Podcasts about asian american writers workshop

A weekly magazine-style radio show featuring the voices and stories of Asians and Pacific Islanders from all corners of our community. The show is produced by a collective of media makers, deejays, and activists. Tonight on APEX Express, Host Miko Lee speaks with artivists from the upcoming exhibition at Edge on the Square opening this Saturday June 29 and running through February 2025!   TRANSCRIPT Walking Stories: Artivists POV   Opening: [00:00:00] Apex Express Asian Pacific expression. Community and cultural coverage, music and calendar, new visions and voices, coming to you with an Asian Pacific Islander point of view. It's time to get on board the Apex Express.   Miko Lee: [00:00:34] Good evening this is Miko Lee and welcome to Apex Express. We are so happy to have you with us. We are going to be talking about something really personal to me tonight. We are talking about the new interactive exhibition at Edge on the Square in San Francisco, Chinatown. The whole exhibition is called Walking Stories and it is stories from our Asian American community. And we invite you to join us. It opens June 29th and runs all the way through December. Opening night, June 29th is going to be interactive performances and amazing little goodies so we really invite you to join us for opening, but if you can make it that night, we're running all the way through the end of December. Okay, so a little bit of background. Some of you might know that I have been a host on Apex Express for the past seven and a half years, and it has truly been a delight and a joy. As part of that time, I learned that Apex Express is part of a network of Asian American progressive groups. That's called AACRE, which is short for Asian Americans for Civil Rights and Equality. And about two and a half years ago, I joined the staff of AACRE, which has been such a joy to be around colleagues that share the same values and passions and beliefs in supporting and uplifting our community. For the past year, we have been working on a narrative strategy, really trying to reframe how Asian Americans are portrayed in the media, how we're perceived within our own community. We were initially going to do this with the Pacific Islander community as well. But in talking to our sister colleagues, they are going through their own process of a PI narrative strategy and I totally respect that. At some point we will merge and join those voices together. So right now we're focusing on Asian American stories. Through the past year through wonderful funding from San Francisco foundation's Bay Area Creative Corps we were actually able to fund approximately 37 different artists and embed them in different AACRE groups to be able to create narratives that resonate with their own communities. So that in this exhibit Walking Stories, we're going to hear stories about Hmong folks and formerly incarcerated folks, folks that are queer and trans and folks that have stories to share, because we all have important stories to share. Our exhibit is inviting folks to think about how they can get involved, how they can share their own stories, how they can join us in this collective movement for rewriting our history of the kind of silent, quiet model minority that sits in the background that's used as the wedge issue for larger things like reparations and affirmative action and really reframes that and brings back our Asian American activist past because we know that is who we are. That is our history going back from the first time that we came into this country. We invite folks in the community to join us to see more about who these stories are, to find out, to get involved to see what resonates with them and even what doesn't resonate with them. But really join us in this conversation. So tonight I'm really pleased to be talking with just a few of the artists that are in Walking Stories. So that you can get some insight into their process and how they made the piece that they're going to be sharing.   The exhibit itself will be at Edge on the Square in San Francisco Chinatown. When you walk in, you are going to see this timeline of lanterns hanging from the ceiling. That's about an Asian American activist history. You're going to see a really cool, nourishing power piece, which we're going to talk to the artists about, that is about how potlucks were used as a tool for queer and trans organizing. You are going to learn more about Hmong dance. And what does that look like, and what does it feel like in your own body? You're going to learn about ancestors, the power of our ancestors and how we can bring that to help us in our healing and moving forward. You're going to see in the exhibit about a Hmong story cloth reimagined with a modern perspective, you're going to see stories of south Asians activists and what they represent. And what does it mean to be a south Asian Muslim in America today? You're going to hear some of these stories. You're going to see them. We hope that you'll experience them. Then we hope that you'll learn more and find out about what we're doing and how you can get involved. So join me on this little journey through some of the artivists—that's artists that are also activists—that are part of our exhibit called Walking Stories. Come board. Join us. Welcome Hà Trần to Apex Express. We're so happy to have you with us. Trần Châu Hà: [00:05:40] Thank you for having me.   Miko Lee: [00:05:41] So you are amazing artist, but I want to start and go back and for you to tell us who are your people and what legacy do you carry with you?   Trần Châu Hà: [00:05:52] Ooh, oh my god, that's such like a big question. I guess my people are the people at Asian Prisoner Support Committee. I come from like a lineage of like Vietnamese refugees, and I think about like the ways that our communities have been impacted by the legacy of imperialism, which includes like incarceration, deportation, and things of that nature. I would say my community are folks who are impacted by, those kinds of pipelines and violences, Southeast Asian folks broadly.   Miko Lee: [00:06:14] And what legacy do you carry with you from them?   Trần Châu Hà: [00:06:18] I think the easy answer is like resilience clearly. To exist and survive under so many different violences and still move forth and create such beautiful communities.   Miko Lee: [00:06:25] Hà how did you get started working with Asian Prisoner Support Committee?   Trần Châu Hà: [00:06:29] It actually started from an interpersonal relationship. My best friend who also works at the organization now. They actually explained to me that a APSC was doing all this work in regards to like stopping the prison to deportation pipeline, how like so many of our Southeast Asian American community members were impacted by this kind of incarceration and things of that nature. At that point, it just became my political home after many, many years.   Miko Lee: [00:06:50] Thanks for sharing that. Then tell us about the work that you have in the new exhibit that is opening up called Walking Stories. Can you tell us the title of your piece and then describe it for us?   Trần Châu Hà: [00:07:01] The piece I'm making is a comic called We Was Girls Together. It's a quote from Sula by Toni Morrison. The comic is about my friend Maria Legarda. She's a re-entry coordinator at the Asian Prisoner Support Committee. She's also a Filipino immigrant who's facing deportation to the Philippines now after she was incarcerated in CCWF for 14 years. We met each other through APSC I know her as a very generous and kind person who loves crocheting. She's always been like an extreme light every time I come to the office and interact with her. But I also know that Maria is like someone who frankly, knows all these like incarcerated women or like formerly and currently incarcerated women. She really shows me what it looks like to be, like, an abolitionist feminist despite the kind of struggles and difficulties that she's moving through as someone who's literally currently still facing deportation because of her quote unquote, deportable offense. My comic is about Maria Legarda. It starts with like her story, her migration story from the Philippines. She was born under the Marcos regime, which basically socioeconomically destabilized the Philippines. She came to the US for economic opportunity. But clearly she had a really hard time adjusting, and then eventually she made some choices that led her to a federal offense that led to her decades of incarceration. When she was in prison, she met all these, wonderful women of color who also were survivors of sexual and gendered violence, so I just follow her story through her healing. Despite the fact that she's healed so deeply and she's shown so much care to other people and she has these communities she still is deportable to a country that she hasn't been to in 30 or so years, and doesn't consider home anymore.   Miko Lee: [00:08:27] Share with me a little bit about how zines are your choice of art medium?   Trần Châu Hà: [00:08:32] I love the nature of how like accessible they are. I think I kind of started out as an illustrator and an essayist separately. But then I realized as I was like writing essays I couldn't necessarily share those things immediately with my mom. She's not super fluent in English, right? But like when I combined the medium of illustration and writing into creating a comic in a zine, I could show that to my mom and even if she can't fully understand all the writing she could still access, like the actual medium. And then the form of the zine is something that is meant to be taken away. It's meant to be shared with other people. I started going to a lot of zine fests last year and it just made me realize like, oh yeah, I want all my stuff to be accessible, right? Like I don't want it necessarily to be underneath a pay wall or things of that nature. I think there's something like, you know, for lack of a better word, very like, democratic about zine making, and as well as, comics generally.   Miko Lee: [00:09:20] I love how you do the mom test.   Trần Châu Hà: [00:09:22] Yes. It's funny, I wrote, an essay about my grandmother, actually, in the Asian American Writers Workshop like 2021, and I had to literally translate the entire thing for her to read it to make sure all the details were right, and I was like, wait, I could have just made this easier by like illustrating some of it to make it accessible across language barriers and things of that nature.   Miko Lee: [00:09:40] And has Maria read through the scene?   Trần Châu Hà: [00:09:42] Yes, she has.   Miko Lee: [00:09:44] What has been her take on it?   Trần Châu Hà: [00:09:46] She actually sent me a very long signal which like made me cry because I was like, oh my god, I can't believe she actually thought this about the work. She was talking about how it helped her reflect on everything she's gone through but also like these relationships that have really sustained her. Namely like, I mentioned this person named Granny in the comic who I've met who's essentially like the person who adopted Maria when she just became incarcerated and was dealing with the fallout and trauma of sexual violence and things of that nature. The comic reminds Maria of just her growth essentially over all these years, but also all these rich relationships that still continue to sustain her like across carceral walls and things of that nature.   Miko Lee: [00:10:17] And what do you hope people that come and see your work and take one of your zines, what do you hope that they walk away with?   Trần Châu Hà: [00:10:25] The obvious answer to the question is, like, how cruel the prison to deportation pipeline is. For someone to build such wonderful communities in the United States and for borders being so arbitrary and things of that nature that they can be stolen away from these communities at any point, and how cruel and unnecessary that all feels for immigrants and refugees who have been criminalized to experience this kind of double punishment. I think the other element of it is the ways that women, specifically currently and formerly incarcerated women create these networks of care amongst each other that, in light of the state not supporting them and their healing, whether they've experienced gendered or sexual violence, these people will find each other, these women will find each other and they'll be able to support each other and help each other through these processes of healing and also like fighting sexual violence in the carceral system. Yeah, just like highlighting those kinds of like organic networks and that relationship building that we don't necessarily get to see in like, for example, like mainstream media or like policy making or things of that nature.   Miko Lee: [00:11:18] What will people see when they walk into the Rdge on the Square exhibit space?   Trần Châu Hà: [00:11:23] Yes, you will see 15 comic pages in acrylic frames and then underneath that will be a table with actually takeaways. So feel free to take the comic away in like a booklet form as well, but you can also read it out on the wall when you walk in.   Miko Lee: [00:11:35] Thank you so much for sharing with us about your artistry and your vision and your story about Maria and your connection with Asian Prisoner Support Committee. We look forward to seeing your work.   Trần Châu Hà: [00:11:45] Thank you, Miko. Pleasure speaking with you.   Miko Lee: [00:11:48] Next up, listen to “Staygo” from DARKHEART, A Concert Narrative by singer and songwriter Golda Sargento.   MUSIC   That was the voice of Golda Sargento from the new Filipinx futurism punk rock sci-fi DARKHEART. Katie Quan, artist, activist, ethnic studies teacher. I'm so happy to have you on Apex Express. And the first question I want to ask you is, who are your people and what legacy do you carry with you?   Katie Quan: [00:16:51] I would say that my people, I really strongly identify with Asian American movement artists, makers, and shakers from like the 60s and 70s. It was my first introduction to really seeing Chinese Americans be out there and be really vocal, be excited, and be loud and angry about all these different topics. And so I've really gravitated towards just all that excitement, all that energy over the past decade just after learning more about them. I really just enjoyed seeing what that looks like and how we can continue that energy, especially for East Asian Americans here in the States, as we move into a new generation of game makers.   Miko Lee: [00:17:38] Tell us about how you carry that legacy of feisty activism into your work as an artist.   Katie Quan: [00:17:44] I like to consider myself a legacy of the Asian American movement. My grandparents came here in the 30s and 40s. I also have great grandparents and great great grandparents who traveled between the US and China, back and forth, back and forth and so I find myself really attached to their stories as well as how they've overcome a lot of those obstacles that Chinese Americans had to face during that time frame. My parents are both second generation Chinese American. They met at Self-Help for the Elderly, which was a organization that came from the Asian American movement in terms of making sure that our elderly are actually taken care of and have culturally relevant care. My parents were very much interested in enrolling us into bilingual education. Bilingual education was not a popular educational pedagogy at that point, partly because people thought that if you learned another language that was not English, that you would lose your Americanness in a lot of ways. And so one of the things that I really like to bring into my art is making sure that legacy and that history is always challenged and always, it feels relevant to where we are now, but also can meet other people where they're at. I do understand that not everyone gets to have a lot of those kinds of privileges where they see themselves, in their role models or that they didn't grow up around the history, I understand that that's the case. And so making sure that the work that I always produce meets people where they need to be at, is something of interest and something that I carry with me in all my work.   Miko Lee: [00:19:32] Thank you, Katie. Can you talk about the work that you have been doing with Chinese for Affirmative Action and tell us about the reparations zine that you've been developing?   Katie Quan: [00:19:43] Me and a team of other artists, academics and activists have been working to make a reparations zine alongside Chinese for Affirmative Action. Here in San Francisco reparations is still a very contentious issue. So one of the things that we're trying to really bring about and inform, especially the Chinese American demographics, is what reparations are and how we can support the work that black communities need and what they're doing at the moment. Within the zine, we are really covering what reparations are, how African Americans in San Francisco have contributed to the making of the city and also the Bay Area, how their community has been bulldozed in many, many ways, whether it's through health, environmental justice, redlining, all of these different issues. What's happened in the past 50, 60 years reparations is that first step in terms of saying sorry and, how can we begin to mend this wound that the United States has created consistently over time with this particular population.   Miko Lee: [00:20:54] What has surprised you about this process?   Katie Quan: [00:20:58] It's hard. [Laughs] And not that I didn't think it wasn't going to be hard. But I think the team that we've been working with, we've been really fortunate because we have some, second, third and fourth generation activists and artists, but we also have a team of other people who are new immigrants, and we've been really fortunate to learn from their perspective. And so rather than approaching it in a lens that talks about anti-blackness, sometimes it's talking about what it means to be American. And how do we participate in democracy? It's bringing a very positive spin, or just kind of a different spin to topics that we already know, and then that we talk about all the time, but making sure that it's accessible to everybody.   Miko Lee: [00:21:46] So this zine is going to be available for free in the Edge on the Square exhibition. Can you talk about what people will see when they walk into the exhibition and see your work? What are they going to see? What are they going to experience?   Katie Quan: [00:21:59] Yeah, we are hoping to make sure that our exhibition is big and it's bold, but at the same time it feels simple in its messaging. Asking people a little bit about what they know about reparations, being able to challenge their own thinking of what they know about black communities here in San Francisco, what they've done. Also talking about how we ourselves get information, how do we learn the things that we know and how can we challenge that? Or how can we push that forward? And so we will have an interactive element, but we will also have the zine there available, which will be created both in English and in Chinese for anybody who needs it. We will also have additional resources via QR code so that if anybody has any other questions or want to learn more about it, want to act on their excitement for this particular issue that they can also do so.   Miko Lee: [00:22:58] And what do you hope that people will walk away from your after taking away your zine after seeing the exhibit? What are you hoping that they will learn or or do after seeing your work?   Katie Quan: [00:23:10] One of the things that we kind of came across when creating the zine is that people had very strong opinions about reparations. They didn't always have all the information, but they had very strong opinions and they had very particular beliefs that come from their own life experiences. Our goal for this is not necessarily to persuade one way or the other, but it's to make sure that they're informed and just making sure that they have all the facts so that they can make a decision that best suits their own life experiences. We're also hoping that people walk away feeling like they know a little bit more and that they can share that with their own communities in a way that makes sense for them.   Miko Lee: [00:23:51] Katie Quan, thank you so much for joining us on Apex Express.   Katie Quan: [00:23:54]Yes, thank you so much.   Miko Lee: [00:23:55] Next up, take a listen to “Live It Up” by Bay Area's Power Struggle.   MUSIC   That was “Live It Up”by Bay Area's Power Struggle. Welcome Tsim Nuj to Apex Express.   Tsim Nuj: [00:27:32] Hi, Miko. Thank you so much for having me today.   Miko Lee: [00:27:37] Can I start with just by asking you, who are your people and what legacy do you carry with you?   Tsim Nuj: [00:27:46] Who are my people and what legacy do I carry with me? My people are Hmong. My ancestors were living in northern Laos, in the mountains and in the jungles and farming. That's where my lineage and then my ancestors had to flee their homes because of the Vietnam War and the secret war in Laos to find refuge in Thailand and then now we're here in the US. specifically in Merced, California in the Central Valley on indigenous Yokut land. So yeah, that's my, those are my people. I think that my community here in Merced that I organize with, who are also queer and trans folks of color are also my people. And I think that the legacy that I carry is this legacy of, I carry this legacy of love. I think that in moments of having to find home and having to survive, I think that love really grounded my people and my people's families. And so I think that I'm really holding onto this act of loving. That I think really grounds me and really affirms who I am and the journey as I honor my ancestors. And I really, as I think about the descendants, right, my descendants, the young people who are a emerging and, you know, the future generations that are coming. And so I think that there's this really special moment where I feel like I'm really longing to connect with my ancestors, especially those who were queer and trans, my queer and trans Hmong ancestors. And I've been also connecting with my descendants. And then I think that there's also this present moment, right, where I'm also connected deeply with my community, who consists of being children of immigrant refugees, you know, queer and trans folks, and folks that are really reimagining and really fighting for a world where we can all be liberated and be our full, authentic, genuine, loving selves.   