Podcasts about filipinx

This hour on Disrupted, we're challenging long-held assumptions about parents and caregivers. First, Angela Garbes, author of Essential Labor: Mothering as Social Change, explains how care workers are undervalued. She touches on the way the early days of the pandemic spotlighted issues in caregiving and why the legacy of American colonialism in the Philippines influenced both her family history and the disproportionate number of Filipinx nurses who died from COVID. Then, UConn professor Kari Adamsons talks about her research on fathers and the problem with the way many people think about "traditional families." GUESTS: Angela Garbes: author of Essential Labor: Mothering as Social Change Kari Adamsons: Associate Professor of Human Development and Family Sciences at the University of Connecticut This episode originally aired on February 15, 2023.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Julius Manapul transforms the pain of displacement into powerful art that challenges colonial structures and celebrates queer identity. As a Filipinx immigrant who arrived in Canada in the 90s, Manapul found themselves caught between languages and cultures—a displacement that led them to embrace visual communication as a universal language transcending verbal barriers.Manapul's multimedia practice spans sculpture, installation, performance, and experimental film, but perhaps most striking is their transformation of pornographic imagery into intricate butterfly patterns. These works initially attract viewers with their beauty before challenging them with the revelation of their source material. "It's fascinating how the work never changed," Manapul observes. "It's people's perspective that changed." This moment of realisation become a thread Manapul continually explores in their art and teaching practice as an Assistant Professor at OCAD University. Their most recent exhibition "Sila/Siya/Ako" (they, them, me in Tagalog) examines the connections between religion, colonisation in the Philippines and the racism experienced within queer spaces. Manapul juxtaposes Catholic symbolism with gay club music, highlighting how both institutions—ostensibly places of belonging—often alienate those who don't conform to dominant ideals. The exhibition's mannequins, adorned with replicas of King Philip's armour crafted from gay porn images and whitewashing products, confront viewers with the ongoing effects of colonisation in contemporary Filipino culture.Manapul shares career triumphs and how they overcame barriers coming up in Toronto's art scene. When traditional gallery spaces initially rejected Manapul's work, they strategically self-funded exhibitions and submitted to international calls—finding recognition in Europe before gaining traction in Canada. This resourcefulness reflects their powerful advice to emerging artists: "If there's no space for you at the table, make that space." Now an Assistant Professor at OCAD University, Manapul creates the representation they lacked growing up, proving that persistence and connection are essential tools for artistic success.Want to explore more transformative art that challenges cultural boundaries? Subscribe to our podcast and join the conversation about how art creates belonging for those who exist between worlds. Connect with us:Madison Beale, HostCroocial, ProductionBe a guest on The Artalogue Podcast

Jen Soriano is a Filipinx author, musician, and first-generation American. She shares important context about Filipino history and how transgenerational trauma plays out for so many people, including her own family. She also opens up about living with chronic pain and the importance of understanding the mind-body connection. Look for her new book Nervous: Essays on Heritage and Healing.For more about Jen:Website: JenSoriano.net | Instagram: @jensorianowrites | Tiktok: @jensorianowritesBuy her book: Nervous: Essays on Heritage and HealingThis episode is sponsored by Orgain Organic Plant Protein Powder. For 30% off go to www.orgain.com/mental30 and use code MENTAL30.The link for the Open Space Therapy Collective LGBTQ+ online support group. (It's $25 per meeting unless you're an MIHH Patreon donor then it's $10 a meeting. I'll post the discount code on the Patreon site) I am not making any money for this plug I'm just a huge fan of their work and Renae Johnson was an awesome guest. https://www.openspacetherapycollective.com/lgbtq-adult-support-groupIf you're interested in seeing or buying the furniture that Paul designs and makes follow his IG for his woodworking which is transitioning from @MIHHfurniture to its new handle @ShapedFurnitureWAYS TO HELP THE MIHH PODCASTSubscribe via iTunes. It costs nothing. It's extremely helpful to have your subscription set to download all episodes automatically. https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/mental-illness-happy-hour/id427377900?mt=2Spread the word via social media. It costs nothing.Our website is www.mentalpod.com our FB is www.Facebook.com/mentalpod and our Twitter and Instagram are both @Mentalpod Become a much-needed Patreon monthly-donor (with occasional rewards) for as little as $1/month at www.Patreon.com/mentalpod Become a one-time or monthly donor via PayPal at https://mentalpod.com/donateYou can also donate via Zelle (make payment to mentalpod@gmail.com) To donate via Venmo make payment to @Mentalpod See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

