mission statement
Our Sound (maga)ZINE is a biannual creative lit publication produced by and dedicated to serving marginalized communities at
Scripps College. We aim to create a space for expression by accepting submissions of art, photography, prose, and poetry from
members of these communities and their allies. As an intersectional publication, we focus on issues of race, ethnicity, gender,
class, sexuality, difference, and identity. Through the permanence
of published work, we will document the marginalized voices at
Scripps and spark dialogue. These pages are your space, and
we hope you will share with us your truth.
Incipit vita nova
letter from the editors
Dear Reader,
We are very excited to present our second issue of Our Sound. Our first issue, Our
Sound, Our Beginning, was a success thanks to wonderful contributors, a fantastic team,
and amazing support from SCORE.
As you may have noticed, we have decided to change our own identity from a Literary
Magazine to a (maga)ZINE. With this change in rhetoric, we hope to emphasize our
radical process and break from the constraints of a formal literary magazine. We are
constantly seeking ways in which to expand our inclusivity and create a safe space to
publish unapologetic voices, thoughts, and experiences.
This issue’s theme is “virtue.” We have asked our contributors to explore their ideas
around gender, sex, and sexuality and how these impact them as members of marginalized groups.
As students of a women’s college, we are constantly presented with questions regarding
gender, sex, and sexuality. We want to change the conversation. We demand for our
voices to be at the forefront of this discussion. How do these topics change at the crossroads of marginalization?
Through our publication and your readership, we will make as much noise as possible.
We are excited to continue to grow with your support.
In solidarity,
Vivienne Müller and Aida Villarreal-Licona
on behalf of the Our Sound team
Catherine Chiang
Grace Xue
Pamela Ng
Alexa Muniz
dedication
This issue is dedicated to the activist community at Scripps—students,
faculty, and staff who work to create a more inclusive future here on campus and in the surrounding communities. Their work often goes unrecognized or under-appreciated, although it is some of the most important
work happening here. This is for the members of the Scripps community
who foster the spirit of social justice on campus, despite the opposition or
discouragement they face. Thank you for your activism, and we hope to
serve Scripps in our activism as well.
Untitled//
table of contents
by Vivienne Muller
Estamos en el valle//
by Irene Hernandez
SHE//
by Vivian Yu
selections from the body IS//
by Shane Zackery
a history of sexuality//
by Catherine Chiang
SEX??//
by Jacob Seirfele-Valencia
Virtuous Kink//
by Shane Zackery
On Loving Black women//
by Vivienne Muller
Harnessing Moonstration//
by Nancy C. Herrera
Untitled//
by Grace Xue
Editorial Board
Contributors
Catherine Chiang
Vivienne Muller
Alexa Muniz
Pamela Ng
Aida Villarreal-Licona
Grace Xue
Irene Hernandez
Nancy C. Herrera
Jacob Seirfele-Valencia
Vivian Yu
Shane Zackery
acknowledgements
We thank Professor Piya Chatterjee for the Bridging Theory to Practice
Grant, which allowed us to print more copies for a wider distribution,
and to host an event for our communities at Scripps. We also thank
Yuka Ogino for her continued support, as well as SCORE for providing
us with resources and a space. Lastly, thanks to our contributors!
Untitled
{Vivienne Muller}
Estamos en el valle
{Irene Hernandez}
You are la Tierra.
Stretched out
Debajo de mí,
You are soft
Tender
Tough
Seco
Clouds come
Soft rumbling
Then wet
Yo deseo
Rainy summer nights
Acostada in the crevices
De tu cuerpo
Our bodies
Mountains
Nuestra Tierra tiembla
A low hearty grumble
Explotamos
Y sabemos
Que otro mundo es posible…
SHE
{Vivian Yu}
She stared ahead with pride, taking the hallways in strides, with purpose and with
confidence. Down the hallway she walked, strong and determined. Putting herself out
there for the world to see. But then she started hearing the whispers. She was attacked
by their harsh words and slowly ripped apart. Objectified for her looks and emotionally
extorted.
“You can see down her shirt”
“The Asian girl with the big boobs?”
“Her? You mean tits-on-legs?”
The talk engulfed her like a web of lies suffocating her with a paralytic rage. She stumbled down the hallway, slowly slouching, leaving behind the girl from years past. She
started wearing baggy sweatshirts, blending in with the crowd in a conforming march.
She made herself invisible. She stopped looking out windows, fearful of confronting
her reflection. She made herself small to fit the talk and confinement of those walls. She
trudged on down that hallway, nearing the end in a dull shade of torn-down.
