Issue 42: Hymen Bike by Ella deCastro Baron | Artwork by Vex Kaztro
I’m a bony brown girl, tipping absolutely NO scales with my forty-four pound body at ten years old. Fifth grade is when my hips spurted out a teense and I grew a whisper-and-a-half taller. Ah...
Hymen Bike by Ella deCastro Baron | Artwork by Vex Kaztro
I’m a bony brown girl, tipping absolutely NO scales with my forty-four pound body at ten years old. Fifth grade is when my hips spurted out a teense and I grew a whisper-and-a-half taller. Ah, but that height promotion graduated me from a kiddie banana seat bike to a woman’s adult bike. I wobble and tippie toe to balance the bigger wheels and frame. The most important thing? I now pedal alongside my Ateh Elise’s (elder sister) biker ‘gang’ of other 7th grade Filipino teens. I am not-at-all ready for womanhood in my mom-run-fundie Christian home, but here in America, this ten speed, one-track mind bike popped my cherry.
My Filipino Papa and the tropa—Filipino for troop—of other Pinoy dads, recruited by America, fought in the Vietnam War and retired together after twenty years in the Navy. A dozen families stuck together. Our dads found post-military jobs. Our moms worked allatime. I swear I saw Sasquatch in our neighborhood swamps more than the myth of a stay-at-home mom. Our parents spackled together two to three jobs to make it in this country.
Each weekend, our moms and dads literally bet on the American Dream….
Read Hymen Bike.
Ella deCastro Baron (she/siya/we) is a 2nd gen Filipina American raised on Coastal Miwok lands (Vallejo, California). She teaches Composition, Literature, and Creative Writing. Her books are, Subo and Baon: A Memoir in Bites, and Itchy Brown Girl Seeks Employment. A woman of color who lives with chronic dis-ease, Ella honors sensations, dreams, story, dance, and decolonial truth-telling so we can ‘re-member our long body.’ She conspires with art-ivists to produce kapwa (deep interconnection) gatherings that stir love and justice via writing, art, joy, grief-tending, movement, food (yes!) and community. Her favorite pronoun, now more than ever, is We.
Vex Kaztro, aka Aglibut Bagaoisan, is an artist/writer of mixed pilipinx ancestry. Their work plays with the threads of trauma that erupt from queer neurodivergent identities living in the cozy liminal spaces of a cracked and unreliable memory. They studied filmmaking at City College of San Francisco and San Francisco State University.
Issue 42 Highlights
Issue 42: Custody of the Tongue by Featured Artist April Dauscha
Issue 42: The Bully by Featured Writer Abby Vines-Lopez
Issue 42: This Halloween You’re Dressing Up as a Nun With a Gun by Raja'a Khalid | Artwork by Kate Molloy
Issue 42: Teetering by Isra Hassan | Artwork by fanjoy labrenz
Issue 42: Hymen Bike by Ella deCastro Baron | Artwork by Vex Kaztro
Issue 42: What I told the generations of a strange illness by Featured Writer Bec Bell-Gurwitz
Artists and Writers
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With galactic gratitude,
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and the Corporeal/KHÔRA squad