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recent grimoire entries
Brendan Lorber on Why Daydreaming Is Important
Feb 20, 2019
Brendan Lorber on Why Daydreaming Is Important
Feb 20, 2019
Feb 20, 2019
Poetry Weekly: Alina Pleskova, Marwa Helal, June Jordan
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Poetry Weekly: Alina Pleskova, Marwa Helal, June Jordan
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Feb 15, 2019
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Survival and Truth: How Tori Amos' Under The Pink Changed My Life
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Survival and Truth: How Tori Amos' Under The Pink Changed My Life
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Feb 8, 2019
Poetry Weekly: Monica Youn, Traci Brimhall, Rosebud Ben-Oni
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Poetry Weekly: Monica Youn, Traci Brimhall, Rosebud Ben-Oni
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Feb 6, 2019
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Feb 4, 2019
Your February 2019 Horoscopes Are Here
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Feb 1, 2019
Kristine Esser Slentz on Polyamory & Being Raised as a Jehovah's Witness
Jan 30, 2019
Kristine Esser Slentz on Polyamory & Being Raised as a Jehovah's Witness
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Jan 30, 2019
Poetry by Brandon Amico
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Poetry by Brandon Amico
Jan 29, 2019
Jan 29, 2019
A Grimoire For Self-Love: A Peek At Light Magic for Dark Times
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A Grimoire For Self-Love: A Peek At Light Magic for Dark Times
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Vi Khi Nao Reviews Diana Hamilton's God Was Right
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Vi Khi Nao Reviews Diana Hamilton's God Was Right
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Jan 25, 2019
Poetry Weekly: Omotara James, John Murillo, E. Kristin Anderson
Jan 25, 2019
Poetry Weekly: Omotara James, John Murillo, E. Kristin Anderson
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Jan 25, 2019
Brandon Amico on Why He Doesn't Want to Be Unreachable
Jan 24, 2019
Brandon Amico on Why He Doesn't Want to Be Unreachable
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Jan 24, 2019
How To Become A Freelance Writer: On Starting Out, Discipline & Ritual
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How To Become A Freelance Writer: On Starting Out, Discipline & Ritual
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Jan 23, 2019
Bewitched: When The Velvet Underground Cast an Identity Spell on Me
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Bewitched: When The Velvet Underground Cast an Identity Spell on Me
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Jan 23, 2019
DIY Gift Ideas for The Magical, the Dreamy, and the Crafty
Jan 22, 2019
DIY Gift Ideas for The Magical, the Dreamy, and the Crafty
Jan 22, 2019
Jan 22, 2019
Review of Christine Stoddard's 'Water for the Cactus Woman'
Jan 22, 2019
Review of Christine Stoddard's 'Water for the Cactus Woman'
Jan 22, 2019
Jan 22, 2019
Poetry Weekly: Vanessa Angélica Villarreal, Jessica Morey-Collins, Justin Karcher
Jan 18, 2019
Poetry Weekly: Vanessa Angélica Villarreal, Jessica Morey-Collins, Justin Karcher
Jan 18, 2019
Jan 18, 2019
June Gehringer Tells Us What She's Afraid Of
Jan 16, 2019
June Gehringer Tells Us What She's Afraid Of
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Jan 16, 2019
5 Film & TV Inspired Nightgowns You Need
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5 Film & TV Inspired Nightgowns You Need
Jan 15, 2019
Jan 15, 2019
Music Friyay: Stevie Nicks, Sun Ra, Hamilton Leithauser
Jan 11, 2019
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Jan 11, 2019
Poetry by Fatima-Ayan Malika Hirsi
Jan 10, 2019
Poetry by Fatima-Ayan Malika Hirsi
Jan 10, 2019
Jan 10, 2019
Poetry Weekly: Kay Ulanday Barrett, Devin Kelly, Elizabeth Metzger
Jan 9, 2019
Poetry Weekly: Kay Ulanday Barrett, Devin Kelly, Elizabeth Metzger
Jan 9, 2019
Jan 9, 2019
Poetry by Karina Bush
Jan 8, 2019
Poetry by Karina Bush
Jan 8, 2019
Jan 8, 2019
Hillary Leftwich on Happiness & Why It's Important to Love Childhood Films
Jan 7, 2019
Hillary Leftwich on Happiness & Why It's Important to Love Childhood Films
Jan 7, 2019
Jan 7, 2019
This Moon Playlist Is Everything You Need
Jan 4, 2019
This Moon Playlist Is Everything You Need
Jan 4, 2019
Jan 4, 2019
Poetry Weekly: Chloe N. Clark, Faylita Hicks, Saretta Morgan
Jan 3, 2019
Poetry Weekly: Chloe N. Clark, Faylita Hicks, Saretta Morgan
Jan 3, 2019
Jan 3, 2019
Jordan Rothacker On the Apocalypse, Jared Kushner, and Daily Rituals
Jan 2, 2019
Jordan Rothacker On the Apocalypse, Jared Kushner, and Daily Rituals
Jan 2, 2019
Jan 2, 2019
Aela Labbe

Aela Labbe

When I Was a Child and a Foreigner, I Met a Girl

February 19, 2016

BY J.A. PAK

When you’re six, new to a country, morphed into this thing called "foreigner," you don’t know what culture is, just that everything you do is wrong and everything that was once so easy and comfortable only brings pain and embarrassment. At birth, culture is family (mine was one of indulgent love). Then you’re uprooted and there’s the schoolyard, of teachers who mostly don’t care, of children who have no skills at compassion—they’re trying so hard themselves, to understand, to fit in. In school—that’s when I begin to fall more and more into an anxious state of observation.

