United States

Peru

Andes

Latinx

Created for the Alternative Worlds Andean collection.

I find a lot of inspiration in the tocapu as a symbol embodying the mystery of the cosmos. My first completed tocapu design, I found the process of creating this to be compelling and meditative, and a welcome departure from all of the time I spend programming websites and software.

I’m inspired by the possibility of incorporating more tocapus into my work, and into my life, as I imagine these designs to be not a part of my past, but an active and important part of my present. They’re also, in my humble opinion, very nice to look at.

Sky Tocapu

A diamond-shaped geometric pattern against a blue background

An altar to Pachamama comprised of a striped blanket with geometric patterns and several items ion top of it, including 5 small plants, other textiles, an Andean alcoholic beverage in a jug (chicha), a basket, other textiles, and a bag of seeds.

About a dozen uncooked dumplings sitting upon a white plate dusted with flower

Envisioning the Future

On "Different Folks" and Andean musical fusion

Heritage, music, and creative freedom

Alternative Worlds: The Andes and Asian America

Mundos Alternatives: Los Andes y América Asiatica

"To Dream and Be Intentional" — Interview with Shirley Man-Kin Leung

Bibliography of Asian American Resources

Alternative Worlds Workshop Weekend Schedule

This is the first in a series of ongoing letters between me and my friend, Charles Huang, exchanged via public posting. You can find his blog here. 

I’ve had a lot swirling around my mind the past few days; so much is happening all at once and I often feel like I’m being swept up in a big current. Then there are moments like right now, as I revise this letter, having just meditated standing barefoot on the ground (literally grounding), and I feel at ease.

As you know, I just turned 31 this past week, and I’m considering more and more what I value, what we as a culture value, how I find myself within that and how to live a good life.

Over the weekend, I went to an offering to Pachamama; it was a beautiful day on Governor’s Island where I was surrounded by inspiring community members, and while I can’t speak to everyone’s specific personal beliefs, being together to honor ancestral traditions helped me to feel increasingly connected and supported in mine.

My spirituality is something I’d been wrestling with for a while; having been raised Catholic, I’ve faced a lot of doubts regarding what our relationship as individuals is to the cosmos, even as I move toward practices that feel more authentic and healthier to me than what I was raised with. It wasn’t the first ceremony I’d been to, though this weekend did feel like an inflection point in my understanding of those relationships.

This Peruvian heritage bed was stewarded by Claudia Urdanivia and Carlos Jimenez Cahua of the the Andean community in NYC; the offering to Pachamama was part of an event to honor Andean farming traditions.

There’s so much power wrapped up in our beliefs; the stories we tell of who we are, and where we come from, shapes our destiny.

To that end, there’s an Andean prophecy stating that humanity, in our current historical moment, has the opportunity to usher in a new stage of consciousness, to become more enlightened and compassionate as a people. It’s a big if; nothing about this is preordained in the Andean worldview from what I understand. And we’re currently up against the largest existential threat we’ve ever faced.

We have a global climate crisis at our doorstep; communities are already being displaced; myself I’m uncertain whether I’d like to raise a family because our collective future is so uncertain. And yet as I began writing this letter last week, I was embarking on an hour-long car ride to visit my family in upstate New York, followed by another 2.5 hour-long car ride to visit family in Pennsylvania. Later this year I’ll likely take a flight to see my family in Florida. Billionaires recently launched themselves into space.

Is it ethical to be doing all this consumption? Shouldn’t we all live locally within walking distance of our families and friends in small neighborhoods to limit our carbon footprint? Shouldn’t we be drastically reshaping our culture and institutions to preserve the planet for future generations?

This huacatay, a crop native to the Andes, was harvested from the Peruvian heritage bed.

Recently while meditating, in an effort to address these anxieties, I’ve been asking my ancestors and the universe for guidance. Doing this regularly, I eventually had the insight to try connecting with the value of ayni, or reciprocity in Quechua; and taking inspiration from the mudras of Buddhism, I’ve been holding my hands in positions found in the sculptures and artwork of the Andes that represent this idea of ayni — one hand on my heart, the other on my side; or one hand held out in offering, the other held out to receive.

Having set that intention, one day a visualization of the invisible tendrils and geometry that interconnects our reality came to mind; patterns interweaving, layered upon each other, our spirits as nodes in a vast web of those relationships, my entire being just a mirror reflecting the people, places, and circumstances of my life.

