Intersectionality Issue

INTERSECTIONALITY
SPECIAL THEMED EDITION

INTER
SECT
IONA
LITY
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PLUVIA
JOURNAL
SPECIAL THEMED EDITION
—
SPRING 2023
Poetry | Prose | Art
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EDITORIAL
BOARD
Founder & Editor-in-Chief: Maggie Yang
Managing Editor: Joyce Huang
Poetry Editor: Emily Li
Prose Editor: Priscilla Raitza
Outreach Coordinator: Alyssa Xu
CONTRIBUTORS
Aisha Nguyen
Elaine Cui
Eric Lee
Isabella Demianczuk
John Muro
Joyce Huang
Kayla Dar Santos
Lauren Goulette
Lea Ju
Louis Lu
Sarah Lam
Sophie Kuah
Sunnie Qiu
Front Cover Art: Peace by Kayla Dar Santos
Journal Designer: Maggie Yang
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TABLE OF
CONTENTS
Editor’s Letter 6
Escape by Lea Ju 7
A Place at the Dining Table by Sophie Kuah 8
Paper by Louis Lu 10
Still Life by Eric Lee 11
Flowers In My Jeans by Lauren Goulette 12
Rabbit by Aisha Nguyen 14
Untitled by Sarah Lam 16
Evenfall by John Muro 17
The Two by Isabella Demianczuk 18
Fortune by Kayla Dar Santos 20
Round-Trip by Joyce Huang 22
Immortality by Kayla Dar Santos 26
Untitled by Sunnie Qiu 27
Concentration by Elaine Cui 28
Faith by Isabella Demianczuk 30
Endmatter 31
Social Media 32
Contributors 33
About Us 35
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EDITOR’S
LETTER
FOUNDER & EDITOR-IN-CHIEF
It is no surprise that our multifaceted identities are shaped
by everyday experiences; the intersectionalities in our
lives between aspects such as race, sexuality, and culture
form our unique perception of the world, and in turn, our
voices in the creative arts. Much like a symphony, strands
of notes woven from every perspective intertwine to construct
the tapestry of a new narrative—one that celebrates
the overlapping images and colors of different keys. But
along with the beauty in these intersectionalities, there
comes discrimination and marginalization, where law
and society’s frameworks only narrow their horizon, letting
those at the meeting of roads fall through the cracks.
For this themed edition, my team and I were impressed
with the work we received; each submission pushed the
confines of the divisions society upholds. They were experimental
and honest, reworking the cracks at certain intersections,
as each painted over and remixed the colors
of a familiar horizon. Each has its own distinct story and
voice—a rhythm determined not by the categories society
defines but of its own accord. ​Without further ado, I present
to you the special edition of Pluvia on intersectionality.
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ESCAPE
BY LEA JU
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A Place at the
Dining Table
BY SOPHIE KUAH
White porcelain bowls with intricate
blue-lined designs are staples here.
This long, seemingly unending wooden table
filled with Women from our past and present.
My father’s side is on the right,
my mother’s on the left.
We share a meal.
Oh no, this is no expensive, high-end banquet.
These are the meals of our homes.
Hong Kong,
China,
Malaysia,
Singapore,
Myanmar and more.
Dishes loaded with soy-glazed melty char siu,
smoky charred char quay teow,
warming bak kut teh,
buttery nasi lemak glide along the table,
gently passed from hand to hand.
Layers of chatter fill my ear,
and though I cannot understand much of it,
a grin forms on my face.
A bowl brimming with courage,
a platter boundless with joy.
Endless love and care melt on my tongue
like egg tarts, creamy and sweet.
