Jiyun Woo

WGSS 3170 Sex, Gender, and Citizenship

Professor Bock

Everything Bagel and The “Stuff” of Archives: Mess, Migration, and Queer Lives

During WGSS 3170 “Sex, Gender, and Citizenship” course, there were several cours

e materials that I related to, and one of the most was the piece called “The “Stuff” of Archive

s: Mess, Migration, and Queer Lives” by Martin F. Manalansan IV. The primary reason why

I resonated the most is because it reminded me of my favorite film called “Everything, Every

where, All At Once,” in short EEAO. I’ve never resonated with the film so far as this film EE

AO. Growing up as an Asian woman was already hard for me. Feeling like I didn’t belong in

this society, getting discriminated against, against receiving racial jokes was already enough f

or me. Everything Bagel that appears in EEAO made me connect to the idea of “archives” an

d “mess” in Menalansan’s piece. Both of the pieces are concentrated on the concept of living

as a social minority, especially being a racial and sexual minority. This essay is focused on th

e idea of living as a queer Asian woman in the States mainly based on two pieces mentioned

above, Malansan’s piece and “Everything, Everywhere, All At Once,” and also a few concept

s mentioned in class.

“Everything, Everywhere, All At Once” is based on Joy, who is a queer Asian Americ

an, the life story and the story of her family. Throughout the film, it explains what Joy goes t

hrough in her life living as a minority. She experiences nihilism and becomes Jobu Tabuki, w

ho has control over multiple universes, feeling like she wants to destroy herself. She puts eve

rything on her bagel which is connected to the idea of “mess” and “archives” in Manalansan’

s piece. It’s a story about six people who are queer and undocumented living together being c

alled “Queer Six.” Together they create a ‘mess’ living like a hoarder since they have no time

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to clean because they’re busy doing their work for survival. I thought these two pieces interse

ct in terms of explaining how it is to be a minority living in the US trying to survive.

In “Everything Everywhere All at Once”, Joy experiences conflict with her family, es

pecially with her mom, Evelyn Wang, as a queer teenager. In the movie, there are an infinite

amount of parallel universes and they are being destroyed by an all-consuming everything ba

gel created by Jobu Tupaki who is Joy in another universe. Only Evelyn has the power to sav

e the universe from collapsing. At first, Evelyn tries to solve the problem without deeply und

erstanding Joy. She introduced Joy’s girlfriend to her father as a girlfriend’ thinking that doin

g that would show Joy that she was supporting her. However, Joy refused this easy reconcilia

tion, being more distant from her mom (Rebecca Ruiz, 2023). After showing Evelyn ‘Everyth

ing Bagel’, the bagel that Jobu Tupaki created to put everything about her life in one bagel, E

velyn understands the blunt life of Joy and feels the ‘nothingness’ like her. At the end of the

story, Evelyn embraces her true self by accepting the alternate realities and her past regrets, al

so it ends by giving the message that we need to be kind to people around us.

“Mess, Migration, and Queer Lives” is about a household that consists of six undocu

mented immigrants creating a queer space of waywardness in terms of physical, affective, an

d social arrangement (Martin F. Manalansan, IV, 2014). Their household contains a huge mes

s, full of archives. According to Oxford Language, the word ‘archive’ refers to a collection of

historical documents or records providing information about a place, institution, or group of p

eople. It means that there could be meanings involved from the past, it could reflect who you

are and what memories you have. Things that are important to us might be left and it might h

ave a meaning that could be articulated through what we have now.

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 Furthermore, the author highlights the “messiness” as moments of vitality, pleasure, a

nd fabulousness rather than just negative aspects such as misery, desolation, and abandonmen

t. Manalansan also emphasizes the idea of mess and clutter as a portrayal of queerness and qu

eer archives and shows how they survive as queer immigrants. They found out the mess could

help them stay under the radar by blurring their identities and avoiding unwanted attention an

d scrutiny. Therefore, the chaos of unarranged space is not just physical condition but also re

presents what they are and how they live.

The first focus of these two pieces is ‘too-much-ness,’ or in other words “intersectiona

lity.” According to Avalon (2022), EEAO portrays that in the face of too-much-ness, it can fe

el like nothing matters. In EEAO, Joy experiences two types of melancholy, feeling like she’s

‘other’ or ‘minority’ because of her race and her sexual orientation. This is called “intersectio

nality,” referring to when individuals experience oppression based on their multiple social ide

ntities, such as race, gender, class, sexual orientation, disability, and others, and they intersect

together (Mignon R. Moore, 2011). Intersectionality shows that one cannot be defined in just

one category but with multiple complex minority groups. For example, Joy is Asian America

n, a racial minority, but also queer, a sexual minority. Also, in “Mess, Migration, and Queer

Lives,” the Queer Six experiences the intersectionality of being immigrants and sexual minori

ties. Queer Six household consists Filipina trans woman, two South Asian gay men, an Ecuad

orian lesbian, and two Colombians, a lesbian and a bisexual man. They are all racial and sexu

al minorities trying to make a living and survive in New York City. Joy and Queer Six are all

experiencing “too-much-ness,” meaning they’re overwhelmed by the melancholy of not bein

g ‘mainstream’ in society. Joy put all matter in the universe in a giant bagel-shaped black hol

e, to escape from the complexity of her life. Queer Six put all their “stuff” into a pile of mess,

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an archive, in their household. However, the difference between Joy and Queer Six is that Joy

wanted to devastate herself, meanwhile, Queer Six struggled fiercely to survive.