Increasingly this is how I’m beginning to see the world regularly, and it offers so much agency — everything we do, everything we are, matters — and the energy we receive, transform, and project into the universe has far-ranging effects we can’t begin to understand.

I don’t know where all of this leads yet. I feel hope, though. To see my life not as the span of my individual experiences, but the echoes and reverberations of all that has come before, all that is touched in the present, and all that ripples into the future, is both comforting and a challenge.

To know, to believe, that the world will not end, that it will simply be transformed, is so inspiring. As to what form that future world takes, that’s up to us, and one of the most radical actions we can take is believing that we’re going to make it out of this — sincerely recognizing our role in the interdependence of our surroundings — and gently cultivating the inner strength, agency, and intention that will allow us to transform the energy within and around us so that someday, we emerge as the humanity we aspire to be.

Someday, our descendents might look back and see, when faced with the greatest crisis we’ve ever known, we collectively reimagined and reshaped our culture, that we answered the call and rose to the challenge.

Here I'm holding the huacatay, which is used in several dishes including ocopa, a potato-based recipe of Peru.

I’m still working through how this all manifests in my life; I feel like this is a start, though. To move forward, I think we need to remember who we are, and maybe that’s as simple as touching our hands to the ground, offering a prayer, and gathering in community to catch a glimpse of how things might be.

So here I suppose I’m sending you some of the thoughts, anxieties, and hopes that have been on my mind recently. I’m looking forward to reading your letter! And maybe reading some of the things you’ve been thinking up.

(Dear Charles) The Shape of Our Future

Untitled

A short story about legacy, revolution, and obliquely, terraforming Mars. Also contains a dumpling recipe.

The morning of the ritual, my fathers assured me there was no need to be nervous. One reminded me I would have all the time I needed. The other said nothing, only tugged gently on my earlobe, to remind me of where I bit my grandmother the first time I met her and that we still laughed about it at family gatherings.

In truth, my nai nai, my grandmother, was a jovial woman who alleviated her rare bad moods with marathon cooking sessions that earned her a legendary status within the neighborhood. She promised me a simple conversation, but I knew it was more, this beginning of my journey into adulthood, the first time I would be listening to a story as its caretaker rather than its recipient.

The whole way to her home, I imagined what it would be like: solemn, I thought, precise, for certain. By the time I arrived on the third floor of a building set into the wall of the lava tube, I thought anyone might be able tell that I was not fit to begin. I hovered outside the curtain in the open doorway until a voice called out from within.

“Suying, no need to loiter. Come in, haizi.” I smiled, both charmed and worried that she would see me as a child no matter how old I grew.

I took a deep breath to brace myself, straightened out of the slouch the aunties in my building always hollered about and ducked through the curtain. I thought there might be incense, perhaps offerings to the ancestors and worried about the appropriateness of my simple smock. I even brought a notebook, real paper and a pen to help the words lodge within my mind. So I was startled to see my grandmother in the kitchen with an array of ingredients on the stone top island counter.

I paused in the doorframe, but my grandma smiled at me, corners of her eyes wrinkling up. She gestured for me to come to the counter and took the notebook from my hand. “Take notes another time. This time, you need only to listen.”

“I thought I was learning a story,” I said, hesitant, surveying the ingredients. A bowl of flour, already shifted, small dishes of spices, apportioned out, and a bundle of green onions, picked fresh from the hydroponic garden shared by the building. The large head of napa cabbage and a package of ground bean-based meat substitute made it clear that my grandmother was preparing to make our traditional family dumplings.

“I am going to tell you a story and I will teach you a skill,” my grandmother said as she directed me to the sink. She said nothing else until I cleaned my hands, dried them upon a dish towel she embroidered with a dancing fish, and rolled my sleeves above my elbows. When we stood over the ingredients, my fear of having to learn multiple things obvious by the way my eyebrows pulled together, she said, “This story will be yours to keep and preserve. One day, you will choose how to pass it on. Today, we do things this way.”

First, we mixed the dough, one part water to four parts flour. I put my hands into a heavy stone bowl and pressed the clumps of flour into each other, rolling and kneading to pick up the dusting of powder that remained. As I worked, beads of sweat building on my temple and an honest ache building up in strange parts of my arm, unused muscles stretching and pulling from the strain, my grandmother began to tell her story.

You already know that your three times great grandparent Zhou Daitan participated in the revolutionary struggles. I will not speak about that today. Instead, I will tell you of their life before the revolution, what made them the sort of person willing to stand arm in arm with their neighbors, the world that shaped them and that they shaped in turn. And though I did not know your three times great grandparent, this story comes to me from their daughter, to her daughter, and down to me. Through them, I bestow it upon you.

