Strain and keep warm if using right away for risotto.
The stock can be made a few days in advance and kept in the
refrigerator. Also, keeps in the freezer for up to six months.
Real cooks may cringe when they read this, but Im a former
Peace Corps Volunteer, so I tend to hoard. In my kitchen, I save
all my veggie peels, ends, and unsightlies, and at the end of
the week (or when my fridges scrap bucketyes, bucketis
overflowing), I put all these odds and ends into a pot with
water and simmer it down for at least an hour. Granted,
my cream-colored vegan corn chowder occasionally turns
pink from using stock full of beet parts, but Id like to think
it gives my soups, stews, and whole grains (which I cook in
vegetable stock instead of water) personality. There are only
a few warnings: Dont use much from the cabbage family
(this includes kale, broccoli, and cauliflower) because it will
turn your stock bitter. An overripe tomato and ugly basil are
okay to toss in the stock pot; rotten jicama and slimy basil are
notbe careful with aging produce. Lastly, some produce,
such as lettuce ends, doesnt enhance a stock, so like a bad
relationshipif something/someones not going to add
anything to your stock/life, compost that shit!
Speaking of composting, you can compost cooked stock
vegetables, but youll need to keep it hot (140 to 160 degrees)
for a week and animal proof (bury or enclose the compost).
Do not compost vegetables cooked in sauce, oil, or butter. If
youre an advanced Domestic Diva with your vermicompost
bin, worms love cooked vegetables. And dead bodies. v
young
voices
Ponds of
Jupiter
There are stars above
Makaikoa Street in Waialae.
There are stars that smell
of ripe lilikoi and plumeria.
There are stars that taste
like sweet Kahuku corn
and tart pineapples.
There are stars that sound
like the calls of the mynah bird
and soothing ukulele tunes.
There are stars that feel
like tall sugar cane stalks
and the sand beneath my feet.
Some stars are brighter than others.
Other stars jump into ponds on Jupiter.
Among the stars are those who paint
a radiant color of citrine.
There are stars above
Makaikoa Street in Waialae,
stars that glow more
than yellow sunflowers. v
Zoe
Matayoshi, Age 8
photo
courtesyWomens
of NASA Journal | 19
Hawaii
young
voices
My Life Falling Apart!

The smart guy I paid to do my math homework
screwed me over. I hate Tim Plick.
No food in the refrigerator
Im going to die.
My friends are back-stabbing low-lifer pigs
who I want to kill.
My 20 fish in a brown mossy bowl
I killed my fish.
My stupid Aunty Tosh keeps telling me to get married to Koa.
She needs a muzzle.
Waiting alone in the black theatre.
Damn, I got stood up.
Black and white fuzzies flickering
our TV just broke.
The boyfriend I loved went to North Carolina.
I hate North Carolina.
Global warming is killing the ozone layer.
Its so hot now.
My sister embarrassing me in front of my friends.
I hate that adopted piece of junk.
Girls monthly period coming three days early
God I hate periods.
Me losing earphones constantly
those things need to be bigger.
Me saying things about a person and them finding out
my friends are the worst. v
Alexa
Yokooji, Age 15
illustration by Kathryn Xian
[local feature]
Because the Next Generation

Can Speak for Itself
hey are talented, articulate, and

perceptive. Standing on stage,
some shake with fear, others with
excitement. Their vocabulary is as colorful
and bold as their sneakers, their cadence and
motions tinged with island dialect and dance.
They brandish words filled with such passion
and imagery that you are moved to tears,
you are speechless, you are snapping when
they stumble over their lines, and more often
than not, you are cheering them on in praise
and admiration. You are in awe at what their
words make you feel. They are the youngest
poets of Hawaii, part of a nonprofit spokenword, education, and youth development
program called Youth Speaks Hawaii.
The national Youth Speaks program was
first created in San Francisco in 1996. In
2003, one of the Youth Speaks co-founders,
Marc Bamuthi Joseph, contacted HawaiiSlam
founder, Kealoha Wong, asking him to create
an adult team from Hawaii to compete in the
Bay Areas invitational poetry slam, known
as the Living Word Project. Melvin Won PatBorja, Travis Thompson, and a few other
local poets performed as the Hawaii team.
After being eliminated, TravisT (as Thompson
is known in the spoken-word community)
watched as youth poets took the stage to

compete against some of HBOs well-known
Def Poets at that time. TravisT explains:
I was watching this poetry competition
where I saw poets that I had seen on HBO
compete against these youth that I had never
heard of and that were a part of nonprofits
that I never knew existed. As I listened and
watched them progress through the rounds,
it was just amazing to see how many poems
they had, how cutting edge and how politically
honest as well as message worthy their poetry
was. There were no gimmicks that grown-ups
sometimes use, like banter to an audience;
instead they were using creative riffs. And
I just kept thinking, Man, what if there was
something like this for myself when I was a
teenager? What if there was something like
this for the kids back home?
After watching the teens defeat their
grown-up counterparts, Melvin and TravisT
knew that they had to start a program for
teenagers back in Honolulu, and Kealoha
supported this idea. It took a couple of years
to get off the ground, but in February of 2005
the first Youth Speaks Hawaii workshop was
held at Marks Garage.
Five years and a feature on HBO later,
by Krista Sherer
Youth Speaks Hawaii has shown the nation
what Hawaiis next generation is capable
of achieving. TravisT is now the Events
Coordinator, Darron Cambra is the Art and
Educational Director, and Lyz Soto is the
Executive Director. All three of these mentors
have seen the support that the organization
gives to the youth poets: some teens come
from unstable homes and need catharsis,
a family who hears their voices; others are
natural-born writers who want a safe space in
which to express their talent. Either way, the
workshops, open mic events, poetry slams,
and exposure to national competitions have
shaped these young poets into remarkably
confident and well-expressed individuals.
You dont even need to be a huge fan
of performance poetry to be impressed. As
TravisT put it, Im rather certain that once
people see the kids perform themselves, its
really just one of those phenomena that no
one really ever forgets. There is a certain
buzz we carry that I think we all hoped for
but didnt understand how we were going to
get it.
One way they got it was through the
consistent dedication of a core group of staff
and mentorsmost who are spoken word
poets themselvesoffering free weekly
workshops for youth. The workshops are
based on free writing as well as word-exercise
activities that help the teens sharpen their
individual voices. The rules of the workshops
are that the standard is yourself, which
reminds young writers not to compare
themselves to anyone else and that there
are no wrong answers. Poetry is neither fact
nor fiction, and the mentors emphasize to
the youth poets that there is room to play in
the grey area of their thoughts as well as with
the concept of universal truths. The writing
processes as well as the performances help
attach value to their words, and once these
students start to see that their stories have
validityor that they have the ability to
tell the story of someone who cant speak
up for themselvesthey feel more valued
and empowered during a point in their lives
when they might otherwise remain unheard.
The youth poets find another family in Youth

Speaks Hawaii, a safe environment where they
find compassion and acceptance to express
their thoughts and feelings in an artistic way.
Many of the teens take pleasure in rising to
the challenge YSH mentors and peers provide:
to grow, to learn, to push themselves, and to
be conscious of their thoughts and feelings as
well as of those in the world around them.
Although YSH started out small with barely
any attendees, it has grown exponentially
in the last five years. Every April, there is a
competitive slam held by YSH that determines
the top five to six poets who will go to the
National Youth Speaks Tournament, Brave
New Voices. As two-time champions and one
of the teams featured in Russell Simmonss
2008 HBO documentary of the same name,
Youth Speaks Hawaii has definitely made a
name for itself here in the islands as well as
in the larger world of slam poetry. Although
they attend Brave New Voices to compete,
they are also there to have fun, meet fellow
teen spoken-word artists, and live poetry for
a week. Being from Hawaii, they also take
pride in their culture and enjoy sharing their
stories of home both on and off the stage.
Youth Speaks Hawaii Executive Director Lyz
Soto explains, The kids find it to be a really
amazing experience. They get to meet people
with similar interests from all over the place
with very diverse backgrounds that Im not
sure they would get a chance to meet any
other way. Of his experience being involved
in national competitions, and specifically the
Brave New Voices documentary, Ittai Wong
says, We set out on what we aimed to do,
be the best we could possibly be and not
compromise the art for gimmicks. Our team is
all about love, and through the documentary
it is evident that our journey was made and
won because of our love of the stage, word,
and art.
Youth Speaks Hawaii has helped expose our
youths talent to the world. Equally important,
YSH has supported youth reading and writing
in a state where the Department of Education
attempts to handle budget cuts and deal with
labor costs by closing its schools for one day
out of the week. Darron Cambra, who runs the
YSH workshops and is also a certified teacher,
spoke on how spoken-word poetry is helpful
to students as an educational tool: The
Language Arts standards of reading, writing,
and oral communication are met very nicely,
[as] the spoken word poets write their own
poetry, memorize [and] present the [poems],
learn [the poems] rhythm speed, and [learn]
how to set themselves up on the stage. So
all of the standards get hit as an educational
tool. YSH offers a creative way of fostering

education as well as a safe community for
teenagers.
Many have gone on to college: for example,
two YSH poets have gone on to receive First
Wave scholarships from the University of
Wisconsin in Madison, which are especially
for hip hop/MC/breaker/poets. Ittai Wong,
who will be the next poet from Hawaii to
attend the program, comments, I hope to
continue slam through college in the collegiate
level (CUPSICollegiate Union Poetry Slam
Invitational) and use it as an opportunity to
experience the world. I dont know if poetry
in trying to improve myself not only as a writer

but also as a performer. Growth should be the
only constant in anything you do, and to see
spoken word evolve is brilliant. Slam poetry
gives any individual a voice and opportunity
to express themselves through words.
When a teenager writes a poem in a
notebook and no one is around to hear it,
does it still make a sound? The answer is, of
course, yes. But teenagers need to be heard,
and poetry is one of the more positive ways for
them to channel their emotions in a confusing
time filled with a need for acceptance,
frustrating rules, and stifling curfews. What
will be my career, but if I got to do something I

love for the rest of my life, I see no downfall.
In 2009, national slam champion Jamaica
Osorio, now a student at Stanford University,
performed at the White House Poetry Jam
for President Barack Obama. The title of her
poem, Kumulipo, powerfully expressed her
desire to keep the culture and tradition alive
within her Hawaiian roots.
I think spoken-word poetry is one of the
most compelling forms of art. As these young
poets stand on stage, they are the canvas and
their words are the colors, depths, and textures.
Their thoughts and feelings are shaped into
expressions that immediately conjure emotions
from an audience. The images evoked through
the combination of their narrative and their
delivery is a mixture of raw vulnerability and
intellect, leaving listeners ruminating on the
depth of their story.
Jocelyn Ng, a slam poet with powerful
delivery and a competitor in the 2007 to
2009 nationals, touched on why performance
poetry was so important to her. She explains,
I love how there are so many different
dimensions to slam poetry. I like the challenge
the teens from Youth Speaks Hawaii do have

is the opportunity to use their voice, and they
learn to do so fearlessly. As the national
Youth Speaks mission states, The next
generation can speak for itself. We all should
be listening. v
Get Involved:
Youth Speaks Hawaii Writing Workshops
Who: Everyone and anyone ages 1319
When: Every Wednesday
Where: ARTS @ Marks Garage
Time: 4:30 p.m.6:00 p.m.
Support:
YSH Poetry Open Mic and Slams
When: Every second Saturday
Where: ARTS @ Marks Garage
Time: 3:00 p.m.5:00 p.m.
For more information:
www.youthspeakshawaii.weebly.com
www.youthspeakshawaii.wordpress.com
www.facebook.com/youthspeakshawaii
email: info@YouthSpeaksHawaii.org
tel: 808-306-7197
Gratuitous Love
from the Editor
here is something that happens, I

believe during puberty, when the
Pandoras box/basement of your brain
that used to be buried beneath stacks of
schematics for forts, fears of toilet monsters
(dont ask), strategies for street hockey, and
memorized passages from A Wrinkle in Time
comes unlatched. Suddenly, everything is
really, really fucked up. Your McDonalds
Happy Meal is full of dead animals; you
acquire the ability to think about war in a
critical sense, not a how do I make this into
a diorama? sense; your family is full of logical
inconsistencies; you get boobs or you dont
get boobs and either way its traumatic; you
dont know what to believe in or what the
medias color-coded terror levels really mean.
I dont know what is more impressivethat
the teenagers from Youth Speaks Hawaii
can take history, current politics, profound
introspection, and pop culture references and
compose them into coherent pieces or that
they can perform these pieces and bring you
to tears in under three minutes. Or that they
were born during the nineties. Their poetry
is like an onion squeezed inside an artichoke
nestled into smiling matryoshka, all stuffed
inside a Turkducken thats wearing fluorescent
green sneakers. YSH: So many layers!
Youth Speaks Hawaii (YSH) has done for
poetry what Glee has done for all embodied
forms of adolescent marginalization: made
being you as you are, cool. Because of my high
school marching-band drum major, yearbook-
editor nerd glory, I could have never imagined

a YSH of my own, a place where you are put
on a pedestal/stage for being different, not
isolated for trying to shove your square-peg
self into a society full of holes. YSH is a family of
teens and mentors encouraging one another
to turn their journals inside out, revealing their
traumas and dreams, owned vulnerabilities
and reclaimed injustices, addictions and the
search for Edward-and-Bella love, even their
affinity for masturbationall in front of their
peers. During open-mic events and slams,
peers support one another with a chorus of
snaps during a performers forgotten lines
and yell inscrutable rally cries: Eat the mike,
Dont be handsome, H1N1, and Beast
mode. Instead of cheerleaders, the crowd
shouts Youth Speaks! for the kids, Grown
Speaks! for the mentors, and New shit!
for first-time poems spit fresh from their
notebooks. Between poems, Honolulus
youngest DJ, DJ.acob, rocks the iPod and
panda-head beanie with a surprisingly stoic
expression for an eight-year-old.
YSH events are magical. The things that
can divide youthlove for unicorns, mad
french horn skills, lead in the school musical,
black clothing, the last pair of Justin Bieber
tickets, high scores on Rock Band, athletic
prowess, socioeconomic statusare chain
links in YSH, not fences. Teens use exactly
what makes them unique as inspiration; it is
their celebration of each others uniqueness
that connects them, arm-in-arm, word-to-
by Jennifer Meleana Hee

word, challenging you with their metaphorical
Red Rovers to even try to break through their
conviction that they can better the world with
their words. You want to be on their side, you
want to help their reach, taunting the island,
the nation, the world to send hope on over.
Yes, the teenagers from YSH inspire
mewith their awareness, their tears,
their candid exploration of identity, their
camaraderie. They do not have the potential
for greatnessraw and unadulterated, their
craft develops before they have a high school
diploma. They are their own genre, creating in
the midst of becomingthe line Im about
to be 18 has an expiration date. There is no
hierarchical evolution to a youth slam poet; it
is precisely watching them grow that shakes
you. You feel the immediacy of their attempts
to comprehend why their grandparents cant
receive proper healthcare, why intolerance
exists, why love does not always love you
backevery experience is new shit. You
wish you could hold their hands and skip
with them back into childhood, before you
and they knew how broken this world is and
became aware that some casts you have to
wear for a lifetime. But you are also hopeful,
because you know voice is power, and they
have already mastered their tongues.
Heres what I am certain of. We are not
alone in this literary revolution, as YSH staff
and mentors continue to support the next
generation of:
WEB EXCLUSIVE :
Check out Jocelyn performing
her poetry on our website at
www.hawaiiwomensjournal.com.
photo of Jocelyn Ng by Ryan Matsumoto
poetry
Christine
There is this melody the ocean conducts
pushing and pulling the tides like orchestra strings.

I can hear each and every note float back my eardrums
as if they were swimming past destiny.
And I wish Christine could hear it,
But she cant.
Christine is my sign language teacher
born deaf with inner lobes too small to catch a single note.
She teaches me and my classmates how to speak
without using our vocal chords,
our tracheas,
our tongues.
Weve become
so immune
so accustomed
so conditioned
to using our voices that we forget
what perfect sounds like.
She teaches us everything
from the ABCs and 123s
to simple introductions
like saying Hello, my name is Jocelyn, its nice to meet you,
to colors and states.
From things you like
to things you dont like.
From saying Im sorry
to telling someone I love you.
One day I ask her,
Christine, do you ever wonder what music sounds like?
She simply replies with words that made
me write this poem,
Made this pen bleed onto this paper
Made these signs translate into something more
than just words.
She says, No, because I can feel the music.
She said...
She can feel it.
From that moment I wanted to know what that means.
I want to feel the music
the melodies,
the orchestra,
photo by Kathryn Xian
by Jocelyn Ng
the strings,
the simple tick tocks, beat box, hello dearthis is music.
I want to feel each and every onomatopoeia you can think of
Breathe into my flesh.
Like the alphabet
Like vowels
like every a, e, i, o, u,
and sometimes y.
I find myself wanting to become the harmony,
the melody,
the vibrations,
that I wish I could feel.
See, sometimes, Christine,
I wish I could put myself into your shoes
experience music like you do.
Ive tried putting my hands over my ears
But I just cant seem to feel it.
Ive heard that music is universal language
But I seem to be lost in translation.
So could you tell me what it feels like?
Would tracing your fingers on harp strings
Feel like the sensation of caressing your mind into a dream.
Do songs run up the back of your neck
every time lyrics braid themselves around your spine?
And would the melodic strikes of a percussion
remind you of the rhythms of your own heartbeat?
Would the cry of a symphony feel like an earthquake
rumbling beneath the soles of your feet?
Would you dance to the disaster?
Can you sing with your hands?

