Tag: feminism

The Cafe Cà Phê team is serving up hella good coffee, culture, and AAPI inclusion.

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By Kelcie McKenney

For Asian American Pacific Islander (AAPI) Heritage Month, we teamed up with The Pitch to highlight the AAPI team members who make Kansas City’s first Vietnamese coffee shop Cafe Cà Phê possible. Stick around this month to hear their stories.

Cafe Cà Phê makes a damn good cup of coffee. But mixed in with the Vietnamese drip and sweetened condensed milk is the recipe for representation.

If you’re tapped into the Kansas City coffee scene, chances are you’ve heard Jackie Nguyen’s story. But we’ll give you a quick refresher. Nguyen, a first-generation Vietnamese American, left Broadway at the start of the pandemic, moved to Kansas City, and opened Cafe Cà Phê—Kansas City’s first Vietnamese mobile coffee shop. And since then, Nguyen and her coffee shop have positioned themselves as advocates for KC’s Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) community.

“When I grew up, I felt so ashamed to be Asian. I thought it was so uncool, and I felt like we were always teased and looked down upon,” Nguyen said. “I do not ever want any Asian kid to feel that way because it’s so far from the truth. I hope to combat that.”

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How Caley Rose Uses Her Music as a Form of Empowerment

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By Nicole Mitchell

Caley Rose is a female empowerment pop singer of four years—and she’s just getting started. So far, her music has been in commercials, she’s been streaming her music creation, her single “GAME OVER” is on the Billboard charts, and, coming up soon, Rose will be performing at an event this Saturday in Chattanooga, Tennessee.

While Rose has been booked and busy regarding her music career recently, it wasn’t always that way. “I was always a singer,” she said. “But I got lost along the way and took some detours.” Her original end goal was to join Broadway as a performer. “However, if I was honest with myself, I really just wanted to do pop music.”

It took Rose a while into her music career to make the switch to pop. “I was working with different producers, and I wasn’t a songwriter,” she said. At the time, Rose followed the lead of what her songwriters wanted her music to sound like. “It wasn’t until four years ago that I started songwriting,” she explained. “Once I realized myself as a writer, I saw myself as a singer.”

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The Short Film Honey & Milk Will Bring an Untold Story of Gender-Identity to Life

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By Sophie Oswald

Honey & Milk tells a story we have yet to see on screen. It follows Alice and Grayson in their final moments as a couple before the life they once knew comes to an end. As Grayson discovers who they truly are and breaks down the walls of masculinity, everything about their romantic relationship changes. Emotions are high with moments of intense anger and heavy sadness. 

Alice wants to take on life together, but Grayson needs the freedom to find themself. Grayson leaves and heads back into the world anew, and Alice is left to grieve what once was. As said on Seed & Spark, “Honey & Milk will leave the audience contemplating how some of the most unconditional expressions of love often come at a personal cost. Love holds the sweet grief of impermanence.”

This uniquely beautiful and inclusive film is being created by an all femme and gender nonconforming (GNC) crew. The short film not only explores gender and personal transformation, but it’s being created by people who truly understand those experiences. 

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Poetry and photography zine Tessellation explores piecing yourself back together—while raising funds for Barrier Babes.

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By Kelcie McKenney
Photos by Travis Young

I reached a creative roadblock in the midst of the 2020 pandemic. I wasn’t making things for myself, and my mental health was suffering because of it. So I challenged myself to make. And this book was created.

Over the fall of 2020, I pieced together poetry and film photography to create Tessellation, a zine about falling apart and putting yourself back together again. 

Over a year and a half later, Tessellation is ready for the world. And because this zine helped me through a dark time, I want it to help others. So I’ve partnered with Barrier Babes—a Kansas City nonprofit that strives to promote inclusive and unapologetic sexual health education. Barrier Babes distributes condoms as a way to help lower rising STI rates in Kansas City. 

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Here’s the Deal with Mansplaining and Why it Needs to Stop

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By Sophie Oswald
Illustrations by Matthew Vargas

“Men explain things to me, still. And no man has ever apologized for explaining, wrongly, things that I know and they don’t,” Rebecca Solnit remarked in her essay Men Explain Things to Me. While Solnit didn’t specifically use the word “mansplain” in her popular essay, she was one of the first to discuss this phenomenon. Conversations surrounding her essay shortly resulted in the term appearing in a comment section online.

Most women, maybe even all women, have been there. Men have been explaining things in patronizing ways for centuries. 

Generally, mansplaining involves a conversation between a man and a woman, but sometimes it can happen between two men or with a man and a non-binary person.

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