Once I punched the dough into a smooth ball, my grandmother declared the task done and we set it aside to rest. Then, I added soy sauce, salt, white pepper, as well as an egg to the meat substitute. With rhythmic, circular motions, I folded these ingredients together.

Daitan grew up on earth, on a patch of sparse and harsh land set aside for refugees. They were a rambunctious child, creative in inventing games and new ways to attract trouble. Though they received the mandatory years of education, provided by the international government for all refugee children, they were not an attentive student. Still, they read widely and thought freely, a difficult thing to do. And someone must have seen potential in that for they received a scholarship to university, sponsored by companies eager to showcase their generosity. They studied as widely as they read and meandered out of university two years too late with a degree in food science. Without sufficient social capital to obtain a posting in a lab, they returned to and worked in the packaging factory next to the camp where they grew tall and strong.

Under my grandmother’s watchful eye, I minced a handful of wood ear mushrooms, the slivers sticking to my hands, as well as a few shitake mushrooms, their unami infused scent filling my nostrils. These I deposited into the marinating meat substitute along with a dollop of sesame oil. Again, I accepted the wooden chopsticks my grandmother passed to me and mixed to integrate the dark pieces of seasoning.

Daitan’s time in university turned them quiet and contemplative. But working in the factory alongside childhood friends and strangers turned into family by proximity and shared struggle, they found their voice again. That voice spoke against exploitation and it wasn’t long before they drew the ire of those who hoped a heavy hand could crush dissent before it bloomed in full.

Then I went back to the bamboo chopping board, passed down through the generations, lovingly cared for by each. I recalled running my hands across the surface as a toddler, feeling the marks left it in by use, some sanded down or covered by newer marks over the years, and wondering when I’d get a chance to use it. Now that I was older, I didn’t have quite the same fascination with chopping vegetables. Still, I found the crunch and thunk of the knife through the green onions and the napa cabbage satisfying. I thought I’d have trouble listening and avoiding injury, but the rhythmic motion proved no distraction.

And so it was that Daitan found themselves cast out, blacklisted, unable to obtain even the meanest of jobs. Their fellow refugees knew what it was to be forced to the margins of society and offered them sustenance. For a time, Daitan was able to do good work within the camp, using what they learned in the factory to rebuild the hastily raised residences, repair the solar still that produced water. These odd jobs also allowed them to distribute the revolutionary literature published by friends within the factory. And when the operation was discovered, Daitan volunteered to take the fall.

The green onions went on top of the mixture and the cabbage went in a separate dish with salt to pull out water. While both rested, my grandmother upended the ball of dough onto a dusting of flour and put me to work pushing it across the counter until it tightened. With one smooth motion, she twisted the dough in half and began to roll her half out, until it resembled a snake.

As there were few places to exile someone who was already a refugee, Daitan found themselves on a one-way trip to the stars. They were still terraforming the planet then and Daitan, like many who grew up in the camps, found it difficult to breathe on the red planet. Even so, they tended to the legume fields for though they did not choose to come to Mars, they were forced to work off the cost of the fuel.

Slowly, so I could copy each step, my grandmother lifted the length of dough and pinched the top of it between the thumb and forefinger of her right hand. With her left, she twisted off pieces of dough. Mine were nowhere near as uniform, some small, some large, most torn off with great force rather than the deft and precise motions I failed to copy. When I grimaced at my collection of however, my grandmother only reached out to wipe a bit of flour from my chin and continued.

Daitan was hardly the only one who came to the planet unwillingly. Except for the youngest, taken in by a flashy recruitment poster and the promises of an unscrupulous earth-side recruitment center whose manager sated himself on kickbacks, all of their bunkmates fell afoul of one planetary power or another. And all of them dreamed of something different.

In synchronized motions, we crushed each knob of dough flat and tossed them in the flour so they would not stick together. Then I tipped the cabbage into the rest of the filling and mixed one last time, trying to ignore the ache in my arm and flinging a bit of filling onto the table in the process. Without

skipping a beat, my grandmother swiped the filling into a pan and set it atop the induction stove. Almost immediately, it began to sizzle and pop. She snatched it up with a pair of chopsticks, blew on it, and offered it to me. I closed my eyes as I considered the flavor and layered textures, to see if it needed anything else. When I decided it needed a bit more salt, I picked up the shaker, an old porcelain vinegar bottle repurposed and passed down.

