What are you to do when you are a Vietnamese asexual and aromantic woman who grew up in white, cishet, francophone-dominated Montreal in the 1980s and 1990s?

This is the story of the birth and death of my name, which means that it is a story about transition, which means that it is necessarily a story about the border between two places and the force with which one rends it.

Loneliness is an old bedfellow of mine; despair, my oldest friend. If I can come to embrace those parts of myself I’ve always tried to push away — perhaps, that is the only lifelong love I can count on.

Being a first-gen, Indigenous, queer, Samoan girl in diaspora almost cost me my Samoan culture. But one day, I’m going to be the queer Samoan elder who looks my grandchildren in their faces, and says: I was afraid the entire time that I was fighting for the world you deserve, but I did it anyway.

Our trans subject editor Xoai Pham speaks to Jayda Shuavarnnasri, Thai-American sexuality educator and resident #SexPositiveAsianAuntie, about sexual violence, myths about polyamory, and what it means to take up space as Asian women.

I believe my queerness makes my Asian-ness and my adoptee-ness stronger. I am more myself when I hold all these truths together than when I try to compartmentalize them.

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.

Through my mother’s recipes, I’m reminded of the resilience that flows in our blood. Instead of disconnecting from my body to survive, I nurtured it. Like me, cooking is hella queer and fluid. Every time I reimagine a dish, it can taste different depending on my mood.“How spicy do I want this dish to be today? “How sweet do I want this dessert?” It’s never fixed or prescribed. That’s what makes these evolving recipes — and the queer experience — so delicious.

When love is a matter of desperation, how do you even begin to know what it is you desire? It doesn’t matter what shape love takes. Or does it?