By Justine Trinh
Dear Mimi,
I first became aware of your work through your project Open in Emergency in 2016. I did not realize it was already an emergency, that—like you said—“the world makes us sick and we were not meant to survive it.” It was not until the year after that I realized the truth of these words, though I misremembered the name (I thought it was “Open in case of emergency”) and was unable to find it. By the time I remembered, I had left academia, unsure whether I would return. But I did come back, and in 2023, when I was faced with another series of emergencies, I sought out your box only to find out it was sold out. Luckily, your book, dear elia, came out earlier this year.
Just as your book is a “book that pretends to be an academic book” but “does what an academic book should do,” this letter acts as a review of the book but also conveys the importance and necessity of your book. Made up of a series of letters, dear elia has us all rethink mental health through what you call a pedagogy of unwellness, that we are all unwell in different ways, and the “only way to survive is to be unwell together.” That is: the systems of power are designed to keep us apart and productive. We are forced to be hyper-productive to belong within the ivory towers of academia and display academic rigor even though this expected abundance is killing us. The systems of care such as counseling centers are premised on the medical model of disability, which is individualized and focused on cure. In dear elia, you connect student experiences to the family to the adjunction of university staff to the pandemic. These concepts are all connected and contribute to our unwellness. Between chapters, you include reflection and writing activities to engage the reader with your work: it is not enough to read passively, we need to see this unwellness in ourselves.
You offer your own personal stories within these pages to show us that it is okay to feel and be vulnerable because the university hurts. When I read about your dismissal at the University of Maryland, I found myself tearing up reading about those details. In turn, your book has given me the language to start articulating the feelings I have felt for a while, but especially in this year alone. Last semester, I was told by another graduate student in my department that I spoke a different English that needed to be translated despite English being my native tongue and the fact I was in an English PhD program. This same student, motivated by racism and ableism, later accused me of having secret meetings while I was in treatment because the disabled Asian body always has something to hide. As a result, I felt physically, mentally, and emotionally sick. I isolated myself, refusing to see anyone and feeling that the world was against me. The list of unwellness your students came up with perfectly encapsulated how I felt (To name a few: Exhaustion. Isolation. No support. Pretending to be well. Something is wrong with me). For a while, I pretended I was fine in front of my students even though I did not want to be there. I did not want to teach English 101 when my own English was in question. One day I finally admitted what happened, and my students realized that my confession was an invitation to be unwell together. I listened to their struggles, and they offered me the same grace.
Your book is an intervention to this hurt. During your keynote at UCI on May 10th, 2024, you mentioned, “I am an adjunct. I don’t have the power to change the university, but I can in my classroom whether it be 5 or 10 or 20 students. I can change the classroom, this small space.” I want to change the small spaces in my life as well. I have been recommending this book to everyone I know, because it is powerful. I recommended it to my advisor, and now we discuss it as a jumping point on how to attend to crisis. My own department is going through a crisis, and I find myself quoting dear elia to my peers in hopes it will get them to rethink how the university makes us individually unwell. It is not enough to say, “Well, everyone has it bad” as a silencing mechanism for the university’s benefit. As I am writing this, I am starting an email draft to propose a care workshop in my department.
Your book is changing and saving lives: I can personally attest to this. This book is a reminder that we are not alone in our unwellness, and we must weather it together if we want to survive.
Thank you for your work.
Sincerely,
Justine
Justine Trinh is an English literature Ph.D. student at Washington State University. She graduated from the University of California, Irvine with B.A.s in Asian American studies and classical civilizations and a B.S. in mathematics. She then went on to earn her M.A. in Asian American studies, making her the first student to graduate from UCI Asian American Studies’ 4+1 B.A./M.A. program. Her research interests include Asian American literature, critical refugee studies, family and trauma, and forced departure and disownment.