During the day cycles, they rode lifts to the surface, where the vast legume fields blanketed the red dirt of the blossoming planet and fantasized about escaping over the horizon. At the end of their shifts, they urged the bovine herds that consumed the legumes into the shelter of the lava tubes and contemplated letting the animals loose. During their night cycle, they lay in their rickety three-layer bunks, six workers to a room, and traded stories or comfort.

My grandmother handed me a rolling pin, not much wider than my finger. She took one of the knobs of dough and brought the edge of it underneath the pin. In practiced motions, the pressed the dough from the outside in, turning the disc after each stroke. I ended up with an oblong shape of uneven thickness that made me wince when I compared it with her thin circle of dough. She took the wrapper from me without comment and began to fix it, gesturing for me to start another.

Life went on thus and though it seemed as if nothing changed as they repeated the same work against their ever-mounting debt, Daitan came to understood that they were building community. People who might have been enemies on earth taught each other their languages. No mode of living seemed all that strange from two meters away. Games and song and dance from different cultures passed back and forth, used to speed the trickle of time. And in these ways, large and small, sedition spread.

We continued rolling and pressing until we piled the wrappers high, dusted flour between each layer. I used chopsticks to position a dollop of filling in the middle of a wrapper. I set the chopsticks down and gathered the wrapper into my palm, watching my grandmother draw the edges together in folds that held the weight of her experience. Perhaps that’s what kept her dumplings closed because mine invariably peeked open at the edges, bits of filling threatening to burst out or the wrapper simply gaping wide.

At the factory, Daitan learned to play a game of make believe and magic. It was fantastical and fanciful and so no one took notice when they began to teach it to their friends. For diversion and escape, yes, but also to pass messages best left unsaid in rooms owned and operated by people who held debt over them like blades. And some things were better conveyed through simulation and practice than through explanation anyway.

My grandmother said that skill would come with time and practice. And I thought that this too, was a lesson she meant to impart. So I kept at it, crimping and folding and often failing, yet in the end, producing a precious few dumplings I would be proud to present to my fathers. Finally, we dropped them into the boiling water atop the stove, easing them into the roiling water one by one so that the hot water did not splash.

So it was that when the revolution began, Daitan knew what to do. They were part of a community once more, indebted to it, embedded within it, reliant upon it. Because what makes a person is not just who they are but what they do, the people who raise them, the society that shapes them, the atmosphere they breathe, the horizons they see. So it was with your three times great grandparent. So it will be with you. That is why we tell these stories, why we ask you to remember them, why we hope that you hold them to your hearts as we did, so you will make different mistakes, and so you will know what was freely given and what was taken to make a better world.

Within the Fold

Created for the Asian American collection of Alternative Worlds.  

Called forth from the dreamers, healers,
witches, womxn of our bloodline
we are the beginning of a new story,
no longer forced to migrate
between truths too small,
stuck in someone else's stomach.
We are not only her aching body
we are dawn
we are light breaking free.
Our ancestors are at our back,
in the rustling of trees and leaves.
They've always been alive.
And when we pray,
we pray whole body into the earth.
We become our own prayer

Called forth from the dreamers, healers, witches, womxn of our bloodline, we are the beginning of a new story,..

Becoming Our Own Prayer

ALTERNATIVE

WORLDS

ASIAN AMERICA

THE ANDES

I absolutely love this! This checks so many of my boxes; Social justice, Science fiction, Humanity and food.

Everyone

China

Ireland

Wales

Philippines

Mobile Android Browser

Desktop Safari

Desktop Chrome

Desktop Firefox

Mobile Safari

Mobile Chrome

Mobile Firefox

Multimedia Storytelling

Zine

New Media Literature

Webzine

Essay

Letter

Sci-Fi

Slice of Life

Andinx

Aymara

Second Generation Immigrant

Welsh

Andean

Cantonese

Asian American

English

Quechua

A few minutes

Paxsi's Instagram

Exhibition URL

Newgrounds

Itch.io

Blue text on white background: "These are the things they took from us, They left us bare These are the things they couldn’t"

The title "Cultural Correspondence" along with the illustration of a hands holding uprooted plants and dirt

Title 'Dear Charles' over a man holding his heart in a meditative stance

A young person in three different stages of life, in three different outfits

A person playing a guitar opposing a portrait of another person looking at the camera

A sketched portrait of a woman who is smiling broadly

A sketched landscape of a person looking out over a lake. There are trees in the background and the sun is overhead.

