Building a Queer Homestead 🌈🌈🌈
Reflecting on what it truly means to be free in America
Contemplations
How can you practice holding complex and potentially conflicting feelings about America?
In which ways can you embrace the complexity of who you and others are?
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As a kid of immigrants, I have a deep appreciation for America. I know the freedoms it brought my parents, Vietnamese refugees, who otherwise would have either died under a Communist regime from malnutrition or suffered in poverty.
I know that the life, the privileges I have is because they made that journey towards an ideal, a dream. And yet, my heart hurts deeply everyday for how far our country is from that American Dream. How as a Queer Asian woman, I have spent my entire life looking over my shoulder. In the best cases, deeply wanting to fit in and in the worst cases worried for my safety because of the many identities I hold. How this past year has been prolific on attacking our Queer community, with more than 500 pieces of legislation across the country targeting LGBTQIA2S+ folks — particularly trans youth.
Fourth of July always brings up these conflicting feelings for me — that of gratitude, anger, frustration and at times, guilt. Us humans are not built to see nuance, only to survive. It is one of the reasons why I love Queerness — not only is it how I identify sexually but it is my worldview. To me, Queerness represents something bigger than our limited thinking, it is in many ways an evolution of our minds, of humankind. It is looking beyond the binary, understanding the flexibility, fluidity of who we are. This is something my beautiful wife has taught me in our relationship, and my gender non-conforming and trans friends embody with how they move through the world with such fearless authenticity and grace. That we have the capacity to evolve, to be a greater, more complicated version of ourselves. And that the work is not just seeing that in ourselves, but loving each other for it too.
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Last week, Jess (my wife) and I decided to embrace all the sides of who we are by throwing a Midsummer party and have a more traditional July 4th cookout. One of my wife’s dear friends is Swedish and on her last visit to our home, she spoke fondly of this tradition often celebrated during the summer solstice. (Not to be confused with the popular horror movie Midsommar.) I remember hearing the longing in her voice for this — a longing that I have heard often in my parents’ voices and other immigrants who have had to let go of the bits of their identity when acclimating (see assimilation) to being in the States. So it felt like a no brainer for us to celebrate her roots to juxtapose against celebrating the idea of “freedom” in America. Over the course of 72 hours, I ate a beautiful smörgåstårta, pickled herring, more sour cream than I have in years and the next day stuffed my face with some grass-fed Angus beef and Hebrew National hot dogs while singing along to Reba Mcentire’s Fancy.
In those 72 hours we invited many friends. Most of whom were Queer. As I looked at my beautiful friends adorning handmade flower crowns, foraged from our land, I took in this wide spectrum of folks — Indian, Puerto Rican, Swedish, Argentinian, Jewish — and felt a very deep gratitude for America, knowing that nowhere else in the world would such a diverse range of people co-exist and frolic around a maypole. Simultaneously, I knew that this joy, this love, this presence we all felt was possible because of the humans who created the space. That yes, this was possible in America, but only in that moment, on the land we were stewarding did we all feel safe enough to simply be nothing but ourselves. To be truly free. That is the possibility of America that so many of us want, that so many of us fight for — including my nephew who is almost done with ROTC and will be serving as an Army officer soon — but does not exist in most parts of the country, much less in the world. And for a long and fleeting 72 hours, I felt that possibility, that indescribable feeling of liberation.
It rained that day. Pouring down in shifts. Our Swedish friend told us this was typical of Midsummer, dodging the rainfall. But on our third time running into the house, grabbing our seltzers and schnapps, I couldn’t help but see the rain as a metaphor for the American struggle — this dance we play of wanting joy, freedom while evading the elements and facing the reality of what truly exists. Later in the afternoon, filled with Ikea Swedish meatballs and hard bread crackers, I looked at Jess and asked if she would dance around the maypole with me.
As the gentle rain kissed our skin, we skipped arm in arm around this 10-foot structure that our genderqueer friend built for us from the scraps of wood in our basement. I reveled in the reclamation and transgression in that moment — that me and my wife, two Queer ladies, were dancing around this huge phallic symbol finding joy where we could, knowing that in any moment we could access it, despite others’ trying to take it from us.
Our friends started calling our place the Queer Homestead and this is what it symbolized to me — this space between grasping what could be and the possibility of something better, lighter, more truthful. A space that would only be possible if everyone who was in it, believed in that possibility. And I was lucky enough that all of our houseguests had bought into that belief and possibility that weekend. Because the Queer Homestead is built not just by me and Jess, but everyone who is in that space with us.
Midsummer is traditionally considered to be a time of magic. “Those feeling curious and intrigued should probably take a chance on this Midsummer magic, it might just work.” Unbeknownst to me, our Midsummer Party, on the heels of Pride month and on Fourth of July weekend, provided that much needed feeling of magic and healing for me as a first-gen kid.
***
Not to be all Buddhist about it, but…
When I first started learning about the concept of emptiness in Buddhism, my brain couldn’t grasp it. Does not compute.
The spark notes’ version of emptiness is that we are not actually any of the containers or labels that we ascribe to or imbue meaning into because we are all interdependent beings. Thich Nhat Hanh asks, “empty of what?” and talks about the limitations of language and that the closest way of understanding our existence is that we “inter-are”. It is this notion, understanding and teaching that we are all made of each other, of the cosmos and they are made of us and that we never will be able to fully encapsulate the complexity of who we are. This to me is Queerness.
I remember one of the Plum Village monastics admiring a beautiful orchid and talking about how calling this sentient being an “orchid” was almost insulting because we will never be able to fully describe or understand what it took to be an orchid.
I share this deep meaningful teaching because Midsummer, Fourth of July, this weekend and my Queer friends reminded me that we will never ever be able to fully grasp the beautiful, rich inner landscape of who we are. But the best we can do is love unconditionally, exist freely and care for each other with the understanding that our happiness and freedom are truly dependent on one other. That’s what the Queer Homestead is about.
And that’s what I hope America will be one day— a fully realized version of the dream it set out to be.
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I listened to The Cinematic Orchestra - 'To Build A Home' while writing this.
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Contemplations
How can you practice holding complex and potentially conflicting feelings about America?
In which ways can you embrace the complexity of who you and others are?
***
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