If it’s a music episode, you know Producer Mike is behind it! In our 3rd and final episode in our Toronto series, we got to get a hangout with Michelle and Kat, two members of the “queer Filipinx kulintang gong punks” crew Pantayo whose incendiary yet soulful music defies even the sheer idea of a...

A Sacramento native, Dr. Maryal Concepcion (she/her) MD FAAFP is a Filipinx creator and connector. She is a mom to two young boys and married to a fellow rural family physician. She is the founder and host of the podcast, My DPC Story, and features direct care physicians. In September of 2021, she opened Big Trees, MD, the first Direct Primary Care in Arnold, a rural town of 4,000 in the Stanislaus National Forest, located in Northern California. Her clinic was created as a micro practice telemedicine and home visit model and, after overhead was met, she branched out into renting a brick-and-mortar space for her DPC.  Topics covered in this episode:  Dr. Concepcion's journey to becoming a Direct Primary Care doctor Overcoming limiting beliefs Understanding different medical models The benefits of direct primary care in both the human & veterinary world Challenges the status quo in medicine  Embracing autonomy in medicine Links & Resources:  Visit Maryal Concepcion's website to learn more Find Dr. Maryal on Instagram Find Dr. Maryal on Facebook Find Dr. Maryal on LinkedIn Find Dr. Maryal on YouTube The House Call Vet Academy Resources:  Download Dr. Eve's FREE House Call & Mobile Vet Biz Plan!  Find out about The House Call Vet Academy online CE course   Learn more about Dr. Eve Harrison   Learn more about 1-to-1 coaching for current & prospective house call & mobile vets.  Get House Call Vet swag!  Register TODAY for the House Call & Mobile Vet Virtual Conference, February 1st-2nd, 2025!!!!!! Music:  In loving memory of Dr. Steve Weinberg.  Intro and outro guitar music was written, performed, and recorded by house call veterinarian Dr. Steve Weinberg.  Thank you to our sponsors!  Chronos  O3 Vets  This podcast is also available in video on our House Call Vet Cafe YouTube channel

In this episode, host Grant Oliphant sits down with Thelma Virata de Castro, a Filipinx artist, playwright, and community teacher based in San Diego. Thelma's work delves deep into the human experience, with a unique blend of humor and profound themes. Through her "Cultivating JOY" project—part of the Far South Border North initiative—Thelma empowers writers and audiences to explore their relationships with nature. Thelma shares her journey growing up in Paradise Hills, where her close-knit Filipino community shaped her creative spirit. Her work spans a range of challenging topics, from grief and loss to domestic violence, all explored through plays such as "Where We Lay Our Sorrows Down" and "The Fire in Me." Using unexpected elements like puppetry and humor, Thelma invites audiences to confront difficult emotions while also finding space for healing and connection.The conversation also touches on her dedication to uplifting other writers and the incredible value of collaboration. Thelma's belief in the power of community, creativity, and noticing the world deeply drives her art, making her a significant voice in San Diego's vibrant arts scene.Listen to how Thelma's fearless approach to storytelling and her commitment to fostering creativity serve as a bridge for empathy and understanding, while offering a window into the cultural and personal nuances that shape our shared human experience.Credits:This is a production of the Prebys Foundation.Hosted by Grant OliphantCo-Hosted by Crystal PageCo-produced by Crystal Page and Adam GreenfieldEngineered by Adam GreenfieldProduction Assistance by Tess KareskyThe Stop & Talk Theme song was created by San Diego's own Mr. Lyrical Groove.Recorded at the Voice of San Diego Podcast StudioDownload episodes at your favorite podcatcher or visit us at StopAndTalkPodcast.orgIf you like this show, and we hope you do, the best way to support this show is to share, subscribe, and review our podcast. Thank you for your support, ideas, and listening. 

