THE NIGHT MY PARENTS WENT TO CHECK OUT GRAVE PLOTS (ARTISTIC ENGAGEMENT by Linh S. Nguyễn)

The western creative writing classroom prioritizes a monolingual template-like approach that alienates marginalized authors, gesturing to the need for radically inclusive practices and examples of writing that foreground lived realities (Chavez, 2021). My artistic engagement—a polyphonic piece of creative writing—engages with anti-racist and decolonial methods such as fragmentation (Fadel, 2023) to tell the story of a queer migrant experience. With a call-and-response format that makes use of literary practices like bolded phrases, italics, and varied languages, my piece draws on intertextual references and lived experience to create the effect of movement, de-bordering, and symphony across space and time. The piece provides an example of practice that sees art as process instead of product, favouring an emergent approach (brown, 2017) that prioritizes holding emotion and embracing love and desire as ways of making meaning (Lorde, 2018). In refusing writing as a skill of grammar or diction (Strunk & White, 1999), I reject a Cartesian mind/body split in favour of embodied pedagogy, aligned with feminist conceptions of knowledge and knowledge-making (Ellsworth, 2005). My practices offer an alternative to the aims outlined by academic institutions and encourage writers to be co- constructors of their arts education and learning communities. I build on my experience as an author and facilitator with creative writing methods derived from physical theatre (Lecoq et al., 2019), feminist studies (hooks, 2014), and emergence (brown, 2017). My work will interest those interested in practical examples of how writing from non-western and anti-imperialist communities can dismantle dominant, monophonic learning traditions.