Miko Lee: [00:29:58] Thank you for sharing. Your art form is as a dancer, as a movement person, and you've created a video for the Walking Stories exhibition. Can you tell us the name of that video and what inspired you to create that?   Tsim Nuj: [00:30:14] I feel really honored to be a part of the Walking Stories exhibit, and this is actually my first exhibit that I get to be a part of and share my work in and so it feels very exciting and it feels very, like such an honor that I get to be a part of this project that's a collection of works who the artists and yeah, the folks that are a part of this are just such like incredible, brilliant beings, sharing our stories. And so my dance video The title of it is Our Queer Hmong Love Dance. What really inspired this piece was this idea of being home, right? And this idea of belonging. There's, there's so much ideas that came up for me. And I think that these ideas were coming up because of a recent transition. Last year, around this time, actually, I graduated from UC San Diego, and I was coming home, right, after five years. And so I think that this piece is really about connecting with my roots and finding home specifically in Merced and in the Central Valley. And really trying to think about who I am as a Hmong person. But it was also about who I was as a Hmong and queer person, right? A queer and Hmong person. And so I started to think about these rituals or these sounds and these movements that I really needed to explore. And so a lot of that exploration and that work. I got to practice and be in process and I think it's really what I needed in this moment. And so I'm really grateful I'm really grateful that I get to share it with my community and I'm really grateful that I get to share with my community and the folks that come and see our exhibit and I really I'm really hopeful that folks will resonate with it and really get to just witness me.   Miko Lee: [00:32:14] And so folks will come to the exhibit, they'll see all these different works, they'll see a booth that will have your film playing in it. Is there something that you want to have your audience lingering with or thinking about after they watch your work?   Tsim Nuj: [00:32:30] Yes. I really want my audience, the folks that come to the exhibit, feel invited to witness my piece, my video in the booth. I want them to allow themselves to really feel, right, whatever they're feeling, whatever is coming up for them. Whether it's the sounds that are guiding them, whether it's the visuals, right. Whether it's, you know, there might be some words or some images that come up, and I really want the audience to just really be with their bodies. Be with their minds, their spirits, right? And I, I hope that they allow themselves to just feel it. And I, I remember having a conversation with you Miko about this like meditative presence. And so I'm hoping that my audience or the folks that come and witness the entire exhibit, right? I hope that they are curious, and that they really allow themselves to just be with the work, whatever that means for them. I don't want to tell people how to watch my work, right? But I do want them to just really, be with it, right? And, and if you can, I hope that you'll be able to watch it for its entirety. I think that there's something really beautiful happening, with how I have put this video together and so I hope that you can be with it. Take the deep breaths. Take those breaths, right, pay attention to the sensations that you experience in your body.   What I want the audience to take away from after seeing my piece, I hope that they get to receive it and that they breathe it in and they're with it, right. And that they really see me and see the people that are in this video. And I hope that they see parts of themselves in it, and parts of their stories and their journeys. And I also really want them to think about these questions that I propose and that I ask, right? That I'm also asking myself. This piece is a dedication, right? I think that I'm creating this piece for my ancestors. I'm dancing for my descendants, and I think I'm also asking them, I'm in conversation with them, right? About where is home? Especially for folks who have been displaced, because of very violent histories of war and persecution and having to flee our homes, right, and survive all that, like, thinking about our indigenous relatives here on Turtle Island and thinking about Palestinians in Gaza. I think that, there's in this moment, this piece, I do ask, and I am trying to find this home, this idea of going home. And also how do we dance there, right? Like, how do we dance towards home? And so what is dance for us? I'm just really inspired by, black queer and trans feminists, specifically Prentiss Hemphill, and just the conversations that Prentiss has shared on their Spotify podcast, go and check it out. I think that this piece is also about remembering and honoring the folks who have come before me and the folks that will arrive after me.   Miko Lee: [00:35:32] Tsi Nuj, thank you so much for sharing your story. And we look forward to seeing your dance piece in Walking Stories.   Tsim Nuj: [00:35:41] Thank you so much, Miko, for your time and for creating the space for me. Yeah, I like, I think there's a lot of excitement that I feel in my body. And so like, I want to talk about the work, but please, please, please, for whoever is listening, come and be with us. Come and experience our work and be in conversation with us. I think it's really important in this moment for us to uplift one another's voices and really affirm each other's stories. When we think about collective liberation, it really is doing this work, right? Of thinking about what is collective care and collective love look like, how do we lean into our creativity, our ancestral technologies and practices to really make meaning of how we show up in this world, right? And to really empower us, right? To, you know, continue showing up for one another and because we know that this work is lifelong. Healing and, you know, really creating this world where we are all free. I hope that the folks that are listening to this and the folks that come to the exhibit and everybody, right, I really hope that we can feel how important it is for each one of us and all of us to be in this movement towards the liberation of everybody, right? Because our liberations are, are so deeply intertwined and connected. So thank you.   Miko Lee: [00:37:04] Thank you so much. That was great. Let's take a listen to one of Byron Au Young's compositions called “Know Your Rights.” This is part of the trilogy of the activists songbook. This multi-lingual rap gives steps to know what to do when ICE officers come to your door.   MUSIC   That was “Know Your Rights” performed by Jason Chu with lyrics by Aaron Jafferis and composed by Byron Au Young. Welcome Visibility Project and Related Tactics to Apex Express. I'm so happy to have you all with me this evening, and I would love to just ask you all the question I love asking for people, which is what is your story? What's your background? And what legacy do you carry with you? And let's start with Weston.   Weston Teruya: [00:40:12] I am a Japanese American and Okinawa American from Hawaii. I identify as an Asian American and person of color, and I draw on the histories of cross-racial solidarity between communities as a strategic alliance and community building effort for justice.   Miko Lee: [00:40:34] Thanks, Weston. And Michelle, how about you? Who are your people and what legacy do you carry with you?   Michelle K Carlson: [00:40:41] Hi, thanks, Miko. I'm Korean American. I grew up in Seattle, Washington and spent most of my time on the West Coast. I, similar to Weston, operate in a realm of cross racial solidarity, linking myself often to histories of racial solidarity justice movements. Weston and I are representing Related Tactics, which is an artist collective that also anchors itself within these histories of cross racial solidarity. We make all sorts of artistic works at the intersection of race and culture.   Miko Lee: [00:41:18] Thanks, Michelle. And finally, Mia Nakano, who are your people and what legacy do you carry with you?   Mia Nakano: [00:41:24] Thank you so much for having me here. I'm Mia Nakano she/her pronouns and I'm the executive director of the Visibility Project. I am a queer fourth generation Japanese American woman. I am the daughter of a single mother and the sibling of a deaf adult. And I think that all of those relationships and intersectional identities bring forth all of the work that I do. And so I think about queer ancestors, I think about accessibility in the deaf community, I think about all of the really powerful women that have been incredibly present in my life to shape who I am today.   Miko Lee: [00:42:10] Thank you, Mia. And you are two different groups of artists. One is Visibility Project. The other is Related Tactics. Can you share with us a little bit about how this collaboration came about?   Mia Nakano: [00:42:22] I was invited to participate as a contributing artist in one of Related Tactics' very first shows back in, I believe, in 2016, and have been following their work as a growing artistic practice and a collective for quite some time. I've always been thinking about how could the Visibility Project as a queer led, you know queer, LGBTQ, archiving and organizing artistic practice collaborate with this cross racial, very intersectional, collective in Related Tactics. One of the ideas that has sort of been percolating for me over a long period of time was that so many queer Asian American organizations and so many queer spaces have all come out of the idea and like the gathering around potluck spaces, right? So potlucks being safe spaces for queer folks, for folks of color, for marginalized communities who didn't have safe spaces to gather. And many queer Asian organizations started off with potlucks that then turned into social and political groups, which then shifted into political advocacy and culture change, and then ultimately like legislative change. And I saw such deep connections in terms of how I see related tactics and experience related tactics. It's building roots and planting seeds for multiple relationships and collaborations through the different intersecting ways that our communities have been able to come together over the past few years.   Miko Lee: [00:44:18] So how did this collaboration begin working on this concept around potlucks?   Michelle K Carlson: [00:44:24] This is Michelle from Related Tactics. The three of us have known each other for a long time and Mia and I have worked together in a lot of different capacities over the years. I think Related Tactics, at the core of what we do is coming together with this kind of shared belief and shared value system around collectivity as this really productive material and tool and method for creative action in the world. I think at the core of that is understanding that we don't have all the information and we don't like to be the only voice in the room and we are not the ones that necessarily should be telling the stories for everyone. Related Tactics, when we often get an opportunity, one of our common strategies is just to figure out a way to share that out and to bring more voices into the room to be in concert with our own. When we understood that the Visibility Project was also going to be a part of this project, we're like we should join forces and bring our communities together. And I think we've been looking for a way to do that over the years.   Miko Lee: [00:45:35] Talk to me about the title, Nourishing Power. Where does that come from? What is that about?   Mia Nakano: [00:45:41] I think because of the individual artistic practices, And the people who comprise Related Tactics, and myself at the Visibility Project, we are all so incredibly busy, that all of our contributions to our various communities, whether it's at universities, in social justice movements, in artistic organizations, we're all about cultivating the power of other people while putting artists into artistic practices and people first, right? Like you have to, put on your oxygen mask first before you're able to really step out and fully do the work that you want to be doing. And to do that, you have to nourish yourself, you have to nourish your power. And I think that there's also the idea of the collectivity and framework that Related Tactics brings where we can all also do that for one another, right? When one person is at 10 percent capacity, the other two people can step forth and we can all move and lift each other up together rather than doing it as individuals.   Miko Lee: [00:46:52] Thank you. And Weston, what can people expect when they walk into Edge on the Square, the corner of Grant and Clay? What will they see that will show them your work?   Weston Teruya: [00:47:04] So the center point of our installation is going to be these carts with an array of takeaways that people are free to engage with in different ways, and they are essentially prompt for various potlucks that, we've contributed as a themes and as collaborators and then have also invited a group of additional artists to contribute as well. One of the modes that Related Tactics works in is in the form of the takeaway and part of the impetus behind that is that we want to provide the seed for people to create their own sort of spaces and gatherings and encounters with people beyond the gallery walls. We don't want art to just be this thing that only exists in these defined spaces. We've had different projects that use that mode, and this is one of them. We invite people to engage with it, take these ideas, plant the seeds for their own potlucks beyond the walls of the gallery and hopefully have these opportunities to build community, in their own spaces, in their own worlds, amongst their own networks of people.   Miko Lee: [00:48:12] I love the accessible takeaway. I still have a divest yourself matchbox from one of your shows. [Laughs] I love that. Michelle, what's a concrete example of a takeaway from Nourishing Power?   Michelle K Carlson: [00:48:27] One of the examples I would talk about is, one of the artists we've invited, Joy Enriquez, has created like hundreds of tiny ceramic spoons. They're thinking a lot about how does one articulate when they need support. They talk about it as if one only has so many spoons to use in a day, but you have way more things you need to do with those spoons. How do you survive that? How do you ask for support? How do you allocate those spoons to this kind of overwhelming existence? They have all these really beautiful prompts that will be printed on a card to take away, but then also you can take away a ceramic spoon that they've been spending many hours in a ceramic studio, making and firing. I think there's this idea too, that there's many, many ways one can use that spoon that can exist to support your day to day that you might not think about. So they have some things that are about how one might hold or touch the spoon or things you might do with it that isn't just about eating. That also really embodies the spirit of this project, that it's also not just about potlucks in the sense of like, bring food to a table, but that it's about this kind of space to share knowledge, to share resources, to exchange things when you don't feel like you have the thing you're supposed to bring, or you can't meet the expectation, the greater expectations of what is supposed to occur in that moment. But that the potluck is a space for us to share and support each other in ways that we maybe have not been able to imagine yet.   Miko Lee: [00:50:06] Ooh, I love that. And Mia, how many different artists are there? How many, and how did you go about selecting all these different artists that are participating?   Mia Nakano: [00:50:15] There's over a dozen artists who are participating, and we collectively just started brainstorming and extending out invitations to our various communities and folks that we've worked with in the past, folks who, have participated in Related Tactic shows or know, you know, through other pathways and connections. And then I just reached out to a few Visibility Project participants, even folks going back that I interviewed over 15 years ago to ask if they would be willing to participate. Each person was invited to create one prompt, one initial prompt of what the potluck would be, like if they were to have a potluck, right? So we have somebody who put forth a potluck for screaming, a potluck for nourishing. So different artists are putting forth their own individual potlucks, and one prompt connected to that, and then folks will be able to use that as a seed to create their own gathering spaces in the future.   Miko Lee: [00:51:15] If there's an action word that you would want people to walk away with, what's that action word after they go to see your exhibit? What is the verb that you want them to do?   Weston Teruya: [00:51:27] I think it might be gather. That's sort of the crux of what we're hoping to seed.   Miko Lee: [00:51:33] What about an emotion? Is there an emotion you want folks to walk away with?   Mia Nakano: [00:51:38] I like the idea of gathering, in that also kind of to be able to connect, right? Like we're not just coming together, like we're building something that we want to connect and maintain.   Michelle K Carlson: [00:51:50] Yeah. And I think also like exchanging, right? It's like something really active is happening, there's an exchange, everybody's kind of, there's like a reciprocity too. That you know, that nobody is hosting, like everybody's coming and sharing and exchanging and giving and receiving and maybe nourish is actually the right, I don't know if nourish is an emotion, but I think in the social justice world it is. [Laughs] So it feels like nourish actually is probably a useful emotion. I think reciprocity is also like a feeling that should happen, that when you are giving you're not doing so to the point of extraction because you are also receiving. And that's I think one of the core things about this project wasn't just about Related Tactics and or Visibility Project offering ideas. It was like, we have created a prompt for a potluck and in many ways audience members will come into the show and see our potluck because it will have all these contributions from all these other artists. And so you get to kind of leave with like a goodie bag, doggie bag that is like the kind of residue of our potluck. We hope that folks go home and do that for themselves within their communities, either using our prompts or using our prompts as a platform to create their own space.   Miko Lee: [00:53:18] Is there a perfect amount of people to attend a potluck? Like how many dishes do you want at your potluck?   Michelle K Carlson: [00:53:26] I feel like we're in like a seven to ten vibe. Like 15 tops, then it's too many. You know, it's like, because not too many, but it, there's a different thing that's happening when you get over 15 people in a room. But like, I feel like 10 is the zone where you can still have kind of like close intimate, you know, conversations where you can like build trust, you can spend some time, get around to see everyone, get a little bit of everybody's, you know, contribution, and then, but it's not like so small that it's like you and one other person and you're on a very awkward blind date or something.   Miko Lee: [00:54:09] And are you all down for the themed potlucks or do you like them to be just open ended, bring whatever you want?   Mia Nakano: [00:54:17] I love a themed potluck. I love just like some sort of container where you're going in and you're acknowledging I've got dessert, or we're gonna go over to Southeast Asia, rather than everybody showing up with ten pots of rice and they're just eating rice all night.   Michelle K Carlson: [00:54:35] Or tortilla chips, or like Trader Joe's brownie bites, like five containers of those. No shame on brownie bites.   Miko Lee: [00:54:44] Okay, how can folks find out more about your work?   Mia Nakano: [00:54:48] So folks want to check out what the Visibility Project is doing, you can go to visibilityproject.org and learn about all the participants and hear their stories and even go on an LGBTQ digital history tour of the Asian American community in the Bay Area.   Michelle K Carlson: [00:55:04] If you want to find out more about Related Tactics, you can go to relatedtactics.com or find us on Instagram and our handle is just at Related Tactics.   Miko Lee: [00:55:15] Thank you so much for joining me and I look forward to seeing your work in the show and feeling nourished and planning my next potluck. Thank you so much. So that was a chance to listen to just a few of the artivists that are part of Walking Stories. You got a little insight into where they're coming from and how they created their pieces. And there's so many more artivists that you didn't get to hear from. So I hope you'll come to our exhibit that runs June 29th through the end of December. We'll be at Edge on the Square in San Francisco Chinatown. We'll put a link in the show notes at our website kpfa.org backslash programs, backslash apex express. We hope that you'll join us and share your story too, because all of us have important stories to tell. Thank you so much for joining us on Apex Express. We thank all of you listeners out there. Keep resisting, keep organizing, keep creating and sharing your visions with the world because your voices are important. Apex Express is produced by Ayame Keane-Lee, Anuj Vaidya, Cheryl Truong, Hien Nguyen, Jalena Keane-Lee, Miko Lee, Nate Tan, Paige Chung, Preti Mangala-Shekar, and Swati Rayasam. Tonight's show was produced by Miko Lee and edited by Ayame Keane-Lee. Have a great night.   The post APEX Express – 6.27.24 – Walking Stories appeared first on KPFA.

