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Collected Item: “Lian McMillan Oral History, 2021/05/06”

Title

Lian McMillan

Who conducted the interview? List all names, separated by comma.

Kit Heintzman

Who was interviewed? List all names, separated by commas.

Lian McMillan

Email Address(es) for all interviewers. Separated by comma.

kheintzman@gmail.com

Use one-word hashtags (separated by commas) to describe your oral history. For example: Where did it originate? How does this object make you feel? How does this object relate to the pandemic?

#Toronto #Chinese #Canadian #queer #dog #foodservice #CERB #vegetarian #vaccine #antimaskers #voting #police #theGreatDepression #gratitude #environmentalism #onlineeducation #publictransit #indigenoussovereignty

What is the format of your recording?

Video

In what ZIP code is the primary residence of the interviewee? (enter 5-digit ZIP code; for example, 00544 or 94305)? In what city/town/village does the interviewee live? In what country does the interviewee live? All comma-separated.

Toronto, Ontario, Canada

What is the gender of the interviewee? Be sure to allow interviewees to self-identify their gender in the pre-interview or interview. *Do not assign a gender identity to interviewees.*

cis woman she/her

What is the age of the interviewee?

18 to 24

How does the interviewee describe their race or ethnicity? Be sure to allow interviewees to self-identify their race/ethnicity in the pre-interview or interview. *Do not assign a racial or ethnic identity to interviewees.*

mixed Chinese/white

Describe the oral history.

Self-description: “I’m a 21-year-old musician. I just recently graduated from U[niversity] of T[oronto] a week ago, and I graduated with a classical percussion degree. I play for a band called cutsleeve. We’re a group of east Asian, queer sound musicians. I’m a mixed race woman, my father is white, and my mother is Chinese. I’ve lived in Canada, the [United] States, and I lived in Shanghai for a few years. I’m a dog owner.”

Some of the things we discussed include:
Working multiple jobs including music making, being in the food service industry during the pandemic, and working as an usher for music performances.
Negotiating online education while teachers were getting used to unfamiliar technologies, having to keep going to campus for performance aspects of the music degree, and how COVID-19 impacted finishing undergraduate degree.
The intersections of environmentalism and the pandemic, single use plastics for food safety, vegetarianism, Indigenous sovereignty, and the Mi’kmaq fisheries.
Worrying about family members in China.
Receiving Canada Emergency Response Benefit (CERB).
Getting vaccinated and the inequities of access in Ontario, Canada.
Looking “healthy” on paper while managing chronic conditions, inaccessibility of mental health care through provincial insurance, medical bureaucracy, and the University of Toronto’s student services.
“Never really felt totally safe as a woman”.
Using public transit during the pandemic.
Anti-maskers.
The perils of strategic voting and its impact on which government officials ended up managing the pandemic.
Police brutality, anti-Asian attacks.
Resonances between her grandmother’s experiences of the Depression and the potential aftereffects of the pandemic on this generation’s future.
Gratitude for partnership during the pandemic, as well as the difficulties of seeing one another.

Cultural references: Netflix, FaceTime, Doug Ford, Justin Trudeau, the NDP, Donald Trump, Uber Eats, OHIP.

See also:
https://www.cutsleeveband.com
https://dominionated.ca/reviews/cutsleeve-the-parts-we-could-not-abandon/
https://fromtheintercom.com/cutsleeve-the-parts-we-could-not-abandon-review/

On what date did you record this oral history?

2021-05-06T14:07
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