Review: Labour for Love by Mia Corazon Aureus

Mia Corazon Aureus’ Labour for Love is a touching creative nonfiction piece published in Cha, an Asian literary journal, following the adoption story of Filipino Titang, who was cast out of home by two different families before she found a home, and finally had to move away from her own son to work.

The value of family is the tissue that holds the story together and makes for an intriguing and heartwarming read. Titang says at one point while referencing her movement through foster homes that her culture is “not kind to kids like me”, a statement that is specific to her Filipino heritage, but is also a sentiment felt globally. Adoption is a universal experience, which ties us to the piece empathetically, but it also adds to that with cultural distinctions that make it raw and authentic.

A moment that piqued our interest in the story was when Titang reached for the narrator's nephew, taking him into her arms and being the reassuring influence not only for him and the other characters but also for us as readers, showing her own learned and instinctive maternal influence. The writer grapples in the text with an unspoken ambiguity regarding the character's undernourished soul, due to her being unwanted in the early part of her life, and finally realizing and actualizing her potential to find redeeming qualities in herself as the mother she lacked. There's a sense in the text of Titang learning of self-love and self-respect to fill the missing piece in her life - that awareness of self that is so longed for in all of us as humans. This deepens our sympathy and empathy for the character and draws a link between us all as children of the world.

We all agreed that the symbolism laid bare in the stylised nuances of Titang’s characterization were extremely effective. We pinpointed beats in tone through which the author portrays the characters, and creates a sense of personal imagery and personality. Their personalities are infused into their actions, like the use of the motif of the colour blue for Titang’s character, which allows us to experience her character on a different level because of her obsession with the colour, along with other specific images that Aureus peppers throughout the piece.

One aspect of the piece that took away from its impact was the plain nature of some of the sentences. Occasionally, the specificity lapsed because of the lack of interesting language, meaning that we were taken out of the character’s story. The pace and story also lagged slightly in the middle. While the overall story was still captivating, it felt that during the section where she begins discussing her partner that the personalization of the story that was so touching fell away. While those elements of the story still provided interest, it didn’t feel connected to the rest of the story.

This touching story showed us how creative nonfiction work should make us feel, simultaneously heartbroken by someone's specific story, but the heartwarming sense of comradery between us all universally.

Find Mia Corazon Aureus’ Labour for Love by clicking here.

Written collaboratively by Georgia Couchman, Rhys Westbury, and Callie Beuermann.

There is Much to Learn From Our Differences

It’s a phrase you hear often, “learn from our differences”. A beautiful sentiment, but perhaps a rose-tinted one. Ideally, we would all learn from and love our differences. Skin would not separate us. Land would not discern us. Accent would not alienate us.

It a beautiful place to live, in the world of the ideal.

There are many people who share and practice to the best of their ability this sentiment. Everyone with a good heart would like to believe that this sentiment applies to them. They do not discriminate, do not alienate, love every life for its flickering possibility. However, that is a glossy idea. We are all holding hands in a circle singing about peace.

Truthfully, there is a discomfort in cosmopolitanism. Behind closed doors, different is another thing entirely. Different is scary, ugly, unusual. Different is uncomfortable. When we face ‘different’ it’s often with hesitation.

The people who want to hold hands and braid flowers into each other’s hair feel uncomfortable when truly met with different. In other places, people don’t wear shoes, people don’t use toilets, people eat horses. These are different, and not something one wants to accept.

The peace advocate thinks, ‘why would they do that? Is it poverty? Is it tradition? Is it choice?’ The answer is, it doesn’t matter. It’s different, scary, ugly, unusual, but it’s theirs.

The first step of learning from difference isn’t acceptance. It’s the opposite. It’s being confused and horrified.  It’s okay to feel these things. Coming to terms with different can take time, but once you become comfortable being uncomfortable, different settles next to you like an old friend.

The answer is not to meddle. We can share our ideas, our technology, our love, but we should never force them onto the other. We are not the savior. 

If their tradition is to not wear shoes, we might be disgusted, but we then must accept and adapt.

Sometimes we too must walk without shoes.

Amid feeling disturbed by difference, we look at the ‘other’, the foreign, and we recognize that while we are different, we are still made up of the same stardust. Right now, our hearts are beating at the exact same pace as someone else’s in the world, a beautiful rhythm that does not discriminate. People sometimes take that for granted.

Learning involves separating yourself from your situation, a level of objectiveness that not everyone is capable of achieving. It involves being unassuming and admitting that different isn’t wrong and conformity isn’t right. It involves seeing outside your body, not always knowing the answer, not always feeling comfortable and safe.

You may not always like different, you may try a new food for the first time and hate it. Yet you will have gained something valuable; perspective, a new lens to view the world in. While it is vastly huge, the world is still a small place, and while we all may feel like small cogs in the machine, we all have big stories to explore. 

Every encounter is an opportunity to learn. Every meeting is a possibility to show love. Once realized, the world becomes easier to swallow.