My radio station is installed! I ended up putting it in the little library/storage space where an organization I volunteer with, Books Through Bars, keeps our bookshelves. It’s out of the way and not the most picturesque spot, but that makes me pretty confident that no one’s going to step on it or tamper with it. Most people will probably just hear it, not see it, but I can always get the key to the space and show people if need be. My partner and I had a few hiccups with putting everything together and aligning our schedules, but we’ve got it figured out now, as long as a radio manages to pick up on it.
It was cool to read Lily Hoang and Vi Khi Nao’s “Broccoli” last week and hear Professor Hoang talk about it. I thought it was very impressive how much work they put into translating and working with a language they weren’t entirely fluent in. I’m not sure I’d have the patience to write something that incorporates Hebrew as much as they used Vietnamese, but you never know; maybe one day. I wished that I understood Vietnamese so that I could have appreciated their writing fully, but hopefully there are people out there who were able to get the maximum amount out of their work. Either way, it gave me a lot to think about when it comes to how I might use code-switching and translanguaging in my writing in the future.
Overall, I feel like this class really got me out of my comfort zone and made me explore writing in ways I never have before. I was really intimidated by this project at first; I even considered dropping the class because it wasn’t what I expected at all when I signed up. I’m glad I stuck it out, though. I haven’t become the most gifted audio editor ever, but I have thought more about how my writing translates to sound and how considering my different languages and cultures can add depth to my work. This was a fun project to create as one of the last things I do at UCSD.
And here’s my audio file:
Radio Chthulucene 87.9 FM 
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