The core traits of these extraordinary
Women are passed from one hand to the other,
from the older generations to the future.
Each Woman brings something new to this table—
a unique dish packed with flavours of her soul and story.
Sometimes,
we are passed beautiful things,
the soup that nourishes our souls,
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and we accept it with gratitude.
Everyone wants a helping, but unluckily,
our portions cannot be equal.
Paw Paw’s delicate hands spoon out only a bite of the
delectable prize,
so my mother can have more,
so I can have plenty.
Sometimes,
we receive a spoonful of rot,
the obstacles that strive to run us dry till we submit.
Receiving a spoonful of spoilage is simply the luck of the draw.
My eyes roam the table in wonder.
I have a plate abundant with fortune and love,
but bare spots linger on Mah Mah’s plate since
She insists on giving her best shares to us.
Oh, because of Women like these, our hearts are full.
Mah Mah is fed a plate full of spoilage,
Or worse, a life of poverty and starvation may mean
She has nothing to eat at all.
Her nose stings,
and her eyes twitch as She hastily gobbles the plate of rotten goods.
Yet still,
She shines her pearly teeth,
so we do the same,
although her stomach furiously grumbles, crying for more.
Her defiance shields her youngest,
so we will never experience the same sour.
Every Woman belongs to this table,
for She brightens the lives of those who sit around her.
A meal around the dining table is a moment where
time does not separate us,
and stories and food bond us.
A warmth fills my heart like a rich hot pot stew.
Two rows travel along and along this dining table,
and despite a hundred language barriers,
Every smile across the table lets me know
I belong in this chair.
Oh, to become as
Bold,
Loving,
Selfless,
Powerful
and Proud
As the Women I am blessed to sit among.
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PAPER
BY LOUIS LU
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STILL LIFE
BY ERIC LEE
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Flowers In
My Jeans
BY LAUREN GOULETTE
Beyond the sacred willow branches
Woven intricately across my mother’s
swollen chest
Liquid gold, honey dripping from sweetgrass
Wisconsin-grown, chipping white barn doors
over lands of blue bays
Culminating indigo violets and yellow dandelions,
barely past four
Bring them to my mother,
through swinging porch doors
Holes for mosquitoes to escape
on the buggy nights
Dusted farmhouse sink,
running past green valleys to neon skies
Tuck my hair behind my little ear,
twinkling fairies behind my brown eyes
Take our talc canoe across the river,
grasp the sides with firm fingers
My mother, crinkles in the corner of her eyes
Whispering stories of swaying carp and
lingering catfish
Eventually in noon we will reach field,
Soft brush under my broken sandals
A paint brush splash soaks through
my denim blue jeans,
In my hand I select
purples, blues, oranges
My mother bends and whispers to me,
lavender, woodland violet, tiger lily
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Somewhere in those fields
on that sonder Sunday afternoon,
As I rested my head on powdered underbrush
Perhaps I did not realize this would be the last time
To cherish that simple moment,
in that town of stars
Ripping sweetwater to see past the eye,
with bruised knuckles and scraped knees
Wisconsin-grown little girl, oil slick hair
red boots and boat fringed knots.
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RABBIT
BY AISHA NGUYEN