Can your palms hear the difference between black and white
Like violin bows
Like piano keys
Like major and minor
Like F flat and G sharp?
Does music feel like a tsunami
crashing onto your eardrums like sound waves?
Would you swim with its currents?
Or would you drown in your own undertow?
There is this melody the ocean conducts,
pushing and pulling the tides like orchestra strings.
I wish I could feel it like Christine. v
[balm for being]
When Being a Good Girl Is Bad:

Identifying and Recovering from
Good Girlism
oday my hairdresser and I had a

discussion about good girls, bad girls,
and the difference. We decided good
girls give themselves away and do things
to please others at the expense of their
own wants and needs. Bad girls dont give
themselves away but instead react by usually
being contrary to what someone else wants
them to do. Both behaviors, in the short and
long term, are destructive to a womans selfesteem and how fully she experiences her
life.
Can we all be categorized as good
or bad girls? None of us fall neatly into
either group, but since society has raised the
majority of women to be good girlsgood
mothers, good wives, good friendswe have
to learn to recognize that there are aspects
of being good girls that do more harm to
our well-being. Consider this column a sort
of Good Girls Anonymous, a fellowship of
sharing our experiences of this social disease
and our recovery. The only requirement for
membership is the desire to stop being so
damn good.
First, you need to determine whether or
not you are a good girl or are in the process
of recovering from being one. Do you:
1. automatically respond yes when asked

to help out (even if you are already
overloaded)?
2. smile, no matter what, even when you
are in pain?
3. find yourself being treated like a
doormat but feel unable to stand up for
yourself?
4. believe that everything you do, have, or
are is not enoughgood enough, smart
enough, thin enough, wise enough,
etc.?
5. beat yourself up when things dont turn
out as you had hoped?
6. fear that others will learn that youre
not perfect?
7. secretly wish you could run away to
pursue a wild dream, although you also
doubt youll be able to accomplish it?
You may have answered yes to at least

one of these questions. Perhaps you didnt
realize how detrimental these behaviors can
be to your own happiness and peace of mind.
Identifying these behaviors help us recognize
that the traits we have accepted as who we
are arent really who we are but, rather, who
society has programmed us to be. Consider
how Good Girl Syndrome affects us: good
girls are unable to perceive their true self
because their inauthentic good girl identity
is cobbled together from the traits others
see them as possessing. They take their
self-worth from how theyre perceived by
others, regardless of whether those opinions

are solicited or even valid. Imagine how
much better you would feel if none of these
behaviors listed above hit home.
Once you are aware of what defines selfdamaging good girl behavior, the next
questions become: How can you consciously
modify your good girl behavior? How do
you discover who you are at your core? If
youre not a good girl, then who are you?
Living a life that hinges on what others
believe puts good girls in a box with walls
sealed so tightly that such confinement
will eventually suffocate them. When your
authentic self is stifled while youre fulfilling
by Suzy Allegra
the dreams of others, you may begin to feel

depressed, lifeless, or angry. You may become
physically as well as psychologically ill. If a
good girl doesnt begin conscious recovery,
she will likely manifest a variety of issues.
Recovery, then, is not only a life skill but also
a process as necessary as breathing.
Recovering from Good Girl Syndrome
often means asking for help. We all need
others to support, encourage, and guide us.
Once we have put some miles on our inner
automobile (learning what is driving us on
our deepest levels), we can consciously
decide to make different choices, choices
for ourselvesones that bring us joy, peace,
and love.
Consider the following situation as one
example to overcoming your Good Girl
tendencies. A friend or acquaintance has
asked you to help out with a time-consuming
project and the good girl within itches to say
yes as usual. Instead try:
1. Simply saying nowith a smile and no
explanation. Test out Im sorry, I cant.
Thats it. Beware of explaining, because
as soon as you begin to do so, you lose.
Youll end up doing some version of
whatever youve just said no to.
2. Replying let me think about it. This
buys you time. You can open up your
calendar, smart phone, or date book,
and take a moment to get real. What
are you willing to give up to take on
this new task? If your schedule permits
you to say yesand, importantly, you
want to do sothen follow-up with a
yes. Otherwise, respond (e-mail them
if youre nervous about talking to them)
and tell the truthyou dont have
enough time. Period.
3. Responding Ill be happy to help if you
can find two committed assistants. But
I cant do this by myself. And refuse to
begin the project without help. If you
think (or, worse, say), Well, maybe Ill
help them out a little just to get started,
you are stuck, sister.
artwork courtesy of Suzy Allegra
Being a good girl is like any other addiction.

You recover one moment at a time. It is
incredibly easy to fall back into old behavior,
especially under stress. On that last note,
realize that being a good girl may have
been necessary for you to make it through
childhood. For example, if your parents
werent accepting of you as an individual,
you may have learned to make nice
to keep your parents happy and/or less
angryto literally or figuratively stay alive.
And you kept using those behaviors because
they continued to workfor a while. That
is, until they started taking their toll on your
physical, mental, and/or emotional health.
If youre lucky, at a certain point, you
will realize this good girl behavior is holding
you back; that theres an invisible strait
jacket being put on you, stopping you from
speaking your truth or pursuing a dream.
At the same time, you also realize that the
only one who can help you recover is you.
Once you move away from either of
the extremes of a good or bad girl, you
are what my friend Betsy calls an awake
girl. An awake girl realizes and admits her
codependence, and she works diligently at
being who she is deep inside: the painter,
chef, or marathon runner. She works on
creating her dreams, not someone elses.
She speaks her mind without anger but
with conviction.
As you take steps toward recovery, you
wake up to who you are, and the quality
of your life improves. Even after 25 years
of working on myself, I, too, still have
setbacksbut theyre less frequent and
less intense. The more recovered I am,
the better able I am to teach those who
need to learn. I know this inner path that
Im exploring will lead to happiness at the
deepest of levels, where I always feel like I
am enough. I wish the same for you. v
[nonprofit corner]
What Should I Wear?

The Bella Project
photo courtesty of Ali Stewart-Ito
uring the spring of my senior year of

high school in the early nineties, two
pressing questions weighed heavily
on most students minds: Am I going to go to
prom? And if so, what should I wear?
At that time, I literally had only one fancy
dressfor Easter brunch and other such
holidaysbut that dress wouldnt have afforded
me second looks from anyone, except perhaps
a textile historian. Buying a dress for prom
didnt even cross my mind: Why buy a dress
that would be worn once? I chatted with my
friends (literally chatted, as this was the preinstant-messaging era) and asked if anyone had
a dress I could borrow. My volleyball teammate
volunteered a black, form-fitting sequin dress
that flattered my adolescent non-curves. I
bought some black heels at Marshalls, but since
I sprained my ankle at track practice, I happily
brought Teva sandals and an ankle brace, so
I could dance with minimal pain. The night
came and went, but I have a picture to prove
it happened. I looked good in that dress. I felt
beautiful.
On prom night, teenage girls want to feel
especially beautiful, encapsulated in magic as
we pass through the balloon archway and into
the ballroom accompanied by our handsome
date (but not so handsome as to steal our fire).
Love it or hate it, prom is an adolescent rite
of passage in American culture, but even after
the prom bid has been purchased, there is a
high price to pay to achieve the prom fairytale
effect as dictated by the media. From designer
dresses and shoes to accessories, flowers, hair
and makeup, and photos featuring fantasy
backdropsone girls prom night could feed
a small third-world village for a week. Peer
pressure is on to have it all, but whats a girl to
do when her pockets are empty and the price
tags are high?
For many teenagers and their families,
especially given the current economic climate,
finances make preparing for and attending
formal dances a challenge. This is where The
Bella Project flutters in, bearing stunning
dresses, shoes, and accessories to make
prom wishes come true. The Bella Project is
a nonprofit organization that promotes self-
by Ali Stewart-Ito
confidence, individual beauty and diversity

by providing new and virtually new prom
dresses and accessories free of charge to
underprivileged high school women in Hawaii
(www.thebellaprojecthawaii.org/about-us.
html). With the help of volunteers, donors,
and local corporate partners, prom essentials
are gathered throughout the year to prepare
for the annual dress giveaway. This year, the
event took place on March 13 at the Honolulu
Design Center, just in time for all of the major
spring dances. I volunteered at the event and
was assigned the role of personal shopper, an
ironic assignment considering shopping is the
bane of my existence. I was, however, willing to
put my disdain aside in an effort to help girls find
the dress that would make them feel beautiful.
Over three hundred dresses and select shoes
and accessories graced the mock boutique,
ready to be whisked away within the four-hour
allotted shopping time slot. Several volunteers
showed up to assist with everything from checkin to makeup and accessories consultation, and,
lest I forget, serving as personal shoppers.
Kylee, this is Ali, and she will be your personal
shopper today, says the official greeter, making
a note on her clipboard. We smile, exchange
awkward greetings, and set out on our mission
without a moments hesitation. We sweep our
hands across the colors and fabrics as we move
to the rack displaying her size.
Oooh, how about this one? Within five
minutes, I have three dresses draped over my
forearm, and we head back to the makeshift
dressing room. The first one she tries is an
emerald green and it fits well aside from the
four inches of fabric dragging on the floor.
Nothing five-inch stiletto heels cant fix,
right? I say. We both laugh, and then I hand
her option two: a pink, floor-length halter
dress. After she wiggles into her new skin, she
checks her reflection from all angles as I nod
approvingly. Theres no need to even try on the
third dress still draped over my armthe pink
dress makes her glow. I carry the chosen dress
for her as we examine the shoes and accessories.
None quite complete the ensemble, but she
is confident she can borrow the necessary
accessories from her mom. She checks out and
skips away, satisfied.

Finding the right dress in one go is no easy
task. I got lucky with Kylee. Over the course of
the morning, I shopped with five more girls who
ultimately left empty-handed. Though in sheer
numbers, my success as a personal shopper fell
short, the look of excitement on Kylees face
when she twirled to meet her reflection was
more than enough validation.
A month later, I followed up with Kylee
via e-mail. She had attended her prom, and it
surpassed her expectations. She arrived in a
limo, passed through the balloon archway, and
walked the red carpet. Kylee wrote me to say:
In my dress, I felt amazing. People were telling
me my dress looked beautiful on me and my
hair was pretty. I think a persons dress should
be everything they want because it just makes
their night a whole lot better.
In high school, prom is a Big Deal, a night
filled with desires and high expectations. As
adults, we have a broader perspective and
can see that there are clearly larger issues to
worry about, such as genocide or the inevitable
destruction of our planet, but for high school
girls during prom season, ensuring the perfect
night is a paramount concern. As much as we
may want a prom revolutionfor overpriced
formal dresses and popularity contests to be
things of the pastfor now, The Bella Project
exists to offer some relief. What The Bella
Project offers is huge in the life of a teenage girl:
the opportunity to erase financial obstacles and
class divisions for one night to help each young
woman feel beautiful in the skin shes in.
Nonprofits exist to serve a need that is
absent in a given community. Be it to provide
clean water to a rural community in Cambodia
or a prom dress to underprivileged young
women in Hawaii, an impact is clearly felt in
the lives of those served. The young women
who attended The Bella Projects annual event
walked away with more than a dress: they were
allowed to enjoy a monumental high school
event that will be forever etched into their
adolescent memories. v
Get Involved:
www.thebellaprojecthawaii.org
email: thebellaproject@yahoo.com
[creative nonfiction]
Black,

Y
ou know its a bad idea, but the school where you teach needs
the cash. Money is the number-one priority in private school.
So for the annual scholarship benefit auction, you and your
colleague offer a parents babysitting dream: youll chaperone a
sleepover in the classroom. After drinking daiquiris all evening, four
mothers pool their resources and buy the sleepover for $800. The
following week, they drop off the boys, with snacks and sleeping
bags, for what the kids hope will be an off-the-wall Friday night.
After board games, computer time, and jokes verging on the
inappropriate, you make your way to the gym and ask a member
of the maintenance staff to unlock the storage closet, and the boys
begin to play with huge bouncy balls and hula hoops. A game of
basketball starts up. The boys challenge you to shoot. It goes in,
thanks to your experience as a Junior Varsity basketball coach.
Your stuffbags, snacks, toys, cameraleans against the wall.
Boys periodically run to their backpacks to grab fistfuls of Cheetos.
The game gets messy, giggly. Youre sweating. Its time to bring the
group upstairs for ghost stories. You gather your things.
But your purseyour big red purseis missing. Maybe you left
it in the classroom?
You retrace your steps, leaving the kids with your colleague. The
only other people in the building are the maintenance staffers. You
ask the one who opened the storage room for help. Did someone
come in? Was there a meeting tonight? The school is connected
through a hallway to a church. Was there an event at the church?
No, he says, he saw nothing.
Defeated, you start back upstairs. But you are bugged. Jittery. You
turn around and find the maintenance staffer again.
Are you sure you didnt see anything?
Look, I told you, nothing.
and Red
maintenance locker room. He is there, as is his supervisor, a woman.
She is standing against the back wall. You stand in the doorway, the
man now caught between you and his boss.
You took it, you tell him. Give it back.
You are a teacher and you are convinced that this maintenance
man, who works for the same school you do, has stolen your purse
while you were playing basketball with children whose parents
bought an expensive play date to benefit the schools scholarship
fund. Everything seems fucked up, but you are single-minded. You
want your purse back.
The woman says, Youre wrong. Her eyes are wet. Or yours are,
and hers look wet. How dare you, she says.
The man is silent.
Open your locker, you tell him.
He looks from you to his boss and back to you. You try to fill up
the doorway. Open it.
The man brushes his fingertips against the locker door. He fiddles
with the padlock. It clicks open. He unlatches the metal door and it
swings out.
Your big red purse is in the locker.
You are relieved but also devastated. You slap him. Or his boss
slaps him. Either way he gets slapped.
You grab your purse and run up the stairs. You dont cry because
you dont want the boys to see that anythings wrong. You call the
headmaster at home, he calls the cops, and within thirty minutes
the man is arrested, fired, and gone.
You see the maintenance supervisor at lunch on Monday. Your
eyes meet, but she looks away quickly, and you are left to wonder if
you saw a hint of how dare you still lingering in hers. v
This man has called you Beautiful since the start of the school year.
Youve asked him to call you by your name, but he continues to use
his nickname for you, even when your students are in the room. Its
been awkward for months. Now he wont even look at you. He looks
at the floor.
You return to your classroom. Over the heads of the boys (who
are now composing Mad Libs), you mouth to your colleague, Ill be
back.
Then you look for the man again. You go to the basement, to the
[editor's essay]
How to Sell
Your Body Parts
T
hings I would do for $20,000:
Chew .001 ounces of SPAM for 10 seconds and

then spit it out and gargle with bleach.
(Hi, Im vegan.)
Shave my head for a year, even though I have hacne
(head acne).
Murder something small.
Define something small for the Managing Editor
of this journal, who insists it needs to be defined.
Vajazzle myself in a public performance art piece.
Donate the entire $20K earned from public
vajazzling to build an orphanage in Sri Lanka
because I would never exploit my body unless it
was to help the exploited. (Dont give me that look,
feminists.)
hings I have done for upwards of $10,000:

Sell my eggs.
While I dont have a literary agent, an editorial assistant,

or even a sycophantic friend, I do have an egg agent who is
responsible for negotiating a decent sale of the most profitable
commodity of my twentiesmy genes, prepackaged in
follicular bundles. By acquiring my eggs, future parents
hope theyll end up with a me-like child: a Harvard graduate;
Chinese and Caucasian; overachieving but existentially
unsettled; athletic body type; passion for words; a history of
social service and teaching professions; prefers the outdoors
to the indoors; an introverted adventurer who loves travel;
proficientish in music, artistic endeavors, and vegan baking.
Thanks to egg donation, I no longer have to wonder, on the
tops of isolated mountains, Buddhist temples, or in line at
Target how much am I worth? I know exactly how much.
My egg agent works for an agency that specializes in Ivy
League egg donors. Well call her Trixie, because no one in
real life has that name. Trixie has been a surrogate, and many
women I met who work in various fertility centers have been
surrogates or donors themselves. Its not just a day jobthey
are passionate about helping families who cant have babies,
passionate enough to lend their bodies and give from their
bodies. There is nothing black market about the fertility
centers (or Trixie)these doctors have the swankiest

medical spaces my naked patient ass has ever seen. One
reproductive endocrinologist said they have the reputation
of being reproduction cowboys, experimenting on the wild,
wild frontiers of baby making. What used to be gifts from
[insert deity of choice here] are now gifts from doctors,
nurses, embryologists, Gestational Carrier X, and Donor
6259. It used to take a village to raise a child, now it takes a
village to create one.
Steps to Baby for the Rich and Infertile and/or Gay

