by Noah Richler
frontal
goblet bulbs
soft
hanging pleasure
bouncy electric forbidden sand-kissed
cupping tenderlings
fleshly boobs.
The most brilliant directorial move in cinematic history. I think there were six of them, maybe eight. All staring at me in a flash of a moment. And as I was lying in bed later that night, thinking about those six or maybe eight, I also got to thinking about all the white people in that movie. There were some black people but mostly they were white. Definitely no Asians. And it was set in a city. A large urban centre in North America. The city I knew, my grade five class alone was filled with kids from all over the world — different colours, different accents — but we weren’t in that movie. We weren’t in most movies or TV shows or magazines or comic books or newspapers or commercials or on stage or on a billboard. Almost as if we didn’t exist.
After I graduated from acting school in university, I wrote this poem. It’s called “Mine Eyes are Lean.” It goes like this:
mine eyes are lean
see?
that’s all
don’t mean how I see is small
don’t mean what I foresee can’t be big and tall
don’t mean what I envision has to be infinitesimal
don’t mean nuttin’
ain’t no thang
they just lean
that’s all
but ya know
they ain’t chinky that’s f’sho
they ain’t squinty slanty slopey
they ain’t no rice eyes
and
I
can
see
but the funny thing is
because mine eyes are lean
sometimes I can’t be seen
sometimes I don’t get seen
when I audition I get pre-screened
when I audition I get deemed unclean
when I audition I get too obscene for the big stages the glossy pages the silver screen
when I audition I get Asian gangster number four in the background
when I audition I get Chinese waiter number five in the background
when I audition I get Vietnamese band member in the background playing for white G.I.’s in the foreground
oh once I got Japanese security officer in the foreground looking away from the camera to the background
it was an over-the-shoulder shot
if only mine eyes were larger
maybe then it wouldn’t be so hard or
maybe then I could be in charge or
maybe then I’d barge in from outside the margin
like sergeant slaughter
living larger
charging to go farther ahead
further
instead of just beginning to begin
every inning no win
never winning no in
just copin’
constantly mopin’ bout the system bein’ all broken
scopin’ for any open door
croakin’ there’s got to be more
than chance’s grope
panting for hope
like ants dancing to all those diversity chants but the answers still nope
and them casting peeps don’t mean to be so mean
they don’t intend to offend
it just happens to happen
again and again
and again
and again
and again
and again
and again
often
ya know?
ya know?
so much so that something’s got to give
or someone’s got to go
sorry
but we’s gots to live beyond what we already know
yo these eyes were once the eyes of the “Asian Invasion”
yo these eyes were once the eyes of the “Yellow Peril”
yo
but all that was a long long time ago
these eyes are mine
these eyes are the eyes of my daughter and my son
these eyes are the eyes of all those dreamers who went before us who planted a few trees with dreams of a forest with dreams of a core of us becoming a strong chorus with dreams of a day when lean eyes are realized as real eyes
so when little lean eyes
see big lean eyes
on the Canadian stage
on the American page
on the international nine by sixteen letterbox wide screen
they won’t be surprised
and they’ll say,
“Hey, I see those lean eyes.
They look like my lean eyes.
Maybe one day, the world will open their eyes
and see
me.”
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Thanks, first of all, to the writers, for having confidence in a vague instruction; to Luminato Festival’s Artistic Director, Jorn Weisbrodt; producers Paul Beauchamp and Jennifer Stein; and to Luminato and LightNews graphic designer Jonathan Rotsztain. Thanks are also due to Patsy Aldana for her Latin American literary counsel; and to Kelly Joseph, Erin Mallory, Janie Yoon and Sarah MacLachlan of the House of Anansi Press for the production of this eBook.
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
CARMEN AGUIRRE is a Vancouver-based writer and theatre artist who has written and co-written 25 plays. She is the author of the #1 Canadian national bestseller Something Fierce: Memoirs of a Revolutionary Daughter, winner of Canada Reads 2012. Her second book, Mexican Hooker #1: Life After Losing the Revolution, will be published by Random House in the autumn of 2015.
