The triumphant return of Lattes with Ladies begins with the founder of Living Hyphen and magnificent marketing maven, Justine Abigail Yu!
I learned about Living Hyphen shortly after they launched and was blown away with the creativity of emerging hyphenate-Canadian writers. Issue 2: Across Generations is in the works and you could be one of their next published writers! Submit to the next volume by February 25, 2020.
HPL: What was your earliest reading memory?
JY: When I was in grade 4 or 5, my mom enrolled me in a summer camp or reading club at the local library. And I totally hated it! I thought it was so lame. I could not believe that I was spending my day at the library reading. One of my best friends was there and I was really excited. One of the activities they had for us was is every time you finish a book, you would get a sticker. So we were going to be in competition with each other but absolutely hated it. I wasn’t really into reading until later in life, my late teens, but that’s my first reading memory. Not a great one! [laughs]
HPL: But now you are an avid reader! What would you say is your most memorable read of last year? It doesn’t have to be “a good book” just the most memorable.
JY: These questions are going against who people might think I am because of my work with Living Hyphen! Actually, last year was a bad reading year. I don’t know why or what was up but I hated everything I read. I don’t want to talk trash about books though.
HPL: I feel that. There is a weird thing about loving reading where you don’t want to talk trash about any book, but you’re also allowed to just not like a book.
JY: I know but I’m also one of those people who is totally guilty of plowing through a book even though I’m not enjoying it. I have to finish the book because there’s the guilt. What if it does get better at some point and I miss it because I gave up too soon. And it has never happened. That has actually never happened.
I think the book that stuck out the most last year was Carlos Bulosan. He is a Filipino-American writer and wrote this book called America is in the Heart. This is actually not one of the books that I hated but it’s also not my favourite. It was the most memorable because it was the first book that I had ever read of the Filipino-American experience from the early days. The story is about one of the first Filipino migrants from those days, and I had never read anything like that before. The Filipino-American experience is so different from the Filipino-Canadian experience which (of course, I am Filipino) I have come to know very intimately. The largest wave of migration to Canada happened in the late ’80s to early ’90s, whereas in the States, 1) we were colonized by the US and 2) we were one of the earlier migration waves so we were there from the early 1920s to 1930s. So there is a lot longer history there and the work that we have done in the States is so much deeper. We were some of the first worker-labourers in America so to have learned that and to read that, especially about some of the racism that was experienced, and especially during the earlier days, is something I had never really had to think about. I loved to be able to get a glimpse of that in some way. And it is one of those books that is seminal for Filipino-Americans to understand our history as well.
HPL: What sort of genre would you say that is? And what genres do you find you read the most?
JY: It’s a fiction-memoir. It is his story but a semi-autobiographical version. I think I read a whole bunch of different genres. I’ve always been interested in non-fiction, particularly around politics and international development. Partly because that’s a lot of what I would read in school. I was a Political Science and Sociology major and in my earlier career, I worked for a lot of non-profit organizations that did a lot of international development work. So I’ve always been called to books that talk about certain political conflicts in different parts of the world. I’ve also always been interested in reading fiction, but what genres? Fiction is such a broad “genre”!
HPL: I know! The term “genre” is also so loaded. Usually, there is ‘genre writing’ which includes your sci-fi and fantasy and then you just have fiction as a bucket.
JY: I have been making a conscious effort over the last few years, especially with my work with the magazine, to read books by marginalized communities: people of colour, black people, trans folks. But that’s not a “genre”! That is something I have been thinking about though when choosing my books. Putting a bit more intentionality into the authors. I’m also really interested in, I don’t want to call it “chick lit”, but beach reads. You know, more light, easy reads. I think there was a time in my life when I was reading a lot of heavy books about, well, like I said, political conflicts, power, and oppression, all of these really difficult, heavy books. I think over the last year, maybe that is why I hated almost every book that I read, it’s just because I kept trying to read those books and maybe I just didn’t have the room for it anymore. At that time, maybe it was just too much. While this year, I’ve started to read lighter books and I love them. I don’t know if this is just a pre-cursor to fanfiction but Crazy Rich Asians.