Male Couple:
1. Family (Intended Parents) who cant have a baby

chooses to compensate another woman for her ovum.
2. Ovum-Donor womans cycle is synchronized with
recipients cycle. If the Intended Parents will not be
carrying the child, family may rent-a-womb from a third
woman (Gestational Carrier). Meanwhile, the donor
injects herself with hormones for a few weeks.
3. Fertility specialists retrieve Donors eggs. Donor is
sedated during retrieval, which is a short procedure
with minimal recovery time. Donor receives check and
Vicodin, sometimes placed together next to clinic bed in
a gift bag. Donor wishes she were compensated similarly
for corporate years spent selling her soul to the man.
4. A few hours post-procedure, donor eggs meet either donor
sperm or fathers sperm in a romantic five-star petri dish.
Embryologists develop the burgeoning new life in a laboratory.
5. A few days later, fertilized embryos are put into either the
Gestational Carrier or the recipient mother. (Put into
her is official in vitro medical terminology.)
6. Provided embryo transfer is successfulrecipient mother
or Gestational Carrier is pregnant!
7. Congratulations! Family who had financial means to
purchase said baby-making services gets a baby.
Its the miracle of life, sort of.
One reason the egg-donation market is lucrative for young,
interested donors is because women are waiting until later
in life to have children. Women are focusing on their careers
before creating a familyand while we have made gains
toward societal equality, apparently biology is still doing its
...and Still Respect Yourself

in the Morning
best to keep the woman down, making it increasingly difficult
and risky for her to have children after the age of 35:
Biological Clock: You cant have it all.
Woman: For $50K and a prayer, I can.
Also, despite the lack of state-recognized equal rights,
with the help of tolerant (and business-minded) fertility
clinics, same-sex couples are also using the egg-donor and
gestational-carrier market. Gay men are the demographic I
am most interested in offering my body parts to, as they are
usually the least interested in my body parts. While we are
never a match made in biological reality, together, we create a
family. A fabulous, fabulous family.
Not including the matches made in Weird and usage of
multiple peoples parts to create one new life, there are all
sorts of questionable practices surrounding the egg-donation
business. Intended Parents who are willing to pay up to
$50,000 to compensate a donor for her eggs can purchase
higher-quality eggs of their choosing. Whats considered
higher-quality? I am, duh. Higher-quality eggs come from
donors with: Ivy League educations and/or higher educations,
high SAT scores, and success in their careers. As the website
from my agency states:
Our focus is on providing the healthiest, the most
talented and most educated egg donors for our
intended parents. Our egg donors are exceptionally
talented women who are also highly intelligent,
as measured by high scholastic achievement/
outstanding scores on standardized college and
graduate-school entrance exams and tests. Each
donor is required to provide transcripts and
official test results, such as SAT, ACT, GRE, LSAT,
MCAT, and GMAT.
The American Society of Reproductive Medicine frowns upon
egg donors receiving more than $10,000 as compensation, but
the market determines value, not a faceless/frowning medical
group. My agent told me a typical family using her agency
spends over $100,000 for all related fees. That seems like an
outrageous amount until you do the addition of compensating
an egg donor and often a gestational carrier, covering all
by Jennifer Meleana Hee

medical expenses for said donor and gestational carrier, and

paying traveling, hotel, food per diem, lawyers, psychologists,
and agency fees. Its an incredible process for an insane price.
And its fucking weird.
For my first donation, I responded to a recruiting ad
on the back of a local independent paper in Seattle, one of
those little ads that no nondesperate person who didnt need
medical marijuana, a new herpes drug via clinical trials, or
cash for eggs would ever respond to. Much to my amazement
as a first-time donor, the clinic was part of an uber-modern
hospital, and every woman from the clinic coordinator to
nurse practitioner were incredibly professional, kind, and
not likely to discreetly snatch a kidney along with my eggs. I
looked forward to my visits, which is a little creepy, since our
conversations usually took place while I was in some form of
splayed-legged undress. It unexpectedly warmed and fuzzied
my moral insides to help a stranger-family and provided me
with cash to move home. However, even the women working
at the clinicwhich didnt specialize in Ivy League Eggs
and compensated every donor the same amounttold me I
should get an agent for future donations because I was worth
more than other people.
I knew it!
Before one can even start the medical process of donating,
theres a lot to go through. Its like applying for a job, only
you dont get a jobyou get your eggs sucked out of your
body via your vaginal wall. You fill out preliminary-screening
questionnaires for days and days, brimming with personal
questions about your entire life history: everything from that
cigarette you smoked when you were 16 to that crack pipe
you hit when you were 22, how many people youve slept
with recently, and the circumstances surrounding your
grandmothers miscarriage. And exactly how developmentally
disabled is Uncle Kimo? Respectable agencies and clinics
will also have you undergo review with a genetic counselor
and evaluation by a psychologist. Youll also have a physical,
complete with full blood work-ups, and youll have to fill out
All about the Donor information for an online profile. Intended
Parents might choose you because their favorite book is your
favorite book (One Hundred Years of Solitude), because you are
prone to world saving, because you are sporty, vegetarian,
and Turkey is their favorite country too! Intended Parents
want to find a connection where there is none. Its your
DNA, your nonconfrontational personality, your hapa brown

eyes that theyre buying into their family line, and most likely,
theyll never meet you. Its like online dating, except you have
to list your STDs.
Once all your paperwork clears, and Intended Parents
choose you, you settle on a compensation amount and IVF
center somewhere in the United States. Menstrual cycles are
aligned faster than you can say transvaginal ultrasound, and
the donation process begins.
Everyones medications are slightly different, but during
Donation Monthor, as I like to call it, DoMothe
job starts out pretty easy. I wake up and inject a synthetic
hormone called Lupron into my abdomen. Luprons the
gateway hormone, which stops my ovaries from functioning.
Scary? Yes. Profitable? You betcha.
After ten days on Lupron, the blood draws begin. Every
few days, my blood is drawn and estradiol level checked until
it is low enough to start taking the stimulation hormones.
Throughout the entire egg-donation process, Ill have had my
blood drawn at least ten times, and
I hate blood draws more than I hate
being honest with myself.
In a normal menstrual cycle, a
womans ovaries develop one follicle
and mature egg. During DoMo, my
count was thirty. (Thirty!) I inject
myself with the same hormones
a woman who is having trouble
conceiving would take. For meas
uberfertile as I already amit causes
the IVF doctor to say HOLY GOD
every time he takes his condomcovered wand into vagina town for an
ultrasound. Each hypersized follicle
will be between 13 to 20 millimeters.
How big is one follicle normally? 100 to 200 micrometers.
Now Im no math nerd, but even I get that that is really small.
Like pollen particulates or my ambitions.
I also take antibiotics and a low-dose steriod. Dont ask me
whyIm a cynic, not a doctor. I imagine antibiotics help anti
possible infections one could incur during the egg retrieval,
and I imagine the steroids give you the strength to kick the
ass of any manfriend who may try to get intimate during your
celibacy month even though youve been wearing a magazine
cutout Octomom mask as a reminder to never have sex for the
rest of your life.
Three injections and three pills a daya pretty intense
regimen considering I wont eat white food because it has
no nutritional personality. (Except tofu, obviously.) If I were
a heroin user or a meat eater, it would probably be easier to
abuse my body, but I keep my eye on the money, as my slowly
bloating abdomen becomes dotted with small bruises. This
is better than a cubicle, I tell myself as a pep talk. I also tell
myself: Its the journey, not the destination, but in this case,
this statement is bullshit.
DoMo is longit feels like it lasts longer than a month.

It feels more like a month and a few days. I am always tired,
which I blame on the fact that I cant have caffeine. Or
cocaine. There are few experiences in life I treasure as much
as reviewing my contract with a lawyer, where one of the
clauses explicitly states I cannot take it up the butt, and if I
do take it up the butt, I can be sued. Indeed, while my ovaries
are being stimulated, theres an extensive list of Do Nots:
Do not have sex. Do not have oral sex. Do not have
anal sex. Do not use illegal drugs. Do not have sex
with a man whos used heroin and had relations
with a Mad Cow (without protection). Do not go
swimming. Do not jump on trampolines. Whatever
you are thinkingdo not do that.
Sometimes I get confused, because the list doesnt say no to
doing it Mormon-style or no watching New Moon while naked
inside a wolf suit. So I do those things, but theyre not the
same as swimming and swallowing, if
you know what I mean.
Point is, the things that hold
me togetherrock climbing, postclimbing Coronas, an evening jog, a
morning joeI trade all of it to shoot
up with more of the hormones that
make me crazy in low doses. I dont
drink milk, even if it is hormone and
antibiotic free, but for a quick buck Ill
skip the middle cow and go straight for
the drugs. Fortunately, during DoMo
I am usually too tired to be Claire-onLost insane; instead, I watch Dancer in
the Dark and cry my soul out.
Throughout the entire process,
while ones ovaries are intentionally overstimulated, the
greatest known risk is Ovarian Hyperstimulation. Apparently,
I was at high risk for overstimulationsomething about the
combination of my small size, uberawesome fertility, and
the script of my life being a streaming FAIL blog. Ovarian
Hyperstimulation could result in extreme bloating, severe
abdominal pain, and rare but possible death. Also, there are
no long-term studies of the effects of stimulation hormones,
but much like all excessive thingsfrom too much red meat
to licking too much napalmexposing your body to high
doses of hormones could result in cancer. One Reproductive
Endocrinologist spent an hour explaining all the risks in
gory detailfrom my abdomen filling with blood to losing
an ovary, to being anesthetized only to never wake up and
spending the rest of my life in a coma. In the last scenario, I
imagine lying there, comatose, and my brain actually develops
into the most ubergenius brain ever, such that I actually find
a cure for cancer, but then Im in a coma so I cant ever tell
anyone.
ere are a few examples from a Potential Risks of

Ovum Donation form I signed, agreeing that I
accept such risks:
Potential risks to ovum donor from ovum donation process:
Infection, requiring hospitalization or surgery or
loss of fertility.
Bleeding, requiring hospitalization or surgery or
loss of fertility.
Ovarian torsion, requiring surgery and possible
loss of fertility.
Ovarian follicle rupture, requiring hospitalization
or surgery and possible loss of fertility.
Potential, but as yet unknown, increased risks of
ovarian or other types of cancer.
Because I am already here, in existence, I am given the choice to
sign this form, to accept the risks associated with egg donation.
We bring babies into the world, without giving their little
nonexistent, nonthinking, non-pain-experiencing selves the
option of accepting the risks of livingrisks much scarier than
ovarian torsion. So: the risks of egg donation dont
feel any greater than the risk I feel every day by
existing. My friends father dies suddenly within
two months after being diagnosed with cancer
when the etymology was exposure to asbestos
50 years ago. My sisters 26-year-old girlfriend
slips in a river while hiking in Costa Rica and
dies. Planes intentionally hit towers and we keep
going. Tsunami wipe out cities and we keep going.
Immediate friends and family have their worlds
dismantled by suicide. Some of the most amazing girls I spent
a month with in Sri Lanka are sexually assaulted by the school
principal. Some of the most beautiful Roma (gypsy) girls I met
in Bulgaria will never be seen as anything but stupid, dirty,
and less than human in the eyes of society.
Im barely scratching the surface; we keep going.
Life is like a rollercoaster, a fucking scary rollercoaster
with chopsticks for safety bars and a sociopath on the speed
controls. I take one glance at the news and the only mantra
I have is: What the hell. What the hell. What the hell. Perhaps you
bring a child into the world and call it hope. Perhaps you toss
a drowning person in an ocean full of sharks a life jacket and
call it hope. Perhaps you hand someone hyperaware of her
own hyperawareness (me) some organic herbal Xanax and
call it hope. All I know is: how strong the urge must be to have
children, stronger than level orange terror alerts, stronger
than the existence of the word genocide, stronger than natural
disasters, disease, and the germs my best friend tries to kill as
she disinfects everything with which her baby might come in
contact.
Sorry, honey, you cant Purell the world.
Besides the minor discomforts of blood draws and
injections and a month of Sybil-like behavior, egg donation

and Jenn Hee were meant to be. Im the friend who balks at
the existence of baby showers because I dont understand
what were celebrating, and I can never find a Congratulations,
your child might get raped one day! card. Im 30my desktop is
cluttered with icons from downloaded photos of my friends
babies. Heres the zygotic sonogram! Negative five months! One
month! Four! Eight! 48 months! Wow! Can you believe its been 48
months already? I cant tell which baby/embryo belongs to whom,
and Im tempted to e-mail back photos of a dead rat with the
message, Can you believe its been 48 months already? But I dont,
because I dont have a photo of a dead rat.
I am a bad person. The inner innerness of my head is dark
and lonely.
If you are my friend, I will hold your baby and say cute baby,
but inside I feel sad, and I do not judge you at all, nor do I feel
superiorbecause you cant help wanting children with as
much biological voracity as I do not want children, even though
once they are here, I love them. I loved the kids whose happiness
glowed through their malnourished yellow eyes in Sri Lanka.
I love my six-year-old nephew, who cries when he surpriseattack kicks me in the crotch. He is full of small grievings; he
doesnt mean to hurt. Its not the childs fault, but
we yell at them anyway, try to make sure they
know everything they cannot do. Welcome to life,
the answer is no.
I have a few offspring in the world, who have
perhaps already learned their bodies can break,
wholl one day learn that love can fill and empty
you faster than panic, who will feel the tight grasp
of happiness and sadness arm-wrestling in their
hearts, the tension a reminder that every day is a
game we can never win, not for long. So, yes: I think having kids
is wrong, but selling my eggs so that someone else can have kids
and I can afford to go travel and hang out with orphans in the
third world is my own kind of selfish survival.
Im a pacifist who happens to be particularly gifted at
constructing weapons, a factory farmer who doesnt eat meat.
We dont always do the things that make us proud; we lock the
doors of our dissonance so we can sleep at night. I realize its
not sustainable to stop having babies, but the sustainability
of our kind is the least of my concerns.
Jennifer
Meleana
Hee
ist of my concerns:
1. If I leave my laptop at the table to use the bathroom

while in Starbucks, will someone steal it?
2. Hungryhungryhungry.
3. Can one die of sleep deprivation?
4. But I really have to urinate.
5. The survival of mankind for the next googleplex
infinity years.
I want my glass to be half full with babies, extra-cute ones,

with rainbows coming out of their heads. With one hand I
make the international stop-having-babies gesture, but Im
not an activist, Im not trying to change anyones mind. Im
just trying to understandto understand everyone else who
doesnt look at a baby and immediately think, how cruel. With
the other hand I accept thousands of dollars and do the exact
thing that goes against what I believe.
I wish I had a baby bump so that I could turn sideways
and fit into the Escher drawing of my breeder friends. It is
isolating, there is so much white space around the puzzle
piece of my head. Ive ended relationships because I cant date
a man who wants to have a childwe just dont see sperm
to ovum. I feel the strain of my own cognitive dissonance:
my greatest guilt is knowing because of me, my selfish need
for fast cash in order to escape, to avoid cubicles, to avoid
committing to lifethere is someone who will have to spend
a lifetime avoiding pain.
In the end, what I learned from donating my eggs is how
little I know my own body. The monitoring of hormone levels,
counting and measuring of follicles, and gross manipulation of

your reproductive system really gets you in touch with your
inner innerness. My choices are surreal. I could: (a) take these
little gobs and make a little me, (b) sell these little gobs and a
stranger can make a little me, or (c) have my tubes tied, saving
these little gobs from ever becoming a living thing that could
know suffering.
The last thought in my head during the egg retrieval,
before the prick of the IV sends me into a peaceful nowhere,
is always: sorry, baby. v
Hawaii Womens Journal | 33www.facebook.com/blondepeacock
poetry
Translation IX
photo by Rita Coury www.ritacouryphotography.com
lungs filled and emptied. Look left and find time stopped. Nothing happens here, we
are safe in our flesh webbed cave. Find him harmless in this anxious womb nothing
happens here. No slivered skins

No abraded elbows or knees

No twisted ligaments

No scarred tendons

No fractures

No
hiccupped breaths after tremor sobs.
Find him safe in my anxious womb, not weeping. Not
one thing happens. Inoculated numb, we are padded. No risk

