Coming Home/Coming Out

Abstract

This article is a theological reflection on one Queer Asian American woman’s experience of caring for her mother with Alzheimer’s disease. Using Coming Out/Coming Home as a frame and metaphor, the author explores the complexity of “home” for many Koreans/Korean-Americans whose very lives intersect with and are disrupted by major events in Korean and world history. For them, the act of coming home is complex, textured, and layered with experiences of loss, trauma, dislocation, resilience and hope. Through dis-ordered memories of a mother with Alzheimer’s, this article attempts to re-order what it means to come home. Grace Cho’s “ghostly haunting” provides a methodology. Layering theory with personal narratives, stories and a dream, ot is an experiment in performance—phantomogenic words that become “staged words.” In three parts, “coming home”, “ghostly hauntings”, and “tug-of-war”, this article performs coming home/coming out of one queer family’s experience of caring for a mother with Alzheimer’s.     

The Moors Are Coming,the Moors Are Coming! Encounters with Muslims in Contemporary Spain

For centuries the Spaniards have celebrated ‘Moors and Christians’, a popular enactment of the arrival of Islam in Spain and the subsequent Reconquista of the peninsula by Catholic forces. In this article we shall analyze how this celebration has evolved from being a religious commemoration and has become a secular holiday through which the population project their image of Muslims, drawing on historical perceptions. In addition, the changes introduced into ‘Moors and Christians’ during the past decades reflect developments in Spanish society in relation to gender issues, as well as adjustments to accommodate the increasing Muslim population.     

Coming Out

No abstract available for this article.     

Spider Coming Down

The Hopi Indians regard humor, even sexual humor, as a form of prayer in their religious ceremonies. Clowns play an important role among the kachinas, twisting things around to make important points.     

Coming Out in Voices

This paper articulates the personal experiences of a woman with a physical disability who enters therapy to explore issues involving lesbian identity, health and illness, disability oppression and pride, and relationships. Written in the first person, the article uses anecdotes, poetry, and journal entries to chart the author's process of self-discovery. As a woman, a lesbian, and a person with a disability, the author frequently finds herself at odds with the culture around her. This creates conflicts between the author's real self, and the self she must present to others. She discusses how she had learned to "silence the voices" which were not useful in challenging the stereotypes, making others comfortable, or communicating with assistants. The author describes how therapy offered her the opportunity to unlearn the silence, value all of her voices, listen to herself, resolve her internal dilemmas, and develop a deeper sense of self.     

Artistic Institutions, Valuable Experiences: Coming to Terms with Artistic Value

Supposing that talk of a distinctively artistic type of value is warranted, what separates it from other sorts of value? Any plausible answer must explain both what is of value and what is artistic about artistically valuable properties. Flaws with extant accounts stem from neglect of one component or the other; the account offered here, based on careful attention to actual art-critical practices, brings both together. The ??value?? component depends on the capacity of artworks to provide subjectively valuable experiences, while the ??artistic?? component relies on the specific norms constitutive of artworld institutions. Understanding artistic value in this way allows for progress on several persistent problems, including the ethical value of art, relativism in artistic value, and the proper boundaries of philosophical aesthetics.     

Coming to Terms, Depression, and Relationship Satisfaction for Native Americans in Intimate Relationships

This study examined the relationships between childhood family of origin (FOO) adversities, coming to terms with them, and adult intimate relationship satisfaction for Native American individuals. The sample consisted of 186 self-identified Native American individuals in committed relationships. The data for this study was collected from the RELATE assessment (see www.relate-institute.org). Results from structural equation modeling indicated that coming to terms buffered the negative effects of childhood family of origin adversities on depression and relationship quality. Results also suggest that coming to terms may help Native American individuals deal with FOO adversity and improve intimate relationship quality. Coming to terms with childhood FOO adversity should be considered in the treatment of Native American individuals in intimate relationships. Clinical implications and directions for future research are discussed.     

Coming to Terms with Our Regrets

This article focuses on the personal experience of regret and the importance of coming to terms with our regrets. It begins with a sermon preached by the first author in which the issue of regret is explored by means of a summary of the film The Big Kahuna, continues with a discussion of recent articles (Tomer and Eliason, Existential and spiritual issues in death attitudes, 2008; Mannarino et al., Existential and spiritual issues in death attitudes, 2008) on the concept of regret formulated by Landman (Landman, Regret: A theoretical and conceptual analysis, 1987; Regret: The persistence of the possible, 1993), and on regret therapy, and concludes with a pastoral care case in which a dying woman expresses both future-related and past-related regrets. The case is interpreted in light of regret therapy’s emphasis on parabolic experiences and reframing techniques.     

The Benefits of Coming into Existence

This paper argues that we can benefit or harm people by creating them, but only in the sense that we can create things that are good or bad for them. What we cannot do is to confer comparative benefits and harms to people by creating them or failing to create them. You are not better off (or worse off) created than you would have been had you not been created, for nothing has value for you if you do not exist, not even neutral value.