The second point is social abjection. The word abjection means making abject, meani

ng rejection or humbling (Merriam-Webster Dictionary). Therefore, being a social abjection i

s a concept of being one who repeatedly finds oneself the object of others’ violent objectifyin

g disgust (Tyler, 2013). Evelyn, a Chinese woman living with her family in the US and work

ing at a laundromat, experiences racism and diasporic identity struggles to adjust between tw

o cultures. At the beginning of the film, Evelyn struggles with taxation with her husband, Wa

ymond Wang. The IRIS agent says, “I thought your daughter was coming to translate.” Also,

the movie hints at the mental health stigmas and depression in the Asian American and Pacifi

c Islanders (AAPI) community (R.F. Kuang, 2022). It’s seen in the scene when Evelyn tries t

o reach out to Joy while hiding in the closet, saying “I know you have these feelings… but it’

s not your fault.” She also experiences a language divide as we can see in the scene where her

dad speaks fluent English as he becomes another version of himself in another universe, she e

xclaims, “When did he get so good at English?” Being socially rejected, feeling like they do

n’t belong in society, and not being mainstream is what Evelyn and her family experience in t

his story. The concept of social abjection goes the same for Queer Six. They are constantly in

fear of being deported, or rejected from the U.S., and are always afraid of surveillance.

Lastly, the concept that brings both pieces together is citizenship; which Evelyn Wang

and Queer Six lack. According to Berlant, citizenship can mean standing within the law and a

t the same time can mean feeling a common identity based on a shared historical, legal, or fa

milial connection to a geographical space. In the United States, the former and latter definitio

ns don’t always go hand in hand. Even when people are in the same geographical area growin

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g up there, they might not have citizenship. Vice versa, even when they have citizenship, they

might not feel like they belong in the country. In EEAO, Evelyn grew up in China but ran aw

ay from her family to live with Waymond. The Wangs were a multilingual family with mixed

citizenship status (Sisil Jiang, 2022). As we can see in the film, the Wangs use multiple langu

ages to communicate, English, Chinese, and Cantonese. They struggle to maintain their statu

s in America by paying taxes to maintain their status in living in the States. Furthermore, obta

ining citizenship is also not easy in Britain. Imogen Tyler suggests that there are certain grou

ps in Britain constantly being socially abject figures. Gypsies and Travellers from Dale Farm

were evicted in 2011 to fight against the unfair treatment they’re getting from the modern Bri

tish government; they face barriers to getting access to housing, education, healthcare, and e

mployment.

As such, being treated like an outsider can mean lacking a way to survive; or sufferin

g. In other words, not being protected by the state could mean to “let die.” Sovereignty can m

ean the right to grant life but also to take life. This is well-illustrated as we can see in how the

Queer Six suffers to survive in New York City. The undocumented Filipina trans woman fro

m the “Mess, Migration, and Queer Lives” getting scared of getting caught and deported whe

n asked about her household is an example of this. Not having status threaten the lives of peo

ple, the Queer Six are living in an unorganized place in one bedroom, which is in Manalansa

n’s words, an “impossible life.”

In conclusion, by using the course materials learned in class, mainly “Mess, Migratio

n, and Queer Lives” could be used to analyze “Everything Everywhere All At Once” and rela

te the concept to queer and Asian communities living in the U.S. Using the idea of “Everythin

g Bagel” from EEAO, we can understand the intersectionality of having multiple social minor

ity identities. Also, we can understand the concept of abjection by looking at the Asian diaspo

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ra that Evelyn and Joy experience in EEAO, and by looking at how the Queer Six live as imm

igrants creating a mess to survive in Melansan’s piece. Lastly, we could understand the conce

pt of citizenship and how it could affect people by looking at Berlant’s explanation of ‘citizen

ship’ and relating to the Queer Six being undocumented, and Evelyn struggling to pay taxes t

o fulfill her requirements to live in the States.

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 Citation

“Abjection.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-we

bster.com/dictionary/abjection.Accessed 4 May. 2024.

Avalon, ed. “The Internet and the Everything Bagel.” Medium, June 30, 2022. https://mediu

m.com/@aval0n/the-internet-and-the-everything-bagel-c3bfb9089632.

Berlant, Laurent. “Citizenship.” Essay. In Keywords for American Cultural Studies 3rd e

d. NYU Press, 2020.

Farnell, Chris. “Everything Everywhere: What Does the Everything Bagel Mean?” Den of Ge

ek, June 24, 2022. https://www.denofgeek.com/movies/everything-everywhere-what-

everything-bagel-mean/.

Jiang, Sisi. “Everything Everywhere All at Once Is an Immigrant Horror Story about Tax Sea

son.” The Verge, May 4, 2022. https://www.theverge.com/23055066/everything-ever

ywhere-all-at-once-life-death-taxes.

Kuang, R.F. “Everything Everywhere All at Once Is the Non-Diaspora Diaspora Story We’ve

Been Waiting For.” Reactor, January 26, 2024. https://reactormag.com/everything-eve

rywhere-all-at-once-review/.

Manalansan, Martin F. The “Stuff” of Archives: Mess, Migration, and Queer Lives , (2014):

94–107.

Moore, Mignon R. “Intersectionality and the Study of Black, Sexual Minority Women.” Gen

der & Society 26, no. 1 (January 23, 2012): 33–39. https://doi.org/10.1177/08912

43211427031.

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Ruiz, Rebecca. “‘Everything Everywhere All at Once’ Has the Best Take on Mental Health Y

ou Never Expected.” Mashable, March 13, 2023. https://mashable.com/article/everyth

ing-everywhere-all-at-once-meaning.

Tyler, Imogen. Revolting subjects: Social abjection and Resistance in Neoliberal Britain. Lon

don: Bloomsbury Academic, 2013.