No first times

No last times

No middles

No
hiccupped sobs after laughter.
Find him silent, or
rupture this trunk, splinter the frame jagged this caesarean wound, Yes!
He breathes messy asymmetrical gasps. He is scar wrapped. He is beautiful. v
Lyz Soto
In here, somewhere, between rib spaces, intercostal webs stretched over these
The Risk It Takes to Blossom
ont try to get pregnant. You just turned

twenty-nine, youre broke, and youre in
the middle of a MFA program in creative
writing. No matter how many friends become
pregnant, no matter how much you ache when
you hold their children, dont get pregnant.
But get a little sloppy with the safe sex
practices. Youre off the pill because you want
to get pregnant next year and you want all the
hormones and chemicals out before your body
turns into an all-organic hothouse. Besides, a
condom on the bedside table during the sex
act? Totally works.
Miss your period.
Pee your way through the EPT three-test
box. Pretend youre misreading all those lines in
the two little windows. Go to your gyno for good
measurepeeing on a test in an office with
white lab coats will make it official. The white
coats have advanced degrees that make them
able to read pee. And to deal with any number
of reactions when they say Youre pregnant.
So. Be pregnant.
Tell no one. If you tell no one, nothing will
change. Wrap yourself around your secret, as
tight as unbloomed petals.
Start prenatal vitamins and rush delivery
of What to Expect When Youre Expecting but
also have that one glass of wine at dinner with
that friend because otherwise shell look at you
weird.
Agonize over whether to have this baby.
Because youre not Catholic or pro-life or
convinced of some All-Seeing Eye. Baby is not
judging youor, at least, probably not.
See a doctor. See an ultrasound. See
actually nothing because at this stage, the
gestational sac and the white bit where the
doctor is outlining an embryo looks like a
Magic-8 ball with the message obscured.
It is decidedly so.
Reply hazy, try again.
Outlook not so good.
But in the grey there is a baby, and what
begins now is the alchemy of keeping it there.
There are things to learn. Get serious. Take
notes. Limit your caffeine consumption. Cut out
herbal tea, raw fish, soft cheese, and all alcohol.
Eat more vegetables. Save money. Read up
on pregnancy, and diet, and parenting, and
banking umbilical cords, and college-education

savings funds.
Get scared. How will you afford anything?
How will you nurture baby into a creative spirit,
an adventurous eater, a compassionate soul,
but also instill a sense of initiative? How will
you give them a moral compass, the choice of
religion when youre an apathetic agnostic, and
an open mind? How can you fool yourself into
believing you can protect a baby, considering
the world into which you will deliver, considering
you cant even protect yourself? How will
you discipline with a loving heart, not end up
a resigned parent to one of those screaming
toddlers on the plane that other passengers itch
to spank? And what of the very real concern
about what kind of parent you will behow will
you weave together a strong cord of love that
doesnt feel like a leash, or an umbilical cord
left uncut? How will you do all of this and still
do the things you want to do? How much will
this change you, your partner, your relationship
with each other and with everyone else? Who
wont be judging you? And why are you thinking
of all these very real concerns now when youve
been planning to get pregnant for a while? Is it
the actuality of being pregnant that makes you
finally face what it means to bring a life into
the world? That tiny heartbeat is a clock, and
each tick takes you further from vague ideals of
a someday baby and closer toward the reality
of a thousand concerns, this new life you have
conjured out of nowhere.
But start to get a little bit excited. Make
elaborate lists of names. Smile when you think
of how excited the grandparents will be. Talk
with your partner about the things you want
to give your child, and the things you dont.
Feel gratitude swirl up inside you, sudden and
forceful, when you think of what a wonderful
father he will make. You do want to be young
parents. You do want to have a baby while
youre still working from home. You have been
talking about this, with increasing intensity, for
the last five years. Why not now?
Still. Tell no one because you want to keep
baby safe.
Then: tell everyone, and when you tell them,
say the condom broke with a gentle shrug of
the shoulders. Because we werent trying but
we welcome this miracle sounds a hell of a

lot better than we are almost thirty and still
stupidly think we are invinciblethat we can
cross streets without looking both ways, flash
our wallets on the street and never get mugged,
leave the condom in its wrapper and not end up
pregnant.
Approach that fine line between a life
lived impetuously and one lived fully, with the
attendant heft and joy of family. Cross that
street without looking both ways.
Let love come to you in a million wonderful
forms. Let your partners mother weep in joy
when you tell her. Let your mother make a scene
in the middle of Ross Dress-for-Less on the
phone with you. Let friends embrace you with
fierce tenderness and tell you what amazing
parents you and your partner will be.
Believe them.
Let your partner pick up the dog poop
because youre more susceptible to bacteria
now. Let yourself have that second serving at
dinner because youre eating for two now. Let
your mother take you maternity shopping,
and strap on the pillowy bump to see how the
clothes will fit you in one month, and three, and
six from now. Let yourself cry at slow songs,
commercials with babies or puppies, and the
moments in movies when the soundtrack tells
you to, because youre hormonal now.
Go back to the doctor two weeks later. He
is running late, but you dont care because
youre looking at one of those Anne Geddes
booksthe one where babies are contorted
into the curves of their own mothers. One
is even back in the wombrecreated with a
gauzy mesh, the baby smashed in there. It looks
really uncomfortable. Its something youd
make a sarcastic comment about, even as your
heartstrings pluck, but youre pregnant so you
let these newborns play your heart like a badass
guitar solo. Look up when your name is called
and follow the nurse into an exam room. Finger
an embryonic-development chart while you
wait. Pull out your single-spaced, two-page list
of questions when the doctor comes through
the door and prepare to launch in. But he wants
to do another ultrasound.
Be excited! You didnt think youd get to
see your baby again so soon. The lights are
by Mayumi Shimose Poe

floral photo by Dave Poe
still on while the doctor puts a condom and
lubricant on the ultrasound wand, and hes
sticking it up in you while his wife, who is also
his assistant, watch along with your partner.
Which is weird. He flicks off the lights and you
all look at the screen. He fishes around and
fishes around. And as suddenly as switching
the light back on, he breaks the news. There
is no heartbeat, and the baby has stopped
growing. But, he rushes to say, his machines
are not the most advanced, so you really
should have a second opinion. He rushes to
make you an appointment at a diagnostic lab
and hurries you back into your clothes and
down the street. As you and your partner
walk, the lubricant soaks through your
panties. Every step you take is punctuated
by no heartbeat, no heartbeat. You are not
invincible after all.
Get that second opinion. Your partner
cant come with you because its a womens
center.
Sit in the dark, alone, unable to stop
crying. When a lab technician enters the
room and stupidly asks you if you know why
youre here, try really hard not to bite off her
head.
Yeah, you fucking know why youre here.
You have a dead baby inside you.
The woman has you undress, hands you
a box of tissues, and puts a trash can at your
feet. As she inserts another condomed,
lubricated wand, you cry and blow your nose
and toss tissues. She leaves the room, then
a few minutes later returns and says youre
have to go back to your doctors office for the
results.
Throw a fucking fit in the middle of the
waiting room, making all thirty or so heads
turn. Why the fuck cant anybody man up
around here? You know your baby is dead,
so why cant someone just fucking say so?
You fucking do not want to fucking go back
to your fucking doctors fucking office and
sit in the fucking waiting room with all the
other fucking women who are visibly fucking
pregnant. Dont give a fuck about the noise
youre making, or that other people might
be getting bad diagnoses themselves. Give a
fuck about nothing but yourself.
Your fucking fit fucking works. Your doctor

gets on the phone in his office and you get on
the phone in the labs office.
You arent pregnant any more, he says.
I know, you say.
It was a silent miscarriage, he says. Baby
stopped growing about a week to a week
and a half ago. Come back into the office. We
need to talk about the next step. You wont
have to wait in the waiting room.
Go. Briefly weigh the options of a natural
miscarriage, of the baby disengaging on its
own and flushing like the heaviest of periods,
...You want to start

grieving, and to keep
grieving, and then to
someday reach the
end of grieving.
or a D&C, the surgical removal of the baby.

Make the too-sudden, too-emotional
decision to have the D&C. You want this over
with. You have a dead baby inside you. You
want it out. You want to start grieving, and
to keep grieving, and then to someday reach
the end of grieving.
The doctor is able to schedule you for a
D&C the very next day.
Go home. Pack all your hopes into a small
box. Put in the maternity clothes and the
pregnancy guides and the baby books and the
lists of names. Pack the newborns little bear
onesie, bought on a whim, the ultrasound,
and the few congratulatory cards. Name
the ungendered, unliving, never-to-be-born
child. Decide he is a him. Write him a letter
and tell him goodbye. Put that in the box, too.
Look at your little curio collection, all of it so
certain, shiny with invincibility. Miscarriages
happen to other people. You even did your
worrying wrong.
Make the saddest love. It is silent love,
mostly, except youre still crying. This is not
sexy, but its not about getting turned on.

It is about needing your partner to be the
most physically close possible. Its about the
tenderness of his touch. Its about spending
one last night together as a family. Wonder
if thats fucked up. After all, one of you is
dead.
Dont eat the next day. Dont drink,
either. Endure IVs being inserted and blood
withdrawn. Wait for nearly seven hours in
a breezy hospital gown and slip-resistant
socks. Try not to cry continuously. Get drugs,
sweet drugs, and then get led into surgery,
and get strapped down to a table with your
legs in the air, your view a tray of shiny
cutting implements. Cry in earnest. Feel like
youve been abducted by aliens and some
horrific experiment is about to occur. Get
administered anesthetic. Think of the Saw
movies, IVII. Cry hysterically. Then pass
out.
Wake up. Ask for the doctor. Ask for your
partner. Ask for water. Pass out.
Forget having done any of that.
Wake up. Ask for the doctor. Ask for your
partner. Ask for water. A male nurse tells you
youve already talked to the doctor. Dont
you remember? You said you had important
questions for him. Like when you could have
sex again. The nurse smirks. You really dont
remember? Wish you could pass back out.
Finally, go home. Dont leave the house
except to walk the dog and get the groceries.
Dont speak to anyone. Have your partner
break the news to your families, even though
you know he is hurting, too, in his quieter,
more understated way. His mother cries
hate her reaction. Your mother doesnt cry
hate her reaction. Swathed in a blanket, you
curl on the couch next to him in what else
but the fetal position.
Place the blame.
How could you fail? Starving women in
Africa manage this. So do prostitutes who
then pass on HIV to their children. Careless
teenaged girls who dont want babies do
it without even trying. Be angry with your
body, as if it was not your body. You had one
job for the last nine weeks: to keep the bell
jar over the seedling. Instead, you shattered
the glass. It was because you werent sure

youd wanted him. It was because the week
you conceived you went to hear that Exotica
jazz band and had way too many tiki cocktails.
It was because you didnt start prenatal
vitamins early enough. It was because you
walked too much, because you lifted that
one kind-of-heavy grocery bag, because you
didnt get enough sleep. It was that fight with
your motherremember, right afterward,
the air high and tight in your chest, being
unable to breathe. It was your husbands
sperm. It was your egg. It was the fuckedup combination of both. It was the love, too
much love, and the pride, too much of that,
too, the wanting it too badly, the celebrating
it too loudly. It is all your fault. Hate yourself.
It is everyone elses fault. Hate the world.
Hate the baby. Who is he to knock at the
door but leave once youre finally ready to
open it?
Send out e-mails telling everyone to leave
you alone. Let the love come to you, virtually,
florally, epistolarily. Ignore everything; box
all of it up, too. Stay home and pull tight
the covers of the world around you, making
sure nothing gets in. Cry until you have no
moisture left in your entire body.
Be unpregnant.
Watch the magic trick of it: the
Thanksgiving table set, flickering light cast
from spindly golden candlesticks, the goblets
of ruby wine, the creamy linen napkins and
tablecloth, china bone white and laced with
gold, all five pieces of the silverware but these
plated, too, in gold. The turkey glistens as it
waits to be carved. And then the tablecloth
whisked out from under the load. The light
still gleaming, the glasses retaining each
drop, each last thing seemingly undisturbed.
You have been given back your same life, but
you are not the same person.
Slowly reenter the world not a mother.
Were you ever a mother? You were one when
sperm met egg, at least this is what your body
would say. Or perhaps you were one when
the first test came back positive, or when the
last did. But you know when it began for you.
It was when you traded in your wine glass for
those awful, fishy prenatal vitamins. It was
when you began dreaming and worrying. It
was when you vowed to care as much for this
Other as for your Self. It was when you took a
life into your own hands.
Drink and dance and eat sushi and fly in
airplanes whenever you feel like it. Wear
short skirts and dresses that cling to your
skinny self. Take no vitamins and have an
entire pot of coffee every day. Forgive your
friends children for living when your child
did not and hold them close. Learn to love

them again. Let seven months pass before
you realize the date.
Before you realize that youre so
unpregnant that by now youd have an
unbaby.
See now the arc youve travelled. Unpack
your emotions along with the boxedup condolences, the goodbye letter, the
ultrasound, the maternity clothes. Here is the
shock, the keening, the rage, the withdrawl
into an unquiet mind. Here is the surprise
and horrification over your resilience. You are
guilty of nothing but being okay. Here are all
the fears about what might go wrong, and did
go wrong, and could go wrong in the future.
Here are the same unanswerable questions.
But dig deeper, because here, too, is the
hope. The readiness to risk going through
everything again. You can no longer remain
tight in a bud. You are thirty, still broke, and
done with your MFA. Youre an editor and a
writer. You are a daughter, a niece, a wife,
and a friend. But what you want to be most
is a mother. v
Acknowledgments
I could not have written this essay without
Jennifer Hee. I also thank Suzanne Farrell
Smith and Caitlin Leffel for two years of
teaching me how to write creative nonfiction
through their own beautiful examples. Lastly,
I am grateful to Dave for allowing me to
share this story.
Mayumi
Shimose
Poe
Art by Alice Mizrachi www.am-files.com

A Second Look
at Providence
by Caitlin Leffel
Mark my words,
the truth will

come out. I read this in an etiquette
column three days after I returned from
Providence. A pregnant woman wrote
asking if it was all right to lie about how
long it took her to conceive to spare a
friends feelings. The columnist asked
the woman if she was prepared to lie for
the rest of her life, and when I read that,
I thought of Providence. Every lie is a lot
of work. Concealment requires upkeep.
Perpetual care.
The trip from New York to Providence
on Amtrak took seven hours. Thats not
a lie. Our train left Penn Station on time
but came to a stop not long after, just
outside Manhattan. I heard passengers
phone people at their destinations and
call where we were stopped Astoria, but
Im not sure if thats really where we were
or if it was a guess one person made that
spread virally to the rest of the passengers
in my car. There were reeds growing
around the track, and through them I
could see the New York skyline. We stayed
in that spot for more than an hour before
the conductor made an announcement
that our trains engine had broken and we
were waiting for a rescue train to tow us
back to the city, where the engine could
be replaced.
When we arrived at Penn Station two
hours later, I leaned across the aisle to
look at my husband. It was Saturday of
Columbus Day weekenda popular time
for Amtrak, the conductor told usand
we hadnt been able to get seats next to
each other. The trip to Providence was
for his twentieth college reunion, but I
had also wanted to go; now I was afraid
that since we were back where we started
after two hours on the train, he might give
up on the trip altogether. But Alex didnt
say anything about getting off. The kid
sitting beside me left the train, and Alex

moved into my row.
Well into the third hour of the trip, the
train doors opened at the first stop, in
New Rochelle. But they didnt close. After
an hour of waiting, EMTs got on and took
a woman from our car off the train on a
stretcher. More phone calls were made,
and I heard people say that someone on
the train had a seizure, but again, I wasnt
sure if this was the truth. The conductor
never made an announcement about
this delay. Maybe he was worried about
mutiny.
Things got better after that. The route
followed the Connecticut coastline, and it
was a sunny day. The trees were colored in
all their different ways from springy greens
to autumns golds, oranges, and browns.
The leaves seemed more like offspring than
appendage in their individualityeach
trees own rainbow tribeand with the
sea in the background, I felt overwhelmed
by the variety in this landscape. Had I ever
seen beach and foliage so close together
before?
I didnt realize how close Providence
is to the coast, I said to Alex, eager for
the honesty. I had been telling him little
lies about Providence all week long, and
now the pile was so high that it was
hard for me to say anything about it
that was true. When we finally arrived,
it was almost four. I asked Alex whether
we should walk or take a cab because
I didnt know how far the station was
from the campus. This, too, was the
truth.
I started lying again when we got
to Benefit Street. The Rhode Island
School of Design doesnt really have
a campus; its buildings are scattered
around several streets in the middle of
Providence, though they are separated
from the rest the city by being on a hill.