An outstretched hand coupled with the words, 'Reach for the Sublime'

Part of the Kiona Ligtvoet’s solo exhibition “These Are the Things” at <a href="https://www.latitude53.org" target="_blank">Latitude 53</a>, this document is collaborator Paxsi's contribution to this gentle attempt at navigating intergenerational barriers to grief, tenderness and longing, in the presence of enfranchisement and personal displacement.In their essay, Paxsi, an Aymara and Welsh-Irish writer and artist, reflects on their Aymara roots as it relates to family connection and their trans non-binary identity.From the author:“I am honoured and privileged to be contributing to this collaboration with this piece of writing which expresses my grief and longing for the things that were taken from me, as well as a celebration of the things that cannot and will never be.“As you reflect upon and consume my words and Kiona’s work, please consider contributing reparations to Kiona’s home community, Michel First Nation, for the legal fees required to reclaim their land and status rights. Reparations can be sent as e-transfers to kionaligtvoet@gmail.com, which will be forwarded to Michel First Nation.”

Letter to Miguel, from “These Are the Things”

With a Lever: The DIY Guide to Institutional Change for Racial Equity

Indigenous

First Generation

A creative game of telephone, this was created for the <a href="https://www.altsalt.com/community/project/alternative-worlds/1">Alternative Worlds</a> shared collection and contains poetry, artwork, and reflections on our creative processes as they relate to our Andean and Asian cultural heritages.

Located across the United States, each person passed the project to the next, who then responded to the previous piece, building up the collaboration via long distance in a way befitting of our times — digital, cultural correspondence :D

Cultural Correspondence

This is an experimental multimedia essay, written to my friend Charles, reflecting on the act of making art. It includes writing, illustrations (doodles), and music.It's also a test of my internal studio tools for creating new media literature experiences for web in Cocos Creator.This is the third in a series of letters we've been exchanging: <a href="https://www.altsalt.com/playlist/dear-art-dear-charles/2" target="_blank">Dear Art, Dear Charles</a>.

(Dear Charles #3) Thinking, Feeling, Creating

Test Publication

A collage of a woman in summer clothes beside one in winter clothes; three authoritative-looking women; a girl against a night sky; a woman with her eyes closed; a colorful pattern of sacred geometry; a Chinese water color of birds; a sleeping woman; a woman wearing a poncho; a woman holding a gun.

Ecuador

Huancavilca

Kichwa

An animated collage created to kick off the <a href="https://www.altsalt.com/community/project/alternative-worlds/1">Alternative Worlds</a> project, this contains art and music by AltSalt contributors from both the Andean and Asian American communities.
From left by row: Artwork by Jessica Tin, Jamie San Andres of Rimay Raiz, Layqa Nuna Yawar, Lia Coleman, Felix Kar-wah Fok courtesy of Shirley Man-Kin Leung, Sandy Enriquez, Adina Farinango, and Angela DelosReyes. Background pattern by Artemio Morales with gratitude to the teachings of Zadir Milla Euribe. Music by Jonathan Morales.

AltWorlds Intro

A mandala that is half half Asian American, half Andean

A joint statement from contributors to the Andean and Asian American collections, speaking on what Alternative Worlds means to us, what we hope folks take away from this, and what we're grateful for.

introduction

A circular mandala with geometric patterns

This Mandala was a project of mine during the winter months a few years ago, where I was inspired by moving into a new home and wanting to create something that represented where I come from, and just flowing with life in a circular pattern.

artwork

Winter 2019

To kick off this project, we brought together the art and music of AltSalt contributors from both the Andean and Asian American communities.

animated collage

A man wearing a golden headless, holding a staff, sitting on a rock; a sword is stuck into his chest and he is bleeding, yet looks proud

A piece about the conflicting experience of being disconnected from cultures that have faced so much adversity and colonization. It is about feeling intrinsically connected to these cultures and yet being so displaced from them.

i am a temple forged from sun 
an army of iron shimmers from its 
golden rays off a white cross 
lodged into the beating heart of an empire...

artwork and poem

displacement.

I am a temple forged from sun...
— displacement. by Julien Nakamoto

pull quote

Shared Collection - Julien Nakamoto

A creative game of telephone, this zine contains poetry, artwork, and reflections on our creative processes as they relate to our Andean and Asian cultural heritages.

