Living Between Cultures: Storytelling With Justine Abigail Yu
In this four-part workshop with Justine Abigail Yu, students will explore their diasporic identities through writing in the genre of their choice.
Course Description
Identity, history, and home have layers; for many of us, they involve multiple geographies, two or more worlds. Join Justine Abigail Yu, Founder and Editor-in-Chief of Living Hyphen, in this small-group, open-genre writing workshop for BIPOC individuals to explore—through storytelling—the lived experience of straddling multiple worlds and embodying hyphenated identities. Over the course of four sessions, we’ll examine the complexities of our diasporic identities through writing prompts, storytelling exercises, and discussion. We’ve designed this workshop to be intimate and generative, with writing prompts that will spark your creativity and give you the time and space to share your story in a safe and positive environment. In our final session, we’ll celebrate the work we’ve done together with a reading of our favorite stories.
No writing experience is necessary. Students should be ready to share their written work out loud. In an effort to ensure all students feel comfortable discussing and sharing their work, we will not be recording sessions.
This workshop series is facilitated through Living Hyphen, a magazine and community that is dedicated to exploring life in between cultures as hyphenated Canadians. Living Hyphen’s aim is to reshape the mainstream and to turn up the volume on voices that often go unheard. A portion of the proceeds from this course will go directly to Living Hyphen.
Syllabus at a Glance
There are four total sessions included in this purchase, each meeting once a week for two hours.
Section A: Meets Mondays beginning January 4
Session 1 (Monday, 1/4, 7–9 PM ET): Living in the hyphen
Session 2 (Monday, 1/11, 7–9 PM ET): Love from afar
Session 3 (Monday, 1/18, 7–9 PM ET): Across generations
Session 4 (Monday, 1/25, 7–9 PM ET): Storytelling night
Section B: Meets Sundays beginning January 31
Session 1 (Sunday, 1/31, 11 AM–1 PM ET): Living in the hyphen
Session 2 (Sunday, 2/7, 11 AM–1 PM ET): Love from afar
Session 3 (Sunday, 2/14, 11 AM–1 PM ET): Across generations
Session 4 (Sunday, 2/21, 11 AM–1 PM ET): Storytelling night
Section C: Meets Mondays beginning March 1
Session 1 (Monday, 3/1, 7–9 PM ET): Living in the hyphen
Session 2 (Monday, 3/8, 7–9 PM ET): Love from afar
Session 3 (Monday, 3/15, 7–9 PM ET): Across generations
Session 4 (Monday, 3/22, 7–9 PM ET): Storytelling night
Between Sessions
Students will be assigned light homework, which will typically include building out any of the stories we begin writing in class but don't have the time to fully flesh out.
Atlas Obscura Online Courses
Our online courses offer opportunities for participants to emerge with new skills, knowledge, connections, and perspectives through multi-session classes designed and taught by expert instructors. Courses can take one of two forms: Seminars are intimate, interactive classes—capped at nine to 25 students—exploring topics and crafts through discussion, workshops, assignments, and in-class activities. We also offer lecture series that can be attended live, or viewed via a recording that will be shared within 72 hours after each session airs. Class recordings for lecture series will be available with a temporary password for up to two weeks following the final session of the course.
To learn more about our current course offerings, please visit www.atlasobscura.com/online-courses.
For answers to commonly asked questions, check out our FAQ page here.
Once registered, you’ll receive a confirmation email from Eventbrite that will provide access to the class meeting. Please save the confirmation email as you’ll use it to access your course via Zoom on each scheduled date and time.
Justine Abigail Yu is the Founder and Editor-in-Chief of Living Hyphen, a community that explores what it means to live in between cultures. She is an award-winning writing workshop facilitator whose work with Living Hyphen has been featured on national and local media outlets including CTV National News, CBC Metro Morning, Radio-Canada International, CBC Ontario Morning, CityTV’s Breakfast Television, and City News. Justine Abigail is a fierce advocate for diversity and representation in Canada’s arts and literature scene. Her mission is to stir the conscience and spur social change. You can follow her at @justineabigail / @livinghyphen across all channels.
This is an interactive, small-group, seminar-style course that meets over Zoom. Students may be invited to participate in discussions, workshop their projects, and receive feedback from the course instructor.
In most cases, instructors will use Google Classroom to communicate with students outside of class. While students aren’t required to use Google Classroom, instructors will be using this platform to post resources, discussion questions, and assignments, when applicable.
There are 8 spots available on this experience.
This course is open to students who identify as BIPOC and are at least 20 years old.
