Amma, Today in class, on a sharp, cold day in Minneapolis, we read Charles Tilly’s Durable Inequality and discussed the intergenerational nature of inequality—how it manifests in durable economic and physical effects, and how it is embodied in reduced stature, disease, and mortality. I looked up the word ‘durability’ in the Oxford Dictionary, which defined it as “the quality of being able to last for a long time without breaking or getting weaker.” The thought,… Continue Reading Becoming Some-body: A Letter to my Mother
As first- and second-generation immigrant women in a Ph.D. program, we grapple daily with questions of belonging: Should we be here? Is this the right place to advocate for our communities? Confronted with the ongoing genocide in Palestine (United Nations 2024), the erosion of immigrant rights, and the institutional erasure of identity (National Immigrant Justice Center 2025), community becomes more than just a personal bond but a site of resistance. Here we explore: How has… Continue Reading Building Radical Hope: An Ode to Community
I learned of you. It began much earlier than elementary. My neighbors and movies defined obtaining you through the confines of walls, licensed teachers, standardized texts and authorized textbooks. I am still in pursuit of you and I’ve come to define you in four. Continue Reading Knowledge You Are
My pursuit of inclusive clothing design inspired me to submit an article to SPARK sharing my experiences. I am a person with a disability who researches collaborative clothing design, specifically with people who have disabilities. Meaning, I work alongside people with disabilities, research disability experiences, design from a disability perspective, and even live with disability. This position supports me to achieve the goal of embracing perspectives from marginalized communities in my research. *Reader* That’s interesting.… Continue Reading Promoting Inclusive Clothing Design Through Participatory Research & Shared Authority
I n the dream, I am standing on a lawn that stretches to a wood line. It looks like the fields in my hometown in rural Michigan. The bag of seed in my right hand is heavy and the sky is bright blue like in the summers of my childhood. There is a small flock of baby chicks in front of me, maybe a dozen, pecking in the short grass. My Ojibwemowin teacher Zoe is… Continue Reading Ojibwemowin Language Revitalization and a Sense of Community, Being, Love, My Grandmother and My Self
Introduction Listen: “I don’t understand” This is the first thing I had asked my grandmother (often referred to as “gram” by family members) how to say in the very first recording I made with her on my journey trying to learn Nishnaabemwin (the word for the Ojibwe language where I come from). It’s an artefact from the beginning of the long road I’ve been on in working to learn and reclaim the language. I am… Continue Reading Ways of and Paths to Knowing and (un)Certainty: An Experience of Grad School
In February of 2024, I interviewed a Minnesota-based music therapist to learn more about how their professional training and experience prepared them to support various identities with disabilities. While the interview began as an assignment for a course, I developed a personal and scholarly interest because of the significant overlap with my dissertation project, which centers jazz music and disability. During this interview, I learned about their observations as a practitioner, what their work includes,… Continue Reading Jazzing up the Method: Music Therapy, Past & Future
The painting below emerged from an eight-week educational cohort on body healing that centered around social justice themes and was influenced by Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) and Somatic Experiencing (SE). Somatic abolitionism (Menakem, 2022) served as the theoretical framework for this cohort; somatic abolitionism asserts that healing racialized traumas and striving for abolitionism—a movement dedicated to dismantling systemic oppression, especially the school-to-prison pipeline—requires each individual to engage in processing these micro-moments in their bodies and… Continue Reading I Am Not a Lone Person Scattered Here: Intergenerational Healing Through Somatic Experiencing and Research
Finding My Voice as a Hmong Woman and Creating Space in Science Everyone’s journey through science is different. For some, it is about discovery or building a skillset to ensure a promising career. For me, it is about unlearning the gender roles of my culture and finding my voice as a Hmong woman in science. The origins of my upbringing are rooted in scarcity and oppression, yet incredible strength and resilience. The Hmong people are… Continue Reading A Seat at the Table: Reflections of a Hmong Woman Scientist
How Hmong Women Reconcile Traumas Through Retelling Supernatural Stories On a Sunday afternoon in April, my partner and I arrived at our rental home in St. Paul, MN from Wausau, WI, where we returned from a Hmong traditional healing ritual for me. As usual, my partner parked the car on the street. I gently opened the door and slid my body out of the car to prevent myself from falling. When I stood firm on… Continue Reading The Manifestation of Transborder Love