There was no definitive day. No clear resolution. She doesn’t remember a change for
the better. She didn’t hope for a brighter future in which judgment is no longer passed
on her. Somewhere between staring at her feet while walking and being shunned in
passing she grew stronger. There’s never a happily ever; things are never completely
resolved. I don’t remember there being an exact day when I retired that grey sweatshirt. But somewhere far down the road from where I started, I stopped submitting to
the criticism of others. Their piercing eyes no longer punctured my pride. Somewhere
along the way, I regained my confidence.
Yes, I do notice when you look down my shirt. No, I will not submit to your judgmental
gaze and shy away while you audaciously slut-shame me. No, it is not my fault that you
are choosing to objectify me. Yes, do keep your eyes up, because up there resides my
unwavering voice, my unique personality and brilliant mind. I will continue to dress as
I please—so you will just have to respect me.
Harnessing Moonstration
{Nancy C. Herrera}
As I rise and grow,
I need you, catch my flow
I want to go
Anywhere, everywhere
From the moment it begun
I transformed into a warrior, champion
Heart of a champion
Fearless, development, growth
A battle has begun
Survive the flow,
Now unsheathed, ready for everywhere,
Go.
For a happy time always as you go
carry flow, blood of a champion
Ready to conquer, everywhere
Body clock monthly mind timer, spurts, grows
Expect the flow
Or not. Either way, a new cycle has begun.
Your duty, begun
Go, go, go, go, go!
Walls, containers, needed: contain the flow
Don’t allow ruptures; you are a champion.
Happy. Normal. Sad. Pain. Of puberty, growth.
With you, I get close and personal with my, everywhere
No one lets me flaunt my wins, everywhere
But this, this is perfect, It has begun.
An experiment, trying out each weapon, I grow.
Prima donna comes, spills, runs, goes.
Weeping, sweating champion
To talk about my flow is to go against the flow
I do not have a clear blue flow
Unlike what is seen everywhere
Oh the lies of a champion
Marketing team. After a score, change has begun.
Since I know, I go
All signs say ‘GO’, As I jump, sprout and grow!
Know that the champion’s strength is hidden.
Seeds, begun, grow, expelled. They run, they flow
Spills, captures, flow.
cadence from ‘the body IS’
{Shane Zackery}
cadence from ‘the body IS’
{Shane Zackery}
transcended from ‘the body IS’
{Shane Zackery}
a history of sexuality
{Catherine Chiang}
(i)
I have been a quiet soul
In the gardens of heaven,
The seductive embrace of Eden,
And I have passed the trees
Dripping with temptation,
And I have had the cutting softness
Of whisper-thin blades of grasses
Pressing against my soles, like coals—
—the worms move silently
In the soil beneath, damp with dew,
The life under my feet
Sucking at my heels, I knew—
—I have been alone in beauty
That asks for entry;
I have been propositioned
And inquisitioned and accused;
Smothered by a loveliness
Begging prettily to consume
The pieces of me I refuse to exhume.
(ii)
You know when you’re trying to cut out something from a piece of
paper, but you can’t get it right and you just keep cutting, and cutting, until it’s smaller and smaller and then it’s the right shape but
you have a pile of paper swirls and scraps in a little mountain under the blades of your scissors? So you’re holding the thing that
you thought you wanted but you’re left cleaning up this mess of
waste, and the little pieces get everywhere and a few days later, after you had forgotten about the whole thing, you find a sliver of
paper in the carpet. I don’t know where I’m going with this, but
I think I’m trying to say that we were holding the scissors, and
I was left months afterward trying to clean up the mess we made.
(iii)
I saw you on a blurry summer afternoon,
Hand reaching forward, taking mine,
Hello, you said,
And my heart stopped.
You were always a little bit out of focus,
A little too far, from being with me;
Your hands here but your mind elsewhere,
And so my heart dropped.
Kisses on a fading Sunday morning,
The gentle bruising from last night
When you kissed away my apprehension;
We are the dying embers of a roaring fire.
And if I could spend a day or more
In your arms, in your head,
Would you see the way my mouth
Forms the vowels of your name—
Would your heart stop instead?
(iv)
fuck (v.) vulgar.
is it fucking
when you kiss the air out of my lungs
leave your little marks in the shape of your lips
the lingering paths of your fingers
when the space between us rushes away
until we’re left close, but not close enough,
when your breath comes in gasps of air
when the colors of your skin are softly
saturated with hues of pink and purple
and when I am bursting into kaleidoscopes,
spiraling patterns of stars spinning into the ceiling,
is it still fucking? or do you think—
do you think we are spiraling out of synch,
another orbit too unsustainable
threatening to crash into the sun—
or do you think, that maybe we
are no longer subject to the laws of Kepler and Newton;
a supernova beginning between the palms of our hands?
SEX? A analog guide to digital
sex education
{Jacob Seiferle-Valencia}
Page 1: WHAT IS SEX?
