Wednesday, May 18, 2022 — 5
Michigan in Color
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
Feliz Día de las Madres
IRVING PEA
MiC Columnist
I love Mother’s Day. I love waking
up Sunday morning to a plethora of
Instagram posts from my friends
dedicated to their moms and reading
the beautiful tributes my mutuals
write about their one and only. I
love being left in awe when I come
across pictures of my friends side by
side with their moms and observing
the stark resemblance between
the two. Of course, this day is not
only about celebrating biological
mothers — for many, Mother’s Day
is about celebrating the person
who embodied a “mother” role
or celebrating yourself because
perhaps you didn’t have a motherly
figure and had to take on that role to
nurture yourself. Regardless of your
relationship with the term “mother”
this past Mother’s Day weekend,
happy belated Mother’s Day.
However, unlike the majority
of Americans that celebrate on the
second Sunday of May, my Mexican
culture celebrates Mother’s Day on
the 10th of May every year. When
Mother’s Day first began in Mexico,
May 10th was considered payday for
most Mexican citizens. This gave
families throughout Mexico the
opportunity to lavish their esteemed
mothers with a traditional Mexican
celebratory act, such as renting
a mariachi band to serenade the
foundational being of their families.
Every May 10th, along with
buying my mom flowers and going
out to eat with her (assuming I am
back home from college), I post her
on my Instagram story and thank
her for doing a great job raising me.
However, the only apps my mom
preaches she needs are WhatsApp
and Youtube. As a result, for as long
as I have posted her, my mom has
never seen a single one of my posts
dedicated to her. She does, however,
read my Michigan in Color articles
and has called me, oftentimes crying,
to express how beautiful my pieces
have been and how proud she is to
call me her son. After I wrote my last
piece thanking my dad for all of the
sacrifices he has made for the sake of
my family, my mother jokingly asked
me when I would write something
for her. Well, mama, I dedicate
this piece of writing to you on your
special day.
My mom is most fluent in Spanish.
With the sole intention of dedicating
this piece to my mother, the rest of
this article will be in Spanish.
Feliz día de la madre, ma. Mientras
escribo esto, estoy empacando mis
cosas para viajar de regreso a Las
Vegas. Por cierto, no estoy listo para
ese viaje de más de treinta horas
de regreso a casa. Pero vale la pena
saber que, muy pronto, estaré de
vuelta en casa contigo. Para cuando
se publique este artículo, ya debería
estar en casa. En lugar de solo
agradecerte por la totalidad de este
artículo, quiero recordarte y dejar
que todos los que lean esto sepan
algunos de los recuerdos que tengo
de ti que se han quedado conmigo
y
permanecerán
conmigo
para
siempre. Hay muchas más de las que
podría hablar, pero estas específicas
también me han convertido en la
persona que soy hoy.
¿Recuerdas esos calurosos días
en el verano cuando estaba en la
primaria en los que rogaba ir a la
biblioteca pero pa no estaba en casa
para llevarme? Nunca aprendiste
a manejar, pero nunca dejaste que
eso te impidiera asegurarte de
que Meztli, Oscar, Isis, Nadia y
yo tuviéramos lo que queríamos.
Durante esos veranos, hubo un
par de ocasiones en las que tú y
yo literalmente caminábamos a la
biblioteca. La biblioteca estaba al
menos a 45 minutos a pie de nuestra
casa. Como todos saben, los veranos
en Las Vegas son increíblemente
calurosos. Fácilmente podría haber
esperado a que papá volviera a casa
para llevarme él mismo, pero había
algo en caminar solo contigo y hablar
de cualquier cosa que me encantaba.