A weekly magazine-style radio show featuring the voices and stories of Asians and Pacific Islanders from all corners of our community. The show is produced by a collective of media makers, deejays, and activists. Tonight on APEX Express, Host Miko Lee speaks with artivists from the upcoming exhibition at Edge on the Square.   TRANSCRIPT Walking Stories: Artivists POV   Opening: [00:00:00] Apex Express Asian Pacific expression. Community and cultural coverage, music and calendar, new visions and voices, coming to you with an Asian Pacific Islander point of view. It's time to get on board the Apex Express.   Miko Lee: [00:00:34] Good evening this is Miko Lee and welcome to Apex Express. We are so happy to have you with us. We are going to be talking about something really personal to me tonight. We are talking about the new interactive exhibition at Edge on the Square in San Francisco, Chinatown. The whole exhibition is called Walking Stories and it is stories from our Asian American community. And we invite you to join us. It opens June 29th and runs all the way through December. Opening night, June 29th is going to be interactive performances and amazing little goodies so we really invite you to join us for opening, but if you can make it that night, we're running all the way through the end of December. Okay, so a little bit of background. Some of you might know that I have been a host on Apex Express for the past seven and a half years, and it has truly been a delight and a joy. As part of that time, I learned that Apex Express is part of a network of Asian American progressive groups. That's called AACRE, which is short for Asian Americans for Civil Rights and Equality. And about two and a half years ago, I joined the staff of AACRE, which has been such a joy to be around colleagues that share the same values and passions and beliefs in supporting and uplifting our community. For the past year, we have been working on a narrative strategy, really trying to reframe how Asian Americans are portrayed in the media, how we're perceived within our own community. We were initially going to do this with the Pacific Islander community as well. But in talking to our sister colleagues, they are going through their own process of a PI narrative strategy and I totally respect that. At some point we will merge and join those voices together. So right now we're focusing on Asian American stories. Through the past year through wonderful funding from San Francisco foundation's Bay Area Creative Corps we were actually able to fund approximately 37 different artists and embed them in different AACRE groups to be able to create narratives that resonate with their own communities. So that in this exhibit Walking Stories, we're going to hear stories about Hmong folks and formerly incarcerated folks, folks that are queer and trans and folks that have stories to share, because we all have important stories to share. Our exhibit is inviting folks to think about how they can get involved, how they can share their own stories, how they can join us in this collective movement for rewriting our history of the kind of silent, quiet model minority that sits in the background that's used as the wedge issue for larger things like reparations and affirmative action and really reframes that and brings back our Asian American activist past because we know that is who we are. That is our history going back from the first time that we came into this country. We invite folks in the community to join us to see more about who these stories are, to find out, to get involved to see what resonates with them and even what doesn't resonate with them. But really join us in this conversation. So tonight I'm really pleased to be talking with just a few of the artists that are in Walking Stories. So that you can get some insight into their process and how they made the piece that they're going to be sharing.   The exhibit itself will be at Edge on the Square in San Francisco Chinatown. When you walk in, you are going to see this timeline of lanterns hanging from the ceiling. That's about an Asian American activist history. You're going to see a really cool, nourishing power piece, which we're going to talk to the artists about, that is about how potlucks were used as a tool for queer and trans organizing. You are going to learn more about Hmong dance. And what does that look like, and what does it feel like in your own body? You're going to learn about ancestors, the power of our ancestors and how we can bring that to help us in our healing and moving forward. You're going to see in the exhibit about a Hmong story cloth reimagined with a modern perspective, you're going to see stories of south Asians activists and what they represent. And what does it mean to be a south Asian Muslim in America today? You're going to hear some of these stories. You're going to see them. We hope that you'll experience them. Then we hope that you'll learn more and find out about what we're doing and how you can get involved. So join me on this little journey through some of the artivists—that's artists that are also activists—that are part of our exhibit called Walking Stories. Come board. Join us. Welcome Hà Trần to Apex Express. We're so happy to have you with us. Trần Châu Hà: [00:05:40] Thank you for having me.   Miko Lee: [00:05:41] So you are amazing artist, but I want to start and go back and for you to tell us who are your people and what legacy do you carry with you?   Trần Châu Hà: [00:05:52] Ooh, oh my god, that's such like a big question. I guess my people are the people at Asian Prisoner Support Committee. I come from like a lineage of like Vietnamese refugees, and I think about like the ways that our communities have been impacted by the legacy of imperialism, which includes like incarceration, deportation, and things of that nature. I would say my community are folks who are impacted by, those kinds of pipelines and violences, Southeast Asian folks broadly.   Miko Lee: [00:06:14] And what legacy do you carry with you from them?   Trần Châu Hà: [00:06:18] I think the easy answer is like resilience clearly. To exist and survive under so many different violences and still move forth and create such beautiful communities.   Miko Lee: [00:06:25] Hà how did you get started working with Asian Prisoner Support Committee?   Trần Châu Hà: [00:06:29] It actually started from an interpersonal relationship. My best friend who also works at the organization now. They actually explained to me that a APSC was doing all this work in regards to like stopping the prison to deportation pipeline, how like so many of our Southeast Asian American community members were impacted by this kind of incarceration and things of that nature. At that point, it just became my political home after many, many years.   Miko Lee: [00:06:50] Thanks for sharing that. Then tell us about the work that you have in the new exhibit that is opening up called Walking Stories. Can you tell us the title of your piece and then describe it for us?   Trần Châu Hà: [00:07:01] The piece I'm making is a comic called We Was Girls Together. It's a quote from Sula by Toni Morrison. The comic is about my friend Maria Legarda. She's a re-entry coordinator at the Asian Prisoner Support Committee. She's also a Filipino immigrant who's facing deportation to the Philippines now after she was incarcerated in CCWF for 14 years. We met each other through APSC I know her as a very generous and kind person who loves crocheting. She's always been like an extreme light every time I come to the office and interact with her. But I also know that Maria is like someone who frankly, knows all these like incarcerated women or like formerly and currently incarcerated women. She really shows me what it looks like to be, like, an abolitionist feminist despite the kind of struggles and difficulties that she's moving through as someone who's literally currently still facing deportation because of her quote unquote, deportable offense. My comic is about Maria Legarda. It starts with like her story, her migration story from the Philippines. She was born under the Marcos regime, which basically socioeconomically destabilized the Philippines. She came to the US for economic opportunity. But clearly she had a really hard time adjusting, and then eventually she made some choices that led her to a federal offense that led to her decades of incarceration. When she was in prison, she met all these, wonderful women of color who also were survivors of sexual and gendered violence, so I just follow her story through her healing. Despite the fact that she's healed so deeply and she's shown so much care to other people and she has these communities she still is deportable to a country that she hasn't been to in 30 or so years, and doesn't consider home anymore.   Miko Lee: [00:08:27] Share with me a little bit about how zines are your choice of art medium?   Trần Châu Hà: [00:08:32] I love the nature of how like accessible they are. I think I kind of started out as an illustrator and an essayist separately. But then I realized as I was like writing essays I couldn't necessarily share those things immediately with my mom. She's not super fluent in English, right? But like when I combined the medium of illustration and writing into creating a comic in a zine, I could show that to my mom and even if she can't fully understand all the writing she could still access, like the actual medium. And then the form of the zine is something that is meant to be taken away. It's meant to be shared with other people. I started going to a lot of zine fests last year and it just made me realize like, oh yeah, I want all my stuff to be accessible, right? Like I don't want it necessarily to be underneath a pay wall or things of that nature. I think there's something like, you know, for lack of a better word, very like, democratic about zine making, and as well as, comics generally.   Miko Lee: [00:09:20] I love how you do the mom test.   Trần Châu Hà: [00:09:22] Yes. It's funny, I wrote, an essay about my grandmother, actually, in the Asian American Writers Workshop like 2021, and I had to literally translate the entire thing for her to read it to make sure all the details were right, and I was like, wait, I could have just made this easier by like illustrating some of it to make it accessible across language barriers and things of that nature.   Miko Lee: [00:09:40] And has Maria read through the scene?   Trần Châu Hà: [00:09:42] Yes, she has.   Miko Lee: [00:09:44] What has been her take on it?   Trần Châu Hà: [00:09:46] She actually sent me a very long signal which like made me cry because I was like, oh my god, I can't believe she actually thought this about the work. She was talking about how it helped her reflect on everything she's gone through but also like these relationships that have really sustained her. Namely like, I mentioned this person named Granny in the comic who I've met who's essentially like the person who adopted Maria when she just became incarcerated and was dealing with the fallout and trauma of sexual violence and things of that nature. The comic reminds Maria of just her growth essentially over all these years, but also all these rich relationships that still continue to sustain her like across carceral walls and things of that nature.   Miko Lee: [00:10:17] And what do you hope people that come and see your work and take one of your zines, what do you hope that they walk away with?   Trần Châu Hà: [00:10:25] The obvious answer to the question is, like, how cruel the prison to deportation pipeline is. For someone to build such wonderful communities in the United States and for borders being so arbitrary and things of that nature that they can be stolen away from these communities at any point, and how cruel and unnecessary that all feels for immigrants and refugees who have been criminalized to experience this kind of double punishment. I think the other element of it is the ways that women, specifically currently and formerly incarcerated women create these networks of care amongst each other that, in light of the state not supporting them and their healing, whether they've experienced gendered or sexual violence, these people will find each other, these women will find each other and they'll be able to support each other and help each other through these processes of healing and also like fighting sexual violence in the carceral system. Yeah, just like highlighting those kinds of like organic networks and that relationship building that we don't necessarily get to see in like, for example, like mainstream media or like policy making or things of that nature.   Miko Lee: [00:11:18] What will people see when they walk into the Rdge on the Square exhibit space?   Trần Châu Hà: [00:11:23] Yes, you will see 15 comic pages in acrylic frames and then underneath that will be a table with actually takeaways. So feel free to take the comic away in like a booklet form as well, but you can also read it out on the wall when you walk in.   Miko Lee: [00:11:35] Thank you so much for sharing with us about your artistry and your vision and your story about Maria and your connection with Asian Prisoner Support Committee. We look forward to seeing your work.   Trần Châu Hà: [00:11:45] Thank you, Miko. Pleasure speaking with you.   Miko Lee: [00:11:48] Next up, listen to “Staygo” from DARKHEART, A Concert Narrative by singer and songwriter Golda Sargento.   MUSIC   That was the voice of Golda Sargento from the new Filipinx futurism punk rock sci-fi DARKHEART. Katie Quan, artist, activist, ethnic studies teacher. I'm so happy to have you on Apex Express. And the first question I want to ask you is, who are your people and what legacy do you carry with you?   Katie Quan: [00:16:51] I would say that my people, I really strongly identify with Asian American movement artists, makers, and shakers from like the 60s and 70s. It was my first introduction to really seeing Chinese Americans be out there and be really vocal, be excited, and be loud and angry about all these different topics. And so I've really gravitated towards just all that excitement, all that energy over the past decade just after learning more about them. I really just enjoyed seeing what that looks like and how we can continue that energy, especially for East Asian Americans here in the States, as we move into a new generation of game makers.   Miko Lee: [00:17:38] Tell us about how you carry that legacy of feisty activism into your work as an artist.   Katie Quan: [00:17:44] I like to consider myself a legacy of the Asian American movement. My grandparents came here in the 30s and 40s. I also have great grandparents and great great grandparents who traveled between the US and China, back and forth, back and forth and so I find myself really attached to their stories as well as how they've overcome a lot of those obstacles that Chinese Americans had to face during that time frame. My parents are both second generation Chinese American. They met at Self-Help for the Elderly, which was a organization that came from the Asian American movement in terms of making sure that our elderly are actually taken care of and have culturally relevant care. My parents were very much interested in enrolling us into bilingual education. Bilingual education was not a popular educational pedagogy at that point, partly because people thought that if you learned another language that was not English, that you would lose your Americanness in a lot of ways. And so one of the things that I really like to bring into my art is making sure that legacy and that history is always challenged and always, it feels relevant to where we are now, but also can meet other people where they're at. I do understand that not everyone gets to have a lot of those kinds of privileges where they see themselves, in their role models or that they didn't grow up around the history, I understand that that's the case. And so making sure that the work that I always produce meets people where they need to be at, is something of interest and something that I carry with me in all my work.   Miko Lee: [00:19:32] Thank you, Katie. Can you talk about the work that you have been doing with Chinese for Affirmative Action and tell us about the reparations zine that you've been developing?   Katie Quan: [00:19:43] Me and a team of other artists, academics and activists have been working to make a reparations zine alongside Chinese for Affirmative Action. Here in San Francisco reparations is still a very contentious issue. So one of the things that we're trying to really bring about and inform, especially the Chinese American demographics, is what reparations are and how we can support the work that black communities need and what they're doing at the moment. Within the zine, we are really covering what reparations are, how African Americans in San Francisco have contributed to the making of the city and also the Bay Area, how their community has been bulldozed in many, many ways, whether it's through health, environmental justice, redlining, all of these different issues. What's happened in the past 50, 60 years reparations is that first step in terms of saying sorry and, how can we begin to mend this wound that the United States has created consistently over time with this particular population.   Miko Lee: [00:20:54] What has surprised you about this process?   Katie Quan: [00:20:58] It's hard. [Laughs] And not that I didn't think it wasn't going to be hard. But I think the team that we've been working with, we've been really fortunate because we have some, second, third and fourth generation activists and artists, but we also have a team of other people who are new immigrants, and we've been really fortunate to learn from their perspective. And so rather than approaching it in a lens that talks about anti-blackness, sometimes it's talking about what it means to be American. And how do we participate in democracy? It's bringing a very positive spin, or just kind of a different spin to topics that we already know, and then that we talk about all the time, but making sure that it's accessible to everybody.   Miko Lee: [00:21:46] So this zine is going to be available for free in the Edge on the Square exhibition. Can you talk about what people will see when they walk into the exhibition and see your work? What are they going to see? What are they going to experience?   Katie Quan: [00:21:59] Yeah, we are hoping to make sure that our exhibition is big and it's bold, but at the same time it feels simple in its messaging. Asking people a little bit about what they know about reparations, being able to challenge their own thinking of what they know about black communities here in San Francisco, what they've done. Also talking about how we ourselves get information, how do we learn the things that we know and how can we challenge that? Or how can we push that forward? And so we will have an interactive element, but we will also have the zine there available, which will be created both in English and in Chinese for anybody who needs it. We will also have additional resources via QR code so that if anybody has any other questions or want to learn more about it, want to act on their excitement for this particular issue that they can also do so.   Miko Lee: [00:22:58] And what do you hope that people will walk away from your after taking away your zine after seeing the exhibit? What are you hoping that they will learn or or do after seeing your work?   Katie Quan: [00:23:10] One of the things that we kind of came across when creating the zine is that people had very strong opinions about reparations. They didn't always have all the information, but they had very strong opinions and they had very particular beliefs that come from their own life experiences. Our goal for this is not necessarily to persuade one way or the other, but it's to make sure that they're informed and just making sure that they have all the facts so that they can make a decision that best suits their own life experiences. We're also hoping that people walk away feeling like they know a little bit more and that they can share that with their own communities in a way that makes sense for them.   Miko Lee: [00:23:51] Katie Quan, thank you so much for joining us on Apex Express.   Katie Quan: [00:23:54]Yes, thank you so much.   Miko Lee: [00:23:55] Next up, take a listen to “Live It Up” by Bay Area's Power Struggle.   MUSIC   That was “Live It Up”by Bay Area's Power Struggle. Welcome Tsim Nuj to Apex Express.   Tsim Nuj: [00:27:32] Hi, Miko. Thank you so much for having me today.   Miko Lee: [00:27:37] Can I start with just by asking you, who are your people and what legacy do you carry with you?   Tsim Nuj: [00:27:46] Who are my people and what legacy do I carry with me? My people are Hmong. My ancestors were living in northern Laos, in the mountains and in the jungles and farming. That's where my lineage and then my ancestors had to flee their homes because of the Vietnam War and the secret war in Laos to find refuge in Thailand and then now we're here in the US. specifically in Merced, California in the Central Valley on indigenous Yokut land. So yeah, that's my, those are my people. I think that my community here in Merced that I organize with, who are also queer and trans folks of color are also my people. And I think that the legacy that I carry is this legacy of, I carry this legacy of love. I think that in moments of having to find home and having to survive, I think that love really grounded my people and my people's families. And so I think that I'm really holding onto this act of loving. That I think really grounds me and really affirms who I am and the journey as I honor my ancestors. And I really, as I think about the descendants, right, my descendants, the young people who are a emerging and, you know, the future generations that are coming. And so I think that there's this really special moment where I feel like I'm really longing to connect with my ancestors, especially those who were queer and trans, my queer and trans Hmong ancestors. And I've been also connecting with my descendants. And then I think that there's also this present moment, right, where I'm also connected deeply with my community, who consists of being children of immigrant refugees, you know, queer and trans folks, and folks that are really reimagining and really fighting for a world where we can all be liberated and be our full, authentic, genuine, loving selves.   Miko Lee: [00:29:58] Thank you for sharing. Your art form is as a dancer, as a movement person, and you've created a video for the Walking Stories exhibition. Can you tell us the name of that video and what inspired you to create that?   Tsim Nuj: [00:30:14] I feel really honored to be a part of the Walking Stories exhibit, and this is actually my first exhibit that I get to be a part of and share my work in and so it feels very exciting and it feels very, like such an honor that I get to be a part of this project that's a collection of works who the artists and yeah, the folks that are a part of this are just such like incredible, brilliant beings, sharing our stories. And so my dance video The title of it is Our Queer Hmong Love Dance. What really inspired this piece was this idea of being home, right? And this idea of belonging. There's, there's so much ideas that came up for me. And I think that these ideas were coming up because of a recent transition. Last year, around this time, actually, I graduated from UC San Diego, and I was coming home, right, after five years. And so I think that this piece is really about connecting with my roots and finding home specifically in Merced and in the Central Valley. And really trying to think about who I am as a Hmong person. But it was also about who I was as a Hmong and queer person, right? A queer and Hmong person. And so I started to think about these rituals or these sounds and these movements that I really needed to explore. And so a lot of that exploration and that work. I got to practice and be in process and I think it's really what I needed in this moment. And so I'm really grateful I'm really grateful that I get to share it with my community and I'm really grateful that I get to share with my community and the folks that come and see our exhibit and I really I'm really hopeful that folks will resonate with it and really get to just witness me.   Miko Lee: [00:32:14] And so folks will come to the exhibit, they'll see all these different works, they'll see a booth that will have your film playing in it. Is there something that you want to have your audience lingering with or thinking about after they watch your work?   Tsim Nuj: [00:32:30] Yes. I really want my audience, the folks that come to the exhibit, feel invited to witness my piece, my video in the booth. I want them to allow themselves to really feel, right, whatever they're feeling, whatever is coming up for them. Whether it's the sounds that are guiding them, whether it's the visuals, right. Whether it's, you know, there might be some words or some images that come up, and I really want the audience to just really be with their bodies. Be with their minds, their spirits, right? And I, I hope that they allow themselves to just feel it. And I, I remember having a conversation with you Miko about this like meditative presence. And so I'm hoping that my audience or the folks that come and witness the entire exhibit, right? I hope that they are curious, and that they really allow themselves to just be with the work, whatever that means for them. I don't want to tell people how to watch my work, right? But I do want them to just really, be with it, right? And, and if you can, I hope that you'll be able to watch it for its entirety. I think that there's something really beautiful happening, with how I have put this video together and so I hope that you can be with it. Take the deep breaths. Take those breaths, right, pay attention to the sensations that you experience in your body.   What I want the audience to take away from after seeing my piece, I hope that they get to receive it and that they breathe it in and they're with it, right. And that they really see me and see the people that are in this video. And I hope that they see parts of themselves in it, and parts of their stories and their journeys. And I also really want them to think about these questions that I propose and that I ask, right? That I'm also asking myself. This piece is a dedication, right? I think that I'm creating this piece for my ancestors. I'm dancing for my descendants, and I think I'm also asking them, I'm in conversation with them, right? About where is home? Especially for folks who have been displaced, because of very violent histories of war and persecution and having to flee our homes, right, and survive all that, like, thinking about our indigenous relatives here on Turtle Island and thinking about Palestinians in Gaza. I think that, there's in this moment, this piece, I do ask, and I am trying to find this home, this idea of going home. And also how do we dance there, right? Like, how do we dance towards home? And so what is dance for us? I'm just really inspired by, black queer and trans feminists, specifically Prentiss Hemphill, and just the conversations that Prentiss has shared on their Spotify podcast, go and check it out. I think that this piece is also about remembering and honoring the folks who have come before me and the folks that will arrive after me.   Miko Lee: [00:35:32] Tsi Nuj, thank you so much for sharing your story. And we look forward to seeing your dance piece in Walking Stories.   Tsim Nuj: [00:35:41] Thank you so much, Miko, for your time and for creating the space for me. Yeah, I like, I think there's a lot of excitement that I feel in my body. And so like, I want to talk about the work, but please, please, please, for whoever is listening, come and be with us. Come and experience our work and be in conversation with us. I think it's really important in this moment for us to uplift one another's voices and really affirm each other's stories. When we think about collective liberation, it really is doing this work, right? Of thinking about what is collective care and collective love look like, how do we lean into our creativity, our ancestral technologies and practices to really make meaning of how we show up in this world, right? And to really empower us, right? To, you know, continue showing up for one another and because we know that this work is lifelong. Healing and, you know, really creating this world where we are all free. I hope that the folks that are listening to this and the folks that come to the exhibit and everybody, right, I really hope that we can feel how important it is for each one of us and all of us to be in this movement towards the liberation of everybody, right? Because our liberations are, are so deeply intertwined and connected. So thank you.   Miko Lee: [00:37:04] Thank you so much. That was great. Let's take a listen to one of Byron Au Young's compositions called “Know Your Rights.” This is part of the trilogy of the activists songbook. This multi-lingual rap gives steps to know what to do when ICE officers come to your door.   MUSIC   That was “Know Your Rights” performed by Jason Chu with lyrics by Aaron Jafferis and composed by Byron Au Young. Welcome Visibility Project and Related Tactics to Apex Express. I'm so happy to have you all with me this evening, and I would love to just ask you all the question I love asking for people, which is what is your story? What's your background? And what legacy do you carry with you? And let's start with Weston.   Weston Teruya: [00:40:12] I am a Japanese American and Okinawa American from Hawaii. I identify as an Asian American and person of color, and I draw on the histories of cross-racial solidarity between communities as a strategic alliance and community building effort for justice.   Miko Lee: [00:40:34] Thanks, Weston. And Michelle, how about you? Who are your people and what legacy do you carry with you?   Michelle K Carlson: [00:40:41] Hi, thanks, Miko. I'm Korean American. I grew up in Seattle, Washington and spent most of my time on the West Coast. I, similar to Weston, operate in a realm of cross racial solidarity, linking myself often to histories of racial solidarity justice movements. Weston and I are representing Related Tactics, which is an artist collective that also anchors itself within these histories of cross racial solidarity. We make all sorts of artistic works at the intersection of race and culture.   Miko Lee: [00:41:18] Thanks, Michelle. And finally, Mia Nakano, who are your people and what legacy do you carry with you?   Mia Nakano: [00:41:24] Thank you so much for having me here. I'm Mia Nakano she/her pronouns and I'm the executive director of the Visibility Project. I am a queer fourth generation Japanese American woman. I am the daughter of a single mother and the sibling of a deaf adult. And I think that all of those relationships and intersectional identities bring forth all of the work that I do. And so I think about queer ancestors, I think about accessibility in the deaf community, I think about all of the really powerful women that have been incredibly present in my life to shape who I am today.   Miko Lee: [00:42:10] Thank you, Mia. And you are two different groups of artists. One is Visibility Project. The other is Related Tactics. Can you share with us a little bit about how this collaboration came about?   Mia Nakano: [00:42:22] I was invited to participate as a contributing artist in one of Related Tactics' very first shows back in, I believe, in 2016, and have been following their work as a growing artistic practice and a collective for quite some time. I've always been thinking about how could the Visibility Project as a queer led, you know queer, LGBTQ, archiving and organizing artistic practice collaborate with this cross racial, very intersectional, collective in Related Tactics. One of the ideas that has sort of been percolating for me over a long period of time was that so many queer Asian American organizations and so many queer spaces have all come out of the idea and like the gathering around potluck spaces, right? So potlucks being safe spaces for queer folks, for folks of color, for marginalized communities who didn't have safe spaces to gather. And many queer Asian organizations started off with potlucks that then turned into social and political groups, which then shifted into political advocacy and culture change, and then ultimately like legislative change. And I saw such deep connections in terms of how I see related tactics and experience related tactics. It's building roots and planting seeds for multiple relationships and collaborations through the different intersecting ways that our communities have been able to come together over the past few years.   Miko Lee: [00:44:18] So how did this collaboration begin working on this concept around potlucks?   Michelle K Carlson: [00:44:24] This is Michelle from Related Tactics. The three of us have known each other for a long time and Mia and I have worked together in a lot of different capacities over the years. I think Related Tactics, at the core of what we do is coming together with this kind of shared belief and shared value system around collectivity as this really productive material and tool and method for creative action in the world. I think at the core of that is understanding that we don't have all the information and we don't like to be the only voice in the room and we are not the ones that necessarily should be telling the stories for everyone. Related Tactics, when we often get an opportunity, one of our common strategies is just to figure out a way to share that out and to bring more voices into the room to be in concert with our own. When we understood that the Visibility Project was also going to be a part of this project, we're like we should join forces and bring our communities together. And I think we've been looking for a way to do that over the years.   Miko Lee: [00:45:35] Talk to me about the title, Nourishing Power. Where does that come from? What is that about?   Mia Nakano: [00:45:41] I think because of the individual artistic practices, And the people who comprise Related Tactics, and myself at the Visibility Project, we are all so incredibly busy, that all of our contributions to our various communities, whether it's at universities, in social justice movements, in artistic organizations, we're all about cultivating the power of other people while putting artists into artistic practices and people first, right? Like you have to, put on your oxygen mask first before you're able to really step out and fully do the work that you want to be doing. And to do that, you have to nourish yourself, you have to nourish your power. And I think that there's also the idea of the collectivity and framework that Related Tactics brings where we can all also do that for one another, right? When one person is at 10 percent capacity, the other two people can step forth and we can all move and lift each other up together rather than doing it as individuals.   Miko Lee: [00:46:52] Thank you. And Weston, what can people expect when they walk into Edge on the Square, the corner of Grant and Clay? What will they see that will show them your work?   Weston Teruya: [00:47:04] So the center point of our installation is going to be these carts with an array of takeaways that people are free to engage with in different ways, and they are essentially prompt for various potlucks that, we've contributed as a themes and as collaborators and then have also invited a group of additional artists to contribute as well. One of the modes that Related Tactics works in is in the form of the takeaway and part of the impetus behind that is that we want to provide the seed for people to create their own sort of spaces and gatherings and encounters with people beyond the gallery walls. We don't want art to just be this thing that only exists in these defined spaces. We've had different projects that use that mode, and this is one of them. We invite people to engage with it, take these ideas, plant the seeds for their own potlucks beyond the walls of the gallery and hopefully have these opportunities to build community, in their own spaces, in their own worlds, amongst their own networks of people.   Miko Lee: [00:48:12] I love the accessible takeaway. I still have a divest yourself matchbox from one of your shows. [Laughs] I love that. Michelle, what's a concrete example of a takeaway from Nourishing Power?   Michelle K Carlson: [00:48:27] One of the examples I would talk about is, one of the artists we've invited, Joy Enriquez, has created like hundreds of tiny ceramic spoons. They're thinking a lot about how does one articulate when they need support. They talk about it as if one only has so many spoons to use in a day, but you have way more things you need to do with those spoons. How do you survive that? How do you ask for support? How do you allocate those spoons to this kind of overwhelming existence? They have all these really beautiful prompts that will be printed on a card to take away, but then also you can take away a ceramic spoon that they've been spending many hours in a ceramic studio, making and firing. I think there's this idea too, that there's many, many ways one can use that spoon that can exist to support your day to day that you might not think about. So they have some things that are about how one might hold or touch the spoon or things you might do with it that isn't just about eating. That also really embodies the spirit of this project, that it's also not just about potlucks in the sense of like, bring food to a table, but that it's about this kind of space to share knowledge, to share resources, to exchange things when you don't feel like you have the thing you're supposed to bring, or you can't meet the expectation, the greater expectations of what is supposed to occur in that moment. But that the potluck is a space for us to share and support each other in ways that we maybe have not been able to imagine yet.   Miko Lee: [00:50:06] Ooh, I love that. And Mia, how many different artists are there? How many, and how did you go about selecting all these different artists that are participating?   Mia Nakano: [00:50:15] There's over a dozen artists who are participating, and we collectively just started brainstorming and extending out invitations to our various communities and folks that we've worked with in the past, folks who, have participated in Related Tactic shows or know, you know, through other pathways and connections. And then I just reached out to a few Visibility Project participants, even folks going back that I interviewed over 15 years ago to ask if they would be willing to participate. Each person was invited to create one prompt, one initial prompt of what the potluck would be, like if they were to have a potluck, right? So we have somebody who put forth a potluck for screaming, a potluck for nourishing. So different artists are putting forth their own individual potlucks, and one prompt connected to that, and then folks will be able to use that as a seed to create their own gathering spaces in the future.   Miko Lee: [00:51:15] If there's an action word that you would want people to walk away with, what's that action word after they go to see your exhibit? What is the verb that you want them to do?   Weston Teruya: [00:51:27] I think it might be gather. That's sort of the crux of what we're hoping to seed.   Miko Lee: [00:51:33] What about an emotion? Is there an emotion you want folks to walk away with?   Mia Nakano: [00:51:38] I like the idea of gathering, in that also kind of to be able to connect, right? Like we're not just coming together, like we're building something that we want to connect and maintain.   Michelle K Carlson: [00:51:50] Yeah. And I think also like exchanging, right? It's like something really active is happening, there's an exchange, everybody's kind of, there's like a reciprocity too. That you know, that nobody is hosting, like everybody's coming and sharing and exchanging and giving and receiving and maybe nourish is actually the right, I don't know if nourish is an emotion, but I think in the social justice world it is. [Laughs] So it feels like nourish actually is probably a useful emotion. I think reciprocity is also like a feeling that should happen, that when you are giving you're not doing so to the point of extraction because you are also receiving. And that's I think one of the core things about this project wasn't just about Related Tactics and or Visibility Project offering ideas. It was like, we have created a prompt for a potluck and in many ways audience members will come into the show and see our potluck because it will have all these contributions from all these other artists. And so you get to kind of leave with like a goodie bag, doggie bag that is like the kind of residue of our potluck. We hope that folks go home and do that for themselves within their communities, either using our prompts or using our prompts as a platform to create their own space.   Miko Lee: [00:53:18] Is there a perfect amount of people to attend a potluck? Like how many dishes do you want at your potluck?   Michelle K Carlson: [00:53:26] I feel like we're in like a seven to ten vibe. Like 15 tops, then it's too many. You know, it's like, because not too many, but it, there's a different thing that's happening when you get over 15 people in a room. But like, I feel like 10 is the zone where you can still have kind of like close intimate, you know, conversations where you can like build trust, you can spend some time, get around to see everyone, get a little bit of everybody's, you know, contribution, and then, but it's not like so small that it's like you and one other person and you're on a very awkward blind date or something.   Miko Lee: [00:54:09] And are you all down for the themed potlucks or do you like them to be just open ended, bring whatever you want?   Mia Nakano: [00:54:17] I love a themed potluck. I love just like some sort of container where you're going in and you're acknowledging I've got dessert, or we're gonna go over to Southeast Asia, rather than everybody showing up with ten pots of rice and they're just eating rice all night.   Michelle K Carlson: [00:54:35] Or tortilla chips, or like Trader Joe's brownie bites, like five containers of those. No shame on brownie bites.   Miko Lee: [00:54:44] Okay, how can folks find out more about your work?   Mia Nakano: [00:54:48] So folks want to check out what the Visibility Project is doing, you can go to visibilityproject.org and learn about all the participants and hear their stories and even go on an LGBTQ digital history tour of the Asian American community in the Bay Area.   Michelle K Carlson: [00:55:04] If you want to find out more about Related Tactics, you can go to relatedtactics.com or find us on Instagram and our handle is just at Related Tactics.   Miko Lee: [00:55:15] Thank you so much for joining me and I look forward to seeing your work in the show and feeling nourished and planning my next potluck. Thank you so much. So that was a chance to listen to just a few of the artivists that are part of Walking Stories. You got a little insight into where they're coming from and how they created their pieces. And there's so many more artivists that you didn't get to hear from. So I hope you'll come to our exhibit that runs June 29th through the end of December. We'll be at Edge on the Square in San Francisco Chinatown. We'll put a link in the show notes at our website kpfa.org backslash programs, backslash apex express. We hope that you'll join us and share your story too, because all of us have important stories to tell. Thank you so much for joining us on Apex Express. We thank all of you listeners out there. Keep resisting, keep organizing, keep creating and sharing your visions with the world because your voices are important. Apex Express is produced by Ayame Keane-Lee, Anuj Vaidya, Cheryl Truong, Hien Nguyen, Jalena Keane-Lee, Miko Lee, Nate Tan, Paige Chung, Preti Mangala-Shekar, and Swati Rayasam. Tonight's show was produced by Miko Lee and edited by Ayame Keane-Lee. Have a great night.   The post APEX Express – June 13, 2024- Walking Stories appeared first on KPFA.

