Seanan McGuire - Shades Within Us

Tales of Migrations and Fractured Borders

LAKSA ANTHOLOGY SERIES: SPECULATIVE FICTION

EDITED BY SUSAN FOREST & LUCAS K. LAW

LAKSA MEDIA GROUPS INC.
www.laksamedia.com

Laksa Anthology Series: Speculative Fiction

EDITED BY SUSAN FOREST AND LUCAS K. LAW

Strangers Among Us: Tales of the Underdogs and Outcasts

The Sum of Us: Tales of the Bonded and Bound

Shades Within Us: Tales of Migrations and Fractured Borders

Seasons Between Us: Tales of Identities and Memories (forthcoming)

EDITED BY LUCAS K. LAW AND DERWIN MAK

Where The Stars Rise: Asian Science Fiction and Fantasy

Shades Within Us: Tales of Migrations and Fractured Borders

Laksa Anthology Series: Speculative Fiction

Copyright 2018 by Susan Forest and Lucas K. Law

All rights reserved

This book is a work of fiction. Characters, names, organizations, places and incidents portrayed in these stories are either products of the authors imaginations or are used fictitiously, and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual situations, events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Laksa Media Groups supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Laksa Media Groups to continue to publish books for every reader.

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

Shades within us : tales of migrations and fractured borders / edited by
Susan Forest and Lucas K. Law.
(Laksa anthology series: speculative fiction)
Issued in print and electronic formats.
ISBN 978-1-988140-05-6 (softcover).ISBN 978-1-988140-08-7 (hardcover).
ISBN 978-1-988140-09-4 (PDF).ISBN 978-1-988140-06-3 (EPUB).
ISBN 978-1-988140-07-0 (Kindle)
1. Science fiction, Canadian (English). 2. Fantasy fiction, Canadian
(English). 3. Speculative fiction, Canadian (English). 4. ImmigrantsFiction.
5. Mental healthFiction. 6. Mental illnessFiction. I. Forest, Susan, editor
II. Law, Lucas K., editor
PS8323.S3S52 2018 C813.0876208352691 C2017-906854-7
C2017-906855-5

LAKSA MEDIA GROUPS INC.
Calgary, Alberta, Canada
www.laksamedia.com
info@laksamedia.com

Edited by Susan Forest and Lucas K. Law
Cover and Interior Design by Samantha M. Beiko

FIRST EDITION

Susan Forest
To Isabel,
Who gave me new understanding of pride in ones homeland, and of the accepted and the exotic.
To Heather,
Who helped me to see how the concerns of migration are close to home.

Lucas K. Law
To everyone going through a transition,
Choice or no choice,
Have faith in yourself, seek help if needed, and remain optimistic.
In memory of those who came before us
and
made this world a better place for us to strive and be us.

Each of us has our own idea and vision of migrations and fractured borders. Often, our first thought is of migrations on the physical plane, though with consideration we might recognize emotional or even spiritual migrations. These days, there is a tendency to associate migrations with refugees and illegal immigrants. There are dangers in such assumptions.

My maternal grandfather and his brother left China with their father in 1916. They left their sister and family behind. Later, during the Chinese civil war in the late 1940s, my grandfather lost contact with his sister. Though he gained opportunities in Malaysia, his adopted country, he lost all family ties in China, the country he left behind.

My grandfather spent most of his life in rural plantations and fishing villages, as a shopkeeper, a farmer, and a small business owner, before he retired. When he could no longer care for himself, he moved again, to the city, to live with his son and family.

So often, physical movement is the focus of a migration story when it first unfolds. But each move is more than a simple relocation. It is a transformation of time, place, and being. Each decision affects a multiplicity of others.

It is difficult for those who have never faced such decisions to truly comprehend the complexity and conflict that takes place in body, mind, and spiritwhat my grandfather and so many others had gone through in such transitions, responding to economic challenges, employment and new opportunities, and finally, to failing health. And these are only a few of the myriad factors affecting the reasons people migrate.

Migrants are much more than refugees and illegal immigrants. We might name them in many different ways, and cast them in new lights: explorers, drifters, nomads, expatriates, evacuees, pilgrims, colonists, aliens, strangers, visitors, intruders, conquerors, exiles, asylum seekers, outsiders.

Within such complexity, what are the commonalities? Transition and change. Boundaries, visible or invisible, voluntary or involuntary, internal or external. The price paid. And the attainment of a new life, a new world, a new reality, for good or ill.

The genesis of this anthology comes from my family history, but it also comes as an outgrowth of the first two anthologies in the social causes series, Strangers Among Us: Tales of the Underdogs and Outcaststhe fine balance between mental health and mental illnessand The Sum of Us: Tales of the Bonded and Boundthe world of caregiving and caregivers.

In Shades Within Us, Eric Choi, Gillian Clinton, and twenty-one authors capture the displacement of the migrating body, mind, and spirit to explore struggles and sacrifices, survival and redemption, losses and gains, in their Tales of Migrations and Fractured Borders. They ask us to open our eyes to see, our ears to hear, and our hearts to understand, that each of us may be impacted somewhere along our journeys. And they also ask us to face those adversities and challenges with equal determination, resiliency, and humilityand not to hide behind the shades within us.

Please support your local charitable organizations and do take care of your own health. Be kind and generous to yourself and to others. Be ready to give back and pay forward. A portion of this anthologys net revenue goes to support Mood Disorders Association and the Alex Community Food Centre.

Lucas K. Law, Calgary and Qualicum Beach, Canada, 2018

One of our favourite things in Toronto is a bronze sculpture at the foot of Yonge Street called Immigrant Family by Tom Otterness. A man holding two small suitcases, likely containing all the familys worldly possessions, looks tenderly at a woman cradling a small child in her arms. Their round, larger-than-life faces poignantly express all the fears for the presentand hopes for the futurethat have been the experience of newcomers for centuries.

Sadly, the warmth and optimism expressed by Immigrant Family is sometimes lacking in discussions of migration and borders. Dangerous political persuasions, usually based on a malignant mix of xenophobia and nostalgia, have taken hold in many places. Those who fear the very notion of new people and new ideas coming together often look backward for comfort. We always look to the past and wish we could return, says a character in The Travellers by Amanda Sun. We always think things were better in that imagined golden age.