Read more at michigandaily.com
To Restitute
SARAH AKAABOUNE
MiC Senior Editor
Sometimes readers are not ready
for what we write, either because our
words are too close to inside parts of
them they haven’t touched — some
call these parts “memories” — or
because these words implicate them
somewhere ugly inside the circles
that our narratives trace. Sometimes
our words name a thing for them that
they are certain, and they are right,
that nobody will believe. Maybe our
words leave them floating, trailing
a bit behind the understanding that
we’ve concretized with our story,
their relating wounds now open,
and with a realization that still
there is not a safe place to land, that
even putting language to trauma is
not the end of it for any one of us,
sometimes least of all for women of
Color remembering girlhood. Sarah
Akaaboune is someone whom I
know now to be floating alongside
the most talented of women doing
this suturing of words to pain, of
the present to the past, with poetic
and painful visions trained on
futurities that elude. I am honored
that she sees me as a companion on
this journey, that she’s taught me
and our collaborators this semester
who are excavating “narratives of
girlhood” so many new, eviscerating
and hopeful things by consistently
dancing with our texts, practicing
and modeling all the necessarily
changing proximity and distance
that they require for the possibility
of their touching. She is a teacher in
all these ways. I am grateful, and I
am angry alongside her, but I am not
sorry, and I know she understands
why.
Ruby C. Tapia
Ruby C. Tapia is Chair of Women’s
and Gender Studies and Associate
Professor
of
English
Language
and Literature at the University of
Michigan. She is the author of “What
I Was Looking for Was Green” and
regularly teaches the undergraduate
course “Narratives of Girlhood.”
The first time I ever saw blood that
did not belong to me was the day they
removed a cancerous mass from my
brother’s brain. There is something
so different about blood that has
been shed against its will — it pools
into all the wrong corners, moves up
instead of down, left instead of right,
through things instead of around
them. It is much brighter, much
thicker, much louder than you’d
ever expect blood to be, so much so
that soon you can no longer discern
between what is the floor and what is
your feet, what is the wall and what
is truly blood. It is stubborn, it moves
with rage and defiance, it demands
to be seen and heard and felt and
returned to its rightful owner. And
this time, it belonged to a 15-year-old
boy in the room right across from my
brother’s. He was dying. And I know
he was dying because when we are
about to die the world moves tenfold
slower, as if to grant us the grace of
enough time to say goodbye, and
people behave in ways you’d never
believe they could. They scream
and shout and cry and beg and plead
and yell and beg some more, move
so fast they become the room and
the windows and the doors, until as
quickly as everything starts, it comes
to a morbid stop, and instead, they’ll
begin to wash and clean and scrub
all the blood that has collected in
places it never should have been. I
watched him die, and I watched him
die even when there was nothing
I could have done, and I watched
him die when everyone told me I
should have looked the other way
and watching him die became the
first thing that ever broke my body.
Read more at michigandaily.com
RITA SAYEGH/MiC
IRVING PEA/MiC
Self-care can be a mindset, not an action
MAYA KOGULAN
MiC Columnist
I have always been put off by the
notion of self-care.
I am not sure why. Maybe it is
because the term has been co-opted
by the beauty and wellness industry
to sell skin products and gym
memberships.
Wellness,
which
centers
around
self-care,
has
morphed into a $1.5 trillion industry
that caters to a predominantly
white, wealthy, thin, able-bodied
demographic.
Maybe I feel this way because
white women use the guise of self-
care to cherry-pick practices from
Eastern cultures and traditions. For
instance, yoga, which is rooted in
Hinduism and was once banned in
India during British colonization,
has been adopted by Western society
as an exotic form of exercise and
self-care. Yoga studios don’t hesitate
to lean into the spiritual aesthetic.
My hometown yoga studio, run by
a white owner, is decorated with
Hindu deities and Om symbols.
To use Hindu symbolism in order
to curate a “calm and spiritual”
aesthetic is not only disrespectful,
but blatant cultural appropriation as
it reduces Hindu deities to “pretty”
decorations.
Due to the commercialization
of
the
self-care
and
wellness
industry, the idea of self-care seems
like a luxury, coming in the form
of elaborate seven-step skincare
routines, mindfulness meditations
and green smoothies. The media has
created a version of self-care that is
tied to indulgence, which requires
extra money and time. Furthermore,
this curated idea of self-care excludes
those who can’t afford it, making it
feel out of reach for marginalized
populations. I never felt like self-
care was for me because it was never
marketed for me.
For many children of immigrants,
self-care
also
seems
like
an
afterthought.
First-generation
kids often have to financially and
emotionally support their families
while handling the burden of their
parents’ sacrifices to succeed. These
high expectations, coupled with a
multitude of other factors, increase
the
likelihood
of
psychological
distress in children of immigrants. In
fact, the prevalence of psychological
distress in children of immigrants
is nearly double compared to their
parents.
Read more at michigandaily.com