episode 1: pilot—finding the tidal flats

PodcastOral History
Written By Liú méi z.b. chen
[Image description: Liú and their grandmother sit on a bench in a park overlooking a small bay in Puget Sound, their heads turned towards each other. The picture is shot from the back, with Liú and their grandma in the center and the beautiful surroundings in the background: a bright blue sky with dramatic clouds, the grass and trees in their vivid and dark greens.]

[Image description: Liú and their grandmother sit on a bench in a park overlooking a small bay in Puget Sound, their heads turned towards each other. The picture is shot from the back, with Liú and their grandma in the center and the beautiful surroundings in the background: a bright blue sky with dramatic clouds, the grass and trees in their vivid and dark greens.]

When this project began, Liú intended to make an oral history-based audio documentary in honor of their Taiwanese grandmother. Struggling with their grandmother’s failing health and the limitations of oral history— When we encounter overwhelming silence, how do we record those silences we find in a way that honors everything that they signify?—Liú decided to probe questions of power within familial storytelling. But what surfaced from their interviews with four other queer and trans East Asian Americans was more visceral and embodied than they expected: feelings of belonging, feelings of kinship. Not answers to a research question, but an extended practice in co-witnessing and story-sharing, in vulnerability and wondering aloud. Episode 1, “finding the tidal flats” follows Liú’s queer diasporic wandering to a local beach, through family histories, and into their lines of kinship.

Content Note: there is a brief discussion of sexual abuse on page 11 (32:11-33:20 in the audio).

 

Transcript here.

Unpublished methodological paper here.

[Please note that this paper has not been edited for publication, or at all since receiving feedback from my advisors. Please do not reproduce or share without my consent. Thank you!]

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Music is played and recorded by Liú méi z.b. chen. Complete songs played are Ferdinando Carulli’s Etude No. 5 Op. 241; José Ferrer’s Vals Español (originally: Ejercicio from Collecion loa de Ejercicios); and the chord progression to Greensleeves (writer unknown). Additional chord progressions, in order played, are: B, F#, E(+9), F#; AFBFE; AFED; Am Fm Em Dm; B, F#, E(+9), F#, G#m, F#.

Oxygen machine and wind sound effects recorded by Liú méi z.b. chen. Waves sound effects recorded and published by Eelke on freesounds.org under a Creative Commons Attribution License, and Notes451 on freesounds.org under a Creative Commons Zero License. Creek sound effects recorded and published by under KVGarlic under a Creative Commons Zero License.

 
Liú méi z.b. chen