For this week's podcast episode, I'm speaking to Rowan Hisayo Buchanan about her latest novel, The Sleep Watcher.We talk about what sleep-watching is, and what we would really discover if we could secretly see the world while asleep. We also talk about mental health, family dynamics, mixed-race identity, writing, and so much more.This episode was recorded back in September :)Rowan Hisayo Buchanan is a Japanese-British-Chinese-American writer. Her debut novel, Harmless Like You was published in 2016 by Sceptre and won the Author's Club First Novel Award and a Betty Trask award. It was also shortlisted for the Desmond Elliott Prize, the Books Are My Bag Breakthrough Author Award and longlisted for the Jhalak Prize. Rowan Hisayo Buchanan was the recipient of a Margins fellowship for the Asian American Writers Workshop, has a BA from Columbia University, an MFA from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and is currently working on a PhD at the University of East Anglia. Her writing has appeared in the short story anthology How Much the Heart Can Hold (Sceptre), the Guardian, New York Times, Granta, The Paris Review and The Atlantic among other places. She has lived in London, New York, Tokyo, Madison and Norwich.If you enjoyed this episode, please do rate, like, follow, subscribe and leave a review. It really helps :)Also, you can help me continue putting out great episodes like these by joining me on Patreon. Join my community today and you could receive an exclusive podcast episode right to your inbox, every month:www.patreon.com/thediversebookshefpodcast Lets connect on social media - I'd love to hear from you