Alexs friends met us on the steps in
front of the student coffee shop. When
they asked how we were doing after
our crazy trip, I said, Im just glad to
be here. Ive never been to Providence
before! On our walk from the train
station, we passed a group of four
students on a walkway over a canal.
One boy wore a striped maillot, like the
kind you see pictures of Picasso wearing
in Antibes; one wore a flannel shirt; and
one wore skinny jeans and a tight-fitting
cardigan over a neon yellow t-shirt. The
girl was dressed in Goth. I went to a
preppy college in Massachusetts where
everyone wore North Face fleeces and
corduroys from J. Crew. The fact that this
site registered as unfamiliar was a relief.
I didnt remember the canal. The kids
seemed unusual. I felt as if I never been
here at all, and this made everything Id
said before feel closer to the truth.
RISD was founded in Providence in
1877 with the objective of providing
instruction in disciplines of art so
graduates could apply these principles
to trade and manufacturing. Brown
University, which was founded as
the College of Rhode Island in 1764,
moved from Warren, Rhode Island,
to Providence in 1770. Both schools
are located above Providences
metropolitan area on College Hill. The
respective admissions materials say the
schools are next door to one another,
but its more accurate to say they
overlap. The schools logos mingle with
each other around the neighborhood
on buildings and signs; and students at
both schools are permitted to register
for classes at the other. In 2007, Brown
and RISD announced the creation of a
joint degree program, through which
photo courtesy of Caitlin Leffel
students receive degrees from both

schools in two complimentary majors of
their choosing. In 1997, when I was 16,
I took a tour of Brown with my father,
during spring vacation of my junior year
of high school. The only thing that I
remember about being there was that
I saw a Ben & Jerrys on the main street.
Is it a requirement for all college towns
in New England to have a Ben & Jerrys?
I joked. There is still a Ben & Jerrys on
College Hill, and when Alex and I walked
by it on Sunday morning on the way to
the RISD art museum, I was about to tell
him that story but then remembered I
couldnt.
I dont know why I lied, but I know how
it happened. The best way to explain it,
which still isnt quite true, is that the lie
felt close enough to what was real. Alex
and I work on weekends. We dont have
a car. We live in a small apartment. Going
away with him for a day and a half was a
luxury, and it seemed like something about
the trip would not have been as good if Id
been to Providence before. Nothing had

happened my first time in Providence
that left any mark on my life, so it seemed
like I easily could not have been there at
all. The distance between the truth and
the lie was so short that I slipped across
it, and once there, the journey seemed
harmless.
At the RISD art museum, Alex pulled me
into a room off the main exhibition hall to
look at an installation called Connected:
Eject before disconnecting. I love
this, he said, and I did too. A group of
electronic collages hung from the ceiling,
each one made of plastic bags, water
bottles, colored lights, computer pieces,
and little video screens. It was amazing,
but now, just four days later, I cant
remember how the pieces fit together, or
what I liked about it, and I feel like I need
to make a rule about Providence that if I
forget something about it, it didnt really
happen. If I make that rule, what I said
wouldnt be a lie and someday I could
tell Alex what Id said about the Ben &
Jerrys and feel that Id been honest. If I

could mark all the words Ive ever said to
my husband, Id see that so many havent
been the truth. I read about a British study
that found the average person lies four
times a day. The most common lie? Im
fine. Ive told Alex that Im fine so many
times when I could have said something
else, and now the deception between us
seems insurmountable and inexcusable.
I want to warn the pregnant woman
about the strange burden of altruism she
will take on with her lie. Every day, I feel
Providence sag a little more. Its a nuisance
but too benign to let the truth out. Still, it
doesnt ache all the time. In fact, I often
dont feel it all. So its finewhatever that
means. v
WEB EXCLUSIVE:
THE BACKSTORY
Caitlin gives us another
glance at Providence
www.hawaiiwomensjournal.com
[the balancing act]
he first time I met Gladys, I was looking

for a pair of shoes for my mothers
funeral.
I had ventured into Pzazz, my favorite
Honolulu consignment store as a break from
the exhaustive planning and cleaning and
phone calls that ensued after my mothers
passing. I had already procured a tasteful black
dress, cap sleeved and full skirted, similar to
one that my mother would have worn in her
heyday of the early sixties, and now I needed
shoes to match.
As I browsed the racks, Gladys floated out
from the back room. She was resplendent in a
black turtleneck and fur coatin the middle
of a Honolulu spring. Her sophisticated bob
gleamed a shocking bright purple.
Can I help you with something? she asked.
Im just looking for some shoes, I
replied awkwardly. Gladyss regal bearing and
straightforward nature, even her confident,
upturned chin, reminded me of my mother. I was
unnerved and yet comforted at the same time.
She fingered the long strand of pearls at
her neck as she studied me. She pointed at the
top of a rack nearby. Try those. They look like
you, she smiled.
Ten minutes later, I was owner of a
gorgeous pair of pink Manolo Blahnik strappy
sandals, which I wore proudly to my mothers
service the next day. I know Mom would have
loved them.
I have visited Gladys at Pzazz many times
over the past two and a half years, and every
time I go into the store I feel more like a part
of her family. Gladys listens to me complain
about work and fusses over me as I try on
clothes. She stands with her hands on her
hips, shakes her purple bob, and without a
word I whirl back into the dressing room and
take whatever I was wearing right off. She sets
aside Diane von Furstenberg wrap dresses
because she senses that they will look good
on me. She even tells me when she thinks Im
spending too much money.
In other words, she looks out for me.
We women spend a great deal of time and
money on shopping. We shop for different
reasons: stress relief and therapy, for instance,
but the eventual goal is to make ourselves look
and feel good. Sadly, however, the urge to look
fabulous often feeds a parallel desire: to look
more fabulous (not to mention younger and
sexier) than the woman standing at the sale
Women with Pzazz

rack next us.
Shopping provides an almost too-perfect
example of the insidious competition between
women: the hysterical tug-of-war over the
same marked-down dress. The dress could
be baby-poo green and ill-fitting, but its on
sale, and damned if any other woman should
go home with itor anything else that should
be ours: a man, a job, even happiness. Men
may be the hunters, but were the gatherers,
and no one stands in the way of our successful
gathering. We have become a generation of
women who will push each other out of the
way for a fifty-percent-off pair of panties.
Competition is not always a bad thing.
The survival of the fittest naturally connotes
competitionwe human beings have used it
to thrive since the beginning of time. Im sure
prehistoric cave women had the occasional
fight over a new mastodon hide. But how did
we get to the point where we cant stand to
see another woman look beautiful in said hide
(or a DVF wrap dress) without wanting to,
well, club her over the head?
Heres my theory: despite the ubiquitous
group-Prada shopping trips on Sex and the
City, most of us choose to do our shopping
solo. We dont need other women. We walk
the mall of life alone.
This is not a surprise: as third-wave
feminists, we have been raised to prioritize
independence above all else. We have been
taught by our second-wave mothers (with
the best of intentions) that to not embrace
independence, whether personal or economic,
is to dishonor their quest for gender equality.
Weve been told that we owe it to ourselves
(and to our fellow women) to be successful
and that this sometimes will mean stepping on
a fellow sister. In other words, once Nordstrom
opens the doors for their half-yearly sale, its
every woman for herself.
Its logical, yet contradictory. In order for
women to make gains in the fight for gender
equality, our foremothers banded together in
remarkable numbers. The womens movement
itself is traditionally defined by the work of
the second wave, a wave being one coherent
force. Yet even as our mothers banded
together, they were coaching us to strike out
on our own. I remember my own mother
saying: Dont depend on anyone else to give
you what you wantespecially other women.
And so, the message that many young women
by Theresa Falk
have taken away from the feminist movement

seems to be both bastardized and lonely.
The above is clearly based on a male
paradigm of power, which makes sense: our
mothers had to struggle within the confines of
a patriarchal system. Even fashion served as a
mirror. Women bobbed their hair and burned
their bras, eschewing symbols of femininity.
They donned linebacker-worthy shoulder pads,
literally mirroring their male counterparts. They
worked with what they had.
Pzazz, for me, is a haven of support in
the sometimes lonely world of independent
womanhood. In Gladyss own words, its
a clubhouseand everyone who enters is
a special member. Bliss, Gladyss daughter,
works at the shop as well, and often her own
children are present. I have spent many a happy
afternoon trying on Jimmy Choos while Gladys
playfully races around the store in her fur coat
pushing one of her grandchildren in a stroller.
I play with Blisss daughter while she is busy
putting clothing back on the racks. And we
snack on cookies and mochi the entire time.
All of Pzazzs customers have bonded.
Theres an older woman, red-headed and
tall, who must have been a dancer at some
point. She pushes open the curtains of the
dressing room with a showgirls flourish, arms
extended, one leg bent inward, to reveal a St.
John suit or Chanel jacketthings Id never
wear (although Gladys thinks I will, indeed,
work my way up to Chanel someday) but that
on her look irresistibly glamorous.
What do you think, Honey? she asks me,
and I swear Ive landed in a Bertolucci film.
Fabulous! I say, and I mean it. She is gorgeous.
I spontaneously break out into applause.
There are dozens of regulars at Pzazz,
and each of them has their different style.
However, being there together allows women
who otherwise may not run in the same circles
to relaxeven to bond. No matter who you
are, Gladys serves as That Woman You Need:
a mother, a sister, an aunty, or a friend. She is
the female support we all crave but that our
stubbornly independent selves will not ask for.
Gladys doesnt let you shop alone.
We all want to feel beautiful, and every
time I set foot in this special store, some
amazing womanGladys, Bliss, a lovely
strangerin some way tells me that I am. And
thats something we women need to hear
from one another more often. v
Heres Where It Takes a Turn
poetry
Harmonie
Bettenhausen
Thunderous anticipation tangibly
heightened, gripping my bowels, I feel myself diminishing

in a vortex of odium and angst. I am forced to leave the
dark situation that proceeds before my darting eyes.
I dont like that person. My pebble of a heart cannot
handle having to deal with people who are unreal.
Unlike the undead, which are totally real, the unreal think
they have problems like trying to be more real.
Its snow, its rain, snow. Rain.
Seattle cant seem to decide what
exactly it wants to do right now.
I woke up and pillows of new snow
were falling from the sky,
creating a cartoon splat when they
hit the ice on the sidewalks.
Now it is raining.
Hard. Icy rain pounding against the windows,
single-pane relics;
you can hear a fly land on them if its quiet enough.
This rain has nice legs. It is thick, an icy gel
slapping and sliding down the glass.
So this is Christmas.
Theres a pumpkin smashed in the middle of his street,

orange innards slime and stain, creeping down the slush
with each passing vehicle.
Better than bees, treads on tires will pollinate the city
with the sprinkle of pumpkin seeds, eaten and shat.
So this is it, a flurry of overconfident text messages.
My new role is undefined.
We end up at Collins Pub. Sitting on either edge, on the

angle, facing each other. His right knee is near my left
knee. I try not to move. Try not to be jittery. Try not to
have to say, "Oh, sorry, was that your leg?"
Awkward pause.
The sun was spreading like a swirl of melted dreamsicle

over the bay, reflecting off the bar mirror. We were
laughing. Why are there always mirrors behind the
shelves of alcohol? To create a feeling of depth?
To create a feeling of watchfulness.

Watch
your
back.
Anyway, the sun. He suggested we go outside,

he needed a smoke. American Spirit.
Yellow pack?
Blue pack?
Its irrelevant now.
We sat on the cold, black metal chairs.
Not black metal chairsthey were metal, black, and
they were freezing. Donning merely a black hoodie and
scarf, not ready to admit I was cold. I knew the next act. I
didnt want to flip to that page.
We watched the sun set over Puget Sound.
I know. Corny. He doesnt pay attention.
Never pays attention. I have to bring his
attention to those things right in front of him.
He always says, Damn. I missed it.
Yeah, you missed it, alright.
This is where it always takes the same turn. Where I turn

my barstool to face the mirror. Turn to face those fears.
This is where I make the grave error of expecting to see
something slightly different when I raise my head to
finally look.
This is where I look. v
photo by Bianca Mills
poetry
Brenda Kwon
Flight
She once caught an avocado between her hands.
Poised on a rock beneath the tree in our backyard,
she leapt, seizing the alligator-green,
then landed tender in the grass,
no signs of sore leg or blue veins
in the way she clutched her prize to her chest
then held it out to me when she noticed me watch.
she watched me graduate from the balls of my feet

to the tips of my toes
til the only thing holding me down to the earth
were wood and a millimeters thickness of satin
because she believed if I only kept going,
chass, arabesque, saut, elev,
I would lift off the ground and learn how to fly.
I took that prize

because I know the language of a mothers care
and how she feeds to say I love you,
but her real gift was flight,
those few seconds she lifted up,
left behind the weight of stone,
her seventy-two-year-old body slicing the air the way it did
in the decades-ago pirouettes and grand jets
that pulsed her blood in the days
before my grandmother threatened,
If you become a dancer, I will break your legs.
And so I danced in satin, ribbons, and wool,

but flew in sound, letters, and words,
and the day I untied those ribbons forever
was the day she let go of dreams
that puppeted me across the floor,
me,
the girl whose movement in her womb
mustve felt like the dance she carried inside,
stirring
long after ribbons fell unbound,
the cord that tied us clipped and cut.
I have never seen her dance,

her only recital shaped by the ballerina who pas-de-bourrs
in my head with a choreography composed of fragments:
the lift of her arms pinning sheets to the line,
the point of her toe when she steps on the gas,
the tilt of her chin as she tucks the phone
between shoulder and ear,
her stage the story of our lives,
whirling through piano lessons, band practice,
basketball, and hula,
three meals per day and reminders to sleep,
her music the waltzes I hear her hum
when she is dreaming of the girl
she never stopped being.
And she packed away my winged feet

but refused to break my fingers flight
over the lined platform of clean white pages.
And she followed me through my many stages,
her steps en avant and syncopated
by swollen leg and hips tilting, unjustly weighted,
while my pen would glissade loops, crosses, and points,
each piece a story of what a body does when allowed to dance.
Maybe thats why she led me into pink leather slippers,

stitching elastic to hold my girl-feet in,
combed my hair back so it wouldnt fall as I spun,
my childs body reflecting in studio mirrors
the artist she was never allowed to become.
Insisting I learn how to walk above ground,
But beneath the lyrics I learned to hear

her earthbound rhythm, her supporting beat,
the way the pause would lengthen between her steps
in what I imagined was flight but knew was time,
silvering her hair, curving her back, measuring her sleep,
and slowing her breath.
And in the silence I remember the way she leaped,
her body supported by the knowledge of flight
and when she leaps from this rock
to claim her prize,
there will be no stones to break her fall. v
Ms. deMeaners
von Hotties guide to navigating a modern life
by von Hottie
RSVP-Huh?

A Refresher Course in RSVP Etiquette
ere we are, living it up in the digital age,

and we are all so in demand. Invitations
are flying at us from every electronic
and offline corner of the world. But how are we
supposed to deal with these paper-invitation
things again? And just what does it mean to
reply maybe to an event? With so many
invitations via so many avenues, it is easy to
become overwhelmedlike my grandmother
used to say, Its hell being popular. Well,
mes petits von Hottlettes, back away from the
reply button. Lets reassess, lets refresh, lets
remember how to rpondez-vous sil vous plat
the right way.
Formal Events and Printed Invitations

(Weddings, Milestone Celebrations,
Intimate Dinner Parties, etc.):

Do what youre asked. Respond by the

reply date and in the manner indicated
on the invitation: telephone, e-mail,
reply card, and so forth. Do not make
the host hunt you down for a response.
They want to invite you, not stalk you.
The Plus One. Never assume that you

may bring a plus one. If there is only
one name on the envelope, it usually
means the invitation is just for you. Sure,
you would like to bring your flavor of the
month to your friends wedding, but that
doesnt mean your friend wants to shell
out $150 just so some person they wont
know by your next birthday can help you
get look at my belly piercing! drunk.
Show up. Once you have positively

replied, barring an emergency, you are
honor bound to arriveand to dress
appropriately, be punctual, and be ready
to appreciate every moment.
Evites:

Dont leave them hanging. Just because it

has a cheesy graphic illustration and small
fuschia font does not mean you can ignore
it. E-mail functions as a primary form of
communication for many people, much
like the Pony Express did in the Wild West.
Back in the day, could you ignore a dude
on a pony? No. Think of Evites like really

fast poniesdont keep that pony waiting
in the virtual front yard forever. Holla back
promptly to the folks who invited you.
Plus One? Or Plus None? Evites make the

plus one issue even more awkward, but
again do not assume you can bring a friend.
However, depending on the formality
and importance of the event, you could
very politely and humbly inquire, Does
this invitation extend to So-And-So?
Show up. Be honest with yourself about

your time and social commitments. Do not
say yes if you know its likely you wont
attend. People often wrongly assume that
because there are dozens of people on the
Evite that their RSVP and their attendance
will not matter. Assume that you are the
one person on that list for whom a RSVP
actually matters and treat the reply with
consideration.
Facebook Events:

Find the important ones. Its rough, I

know. Your inbox is flooded, you cannot
comprehend what the event is even about,
and you havent a clue which one of your
876 friends sent you the invitation. But
you must try to decipher which ones are
important and reply. Of course, be honest
with yourself about your time: you are
only one person and you cannot be at all 58
Facebook events occurring between 8:00
p.m. and 10:00 p.m. on next Saturday night.
Yes or no, not maybe so. When a lot of

these events are friends performances
or fundraisers, it is tempting to reply
maybe because you dont want to
seem unsupportive, even though you
have no intention of actually showing
up. It is actually more polite to give a
truthful RSVP, and if you cant make it,
e-mail them a personal note. Feel free
to cut and paste this exact note: Dear
[Friend], Im so sorry I cant make your
[show/fundraiser]. Im sure [you/it]
will be fabulous. Love, [Your Name].
Downgrading. If you replied yes or

dont make me cuss at youmaybe and
later have to switch your reply to a no,
its best to e-mail or message the host with
an explanation and an apology. Similarly,
if you upgrade to a yes, confirm with the
host to make sure there is still space for
you at the party.
Always Keep in Mind the Following:

If you do attend: call or e-mail the host

to thank them after the event. Bonus
points for handwritten thank you notes.
If you cannot attend: call or e-mail the

host to express your regret and wish
them well with the event. This will keep
you on the guest list for the next event.
When in doubt about the attire, formality,
or guest list of a party, ask your host for
clarification. Be careful not to overly
badger them for information or be high
maintenance; always remember that
you are not the only person they invited.
Have fun! Its a party, people! Relax and

look good. Not sure how to look good? Stick
to the two-for-one rule: two pink drinks
for them, one for you. Everyone looks good
through ros-colored glasses. v
If you have pressing etiquette concerns or

questions on how to best navigate this modern
life, please e-mail:

vonhottie@vonhottie.com
photo by Lucas Stoffel
Walls
by Anjoli Roy
Illustration by kathryn xian

