THE UBC UNDERGRADUATE JOURNAL OF ENGLISH • THE• GARDEN • STATUARY VOLUME 9 WINTER 2019 $ SPRING 2020 ABOUT THE JOURNAL The Garden Statuary is the o!cial Undergraduate Journal of English at The University of British Columbia, operated and peer-reviewed by UBC undergraduate students. We publish twice a year online (once at the end of each term) and compile both online issues into a single end-of-year print edition. The journal began as the idea of a group of writers, artists, and musicians from a second year English honours class and has published 18 issues since September 2011. As “English” is a "eld of remarkable interdisciplinary richness and UBC students work in remarkably diverse mediums, we welcome a wide range of genres and forms: academic essays in the "eld of English, poetry, "ction, creative non"ction, stage and screenplay, photography, visual art, music, and "lm. Our mission is to provide a place for UBC undergraduates to showcase, celebrate, and share their work within the university and beyond. In turn, we hope we leave our student audiences feeling inspired and connected to the incredible energy and talent found in the community around them. If you are a UBC undergraduate and wish to see your work on our print and/or digital pages, please peruse our submission guidelines on our website www.thegardenstatuary.com. You can also contact us at [email protected]. We’re excited to see your work! VOLUME 9, WINTER 2019 2019 WINTER 9, VOLUME POETRY, FICTION, CREATIVE NON#FICTION, MULTIMEDIA AND ACADEMIC ESSAYS BY NOOR ANWAR • MABON FOO • SAGORIKA HAQUE • MOIRA HENRY VLAD KRAKOV • CAMILLE LEMIRE • ALGER LIANG • JADE LIU LISA LIU • TYLER ANTONIO LYNCH • LINDSEY PALMER • EMMY PEHRSON FRANCOIS PELOQUIN • MARIANNA SCHULTZ • AVANTIKA SIVARAMAN $ MARILYN SUN • AIDEN TAIT • AMANDA WAN • IRIS ZHANG 2020 SPRING FRONT COVER ILLUSTRATION BY IVY TANG COVER DESIGN BY GABRIELLE LIM PRINT ISSUE ASSEMBLED BY KRISTEN KALICHARAN VOLUME 9, ISSUE 1 ! WINTER 2019 *+,-./0*1/2,3-/4*56*+//.-728*9,3-,. ! /44,E*?E*FD,70,*K,7 *:/.,73;5.-,*,70*+<,2-./*=>?@/3A4*56 !B>//<*C7A-D,3E*-7*F70</G*F;7H4*"#$ %&'() *IJI5*K,A/<*,*:,70<,L/J8*M5<<>NA/0 "# /44,E*?E*F-0/7*I,-A *M57O/<4-57*56*A;/*P50E*56*M;<-4A*-7 !A;/*Q/3<5?5A,7E*56*R5;7*K/?4A/<H4**(+ ,(&)+!-+.&/ *K;-A/*K-A3;/4*,70*K,<<-5<*P/,4A48 $% /44,E*?E*:,?57*+55 *S-/<,<3;-3,.*F<<,72/D/7A4*56*P/-72 !,70*A;/*+,7A,4A-3,.*Q5<A;*-7!*(+!0&123 !)(+!,&)4(!$25!)(+!,$65617+!,70!*(+ 81/5+2!91:#$;; M;,4/*T</,D $& N5/D*?E*R,0/*1-> :-72>4*:-72>4 #% N5/D*?E*+<,735-4*V/.5Y>-7 M-O-.*T-45?/0-/73/ #$ N5/D*?E*=,25<-L,*S,Y>/ +,..-72*-7A5*U><4/.O/4 #' D>.A-D/0-,*?E*ZDDE*V/;<457 V5<A<,-A*56*=;,72;,- #( D>.A-D/0-,*?E*F.2/<*1-,72 STATUARY GARDEN THE B>-77 #) N<54/*?E*[.,0*\<,L5O S-4A5<E*56*W,X*P/,3; !! N<54/*?E*IE./<*F7A57-5*1E73; 1 VOLUME 9, ISSUE 2 ! SPRING 2020 *T57`A*155L*P,3L8*I;/*954/aM5.5></0 '% /44,E*?E*:5-<,*S/7<E Q54A,.2-,*56*!"#$%*,70*&'(()*+"$%,-%. The Reimagined (Anti-)Origin Story: '! /44,E*?E*1-4,*1-> Examining Nu Wa’s Diasporic Identity Through Body and Birth Racism, Ableism, Exceptionalism, and (% /44,E*?E*1-704/E*V,.D/< Imperialism: Jane Eyre as Antifeminist an ode to the world (( N5/D*?E*Q55<*F7G,< Self-Portrait as a Bleaching Cream (& N5/D*?E*FO,7A-L,*=-O,<,D,7 She Doesn't Look Herself ]% N5/D*?E*ZDDE*V/;<457 Before the Rain ]$ D>.A-D/0-,*?E*C<-4*^;,72 Technology Xiao Jie ]# D>.A-D/0-,*?E*:,<-.E7*=>7 Weekend I ]' N<54/*?E*:,<-,77,*=3;>.A_ My Dad is Jeff Probst &" N<54/*?E*M,D-../*1/D-</ THE GARDEN STATUARY GARDEN THE 2 2019–2020 EDITORIAL BOARD Joyce Chung • Katie Czenczek Christina Daudlin • Avani Dhunna • Jiyoon Ha Nick Jensen • Katie Lund • Saakshi Patel Colby Payne • Makenzie Pratt • Asli Sözen 2019–2020 EXECUTIVES Chimedum Ohaegbu • Co-Editor-in-Chief Christine Xiong • Co-Editor-in-Chief Samantha Bowen • Journal Coordinator Yunhwi Lee • Submissions Manager Kristen Kalicharan • Print Manager ILLUSTRATION TEAM Napat Asavamongkolkul • Enid Au Paew Chantrakul • Angie Dai • Grace Guy Debbie Liang • Maggie Lu • Ivy Tang • Ivy Zhan ILLUSTRATION CREDITS STATUARY GARDEN THE Napat Asavamongkolkul p. 34, 67 • Enid Au p. 87 Paew Chantrakul p. 42, 71 • Angie Dai p. 23, 51 Grace Guy p. 16, 78 • Debbie Liang p. 31, 57 Maggie Lu p. 48, 62 • Ivy Tang p. 29 • Ivy Zhan p. 8, 69 www.thegardenstatuary.com 3 ACADEMIC FAILED LEGACIES OF FEELING: RACIAL MELANCHOLIA AND FRAGILE SUBJECTS OF QUEER INTIMACY IN ANDREW AHN'S SPA NIGHT (2016) AMANDA WAN In Andrew Ahn’s Spa Night, queerness disappointed expectations about David’s circulates through the aesthetics of failure failure to perform as a visible and audible and fragility within the Cho family, and queer subject communicate the fragility the losses that they desire and grieve as of the emotional and political desires racialized and classed subjects. Racial upholding these