Welcome to Season 3, Episode 39! We were so excited to get a chance to have a conversation with Curtis Chin. Curtis is an award-winning Writer, Producer, Director, and Activist. His debut book Everything I Learned, I Learned in a Chinese Restaurant is published by Little, Brown and Company and will be available on October 17, 2023. The memoir is filled with humor and heart-warming moments centered on Curtis growing up Asian American in the Black and white city of Detroit and coming out in his working-class immigrant community. He also shares his experiences as a first-generation college student at the University of Michigan. In our conversation, we talk about the journey to writing his memoir, feelings of identity and belonging, the family restaurant, his award-winning documentary filmmaking (Tested, Vincent Who?, and Dear Corky), the founding of the Asian American Writers Workshop, and so much more. Check out his website, follow him on Instagram or Twitter,  order his book, watch his documentaries (Tested and Vincent Who? are available free on Kanopy), and meet him on his book tour. For previous episodes and information, please visit our site at https://asianamericanhistory101.libsyn.com or social media links at http://castpie.com/AAHistory101. If you have any questions, comments or suggestions, email us at info@aahistory101.com.

Notes and Links to Sarah Thankam Mathews' Work        For Episode 198, Pete welcomes Sarah Thankam Mathews, and the two discuss, among other topics, her early reading and writing and experience with multilingualism, contemporary and not-so contemporary writers who left an imprint on her with their visceral work and distinctive worldbuilding, “seeds and fertilizer” for her standout novel, including the vagaries of post-college life and the tragedies and communal love that came with the COVID pandemic, and pertinent themes in her book, like alienation, sexual trauma, “found family” and community building, and problematic capitalism.        Sarah Thankam Mathews grew up between Oman and India, immigrating to the US at seventeen. She is author of the novel All This Could Be Different, shortlisted for the 2022 National Book Award and the 2022 Discover Prize, nominated for the Aspen Literary Prize. Formerly a Rona Jaffe Fellow in fiction at the Iowa Writer's Workshop, and a Margins Fellow at The Asian American Writers Workshop, she has work in Best American Short Stories 2020 and other places. A proud product of public schools, she lives in Brooklyn, New York. Buy All This Could Be Different   Sarah's Website   Sarah's Substack   Review of All This Could Be Different from Los Angeles Review of Books At about 1:35, Sarah discusses her current paperback tour and what she's heard about the book from readers and observations she has after a year of publication for All This Could Be Different   At about 4:50, Sarah gives background on her early relationship with languages, particularly Hindi, English, and Mayalalam   At about 7:30, Sarah discusses early reading that was influenced by living in what she calls a “tertiary” book market; she mentions transformational and formational books like The Bluest Eye and Arundhati Roy's The God of Small Things as books that left her “profoundly rearranged”   At about 10:20, Sarah shouts out Jamaica Kincaid's Luck as a helpful companion as she wrote All This Could Be Different   At about 12:20, Sarah responds to Pete's question about how Sarah saw her early reading in terms of representation; she points to ideas of visceral pleasure with that reading     At about 14:20, Sarah expands on ideas of pathos as a driving force at times as she wrote her book   At about 15:30, Sarah cites C Pam Zhang, Isle McElroy, Lydia Kiesling,  as some of the many contemporary writers who she admires and is thrilled by   At about 17:45, Sarah coins the cool term “proprietary physics” and how Lydia Kiesling exemplifies the phrase   At about 19:15, Sarah highlights Cohen's The Netanyahus and Homeland Elegies from Ayad Akhtar   At about 20:15, Sarah drops a haunting and amazing fact about publishing from 9/11   At about 20:40, Sarah provides seeds for the book, both in the immediate past and the thought process from the more distant past   At about 23:20, Sarah talks about Bed Stuy Strong, a mutual aid organization she started in 2020, and how the “seeds and fertilizer” for the book came from this time    At about 29:10, Pete lays out the book's exposition and Sarah responds to why she chose to set the book in 2012 or so   At about 32:30, The two discuss the book's pivot point, which happened before the book's main chronology; Sarah expands on the ways in which Sarah's relationships and ethic and view on her previous life in India come from this pivotal and traumatic event   At about 37:30, Sarah speaks to the importance of Milwaukee and its history and her knowledge of it, and why she made the setting what it was    At about 42:10, Sarah responds to Pete's asking about Sneha's complicated relationship with her parents   At about 46:30, Sarah talks about the “absolutely bonkers act” that leads to a misunderstanding between Marina and the smitten Sneha   At about 49:40, Sarah gives background on Sneha's boss and how his character evolved in her various drafts   At about 51:15, The two discuss the idea of “The Pink House” and its significance   At about 54:00, Sarah discusses her book as a coming of age story and her desire to portray deep friendships and love   At about 58:40, Pete notes the success of the well-drawn flashbacks and flashforwards and fanboys over the fabulous and eminently memorable last scene and last line of the book, and Sarah describes what the “page [was] revealing to her” as the book's ending morphed   At about 1:02:05, Sarah discuss the book as (perhaps subtly) hopeful   At about 1:03:10, Pete asks Sarah about future projects   At about 1:04:00, Sarah drops some important insights that are useful advice for young (and old) writers   At about 1:04:50, Sarah shares contact info, social media, and bookstores where to buy her book, including The Word is Change in Bed Stuy, Brooklyn    You can now subscribe to the podcast on Apple Podcasts, and leave me a five-star review. You can also ask for the podcast by name using Alexa, and find the pod on Stitcher, Spotify, and on Amazon Music. Follow me on IG, where I'm @chillsatwillpodcast, or on Twitter, where I'm @chillsatwillpo1. You can watch this and other episodes on YouTube-watch and subscribe to The Chills at Will Podcast Channel. Please subscribe to both my YouTube Channel and my podcast while you're checking out this episode.    Sign up now for The Chills at Will Podcast Patreon: it can be found at patreon.com/chillsatwillpodcastpeterriehl     Check out the page that describes the benefits of a Patreon membership, including cool swag and bonus episodes. Thanks in advance for supporting my one-man show, my DIY podcast and my extensive reading, research, editing, and promoting to keep this independent podcast pumping out high-quality content!    NEW MERCH! You can browse and buy here: https://www.etsy.com/shop/ChillsatWillPodcast    This is a passion project of mine, a DIY operation, and I'd love for your help in promoting what I'm convinced is a unique and spirited look at an often-ignored art form.    The intro song for The Chills at Will Podcast is “Wind Down” (Instrumental Version), and the other song played on this episode was “Hoops” (Instrumental)” by Matt Weidauer, and both songs are used through ArchesAudio.com.    Please tune in for Episode 199 with Jared Beloff. He is the author of Who Will Cradle Your Head and the microchap This is how we say “I love you.” He is also a peer reviewer for The Whale Road Review, and his work has been nominated for Best of the Net and the Pushcart Prize.    The episode will air on August 15.

Notes and Links to Chloé Cooper Jones' Work        Chloé Cooper Jones is a professor, journalist, and the author of the memoir Easy Beauty, which was named a best book of 2022 by The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, TIME Magazine, and was a finalist for the 2023 Pulitzer Prize in Memoir. She was also a Pulitzer Prize finalist in Feature Writing in 2020. She is a contributing writer for The New York Times Magazine, a Whiting Creative Nonfiction Grant recipient and a Howard Foundation Fellow. She lives in Brooklyn, New York.      For Episode 197 of The Chills at Will Podcast, Pete welcomes Chloé Cooper Jones, and the two discuss, among other things, her early relationship with reading, writing, seeking beauty, her parents' influences on her world views, formative and transformative writers (and “fun trash” she read), and salient topics from her powerful memoir, such as muses and aesthetes, pop culture and philosophy, bigoted views on women as those with disabilities, and the pertinent trips that Chloé took in seeking beauty, catharsis, and hope.      Buy Easy Beauty: A Memoir   Chloe's Website   Chloe's Pulitzer-Prize Nominated Article for The Verge- “Fearing for His Life”   People Magazine 2022 Article about Easy Beauty-“Author Chloé Cooper Jones, Who Has a Visible Disability, On Deciding to Claim Space For Herself and Her Son” At about 1:35, Chloe lets the listener in on her mindset in hearing about her second Pulitzer Prize nomination, including the beauty of combining family pursuits and career    At about 6:55, Chloe gives out information regarding where to buy her book, and her contact information, including Greenlight and Books are Magic, and Lawrence, KS' The Raven Bookstore   At about 8:45, Chloe talks about her childhood and its focus on beauty as impressed upon her by her parents in their different ways; she calls “having a rich interior life a survival mechanism”    At about 13:15, Pete shouts out a short story idea from Chloe's father that was emblematic of his mind   At about 14:00, Chloe details some of the reading that excited and challenged her as she grew up, and “the fun trash” too   At about 16:40, Chloe lists Diane Williams and Cormac McCarthy, among many others, as formative writers   At about 17:30, Pete asks Chloe about David Foster Wallace and some other nonfiction she may have read; she notes how “exciting” his sportswriting was, and Janet Malcolm and John McPhee as other great influences   At about 20:20, Chloe shouts out the recently-released and incredibly versatile work of Andrew Leland-The Country of the Blind, Rachel Aviv's work, and Jessamine Chan's School for Good Mothers   At about 22:10, Chloe responds to Pete's question about if she felt represented in what she read growing up, and she answers the question using Coming Home as one anomaly   At about 26:30, Chloe reflects on the use of the word “disabled” and its myriad meanings    At about 28:05, Chloe answers Pete's questions about the balance between disabled people educating others and well-meaning people and possible dehumanizing actions; she cites a telling excerpt from Andrew Leland's book   At about 33:30, Pete cites Elaine Scarry and how Chloe connects ideas of processing beauty and ignorance   At about 34:15, Pete lays out the structure for the book as based on trips Chloe took, and he and Chloe discuss the importance and circumstances of the first trip chronicled, the trip to see Beyonce at San Siro; Chloe builds on the idea and definitions of “easy beauty”   At about 41:55, Pete compliments Chloe's genuine writing about her son and motherhood   At about 42:55, Chloe explains the power of Beyonce and her “radical presence”   At about 45:50, The two discuss the freeing nature of Chloe's reporting trip to see Roger Federer, which leads to further discussion of how Chloe's melds philosophy and more aesthetic ideals with a more pop(ular) sensibility   At about 51:10, Chloe discusses an opening scene from the book that engendered strong feelings for her, as well as pervasive beliefs    At about 54:45, Chloe reflects on what was different about her reaction to the above conversation and the phenomenon of “The Neutral Room”   At about 56:35, The two discuss the book's “Indifferent Man”   At about 59:20, Chloe gives background on her trip to Rome and seeking beauty and connections to her father's philosophies    At about 1:04:15, The two discuss Chloe's trip to Cambodia, and she discusses the evolving nature of her research and searching questions, as catharsis and society's desire for witnessing violence become topics   At about 1:13:10, Pete notes the emphasis on capitalism in “dark tourism” and the seeming normality of dark tourism sites   At about 1:14:35, The two discuss a final scene dealing with perspective and Chloe's mother and a trip to Miami   At about 1:19:25, Chloe responds to Pete's question about how she deals with writing on profound and deeply painful and tragic topics   At about 1:23:45, Chloe talks about upcoming events and projects, including working with Matty Davis in Bentonville, AR    You can now subscribe to the podcast on Apple Podcasts, and leave me a five-star review. You can also ask for the podcast by name using Alexa, and find the pod on Stitcher, Spotify, and on Amazon Music. Follow me on IG, where I'm @chillsatwillpodcast, or on Twitter, where I'm @chillsatwillpo1. You can watch this and other episodes on YouTube-watch and subscribe to The Chills at Will Podcast Channel. Please subscribe to both my YouTube Channel and my podcast while you're checking out this episode.    Sign up now for The Chills at Will Podcast Patreon: it can be found at patreon.com/chillsatwillpodcastpeterriehl     Check out the page that describes the benefits of a Patreon membership, including cool swag and bonus episodes. Thanks in advance for supporting my one-man show, my DIY podcast and my extensive reading, research, editing, and promoting to keep this independent podcast pumping out high-quality content!    NEW MERCH! You can browse and buy here: https://www.etsy.com/shop/ChillsatWillPodcast    This is a passion project of mine, a DIY operation, and I'd love for your help in promoting what I'm convinced is a unique and spirited look at an often-ignored art form.    The intro song for The Chills at Will Podcast is “Wind Down” (Instrumental Version), and the other song played on this episode was “Hoops” (Instrumental)” by Matt Weidauer, and both songs are used through ArchesAudio.com.    Please tune in for Episode 198 with Sarah Thankam Mathews (Thungun) who is the author of the novel All This Could Be Different, which was shortlisted for the 2022 National Book Award and the 2022 Discover Prize, and nominated for the Aspen Literary Prize. She is formerly a Rona Jaffe Fellow in fiction at the Iowa Writers Workshop, and a Margins Fellow at The Asian American Writers Workshop. 

What do sandwiches, laundry, therapy, childhood homes, and forgiveness have to do with each other? Wo Chan weaves a poem that charts the many things a single day can hold.Wo Chan is a poet and drag artist who performs as The Illustrious Pearl. They are a winner of the Nightboat Poetry Prize and the author of Togetherness (Nightboat Books, 2022). Wo has received fellowships from MacDowell, New York Foundation of the Arts, Kundiman, The Asian American Writers Workshop, Poets House, and Lambda Literary. Their poems appear in POETRY, WUSSY, Mass Review, No Tokens, The Margins, and elsewhere. As a member of the Brooklyn-based drag/burlesque collective Switch N' Play, Wo has performed at venues including The Whitney Museum of American Art, National Sawdust, New York Live Arts, and the Architectural Digest Expo. Find them at @theillustriouspearl.Find the transcript for this show at onbeing.org.We're pleased to offer Wo Chan's poem, and invite you to connect with Poetry Unbound throughout this season.

Sarah Thankam Mathews grew up between Oman and India, immigrating to the United States at seventeen. She is a recipient of a Best American Short Stories 2020 award and fellowships from the Asian American Writers Workshop and the Iowa Writers Workshop. All This Could Be Different (Viking, 2022) is her first novel. Sarah's Recommendations: Halle Butler, The New Me Akil Kumarasamy, Meet Us By the Roaring Sea Dhumketu, The Shehnai Virtuoso Sabrina Imbler, How Far the Light Reaches Make a donation to Bed-Stuy Strong. Chris Holmes is Chair of Literatures in English and Associate Professor at Ithaca College. He writes criticism on contemporary global literatures. His book, Kazuo Ishiguro as World Literature, is under contract with Bloomsbury Publishing. He is the co-director of The New Voices Festival, a celebration of work in poetry, prose, and playwriting by up-and-coming young writers. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Sarah Thankam Mathews grew up between Oman and India, immigrating to the United States at seventeen. She is a recipient of a Best American Short Stories 2020 award and fellowships from the Asian American Writers Workshop and the Iowa Writers Workshop. All This Could Be Different (Viking, 2022) is her first novel. Sarah's Recommendations: Halle Butler, The New Me Akil Kumarasamy, Meet Us By the Roaring Sea Dhumketu, The Shehnai Virtuoso Sabrina Imbler, How Far the Light Reaches Make a donation to Bed-Stuy Strong. Chris Holmes is Chair of Literatures in English and Associate Professor at Ithaca College. He writes criticism on contemporary global literatures. His book, Kazuo Ishiguro as World Literature, is under contract with Bloomsbury Publishing. He is the co-director of The New Voices Festival, a celebration of work in poetry, prose, and playwriting by up-and-coming young writers. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network

Sarah Thankam Mathews grew up between Oman and India, immigrating to the United States at seventeen. She is a recipient of a Best American Short Stories 2020 award and fellowships from the Asian American Writers Workshop and the Iowa Writers Workshop. All This Could Be Different (Viking, 2022) is her first novel. Sarah's Recommendations: Halle Butler, The New Me Akil Kumarasamy, Meet Us By the Roaring Sea Dhumketu, The Shehnai Virtuoso Sabrina Imbler, How Far the Light Reaches Make a donation to Bed-Stuy Strong. Chris Holmes is Chair of Literatures in English and Associate Professor at Ithaca College. He writes criticism on contemporary global literatures. His book, Kazuo Ishiguro as World Literature, is under contract with Bloomsbury Publishing. He is the co-director of The New Voices Festival, a celebration of work in poetry, prose, and playwriting by up-and-coming young writers. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literary-studies

Sarah Thankam Mathews grew up between Oman and India, immigrating to the United States at seventeen. She is a recipient of a Best American Short Stories 2020 award and fellowships from the Asian American Writers Workshop and the Iowa Writers Workshop. All This Could Be Different (Viking, 2022) is her first novel. Sarah's Recommendations: Halle Butler, The New Me Akil Kumarasamy, Meet Us By the Roaring Sea Dhumketu, The Shehnai Virtuoso Sabrina Imbler, How Far the Light Reaches Make a donation to Bed-Stuy Strong. Chris Holmes is Chair of Literatures in English and Associate Professor at Ithaca College. He writes criticism on contemporary global literatures. His book, Kazuo Ishiguro as World Literature, is under contract with Bloomsbury Publishing. He is the co-director of The New Voices Festival, a celebration of work in poetry, prose, and playwriting by up-and-coming young writers. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literature

Jia Sung is an artist and educator, born in Minnesota, raised in Singapore, now based in Brooklyn.
Her paintings and artist books have been exhibited across North America, including the Knockdown Center, RISD Museum, Wave Hill, EFA Project Space, Lincoln Center, Yale University, and MOMA PS1. Her work has been published in The Paris Review, Emergence Magazine, Hyperallergic, Jacobin Magazine, and Asian American Writers Workshop, and collected by the Met, SFMOMA, and the Special Collections at Yale, SAIC, and RISD. She has taught at organizations like the AC Institute, Abrons Arts Center, Children's Museum of the Arts, and Museum of Chinese in America. She was a 2018-2019 Smack Mellon Studio Artist and Van Lier Fellow, and is currently an adjunct professor at RISD, where she received her BFA in 2015.

Now, Tom welcomes to the show an author whose literary debut is getting a lot of buzz. Her debut collection of stories centers on two Taiwanese American women who have been best friends since the second grade. As adults, Fiona Lin and Jane Shen lead very different lives, but there is a poignant and complex bond that binds them together, through good times and bad. Author Jean Chen Ho  writes with compassion, insight and authority. Her new book is called Fiona and Jane. Jean Chen Ho joins us on our digital line from Los Angeles. _______________________________________________ Jean Chen Ho will be part of an on-line panel with the authors Jessamine Chan and Weike Wang sponsored by the Asian American Writers Workshop on Friday, February 4 at 7:00pm. For more information and to register for the event, click here. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Benedict Nguyen is a writer, dancer, and curator based on occupied Lenape and Wappinger lands (South Bronx, NY). Benedict's poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in AAWW's the Margins, Flypaper, and PANK. Their fiction writing was supported by an AWP Writer to Writer Mentorship in 2017. They're at work on a novel. Their criticism has appeared in the Brooklyn Rail, Shondaland, the Establishment, and Culturebot, among others, and in commissioned profiles for Danspace Project, Baryshnikov Arts Center, and Fusebox Festival. As the 2019 Suzanne Fiol Curatorial Fellow at ISSUE Project Room, Benedict created the multidisciplinary performance platform “soft bodies in hard places,” which has partnered with Materials for the Arts, Culturebot, the Asian American Writers Workshop, Center for Performance Research, and Bronx Academy of Arts and Dance! (BAAD!). They've performed in DapperQ Fashion week and in recent works by Sally Silvers, José Rivera, Jr., Nick Mauss at the Whitney Museum, Monstah Black, and more. They've worked as an arts admin unicorn and grant writer for Jennifer Monson, Donna Uchizono, and John Jasperse. They've served on selection committees for Movement Research at Judson Church, the MAP Fund, and Bronx Council on the Arts. Otherwise, Benedict has worked a tutor, grant writer, Postmate, cater waiter, and more. As a producer, educator, and artistic entrepreneur, Johnnie Cruise Mercer leads as the Company Director of Johnnie Cruise Mercer/TheREDprojectNYC (@jcm_redprojectnyc). His process-memoirs, happenings, and performance events have been commissioned/held at The Dixon Place, Bates Dance Festival (@batesdancefestival), Brooklyn Arts Exchange (@baxarts), AUNTS @NYU Skirball, The NADA Conference (@newartdealers), Abrons Arts Center (@abronsartcenter), The Fusebox Festival (@fuseboxfestival), Gibney (@gibneydance), Danspace Project Inc (@danspaceproject), The Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center (@theclaricemd), and most recently at the 92Y Harkness Dance Center. Mercer is currently 2019-2021 Artist in Residence at Brooklyn Arts Exchange (@baxarts), 2020-2021 Black Artist Space to Create AIR through The New Dance Alliance (@newdancealliance) and a 2020-2021 Ping Chong + Company (@pingchongco) Creative Fellow. Find out more info on the company and the work at www.trpnyc.com. Transcripts of this episode are available at odc.dance/stories.

