Hello, everyone! As of Labor Day weekend, I started to organize my page and took advantage of the feature allowing me to organize the menu by categories (yay!). This saved me from having to do full-on HTML and make completely separate pages. I may yet do this for select sections, depending on how much the site expands in time.
I also decided to make a separate category for News. This will help keep me accountable to everyone who follows me, and the friends who have lost touch with me since I discontinued the use of my Facebook (for now). It will also help me just simplify what I have been up to, for people who do not feel like reading my reflections. In contrast, my Blog section will involve a lot more of the intense subjects people are likely used to seeing when I update this site, my Reflections.
There are also some additional news updates listed below.
Thank you all who have been supporting me in my personal journey, locally and from afar. Happy Labor Day!
Much love,
Arya
Manuscripts in progress (not on the page, titles not listed):
- Whitewashing in White-Wolf Games [not official title].A work on deconstructing the whitewashing of Asian inspired stories and lore done by White-Wolf Games. Right now, I do not want to release too many details, but based on a basic Google search, I have not seen many articles on this topic. I bought a few of the PDFs for this project for reference, to keep me on track on the writing. You will be seeing this in an outlet that publishes analog game-related articles soon. When I have it published, I will link it.
- Addressing Colorism and How It Affects Mixed-Race White-Asians.At some point, I want to polish a work I have done on addressing my privilege from colorism. It will go into the complications of passing from ethnic ambiguity and how it is not always as clear-cut as people seeing you as White (though it can be). Ultimately, I want to make a case for multiracial White-POC people who benefit from white-adjacency, no matter their blood “quantum,” to own the privilege and do more to help their families and affiliated communities. Many multiracials have been doing this already. Famous Asian-American author Lisa See is a case of someone who has done this for the Chinese-American community in Los Angeles.
- Poetry Book.I am finally putting together a ton of poetry I have done this past year. My fiction project has been put on hold while I try to organize this and juggle umpteen other writing projects. I am hoping then to look for anyone who would be interested in having the works put in as many hands as possible. Themes in the work involve my upbringing, inspirations from Southeast Asian folktales (and the religions that influenced), and social justice topics that affect the Southeast Asian diaspora.As I do not want the works out there until I agree on first-publishing rights with someone, no one will see anything yet. Content that does not make the cut will likely be posted here or in my Patreon account. This project will be purely minimal-to-no profit for me. I intend to dedicate 80% of my share to non-profit organizations that are centered in Asian American communities and Southeast Asian countries.
My goals for this work is supporting programs that bring in more writers of color, as well as organizations that advocate for the more vulnerable populations in the Southeast Asian sub-region. I recognize my privilege in my own family as well as on a global scale, and I want this particular compilation to address that. Poetry addressing social justice is not worth distributing if I do not dedicate it to social justice.
- Fiction in Progress.After much thought, I scrapped the very first novel I completed (for now). I may revisit it and do serious changes later, based on how my second novel goes (which was a “prequel” initially). After taking a literary criticism class and refreshing myself on postcolonialism, I just in good conscience could not see myself putting my first novel out there. While no work will be perfect, I have a responsibility to give my all and do better with each work. Despite being culturally brought up as both Southeast Asian and American, White America still finds its way to influence how we view the world.On the other hand, my second piece has much more potential and is far less problematic. I also discovered that I may have introduced a second main character. Both main characters are women, and I hope to make them as wonderful as they should be with my evolving writing.