#birchwoodrain

[birchwoodrain]

moon(cake)

It’s mid-autumn, the season of heat and humidity, of damp walls and sticky furniture, a trademark of the Vietnamese climate. With September brings an excitement felt by every child, in anticipation of the annual Mid-Autumn Festival. The streets light up as soon as night descends, revealing market stalls lined with moon cakes, candies, fruits, and lanterns. The thrumming of drums and ceremonial songs echo in the streets, and suddenly I am twelve again, so light and vivid like a fever dream. 

I am in my grandfather’s house, the crooked old thing filled with orchids and porcelain plates. There is a small metal gate that creaks loudly when touched, which leads to a door that opens right into the living room, where a scratched glass table takes up the center. Against the wall is a tattered brown leather sofa; a cabinet of mysterious medicines and trinkets stands next to a glitching, cube-shaped TV. Every Mid-Autumn festival, I would visit him in his home and spend time together, whether in the garden admiring his orchid vines, or in his bedroom, flipping through vintage photo albums. I much prefer this comfort over the chaos and chattering in the streets. Remnants of my memories resurface: it’s early in the evening during the festival, and I’m having dinner in his dim kitchen, serving him a bowl of lukewarm tomato rice that he prepared in his faded rice cooker. 

“How are you nowadays? When are you bringing home a boyfriend?” he probes. 

“I’m in good health, and I don’t know, grandpa,” I reply. 

“What nonsense. I’ve been wooing girls left and right since I was a teen,” he says, which prompts my parents to laugh. 

The night always ends with me eating all of his moon cakes and making a mess of empty sunflower seeds on the coffee table, before leaving as a sleepy lump in my father’s arms. Before I am out the door, he pushes the hair out of my forehead and whispers, “I love you. I want us both to eat well.” This was his love language—stored in gentle hands, in small smiles, in meals that taste like affection. 

That was the last Mid-Autumn Festival I would ever feel his gentle hands. Looking back now, perhaps I should have engraved him into my mind somehow, before he got diagnosed with Alzheimer’s and became paralyzed. The house lays quiet, almost cold to the touch. 

A few years later, and there is a hospital bed in the middle of the living room now, with a body to match it. Soft breaths harmonize with the dripping of the IV. The silence stretches between my grandfather and I like a thread, and I feel suffocated, cornered by the glaring metal bed-frame that juts out between time-worn furniture. Through the windows, I watch the children outside as they chase each other around, their drumming and chanting in the festival failing to break his slumber. He passed away the summer I turned 14, and I was shocked by how little I have thought of him these past few years. 

It’s a yearning that can only be described as nhớ. In Vietnamese, to miss and to remember share the same word. 

Grandpa, sometimes I feel like I miss you more than I remember you. Because here is the thing about grief: it persists, it stains like ink, it is faceless yet insurmountable. It remembers you. But with it comes reminders of a person well-loved. Now, whenever September arrives, I think of the heaviness of the summer heat and the faint smell of home-cooked meals. 

Back in America, the full moon hangs overhead like a white lantern. Under the soft, pale light, I cut myself a slice of mooncake in the smallness of my kitchen. In my mind, I am blowing on the steaming porridge before spoon-feeding him on the hospital bed. In my mind, he sits primly on the brown sofa with an easy smile, back straight, his hands on his knees, posed for a photo. In my mind, he is calloused knuckles and shaky fingers brushing against my forehead, he

is the explosion of mid-autumn fireworks distorted by the television static. For a moment, the weight becomes bearable, and it feels like taking a breath for the first time in years.

.・。.・゜✭・.・✫・゜・。.

Notes: This was originally an English assignment about my memory of a holiday/celebration! I want to clarify that very small pieces in this essay is partially inspired by other writers. Namely, it references a line in Ocean Vuong's On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous where they talk about the significance of the word nhớ in Vietnamese. The second reference is a direct quote from Christopher Citro's poem, "Our Beautiful Life When It's Filled With Shrieks". Reading this piece always makes me sentimental for some reason—food as always been an important love language in my culture. Some details within this essay are fiction/dramatized as an artistic choice, but I don't feel the need to clarify which parts. That's all, hope you enjoyed reading!

