Food, Memory and Nostalgia: Collective Writing Workshop

What are the smells, tastes, and textures of food that brings you comfort? Who prepares and shares the food, and what remains after its consumption? What does nostalgia taste like for you?

Join huiyin zhou and Laura Dudu, co-directors of Chinese Artists and Organizers (CAO) Collective 离离草, for a collective writing workshop on food, memory, and kinship. Guided by queer feminist ethics of care, this workshop starts with a collective meditation and somatic grounding practice. Then, in response to individual and collective writing prompts, participants will have both private journaling time and the option to respond to other people’s writing on a large piece of calligraphy paper. The workshop will wrap up with optional sharing or reading, reflections and conversations about the foods so central to our lived experiences, identities, and memories.

This workshop is part of a SEEK Raleigh public art project, Ciba Punch 女拳手打糍粑. A participatory food-making performance, the Ciba Punch invites community members to punch steamed sticky rice into ciba 糍粑, a southern Chinese rice cake. It explores rage, grief, and love as a collective labor of transformation and healing.

The workshop will be mainly facilitated in English, but participants are encouraged to write/doodle/journal/converse in whichever language(s) they feel called to.

Special Note: Artists request that participants wear a mask (KN95/KF94 or medical mask), and free masks will be available.