The Pleasures of Reading, Viewing, and Listening in 2021, pt. 3: Xian Mao

 

Being Seen and Being Messy
by Xian Mao

 

How can I, a queer Chinese American, not begin by talking about Everything Everywhere All At Once? The moment Joy’s face appeared on screen, I knew. It didn’t take the warm kisses from her supportive girlfriend; just the expression, the posture, the clothing tipped me off that this was a story about queerness, on top of a story about Chineseness, neurodiversity, missed opportunity, and, well, everything. In a way it was also too real; the clenched-fist acceptance Evelyn had for Joy, the lack of language Joy has in communicating her sexuality to her Cantonese-speaking grandfather. My partner puts it best: “If you want a look into Xian’s family life, watch this movie.”

Perhaps the greatest insight I had from this movie, however, wasn’t Evelyn rescuing Joy from a nihilistic end, but Waymond teaching Evelyn how to love the simple things. The fact that the Waymond who saves the day is the gentle, goofy Waymond from Evelyn’s own universe brought me to tears, even as the Waymond from the Wong Kar-wai universe gave the thesis statement of the movie. Much of my resonance with this character comes from my own stepfather, who shares Waymond’s kind and silly nature.

I am forever indebted to this movie, because through the language of the Everything Bagel (or, in my mother’s own malapropism, the “黑(hei) Donut”) I was able to fully come out to my mother. At last, she understood that being my authentic self isn’t a selfish choice, but a necessary one, between existence and annihilation.

There’s so much to say about a movie that made me cry about rocks, and also featured a fight scene with plot-relevant butt plugs. Everything Everywhere All at Once says many things, some better than others, but it’s intentional in its messiness. Perhaps the true self is messy and incoherent, it posits. Perhaps that’s the beauty of it all. 

The other creative work that defined this year for me is the musical A Strange Loop by Michael R. Jackson. From the frenetic “Intermission Song” with its Sondheimian riffs and wholesale reference to “The Music and the Mirror” to the raw emotion of “Memory Song,” A Strange Loop had me proselytizing its music to my peers even before it came to Broadway. It breaks my heart that it’s closing before I can go see it, but I’m glad it has garnered the attention and praise it deserves.

I will use the song “White Girl Music” to transition to talking about music. If “Memory Song” is my favorite based on raw emotion, “White Girl Music” hits a very specific chord with me—my own musical tastes, from discovering Liz Phair in college to refamiliarizing myself with the Indigo Girls this year. The Indigo Girls hold a strange, special place in my heart because I was introduced to them by a lab mentor back in high school. Looking back at my barely closeted self, I understand now that talking about Indigo Girls was code for being queer. Unfortunately by then my generation had moved on to Tegan and Sara as the du jour “queer two-woman acoustic band,” but listening to the Indigo Girls in earnest feels like a return to my roots. I am choosing to connect with parts of queer history I was not there for, but which inform who I am today. “Chickenman” is also a phenomenal song with an escalation that at first listen left me breathless.  

One band I absolutely was present for was My Chemical Romance, and they now have the honor of being the fourth band I have seen live. Their music spoke to me as an angsty teenager, and seeing them live as an adult is an out-of-body experience. Half of me is screaming at the top of my lungs, and the other half is holding the screaming child, telling them it’s going to be okay. The absolute joy with which the singer Gerard Way plays with gender onstage, from dressing as a teacher with red scarf and pencil skirt at my concert to the literal sheet ghost the next—gender euphoria is contagious. 

This was the year when I treated my younger self with kindness and indulgence. One of my formative writing experiences was being a part of a Warrior Cats roleplay forum, first on Neopets and then migrating elsewhere. Amidst the utter messiness of my middle school self, the friends I have made online feels like a great love story. The utter joy and trepidation as I made the Discord channel and waited as people who I have not heard from in almost a decade join was definitely a highlight of my year. It was like seeing old friends I thought I had lost forever.  

While Warrior Cats series are not a work of literary genius by any degree (though they are a great middle grade talking animal series), they mattered to me immensely when I was young. Defunctland’s documentary on the Disney Channel theme hammered this home for me, as I had vivid sense memories stir up when I heard the various bumpers, returned to my best friend’s carpeted floors as we watched television while my mother was still at work. There is something heartrending and magical about the pieces of ephemera that wedge themselves into our soul. The most wonderful thing is when those pieces are found again, and new memories can be made.

 

Speculative fiction has always been Xian Mao’s home. At the end of their college career, and the precipice of the 2016 election, their first short story, “Silk Moth,” was published in Dirty Birds Press’s Undercities anthology. Another short story, “Carry the Ocean,” was published in Strange Constellations. Their poetry has appeared in Aqueduct Press’s Climbing Lightly Through Forests, a poetry anthology celebrating the life and works of Ursula K. Le Guin. Le Guin, along with Terry Pratchett, Lawrence Yep, and Octavia Butler, are major influences in their writing, which often focuses on isolation, generational trauma, and contending with history.Aqueduct Press will be publishing their novella, Apollo Weeps, next month, as a volume in the Conversation Pieces series.