In time for the Association of Asian American Studies Conference that kicks off this week, we’re reposting an episode from the newly launched Journal of Asian American Studies podcast! We discuss a unique special issue of The Journal of Asian American Studies: #WeToo, a reader of Art, Poetry, Fiction, and Memoir, that seeks to answer the question, “What does sexual violence look like in the lives of those hailed as “model minority?” Intended as a reader for the college classroom, the #WeToo special issue contains works that make academic language and theories of sexual violence relevant and workable for our students’ understanding of their own lives and experiences. This episode is hosted by Chris Patterson and features interviews with the issue editors, erin Khuê Ninh and Shireen Roshanravan, as well as with two contributors, James McMaster, and Mashuq Mushtaq Deen. This special issue of the Journal of Asian American Studies was published in partnership with the Asian American Writers’ Workshop and our digital magazine The Margins. Read a selection of pieces from #WeToo online at https://aaww.org/we-too-introduction-ninh-roshanravan/ Forthcoming episodes of the JAAS X New Books Network Podcast can be found here: https://newbooksnetwork.com/erin-khu%C3%AA-ninh-wetoo-reader-jaas-2021

Acclaimed poet, novelist, and essayist Kazim Ali joins the Asian American Writers’ Workshop and Milkweed Editions to launch his new memoir, Northern Light: Power, Land, and the Memory of Water. Northern Light, a sensitive and elegantly structured exploration of land and power, is told through Ali’s recollections of his childhood in Manitoba, and the relationships he built with the indigenous Pimicikamak community, his former neighbors and fierce environmental activists. Ali is joined in conversation by poet and scholar Billy-Ray Belcourt.

Sign-up for Michael Moore's email list! https://forms.gle/1wmxdZmdAZQ4yMkZA ***** In 1987, Michael Moore exclusively interviewed Ronald Ebens, the former Chrysler autoworker who, along with his laid-off autoworker stepson, brutally beat a Chinese-American man named Vincent Chin to death with a baseball bat in Detroit 5 years earlier. A witness heard Ebens tell Chin and his Asian-American friend that they "were the reason we're all getting laid off" -- a reference to the scapegoating of the Japanese for the American auto industry cutting jobs (again, Chin was Chinese, but that made no difference to his killer). The killing of Chin and the fact that Ebens spent no time in jail and only paid a small fine set off a wave of new Asian-American civil rights activism. In this special episode of Rumble, Michael recounts his 2 hour meeting with the defiant killer of Vincent Chin and notes the all-too-familiar "white-guy-as-victim syndrome" that Ebens exhibited due to his legal and media ordeal after he killed Chin. Michael is joined by an Asian-American public school teacher, storyteller, activist, and the cousin of the late Vincent Chin, Annie Tan, who explains the importance of Vincent Chin's legacy and discusses the proactive, positive work that is being done to confront anti-Asian racism and violence. Finally, March 23rd, 2021 is Michael Moore's Liberation Day. After 379 days in a self-imposed quarantine and one month after receiving his second dose of the COVID-19 vaccine, he's finally leaving the house and he ponders all the places he will go. 'The Man Who Killed Vincent Chin' by Michael Moore This article appeared in the Detroit Free Press Sunday Magazine on August 30, 1987. https://web.archive.org/web/20120627010544/https://michaelmoore.com/words/must-read/man-who-killed-vincent-chin-michael-moore Here are the links to the groups Annie mentioned that support Asian Americans: NAPAWF: National Asian Pacific American Women's Forum: https://www.napawf.org/ Asian Americans Advancing Justice: https://www.advancingjustice-aajc.org/ CAAAV Organizing Asian American Tenants: https://caaav.org/ Red Canary Song: https://www.redcanarysong.net/ SWOP Brooklyn: https://www.swopbrooklyn.org/ DRUM NYC: https://www.drumnyc.org/ Flushing Workers Center: Twitter @FlushingWorkers: https://www.paypal.com/donate/?hosted_button_id=NAX7TUH6UPSFE Welcome to Chinatown: https://www.welcometochinatown.com/ Send Chinatown Love: https://www.sendchinatownlove.com/ CACF Coalition of Asian Children and Families: https://www.cacf.org/ 18 Million Rising: https://18millionrising.org/ Articles Annie mentioned: Annie Tan, "Remembering Vincent," The Moth https://themoth.org/stories/remembering-vincent Nina Sharma, "Not Dead" in Asian American Writers Workshop: https://aaww.org/not-dead/ Music in the episode: "If I Ruled The World" - MILCK https://youtu.be/NhHKRvv4JfU --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/rumble-with-michael-moore/message

Join the Asian American Writers’ Workshop as we celebrate award-winning writer Chang-rae Lee’s electrifying new novel, My Year Abroad. A surprising, tender, and humorous work, My Year Abroad is a story unique to Chang-rae Lee’s immense talents as a writer, and explores the division between East and West, capitalism, mental health, mentorship, and much more. Chang-rae will be joined in conversation by Bryan Washington, award-winning author of Lot and Memorial.

In this inaugural episode, we discuss a unique special issue of The Journal of Asian American Studies: #WeToo, a reader of Art, Poetry, Fiction, and Memoir, that seeks to answer the question, “What does sexual violence look like in the lives of those hailed as “model minority?” Intended as a reader for the college classroom, the #WeToo special issue contains works that make academic language and theories of sexual violence relevant and workable for our students’ understanding of their own lives and experiences. This episode features interviews with the issue editors, erin Khuê Ninh and Shireen Roshanravan, as well as with two contributors, James McMaster, and Mashuq Mushtaq Deen. The JAAS Podcast is a collaboration between the New Books Network and the Journal of Asian American Studies (JAAS) and is hosted by Chris Patterson (University of British Columbia). The Issue’s Companion Website on the Asian American Writers Workshop is here. Christopher B. Patterson is an Assistant Professor in the Social Justice Institute at the University of British Columbia. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm

In this inaugural episode, we discuss a unique special issue of The Journal of Asian American Studies: #WeToo, a reader of Art, Poetry, Fiction, and Memoir, that seeks to answer the question, “What does sexual violence look like in the lives of those hailed as “model minority?” Intended as a reader for the college classroom, the #WeToo special issue contains works that make academic language and theories of sexual violence relevant and workable for our students’ understanding of their own lives and experiences. This episode features interviews with the issue editors, erin Khuê Ninh and Shireen Roshanravan, as well as with two contributors, James McMaster, and Mashuq Mushtaq Deen. The JAAS Podcast is a collaboration between the New Books Network and the Journal of Asian American Studies (JAAS) and is hosted by Chris Patterson (University of British Columbia). The Issue’s Companion Website on the Asian American Writers Workshop is here. Christopher B. Patterson is an Assistant Professor in the Social Justice Institute at the University of British Columbia. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm

In this inaugural episode, we discuss a unique special issue of The Journal of Asian American Studies: #WeToo, a reader of Art, Poetry, Fiction, and Memoir, that seeks to answer the question, “What does sexual violence look like in the lives of those hailed as “model minority?” Intended as a reader for the college classroom, the #WeToo special issue contains works that make academic language and theories of sexual violence relevant and workable for our students’ understanding of their own lives and experiences. This episode features interviews with the issue editors, erin Khuê Ninh and Shireen Roshanravan, as well as with two contributors, James McMaster, and Mashuq Mushtaq Deen. The JAAS Podcast is a collaboration between the New Books Network and the Journal of Asian American Studies (JAAS) and is hosted by Chris Patterson (University of British Columbia). The Issue’s Companion Website on the Asian American Writers Workshop is here. Christopher B. Patterson is an Assistant Professor in the Social Justice Institute at the University of British Columbia. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm

In this inaugural episode, we discuss a unique special issue of The Journal of Asian American Studies: #WeToo, a reader of Art, Poetry, Fiction, and Memoir, that seeks to answer the question, “What does sexual violence look like in the lives of those hailed as “model minority?” Intended as a reader for the college classroom, the #WeToo special issue contains works that make academic language and theories of sexual violence relevant and workable for our students’ understanding of their own lives and experiences. This episode features interviews with the issue editors, erin Khuê Ninh and Shireen Roshanravan, as well as with two contributors, James McMaster, and Mashuq Mushtaq Deen. The JAAS Podcast is a collaboration between the New Books Network and the Journal of Asian American Studies (JAAS) and is hosted by Chris Patterson (University of British Columbia). The Issue’s Companion Website on the Asian American Writers Workshop is here. Christopher B. Patterson is an Assistant Professor in the Social Justice Institute at the University of British Columbia. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm

Join the Asian American Writers’ Workshop for the official launch of Te-Ping Chen’s extraordinary debut short story collection, Land of Big Numbers. Assured and immersive, the stories in Land of Big Numbers move confidently between the United States and China, shifting from realism to magical realism, and forming intimate portraits that draw from Chen’s years of working as a journalist in China. For this launch event, Chen will be joined in conversation by Charles Yu, author of the National Book Award-winning Interior Chinatown.

