Everyone who’s come across Living Hyphen has been so wonderfully supportive and has shown so much belief in me and this publication. But the one question that almost always inevitably comes up is this — why print?

“Print is expensive,” folks warn me. It absolutely is. I will tell you right now that the margins are terrible (another blog post for another day). And that’s been a hard pill to swallow.

“There are so many more possibilities online,” they urge. There absolutely are. “And you could reach so many more people.” I absolutely would.

Throughout these last few months post-launch, I am finding that the magazine, as incredible a success and as important a piece of work as it is, has not been enough.

After spending some time in the arts and literary scene in Toronto, I’m noticing that I am running into the same people, the same artists, the same writers — many of whom submitted their work to Living Hyphen. I am quickly learning that there is a very small and tight-knit circle of creatives here. And I don’t doubt that the same is true across all of Canada.

And though I am extremely proud to know these people and I am deeply grateful for their work in pushing diverse voices into more mainstream spaces, I can’t help but think about the countless other voices out there that are never heard, the stories out there that never see the light of day. Surely there must be more artists and writers from diverse backgrounds than the ones that I see in repeat rotation at the arts and culture events that I’ve been attending.

As I dig deeper into my identity, my ancestry, my roots, my adopted homeland, and this complicated world we live in, I am also becoming much more critical and yes, “woke”, than I have ever been.

I am coming to grips with my role and responsibility as an immigrant settler on Turtle Island — as someone who has benefitted and continues to benefit from colonial violence on this land.

I am coming to grips with my own privilege as a middle-class Filipina-Canadian whose parents entered this country through the Skilled Worker program with familial support already in place here for years — and who therefore had numerous advantages ahead of so many newcomers in this country (an apartment, a steady household income, a solid support system — just to name a few.)

I am coming to grips with how this country has been good to me and my family, but has not been so good to so many others in my own community, and to all other marginalized communities.

I am coming to grips with the systems of oppression, the inequality, the inequity, and the injustice that permeate so many levels and spaces of this country.

The seed of this idea was born in the fall of 2015 at Toronto’s Feminist Art Conference when I attended a powerhouse panel about (the lack of) diversity in Canadian literature. The panel was stacked with writers of colour with tons of experience to share about the publishing industry. I listened to these panelists - all writers of color - talk about the difficulties they faced in getting their work published, simply because their stories did not conform to the "Canadian narrative”. Either that or their stories were not "ethnic" enough.

As a writer and as a woman of colour, this deeply unsettled me.