“But I just lead a normal man’s working class life” frowned JuJu, deflecting my mom’s insistence in Shanghainese that he start documenting his life in the form of letters to her. They live oceans apart. JuJu lived in a small room with ten other people for years. He survived China’s Communist revolution. His story is one I’d give anything to read.
It will be the last time Ben and I are in Shanghai—witnessing such fleeting interactions—until our newborn arrives. I spent the 15 hour plane ride home dodging peanut shell shrapnel from a middle seat inhabitant and tugging at my knee-high compression socks. After watching Emma Stone’s Cruella, I surmised that growing a new human is pretty metal. Rock ‘n roll optimism is my third-trimester trick.
How was your trip?
Well, I attended my maternal grandmother’s Buddhist funeral at 28 weeks pregnant, my brain shuttering between the elegant sibilance of Shanghainese, the angularity of formal Mandarin, and the more familiar pugnacity of Hong Kong’s Cantonese dialect, completely mired in mortal thoughts. Gone mom. Golden years mom. New mom. Three weeks between Hong Kong + Shanghai shook loose the dormant colors of my heritage with opulent passage. I was one with family again. I looked the part of the majority again. I belonged again. The trip was mighty fine, thanks!
My side of BearBear’s story doesn’t begin in Milwaukee but in Utah, around 1975. My parents met there with two suitcases each and a couple hundred US dollars to their names. They worked throughout school and summer school bussing tables and preparing Arby’s biscuits at dawn. They sent money home to Hong Kong and honed their English one degree at a time until I arrived in 1990.
Both of my parents are retired professors now. I am an only child and they have funded my life in countless ways. The BearBear story would be nothing without my parents, Ben’s parents, and their success as individual people, as role models, as givers.
Ben and I kept our second-hand RZ1090U Risograph printer (hailing from the Wisconsin Document Imaging company) in the basement of our Milwaukee Lannon stone home exactly a year before we married in 2019. We spent a couple weeks fancifully workshopping names until Ben suggested ‘bear bear’. Kind of capturing the auspiciousness of the Chinese character for ‘double happiness’. Plus a nod to Ben’s surname, Grzenia, or ‘grizz’, as in the big brown bear. The clacking of our laptop keys served as amuse-bouche before dinner as we formed our LLC scrunched into a divot in our living room couch.
No more than five years.
That’s how long we promised ourselves we’d stay in Milwaukee for, filling that time with two corporate in-house design jobs, a stint at a nonprofit, one bakery gig, and what felt like a part time mentorship in bookmaking at a local startup. BearBear was the side thing until 2022. Our one-color Risograph printer moved into a studio space at The Bindery, and a two-color MZ1090U joined it a year later.
A connecting thread to all this is Milwaukee Zine Fest every April. Participation in art book fairs, zine festivals, or alternative comix conventions—which are often volunteer-led passion project affairs that span just one or two days—cannot be minimized for their outsized impact on our self publishing practice. Folks whom we only knew by their Risograph press names slowly transitioned from hallowed fixtures to digital acquaintances over Riso Discord chats to pals we could sit and split a Seattle dog with.
BearBear is in its sixth year of existence and its second as a two-person outfit giving it their all. I’m here to document that ‘all’. Humbly distilling hard-earned lessons from failing, pivoting, and winning at operating a small business in the Midwest as a first-generation Asian American expectant mom (yikes). Even if it feels like we just lead a “normal working class life”.
I’m going to treat this Substack as a serial document of BearBear’s (mostly) business efforts. Each post will contain one idea or chapter that forms a chain.
The sooner you hop on the chain the better you’ll understand the whole. Recommend this newsletter to a friend or share it with someone who’s thinking of starting their own business. This first installment was context—crucial history to catch you up to the now!
This is the last post where our free and paid content is the same.
To continue reading this chain, you’ll need to be a paid subscriber for the next post. We’ll cover topics that include When to Take Risks, Why aren’t you using Quickbooks already?, Fear the Gear Creep, Is there such thing as Good Debt?, and Systems or Suffer, etc. To be clear: the paid channel is a business-leaning newsletter that may veer slightly into the personal, but is centered on BearBear LLC and how it works. It’s an actionable blend of storytelling and business philosophy, backed up by hard-hitting facts. All in email-sized chunks delivered straight to your inbox.
If you’re sticking with our free newsletter, that will continue as a platform for studio news, event and workshop announcements, new products and publications: your friendly BearBear ticker tape!
No matter how you choose to read Bear Snacks, we’re so glad you’re here.
BearBear’s Pubs
The Paper is Short but my Love is Long: Back with a second edition.
Vietnam in B&W: Same!
Hanoi in Duotone: Onto its third edition by popular demand.
The Bridle Will Break: New. Ages 18 and up.
+ An exciting collaboration of 500 sewn Riso art books: announcing very, very soon.
And a Book(ish) Tote
Riso Rant totes are up in the shop. Printed on Eco bags and screen-printed locally.
Riso Open Studio
Book a Friday and hang with us. Our interviews for Riso Print Wizard Intern are underway!
Ben’s Latest Food Obsession
Red fish courtboullion. A recipe from M. Martin’s ‘Mosquito Supper Club’ cookbook, introduced to us by pals A & R. A dish we could see ourselves making over and over (but substituting cod from St. Paul’s at Milwaukee’s Public Market). It only calls for two pounds of freshly chopped onions.
On My Nightstand
And the opposite of fragility is…
Why do I want to monogram everything suddenly?
My girl Patti Smith wrote about my girl Dua Lipa in TIME Magazine (!!!!)
The only Summerfest 2024 lineup I’d attend, with or without you
The wasabi version of this famous candy
Silly phone cases + Iris blooms,
Diana