Photo by Paul Dzenkiw
JOSEPH BOYDEN’s first novel, Three Day Road, was selected for the Today Show Book Club, won the Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize, the CBA Libris Fiction Book of the Year Award, the Amazon.ca/Books in Canada First Novel Award, and the McNally Robinson Aboriginal Book of the Year Award, and was shortlisted for the Governor General’s Literary Award for Fiction. His second novel, Through Black Spruce, was awarded Canada’s Scotiabank Giller Prize and named the Canadian Booksellers Association Fiction Book of the Year; it also earned him the CBA’s Author of the Year Award. His most recent novel, The Orenda, won Canada Reads and was nominated for the Scotiabank Giller Prize and the Governor General’s Award for Fiction. Boyden divides his time between Northern Ontario and Louisiana.
Photo by Miriam Berkley
LAAKKULUK WILLIAMSON BATHORY writes, “I am an advocate for the deep human need for all people, but especially post-colonial indigenous people to express themselves at a level of creative excellence. I am a mother, wife, writer and performer based in Iqaluit, Nunavut. My three children speak Greenlandic, Inuktitut and English — all languages part of their heritages. I am a performer of uaajeerneq — Greenlandic mask dancing, music, drum-dancing, a storyteller and actor. My career has allowed me to travel all across Canada and to many wondrous parts of the world. I am passionate about spending time on the land — hiking, snowmobiling, boating, hunting, camping, eating wild foods, building cabins and cultivating raccoon tans are all activities that figure largely in my family.”
Photo by Ed Maruyama
INS CHOI is an actor and a playwright who was born in South Korea, grew up in Scarborough, and now lives in Toronto with his wife Mariko and two children. He has performed with the Stratford Festival, fu-GEN, Canadian Stage and Soulpepper. He has also been involved in the creation of such plays as 2000 Candles (Brookstone), The KJV: The BibleShow (ArtsEngine), Window on Toronto, (re)birth: e.e. cummings in song and Alligator Pie (Soulpepper). His inaugural, award-winning play, Kim’s Convenience, was first produced at the 2011 Toronto Fringe festival, and the
n at Soulpepper Theatre Company and has toured across Canada to nine cities over two years including four sold out runs in Toronto. Kim’s Convenience was published by the House of Anansi Press and is currently being developed into a television series in partnership with Soulpepper, Thunderbird and the CBC. Most recently, his solo show, Subway Stations of the Cross, premiered at Soulpepper in 2015 and was concomitantly published in an illustrated, accordion style book by the House of Anansi Press.
Photo by John Christianson
EDWIDGE DANTICAT is the author of numerous books, including Claire of the Sea Light, a New York Times notable book; Brother, I’m Dying, a National Book Critics Circle Award winner and National Book Award finalist; Breath, Eyes, Memory, an Oprah Book Club selection; Krik? Krak!, a National Book Award finalist; The Farming of Bones, an American Book Award winner; and The Dew Breaker, a PEN/Faulkner Award finalist and winner of the inaugural Story Prize. The recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship, she has been published in The New Yorker, The New York Times, and elsewhere. Born in Port au Prince, Haiti, she now makes her home in Miami.
Photo by Jonathan Demme
ALAIN FARAH was born in Montreal in 1979 to Egyptian-Lebanese parents. He published a book of poems, Quelque chose se détache du port, and the novels Matamore no 29 and Ravenscrag, english version of Pourquoi Bologne, a finalist for the Governor General’s Literary Award, translated by Lazer Lederhendler and published in English by the House of Anansi Press. He is assistant professor at McGill University, where he teaches contemporary French literature.
Photo by Simon Duhamel
FERRÉZ (Reginaldo Ferreira da Silva) is a Brazilian author, rapper, cultural critic and activist from the Zona Sul favela of Capão Redondo in São Paulo, Brazil. He is a member and leader of the literary group Literatura Marginal that emerged during the late 1990s and early 2000s from the urban periphery of São Paulo. His writings are notable for descriptions of graphic violence and the stark reality of individuals living on the margins of society. He has emphasized that his writings are for the youth of the favela, and that they feel a sense of pride in reading literature that reflects their reality and experiences.
