Multi-Genre
Edited by Justine Abigail Yu, feat. Various Contributors

From the Living Hyphen team:
“Living Hyphen is an intimate magazine that explores the experiences of hyphenated Canadians. From the third generation Haitian woman in Montreal having brunch with her girlfriends to the Ugandan refugee boarding his first TTC streetcar, from the Filipino boy in Calgary practicing basketball to the Polish grandmother navigating a Loblaws superstore, our emerging and established writers and artists reveal the rich inner lives of Canada’s diverse communities.

Through short stories, photography, poetry, and illustrations, we uncover what it means to be a part of a diaspora. We examine life in between cultures, as individuals who call Canada home but with roots in different, often faraway places. Our stories are beautiful, heartbreaking, uplifting, contradictory, and constantly unfolding.
Living Hyphen’s aim is to reshape the mainstream and to turn up the volume on voices that often go unheard.”

I’ve had a hard time summarizing the impact this work had, and continues to have, on me. It is comforting as the son of Filipino immigrants to see work highlighting my experience: the tangled nature of these identities sprawling out onto the page in photographs and words. Although this publication was put together by our northern neighbors, the contents of Living Hyphen’s inaugural issue prove that if we look closer at our borders we can find bridges. An important and universal work!
-Drew