by Michelle Ha

Lunar media claims the Moon's reception capacity is overwhelmed. Right wing cable news calls the influx of human arrivals an alien invasion, a migrant caravan of rapists and bad hombres, threats to Lunar safety, culture, and identity.

While grading my charcoal study of a pinecone, my college studio art teacher remarked that I seem to draw “half from observation, half from imagination.” I wish I had asked her which half, exactly. I think speculation allows me to attempt an answer: how what we portray as fixed erases the dynamism of what could and should be.

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Michelle Ha was a corporate lawyer with an active immigration pro bono practice. She is now researching the history of Korean indentured labor migration to Mexico while learning Yucatec Maya. She has received a 2020-2021 Fulbright Fellowship to Mexico to continue her research, but her travel plans are on hold due to COVID-19.