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UNTITLED
BY SARAH LAM
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Evenfall
BY JOHN MURO
Certain that more than youth
is gone and will never return,
I’m waving memory back as
clouds hastily spend down
day’s last light with no means
to still the air or prolong
the flood of color over color
or the moment between
light and dark when day’s
nearly extinguished and
stars still keep to their cold
corridors like fragments
of ore in marl, and we quietly
gather near firelight behind
the broken latches of frosted
windows, as the world turns
dumbly on its axis knowing
there is so little of the future
left for us, listening to the
dull drone of a skulking wind
jostling branches, kicking
leaves and dreaming our
younger selves awake.
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THE TWO

BY ISABELLA DEMIANCZUK
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FORTUNE

BY KAYLA DAR SANTOS
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Round-Trip
BY JOYCE HUANG
“This is the final [static] call for passenger [static] -ching
Zang on flight AC407 to [static]. Please proceed to Gate [static]
-ediately. Than- [static].”
You stand here at the entrance to the airport. Emotions,
colours, voices – everything is slower, duller, blurred.
You watch your sister’s tears stream down her face,
and yet your mask seems to press down not just physically, but
also emotionally, a dampener on your perception of the world.
Any uncontrollable swell of incomprehensible feelings in the
back of your eyes is beaten down by the suffocating material.
“Good after- [static] -for flight [static] will be delayed
for [static]. Thank [static] your patience.”
Your mother teases you for being stone-hearted, pillows
cushioning the gap between you, yet just a few years ago – on the
sofa in your Vancouver home, sinking into cushions that could
not pillow her words – she was scolding you for your “glass heart.”
What changed?
“Hello, passengers of flight [static]. Boarding begins in
twenty minutes at Gate [static]. Please have your identifi-[static]
pass ready. Thank you.”
The airport: synonymous with anticipation. At times
dreadful – it clutches your empty stomach and twists with malicious
intent. Sometimes hopeful – it brightens and softens the
world at once. Anxiety. Delight. Sorrow. Uncertainty. All emotions
burst forth the moment you step over the invisible threshold
between autodoors and congregate in a stubborn cloud over you.
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Night spills from storm clouds like ink. The absence
of cold metal bites into your thighs as much as its presence.
You sit alone. The chair beneath you is riddled with
holes; you are riddled with homesickness. The distant melody
of reunion-kindled laughter sparks an ugly flame in you.
Your sister’s tears can douse any fires, you think. Her
face scrunches up like a crumpled rose, watery blots staining
cheap origami paper. You carefully keep your back to
her, your gaze on the phantom-like car drifting away into
the night. Streetlights cast a sore warmth on its path and between
your eyes. The world descends into blurs of color.
You must have slipped sunshine into the color
palette today. Golden (de)light tints your eye and embroiders
the marble-clad hallway of the airport. Several
sets of reassuring footsteps trail your path, the sound
melodious to your ears as honey is to your tear-stained tongue.
The taste of nostalgia is bittersweet. You feel like a stranger
each time you sit in this spot; yet habit takes over every flight,
and you find yourself staring out the window again. Patchwork
of harvest-bound fields, arctic cracked-ice clouds, a mist-eyed
sunset. The double-paned glass traps just a little of that childish
wonder left behind the first time you embarked on this journey.
A taxi is coming soon. You pretend to scroll
through your phone sans-wifi, watching the arrow run
in aimless circles and wonder if you aren’t the same.
“This is the pre-boarding announcement for [static].
Boarding begins in ten minutes. Please [static] -ank you.”
Look. The airport is home to so many travelers. Their
life – your life – is but a flimsy strand so easily disappearing into
the grand tapestry of the human experience. You watch your
sister cry on your mother’s shoulder and see the people hurrying
about around you, caught in the tide of momentum and the
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promise of a destination, not even bothering to give a wide
berth, not even caring to give you enough space to properly
grieve for a childhood lost – a mother who will never be
able to make up for the loss of her presence in your growing
up, and you who will never be able to return to that
childhood you so desperately want to defy time for, if only
to give her the chance to reintegrate herself into your life.
“Boarding begins now for flight AC120 to
[static]. Please proceed to Gate B13. Thank you.”
Look at them. You see the same thing over and
over again in the airport. The numbing indifference of
urban life, the cracked-up emotions wrung into forehead
wrinkles and helpless hands, the harsh weight of money
and responsibility whipping red lines against palms, (look
at you – ) your frozen smile and your mother’s burning
tears – the forever on-voyage and forever returning-home
and forever new-beginnings that are never called by
their other names: never-home and never-coming-back.
You step over the narrow slit between plane and
ground, determined to escape from voyage to destination,
yet wind slips in – an icy chain around your ankles.
Through the oval frame, you track a tiny yellow car, trailing
the baked leaves of autumn behind tire prints painted
in snow. You turn and summer heat pulses through the
ground as you clamber into the taxi; you haul your luggages
out to meet spring-softened soil and spring-sweetened air.
Sunsets melt into sunrise; the songs of your mother
tongue find traces in the dialects unfamiliar to your ears.
One home is the same as another, each beginning an end.
Your voyages unroot you. Your voyages free you.
Your voyages have long since entangled themselves in you, so
that they cannot extract themselves without undoing you too.
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Your voyages are the thread, tenuously stringing one
side of yourself to another, straining to pull your identities
together. Or pull them away, keep them at a careful balance,
an arm’s length between the two so neither invades the other’s
presence.
You must remember that you are both. Departures
and arrivals, beginnings and endings, your parents’ efforts to
mend, and yours, to blend.
You understand, don’t you? Because destinations –
definitions – are never singular. You find and abandon one
home after another, you discover and forget every sunset you
ever encounter, you are a passerby to every person you love
and will ever love. If your plane reaches a stop, then you
must have another start waiting.
And so you set off again –
“Good evening, passengers. Welcome on board to
Air Canada, flight AC021 to Shanghai, China.”
– onto your next round-trip voyage.
“Good morning, passengers. Welcome on board to Air China,
flight CA120 to Vancouver, Canada.”
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IMMORTALITY
BY KAYLA DAR SANTOS