[birchwoodrain]

August Wilson: Reclaiming Power Through Cultural Redemption

In the plays, Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, The Piano Lesson, and Fences, August Wilson incorporates African-American cultural elements like blues and jazz music and African-American Christianity to serve as a form of self-expression through which minorities use to reclaim power and resist conformity to their oppressors’ standards. In Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, Ma Rainey manipulates the power dynamics between her and her exploitative employers through her talent in blues music. In The Piano Lesson, music serves as an intergenerational connection for the Charles family, whose strength relies on the spirit of Black ancestors. In Fences, Wilson uses the story of Jacob from the Bible as a moral to portray the effects of generational trauma on familial relationships. Essentially, Wilson illustrates that individuals have the agency to heal from the past by reaffirming their cultural values. Although succeeding does not resolve trauma in its entirety, incremental improvements allow human beings to take the first step toward loosening trauma and developing more meaningful relationships within their communities.

In the play Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, Ma Rainey and her band play Blues and Jazz music, derived from gospel and spirituals, to exert control over their own lives, as well as their oppressors’ lives. Historically, it was used to boost spirits and affirm Black humanity during slavery, which eventually evolved into a symbol of Black empowerment and creativity. Despite Ma Rainey’s fame and talent and the popularity of the African American music scene during the late 1920s, she struggles with self-expression due to the white-dominated music production industry. Because of this, the producers view her as a commodity and someone they can exploit for their own gain. In retaliation, she reacts by refusing to record, protesting often, and having a hot temperament. This is apparent when Sturdyvant, one of the producers, expresses his disapproval of Ma Rainey’s attitude, saying, “I don’t care what she calls herself. I’m not putting up with it. I just want to get her in here...record those songs on that list...and get her out. Just like clockwork, huh?” (Wilson, Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom 2). Evidently, he fails to perceive her as human, comparing her to the likes of a machine that labors for his benefit. He demonstrates that she is simply another voice he manipulates for its marketability. Later into the play, when Levee, one of the band members, inquires about her resilience, she reveals:

MA RAINEY. They don’t care nothing about me. All they want is my voice. Well, I done learned that, and they gonna treat me like I want to be treated no matter how much it hurt them (...) As soon as they get my voice down on them recording machines, then it’s just like if I’d be some whore and they roll over and put their pants on. Ain’t got no use for me then. (Wilson, Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom 29).

In this sense, Ma Rainey enacts a minor rebellion of her own; by withholding the labor that her exploiters depend upon for survival, she reclaims a small amount of power and authenticity that Sturdyvant and Irvin take from her. Contrary to the submission and naivety that the executives expect from the new band members, Ma Rainey defies them, proving that the value of her voice is up to her discretion alone; she decides when her talent can be borrowed, and when it is returned. Furthermore, she perceives blues music as a medium through which she communicates her creativity, believing that it is “life’s way of talking. [She doesn’t] sing to feel better. [She sings] ‘cause that’s a way of understanding life” (Wilson, Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom 31). In order to process and endure the Sturdyvants’ and Irvins’ scrutiny, she weaponizes an aspect of her cultural identity that she can control in order to move past her oppressors’ racial discrimination and ignorance.

On the other end of the spectrum is Levee, a young, stubborn, and ambitious musician who is unafraid to use deceit to reclaim power, even if it means catering to his own oppressors. After watching his father smile and shake hands with the Southern townsfolk who lynched his family, Levee learns that deception and diplomacy are important skills that are beneficial to achieving his goals. As a result, he panders to the white executives and seeks their approval, valuing their musical opinion above his bandmates’. Disapprovingly, his bandmate, Toledo comments:

TOLEDO. See, now...I’ll tell you something. As long as the colored man look to white folks to put the crown on what he say...as long as he looks to white folks for approval...then he ain’t never gonna find out who he is and what he’s about. He’s just gonna be about what white folks want him to be about. That’s one sure thing. (Wilson, Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom 10)

In brief, Levee isolates himself from his community in an attempt to achieve his ultimate goal of recognition and fame in front of a white audience. Levee refuses to compromise with his bandmates, adamant on performing according to his personal preferences. This demonstrates his misuse of the purpose of the blues; instead of encouraging collaboration and creativity, he sows discord amongst the community, to the point of violence. At the end of the play, Toledo becomes irritated with Levee’s demeanor and accidentally steps on his shoes, which represent his sense of pride, prompting Levee to stab him in the chest in the heat of the moment. According to Sandra G. Shannon, Professor Emerita of African American Literature in the Department of English at Howard University, “Levee [fails in his] attempts to leave [his] own mark on the blues recording industry at the expense of denouncing both Africa and the South” (“A Transplant That Did Not Take: August Wilson's Views on the Great Migration” 979-980). Instead of drawing strength from the historical force behind African American music, he borrows the authority that Sturvant provides. Thus, as he remarks to Cutler, a fellow bandmate, “We done sold ourselves to the white man in order to be like him” (Wilson, Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom 37), he emulates the power of the white man, hoping to rise in status and subdue his band. As a result, Levee never succeeds in detaching himself from the judgment and conformity of white American society, ultimately causing the dissolution of his band along with the members’ future prospects. Not only does he stray from cultural reconnection, but he also fails to heal from childhood trauma, leading to his betrayal of his musical community. Unlike Ma Rainey, who sees blues music as a symbol of hope and autonomy, Levee conforms to his oppressors’ standards, isolating himself and deepening his emotional burdens because of his failure to cooperate and empathize with others.

