We're still emerging from the darkness of quarantine and isolation. Hopefully, we can move into the light without forgetting the parts of the experience of darkness that make it now so much brighter. We also seek the light and are sometimes blinded by it. But when you close your eyes, you can still feel the warmth, find your own space in the brightness.
This book is about all of that - comprised of 5 song collections: Chasing Light with Darkness, Finding Space in Brightness, A Place to Grow: Charting the Swoon, Reclaiming Our World and A Warm Embrace. One of Chiemi's songs, "Always Time to Climb" contains the phrase "odd simple beauty." When she first posted it, in February 2022, someone said to her "I like the 'odd simple beauty.' It would be a great title for something...."
All proceeds are directed to Asian Women for Health, a community-based non-profit organization advancing Asian women's health and wellbeing through education, advocacy, and support - a diverse group working together across differences in age, ethnicity, language, sexual orientation, socio-economic and educational levels, to address individual, community-wide and systemic barriers that affect Asian women and their loved ones. For more information, go to https: //www.asianwomenforhealth.org