Unlearning, Call Out Culture, And Activism With Justine Abigail Yu

How do you nurture your personal journey in cultivating anti-racist communities? It’s time to get comfortable being uncomfortable. To pull us right into the work we need to do, Justine Abigail Yu shares with us the story of her encounter with a racist woman in a Toronto park.
“We are so afraid of failure... I think we need to just get comfortable with [failure] and normalize our imperfections.” - Justine Abigail Yu

How do you nurture your personal journey in cultivating anti-racist communities? 

It’s time to get comfortable being uncomfortable. To pull us right into the work we need to do, Justine Abigail Yu shares with us the story of her encounter with a racist woman in a Toronto park.

Justine Abigail Yu is the Founder and Editor-in-Chief of Living Hyphen, an intimate journal that explores what it means to live in between cultures as a hyphenated Canadian. She is a fierce advocate for diversity and representation in Canada’s arts and literature scene. 

Her mission: to stir the conscience and spur social change.

Justine is an award-winning writing workshop facilitator whose work with Living Hyphen has been featured on national and local media outlets including CTV National News, CBC Metro Morning, Radio-Canada International, CBC Ontario Morning, CityTV’s Breakfast Television, and City News. She is also a freelance writer whose work has been featured in publications such as Intermission Magazine, Metro News Canada, African Business Journal, and Makeshift Magazine.

In this episode, Justine and I dive into:
  • Justine’s recent encounter with a racist woman in a Toronto park, how she addressed the oppressor, and the actions taken by the community after the story went viral.
  • Our generation’s fear of failure and imposter syndrome.
  • Justine’s journey in launching and scaling Living Hyphen.

Continue the conversation with us on the Conscious Bad Asses Facebook group and follow along at @curatedconsciously.

Connect with Justine at justineabigail.com, livinghyphen.ca, and on Instagram and Twitter at @justineabigail.
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