On the contrary, The Piano Lesson demonstrates that using music as a medium to reconnect ancestral ties allows the Charles family to rekindle their relationship with one another and overcome generational trauma. Initially, Boy Willie and Berniece, the Charles siblings, disagree on whether to sell the old piano for a piece of land or keep the heirloom containing carvings made by their enslaved ancestors. While a symbol of beauty and remembrance of the Charles family, it is also a reminder of the death and oppression their ancestors suffered at the hands of Sutter, the now-deceased slave owner. Witnessing the argument, Avery, her partner, comments, “Everybody got stones in their passway. You got to step over them or walk around them. You picking them up and carrying them with you” (Wilson, The Piano Lesson 70). In this regard, Boy Willie attempts to “walk around” the issue of unresolved trauma by removing the piano from his presence, but not his mind; conversely, Berniece allows it to burden her. Avery attempts to convince Berniece to let go of her husband’s death and the weight of her tragedies, but she remains a woman, and by extension, a mother in mourning to the rest of her family:

BERNIECE. When my mama died I shut the top on that piano and I ain't never opened it since. I was only playing it for her. When my daddy died seem like all her life went into that piano…when I played it she could hear my daddy talking to her…I don't play that piano cause I don't want to wake them spirits. (Wilson, The Piano Lesson 70).

Here, the similarities manifest between her and her mother, Mama Ola: both grieved their husbands’ deaths and believed the piano to be both a symbol of Black oppression and a symbol of hope. Her husband’s spirit, along with her parents’ and great grandparents’,  is entrapped within the instrument under their history of oppression while simultaneously providing security and solace. The lingering trauma takes the form of Sutter’s ghost, whose presence persists through multiple generations. As long as he remains haunting their home, he still exerts power over the piano, and to an extent, still enslaves the family. The ghost resurfaces during the many attempts that Boy Willie tries to remove the piano from their home. This is similar to opening up an old wound; by revisiting their history of enslavement, the family confronts many traumatic unwanted memories and feelings that disrupt their interpersonal relationships.

Although initially afraid, Berniece realizes that she has to call upon the spirit of her ancestors to use their voices to banish Sutter, who aims to divide the Charles family. In the stage directions for Berniece’s singing, Wilson describes it as “an old urge to song that is both a commandment and a plea. Within each repetition it gains in strength. It is intended as an exorcism and a dressing for battle. A rustle of wind blowing across two continents” (Wilson, The Piano Lesson 106). Berniece transforms the piano into a channel for which her great-grandparents cross over in order to combine forces; hence, she summons them to the land of the living. According to Professor Cynthia L. Caywood and Professor Carlton Floyd, both at the University of San Diego, Wilson emphasizes “the need for a cultural figure that can withstand the trauma of this earth, a ‘grounded’ figure that is itself a mouth piece that can open the gates of heaven, emerges” (75). Simultaneously, Boy Willie’s physical altercation with Sutter and Berniece’s song transform into a cultural exorcism that overpowers the ghost, thus undoing his possession on the Charles’ home. This spiritual intervention, empowered by music, can be interpreted as a “second chance at life” for the older generations, just as the spirit of Mama Ola helps Berniece release her trauma and finally establish a sense of belonging within her family and cultural values. Furthermore, Professor Shannon elaborates, “[This search] for African roots has altered the nature of African American remembering by focusing on positive ways of constructing a new identity, even out of the painful experiences of the past” (“Framing African American Cultural Identity: The Bookends Plays in August Wilson's 10-Play Cycle” 30). While the Sutters only perceive the piano as an exotic artifact used to oppress others, the Charles family reclaims the meaning of the instrument by reconnecting with their African-American heritage. Only after subjugating the ghost does the family find peace by healing and transforming their past suffering into reminders of familial love and endurance.