Join the Asian American Writers’ Workshop for our first event of the new year: a joint paperback launch of Gish Jen’s The Resisters and Meng Jin’s Little Gods. These two novels, released in early 2020, sketch out a dystopian near future that takes aim at several current catastrophes, and examine history, absence, and the passage of time as filtered through the individual immigrant experience. Together, these works break new ground for the dystopian and immigrant novels, and we hope you will join us as Gish and Meng discuss their work and craft.   Live Transcript: Hi, everyone. Happy new year and thank you for joining us online for this conversation with Meng Jin and Gish Jen. My name is Lily Philpott. It is my pleasure to welcome you to our virtual space. For those that are new we are a nonprofit organization dedicated to uplifting Asian literature and story telling. You can visit aaw.org and follow us on twitter, I object Saturday gram and YouTube. The recording of this event will be posted. During the event we ask that all audience members practice nonviolence in the chat. Comments will be flagged and the person will be removed from this event. We will have time for audience Q&A at the end of the night. You can ask questions by the Q &A function at the bottom of your screen. Books are for sale. You can find a link to purchase in the chat. You can support our authorize and independent book stores in doing so. I am going briefly introduce Meng and Gish. Gish Jen is the author of 4 previous novels. Her honors cloud the literary award for fiction and the American academy of arts and sciences. She delivered the William E Macy lecture at Harvard universitity. She teaches from time to time in China and lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts. She is a graduate of Harvard and hunter college. "Little Gods" is her first novel. We are delighted to celebrate " Little Gods" and "The Resisters" back in paper back. Pick up those books, support our authorize and enjoy the evening. Welcome Meng Jin to read. » Hi, everyone. Thank you so much for joining us tonight. Thank you Lily for that lovely introduction. Thank to AAWW for inviting Meng Jin to do this event. I couldn't think of a more wonderful way to celebrate the paper back launch of those books. I am so honored to be here with Gish Jen who many of you might know was one of the first Chinese American authorize that I read when I started thinking about becoming a writer. Yeah, it's just kind of mind blowing that we get to be here tonight together. I am actually going to read from a photo essay that is published in the end section of the paper back. I thought about reading this because I took these photographs in 2016 in the summer of 2016 when actually I saw Gish in person for the first time. I don't know if we actually met. But Gish was doing an event with some local writers and a friend of mine invited me. So yeah, here are the -- here is the photo essay . I am going to share my screen. Images of Shanghai I spent 6 weeks in my birth city Shanghai. I was there to finish my novel "Little Gods". I left when I was a child. My memories of the city are the memories of a child fleeting, flashes of sensory knowledge, closer to the knowledge of a dream than that of a photograph. Inside these memories were images so intense and vivid I felt I could reach out and touch them. But when I did reach for them they disintegrated immediately. I hope to stabilize my memory with images of the real city outside my window the Shanghai of post cards was laid before me sharp and glittering. This was a Shanghai that had been built after my departure when the sky line was farmland . Time changed me too. We faced each other as strangers. Some days the city felt dense. It awed me with its layers of complexity. Each time you peeled one another, you found another just as teaming. The inner most layer was the one I sought between the cracks of the buildings crowding the feet of the sky line. We'ved weaved through the sit. I knew I would never find the exact Shanghai I was looking for. My childhood had been demolished. On previous visits I had searched for its remnants in vein. The closest I had gotten was confirmation of its non-existence. In a translated directory I found the name of my neighborhood with a single asterisk beside it. According to the note note it meant has been obliterated. Still I walk the streets where it should have been searching for glimmers glimmers that might bring my childhood home back to me in one unbroken piece. Some remain. In thosalies you can these allies you can see the disruption of empire, technology and nature. The architecture was pleasantly modeled colonel history the narrow allies are made narrower by frequent stacks of junk. Not a centimeter of space goes unused. Everywhere life is spilling out of the doors. Most of the time, however , the impossibility of my search was reflected back at me. Since 2005 the Shanghai municipal government has been modernizing the city through the demolition of the neighborhoods. Select areas have been preserved for historic value or rebuilt as tourist destinations. But most are marked with. Sometimes instead of Ti, I found buildings meaning they were empty. A paradox in a city that is continually over filling. I found myself photographing tis. I did not actively search. It is not photo again I can or beautiful. I continued to photograph with a vague imperative of duty to whom or what I didn't know. I still don't understand what good these images are for. They can't preserve anything. Not really . And besides most of the residents would prefer to collect their relocation checks and go. They certainly can't bring back anybody's lost home. But there is something about looking at a site you know will soon disappear that compels to you keep looking. One day I unearthed a lost photograph of my town taken in 2008 during the last visit to the neighborhood before its demolition. I noticed an unusual looking building in the background. Using street view I was able to locate the exact spot where my town would have been if it still stood. I went there. I saw that the unusual building still stood. What's being built here I asked some construction workers. A shopping mall they replied cheerfully. Now when I imagine Shanghai I long for no fixed image. Instead I see a city racing to an unknown future at near light speed in whose wake I can only blink. Thank you. » Hi. Am I on screen now? First let me say Meng that was beautiful. Just hearing your voice and images I can't even tell you how much they meant to me. My family is also from Shanghai an I also spent a lot of time looking for remnants of the past. It's so interesting that even throw my new book is very much concerned with the future, just listen to go you and that Shanghai, I am aware how much even this book is a loss. We'll be talking about that. Let me just read a few minutes from my book. My book as you know is called "The Resisters". It is a post automation state baseball testimony enist dystopia. I am going to read to you 2 sections. One is longer than the other. And then we' ll talk. So this is from the beginning of the bosk. The book is narrated by the father in this family named grant. He is talking about his daughter a gifted picture for a daughter daughter. As her parents should have known earlier, but Gwen was a preemie. That meant oxygen at first and special checkups and her early months were bumpy. She had jaun cidie. A heart murmur things that distracted us. We were focused on her health to the exclusion of all else. For us surplus the limit was one pregnancy per couple and Eleanor was just out of jail. Outside of the house she had a drone tracking her every move. The message was clear she was not getting away with anything . And we loved Gwen would never have wanted to replace her. She was delicate that she might not consume the way she needed to the way we all needed to. Charges of under consumption couldn't be fought in the courts. This was auto America after all for all the changes brought by AI and automation now rolled up with the internet into the eye burrito we called aunt Netty we still did have a constitution. If anyone could defend what was left of our rights it was Eleanor even the goose patrolled the neighborhood. The pit bulls one might say were afraid. But as Eleanor's incarceration brought home these battles had a price. In the meanwhile worrying an weighing the options distracted us from realizing other things things we might have noticed earlier had Gwen had a sibling. It is so hard for a new parent to imagine a child any different from the one he or she has. Children do have their own gravity. They are their own normal. And so it is only now we can see that there are signs. All children take what 's in their crib and throw it for example. It is universal. But Gwen through her stuffed animal straight through her bedroom doorway. They shot out never grazing the door frame and they always hit the wall or staircase at a certain spot with a force they need today bounce forward and drop clean down to the bottom of the stairwell. Was she 2 when she did this? Not even. She was already a southpaw and she seemed to have unusually long arms and long fingers or so I remember remarking one day not that he will nor and I had so many babies on which to base our comparison. Ours was just an impression. But it was a strong impression. Her fingers were long. I remember too having to round up own the landing before starting up the stairs. The stuffed hippo and tiger the stuffed turtle. I gathered them all into my arm like the story book zoo Cooper of some kingdom. It was as if I too by all rights be made plush. Of course our house was automated as all surplus houses were required to be by law. The animals could easily have been clear floated. All I had to do is say the wall they would immerse from the closet. Clear float now, aren't those animals in your way and we can roll an clear if you prefer. You have a choice. You always have a choice. The choice the new feature of the program. To balance its more cyber intimidation. If you shift it will be your own fault. Do note that your choice is on the record. Nothing is being hidden from you. Your choice is on the record. Meaning that I was losing living points every time. Living points being something like what we used to call brownie points growing up. They are more critical than money from goating a loan to getting Gwen into net u should we dream of doing that a goal that involved tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of points. But I picked the animals up myself any way as did Eleanor when it was she who came upon them her silver hair and black eyes shining all because we wanted to dump the animals into the crib and hear her laughter as she set about hurling them. Everything was a game to her a most wonderful loving endless game. Her spy eyes let up with mischief. Her cheeks the pink on the under clouds. She laughed so hard she fell grabbing the crib rails as she scam peopled back up that the whole crib shook. Was this delicate newborn we delicately tended. She wore a soft yellow blanket sleeper with hand knit extra version of a suit Eleanor remembered from her own childhood. None of the baby over Gwen's Crib. She learned to blow on her hands if she was cold and cuddle for us if she needed warmth. We all wore sweaters to avoid turning on the zone heat for which we were house scowled. Don't you find it chilly? Why not turn on the zone heat you will be more comfortable Eleanor especially. Don't you find it a bit chilly? We ignored it. This is how the auto house started with thermostats that sent to aunt Netty and videos then drone deliverers and fruit stockers and global sitters. Elder helpers and yard bots all of which report today ought netty as any spy network recording our steps, our pictures, you are relationships and when surplus had them. She in turn took what she knew and applied it prover ago long the way so will is and advice. Indeed in the earlyize day automation I myself brought up ask aunt Netty and can still remember her voice as she volunteered I 'm here and insisted I want to hear everything and reassured me of course you feel that way , how could you not. You are only human. I did laugh at you are only human. Now I am going to read a short section from later on the book. Gwen has gone on and now she and her teammates are getting ready to play in the olympics against the Russia team. The Russia team is terrifying partly because they have all been bio engineered. That mean we are all switch hitters. Perhaps all of this was fear pure and simple on the part of Gwen's teammate feeding their obsession was the sense that baseball was more than a sport. That it was a crown jewel. There were people that said it wasn't even invented in America. There were people who pointed out it was mentioned by Jane Austin long before it was ever mentioned here. But if baseball took on a hallowed meaning, it took on that meaning in our American dreams. For was this not the level playing field we envisioned, the field on which people could show what they were made of? And didn't we Americans believe above all that everyone should have a real chance at bat? Didn't we believe with the good of the team at heart something in us might just hit a ball off our shoe tops? If Gwen's teammates were playing Russia for something it was for this, for a chance to show my mother would have said that even if we all returned to the dirt and the wind and the rain like the plants and the animals, we had a bigness in us, something beyond algorithm and beyond upgrades. Something we were proud to call human or so it seemed to me. Thank you. Did I say thank you loud enough? Meng, great. So Meng, it is really a great, great pleasure to share the event of you. I was a big fan as you could tell by my review. It was a stunning debut. I am hoping that a year later the joy is still with you. How does it feel now that you have done it in hard cover but the paper back? It is quite a moment for you. Are you still aglow? » Well, it's been quite a year in between. Yeah, I think I have got a little bit of distance and perspective this year because of how nuts the world has been. I was reflecting on when the hard cover came out in January of last year and the president was getting impeached and it was very -- it was apparent because one of my interviews was -- one of my radio interviews was canceled because they were covering impeachment all day. Oh, gray great. It is almost like no time and all of the time in the year. » I have had friends come out and publish books on 9/11. » Yeah. » You will soon discover something is almost always happening in a funny kind of way it matters so much to you but the rest of the world barely notices. Since this is the writers workshop and people are so interested in process we should talk about our books. I think we should maybe -- maybe you could talk about your journey. I think a lot of people in the audience would like to be you. They are working on their first book and they are working on their first book and they have roots maybe in Asia as you and I do. Not everybody is from Shanghai, of course. But they have all made -- as you know, they are making 2 journeys. Often they are making one journey which is just from wow , I have a blank page to like wow, how do these books get written that is really long. In the beginning people go on to write like 7 books? It seems to I am probable. That is one journey which is just -- I bearly know what point of view is to a finished book. For people like you and me we have another journey. We have roots in another culture where the whole narrative thing, the whole novel tradition is not native. And we frequently -- there are probably 3 journeys. The journey often we have parents who often do not get this thing at all. Who really see this whole enterprise as May more individualistic than anything they would happen to them and their family. So this kind of has 3 things going on. Your journey was my journey at one point. I think interestingly I don't know how many years out my first book came out in '91. I have been at this for quite a while. I sat down to write in 1986 when Asian American novel did not exist. I can still remember my agent saying it is about people coming to America. It' s about -- the term immigrant novelist did not hope to mind. I wrote that book at a time when people believed Asian Americans could not write novels. Max even had meant the warrior to be a novel and forced to force it as a memoir . Asian Americans did not write novels. I wrote it at the bunting institute at Radcliff. I was asked every day aren't you writing immigrant auto biography. This was by educated people. Every day I had to say no, actually I am writing a novel. Actually I'm producing not artifact. It was another -- all of these things today happily people presumably don't say those things to you anymore. Today presumably people can accept that you are writing a novel. If you can talk about what it is like to enter this tradition or getting up the nerve to tell your parents that you were going to be a novelist, where you got this idea. We both went to Harvard, am I right? » I guess so, yes. I was actually her fighted of the English department at Harvard. It was in the most intimidating building with all of these deer heads on the wall. I don't know if you remember that. And I took like 2 English classes that were in the requirements. I studied basically everything else. I studied social studies and I did pre--med because I told my parents I have my plan B don't worry. I can always go back on my pre-med requirements » You will not be surprised to hear that I was also pre-med and pre-law. I dropped out of Stanford business school. This is very familiar too. This is part of the story. 3 of us from Harvard we were all about '77, '78. The 3 of us stood there and it was like a trifecta. I had dropped out of business school. the other one dropped out of law school and the other one dropped out of med school. And there we were. But anyway, this is a very familiar part of the story. Please say about what did it mean at the time that you were doing it. We're like the old school. » No, I think honestly everything I have said sounds familiar to me. I remember because I didn't really have a big humanities education or background I wasn't really encouraged to read when I was a kid, I remember when I decided after college I am really going to try to do this and went abou methodically making reading lists for myself Asian American reading lists. I remember discovering your work and the best short stories of the century and reading it and being like oh, my God this is not just like we are Chinese people drinking tea or we have so much tender immigrant feelings. It's funny. It's ambitious. It looks outside of just the Chinese American experience or the experience of immigration. You were really one of the writers that made me feel like okay, I don't necessarily have to, you know, produce the kind of work that people are expecting me to produce. I think I teach a little bit now . It feels like my students are not going through as much just as I am not going through as much of the you might be writing your own story. Surely you can only be expressing yourself not creating art. Surely you must be like creating testimony and not a work of art. I feel, yeah, when I started writing I felt like I did get a lot of feedback. It took me a long time in my writing workshops to get over the fact that all of my professors and most of my peers were white and that they were -- the parts of my writing that they liked were the more exotic Chinese parts. I literally had a teacher, I literally had a teacher who gave me feedback that was like do more of the Chinese stuff. It took me a while to understand how to sort of push back against that and to ignore it and to come to my own sense of what I wanted my writing to be. Because I think especially someone that doesn't come from a literary background, please, tell me what is good. A lot of writing, this book was learning to ignore what other people thought and learning to really listen to what it was inside me that wanted to create and wanted to write. » It is so interesting, I of course have the letter from the Paris review that literally the rejection letter says we prefer more exotic work. » Oh, wow. » It is right out there. Today they might hesitate to say that. But I think what you are describing and many people in the audience can also relate. I think they can see that there is a kind of salable commodity that everybody sees in you and you have to really resist. For me a lot of that meant I defined myself early as an American writer. Everybody wanted to be right about China China. I didn't want to -- I didn't want to become abdomen ambassador. There were a couple of roles for you. One is exotic. Being an ambassador of some sort. Another as things got more political and being a professional victim. I don't want to be a professional victim. I actually want to be a writer. And it is kind of this mine field when you are negotiating , negotiating. The very happy situation with you is that you made it through. I think that maybe one of the things that people might be interested to hear sounds like look you could hear I also heard myself in the end. I ignored all of those things just like you. I literally had a little ritual that I would enact before I started working where I would make a little icon of various people and various opinions in my mind a little icon. I would literally pick it up and put it in the trash. Or out in the hall. But I would basically -- there were a lot of these. They weren't all -- in other words some people who wrote opinions were not bad people. I removed the people with good opinions. John Updyke had a good opinion of me. No sooner did I realize what a good opinion he had of me did I have to put him in the hall. It was a happy thing but I am not here to write for John Updyke. I write for myself. If you are from an Asian background the business of writing for yourself this is a radical act . It doesn't come naturally to us for many, many reasons that we can discuss. As you know I have written a lot about that. It doesn't come naturally to us. So it is a fight the whole way. I have had this little ritual. I am wondering whether you had anything like that that you would be able to share with the audience? How did you find your way? This book is very striking. Very unlike any other Asian American novel. It doesn't feel like oh, she has been reading a lot Maxine Hunt Kingston. You kill the writers ahead of you. She said I heard that you wanted to kill me. Maxine is so sweet. But at some level what I really -- what really was I had to put her out in the hall. I am sure you had to put me out in the hall. You have to put everybody out in the hall.. I wonder how you did that whether you had rituals that you used, how you cleared the space for yourself so you could hear yourself so you could write this very singular book that is on one level very identifiablely Asian American around another way unlike any other Asian American or American novel. Where did you find that? How did you do that? >> I love what you said earlier. I loved hearing about you talking about you identified yourself as an American writer. I think I had a similar sorts of things that I would insist upon. One thing was always that if anyone ever said that I was writing about identity I would correct them and say I am writing about " the self". Because I felt that identity was something superficial that society imposed upon you and it is the self's way of responding to others view of us. I wanted - - I think I wanted from the start when I started writing I knew that I wanted to be able to write with the sort of freedom that I saw white guys writing with where I wasn't sort of bound to write about anything basically except for the things I wanted to write about. And I didn't -- I love your ritual. I wish I had something as cute to share. But I think mostly I just -- at a certain point my work I think started really growing and becoming itself when I realized that I hadn't read a book like the one I wanted to write and that was a good thing. And that I should be writing the book I wanted to read. So in my head I sort of -- I think there was a point in which I shifted my imaginary audience from whatever you imagine American readers or the general readership to be. I shifted that and I started writing for myself when I was younger basically. I started writing for the person who was reading and reading and trying to find the book that I craved to read and then realizing that that book didn't exist yet and I had to write it. So I think that was one of the sort of Montras that I had that you are writing the book that you want to read. That a version of yourself who basically has had the same experiences and has the same - - is interested in the same things, is delighted by the same things. Is moved by the same things, hasn't had the exact same ideas you have had. That really changed -- I think that really helped me and changed my work because I was no longer explaining myself as much as I was in my earlier work. » It's interesting. Another thing I don't know that will resonate with you. There are also books that talk about the freedom of the white male writer. There are books that are still in territory that is not out. That is not only because we are Asian America but also because we are women. So this business first of all my first book is called " typical American". How can those people be typical American. How can you be claiming to be the great American novel. How can you be doing that. Even now so many books in there is still territory that is not okay. In in case the baseball novel. Coincidentally I am not the only women. Emily did it at the same time. It is interesting. What you can sort of see is a journey I have been on, whatever, a generation and a half later you will go on the same journey. People will fill the same box. Why can't women write about baseball? With baseball being extremely important because it is the American sport. When women can't write about baseball you are there is a whole portion of America that is fenced off in some ways that is not yours. So it was kind of interesting that Emily Neamans felt this kind of restriction and also chose to write against it. Also did it as I did with the sense that boy territory and we knew -- we both had the sense you cannot get one detail wrong. It is dangerous. You understand that the audience is looking -- they are looking to find fault. They are looking to question your authority. This is a question for you. I don' t know if there is a point at which you realize that you have kind of -- there was something in the -- there was something out there that we need to get you. You realize they didn't get me. I know for me it was when I passed muster of any number of baseball biographers. When I passed muster with Jane Nolan and James Levy. They wrote and also with baseball fans. I put my book through the biggest baseball fans I could find. I know the moment -- and I passed. It almost didn' t matter what the reviews said . I knew that I had gotten in there and I actually don't know that much about baseball. I knew -- I learned a lot obviously. I did a lot of studying. I did a lot of research. Nobody said to me that's not how pictures feel or that is not how pitchers -- that's not how they act or that's not how the game goes, any of those things, nobody said any of that. Everybody said you must be a pitcher. I can't throw a ball from here across the room. » Neither can I. But I found all of the baseball so delightful. I learned so much about it. I was curious. I thought that surely you must have a deep love for baseball and that's why you wanted to write a baseball novel. But was there another reason? » I do have a -- funny, I don' t play baseball myself. I don 't know it. Neither of my children. Is Gwen your daughter? Neither of my children can catch or hit or any of those things. They don't throw. They read philosophy. They don't do any of those things. But it is true that my mother was an avid, avid Yankee fan as many immigrants are. When she first came to America this was one of the first ways she performed to be an American and learned what America was. This whole idea of the level playing field being from Shan ghai that is not an idea you grow up on. She became such an avid fan. She did die of COVID this spring. I know. » I'm so sorry. we did bury her with a Yankee's cap. She was really a fan. My brother could really pitch. Most of my siblings don't. But my brother could really throw. It was something he would not have discovered he could do. My father found a boy's club for him and turned out he had quite a little childhood formed by baseball. So I had some familiarity with it. Really it was more it was something I wanted to write about, about what I thought was happening to America as I was trying to think about how to drama ties dramatise what we could be losing and the danger to democracy and conveying that dramatically. I said of course baseball. So I have an emotional feeling about it but truly I hadn't thought about baseball in many, many years. My family are still Yankee fans. From Boston we are definitely not Yankee fans. I don't have the patience to watch all of those games and they are watching that every pitch. You know what I mean. I don't have the patience for any of that. So it really was -- » I am more interested in baseball now than when I started my book. Now that I know a little bit it it is really interesting. » You could really feel the tenderness in the way that you wrote about it. I was especially drawn to how you described the relationship between the catcher and the pitcher which I had no idea because I have not watched baseball. I am not really a baseball fan and how you use that in this brilliant character dynamic between 2 best friends. It was one of those things that made me think that you must know the sport deeply. It also made me realize that Andey was as exciting a character as Gwen » It is a little bit like the relationship between Ju wun. She is like the person that -- they are kind of related because each one is the person that wun hoped she could be. The other is the person she fears she could be. We could probably go on. I warned you, Lily, that we had a lot to talk about. We can go on very easily. We haven't scratched the surface. I can see you are here and it is time to take questions from the audience. I think the fact that -- I think honestly for somebody out there that is looking for a little paper to write there is a paper there. » Another thing that I noticed was reading your book that felt like a symbolotic relationship it is narrated from the perspective of a par parent about the child. I can 't think of another book that' s told from that point of view. That point of vow is just unbearable for me to read. Unbearably heartbreaking. I think a lot of times like my book obviously has a child looking at a parent. That's a more typical sort of gaze especially when we are talking about immigrants and the child looking backwards looking at the past and I guess it makes sense that your November Dystopian novel is looking into the future. The way a parent must feel growing up in a horrible world and want ing that child to have a bright future and wanting them to have freedom and wanting to protect them. » Well you got it. Lily is here and she is here to tell us to take questions. I will say that here you are. Your first book obviously many things -- many things to pioneer and very exciting and many new things to write. I will say that of course just the same way you write against things I write against the older writer. There is a sense you must be done because you wrote about the story being young growing up. Actually there are many, many other stories to be written. I feel so privileged to be an older writer who still has a few things to say and a few of view that is different. A point of view on the same experience. It is so familiar but oddly enough from where I sit it looks different. Anyway, Lily, I warned you we would have a lot to say. » I know. I feel like we could go on forever. I am so grateful. There is lot in the chat. I am grateful for the conversation. It is so vibrant and I am so glad to hear you speak. I think we have time for a few audience questions which I will read. If you have any questions you can put them in the Q&A box in Zoom and we will do our best. The first is from Rachel who writes Shanghai is an ever changing city. In what ways does it still feel like home? » It's funny, I think one point in your book it is all so Chinese. University like Meng I was born in America. I evenly knew about Shanghai from my mother. It really did feel like home. The things that people are pre-occupied with. I could really sense the difference between Shanghai and Beijing. Meng you have much more to say. There is a whole Shanghai way of thinking. » There definitely is. » Including what they think of other Chinese. » My family isn't old school Shanghai where my parents are migrated to Shanghai from the provinces. So Shanghai is not in our blood but maybe that means I can see it a little more. I have definitely been on the hardened of that Shanghai before on the receiving end. I haven't been back -- I haven 't been back in a really long time. I do think that there is just -- whenever I go back to Shanghai or any part of China that my family lives in, it just opens up a part of me that, you know, perhaps lives in my memory and doesn't really exhibit itself in American context. It makes me remember the language the smiles, everything that's coming in from the environment of a place that's just irreplaceable. It reminds me of a part of something that has made me. I think that's so much why I write, too, is just to capture those intangible and sort of inexpressible feelings that I always feel like I am on the verge of losing because a place is changing so quickly or because I am changing or because I am running away from it or going to a new place. Sny but Shanghai I will say that one small antidote. Back in the days in the very early days of development, many places in China if they took your credit card or they had just gotten credit card. They lanted your credit card always handed your credit card back with 2 hand. Shanghai, they were like here is your card. The shanghai attitude is back. » We're Shanghai. That's true. » They are not going to bow to you because you are an American. Excuse me. » In an apologetic way they look and appraise. Don't look I am looking at your entire outfit and I see you and I have judged you. » What is the matter with Americans ? Why do you dress like that? I mean they can't believe how we dress. If you have ever showed up in Birkenstocks in a Shanghai hotel you will know how broken we have from a fashion point of view. » Thank you both. I have a couple more questions. The next one it is which books do you consider the grandparents of your books? In other words what are the two or 3 books without which your books would not exist? » » Do you want to go first? » That is such a hard question. For me it is not 2 or 3 books. I want to say it does not have a narrative tradition that I'm sure that I would not be able to master the novel without Shakespeare. King Lear, 5 acts was foundational. I think Meng was talking about this freedom to say whatever it is you want to say. I have to say that I think I was very , very influenced by the Jewish writers and I will say that would include all of them . But especially maybe grace Paley. I think in terms of work that was both actually art but actually engaged. For me she was the mold. You could actually write stuff that was about society, very engaged and yet it ain't journalism. That is leaving out 100,000 books. » I love that. Yeah, if we had more time I would ask you about your humor and that sort of answers it a little bit. I love that and I love grace Paley too. For "Little Gods" in particular I would say there are I think 3ish books that really come to mind that very directly helped me. One of them was the neopolitan novel. I was very thrilled when you mentioned her in your review. Thank you, Gish. The way that she writes about social mobility and I think really there is not another writer who can see the nuisances of people who leave with more -- with more aquity. There is a book called "in the height of what we know" which is modeled. It is about a mathematician. Road ing that book gave me permission to 1, write in long paragraphs. And 2, write about science in a way that felt -- it gave me a model how to write about science in a way that felt beautiful not just sort of sort Bill Nye the science guy , science. The last book that influenced me was "a gesture life". The narrator in that book has such a circular way of thinking and such a sort of deflective way of thinking that I really used when I was writing the section in this book. » Thank you. I love those book recommendations. We have time for only one more unfortunately. There are so many good questions. We do need to wrap up in a moment. One last question from M who writes I would love to hear about what you are both working on next. Meng does " write the book you want to read" hold for your second book and does what you want to read change as you grow as a writer and reader? » Sure. Since there is a direct question for me I will go first. I think so. Yes, definitely what I want to read changes as I grow as a writer and a reader. I feel like I got out a lot out of my system with "Little Gods". I also feel that I put a lot into " Little Gods". Sort of what we were talking about earlier, Gish. There wasn't the expectation that I would be able to do it again. I sort of felt like it was my one shot and now I feel like it has -- because I have gotten this out of my system, I feel like I can play, I can have more fun. I am really interested in playing now more with style and with humor and with provication, with writing that is a little more out there stylisically and yeah. The next -- I'm working on a novel called "mothers and girls" which I am calling a fake memoir sort of as a tongue in cheek nod to our dear Maxine and her fake memoir and it's a book that is about building methodologies and tearing them down. » Sounds wonderful. I can't wait. So I just placed a new book so it will be out next year just about this time next February. I haven't talked about it very much. Now that is in editorial I can talk about it. It is a collection of linked stories. I am out having a great time. It is a little bit of a return. So this is a story -- it is linked as a collection of linked stories through which you can see the 50 years since the opening of China refacted through the various stories and various characters. It is called " thank you Mr. Nixon". Next February. » That's so exciting will. I hope we can celebrate both of these books. Gish, I hope we can celebrate that book in person next year. I want to thank you both for taking the time for joining us this evening.    