At first I think it’s language, that if I could speak the language I’d understand. Language is culture abbreviated. There are other things that make up culture, like gestures and toys. Friends, or lack of. Religion, television, housing, supermarkets, games, street signs, the way you say 'I love you.' Six years of culture is harder to make up than six years of language.

Now I’m eight and there’s a girl at school—she’s new. At first she pursues my friendship. And then she destroys it and becomes my occasional tormentor. She finds me exasperating. And I can understand that now. I was never a child who liked to play with other children. I preferred to sit and listen, to a friend’s older brother reading a story out loud, to my mother and her friends gossiping. I liked sounds, the lenticular vowels and the jumping consonants shadow-puppeting human life. The girl thought I was a know-it-all, but I only nodded and agreed to things I didn’t understand because, even though I sounded native, my vocabulary was limited. She’d had eight years. I’d had two. Two years of not understanding, of not being understood (nodding was like sleeping, an acceptance of numbing fatigue).

This too. I was born into a culture where little girls were bossy, where hierarchy was severe: the first thing you asked a stranger was how old they were because age is hermetic; the older you are, even if by a day, the more your right to tyranny. I can’t remember now who was older. But I do remember we were both firstborns and maybe that was part of the trouble. Two bright little girls used to being boss. Always stinks of trouble. Even without cultural difficulties, we were probably destined for rivalry.

Time-traveling through your mind is a precarious expedition. Momentum ricochets you from ghost to ghost, tendrilled eyes looking you up and down. Now I’m remembering this girl’s mother, a woman whose gentle kindness always distracted me into a state of bemusement, then warmth, the kind in which all self disappears and there’s only warmth (which anxiety had displaced so it was hardly recognizable). The mother was a child of Italian immigrants. I saw the Italian grandmother once. At the girl’s birthday party, hiding in the kitchen making meatball pizzas (my first—the meatballs were tiny and soft and I thought it was odd, even wrong, meatballs on pizza). That scene, the old woman, cultural milk so painfully familiar—a misplacement like my submerging culture, slowly becoming as foreign to me as she was to her own granddaughter. A grandmother I must meet again inside myself.


A recipient of a Glass Woman’s Prize, J.A. Pak’s work has been published in Luna Luna, Thrice Fiction, Atticus Review, The Smoking Poet, Quarterly West and Art/Life. This is an excerpt from a WIP nicknamed "That Which Cannot Be Categorized."

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TONIGHT, Feb. 13, Brooklyn/NYC: join @attheinkwell + Luna Luna for a reading on Self-Love.
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When: 7-9 p.m. WORD Bookstore, 126 Franklin Street, Brooklyn A sampling of a few of the poets who will be reading at the FEB. 13 event at @wordbookstores for @attheinkwell: @lifestudies + @joannacvalente + @lisamariebasile + @anditalarico (our lovely host) 🖤Mark your calendars! February 13, 7pm, Word in Brooklyn Want to get into the writing life? @lisamariebasile wrote a guide to starting your freelance life. All about working from home, money & logistics, ritual and mindfulness, finding clients, developing a portfolio, and negotiating your rates. 🙌🏽 Visit lunalunamagazine.com to read! Our very own @joannacvalente has some images up over at @yespoetry from their #Survivor photo series. (There are more at Luna Luna, too!). 🖤 We’re about 200 followers away from 10,000 (!!!!) over on twitter 🙌🏾 Pop over and follow us if you haven’t yet (we’re VERY active there, always having conversations and sharing work and engaging with all of you!) — were going to do a giveaway at 10,000. Thank you for the love, it means the world to us 🎉 LINK IN BIO! WANT TO CONJURE LIZZIE BORDEN? Of course you do. Preorder Lizzie, Speak by our phenom editor & poet @kaileytedesco via the lovely @whitestagpublishing. 👻 The Luna Luna crew! Stay tuned for a reading announcement in February here in NYC. 💜🖤😈 HAPPY NEW YEARS, friends and readers! 🙌🏽 The lovely @joannacvalente posted your January 2019 horoscopes today. Head over to lunalunamagazine.com to check it out. We have good vibes about this year + we hope you had a beautiful celebration!
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PS, as Joanna says: “A lunar eclipse will occur on January 20 during a full Leo moon is going to be emotionally intense. It will stir up feelings about belonging, identity, and love. It might not be an easy moon, but it will  help you shed any unnecessary habits and relationships. Get rid of what doesn’t serve you.” Start thinking about ways you can release those things or people — and what you’d like to focus on instead. 💜🙌🏽🎉

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