Photo by Almeida Rocha
NALO HOPKINSON is a Jamaican-Canadian whose tap roots extend to Trinidad and Guyana. Her fiction has received the John W. Campbell Award, the Locus Award, the World Fantasy Award, the Sunburst Award (twice), and the Norton Award. She is a professor of Creative Writing at the University of California, Riverside.
Photo by David Findlay
MARIANO PENSOTTI was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina in 1973. A student of cinema, visual arts and theatre, his performances have been presented in Argentina as well as in festivals and venues in Belgium, Germany, France, Ireland, Latvia, Brasil, Canada, Japan, Austria, Spain, Chile, England, Denmark and Switzerland. He has won the Rozenmacher, Clarin and Premio F prizes; and fellowships from Unesco-Aschberg, the Rockefeller Foundation, Fundación Antorchas and Casa de América de Madrid.
Photo by Carlos Furman
BEATRIZ PIZANO is an actor, playwright and director, and the founder and Artistic Director of Toronto, Canada’s Aluna Theatre. She has written and directed a trilogy, La Comunión (2010), Madre (2008), For Sale (2003) that have received 13 Dora Nominations and won 4 of these awards. In 2014, La Maleta, her first play for young audiences, was produced by Roseneath Theatre and earned her a Dora nomination and toured the United States. Beatriz is the recipient of the 2014 K.M Hunter Award, the John Hirsch Prize, The Ken McDougall Award, and the Urjo Kareda. This year she is has been selected as one of the “100 Colombianos,” an award by the Colombian government recognizing citizens living abroad that have made significant contributions in their fields.
NOAH RICHLER produced and hosted documentaries for BBC Radio for many years before returning, in 1998, to his native Canada to join the National Post . He has worked in bars, mines, newspapers and the theatre; as a prospector’s assistant in the Yukon and on a lobster boat in Nova Scotia. He is an author, journalist, cultural critic, an occasional broadcaster and, since 2014, the Literary & Ideas Curator of Toronto’s Luminato Festival of Arts and Creativity. He has won two gold National Magazine Awards and is the author of This Is My Country, What’s Yours? A Literary Atlas of Canada, which won the 2007 British Columbia Award for Canadian Non-Fiction and was picked in 2010 as one of the Top Ten Books of the Decade by Macleans news magazine, and What We Talk About When We Talk About War, was a finalist for the Governor-General’s Literary Award for Non-Fiction and the Shaughnessy Cohen Award for Political Writing.
Photo by Sarah MacLachlan
RICHARD RODRIGUEZ, a master of the personal essay and winner of the Frankel Award (later renamed “The National Humanities Medal”), is the author of Hunger of Memory, Brown and Darling: A Spiritual Autobiography. Of American and Mexican working-class provenance, Richard’s work has explored everything from his own education and homosexuality to ideas about the desert, spirituality place and the “secular dream” of green. He lives in San Francisco.
Courtesy Photo
LEANNE BETASAMOSAKE SIMPSON is a Canadian First Nations writer, spoken word artist, activist and academic of Mississauga Nishnaabeg ancestry. She was the winner of the 2013 RBC Taylor Prize for emerging writers and is the author of Dancing on Our Turtle’s Back, The Gift is In The Making and Islands of Decolonial Love. She lives in Peterborough, Ontario.
Photo by Nadya Kwandibens
ANTONIO SKÁRMETA was born in Antofagasta, Chile, Antonio, one of Latin America’s most renowned novelists, has received numerous distinctions and awards, among them the “ Commendatore dell´Ordine al Merito della Repubblica Italiana,” his appointment as a “Chevalier de l´Ordre des Arts et Lettres” in France, and grants from the Guggenheim and Deutscher Akademischer Foundations. His novel El Cartero de Neruda, was adapted for film as “The Postman” and was nominated for five Oscars at the 1995 Academy Awards, including one for Best Writing (based on material previously produced or published). The film No, based on Skármeta’s unpublished play, El Plebiscito, addressed the 1998 Chilean plebiscite challenging the dictator Augusto Pinochet’s right to rule, was nominated by the Academy as Best Foreign Language Film, 2012.
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