(image credited to the Digital Humanities Innovation Lab of the SFU Library).
This FEELed Note is a contribution from Rina Garcia Chua, who is a Research Associate in Environmental Humanities and Migrant Ecologies at the FEELed Lab. This blog introduces the project she is leading at the Lab, “Sustainable Mentorship in Writing,” which features a workshop she will host in Spring 2024.
For the almost-five years I have been involved with The Goose: A Journal of Arts, Environment, and Culture in Canada (https://scholars.wlu.ca/thegoose/), we have been initiating a systemic and structural change in the journal’s infrastructure. We recognize that the journal is built on the unpaid mental and emotional labour of precarious scholars, who oftentimes have sacrificed their own academic and institutional progress to, say the least, keep the journal going. I am one of those scholars: precarious, a person of colour, and a migrant in this country. When I initially applied as Poetry Editor for The Goose, I never imagined where it would bring me now—as one of three current co-editors—or the people I will meet because of my work (and love) for this eccentric and progressive journal. As transitioned to a new Editorial Team, my co-editors (Rachel Jekanowski and Jessica McDonald) and I wanted to extend the questions we had around “Sustainable Publishing” towards other forms and understandings of what “sustainability” is.
My creative practice mirrors the emotional affect of experiencing, reading, encountering racist, discriminatory archival or current materials and everyday micro-aggressions in this “multicultural” country. When we were working on our proposal for the Public Engagement Accelerator Fund in Memorial University (where Rachel is currently Assistant Professor), my co-editors and I wanted to amplify what “Sustainable Publishing for Energy Transition” means in multiple perspectives—this is not just about sustainability as the sciences define it to be, nor is energy simply about the material resources that are needed to create an online journal. We also want to think about what “sustainability” is for the Editorial Team at The Goose: How can we
create a new infrastructure that honours and respects each and everyone’s labour without unnecessarily burdening one another as part of sustainability? How can we continue being a part of the journal without compromising who we are as individuals outside of academe? How can we confront the messy work of pausing and recalibrating ourselves and our work so that we keep the journal going for future environmental humanists? Importantly, one part of this grant is to also think about our communities—how do we sustain our relationships with ourselves and our communities, those we want to mentor and be mentored by, without compromising our energies?
These questions became apparent during the wildfires that ravaged Kelowna and West Kelowna last August. In moments of crises, when every decision has to be carefully weighed and safety of family members is prioritized, the aftermath of survival is a murky, cement-like awakening. In many aspects, I felt like getting out of one wildfire season—again unscathed—was enough to make me rage-quit all of my commitments. Sometimes, nothing else matters but coming out of a wildfire alive. My energy was depleted from checking in on friends, packing and repacking our go-bags, and trying to live. I was sick, physically, at least a month afterwards. Coming back to the Mainland to perform at Word Vancouver my poems that contain the affect of my embodied experiences as a migrant living in this space was the first time I felt I could really, truly breathe since the wildfires.
Thus, my work and questions of sustainability continue—the workshop I am imagining with the FEELed Lab, with funding from Memorial University’s PEAF grant, has shifted. This spring, I am organizing a workshop on “Sustainable Mentorship in Writing,” which centers on this question: Is it still possible to mentor and help other folks without running our cups empty? This is a workshop that is open to Indigenous, Black, person of colour community members of the FEELed Lab and beyond who are devoted to mentorship (or being mentored) in the writing
industry and community, but are finding themselves overrun with physical, emotional, and spiritual labour that exceeds their capacities and energies as individuals. I am hoping to facilitate a safe space where concepts of reciprocity, nourishment, and community-building are explored in an embodied and active way—perhaps through movement or visual arts. I want folks to leave this workshop with an open heart and mind, and perhaps we can rethink what sustainability is in our own lives, and the energies we give forth and receive from our communities.
This workshop also parallels the work I have been nurturing with my The Goose colleague, Anita Girvan. Anita and I have collaborated on The Goose’s special issue on “E-Race-sures” back in 2021, which was a response and intervention to the Euro-American tradition of the environmental humanities. These concepts of race, environmental justice, migrancy, and how my work with Anita and this field has evolved, will be presented in a series of spring workshops on Migrant Ecocriticism as a contribution to “E-Race-sures, Renovictions, & Reclamations.” This is another angle to the idea of sustainability—sustaining these questions and interventions around the very field we are invested in and ensuring that these questions and interventions invite more IBPOC environmental humanists and scholars to this space we are facilitating.
I am starting to rethink sustainability this way: with a moment to pause, breathe, and continue. We pause as long as we like; we breathe as deep as we can and realize that we are still alive. These workshops are moments for our community to pause together, breathe, and remind each other that it is so, so lovely to simply be alive.
The FEELed lab 