Từ Từ Dialogue was created alongside our community from 2020 to 2023 using participatory research and play. It is a tool to foster conditions for understanding and love in the everyday life.
Disclaimer: Từ Từ is not a business with the priority to sell products, so our customer service may be a bit slow... Thank you for supporting our project with love! Từ Từ is finding ways to bring this tool and more like it to as many families as possible.
You can experience or buy Dialogue Cards offline from lovely friends of Từ Từ:
Historically, the phrase "stop making a fuss" is used against the marginalized (notably, women) as a technology to put them in line. It is effectively saying, "You are wrong. Please stop creating drama on unnecessary things." But who decides what is wrong and right , what is un/necessary?
In this booklet, you will find:
A discourse on love making a fuss.
How to “make a fuss” in your own community.
The use of projecation to create gatherings on fusses.
Stories by community contributors.
How does the concept of "making a fuss" relate to love?
Whose story deserves to be told, remembered, and empathized with? Who will be silenced? Who gets to decide whose stories are told?
Being a young, petite, female Vietnamese in a mostly tall, old, white, male academic space, there is much barrier for me to have the resonance of my dialects heard. In July, I went to the biggest international Asian Studies Conference for academics and I was repeatedly told, "Wow, you are the only Vietnamese national that I meet in this event."
I wanted to make this zine to wrap my own head around the importance of archiving, especially when we see that our lives are insignificant; Recognizing that why we feel insignificant is not only psychological, it's historical, political, and social discriminatory violence on our people.
What shocked us the most when we are working with communities who historically have been underserved and marginalized is (1) how kind these people are, and (2) how unkindly they allow the world to treat them. They don’t know that they deserve to be treated kindly in return. It is as if one-sided empathy and forgiveness are engineered into the abused to survive the abusive treatment. Overjustification, apologies, and forgiveness are tools that some people have been taught to do relentlessly at the expense of their own sanity for the comfort of the dominant one.
Against popular notions of love, this booklet urges us to…
STOP
blaming ourself for a moment
forgiving the other person
justifying for their misdeeds
spiritual bypassing our pains
START
admitting that we were hurt
validating our own reality
placing accountability where it’s due
truth-speaking about our experiences
Learning about Narcissism and On a macro level, by questioning who benefits from how we currently understand "love", I hope "love" widens to include the marginalized.
Are we hugging to get it done? Or are we hugging to enjoy?
In every hug, there’s an opportunity for those involved to share a brief moment of resting, rejuvenation, feeling safe, and feeling seen. Yet, because this process is vulnerable, and thus requires courage, many of us have been viewing hugs as if it is medicine – one to get done with or run away from.
This zine offers a Từ Từ’s way of hugging. With a two-word mantra: ‘Just Stay’, we hope all of us can allow ourselves and others to sink into the embrace of each other to feel seen and special.