Spoken for Dykes Gone Digital, the digital version of Ottawa’s yearly Dyke March.
It is hard to be here.
immigration
{advertisement}
Frost on the Sand
This is the only thing I can write today.
My Canadian residency is in doubt. My denial may soon be final, based on something so perverse and so trivial as my being a member of an ODSP-receiving household. My appeals may yet save me, as Ania and I exhaust every remaining option to secure my life here in Canada.
Because there is no life for me elsewhere.
Transport to the Outer Rim
I got out.
I don’t know how long I can stay. Canada has refused to employ me despite (because of?) my advanced degree, and if anything goes awry in my immigration process, they might yet force me back.
But I got out.
Immigrant Gems
It is not possible to run out of reasons to love Steven Universe. This show’s explicitly queer representation is staggeringly high for a show as mainstream as it is; its psychological depth is impressive; it tells us forthrightly and aggressively that our genders should not constrain our possibilities; most of the characters are women or people of color (and largely voiced by people of color); there is a plot arc that is unambiguously about consent and another about being willing to seek comfort from one’s friends in crisis; onward and onward.
It’s also an impressively diverse treatment of immigrants’ and refugees’ feelings about the place they used to call home.
Spoilers out to episode 83 follow.