UNTITLED
BY SUNNIE QIU
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CONCENTRATION

BY ELAINE CUI
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FAITH
BY ISABELLA DEMIANCZUK
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ENDMATTER
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SOCIAL MEDIA
Follow us on
Instagram & Twitter
@pluviajournal
WWW.PLUVIAJOURNAL.COM
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CONTRIBUTORS
AISHA NGUYEN
ELAINE CUI
ERIC LEE
ISABELLA DEMIANCZUK
Isabella Demianczuk was first introduced to art through school in
grade eight and immediately fell in love with the subject. The last
three years have been fundamental to her development as an artist,
and she credits her art teachers for nourishing and encouraging her
passion. Isabella’s favorite medium is acrylic paints, as she finds them
easy to manipulate and quick to dry. Isabella favors these characteristics
as they allow her to make sudden changes, and add a painterly
effect to her pieces. In the future, Isabella will be pursuing art through
an AP art course, and perhaps even a career in the industry.
JOHN MURO
A two-time nominee for the 2021 Pushcart Prize and, more recently, the
Best of the Net Award, John is a resident of Connecticut and a lover
of all things chocolate. He has published two volumes of poems: In the
Lilac Hour and Pastoral Suite, in 2020 and 2022, respectively. Both books
were published by Antrim House and both are available on Amazon.
John’s poems have appeared or are forthcoming in numerous literary
journals and anthologies, including Acumen, Barnstorm, Grey Sparrow,
Moria, River Heron, Sky Island, and Valparaiso. Instagram: @johntmuro.
JOYCE HUANG
Joyce Huang has been fascinated by stories ever since she was little,
and she grew up spending much of her free time reading and
writing. She likes fiction in general, but her all-time favorite genre
is fantasy. She loves creative writing—from creating short stories
and poems to simply describing things, she finds them all immensely
enjoyable. She hopes to continue exploring the beauty
of languages and storytelling throughout her high school career.
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CONTRIBUTORS
KAYLA DAR SANTOS
Kayla, who is currently 17, has been passionate about art
throughout her life. However, she began to find joy in graphite
sketches at the beginning of 2020. For Kayla’s art pieces, she
explored traditional graphite sketches while incorporating art collages
into each drawing. Her concept was inspired by the beauty
of Chinese culture and the significance of everyday objects.
LAUREN GOULETTE
Lauren Goulette is a seventeen-year-old high school senior from the
wider Minneapolis area. Her pieces often reflect ancestry and experiences
growing up in rural Wisconsin. She is passionate about
writing poetry, painting, and doing all kinds of creative things. By
using her voice, she intends on spreading information through poetry
and creative writing. Lauren serves as a member of her high
school’s Student Council, an ambassador for Her Coalition’s student-led
organization, a founder of her school’s Women In Literature
Club, and an alumni winner of the class of 2020, 2021, and
2022 Scholastic Arts and Writing Awards. In her free time, Lauren
enjoys doing yoga, hanging out with her friends, and reading books.
LEA JU
LOUIS LU
SARAH LAM
SOPHIE KUAH
Sophie Kuah was first introduced to writing personal narratives in
grade 8, finding she could not stop writing about her experiences
growing up Chinese-Canadian. Since then, she has fallen in love
with writing and continues to explore her identity through the art.
SUNNIE QIU
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ABOUT US
At Pluvia, we seek to uplift both emerging and
established voices, with an emphasis on BI-
POC and underrepresented writers and artists.
Inspired by rain’s beauty and by how often it’s
overlooked, our mission is to showcase the future
of the creative arts as a path for societal change
and expression of the inner self. We’re looking
for work that’s raw, authentic, and unforgettable;
work that excavates and uncovers the beauty in
the small; work lost in the waves of existence or
basking under the emerging sun in a rainstorm.
Pluvia is an international non-profit literary
arts journal that publishes online 3-4
times a year. We accept creative art forms,
whether it be poetry, prose, or visual arts.
Visit our submissions page for more info.
Back Cover Art: Ritual by Kayla Dar Santos
WWW.PLUVIAJOURNAL.COM
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