Guest: Jemarc Axinto (They/She/He), a Filipinx, Nonbinary, Trauma Recovery Coach, and Wellness Consultant.Episode Summary: In this deeply insightful episode, Amy Wheeler is joined by Jemarc Axinto, a Trauma Recovery Coach with a passion for helping others overcome trauma at its root in the nervous system. Jemarc shares their personal journey of healing alongside their partner, Ezra, who made a remarkable recovery from chronic illness and complex PTSD by radically rewiring their brain and nervous system. This conversation explores the intersectionality of trauma recovery, neurodivergence, and the importance of holding space for both our humanity and the humanity of others.Key Topics Discussed:· Journey to Healing: Jemarc recounts how discovering a book by Dr. Tidal sparked a transformative healing journey for their partner, Ezra. This journey led them to focus on retraining the nervous system to heal from deep-rooted trauma.· Understanding Trauma: Jemarc emphasizes that trauma is often misunderstood, explaining how our brains can become "addicted" to stress chemicals like cortisol and adrenaline, and how retraining the brain can lead to radical healing.· The Role of Neurodiversity: Drawing on their own experiences, Jemarc discusses the importance of acknowledging and integrating neurodivergence into the healing process, and the challenges of navigating the world as a neurodivergent individual.· Creating a Trauma-Free World: The conversation explores the idea of co-creating a world where trauma reactivity doesn't rule our lives. Jemarc advocates for a world where everyone can hold their own humanity and that of others, even in challenging situations.· Balancing Anger and Compassion: Jemarc shares personal stories about the importance of addressing harmful behaviors without dehumanizing others, and the power of maintaining both compassion and boundaries in our interactions.· Self-Empowerment: For those ready to embark on a healing journey, Jemarc offers guidance on how to start, including the importance of therapy and the need for radical self-empowerment in the process.Connect with Jemarc Axinto:· Website: www.jemarcaxinto.com· Social Media: @JemarcAxinto (Instagram, Twitter, Facebook)· 3-Month Program: Jemarc offers a comprehensive 3-month program focusing on brain, body, and spirit to support radical healing. For more information, visit their website.Additional Resources with Amy Wheeler:· University of Minnesota Therapeutic Yoga Series· Polyvagal Institute Mighty App· 7-Week Course on Yoga, Yoga Therapy & Polyvagal Theory· Optimal State Mobile App· Optimal State and Yoga Therapy Hour Patreon·       Monday Night Yoga Therapy Clinic on www.TheOpimtalState.com·       Join us for our Monday night Yoga Therapy Clinics, specially designed to address specific health and wellness topics. The sessions are held every Monday from 4:00-5:15 PM PST and are led by Amy Wheeler, a seasoned expert in yoga therapy. This clinic provides a supportive environment where participants can explore therapeutic yoga techniques to aid in addiction recovery and overall well-being.·       For those seeking professional development, there is an option to stay longer after class and earn Continuing Education (CE) credits. This extended session offers in-depth training and valuable insights into integrating yoga therapy with addiction treatment.

In early 2021, popular artist Anna Marie Tendler checked herself into a psychiatric hospital following a year of crippling anxiety, depression, and self-harm. Over two weeks, she underwent myriad psychological tests, participated in numerous therapy sessions, connected with fellow patients, and experienced profound breakthroughs, such as when a doctor noted, “There is a you inside that feels invisible to those looking at you from the outside.” In her new book, Men Have Called Her Crazy, Tendler recounts her hospital experience as well as pivotal moments in her life that preceded and followed. As the title suggests, many of these moments are impacted by men: unrequited love in high school; the twenty-eight-year-old she lost her virginity to when she was sixteen; the frustrations and absurdities of dating in her mid-thirties; and her decision to freeze her eggs as all her friends were starting families. This literary self-portrait examines the unreasonable expectations and pressures women face in the 21st century. Yet as overwhelming and despairing as that can feel, Tendler ultimately offers a message of hope. Early in her stay in the hospital, she says, “My wish for myself is that one day I'll reach a place where I can face hardship without trying to destroy myself.” By the end of the book, she fulfills that wish. Anna Marie Tendler is an artist and writer. She holds a master's degree in costume studies from New York University. She lives in Connecticut with her three cats, Chimney, Moon, and Butter. Jen Soriano is a Filipinx writer and movement builder who has long worked at the intersection of grassroots organizing, narrative strategy, and art-driven social change. Jen is the author of Nervous: Essays on Heritage and Healing and the chapbook Making the Tongue Dry, as well as the co-editor of Closer to Liberation: A Pina/xy Activist Anthology. Buy the Book Men Have Called Her Crazy: A Memoir The Elliott Bay Book Company

