Formative Work

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Shizo-posting v. Shit-posting: An Analysis

The first time I had a student die I was too stunned to process what had happened. He was a bright, charismatic young man who could play perfect renditions of songs he’d only heard once. He mastered Zelda by the game’s auditory cues. 

Died in his sleep. I want to die with my eyes wide open. 

He was buried the day Donald Trump took office for the first time. It feels so unnecessarily cliché to be forced to associate his death with the new age of gerontocracy. 

I quit teaching at the end of the year, one month after my former student was pushed in front of a county bus by a stranger. He was killed instantly. His killer was never found. 

I moved to Silicon Valley and swore to do good work. On my old calendar from my old life I was scheduled to partake in an IEP meeting on the same day as a teenager would walk into the same school and start shooting. 

I lost faith in American democracy when I watched a man sue his alleged victim in court for slander. I often wonder why the county’s state attorney has a foreign law degree and needs forty different women to file civil suits to investigate a certain type of crime. The world is unpredictable. The case was dismissed with prejudice after one of the lawyers was arrested and later convicted of possessing child porn. Sometimes I think that justice prevails, but probably not for a lot of us. 

My law school classmate is awaiting trial after shooting his wife's lover in the face and blinding him. He will be using a "Stand Your Ground" defense. The prosecutors will show evidence that my classmate called 911 to falsely report his wife was being raped; other evidence shows his wife kicked him out of the home earlier in the evening after a fight over the wife's lover.  

The vast majority of braille in America is produced by those incarcerated in the nation's prisons. 

I want to tell the judge, "Two eyes for a braillewriter and LibLouis. Please and thank you." Less than one percent of the world's books are available in braille. Instead, I sit in the backroom of a dusty used bookstore and assemble packages of books to send to prisoners. I do not send a book to my classmate in jail, but I think about him often and hope he picks up a pilates practice in prison. 

I put up a cardboard cutout of Monica Lewinsky in Pam Bondi's alma mater. My classmates do not know who she is; they're boycotting Reformation, but it's illegal to explain why. I tell them, "I love Tammy Wynette, but I would never stay with a man who humiliates me for sport." There is discourse on TikTok about lead poisoning, vapes, and vacant stares.

A man I needed to tolerate called me a perpetual victim and blocked me. I tried to tell him about the sprints, and site changes, and dead links, but he doesn't speak my language or maybe I am still blocked. Our city lost access to twenty thousand digital books, but is anyone really doing their own research anyways? 

The left's leading voice against a genocide named his podcast after the group that deported my family to America. 

Once a man snorted an antipsychotic and tried to choke me, and when the restraining order I sought wasn't granted, the court's clerk assured me, "He sounds crazy. Come back when he does it again. Next time take photos." 

I ran.   

I was and am terrified of a forty-something year old man who videotaped himself covered in a condiment and caterwauled his way through an obscure country western song. There are other people who I am scared of. I am worried I made fun of Peter Thiel outside of the Palantir offices in Palo Alto because I used to sit at the CalTrain station waiting for life to get easier, and it usually did when I made fun of people’s scooters and sweater vests. I think he might be stalking me. I am worried Peter Thiel might be stalking us all.  

We Americans claim to be a peace-loving people. We hate bloodshed; we are opposed to violence. Yet we go into spasms of joy over the possibility of projecting dynamite bombs from flying machines upon helpless citizens. We are ready to hang, electrocute, or lynch anyone, who, from economic necessity, will risk his own life in the attempt upon that of some industrial magnate. Yet our hearts swell with pride at the thought that America is becoming the most powerful nation on earth, and that she will eventually plant her iron foot on the necks of all other nations.

Such is the logic of patriotism. - Emma Goldman

This shirt was hand stitched on each fourth of July celebration for four consecutive years 

(July 4, 2019, July 4, 2020,  July 4, 2021, July 4, 2022).  

Emily  explores her complex emotions triggered by other people's visual body art by channeling her emotions towards silent critiques through the use of embroidery

Emily has sixteen tattoos that she accumulated over a lifetime  This collection of hand stitched embroidery features tattoo flash.