BONDING

<p>This twelfth SDUK broadsheet examines the diverse means by which individuals and communities build lasting or fleeting bonds. Coinciding with the conclusion of <em>Crossings: Itineraries of Encounter</em>, the Blackwood’s 2021–22 lightbox series, this issue, <strong>BONDING</strong>, echoes themes seen throughout <em>Crossings</em>: migration, diaspora, borders, and archives. Where the lightbox exhibitions examine image-making practices, this SDUK issue engages print culture in new and recurring formats including visual storytelling, poetry, a letter exchange, and a recipe.</p> <p>Food is the source of many enduring cultural bonds, and thus one might be tempted to start from the gut: See <em>Diasporic Dumplings</em> (p. 27) for a site-responsive recipe for Mississauga. Huynh’s recipe begs the question: <strong>How do cultural practices shift for a local context?</strong> While she describes the dumpling as a diasporic vessel, poetry by Cecily Nicholson (p. 14) reflects on the transformation of land for agriculture. Her verse considers the enactment of Canadian settler colonialism through farmland practices.</p> <p>If bonding evokes notions of home and community, readers may wonder: <strong>How do we forge bonds across difference, and across culture?</strong> Karie Liao’s column (p. 30) examines the many valences of solidarity in the GTHA—expanding on the term’s origins in the labour movement to trace its resurgence in socially-engaged art practice, and disability and migrant justice activism. Continuing the focus on deepening equity across difference, a Q&A (p. 18) compiles the insights of diverse healthcare practitioners on the movement toward more gender-inclusive reproductive care…</p>