Furthermore, Wilson also draws parallels between Troy Maxon’s internal conflicts and the biblical character, Jacob, to depict Troy’s struggle to maintain autonomy while suffering from aftereffects of parental abuse. Like Jacob, he battles tirelessly against God, who challenges him to a wrestle, leading to him gazing into “God’s” face at the end of the battle. However, unlike Jacob, the God that Troy battles is Death personified, at the beginning and end of the play. His first encounter occurs when Troy experiences hardships in finding a stable job and housing for his wife, Rose, and their child. While recounting his past to his best friend, Bono, Troy boasts:

TROY. We wrestled for three days and three nights. I can’t say where I found the strength from. Every time it seemed like he was gonna get the best of me, I’d reach way down deep inside myself and find the strength to do him one better(…)

TROY. At the end of the third night we done weakened each other to where we can’t hardly move. Death stood up, throwed on his robe…had him a white robe with a hood on it. He throwed on that robe and went off to look for his sickle. Say, “I’ll be back.” (Wilson, Fences 13-14)

For context, the play’s setting in the 1950s indicates the post-War economic growth which promoted capitalism, often defining human worth through the accumulation of capital. Unable to meet these demands, a younger Troy, like many other low-income people of color, resorts to theft, which further pushes him further down the social ladder. In spite of imprisonment, Troy uses the opportunity to become a better man, putting further distance between himself and his father. During his formative years, he experiences physical and emotional abuse from his father, who forced him to participate in child labor and sexually assaulted his first girlfriend, among other forms of neglect. He states, “Now I thought he was mad cause I ain’t done my work. But I see where he was chasing me off so he could have the gal for himself. When I see what the matter of it was, I lost all fear of my daddy. Right there is where I become a man…at fourteen years of age” (Wilson, Fences 56-57). Troy’s desperation to escape his father’s influence helps him put a physical and emotional divide between them; his determination manifests through his hard work and grit. When he “cheats” Death the first time, he is on the edge of his resolve, with low income and the risk of his family falling apart. Additionally, workplace discrimination prevents him from being promoted to a truck driver, unlike his white colleagues. However, he escapes his downfall due to his resilience and unwillingness to submit to pessimism. Troy draws strength from his unwillingness to merge with his father’s habits of neglecting his family and abandoning work in favor of sex and alcoholism.

As he gets older, Troy allows himself to pass down his father’s resentment and loses empathy, becoming bitter in the face of social progress. This is proven when he discourages Cory, his son, from participating in the football team, insisting that it is a waste of resources and that he would not be accepted socially. Subconsciously, Troy is jealous that his talent was undervalued due to the lack of diversity when he was a youth in the baseball team. At the end of the play, he confronts Death once more and loses. He lacks the will to oppose the pressure to become spiteful in old age, and ultimately, severs his connection to Rose and Cory, who are representations of his personal values. Just as God strikes Jacob in the hip, causing him to limp for the rest of his life, Death delivers the final blow that destroys Troy’s remaining sense of hope. Although his defeat in the battle against Death is physical, it also represents the death of his resolve and willpower, and solidification of his and his father’s identities. Consequently, Troy’s relationship dissipates with his wife and son, the grounding forces in his life for whom he lives. According to David Letzler, professor at Queens College of the City University of New York, “Troy’s abrogation of his well-earned discipline loses him not only the fruits of his adult life’s work but damages those about whom he cares most, fragmenting his family” (308). Troy’s regression into his father’s persona not only hinders his ability to feel happiness in life, but also his ability to provide emotionally for his family, just as Jacob loses sight of his own.

Moreover, his refusal to rectify his treatment toward others causes him to become estranged from his family. Andrew R. Davis, Associate professor at the Boston College, writes, “Both characters set out alone and gradually form relationships that have a stabilizing effect in their lives, but for both characters a former conflict casts a long shadow over their journey and ultimately drives them to a renewed solitude” (51) to explain the inevitable self-isolation that comes with refusal to strive for improvement. This is realized when Troy finally builds the fence around the house that Rose repeatedly requests throughout the play. While Rose intends to use the fence as a way to keep Troy’s love and affection inside the home, Troy unwittingly prevents his family from joining him on the other side, shunning them. Thus, Troy fails to deviate from his predetermined fate, descending into the same path that renders Jacob alone for the rest of his life. Subsequently, Cory joins the Navy to escape his father’s wrath, straining their relationship even further. Finally, at Troy’s funeral, Cory admits to Rose, “The whole time I was growing up…living in his house…Papa was like a shadow that followed you everywhere. It weighed on you and sunk into your flesh. It would even wrap around you and lay there until you couldn’t tell which one was you anymore…Trying to crawl in. Trying to live through you…I don’t want to be Troy Maxson. I want to be me”  (Wilson, Fences 104). The aftermath of Troy’s degradation appears within Cory’s inner thoughts and selfhood, causing a struggle to separate the two personalities; through this parallel, Wilson portrays abuse as an endless cycle between father and son. It is only at the end of the play that Wilson leaves Cory with the same opportunity as his father: despite the lingering effect of his father’s violence, he has a choice between passing it down to his sister or breaking the cycle by separating his identity from his abuser.

