Music is essential to every Living Hyphen workshop. Whether online or in-person, whether with young students or seniors, playing music is a non-negotiable. And our gatherings in the prison system are no exception.

It is, however, a lot more challenging to bring music inside.

As you can probably guess, you can’t just bring anything into a prison. You need approval for everything that goes in, and there are even greater restrictions around electronics. No cellphones, no laptops, nothing with Bluetooth technology.

For these workshops in the prison system, I had to find an old MP3 player that I could then attach to a speaker with an aux cable. Bringing in this technology required that I share the exact model, make, and serial number with the warden, who would then arrange a “gate pass”. Once I arrived at the prison, I would then have to show my electronics and run them through security. It’s a whole involved process for something we barely have to think about in our daily lives.

Since founding Living Hyphen back in 2018, I’ve spoken and written a lot about my experiences as a Filipina-Canadian and the push and pull I’ve felt about living in between these two cultures. But here’s the thing I don’t talk about often – my dad has always been upset about that.

He’s given me a lot of flak over these past few years for always dropping “Chinese” in my hyphens when I talk about my identity.

“Why are you ignoring your Chinese side? You’re a Yu!” he’d often chide me. 

“But you never taught me anything about being Chinese! I can’t claim it!” I’d snap back. 

The truth is that I grew up largely disconnected from my Chinese heritage. My Angkong, who fled China during the rise of communism and migrated to the Philippines, passed away before I was born, and I didn’t spend much time with my dad’s family growing up. We never celebrated Lunar New Year, I never learned Fukien (also known as Hokkien, the most common language of Chinese Filipinos), and my dad didn’t really practice any Chinese traditions when I was growing up (except maybe that short-lived phase when he became obsessed with feng shui).

“I feel like a kid again!” Marcus exclaimed while drawing the torso of his “exquisite creature”.

Everyone is looking over each other’s shoulders, trying to get a peek at what the other person has drawn, comparing notes and giggling at the ridiculousness of the “assignment”.

I’m in a medium security prison in the Fraser Valley, facilitating storytelling workshops with incarcerated men, and our icebreaker activity is “exquisite corpse” (though I prefer to call it “exquisite creature”). For those unfamiliar, it’s a game where each participant takes turns drawing parts of a “creature” on a sheet of paper, starting with the head, then the torso, and finally, the legs. At each step, they must fold the paper to conceal their contribution and then pass it to the next player to continue the drawing.

Once we’ve completed a round, I ask them all to unfold their sheet of paper to reveal what they’ve created together and to tape it up to the wall at the front of the room, which I like to call “our art gallery”. I invite the guys to stand up and admire each other’s artistic expressions.

At this point, it is complete chaos in the room. Everyone is howling with laughter.

I am remembering how I would spend my mornings driving on Highway 7 with the river to one side and the stunning mountains up ahead and all around me. I would spend these mornings just in awe of all that surrounded me, so full of gratitude for the natural world.

And then I would slowly pull up to my destination and see the fences surrounding a cold, sprawling compound of grey, soulless buildings heavily secured with barbed wire. The disconnect was, as I wrote, jarring, bewildering, and infuriating.

I couldn’t help but think to myself about how settlers really saw all this abundant, fertile, beautiful land, stole it from Indigenous peoples, and chose to build systems of control and punishment. And how politicians of today really see all this abundant, fertile, beautiful land, ignore our treaty obligations, and continue to choose to expand these systems of control and punishment. What stunted imagination…