Ray Hsu

thewayofray.com }{}{}{ twitter.com/thewayofray

By this author

Recently in Jacket2

Near/Miss launches

New from University of Chicago Press: paper, cloth, e-book
Audible.com has also published an audiobook of my reading of the full work.

Dollbaby

The poetics of hysteria and motherhood

Megan Burns

Trigger warning: abuse, suicide

The following document is an archive of two years of my life when I lost custody of my children after I tried to end an abusive marriage. The court took my kids from me based on the art I create: appropriately, the art in this case centers around historical instances when real women also lost their voices, autonomy, and their lives due to their own inability to have freedom and safety in this world. It’s 2019, and women are still not safe.

June 20, 2019

All axes blur in transit

Transpoetic choreography and memorial

jordan chesnut

“The OPEN sign flickers. Replace OPEN with acquiescence. Replace OPEN with displace. Replace OPEN with a fist in the mouth. Replace the fist with a lake. The lake chokes on its pronoun.” Photo by MIKI Yoshihito, via <a href= https://flic.kr/p/9cuuuY>Flickr</a>. — “The OPEN sign flickers. Replace OPEN with acquiescence. Replace OPEN with displace. Replace OPEN with a fist in the mouth. Replace the fist with a lake. The lake chokes on its pronoun.” Photo by MIKI Yoshihito, via Flickr.

In Antigone by Sophocles, the protagonist attempts to secure proper burial for her brother, Polynices. While reading, I meditated on the applicability of the drama as it applies to the transgender community. Discrimination takes a violent toll in the form of cis supremacy. Antigone’s objective, for me, is evocative of the LGBTQI+ family and alternative forms of self-organizing as a means of survival within pervasive heteronormativity. I reread this myth when the Human Rights Campaign released the 2017 archive of trans lives lost due to systemic violence.

June 20, 2019