Ultimately, Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, The Piano Lesson, and Fences, show that music and religion deep-rooted in African-American heritage are modalities of communication and self-expression used to liberate abused individuals from their oppressors' values. When viewing Wilson’s plays from a broader perspective, he concludes that humans have the choice to take incremental steps toward recovering and strengthening emotional connection. However, failure to break away from oppressive values hinders progress toward self-reform and healing from trauma. Fundamentally, cultural redemption allows individuals to build strength from their core values in an attempt to escape from oppressive ideology.

Works Cited

Caywood, Cynthia L., and Carlton Floyd. “'She Make You Right with Yourself': Aunt Ester, Masculine Loss and Cultural Redemption in August Wilson's Cycle Plays.” College Literature, vol. 36, no. 2, 2009, pp. 74-95. https://www.jstor.org/stable/20642023.

Davis, Andrew R. “Wrestling Jacob in the Book of Genesis and August Wilson’s 'Fences.'” Literature and Theology, vol. 29, no. 1, 2015, pp. 47-65. JSTOR, https://www.jstor.org/stable/43664519.

Letzler, David. “Walking Around the Fences: Troy Maxson and the Ideology of 'Going Down Swinging.'” African American Review, vol. 47, no. 2/3, 2014, pp. 301-312. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/24589755.

Shannon, Sandra G. “Framing African American Cultural Identity: The Bookends Plays in August Wilson's 10-Play Cycle.” College Literature, vol. 36, no. 2, 2009, pp. 26-39. JSTOR, https://www.jstor.org/stable/20642020.

---.“A Transplant That Did Not Take: August Wilson's Views on the Great Migration.” African American Review, vol. 50, no. 4, 2017, pp. 979–986. JSTOR, https://www.jstor.org/stable/26446147.

Wilson, August. Fences: a Play. New York, New American Library, 1986.

---. Ma Rainey's Black Bottom. New York, Penguin Books, 1985.

---. The Piano Lesson. New York, Dutton, 1990.

(a/n: sorry for the weird format, the indents and block quotes don't really translate well into tumblr!)

[birchwoodrain]

I actually made this for my 9th grade Multimedia Journalism class during the pandemic. Forgot about it for a while, but here's "gardenia", a lookbook layered over the song, "Lonesome Town" by Ricky Nelson. In honesty, it's inspired by the stagnant and sleepy atmosphere town where I'm currently living and my attempts to romanticize it.

[birchwoodrain]

peeling clementines

The poets say the language of love is stored in the hands. There is so much devotion, so much tenderness imbued into the fingertips, the palms, the soft calluses proof of having held something cherished. Years of love etched into lines of my knuckles, written into the curl of my thumb, and I remember, then, of those who stood before me.

I see it in the way my mother cuts my hair, holding the delicate strands in between her fingers like the finest silk; the way she cradles my face, her palms warm against my cheek, as she swipes her finger under my eyes looking for stray tears. I remember the way she ladles broth into my bowl hoping that someday I will outgrow her like the moon. I can feel it, still, her lingering warmth, see the love reflected across the span of time.

It’s summer again, the season of rain and rebirth, of first love and flowering. Summer, eternal in its wake, dewy evenings ripe with florescence and the aftertaste of petrichor. My mother, my grandmother, and I, sitting at the kitchen table in the evening, the crickets chirping in between the stretches of silence. The vastness of the clear night sky hangs above us like a black curtain while my grandmother passes a slice of clementine to me. I watch, entranced, as her thumb follows her right index finger, peeling back the tender fruit, peeling back the orange sky. I accept the fruit, soft and shiny like a gem, and pass it onto my mother. The love trickles from one hand to another—she takes a bite, and her mother fades from view. How I’ve missed you.

I am thinking again, of the gentle devotion that courses through my blood after all these years. Here, in the small kitchen, the windows are open, and the chirping of the power lines fill me with aching familiarity. The light filters through, carries like a beacon, a memory, hands that illuminate the bowl of fruit by my side.

Under the sickle summer moon, the kitchen table glows white with longing.

The clock strikes twelve: I peel myself a clementine in the strange morning hours. The hand chases the fruit, chases the hand, chases the mother; this, too, is love in its purest form.