I’ve been told I should try to reclaim my ancestral healing practices, and this is something I would like to do. When I try to learn about Chinese things, it feels performed. I wonder if me learning qigong is any better than white lady yoga.

In Ifa, a Yoruba-based religion, we believe that when we die, we are reincarnated into our same family lineage. I’ve imagined all the ways in which it would be possible that my grandmother was once my sister, or my aunt, a friend in a past life or even a version of me. We depended on each other in so many ways.

There’s a difference between domination as a way to take control or claim power over another person — the way certain lovers have done with me — versus domination as a way to provide comfort and care, and to grow one’s power without harming anyone else.

All I have is an ellipsis. Grief is a flat circle. And I never imagined I would have to live through grieving her.

Even one-night-stands have a spirit to them, but I wasn’t willing to confront that until I stopped drinking. When I did, I was finally able to place my mind right within my body, to touch and be touched without fear. Having sober sex was a way for me to unravel the contempt I felt around my body and my sexuality.

In a time where Black people are experiencing new and old collective trauma whenever they scroll through Instagram, please stop asking us if we’re okay. We are not.

Because of the positive affirmation I received during sex, I began to believe it was all I was good for. When people wanted me, I assumed it was my job to provide joy for other people. I gave myself to a lot of people in that way. I had to remember that I had a right to pleasure as well.

I don’t want to be caught parading around in last generation’s false sense of security. I’m kicking off Autostraddle’s first Asian Pacific Islander American (APIA) Heritage month by exploring the values my own South Asian and Japanese American parents and grandparents imparted to me, to learn to carry them forward.

To me, magic means resilience and connecting to ancestors who survived the tragedy of the Middle Passage. Magic runs through my veins and feels like my birthright. It’s stronger than white supremacy will ever be.

It seems contradictory to say I learned how to view my body as my own by sharing it with strangers and friends, but it is a truth that I revel in. What I love and learn about these encounters are the parameters of my body, its strengths, and boundaries, what pleases it.

I’m not coming out to you as a lesbian, umma, I’m coming out as your daughter. I’m tired of being a stranger to you and I’m tired of tripping over boxes in my living room because you’re incapable of just being vulnerable with me.

I’ve heard so many times that Asian America is about being caught tragically in the space between, never fully accepted in the U.S. and too Westernized to ever be Asian. Listening to my friends, I thought there was something defiant about singing in languages that we were told would never be ours, languages that this country wanted to force us to forget.

In times like these, when people don’t understand us and decide that this means we shouldn’t live at all, we need to connect with the people that do understand, even if just a little bit, even if peripherally.

“I thought changing something on the outside would change the wrecked ruin of me on the inside. I thought somehow the inside would get a memo from my outside and get into shape. It didn’t, but my hair is the first way I was able to gain autonomy over my body.”

My journey to self-love through the influence of Whitney Houston’s life and music.

A road trip which happens to coincide with the occasion of Prince’s death and the release of “Lemonade.”

“My father has very few admirable qualities when it comes to our relationship: he doesn’t follow through on his promises, he doesn’t compromise, and he has a God complex. “

“But, like embracing the woman I am, I couldn’t stay back from the allure of the waves. The pull of my trans-ness and queerness, of course, would always be stronger, the strongest impulses I have ever known. The sea, like them, was a place that represented a kind of forbidden love. I needed to overcome my fears or I would feel that I was holding myself back from living authentically.”

“Now more than ever, I think it’s important to say alabanza to those who were slain, to lift their names up in prayer and to remind those of us still living that Black lives do matter — they’ve always mattered and will always matter.”

In the very first edition of a biweekly column all about tacos, Yvonne writes about her personal connection to the delicious, Mexican super food and her search for damn good tacos far away from home.