You always have to think beyond the
structure. Think about what is going on
underneath and all around, because
that is where the rats are located. The
more you look into it, the more you will
most likely find.
John Murphy, an exterminator,
quoted in Rats: Observations on
the History and Habitat of the
Citys Most Unwanted Inhabitants
here are rats in the walls. Everybody

knows that, but nobody wants to
think about it. Still, theyre there,
nesting nimbly in the cotton-candy insulation,
smudging their musty hair along concrete
walls and wooden support beams.
Ive nursed a fear of rats as far back as I can
remember. In my travels across the U.S. from
California, where I knew rats to lumber around
in garages and alleyways, to New York, where
they got on and off the late-night subways
as casually as human passengers, all the way
back across the country to Hawaii, where Id
sensed but never seen them, I hoped with all
earnestness that I might find a place, at last,
without these hideous creatures. Still, I know
that wherever I am, if I listen closely enough,
I will hear their nails clicking and their highpitched squeals squeaking across the still night
air. But New Yorks nights are never still, which
means that to hear the rats, to note when they
are scratching their wet teeth through the dry
wall or gnawing on the plastic bags beneath
your kitchen sink, you must have an ear alert
to them.
My boyfriend, Dave, always spends the
weekends outside the city. He says its his time
to decompressto chill out with family and
get away. A born-and-raised Long Islander,
hes happy to spend Saturday and Sunday
in the suburbs for a break from the crush of
the city. When hes gone, our small studio
apartment is, for the most part, unoccupied.
After spending the better part of a decade
in Manhattan, I found that I also wanted some
distance from the city to decompress, but
I wanted to get farther away than just a few
hours on the train. I decided to attend the
University of Hawaii at Mnoa for an M.A.
in English, but I felt confident that Dave and I
would survive the two years and five thousand
miles apart. Having grown up in a California
community where parents divorcing was as

predictable as puberty, I told myself that for
a relationship to last, it needed a test, and I
couldnt think of a greater challenge than
being so far apart. Dave and I were great,
sureI knew that from the six years wed
been togetherbut what would happen if our
relationship were inconvenient? If we werent
in the same apartment/city/continent?
Would our sometimes papery attempts at
communicating withstand the distance? What
furry beasts might surface if I were gone?
Wed survived my first year away already,
each of us going to great lengths to see each
other. Our pattern was to visit after no more
than seven or eight weeks aparta time
period, we soon recognized, that was our
breaking point. If we went longer, Dave was
sure to be increasingly distant, and I was sure
to pick fights that ended in tears. Silently, wed
decided that wed each do whatever it took
to find each other before more than seven
weeks passed: Dave found the money and the
time off from work to surprise me for a long
weekend in California when I was visiting my
family just as the final sprint to summer break
seemed too long to bear; I, on a whim, spent
the last of my savings to brave the half-days
of travel, each way, so we could be together
on Valentines Day weekend. I imagined us
traversing the endless maze of walls that had
shot up between us; once we were together,
the struggle to find each other always faded
away.
Though wed begun quibbling about small
thingslike where wed live when I returned
and how long it might take me to find a job
with a degree that didnt mean much of
anything in the cityand bigger, foundationrocking thingslike if Id open myself up to
trying to hear the message at his church
rather than continuing to hide out with the
babies in the nurseryI hoped that after
braving this great distance, we might average
the space between us and move to some
place between New York and Hawaii, some
place closer to my family in California, some
place that wasnt as gritty as New York. Some
place without rats.
At nine p.m. my time on an October night,
Dave logged online. Calculating the time
differenceit was three oclock in the morning
his timeI was surprised to see him there. I
accepted his request to audio chat, especially

excited to hear his voice since itd already
been close to a month and a half since wed
seen each other. I remembered that since he
didnt have a webcam, I wouldnt be able to
see him and glanced up at my wall calendar,
where Id circled his upcoming arrival date
with a fat red marker
A slew of excited, indeterminablenot
cursing, Dave doesnt cursewords came
through my computer from his end.
Uhm, what?
Two in the apartment when I got back
from worktheir bodies as big as Coke cans!
Two what?
Rats, Roy Li! he pleaded, using his
nickname for me to garner extra sympathy.
The Rattus norvegicus is the only species
of rat that lives in New York City, my quick
Internet search would later tell me. Most
likely misnamed by the English physician,
naturalist, and writer John Berkenhout, the
rats were believed to have come to England
on board Norwegian lumber ships, though
they hadnt been sighted in Norway yet.
Having originated in Southeast Asia, this rat
also known as the brown ratis said to have
traveled through northern China and Europe,
arriving on Turtle Island around the time of
the American Revolution. Their port of entry
was most likely New York City, and they spread
out onto the continent in hordes, a manifest
infestation. Thanks to global warmings more
tepid winters and humans ever-wasteful
food habits, the brown rat is now common
to all continents in the world, with the sole
exception of Antarctica.
In the midst of my research, I would be
most loath to discover that, as stowaways on
European ships sailing the Pacific, these same
rats had landed in Hawaii in the nineteenth
century. Though there were rats here before
them, the brown rat is the largest on the
Hawaiian Islands today.
In New York, winter is the best time to
exterminate since rats are already combating
the cold and relative lack of food. However, as
a Times article I read had said, every garbage
can without a lid, every window screen that
had been nudged aside just enough to let a rat
slip by, encourages the existence of this everpresent population.
Did you call the exterminator? I asked,
horrified. This was a silly question. I knew Dave

hadnt had a phone for the past year. Was
being so difficult to reach his way of punishing
me for moving all the way to Hawaii to go to
graduate school? I didnt want to believe that,
unlike me, he wasnt addicted to technology
didnt need a Blackberry for e-mail, BBM,
text messages, Facebook, the bus schedule,
Internet searches, and, oh yeah, for telephone
calls, too.
My mind immediately flashed to the teeth
and nails I was convinced that Id heard in
the very apartment I was sitting in, halfway
around the world from Dave. On those nights,
Id lamely hunker down into my sheets,
hoping nothing would eat its way through the
cinderblock walls.
Dave recounted the scene he stumbled into
after his most recent weekend with his family
in Long Island. He saw one rat scurry back into
the wall behind the refrigerator. The other was
in the toilet. Captive, the toilet rat suffered a
painful drowning in concentrated peppermint
Castile soap and urine. (Those were the only
fluids within reach, he told me. It was the heat
of passion.) After the drowning, Dave lifted
the rats limp bodyat least 30 pounds (his
words)with the plunger and dumped it down
the garbage shoot just a few steps outside
the front door of our studio. Then he went to
work scrubbing the apartment, dumping the
crumb-filled pizza boxes and greasy Styrofoam
takeout containers hed abandoned days and
weeks before on our small counter (he hadnt
grocery shopped or cooked a decent meal
since Id left). Finally, he shifted the stove and
fridge away from the wall enough to reveal the
fist-sized hole the rats had eaten through the
wall. He stuffed it with a dirty towel.
In the morning, the towel had been eaten
straight through and a new hole gaped in the
wall, though the rats, thoughtful guests, had
disappeared by morning. Dave patched things
over again, this time, covering the holes with
duct tape and something else, he said.
What else?
Well, you know how I told you the holes
are, like, perfect circles?
Yeah . . .
I plugged up the holes with your makeup
thingies and then used the duct tape.
Packing up for Hawaii, Id left behind my
plastic cylinders of pricy mineral foundation
and blush, thinking, who needs to maintain in
a long-distance relationship?
Dave! That stuffs expensive!
Home again that evening, he found yet
another rat, this time chilling out (again,
his words) in the planter on our windowsill,
sunning itself. Its legs were kicked out to the
side; its face, resting against the warm glass,
looked out dreamily at the setting sun.

I swear to God! I yelled into my computer
screen. We arent living any place with rats
ororor snow! When my program is up in
May, were moving! So get your isht together!
(Out of respect for Dave, I didnt curse either.)
Didnt you move already?
I sensed him smirking behind the screen
and flipped off my computeralthough I knew
he couldnt see my angry finger.
Funny, guy. Im serious.
And are you saying there arent rats in
Hawaii or something?
Not that Ive seen! I snapped. I
instinctively drew in my limbs; eyed the walls
for gnaw marks, the surfaces around me for
droppings.
So whatd you do to the sunning rat?
I opened the window and pushed it
outside.
Never mind that we live three stories off
the first floor. Never mind that there are always
pedestrians dappling our street, playing music
too loudly, yelling at each other, smoking weed,
and laughing. I imagined the rat making a big
splat on the sidewalk below.
The exterminator came, he said. He gave
me glue traps.
I imagined the hulking beasts laughing,
the sticky mats clinging to their muscled, furry
bodies as they scurried back into the walls and
beyond.
Dave created his own tactic instead of the
glue traps. He cut up circles from the wiremesh strainer I used for draining pasta, then
duct taped those circles to the wall.
The next morning, there was no rat in sight,
and his patches were intact. At work that day,
Dave beamed through the phone.
And get this, Roy Li! I was walking out
of the apartment, and I heard our neighbor
through the wall saying, Theyre effing huge!
I think they must be coming through the gas
line! I guess theyve moved on. He laughed.
On my way out that same morning, I
stepped into the bright Pauoa sun and was
thankful that I had encountered no such rats
in my house on this island, so far away from
Daves. On its way down the valley, a cool
breeze sped down one of the many green
folds of the Koolau mountains and hit my
upturned face with a playful smack. I smiled,
appreciative for my good fortune, and clanked
shut the chain link fence behind me.
Turning to walk to the bus, I spotted a prone,
furry lump out of the corner of my eye. I closed
my eyes, held my breath, and considered
refusing to acknowledge what was at my feet.
But, I knew that even if I kept walking, even if I
shrugged and hustled to the bus, it would still
be waiting for me when I got back.
I exhaled and looked down.

There, just ever so slightly too close to my
left foot was a large mass. I shrieked, my body
jolted as if thrown from a blast, and scuttled
down the street with increasingly fast staccato
steps.
I chose not to move the large, motionless
body to the slim trashcan in the garage just
then. But even after its limp, light-brown body
stiffened and rotted away, even after I would
shovel it into a plastic bag that Id then carry
with the tips of my fingers to the trashcans at
the end of the street, Id pretend like it hadnt
been there, at least for a little while. I couldnt
tell Dave about it, I told myself. It was either not
tell him or settle on moving us to Antarctica.
But rats have a way of surfacing, and
relationships only work if we are brave enough
to confront the ones that make homes in the
walls that separate us from our loved ones.
Feeling swift rivers of sweat running down
my slumped spine, I reasoned that Id have
until May, when Id graduate, to ready myself
for what I knew would be waiting for me in
that many-walled city of New York, where Id
continue my campaign to live somewhere
else.
Beneath my feet and ahead of me, the
steaming asphalt, still slick from the morning
rain, seemed to radiate back up at the sun,
blurring the line between the ground and the
already sweltering air. I imagined the mirage
of Daves smiling face glimmering just ahead
of me, and I laughed, straightening my back a
little. v
Acknowledgments
Thank you to Jenn Hee and Mayumi Shimose Poe for their
wonderful editing and encouragementtheyve improved
this text greatly and inspired me to make it better. Id also
like to thank them for drawing my attention to Sullivans
text, which contains a number of fantastic quotables on
rats, including this storys epigraph and the term manifest
infestation. Diverse Voices Quarterly published an
earlier version of this story in volume two, issue five.
Notable References Cited
Gorman, Christine
2008 Mapping the Rats in New York City.
Time, December 15. www.time.com/time/
healtharticle/0,8599,1866594,00.html, accessed July 25, 2010.

Sullivan, Robert
2004 Rats: Observations on the History and Habitat of the Citys Most
Unwanted Inhabitants. New York: Bloomsbury.
[fiction]
Sorry, Dani
by Richard Hartshorn
et me start at the beginning. I am

Danis aunt. Dani is prelingually deaf,
born to two hearing parents: my sister
Tracey, a hippie with rings on every digit
and hair down to her butt; and her husband
Sam, an independent contractor who left
Tracey shortly after the birth for reasons
Tracey has never revealed to me. A month
after Dani turned six, I moved into Traceys
guest bedroom to help look after her. It was
easy for me to take on this responsibility: no
husband, no kids of my own, unemployed. But
Dani frightens me sometimesher need for
goodnight kisses, the way she snuggles up to
me when we watch television, her constant I
love yousas though she thinks of me as her
mother when Tracey is away. As much as her
affections warm me, I still feel like a visitor
here. I cannot stay forever.
Tracey plays acoustic guitar in a Beatles
cover band, cashiers at a convenience
store, smokes dope, and occasionally brings
coworkers home and makes love to them in
the bedroom where she and Sam used to
sleep. I am in the bedroom down the hall
and can hear every detail. My sister howling,
the headboard smacking the wall. At first it
was vexation, a simple annoyance, although
I understood her need for release as well as
I understood my own. Currently, I am pitiful
enough to occasionally slide my fingers under
the purple band of my underwear and play
with myself to the sounds from down the
hall. Tracey never talks to me about these
encounters with her co-workers, so I act like
they dont exist, which has generated a certain
distance in our breakfast conversations.
I am twenty-six now; I am unable to have
children due to complications following a car
accident when I was sixteen. I have a shaved
head and gauged ears, remnants of my punkrock adolescence of which I refuse to let go.
I wear torn jeans everywhere except five-star
restaurants and weddings, for which the happy
trio of Tracey, Dani, and myself have little time
or money, anyway. Tracey tries to get me to
clean up for the sake of getting dates, but
she forgets that she was the one copying me

during childhood. More than anything, I love
Dani. I love playing with her hair, reading to
her in sign, and I am completely absorbed by
her interests. Fairy tales, soccer, homemade
pizza. Every harmless thing I would want my
own ten year old to eat up if I had one.
After Dani completes fifth grade, she
also graduates to a new doctor. When we
meet the doctor, a Doctor Sanford (who
introduces himself simply as Matt), we sit
in a whitewashed office with no windows and
listen to him explain that Dani is a candidate
for something called a cochlear implant, which
can potentially improve her hearing. It is not
a cure for deafness, he says, but rather, a
prosthetic for hearing. Because she has not
yet passed the critical period of adolescence,
her brain will still be able to learn to process
and distinguish speech. I hold Danis hand
while Matt speaks even though she cannot
hear him. She has always been an excellent
lipreader, but he is using plenty of words she
doesnt know.
He explains the operation: a small incision
will be made behind Danis ear, then he will
drill into the thin mastoid bone and insert the
tiny electrode array in her inner ear. This will
be done under a general anesthetic and she
will go home the same dayas if a hole hasnt
been drilled into her skull. From the outside,
she will look like she has a hearing aid attached
to a magnet on the side of her head.
There are risks: meningitis, facial nerve
damage, a thousand types of skin infection.
But most of all, the implant will inevitably
damage the nerve cells in Danis cochleathe
loss of residual natural hearing means she will
never be able to hear without the aid of the
implant. This is, I think, a disclaimer he must
give everyone while describing this operation.
Dani has been deaf since birth, and weve
been told a thousand times shell never be
able to hear on her own, but Matts warning
ignites guilt in me, as though were throwing
Dani to science and not leaving her to nature.
I interpret to Dani while Matt speaks, but I
dont tell her about the bad thingsjust that

she may be able to hear and that this operation
is her choice. It is the hardest interpretation
Ive ever had to do because Dani is ten years
old and has no concept of sounds or voices.
She cant miss them because shes never
had them. Nevertheless, she looks at me as I
explain it, her blue eyes sliding from my right
hand to my left, her lips pouting like they
always do when shes concentrating. I imagine
once she thinks it through, Dani will regard
the operation as just another adventure.
Tracey practically signs on the dotted line
before Matt even finishes speaking. But her
excitement is not for Dani. Its for herself. If
Dani can hear, Traceys life will be easier. She
can play out with the band, smoke until shes
incoherent, and she wont need me taking up
space in the house.
None of this is to suggest Tracey does not
love her daughter. That wouldnt be fair. She
loves Dani more than Hey Jude; more than
summer breeze gliding through her hair; more
than any amount of toe rings, bonfires, and
casual lays; more than seven years of marriage
with the man who helped create Dani; and
more than the parents who sang the two of us
to sleep in our childhood double bed. But she
cannot deal with the pressure. It embarrasses
her to introduce her daughter with a disclaimer
attached. She cant raise Dani alone, which is
why Im here, but I cannot be Traceys Other;
she needs to be with a man. She doesnt seem
to mind that it could take years for Dani to be
able to hear properly, form her little voice
around words, and fully communicate with
others. In Traceys mind, once Dani awakens
from surgery, she will be fixed.
Over the next week, Tracey slowly convinces
Dani that getting the cochlear implant is
the right decision, although I watch their
conversations and Tracey often signs nothing
can go wrong. I want to step in, but I was the
liar at the doctors office, and Im not mom.
I make the mistake of nosing around about
cochlear implants. I come across articles that
focus on the surgical process and the side

effects. I read about botched operations in
which eardrums are shredded to powder or
surgery goes smoothly yet the patient never
hears a thing. The most stunning discovery is
the one about which Ive been most worried:
a young woman about Danis age gets the
implant and, having had no concept of sound
since birth, loses her mind in the cacophony.
The implant is hastily removed, destroying all
residual hearing, but the girl swears she can
still hear the noise, and she is put in a mental
hospital.
My dreams all involve Dani screaming,
but no sound comes out. Her eyes are tightly
shut, her jaw hangs. Silence. In waking life, my
thoughts hang on Danis skull being drilled.
That spot where I always brush her hair over
her ear will soon have a chunk
of steel violently spinning
through it. I cant help but
expect the worst: the surgeons
will hit something soft and vital
and Danis little head will pop
like a water balloon. Then the
head surgeon will come to us
in the waiting room, stand with
perfect posture, hands clasped
in front of him, and say, Sorry,
folks; there was nothing we
could do. No apology to Dani.
Dani and I spend some time
at the park the day before the
operation. We sit for hours
watching people and seeing
which one of us can get more
height on the black rubber swings. The burning
orb of the sun hovers over us, and we dont
mind the heat until we stand and our thighs
stick to the metal bolts holding the swings
to the chains. Dani, who cant stand sores or
blisters or any sort of blemish, is briefly miffed,
but I calm her down by saying Ill buy her an
orange smoothie.
I will hear you soon, Dani signs to me
during the walk home. I want to smile and cry
at the same time. Shes excited but doesnt
even know what it means to hear. To Dani,
its an epic journey into the unknown. The
unknowable.
Tracey is called into work the day of the
operation and is told she will be fired if she
doesnt come in. She throws a fit as I gently
wake Dani and usher her to my aging Isuzu.
I dont care, says Tracey, her necklaces
jangling as she whips her head away from my
nurturing hand. Ill quit. But she knows she
cant quit. After a few heaving breaths and the
promise that I wont let anything bad happen,