HPL: Is that your favourite series? Is it Crazy Rich Asians?
JY: Yes! Growing up, I did love “chick lit” like the Shopaholic series. But I don’t think I could read that anymore without seeing how problematic a lot of those books are. I loved Crazy Rich Asians, I thought it was such a fun read. It was lighter but still teaching me something about a different culture that I have no experience with. Learning about Singapore and the different class dynamics there was really interesting but also was still really fun as an Asian woman to see some of those familiar familial dynamics. It felt so relatable to me.
HPL: Also a huge fan. Did you go and see the movie?
JY: Of course.
HPL: Are you a big fan of the book versus the movie? I know some people always say “the book is always better” or “I have to read the book before I see the movie.”
JY: Yeah, I always have to read the book before I see the movie. It’s almost always inevitably ruins the movie for me because it’s never as good. At least, I personally don’t think so! I think for me, at least of the book-to-movie titles I have seen, in the book you often get the perspective of the writer, or narrator, the thought processes, feelings in a way that I don’t think movies have been able to translate. I don’t know that I’ve seen any movie that I’ve ever preferred over the book. I prefer the book version usually.
HPL: Well, there’s no budget on imagination, right?
JY: [laughs], I like that!
HPL: You mentioned you were reading a lot of heavy reads and you’ve switched tracks. How do you normally select your next read? Are you doing any reading challenges? You also mentioned you’ve been paying a lot of attention to authors, is there a specific list that you’re following?
JY: I have my Goodreads account, that I’m also involved in the reading challenge. I totally missed last year but hopefully back on track for this year. So I have an existing list of what I want to read which I tend to pick up whether it’s from a friend who mentioned it or browsing through a book store that I just logged. But I’m also plugged into the lit scene here in Toronto, so I follow a lot of local authors and try to see who is up-and-coming and read their work. With my work with Living Hyphen, being a part of these arts and culture communities, I just hear about it! It’s on my Facebook all the time and from my friends who mention it to me.
HPL: Speaking of Living Hyphen, I know you’ve written pretty extensively about what drove you to found Living Hyphen, particularly about finding new voices. I’m curious, were there any books or authors in particular who helped inspire you to come up with this concept for publication?
JY: Yes! I have two in mind. I’ll tell you the first one: Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. It’s one of my favourite books ever. I just adored it so much while I was reading it. She’s a Nigerian-American writer and the main character of the book is also a Nigerian-American woman who, I don’t know if they specifically say it in the book itself, but I know she’s in her twenties, and I read it at the same time that I was maybe that age. I related so much to it. It’s a story about her considering going back home. She goes back home to Nigeria, and she asks so many questions that I had been asking about living in-between cultures. About am I more Filipino or am I more Canadian? In her case, Nigerian or American. So that was a really big book in the development of Living Hyphen and larger, for me. It was also one of the few books that at that time I had read that… how to say this without sounding flippant? It was a book that wasn’t just about trauma or oppression. About being a person of colour but being more than that. Being more than just the hardship that my parents had to go through just to be here and things like that, which is such an important part of my story but dominates so much of the POC experience. But personally, I don’t really see that myself. I’m very fortunate and very privileged. It was a book that was just about being a person! A humanized experience about someone who comes from two different places and was just thinking about existential questions of identity and belonging and home. I really loved that.
It was a book that was just about being a person! A humanized experience about someone who comes from two different places and was just thinking about existential questions of identity and belonging and home. I really loved that.
