As an immigrant, home has always held a special meaning for me. It’s intertwined with both joy and longing. I’ll never forget the feeling of each time arriving at my grandparents’ house for a visit. Finally resting my suitcase, heavy with gifts, in the entryway. Embracing them and transforming into a version of me that feels achingly familiar. It isn’t until then that I even realize a part of me was missing.

The invitation of this opening issue is to speak as if we’ve arrived home to a place where we feel safe and belong. We can unfurl ourselves into an almost-forgotten fullness, and be welcomed by people who share our pains and yearnings. In here…

What would you create? How would it feel?

Answering the call, many of the works presented in this issue center on the possibilities and challenges around (re)connection, resilience, and love. In a way, this theme is at the heart of psychoanalysis as a practice of attunement and relating. Some utilize concepts from psychoanalysis directly, while others lean into its inherent themes of connections lost and rediscovered. Amir Ramezani, Nsa Emodi, Jeanette Vuong, Maria S. Montero, Alex L. Andrade Jr., and Daniel Rockers created a poem that is in itself a beautiful reflection of the collective spirit of this publication. Their work speaks eloquently about moments in psychoanalytic therapy when boundaries between self and other, past and present, and even parts within oneself blur and transform via transference. Susan Rios composed a love letter. She reminds her Self that she is adored in all that she is and carries inside of her. She finds in her own loving gaze an act of reclaiming. Paul Wang wrote an ode to four generations of family, placing himself alongside them through words and imagery. They puzzle together an arc that stretches across time and oceans, fathers and sons reaching toward one another and also moving ever forward. Victoria Gutierrez-Kovner shares her autobiographical story of being a 1.5 generation immigrant and her process of piecing together through family, language, and being reflected by a familiar “other.” Along similar lines, Sahil Sharma (in “Trio of Discussant Responses”) reflects on how seeing and being seen in the consultation room as a South Asian immigrant therapist can bring both uncertainty and unexpected reward. In her book review, Mona Ezzat Abuhamda invites us to engage with a story of humanizing and human relating under seemingly impossible circumstances in Israeli-occupied Palestine.

Here, I need to acknowledge the absence of works in this issue that address - in a contemporary way - the genocide in Gaza, now five months in with over 30,000 Palestinian lives lost and countless others devastated. While Abuhamda’s “A Morning in Jenin'' no doubt touches on themes that are at the core of this current horror, there is also a gap that cannot go unwitnessed or unaddressed. This issue’s deadline for submission occurred a week after October 7, 2023. As I reflect on those dizzying days and weeks, words felt simultaneously not enough and like they were the only lifeline to what was happening. Like many, I found myself lost in words (and pictures) that updated the dreadful losses daily or hourly, or in the lack thereof from mainstream sources. What words I could find, I spent on letters of protest or support, in emails and forums, places that felt immediately urgent rather than months away. I imagine this may also have been the case for others. Still, I hope that as Coloring Psychoanalysis grows in the days ahead, it becomes a space where words and other expressions about Palestine can find a welcome home.

Another vein that courses through several pieces is grappling with the nature of our work to practice self-care, retain meaning, and meet ethical standards. Amir Ramezani examines the often contradictory tasks in his capacity as an assessor, all the while asking what it means to do this work with integrity. Stephanie Z. Chen weaves together her professional and personal narratives to challenge us to think about the value of our work against the backdrop of sociopolitical forces. In his writing, Loong Kwok (in “Trio of Discussant Responses”) picks up a similar thread of the slipperiness of Asian American identity and how it can come to be replaced by production.

Some of us chose to engage directly with psychoanalysis and the ways it harms us as intersectional BIPOC people. As we prepared to publish, my conversations with several contributors made clear the risks of expressing our pain and anger so plainly. Coloring Psychoanalysis’ very existence over the last year as a BIPOC-exclusive space has attracted a range of responses from the cis White psychoanalytic world, from clueless questioning to outright attack. Even so, our words and images burn with courage, as well as with a fiery love for the field and ourselves/our communities. In her cover art, Theresa Tan brings us face to face with a transformed Founding Father. It demands an unflinching look at the racism embedded in the roots of psychoanalysis as well as invites new imaginings of hope. Sophia Sandhu articulates her excellent observations and challenges to psychoanalysis to better serve neurodiverse BIPOC patients. Wen D. Feng’s poem is at once playful, layered, and subversive. I also offer my piece (in “Trio of Discussant Responses”), fittingly a part of my journey in creating Coloring Psychoanalysis, about turning our tools on psychoanalysis itself to reverse its investment in power and Whiteness.

Relatedly, the final work of the issue showcases the act of creativity, even through risk and failure, as living and life itself. Melikabella Shenouda opens her creative process to us and invites us to ponder with her the experience of living in our bodies, minds, and histories.

Finally, these works are presented in a web-based “zine” format. It feels imperative that the publication brings together verbal and artistic languages as a holistic expression of our resilience and joy. I hope the overall experience of this issue feels engaging and enlivening, a move away from academia and toward accessibility, creativity, and pleasure.

It’s a great honor to present this collection of works to you in the first issue of Coloring Psychoanalysis. I am in awe and gratitude.

To share your reactions to these works, feel free to contact each author at the email address included in their bio at the bottom of each page. You can also contact me directly (coloring.psychoanalysis@gmail.com).