Tracey gives me a half-hug, composes herself,
grabs her car keys from the coffee table, and
rushes out the door.
I decide to dress up for Danis big day.
I snatch a pair of Traceys designer jeans
and slide into them, twisting in front of the
bedroom mirror and admiring my lower half,
which doesnt look half bad now. I spritz my
neck with the contents of a peach-scented
bottle from Traceys dresser, throw a summery
tank top over my head, poke two fake diamond
studs into my earlobes, and walk to the front
door. Dani is in the passenger seat, leaning
back, eyes closed.
I do not belong in a hospital. I did my time after
the accident and still cant forget the sleepless
nights, the bland room, the feeling of having

my shredded guts stitched back together.
Without Tracey to hold my hand through
the bleach-smelling corridor where our baby
resides, I am frightened. I curl up in the lobby
and watch The Price Is Right all morning until
surgery is done.
The operation goes smoothly. Doctor
Sanford performs it himself. No infections, no
extensive damage (aside from her inner ear,
which is now outfitted with a microphone, a
speech processor, a receiver, a stimulator, and
twenty-two electrodes). When the nurse calls
me in, she tells me Dani is in the last room on
the left.
I make my way past the other little rooms
and try my damnedest not to look at any of
the other patients, but I cannot help myself.
Some are groaning at unseen ailments; some
sit upright eating in silence. Others, hooked
up to networks of tubes, sleep. A family is
huddled around one of the beds, all chattering
with low voices, but I cannot see who or what
they are looking at.

As I enter the room, Doctor Sanford
appears from behind the curtain of Danis
little alcove. He hails me neutrally, waving
his hand alongside his head as if we are old
friends. Our girl is ready to go, he says, and
I catch him looking at the rear of my jeans as I
go past. I have a brief, silent conversation with
myself about Doctor Sanford and his taste in
women, shaven heads, and designer apparel.
I snap out of it when I part the curtains and
see Dani.
Her head pokes out from under the
ghost-white sheets. The device is firmly in
place; a piece that looks like a black hearing
aid is attached behind her ear, connected
to another circular piece on the back of her
head, which I see when she turns to look at
me. Her eyes open and close
slowly, drowsily, no doubt the
effect of the drugs on her tiny
body. A fantasy passes through
my head in which I imagine she
will be able to hear me when I
speak and that she will jovially
respond with a full sentence
telling me how she feels. I do say
Hi, my little sweetheart aloud,
but I also sign it to her when her
eyes fully open. Doctor Sanford
says he will give us a minute, and
he strides off.
Dani wriggles her arms from
the mass of bedsheets. I have
a headache, she signs to me. I
want to go home.
We will, I sign back. We have to wait for
the doctor.
She smiles. He is a nice man.
We spend the next few minutes discussing
the dreams she had for the three-and-ahalf hours she was under. She tells me she
was friends with a narwhal. It grew so large
she was able to ride it. They scoured the sea
bottom for gold, leapt through the waters
surface, and soared through the expanse of
the sky together. I am briefly jealous; I want to
give her something even better.
Doctor Sanford sidles up behind me. He
sets a plastic cup full of water in front of
Dani and winks at her, then regards me with
a brief smile before putting his face in some
paperwork.
Its going to be about two weeks before
incision heals, he says. Come back in and
well activate the device. In the meantime,
you should encourage her to make sounds,
exercise her voice, and try to speak some of
the words she reads. There will be extensive
ongoing therapy once she can hear, but this will

be a good warm up for her.
We get Dani out of bed and onto her feet.
Her legs wobble like strands of wet linguini when
she tries to walk, so we each lift her by one
arm and carry her to the car together. Doctor
Sanford gives me his card, which I already have.
He reminds me again to call him Matt. Are you
this informal with all of your patients? I ask. I
try to sound flirtatious, but in the half-second
before he answers, I recognize the absurdity,
the immorality, of the situation: me and Danis
doctor. But I do smell good, and hes the one
who checked me out. Ill see you soon, Matt,
I say.
Tracey never quite gets over the fact that she
missed it: driving Dani to the hospital with no
conversation but a mothers soothing touch,
holding her daughters hand before surgery,
being there when her eyes opened. She takes
her frustration out on me. I am resentful,
sexually frustrated after the whole Matt thing,
and I have several words for both my sister and
her daughters surgeon. The whole reason I am
in Traceys house is because I gave up everything
to help her. I could run away, take up waitressing
again, finish that marine biology degree.
However, this is my family. Instead of
screaming back at Tracey, I pamper her. I give her
back rubs when she comes home from work. She
crashes face-first on her bed, and I dig my fingers
into her knotted muscles until she is near tears.
After a few days of this, Traceys temperament
begins to cool. She listens to me when I tell her
what Dani and I did all day and when I remind
her that her health insurance completely covers
the operation.
But things dont go as planned. Dani does not
want to speak. She is embarrassed. She becomes
impatient with me when I push the issue. Tracey
has no luck either. There is a disagreement
between them one morning, and mother and
daughter begin to spend even more time apart.
When the wound is fully healed, we bring
Dani back to get the device activated. It takes
Doctor Sanford (sorry, Matt) all of thirty
seconds to turn it on and send us on our way.
I let slip that I take care of Dani most of the day,
and he tells me how brave I am. He hands me
another card, which I slide into my back pocket.
It gets bad. During a trip to the local aquarium,
Dani has a panic attack and begins pounding on
the shark tank. A shortfin mako sweeps past,
briefly hovering in front of us before aquarium
attendants escort us out. We spend the rest of
the weekend home.
Dani lies in bed, fiddling with a dolphin
diorama that hangs over her pillow. I sit on
the bed next to her and sign, Did you hear

something?
She sits up, nods, but she doesnt say
anything back. She has not made a sound since
the operation. I want to convey how worried I
am, how much I need her. In my head, I dismiss
everything I thought before: that I could run
away, ignore my family, date around. When Dani
acts this way, I feel pitiful.
Do you want to try reading with your voice?
A curt shake of the head.
You can try it whenever you are ready.
She opens her eyes wide and indicates the
device on her head. Opens her mouth, no sound.
She signs, I hate this.
What can I tell her? That everything will be
okay? When will it? When the speech therapists
step in?
I sign back, Can you hear me now? and I say
the words along with the signs.
She shakes her head no. I dont want to upset
her, but I need to know whats going on in that
brain of hers.
What happened at the aquarium? Did you
hear something?
She pounds a fist into the soft mattress like
a little gavel. You did this to me, she signs, then
plops down into the bed with absolution and
flings the sheet over her face.
I wish Tracey was home. Someone to comfort
me; someone with a voice. If Dani wants to
ignore me, all she has to do is turn her head or
quiet her hands, and shes made clear that shes
not in the mood to deal with me.
But then when has Tracey comforted me
since Ive been here? Never.
Stifling hysteria, I walk to the kitchen. Blackand-white tile floor. Refrigerator humming. For
some reason, I pick up one of Matts cards from
the counter and dial him up at home. I just need
to hear another voice.
Hello?
Hi, Doctor San Matt. I explain who I am.
When I sheepishly say, I was the bald one, he
remembers. I dont even have to remind him of
Dani.
Yes, hello, he says. Is everything okay? I
cant tell if its personal or professional interest.
Having half my conversations in sign has made
me rusty at phone talk.
Dani wont talk to me. Im home alone with
her, and Im worried.
Did something happen? His voice is
frustratingly calm.
No. Well, yes. She had a panic attack at the
aquarium. She told me she heard something,
but then said she couldnt hear me talking.
I hear him exhale pronouncedly as if blowing
on tea. This is fairly normal, he says. Shes
expecting to hear but has no idea what hearing
is yet. Shes afraid of what might happen. It

sounds as though you are, too. He says it as
though hes known me forever. I want to tell him
to piss off, that he doesnt understand, that my
feelings are none of his business, but he is right.
I keep quiet.
I hear him take a generous sip of the tea or
coffee or cognac or whatever it is. Signing is
your special thing with her, I know, he goes on.
But trust me. The implant will help her. Shell
come around in no time.
I know what is probably expected now. Matt
and I get together; we talk about Dani and things
get all mushy. Maybe we go back to his place, he
tears my clothes off, and we dont even make it
to his bedroom before eating each other alive.
I wont pretend I havent thought about it, but
none of this happens. He doesnt know that my
abdomen is scarred from the accident or that I
havent dated since high school. I put as much
distance between myself and everything to do
with the scientific aspect of Danis problem as
possible. I want my relationship with Dani to be
beautiful and free, relying on nothing but the
two of us. I remember a saying that went when
a doctor treats you, he plays God. Matt Sanford,
the god of our little world, must step back for a
moment and let us evolve.
The following afternoon, Dani still wont speak
to me. We are in the living room together; Dani
is watching Garfield and Friends with subtitles.
Her hands stay folded and motionless. The front
door lurches open, revealing Traceys slender
form. A breeze rushes in with her and blows a
cluster of papers and blank checks from the
coffee table. Her hair is matted in the front,
and the rest is a cloud of static, clinging to her
shoulders and back. The car keys rattle against
her rings as she tosses them on the table.
I ask her how work was, and she doesnt tell
me much of anything. She doesnt need to. Shes
been away from her daughter for eight hours,
wearing an apron, counting pennies. We hug,
and as we part, she rubs my head. I can smell
a metallic odor on her hands from handling
change all day.
Our baby is upset with me, I say.
Tracey throws her apron over a chair. Take
the night off, okay? I can see it in her face:
Tracey is tired, resentful, ready to call it quits
with the job, Dani, me, everything. She goes
to the sink, runs some cold water, splashes it
against her cheeks. Without drying her hands or
saying a word to me, she goes down the hall into
her bedroom and firmly yanks the door shut.
I am exhausted, but we need to talk about
Dani. When I walk into Traceys bedroom, she is
face down on the bed, still in her work shirt. I sit
next to her, pull each wet ring from her fingers
one at a time and drop them into a ceramic

bowl on the nightstand. She doesnt make a
sound. I go to her feet, pull away her toe rings,
and make a tired attempt at a foot rub, digging
my thumbs into her soles. She finally groans a
little. I keep going for a few minutes and move
to the small of her back. The muscles are tight,
knotty, like a trail of solid bubbles on an alder
tree.
She moans, Help me.
I roll my hands through the hair on the back
of her head. Tell me what you need, I say.
She is quiet. I begin massaging the back of
her neck, working my fingers in deep. After a
moment, I close my eyes, falling into the onset
of sleep even as my hands keep going. When
her breath slows and deepens, I gently drape
a sheet over her back and walk down the dark
hallway back to my own room.
I wake up at four in the morning with what feels
like an ice cream headache and Dani curled up
in bed next to me. This is a breakthrough. I feel
as though she has not acknowledged me in
days. Her arm is flung over my breasts, and her
eyes are squeezed shut.
The fact that she has come into my room,
peeled back the covers gently enough to not
wake me, and nestled herself so tenderly
against me is almost celestial. I am stunned
by it. I glide my index finger along her cheek.
I love you, my sweetheart, I say out loud.
Maybe she can hear me, maybe not. I wonder
what my voice will sound like to her. Whether
shell hear the real me or whether Ill sound like
a robot through her implant.
Dani awakens. Fresh faced. Zeal burns in her
eyesand I know it means she wants another
chance at the aquarium. For a moment we lay
still, amazed at each other. She puts on a smile
that melts my insides; its the smile that says

she wants me to forget something shes done.
She makes an a with her right hand, rotates it
over her heart, points to herself, then mashes
her fist onto the opposite palm like a mortar
and pestle. Im sorry I complained.
I dont wait for her to ask about the
aquarium. I sign that I will take her if she wants
to go, and her face brightens. I say aloud,
without signing, I want you to grow. I want
you to fall in love, have children. She shows no
signs of hearing me. She snuggles up close.
I try to be the responsible aunt. I wish Tracey
could be with us, but work dominates even
her Saturdays. I wonder if she talks to any
interesting people among the coin flinging and
grocery bagging, whether she flirts with men
anymore.
Dani and I walk through the lobby of
the aquarium. The cool subterranean blue
undulates over our faces. An octopus shimmies
past Danis head, moving through the water
like a belly dancer, and she chases it along the
transparent glass wall until it skitters out of
sight.
She wants to see the sharks and the
narwhals (though she doesnt have a sign for
narwhals, so she sets the back of her hand
on her forehead and points her index finger
out like a horn, opening her mouth wide like
a whale). I close my fist, extend my pinky and
thumb, and wiggle my hand in front of my face.
Youre silly.
Dani laughs. A series of high-pitched cackles,
like the call of a chickadee but more enunciated,
erupts from her. Its so rare to hear her voice. I
wonder if she even knows she made sound.
I can see it in her face as we make our way
through the cavernous walkways toward the
narwhal exhibit. The grin of a child but also the

fostering eyes of a mother. A lovers concerned
brow. Dani is already a woman.
We walk over a small bridge that spans an
open tank. Dolphins pop along the surface.
Children chatter and giggle as their parents drag
them past. The overhead fans, which look like
the engine of a rocket ship, cause the hanging
starfish mobiles and sea turtle skeletons to
joggle and oscillate over us. Dani holds my
hand. The narwhal exhibit is in the next room.
I dont know why, but I stop in the middle
of the bridge and I get down on my knees in
front of her. Your mother loves you. She wants
to be here.
Dani exhales and looks at me in a way she
never has. She signs, I heard her this morning.
She told me she loved me.
Can you hear now?
She points at me with her thumb and
forefinger, slowly lifts her hand to her forehead
and clasps the fingers together. Confused.
I think of how tight Traceys muscles will be
when I massage her tonight. What Ill tell her
we did today. How the knowledge of being the
first thing Dani has ever heard might alleviate
her pain. Whether shell be able to appreciate
the moment Dani and I are sharing right now.
And then Im suddenly glad Tracey couldnt
come with us.
There we are, in the middle of the bridge,
hovering between the noise of the rocket fans,
the floating skeletons, and the blue waves
crushing themselves against the tank beneath
us. I imagine this is what the sea is like: the
foam raging above; gray blurs and dorsal fins
slicing around us; our naked forms spinning in
the womb of the ocean as we lift our heads and
hear for the first time. v
Our Period:
Burden or Blessing?
magine looking forward to your menstrual

period. Picture your partner, friends,
or coworkers filling in for you so that
you can have time to relax and rejuvenate.
Envision those same people eager to hear
about the insights you received during
your monthly time. Feel your menstrual
experience being so valued that your good
feelings last all month. Sounds farfetched?
To those in the Western world, perhaps yes.
Yet, in essence, many tribal societies treat
womens menstrual periods with reverence,
understanding the power behind a womans
moon cycle. Moontime is a natural term for
period, menstruation, the curse, and
the rag. Menstruation in human females
generally follows the twenty-eight day cycle
like the moon.
When anthropologist Margaret Mead
(1961) asked Samoan women in Polynesia
about premenstrual symptoms, they
thought the question was bizarre, a joke,
because they didnt associate discomfort
with their bleeding time. Brook Medicine
Eagle, in writing about menstruation in
Buffalo Woman Comes Singing (1991),
suggests that women who live in harmony
with naturewaking with the sun instead
of a digital clock-radio; eating fresh and
local fruits, vegetables, and grains versus
a Big Mac; working outdoors instead of in
a forced air high-rise; and so onhave few
to no PMS symptoms. Similarly, Tomasa
Macapinlac, a womens health coach,
advises Chi exercises and an alkaline (fruit/
vegetables) diet as ways to ease PMS
symptoms.1
In India, the Hindu word rutu means
menses, and it is the root of the word ritual
(Gadon 1989). Vicki Noble in Shakti Woman
(1991) says, We just need to understand
that the monthly menstrual period is the
quintessential ritual experience; it is
analogous to the time of the Dark-Moon
the impossibly magical time when the moon
disappears from the sky.
Ancient cultures told time by the seasons
of the sun and the phases of the moon.
During menses, like the moon waxing full,
the lining of the uterus (the endometrium)
builds up in preparation for fertilization,
then, again like the moon, menses wanes. In
her groundbreaking book Womens Bodies,
Womens Wisdom, Christiane Northrup,
M.D., writes, The menstrual cycle is the