Justine Yu on Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
The second one I was thinking about, not necessarily for Living Hyphen, but generally as a human being, One of the most important books I’ve read is Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates. Which I also adore. I don’t know what his specific hyphen is or if he identifies as such but he is a black American man, and it’s written as a letter to his son. Again, a semi-autobiographical account, but about the experience of a black man in America. That one is more about the trauma and the oppression and the racism that black people have to deal with in America. It’s something that I know on an abstract level but reading that book, I really felt something of the experience. That experience was revealed to me in that book in a way that never had before. I think that is one of the books that, for me, really woke me up about black rights and Black Lives Matter. And the importance of diasporic communities to band together in solidarity with other marginalized communities, specifically black communities. That book was big. I wish I could explain that a lot better!
HPL: Do you find that you buy a lot of books? Or are you a proud library card owner?
JY: I’m a mix. I’m also a proud library card owner. But there are some books that I want to buy because I want them on my shelf. There are titles that I want to own a copy of and specific authors who I want to support. I also have a Kindle so I read that as well, especially while travelling.
HPL: So you’re okay with e-books?
JY: Totally. I travel a lot for work for whatever so it just makes sense for me. But I do love the hardcopy bound book, which is why I wanted to put together Living Hyphen because in my parallel life I work in marketing and communications and manage a lot of blogs for different clients that I have. So I am really well acquainted with the digital world, which I love. I think it’s a really powerful platform and allows people to connect like we connected through email and Instagram. So I think it’s a really powerful tool but I’m still really nostalgic for that physical book. There’s something also powerful about seeing a book on a shelf and that tactile feel of a hardcover book. A lot of people ask me, ‘why a physical print publication over a digital one’? There are so many reasons, but that’s one of them. There’s a level of connection there that is just different.
HPL: That’s perfect because now I’m going to ask you a question about Living Hyphen you never want to be asked. Who of all the Living Hyphen volume one authors would you want to see a book from? I am not asking you who’s your favourite, just who you want to see a book from.
JY: Ooh, they’re all just so talented. Aeman Ansari, she wrote For All the Shadows. It’s a short story. How do I even summarize it? It was such a beautiful, tender short story. I’m trying to figure out how to summarize it without giving it all away. Do I have to do that?
HPL: No, you don’t have to. Tell them to go buy it or borrow it from the library!
JY: Ok, good! Aeman Ansari is an author, a writer I think to watch out for. Obviously, a lot the writers and artists in volume one are people to watch out for and already I’m seeing them rise in the arts and culture space here in Canada. It’s just so cool to see. There was recently a residency at Banff but I saw so many Living Hyphen contributors there and it just made me really happy to see them being recognized for their talents. Anyway, Aeman, I absolutely loved her short story and I think she has so much more to offer and more writing that she is probably doing on her own that I look forward to reading. She’s great. She’s also recently started this Twitter account that you may be following already, BIPOC of Publishing in Canada.
HPL: Any other plugs you want to make?
JY: We are accepting submissions for Living Hyphen issue two. Our theme for this issue is “Across Generations”. What I’m interested in is exploring generational stories. A lot of the contributors in volume one are generally in the majority between 20 to 30 or 35. Still, a very millennial voice, which I think is great but I’m also interested in the older generation and the future generation. How do our experiences differ depending on our migration experiences and how long ago you came to Canada? Do your experiences as a hyphenated Canadian change depending on how long you’ve been in the country? Those are the kinds of things I look for answers for. Just building a different understanding of our ancestry and our ancestors. Submissions close on February 25th so watch out for it!
Current read: I’m reading Trick Mirror by Jia Tolentino. You have to read this book. I’m only halfway through. It is so good. I’m so happy to be reading it. It’s a delight to read. It’s a series of essays on all different topics. A lot of it is a critique of different aspects of our society; a lot of it is a social commentary on the effects of capitalism and feminism. It is just so intelligent, and she is just whipsmart. It’s one of those books, and I don’t know if everyone thinks of this, but I’m pretty sure we’re around the same age, and I just wonder “how are you so fucking smart?!” The level of analysis she has and the awareness of her own habits and behaviours and how it contributes to or is playing into the systems in the world is just really fascinating to see.
This interview was edited for length and clarity.