- Well you have to be registered first, you will need to go to your local tax office and apply for
a fornication licence, thin with your licence you can now buy the approved fornication kit at
your local hardware store inside you will find everything you will need to know
- Sex is just sex
- Sex, more than just feeling good and being something “fun” to do, makes babies
- Its like a dream
- it sucks when ur not in a relationship
- I be honest wait till u ready then find out
Page 2: FACTS ABOUT SEX
- Your birth control method might be dampening your sexual response
- On Average, adult men think about sex every 7 seconds
- Sex is 100% more pleasurable without any kind of protection
- Sex is a great way to burn calories
- You can’t get pregnant the first time you have sex
- Guy can use plastic wrap instead of a condom
- Only trashy people get stds
- Silicon based lubes work the best?
Page 3: Frequently Asked Questions
Q: Will it hurt?
A: FOR THE FIRST TIME, YES IT WILL HURT LIKE HELL…& TO MAKE IT BETTER
MAKE LOVE (BEFORE ENTERING) TO THE GIRL THEN IT WILL BE BETTER
Q: How do you put on a condom?
A: you don’t put it on, you take it with a glass of water.
Q: Is masturbating bad?
A: DO YOU NOT MEAN YOUR SELF IT MAY MAKE YOU BLIND
Q: How to have gay sex?
A: Just because you realize who you are doesn’t mean that you should rush into sex. At
15 you are far too young.
A: Bum sex, mouth sex, hand sex…
Q: I want to have sex? Should I? How so?
A: Sex outside of marriage causes damage. Save it for marriage.
Q: “What if it’s too late? What if I’ve already forfeited my sexual purity?”
A: Good question! Certainly a person cannot reverse the past, but there are a number of
sis others. First, acknowledge your actions as sin. For those who have accepted Christ’s
payment of the penalty for their sins, He asks only that they confess – agree with God
that they are sinful. Second, maintain purity from this moment forward.
Page 4: TIPS FOR WOMEN
- Cook dinner topless, apply a little tomato sauce to your nipple and ask your man to
lick it off.
- If his wardrobe is constantly changing, watch out! He might be cheating!
- If your guy is suddenly going around all happy and whistling, then you need to find
out why.
- Receive a butterfly kiss of your breasts. To do: he bats his eyelids agains the hypersensitive underside of your breasts
Page 5: Tips For Men
- The smell of toast is a serious mood booster
- Hold her gaze for a minute. IF she’s blinking more than normal (which is about 15
times a minute), there’s a good chance she’s on the Pill; women on birth control blink
32 percent more than those who aren’t
- The key to sexiness may lie in yogurt—at least for mice.
- Remember that chores around the house count as foreplay… when you do them, that
is.
- Try facial intercourse. This smooch mimics sex from foreplay to penetration, beginning with a tongue exploration inside the mouth. Rub your tongues together in
small and large circles, then dart them in ad out of your mouth as if you were having
intercourse.
What about LGBTQIA sex tips? FAQs? Advice?
-That’s too complicated.
Virtuous Kink:
Whose Sex is it Anyway?
{Shane Zackery}
I got a call one day from a friend who was concerned about another mutual
friend of ours. Let’s call that friend Charles.
Charles had shared with Linda, the friend who called, that she wanted to have
kinky, masochistic sex with her boyfriend. Linda called me, head practically
spinning off in concern, to share her feelings about the “troubling intentions”
that Charles had for that weekend.
Here Linda was babbling about Charles’ unhealthy desires to bite and be
bitten, to tie up and be tied up, to play with the boundaries between pleasure
and pain, while in the mean time I was thinking of ways to get in on some of
that action.
See the thing was, I really wanted to fuck Charles. Like a lot. Finding out that
she was a fellow kinkster was just the icing on the cake.
Poor Linda. She had come to me because she knew that I had a crush on
Charles and had shared with me that Charles had a crush on me too. She felt
that as a potential love interest, I could talk Charles out of her plans and steer
her towards a more healthy option.
After I hung up with Linda, I got on AIM (AOL Instant Messenger. Yes, this
was that long ago) with Charles and encouraged her to do whatever the fuck
she felt like and told her that she had my full support.
My fleeting interest in getting into Charles’ pants aside, the point of sharing
all of this with all of you is to highlight the ways in which we define virtue and
condemn others for their less than traditional approaches to sex and pleasure.
Who was Linda to deem Charles’ behavior unhealthy? Her plans were consensual. She had talked to her partner about her desires. They shared an interest
in exploring BDSM culture and planned to take extra steps to ensure the comfort and safety of everyone involved. All that I could see were green lights.