identitarian categories, melancholia, as formulated by David and the need for resolution and legibility L. Eng and Shinhee Han, circulates enclosed in these desires. between members of the family as !rough four sections, I will work traces of emotional maps and form their through the immense communicative relationality to one another. !e emotional potential of failure and fragility across terrains between the Chos and other various characters and readings of "gures throughout the "lm generate queer Spa Night: “Reading the shame of intimacies through spoken language, racial melancholia in the Cho family,” physical acts of care and kinship, and the “‘Inscrutable’ Asians and the failed queer preservation of lost desires and emotions subject,” “Speaking unclearly/Translating in the memory work of circulating or queerly,” and “Troubling ‘coming out’ inheriting grief. As these queer intimacies narratives: the queering space of the become generated through modes of Korean spa.” kinship that do not privilege relationality based on shared claims to race, language, Reading the Shame of Racial or biological reproduction—and as Melancholia in the Cho Family characters like David “fail” in western I approach racial melancholia as Eng and LGBTQ discourses and analyses of Spa Han’s construction of a “psychic condition,” THE GARDEN STATUARY GARDEN THE Night—it becomes clear how fragile wherein unresolved grief over losing seemingly concrete identitarian categories objects and ideals associated with sel#ood like “queer,” “Asian,” or “Korean/Korean and subjectivity culminates in grief that is American” are in highlighting the politics never redirected externally and is instead of coherent subjectivity and recognition internalized (Eng 16). In their commitment as a queer subject. Frustrations and to destabilize the pathologizing tendencies 4 ACADEMIC of Freud—one of the points at which (played by Joe Seo), Soyoung (David’s Eng and Han arrive at the theory of mother, played by Haeery Kim), and melancholia—racialized subjects moving Jin Cho (David’s father, played by Youn through immigration and the legacies of Ho Cho) in their shared relationalities Western imperialism in Asia, such as the embodied through tiredness and memory working-class immigrant Cho family in work. When they close the restaurant, they Spa Night, may grieve over “lost objects, lose access to its physical space and the places, and ideals” in attempts to recognize emotional terrains mapped onto it. Echoes themselves in ful"lling desires. As we see of their loss resonate as Soyoung and with the working-class immigrant Cho David encounter the tangible brokenness family in Spa Night, these longings “remain of the building where Soyoung and Jin estranged and unresolved” because they "rst lived when they migrated from Korea, are never ful"lled and therefore felt as now neglected. Facing the building, and lost (Eng 17, emphasis in original). Forced presently dislocated from her emotional to close their restaurant due to "nancial memory map of arrival in America, struggles, the Chos’ psychic terrains Soyoung recounts details of her and Jin’s become “uninhabitable and barren,” feelings to David while staring at the run- demonstrating “conditions of existence” down building. She ends forlornly: characteristic of racial melancholia (Eng SOYOUNG: Moving to America… we 13). Within this landscape of feeling, they were so excited to be here. are made to move with diminished capacity DAVID: Are you okay? for embodying or imagining feelings such SOYOUNG: It’s been a long day.% as happiness and hopefulness. It is the (Spa Night) emotional and embodied lives of loss and longing that are made possible for the Soyoung’s initial excitement and hope Chos, engendering not merely a lack of mapped onto the building, here, becomes disoriented by the present emotional ful"llment but an excess—of sadness, of terrain of losing their restaurant and great longing, and the shame of feeling helpless "nancial and emotional strain. Her loss 1 ISSUE 9, VOLUME against such spillages, where shame turns and grief manifests as tiredness—“It’s been the pain of melancholy into a matter of one’s a long day”—as Soyoung physiologically own body (a thread I will take up in a later bears the emotional weight of holding section). Such melancholic excess con"rms past a&ects while confronting their the inarticulable quality of pain and loss; misalignment with the present moment. it also gestures towards the possibility of !e labour of memory ensures that the reading the aesthetics and communicative weight of loss is not only the weight of loss potentials of sadness, despair, and failure, itself, but of its haunting presence, carried rather than pathologizing either sadness or long a'er it has been perceived to be gone.