Located across the United States, each person passed the project to the next, who then responded to the previous piece, building up the collaboration via long distance in a manner befitting of our times — digital, cultural correspondence :D

zine

The back of a woman's head, where a tattoo is visible near her shoulder blades

In Buddhist tradition, they say that the soul wanders the earth for 49 days before crossing to the afterlife. This is my imagining of my grandmother's journey after she passed.

short film

49 Days

A collage of gymnast Simone Biles, Andean textiles with small potted plants, and a cover from the movie, "Honey, I Blew Up the Kid"

In the tradition of those old timey letter exchanges, in this series of essays we delve into generational anxieties, life reflections, and vulnerabilities as we unpack what it means to be a human in the 21st century. Letters are written in response to one another with no prior planning and only exchanged when they are posted publicly. In this way, we hope to foster discovery at every point along our journey; we invite you to join us!

essay series

Dear Art, Dear Charles

DriveThruRPG

The cover uses a retrofuturistic artist's rendering of a space colony from NASA's Ames Research Center.

You are passengers aboard the interstellar ark Nabi. With 90 years remaining until your destination, New Earth, you must maintain the ship and its onboard sustainable farms by drawing inspiration from the agricultural customs of communal labor—PUMASI.PUMASI is a hack of John Harper’s Lasers & Feelings.

tabletop roleplaying game

Pumasi: A Lasers & Feelings Hack

A short story about legacy, revolution, and obliquely, terraforming Mars. Also contains a dumpling recipe.

short story

…this [was the] beginning of my journey into adulthood, the first time I would be listening to a story as its caretaker rather than its recipient.
— Within the Fold by Alda Yuan

Asian Am Collection - Alda Yuan

Link to webzine

Screenshot of webzine: two side-by-side portrait-orientation images of cityscapes, overlapped by a rectangle containing a recreated text message conversation, all against a white background.

An interactive story of my trip to Hong Kong with my friends a while ago, centering mundane moments of joy and tiny lessons about what "home" means to me.Content warnings: looping GIFs in motion, images of food.

interactive webzine

shortly, briefly

Called forth from the dreamers, healers, witches, womxn of our bloodline, we are the beginning of a new story...

A photo of a woman wearing Philippine cultural attire with illustrations and typography overlaid.

Initially, I wanted to start this project under the idea of being a “perpetual foreigner,” or the concept that regardless of me being an American citizen and having the tokens of what makes up an American (whatever that means… since the U.S. is a mix of cultures after all), I will always be perceived as “the other''...

artwork and essay

Acceptance

A woman with her eyes closed and a contemplative expression

A sequence of pieces going back through time exploring lineage, ancestors, history, memory, remembrance, and loss.
It begins in the present day with me, as one piece in a portrait series spanning three generations of women in my family.
1. "Me / 2020"
2. "Mother / 1994"
3. "Grandmother / Before I Even Was on This Earth"
4. "49 Days" When we arrive at my grandmother, we see her recent journey to the afterlife in the video piece "49 Days." (see entry below)
5. "The Time Before–" 
The last piece in the series, a generation from a neural network of a Chinese papercut, represents the imperfection of memory & dissolution of generational history, as time inexorably marches on... (continued)

Generations

Core Collection Alternative Worlds Asian America

The twin collections Asian America and the Andes were born in solidarity with one another to both celebrate our diversity and recognize our shared humanity.

The following pieces, part of both collections, transcend the boundaries of either community, reflecting our interdependence and our ability to create in harmony with one another.

In this way, may this shared collection offer a glimpse and path forward towards a reciprocal world.

Shared Collection

Free

Resonate

Creative-Coding

Yoga by Shirley website

Music

Bots

Twitter

Personal Website

Integral States Project

I'm a software developer, director of Artmayu Studios, and founder of AltSalt.I love the digital and literary worlds, especially exploring new kinds of digital literature, from experimental multimedia books to narrative adventure games.Currently, I'm in the process of learning more about my Andean background, and thinking through how to bridge that heritage with the world of technology.

Ecuadorian-American sociologist, of Huancavilca and Kichwa descent. Bi-coastal, born in Queens, NY and raised in both NY and CA. Musician, community activist, project coordinator at an immigrant and workers rights org, and co-founder of Rimay Raiz.&nbsp;

Editorial content by the AltSalt team.

Shirley identifies as a queer, asian-american woman of color. She works as a community organizer in Northern Colorado and as a yoga teacher. When not being self-referential in a bio, you can find her painting watercolors, biking around town, dancing, or reading a book.

Envisioning an alternative world

Sky Tocapu

Creator Background

Creators