Send us a Text Message.In today's episode, Coach Chris Rodriguez is joined by psychotherapist Melisa Madelle to discuss integrating sustainable self-care into daily life, finding joy in small moments, and creating community connections through movement and dance. Melisa also shares her commitment to continued education and serving her clients and community.Connect with Melisa on Instagram @activationartsproductions and @laka_boom_shaka.Learn more about Melisa's offerings at https://lumagowellness.com/Book a free 30-minute consult/discovery call with MelisaFor all episodes and info about my coaching program, visit me at www.coachchrisrodriguez.com.Connect on Instagram at @coach_chrisrodriguez and on TikTok at @coach_chrisrodriguez.Click here to take your FREE Inner-Soul-Child Assessment.Be sure to subscribe and leave a review on your favorite podcast platform!Guest Bio:Melisa Medalle is many things. A Filipinx born and raised in the San Francisco Bay Area, she is a community organizer and psychotherapist focused on decolonizing mental health work and committed to lifelong learning. She is also a multidisciplinary wellness coach, certified yoga instructor, and Reiki Master.Melisa practices mindfulness as a way of life, understanding that being fully present can be empowering and liberating and can be accessed by all. She aspires to support others on their unique journeys by increasing the accessibility of alternative healing modalities to underserved and marginalized communities.

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.

Get the full show notes: https://jumpstartyourjoy.com/2024/06/exploring-trauma-and-joy-with-author-jen-soriano Follow/subscribe to JSYJ (free) on your favorite app: https://plnk.to/JumpStartYourJoy In this episode of Jumpstart Your Joy, Paula interviews Jen Soriano, a Filipinx writer and movement builder, about her experiences with trauma and healing. They discuss Jen's book 'Nervous Essays on Heritage and Healing,' the effects of trauma, and the importance of addressing collective pain. The conversation delves into the difference between trauma-informed and trauma-wise approaches, the impact of the pandemic on mental health, and the pressing issues within local communities, such as the banning of pride flags in schools.  Jen also shares her personal journey through grief and chronic pain and offers practical advice and insights into the fundamentals of healing and finding joy. Find Jen Soriano's website: https://www.jensoriano.net/ Jen Soriano on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jensorianowrites Buy the book: https://amzn.to/4cfAkrw Love the show, and want to show your support? Buy me a cup of coffee, and I'll give you a shout out on the next episode. Subscribe to my YouTube channel 00:00 Welcome to Season Eight! 01:03 Introducing Jen Soriano 01:38 Diving into Trauma and Healing 04:16 Jen's Childhood Joys 06:21 The Birth of a Book 10:17 Understanding Trauma 15:23 Chronic Pain and Trauma 22:54 The Fluidity of Our Nervous Systems 25:09 Rewiring Neural Circuits for Joy 27:25 The Pandemic's Collective Trauma 29:44 Addressing Global and Local Issues 32:28 School Board Controversies and Trauma 42:15 Healing Trauma and Finding Joy 46:21 Conclusion and Final Thoughts

In Crip Colony: Mestizaje, US Imperialism, and the Queer Politics of Disability in the Philippines (Duke UP, 2023), Sony Coráñez Bolton examines the racial politics of disability, mestizaje, and sexuality in the Philippines. Drawing on literature, poetry, colonial records, political essays, travel narratives, and visual culture, Coráñez Bolton traces how disability politics colluded with notions of Philippine mestizaje. He demonstrates that Filipino mestizo writers in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries used mestizaje as a racial ideology of ability that marked Indigenous inhabitants of the Philippines as lacking in civilization and in need of uplift and rehabilitation. Heteronormative, able-bodied, and able-minded mixed-race Filipinos offered a model and path for assimilation into the US empire. In this way, mestizaje allowed for supposedly superior mixed-race subjects to govern the archipelago in collusion with American imperialism. By bringing disability studies together with studies of colonialism and queer-of-color critique, Coráñez Bolton extends theorizations of mestizaje beyond the United States and Latin America while considering how Filipinx and Filipinx American thought fundamentally enhances understandings of the colonial body and the racial histories of disability. 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

