Issue 44: How To Gigil by Ella deCastro Baron | Artwork by Vex Kaztro
"Times I’ve been gigil: Caressing and sniffing wet puppy noses from our cockapoo dog Trixie’s three litters. I gritted my teeth so hard I thought I chompchomped through my own mouth."
In the words of Isra Hassan, Issue 44 is a banger! Curated writers Ella deCastro Baron, Christina Berke, Isra Hassan, and Raja’a Khalid are back with new work that runs right off the edges of genre and form. We’re thrilled to spotlight Jenny Tang as our Featured Writer, whose essay “The Progressive Filtering of Truth” explores the stories told by her grandfather, who “once disappeared from my family for 10 months while he secretly lived with Mao Zedong.”
The visual landscape of Issue 44 is gorgeous, featuring the work of curated artists April Dauscha, Vex Kaztro, the duo known as fanjoy labrenz, and Kate Molloy. In “Behind the Marks,” Featured Artist Nicole Roberts offers an intimate glimpse into her work as a commission artist, inviting you “to land. For a while.”
To bring some joy to your Friday, here’s Ella deCastro Baron’s “How to Gigil.”
How To Gigil by Ella deCastro Baron | Artwork by Vex Kaztro
In March this year, the Oxford English Dictionary added forty-two untranslatable words to its over half a million word collection. One of them is from the Philippines, the word gigil. Pronounced “ghee-gill,” it’s the word for “cuteness aggression.” It can be an adjective or a noun, used as shorthand for OMG I wanna pinch squeeze and take a bite of this totes adorbs…you name it.
It may sound like “giggle,” but that action is localized to just our heads. A gigil is a full-bodied giggle animating all of our extremities while our brains and cores temporarily cross wires, speed up the joy train to a shivering sorta kawaii orgasm, the kind Sanrio besties Hello Kitty and My Melody surely have when they behold each other.
Autocorrect hasn’t read the memorandum of understanding, corrects “gigil” to “vigil.” I’m not discounting the layers there. Gigil wakes us up from slumber, from numb….
Read How To Gigil.
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 44 Highlights
Issue 44: Behind the Marks by Featured Artist Nicole Roberts
Issue 44: The Progressive Filtering of Truth by Featured Writer Jenny Tang
Issue 44: How To Gigil by Ella deCastro Baron | Artwork by Vex Kaztro
Issue 44: Wander Yonder by Isra Hassan | Artwork by fanjoy labrenz
Issue 44: The Witch of Khawaneej by Raja’a Khalid | Artwork by Kate Molloy
Issue 44: (This is how you) Lose Her by Christina Berke | Artwork by April Dauscha
Artists and Writers
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Team-based, collaborative, and curated, KHÔRA is a form that is continually opening. We invite you to join us in sustaining it together. We don't believe in rejections. KHÔRA’s 500 Words is about considering how multiple voices can be heard; how frameworks, traditions, and projects can inform each other; and how new perspectives emerge from collaboration and openness. If you are a visual artist or interested in sharing your artwork or images, ready about KHÔRA’s Images here.
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With galactic gratitude,
Leigh Hopkins
and the Corporeal/KHÔRA squad