Exploring (un)conditional love in relation to food, space, and queerness

GSWS 321 Student Spotlight: Erwin Inocalla

Inspired by Chosen Family Mixtape Zine, a zine edited by J Wu-O, I decided to create a zine as part of my final project for GSWS 321. I wanted to explore the concept of (un)conditional love in relation to food, space, and my queerness, in an attempt to think carefully about the sorts of limits or conditions I might need to set with my own Filipino diasporic family to protect myself. Initially, I opted for a more narrative structure made up of brief vignettes depicting my experiences of caretaking, family, love, food, and queerness. In the end, though, I found this structure limiting. The experimental form of the zine – the ability to choose how to use space and image, movement and pace, to evoke themes and experiences – allowed me to push further in my thinking and feeling.

After living in Korea alone for a year, I moved back in with my family during the pandemic. This drawing depicts our fridge at home, which these days is crowded with leftovers in containers for my family to separately reheat and eat alone. I was never allowed to do this before. We always used to eat meals together, food fresh and hot from the stove. Here, I think about the ambivalent complexity of my changing relationships with food and with my mother’s love, which animates the work she does as the family caretaker through preparing nourishing Filipino meals.