most basic, earthy cycle we have. Our blood
is our connection to the archetypal feminine.
The macro-cosmic cycles of nature, such
as the ebb and flow of the tides and the
changes of the seasons, are reflected on
a smaller scale in the menstrual cycle of
the individual female body (2010). And
Native American visionary Black Elk says,
the power of woman grows with the moon
and comes and goes with it (Neilhardt
1972:161).
While many women in developing
countries regard their moontime as sacred,
most women in Western cultures consider
their period a nuisance and would gladly
ingest a new pharmaceutical to eliminate
monthly bleeding. In Western cultures,
30 to 85 percent of the female population
suffers from premenstrual syndrome (PMS
Health Center n.d.). However, as early as
1965, nutritionist Adelle Davis wrote about
the stressful plunge that a womans blood
calcium takes during menstruation and the
need for vitamin supplements (personally
speaking, calcium supplements did ease my
PMS irritability). PMS and PMDD symptoms
range from headaches to acts of violence. I
talked with a man whose wife had burned
their house down and shot and killed their
five-year-old son. She suffered from severe
PMS. Twenty years ago, a woman with PMS
was considered crazy and moody. How
different it would be if we had a Red Tent
in Every Neighborhood, as author DeAnna
Lam (2006) envisions: a place where
women could rest, meditate, and nurture
one another.2
I recall times during my period of
wanting to kill my ex-husband. Years later,
never having connected menstruation to
the moon, my boyfriend took me by the
hand as I yelled at him, walked me outside,
pointed to the moon, and gently said,
Shinan, you always get this way around
the full moon. Since thenthirty yearsI
mark the calendar with a big red circle
and write MT for moontime to remind
myself about take time for me. I also began
keeping a moontime journal, recording how
I felt, what I did, and what was or wasnt
helpful. Eventually I saw a pattern: a glass of
wine was helpful, yet three margaritas and
I was sloshed; turning the phone off was
[fembodiment]
by Shinan Barclay
helpful while endless chat with colleagues
irritated me; decapitating the hedge row
was helpful but angry thoughts toward
my boss increased my irritability. I noticed
that when I suppressed or repressed my
feelings, I became depressed, and that
when I expressed my feelings without
compassionate awareness for my partner,
I erupted like a volcano. Energy that is
suppressed, repressed, or depressed often
explodes. Imagine this high-spirited, redhaired Irish gal. It must be your period,
my husband used to say, because thats
when all the plates start to fly. Yes, I
demolished my china and then started
throwing my potted plants. It took several
years of psychotherapy and interpersonal
communication training for me to learn that
every moment brings a choice for me to be
100 percent response-able. By attending to
my moontime, Ive become more skilled at
positive choices.
The cause of PMS is undetermined; its
merely labeled a hormonal imbalance.
Yet this very imbalance or heightened
sensitivity was believed by many tribal
cultures such as the Lakota, Apache, and
the Maori of New Zealand to enhance
a womans intuition and to open her to
vision, wisdom, and insight. During a
womans moon, hormonal changes bring
about a time of heightened vulnerability
and a dreamlike awareness. In earlier times,
these women were encouraged to drift into
dreamland and then to bring back stories,
songs, and insights that would benefit
themselves, their families, and their tribes.
Tribal cultures live in harmony with nature,
aware that everything goes through ebb
and flow. Fluctuations in the rhythm of life
and changes in the seasons are gifts from
the Great Spirit. As rain purifies the air, so
too does a womans bleeding time allow
for transformation, purification, newness,
and change. Through menstruation,
pregnancy, and birth, many indigenous
people believe that women are instruments
of transformation because our basic
biology embodies a sacred ritual of change
(Allen 1986:28). Native traditions view the
biological changes of the menstrual cycle
or moontime as a powerful and positive
pathway to inner growth and wisdom
(Medicine Eagle 1991).
Unfortunately, in our fast-paced world of

cyberspace and instant messaging, weve
lost touch with natures cycles as well as our
own creative and emotional cycles. Weve
forgotten how to tune into and use our
menstrual energy to empower our lives and
our world. Were too busy doing to be
aware of being. In many arenas, Human
Beings have been replaced by Human Doings.
Doing comes from the goal-oriented,
analytical, and masculine or left hemisphere
of the brain, whereas Being comes from
the creative, feeling, and feminine or right
hemisphere of the brain. Many women
today pressure themselves to do more and
more. My to do lists have to do lists, I
sometimes complain. Stressed out, once
again, Ive forgotten how to simply be.
Moontime gives a woman a monthly
reminder to take some time out and nurture
her inner self. By going within we begin to
access our deeper feminine. In my book
Moontime for Kory, the wise women of the
village advise young Kory:
Moontime is about re-connecting
to our personal rhythm so we can
begin our cycle anew, pure and
strong. Its the time when the
Goddess is most likely to offer truth
and beauty through a woman in the
form of songs, stories, art or ideals.
Guard this special time of your cycle.
Give yourself quiet time to receive
inspiration. Dont busy yourself
with useless details. Through each
woman at Moontime, a blessing can
be born... sometimes however, the
blessing is a nap. [Barclay and Dillon
2010]
So, what does this mean in practical terms
for todays woman? For Bianca, a Hispanic
California mom, it means recognizing her
feelings, allowing herself time for what she
calls her moontime dreamtime. One result
from this gift to herself was a new idea
that produced a lucrative sale in her webdesign business. Linda, a teacher in Alaska,
takes a wellness day each month, during
which she stays home reading, meditating,
and daydreaming, which resulted in an
innovative classroom curriculum that got
her nominated for teacher of the year. Mei
Lin, an Asian-American executive secretary
and student of Native American traditions,
takes time out for ritual during her menses.
I close my office door, put paper clips in a
coffee cup, and rattle, chant, and dance, she
says. For Monika, it means that her husband

cooks dinner, gives the kids their baths,
and cleans up the messes while she takes a
moonlight walk, reads, or soaks in the tub.
And as her kids put it: Moms a lot easier to
be around and shes not so grumpy.
For me, observing my moontime means
allowing myself to dip deeply into my
intuitive feminine self. With my hands on
my belly, I either sit or lie down and breathe
deeply, concentrating on the inhale and
exhale. Then I focus on my heart center,
placing one hand on my heart and the other
on my belly. After calming my mind, which
is sometimes like a runaway freight train, I
slowly repeat an affirmation. Go with your
gut; follow the flow of your aliveness. I
not only feel connected to a larger, more
knowing part of myself, I also receive helpful
ideas/inklings such as do this [difficult task]
Weve forgotten how to tune

into and use our menstrual
energy to empower our lives
and our world. Were too
busy doing to be aware of
being.
for ten minutes three times during the day.

One moontime on a Sunday afternoon, I
had an impulse to get up and immediately
call a bookstore owner in Seattle, whom
Id been trying to contact for weeks to set
up a seminar. She hadnt returned my calls
or e-mails, but this time she answered the
phone, obviously expecting someone else.
Why are you calling now? she asked.
When I told about my intuitive prompting,
she replied, If your instincts are that
strong, I want to meet you. In the end,
she not only set me up with a book signing
and workshop but also arranged a radio
interview and a lunch engagement with the
editor of a magazine, who then hired me to
write several articles. Thank you, moontime
inklings.
Even now, in my menopause years, I still
feel moontime energies pulling me into
reverie. I mark my calendar for three days
before the full moon and block out time to
rest, read, swim, and meditate. There are
numerous moon and lunar calendars to
help us record our moontime. By tracking
actual bleeding days as well as days when
hey, I feel really good, it is possible to work

with the bodys energy cycle. Keep a list of
inner work youd like to explore during
your moontime: meditation; feng shui;
understanding your dreams; exploring your
inner child, artist, or archetypes. Or just plan
to spend the day in bed. One of my favorite
moontime books is Sarks Change Your Life
without Getting out of Bed.
Many women redefine PMS as Put Men
Secondtake time first for ourselves. PMS
now means Please My Self, by respecting
the ebbs and tides of my energy. A shift is
required to view our periods as moontimes,
not as burdens but blessings, not as curses
but cures. As we honor our sacred and
powerful moontime energies, women will
rebirth feminine wisdom that is so needed
in our world today. v
NOTES
1. www.PMSFreedomNow.com.
2. www.facebook.com/#!/pages/Red-Tents-in-every-neighborhood/122
438694447745?ref=ts.
REFERENCES CITED
Allen, Paula Gunn
1986[1896] The Sacred Hoop: Recovering the Feminine in American
Indian Traditions. Boston: Beacon Press.
Barclay, Shinan N., and Mary Dillon
2010 Moontime for Kory: A Girl and a Dolphin Share Coming of Age in
This Mythic Rite-of-Passage. Charleston: Hazel Heron Press.
Davis, Adelle
1965 Lets Get Well. New York: Harcourt Brace.
Lam, DeAnna
2006 Becoming Peers, Mentoring Girls into Womanhood. Sebastopol,
CA: Red Moon Publishing.
Gadon, Elinor
1989 The Once and Future Goddess: A Symbol for Our Time.
San Francisco: Harper.
Mead, Margaret
1961 Coming of Age in Samoa. New York: William Morrow.
Medicine Eagle, Brooke
1991 Buffalo Woman Comes Singing. New York: Ballantine.
Neihardt, John G.
1972 Black Elk Speaks. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press.
Noble, Vicki
1991 Shakti Woman: Feeling Our Fire, Healing Our World, the New
Female Shamanism. San Francisco: Harper.
Northrup, Christiane, M.D.
2010 Womens Bodies, Womens Wisdom: Creating Physical and
Emotional Health and Healing. Rev. edition. New York: Bantam Books.
PMS Health Center
N.d. Premenstrual Syndrome (PMS)Symptoms. http://women.
webmd.com/pms/premenstrual-syndrome-pms-symptoms, accessed
August 1, 2010.
Sark
1999 Change Your Life without Getting out of Bed: The Ultimate Nap
Book. New York: Simone & Schuster.
[writers corner]
Five Minutes
with Kaui Hart Hemmings

A Chat with Mayumi Shimose Poe
first met Kaui Hart Hemmings in Bronxville, New York. It was 2001,
and we had both signed up for a class called Anthropology Goes to
the Movies at Sarah Lawrence College. She was a graduate student in
Writing, and I was an undergraduate finishing my junior year. Even then, I
had a serious case of stars-in-the-eyes combined with jealousy/panic along
the lines of: Shit. Shes from Hawaii and writes about Hawaii and is wayyyy
further along than me in her craft. Which means she will be the hottest thing
to come out of Hawaii since Lois-Ann Yamanaka. Was she my role model
or literary nemesis? Of course, I did what all aspiring artists in their early
twenties doI publicly supported my fellow female writer from Hawaii while
secretly hoping shed go and Eat, Pray, Love it up in a third-world country for
a few decades, so I could become the next superstar literary darling instead
of her.
But instead of moving to a third-world country, Kaui went to northern
California, garnered the coveted Stegner Fellowship, and became the
youngest member in San Franciscos premier writing collective, The Grotto.
She published a highly acclaimed book of short stories (House of Thieves,
2005), a novel (The Descendents, 2008), and had a baby in under three years
flat; then she dropped her babyweight incredibly fast and moved home to
Hawaii, where she now hangs out on the beach in a bikini, shooting the shit
with Dog, the Bounty Hunter. Bitch.
KHH: The turning point was realizing that exciting isnt the point. Anything
and anyone can be interesting. I didnt necessarily give myself permission to
write about home. I test out places and voices and use what fits.
HWJ: The writer Robert Vivian (among others) has said that in this life,
we are given only one or two true landscapes. Would you agree with this
statement? Do you consider yourself to be primarily a Hawaii or local
writer or have you found that, with two books set in Hawaii under your
belt, you are now experimenting with other landscapes?
KHH: Im experimenting. Right now Im writing about San Francisco and
Colorado.
HWJ: In a recent Honolulu Advertiser article,3 local author Chris McKinney
has suggested that The Descendants has a universal qualitythat
Hawaii in this book is just a backdrop to these American characters
lives. In your work, do you consider Hawaii a landscape/backdrop to your
characters or a character in and of itself?
KHH: Hawaii is the setting. A setting informs who we are, the choices we
make, the way we live. Nothing could be more important.
HWJ: Whats a work day in the life of Kaui Hart Hemmings look like?
From Anthropology Goes to the Movies to in the movies, almost a decade

later, Kaui has made all us aspiring local writers believe that we too can write
books set in Hawaii that will one day star George Clooney. Her 2008 novel,
The Descendants, is being made into a film directed by Alexander Payne and
stars Clooney as the male protagonist.
As filming of The Descendants wrapped, Kaui sat down with HWJ to give us
insight into her work.
KHH: [Writing] is my only job as of now. I work a little, do mom stuff, cook,
grocery shop, exercise. We go out a lot.
HWJ: Worst writing advice you ever got?
KHH: Youll never write anything good until after youre thirty-five.
HWJ: What are you reading these days?
HWJ: I read your interview of author Pete Rock where you asked him to
describe his book in one sentence.1 I liked that question so Im biting you.
Tell us about The Descendants in one sentence.
KHH: The Descendants is about a father and his daughters forming a united
front against someone they love; its about sacrifice, shame, death, and real
estate.
HWJ: In a 2009 Star Bulletin article,2 you discussed how you came to write
about Hawaii in your first two books: that initially you didnt think writing
about life in the islands would be interesting or exciting enough but
after trying to write about other things you realized it wasnt my material,
in the end. What was the turning point that gave you permission to start
writing about home? How does it feel to now know that writing about life
in the islands is exciting enough to be a movie starring George Clooney?
KHH: The best books Ive read lately: The Mercy Papers by Robin Romm, The
Aderall Diaries by Steven Elliott, Little Bee by Chris Cleave, and This Is Where
I Leave You by Jonathan Tropper.
HWJ: What do you want people to take from your stories?
KHH: I want people who claim to not be big readers to read my stuff and be
engaged and entertained. I want to make all readers laugh, feel emotion,
and ultimately turn the page. v
NOTES
1. www.partywithaninfant.blogspot.com/2009/03/chatting-up-pete-rock.html
2. www.starbulletin.com/features/20091004_no_place_like_home.html
3. www.honoluluadvertiser.com/article/20100214/life/2140330/stepping+out+in+th
e+right+direction
photo by Christina Simpkins
60
C74;460;083B>284CH>570F088
Legal Aids Maui Office
The Legal Aid Society of Hawaiis Honolulu Headquarters
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Issue 3 Low Res

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July-October 2010

Youth Speaks Hawaii!

Luminous Prose & Poetry:

One on One with

Local Teens Use

Paper bags never

[from the contributing editor]

have a new favorite book: The Paper

Just ask any five-year-old if happily ever

How do we give society a makeover?

Our Room Is the World

poetry & prose

An Interview with Lynne Hanzawa-ONeill on

Because the Next Generation

Black, White, and Red

photo by Ryan Matsumoto

BY JENNIFER MELEANA HEE

BY SUZANNE FARRELL SMITH

How to Sell Your Body

The Risk It Takes

BY MAYUMI SHIMOSE POE

Hawaii Womens Journal | 2

Here's Where It Takes

The Wellness Manifesto

The Dame Game

The Domestic Diva

Balm for Being

Toxins and Chemicals:

Chasing the Zen

Don't Rush the Risotto

When Being a "Good" Girl Is Bad: Identifying

The Balancing Act

What Should I Wear? The Bella Project

Women with Pzazz

Our Period: Burden or Blessing?

Five Minutes with Kaui Hart Hemmings

Hawaii Womens Journal | 3

My Life Falling Apart!

Cover & Youth Speaks photos by Ryan

Our Room Is the World

Jennifer Meleana Hee

Mayumi Shimose Poe

Andrea Devon Bertoli

Suzanne Farrell Smith

HAWAII WOMEN'S JOURNAL

Rita Coury, Ryan Matsumoto,

ARTISTS & ILLUSTRATORS

Suzy Allegra, Alice Mizrachi,

Hawaii Womens Journal | 4

cheese, although this is all ancient history for me now. Months

We need your help to make this publication even better.

Sleep, sleep, and more sleep. However, thats not usually an

Hawaii Womens Journal | 5

mandas recurring dream as a child was about a witch and a bathtub

when it was born to scream and riverit is an incredible feat of hesitation

photo courtesy of Mindy Nettifee

Hawaii Womens Journal | 6

Suzy is the author of several books

A Rocky Mountain transplant living

Shinan Barclay, M.A., is coauthor of

Richard is a fiction writer whose work

Harmonie wrote her first poems

Jennifer Meleana Hee is a vegetarian