In Crip Colony: Mestizaje, US Imperialism, and the Queer Politics of Disability in the Philippines (Duke UP, 2023), Sony Coráñez Bolton examines the racial politics of disability, mestizaje, and sexuality in the Philippines. Drawing on literature, poetry, colonial records, political essays, travel narratives, and visual culture, Coráñez Bolton traces how disability politics colluded with notions of Philippine mestizaje. He demonstrates that Filipino mestizo writers in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries used mestizaje as a racial ideology of ability that marked Indigenous inhabitants of the Philippines as lacking in civilization and in need of uplift and rehabilitation. Heteronormative, able-bodied, and able-minded mixed-race Filipinos offered a model and path for assimilation into the US empire. In this way, mestizaje allowed for supposedly superior mixed-race subjects to govern the archipelago in collusion with American imperialism. By bringing disability studies together with studies of colonialism and queer-of-color critique, Coráñez Bolton extends theorizations of mestizaje beyond the United States and Latin America while considering how Filipinx and Filipinx American thought fundamentally enhances understandings of the colonial body and the racial histories of disability. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/history

In Crip Colony: Mestizaje, US Imperialism, and the Queer Politics of Disability in the Philippines (Duke UP, 2023), Sony Coráñez Bolton examines the racial politics of disability, mestizaje, and sexuality in the Philippines. Drawing on literature, poetry, colonial records, political essays, travel narratives, and visual culture, Coráñez Bolton traces how disability politics colluded with notions of Philippine mestizaje. He demonstrates that Filipino mestizo writers in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries used mestizaje as a racial ideology of ability that marked Indigenous inhabitants of the Philippines as lacking in civilization and in need of uplift and rehabilitation. Heteronormative, able-bodied, and able-minded mixed-race Filipinos offered a model and path for assimilation into the US empire. In this way, mestizaje allowed for supposedly superior mixed-race subjects to govern the archipelago in collusion with American imperialism. By bringing disability studies together with studies of colonialism and queer-of-color critique, Coráñez Bolton extends theorizations of mestizaje beyond the United States and Latin America while considering how Filipinx and Filipinx American thought fundamentally enhances understandings of the colonial body and the racial histories of disability. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literary-studies

In Crip Colony: Mestizaje, US Imperialism, and the Queer Politics of Disability in the Philippines (Duke UP, 2023), Sony Coráñez Bolton examines the racial politics of disability, mestizaje, and sexuality in the Philippines. Drawing on literature, poetry, colonial records, political essays, travel narratives, and visual culture, Coráñez Bolton traces how disability politics colluded with notions of Philippine mestizaje. He demonstrates that Filipino mestizo writers in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries used mestizaje as a racial ideology of ability that marked Indigenous inhabitants of the Philippines as lacking in civilization and in need of uplift and rehabilitation. Heteronormative, able-bodied, and able-minded mixed-race Filipinos offered a model and path for assimilation into the US empire. In this way, mestizaje allowed for supposedly superior mixed-race subjects to govern the archipelago in collusion with American imperialism. By bringing disability studies together with studies of colonialism and queer-of-color critique, Coráñez Bolton extends theorizations of mestizaje beyond the United States and Latin America while considering how Filipinx and Filipinx American thought fundamentally enhances understandings of the colonial body and the racial histories of disability. Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/southeast-asian-studies