What really troubles me about all of this now is why Linda felt that I, someone
who was not at all to be involved in the proceedings, had a say in what Charles
did during her weekends. It’s wasn’t my sex. I wasn’t going to be affected by all
the teeth and nails and cuffs. It had nothing to do with either of us at all. So
why did she care so much?
For some reason, Linda felt Charles’ indulgences as a direct threat to her own
state of being. Her status quo was completely shaken up when she found out
that someone so close to her was interested in something so foreign. So weird.
So…unappealing.
My response to these types of situations now more or less reflects the sentiments that I expressed back then. What other people do in the bedroom
is none of my fucking (no pun intended) business. It’s none of yours either.
Pleasure has limitless dimensions. It takes all different shapes and forms, never looking the same for one person as it does for another. We should rejoice in
being parts of communities where we can openly discuss all levels of sexuality
and consider ourselves lucky when we find partners that are interested in
exploring aspects of sexuality that mirror our own curiosities. And when they
don’t, we should not be yucking what others find downright yummy.
More power to Charles and to us because what is virtue anyway? “Behavior
showing high moral standards”? Whose standards? How high is high? I don’t
want anyone deciding my behavior for me and I bet that no one else wants
that either. So forget all of that noise and do what you do.
So. To all of the Lindas out there—mind yours. Support that your friend is a
consenting, sexually healthy individual with the freedom to express that sexuality in all of the wonderful, beautiful ways that she can think of.
Just in case anyone is wondering, I never slept with Charles, but we did make
out hardcore. She wanted to have sex but her parents were like, in the next
room. She was down but that’s a little too kinky, even for me.
On Loving Black women
{Vivienne Muller}
On Loving Black women;
as a gender-fluid, light-skinneded, fair-eyed, queer black woman.
What they hate I
love. dark, amber, copper, bronze, gold
ebony, oak, birch, balsa—I’ll rub
away the ash that
builds up from their
burning tongues, that clings
after the spittle that ignites the
words they use to scorch
you for being
smokes away.
They say your strength
is emasculating–– why
would (how could) I lose
to you what I’d gladly share?
They say you are:
too sassy (but everyone else–– here’s looking
at you white girls and gay men–– gets to
put on our snaps, head swivels and
“girl/boy/bitch please”s to show attitude)
too loud (but no matter how hard we
try, how hoarse we scream ourselves,
how deftly we whisper from dry throats, they don’t listen)
too angry (but white men get to start re
volutions over taxes, become enraged that we
too dream in American and fluster themselves
against our struggles to exist outside of their control)
too sexual (but when others dance like us––
if twerking goes viral does that make it an infection?––
dress like us they are liberated, edgy, avant guarding
their bodily autonomy)
to be desirable...
Well so am I.
You are my mother
my aunt my sister my cousin
my kin.
You are my friend,
my classmate, my ally, my partner, my lover
my love myself. I come from you
I am you
we are one.
Big lips fat ass
wide nose bulbous forehead endless hair
everything is beyond
proportion–– we overflow as our colors
bleed outside the box–– we are distorted
in this white-washed world.
To Black Men
who stand on the
backs of your mothers’
work to get here, to
exist; who rely
on the support of
your sisters in places where
there are few of us;
who prefer not to date black women
who would never
date a woman darker
than you who just
aren’t attracted to
black girls:
who the hell do
you think you are?
Black women have kept my belly full:
have they not fed you?
Black women have raised (& in away made) me:
have they not shaped
you?
Black women have nurtured, held, healed me (a safe place):
have they not
cared for you?
To other (non-black) men
who at the very least
have the flimsy excuse
of not knowing us:
who the fuck do
you think you are?
You say our vagina’s
are the wrong color (purple).
You say you can’t
run your fingers through our
hair (it isn’t long and flowing).
You say we’re dirty (you can’t scrub away the brown).
To your counterparts
who “love” black women
because we’re exotic:
who do you think
you’re helping?
You say we’re sexier (and freaky, right?)
there’s just something about the way we move.
You say we’re not like other women
we can take care of ourselves (so you don’t have to)
and still fry your chicken for dinner.
You think your validation is a compliment.
To other black folk (regardless of gender)
who want to fuck us but
do not respect us
what do you see
when you look in the mirror?
If we are big booty hoes
sexy bitches
super freaks
then so are you.
Black Woman,
how can I love myself
if I don’t love you?
Black Woman,
who else has strong
soft arms that I can hold be
held by? Black Woman,
where else is as
safe for me?
It’s not that every
one else is prickly thorny
rough, abrasively grating
against me... but.
They can be energy that
I don’t have.
Black Woman, you
give what I give you don’t take
or wrestle wringing me dry
without leaving me any
thing for myself.
Black Woman, black women
black girls:
I
love
you
Untitled
{Grace Xue}