Author Kavita Das joins Jafreen Uddin, Executive Director of the Asian American Writers’ Workshop in conversation about her book, Poignant Song: The Life and Music of Lakshmi Shankar. Shankar, who was Grammy-nominated, was the most prominent Indian female musician in the movement that brought Indian music to the West in the late 1960’s. This event, co-presented by Asian American Writers’ Workshop and the South Asia Institute in Chicago, explores Shankar’s musical evolution and more-than-seventy-year career creating within both South and North Indian musical traditions, as well as pop and fusion, and celebrate her life, legacy, and impact on South Asian diasporic communities.

This fall, the Asian American Writers’ Workshop is celebrating the art of the essay. Featuring longtime poets and fiction writers with debut essay collections out this year, this conversation will take an intersectional look at Asian American identity, genre, gender, race, publishing, and the way the essay form allows writers to dance, dodge, spar, and move through time and nature to tell important stories. Featuring Cathy Park Hong, Aimee Nezhukumatathil, and Sejal Shah, and moderated by Piyali Bhattacharya. Buy the writers' books via our local independent bookstore partner Books Are Magic: https://booksaremagic.net/racing

 In this episode of the QC Pod, we meet Amir Khafagy, freelance journalist and QC graduate with a B.A. and M.A. in Urban Studies from Queens College. Khafagy’s writing has appeared in numerous publications, including Vice, Bloomberg, and City Limits. He’s the recipient of The New Economics Reporting Fellowship and the Asian American Writers Workshop […]

 In this episode of the QC Pod, we meet Amir Khafagy, freelance journalist and QC graduate with a B.A. and M.A. in Urban Studies from Queens College. Khafagy’s writing has appeared in numerous publications, including Vice, Bloomberg, and City Limits. He’s the recipient of The New Economics Reporting Fellowship and the Asian American Writers Workshop […]

 In this episode of the QC Pod, we meet Amir Khafagy, freelance journalist and QC graduate with a B.A. and M.A. in Urban Studies from Queens College. Khafagy’s writing has appeared in numerous publications, including Vice, Bloomberg, and City Limits. He’s the recipient of The New Economics Reporting Fellowship and the Asian American Writers Workshop […]

The Asian American Writers’ Workshop is thrilled to celebrate the launch of Akwaeke Emezi’s new book THE DEATH OF VIVEK OJI and the recent release of Elizabeth Acevedo’s CLAP WHEN YOU LAND and WRITE YOURSELF A LANTERN: A JOURNAL INSPIRED BY THE POET X. The two authors read from their new works and have a moderated conversation with writer and Berkeley Center for New Media Events Coordinator Sophia Hussain.

Tina Chang and Mira Jacob join the Asian American Writers’ Workshop to celebrate the paperback releases of their books Hybrida and Good Talk. Following a reading from their work, they will speak to the intersections of their experiences and creative practices, discussing race, motherhood, and hybrid storytelling structures.

In this episode, Film Forum Presents a conversation around Catherine Gund’s new documentary, AGGIE, co-presented by the Asian American Writers’ Workshop. AGGIE is the story of the filmmaker’s mother, the philanthropist, collector, and MoMA Board President Emerita Agnes Gund, with a focus on her social justice work. In 2017, Aggie sold Roy Lichtenstein’s painting, “Masterpiece,” at auction for 165 million dollars and used the proceeds to found the Art for Justice Fund, an organization devoted to ending mass incarceration. Today’s episode features a Q&A with two Art for Justice grantees: the poet, writer, curator and organizer Mahogany L. Browne and Adnan Khan, executive director and founder of the prison reform organization Restore Justice. We were also joined for a special introduction by producer Tanya Selvaratnam, who produced AGGIE. The Q&A was moderated by scholar, writer, and educator Dr. Rachel Kuo. AGGIE is currently available for rental in our virtual cinema at www.filmforum.org. A portion of all rental fees support Film Forum. Special thanks to Strand Releasing, Aubin Pictures and the Asian American Writers’ Workshop for making this episode possible. Photos clockwise from top left: Mahogany L. Browne (Photo by Jennie Bergqvist); Adnan Khan; Tanya Selvaratnam (Photo by KK Ottesen); Dr. Rachel Kuo (Photo by Marino Aguas).

In this Episode, we discuss and dive into and begin to reimagine how we conceptualize activist work that is so incredibly important within the contemporary moment. Drawing from Healing and Disability Justice activists Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha and adrienne maree brown, to reimagine what activism would look like and mean to center healing as a primary mode of activism. Diving into the work and unique forms of crip knowledge we ask the question what does care look like and why do we need a healing justice and disability justice framework if we want to create lasting change in black, brown queer and indigenous movements. Audio clip credits go to Leah Lakshmi Peipzna Samarasina and the Asian American Writers Workshop for their talk on Care Work Dreaming Disability Justice, accessed here: https://youtu.be/8UpQVlT2wCQAnd adrienne maree brown and Kate Werning on Irresistible podcast accessed here: https://open.spotify.com/episode/2yEnrX4lZzVvCyHFD3ymcZ?si=mGAuycvjQx6Md4in3KOmoA

Hannah Bae is a freelance journalist and nonfiction writer who is at work on a memoir about family estrangement and mental illness. Her work has been published in books including “(Don’t) Call Me Crazy: 33 Voices Start the Conversation on Mental Health” (Algonquin Young Readers, 2018) and “The Monocle Travel Guide, Seoul” (food and drinks chapter co-editor/writer, 2018). She is focused on stories about Korean American culture and identity, and in 2019, several of her essays received nominations for The Pushcart Prize. She was a 2019 Open City fellow in narrative nonfiction at Asian American Writers’ Workshop. Through 2018 and 2019, Hannah served as president of Asian American Journalists Association’s New York chapter, for which she was named AAJA National’s Chapter President of the Year in 2019. Hannah has worked full-time for organizations such as CNN Business, Newsday and the U.S. State Department. She started her journalism career in Seoul on a Princeton-in-Asia fellowship that led to full-time editor positions at some of South Korea’s largest news organizations and freelance work with CNN, Monocle, Eater, The Associated Press and other clients. She serves as a reader for the literary journal Pigeon Pages, as a co-director of AAJA’s national mentoring program and as a volunteer with Womankind, a nonprofit that serves survivors of gender-based violence. Hannah is also an illustrator whose work can be found on Goldthread, Tricycle.org, SupChina and EatDrinkDraw.com, the website she runs with her husband, Adam Oelsner. She and Adam live in Brooklyn with their dog, Ramona.

Authoring Advocacy: Bearing Witness in an Era of Mass Incarceration What is the responsibility of writers to confront our era of mass incarceration, and how do we bear witness without assuming voyeuristic or exploitative perspectives? Featuring 2018 PEN America Writing For Justice Fellows Justin Rovillos Monson and Reginald Dwayne Betts, and Asian American Writers’ Workshop’s The Witness Program writers Roshan Abraham, Christina Olivares, & Sarah Wang. A closing conversation, moderated by Victoria Law, will explore the ethics, challenges and necessity of writing about mass incarceration from a variety of perspectives and lived experiences. The Asian American Writers’ Workshop is a national nonprofit dedicated to the belief that Asian American stories deserve to be told. Intro by Mark Gallagher Event Photos by Giselle Robledo: https://flic.kr/s/aHsmJd5bhu Video at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8P2k2bA7E2s

Curtis has written for ABC, Disney Channel, and Nickelodeon, and won awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, New York Foundation for the Arts, and the San Diego Asian American Film Foundation. As a community activist, he co-founded the Asian American Writers Workshop and Asian Pacific Americans for Progress. His first film, Vincent Who? has screened at nearly 400 colleges, NGOs and corporations in four countries. Curtis is currently a Visiting Scholar at NYU. His documentary, "Tested," which follows a dozen racially and socioeconomically diverse eighth-graders as they fight for a seat at one of New York City’s schools, has screened at hundreds of schools and communities around the world, and Curtis planned this campaign himself. He’s here to tell us how.

We talk about The Farewell, the need to tell stories, Esther's path to being a writer, politics within the Asian community, what it's like to work for Jezebel and more! Enjoy! Esther is a New York City-based writer who covers social movements, immigrant communities, and the intersection of culture and politics. In 2016, she was an Emerging Writers fellow at BuzzFeed. In 2013, she was an Open City Creative Non-Fiction Fellow with the Asian American Writers Workshop. Follow more of Esther's writing athttp://www.estherwang.com/ and https://kinja.com/estherxlwang? Twitter: @estherxlwang The Bad Asians podcast is recorded @canalstreetmarket and presented by @listeningpartypresents Follow David and Imran: @davidnguyen and @ImrantheG

We're featuring audio from a 2017 event collaboration with the Tenement Museum. We celebrated the launch of author Min Jin Lee’s second novel Pachinko, which was a New York Times Notable Book of 2017 and National Book Award Finalist. Pachinko follows one Korean family through generations. The story begins in Korea in the early 1900s and then moves to Japan. The family endures harsh discrimination, catastrophe, and poverty. They also encounter joy as they rise to meet the challenges their new home presents. Through desperate struggle and hard-won triumph, they are bound together by deep roots that are set as their family faces enduring questions of faith, family, and identity. Min Jin Lee reads from her novel and then is interviewed by Ken Chen, the executive director of the Asian American Writers Workshop. They discuss her extensive research and interview process, how growing up in Queens, New York helped her write Pachinko, and much more. Watch the full event on our YouTube channel, as well as our other past events.

[gallery columns="1" link="none" size="full" ids="32551,32550,32549,32548,32547,32546"] A live recording of our educational podcast The How, The Why with Neelanjana Banerjee, Anelise Chen and Q.M. Zhang. Neelanjana Banerjee is the Managing Editor of Kaya Press; assistant editor with the Los Angeles Review of Books; instructor with artworxLA and Writing Workshops Los Angeles; journalist; co-editor of Indivisible: An Anthology of Contemporary South Asian American Poetry (University of Arkansas Press); and writer whose works have appeared in anthologies such as Desilicious (Arsenal Press), The HarperCollins Book of English Poetry (HarperCollins India), and Breaking the Bow: Speculative Stories Inspired by the Ramayana (Zubaan Books), as well as in numerous magazines and journals such as PANK Magazine, The Rumpus, Prairie Schooner, and Asian Pacific American Journal. Anelise Chen is the author of So Many Olympic Exertions (Kaya Press 2017), an experimental novel that blends elements of sportswriting, memoir, and self help. She hails from Temple City, California, and received a BA in English from UC Berkeley and an MFA in Fiction from NYU. Her essays and reviews have appeared in the New York Times, NPR, BOMB Magazine, The New Republic, VICE, Village Voice and many other publications. She has received fellowships from the Asian American Writers’ Workshop, the Wurlitzer Foundation, and she will be a 2019 Literature Fellow at the Akademie Schloss Solitude in Stuttgart, Germany. She currently teaches writing at Columbia University and writes a column on mollusks for The Paris Review. Q.M. Zhang (Kimberly Chang), author of Accomplice to Memory (Kaya Press 2017), grew up in upstate New York, lived in China and Hong Kong, and currently makes her home in Western Massachusetts.  She is a writer and teacher of creative non/fiction stories and forms, with a focus on Chinese American border crossings.  Trained in the disciplines of anthropology and psychology, she has published ethnographic studies of Asian diasporic communities on both sides of the Pacific.  Faced with the limitations of her social science tools, she has worked over the last decade to develop herself at the craft of creative non/fiction as the quintessential hybrid literary form for writing about migration and diaspora.  She is an alumni of the Juniper Summer Writing Institute and was a resident writer at the Vermont Studio Center.  Her book, Accomplice to Memory, combines memoir, fiction, and documentary photographs to explore the limits and possibilities of truth telling across generations and geographies.  An excerpt from the book was published in The Massachusetts Review.  She currently teaches at Hampshire College in Amherst, MA. Producer: Jon-Barrett Ingels and Kevin Staniec Manager: Sarah Becker Moderator: Julianne Berokoff Guests: Anelise Chen and Q.M. Zhang Audio: Brew Sessions Live Photo: Arthur Pham     The How, The Why is a half-hour podcast documenting the creative process and the creative purpose hosted by Jon-Barrett Ingels. This free weekly series is an educational resource provided to discuss the evolution of literary arts with industry innovators—authors, journalists, and publishers.

In late 2016 we celebrated the launch of Good Girls Marry Doctors: South Asian American Daughters on Obedience and Rebellion. This is the first anthology to examine the multiple facets of daughterhood in South Asian American families. The title, Good Girls Marry Doctors, is a tongue-in-cheek jab at the things Asian American mothers sometimes say. These first person essays are intimate, heart-breaking, political, and hilarious; and examine what it means to be the perfect Asian daughter. This episode features the editor of Good Girls Marry Doctors, Piyali Bhattacharya, alongside three of this anthology’s contributors: Swati Khurana is a visual artist and writer, Jyothi Natarajan is the Editorial Director at the Asian American Writers’ Workshop, and Ankita Rao is an editor at Vice. After these contributors read excerpts of their pieces, author Sejal Shah joins them for a Q&A.

Denison’s Beck Series welcomes poet Solmaz Sharif. The former managing director of the Asian American Writers’ Workshop, Sharif’s first poetry collection “Look” was a finalist for the National Book Award. Her work has appeared in The New Republic, Poetry, The Kenyon Review, jubilat, Gulf Coast, Boston Review, Witness, and others and has been recognized with a “Discovery”/Boston Review Poetry Prize, scholarships the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, a winter fellowship at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, an NEA fellowship, and a Stegner Fellowship. She is currently a lecturer at Stanford University.

Rowan Hisayo Buchanan is writer and author. She is the author of the debut novel Harmless Like You which is receiving praise and raving reviews. Rowan has a BA from Columbia University, an MFA from the UW-Madison, and a 2015 Asian American Writers’ Workshop fellowship. At first, Rowan did not believe that she could write for a living. She thought it was something so impossible for her. In the end, Rowan made the decision to write anyway despite her fears and it has led her to a life that she never thought was possible all because of that one decision. Listen to her episode as she shares her story. Check out thetaoofselfconfidence.com for show notes of Rowan's episode, Rowan's website, resources, gifts and so much more.

On this podcast, sounds and stories from Kaya Natin!, a literary benefit organized by Filipino American writers for survivors of Typhoon Haiyan at the Asian American Writers Workshop.