In Crip Colony: Mestizaje, US Imperialism, and the Queer Politics of Disability in the Philippines (Duke UP, 2023), Sony Coráñez Bolton examines the racial politics of disability, mestizaje, and sexuality in the Philippines. Drawing on literature, poetry, colonial records, political essays, travel narratives, and visual culture, Coráñez Bolton traces how disability politics colluded with notions of Philippine mestizaje. He demonstrates that Filipino mestizo writers in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries used mestizaje as a racial ideology of ability that marked Indigenous inhabitants of the Philippines as lacking in civilization and in need of uplift and rehabilitation. Heteronormative, able-bodied, and able-minded mixed-race Filipinos offered a model and path for assimilation into the US empire. In this way, mestizaje allowed for supposedly superior mixed-race subjects to govern the archipelago in collusion with American imperialism. By bringing disability studies together with studies of colonialism and queer-of-color critique, Coráñez Bolton extends theorizations of mestizaje beyond the United States and Latin America while considering how Filipinx and Filipinx American thought fundamentally enhances understandings of the colonial body and the racial histories of disability. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/critical-theory

In Crip Colony: Mestizaje, US Imperialism, and the Queer Politics of Disability in the Philippines (Duke UP, 2023), Sony Coráñez Bolton examines the racial politics of disability, mestizaje, and sexuality in the Philippines. Drawing on literature, poetry, colonial records, political essays, travel narratives, and visual culture, Coráñez Bolton traces how disability politics colluded with notions of Philippine mestizaje. He demonstrates that Filipino mestizo writers in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries used mestizaje as a racial ideology of ability that marked Indigenous inhabitants of the Philippines as lacking in civilization and in need of uplift and rehabilitation. Heteronormative, able-bodied, and able-minded mixed-race Filipinos offered a model and path for assimilation into the US empire. In this way, mestizaje allowed for supposedly superior mixed-race subjects to govern the archipelago in collusion with American imperialism. By bringing disability studies together with studies of colonialism and queer-of-color critique, Coráñez Bolton extends theorizations of mestizaje beyond the United States and Latin America while considering how Filipinx and Filipinx American thought fundamentally enhances understandings of the colonial body and the racial histories of disability. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/intellectual-history

In Crip Colony: Mestizaje, US Imperialism, and the Queer Politics of Disability in the Philippines (Duke UP, 2023), Sony Coráñez Bolton examines the racial politics of disability, mestizaje, and sexuality in the Philippines. Drawing on literature, poetry, colonial records, political essays, travel narratives, and visual culture, Coráñez Bolton traces how disability politics colluded with notions of Philippine mestizaje. He demonstrates that Filipino mestizo writers in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries used mestizaje as a racial ideology of ability that marked Indigenous inhabitants of the Philippines as lacking in civilization and in need of uplift and rehabilitation. Heteronormative, able-bodied, and able-minded mixed-race Filipinos offered a model and path for assimilation into the US empire. In this way, mestizaje allowed for supposedly superior mixed-race subjects to govern the archipelago in collusion with American imperialism. By bringing disability studies together with studies of colonialism and queer-of-color critique, Coráñez Bolton extends theorizations of mestizaje beyond the United States and Latin America while considering how Filipinx and Filipinx American thought fundamentally enhances understandings of the colonial body and the racial histories of disability. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hey Artists and Creatives! If you want to know what it's like to transition from an agency career working with big brands like Stephen Curry and Michelle Obama to owning your own thriving Creative Design Business while centering values like community, rest, play and pleasure — then you're not gonna wanna miss this convo with my amazing client Isabel! Listen in as we talk about: The evolution of our work together from The Alchemy Room thru Re-Wilding: The Mastermind How she was able to fill her very first group program, as a new entrepreneur The invitations she's received from leading in-person workshops to freelance opportunities The importance of Discipline vs Devotion, and why you can't sustain a business off of excitement only How she models getting paid with EASE as she created recurring revenue while she vacationed in the Philippines for a month How expanding her self-concept and creating a strong body of work set her up to grow her business while integrating rest, play, and pleasure in her day-to-day! Isabel Bagsik (she/her) is a Creativity Wellness Guide and art director who works with creatives, visionaries, and changemakers ready to honor their inherent creative wisdom (and untangling from exhausting habits). Systemic oppressive systems encourage burnout, so to rest is to resist and have the sustainability to build a new just world. Isabel has a double Bachelor's degree in Design & Digital Media from UC Davis, founded the Brown Papaya Magazine for Filipinx women and LGBTQIA+ folks, and designed for nonprofits, multi-billion corporations, and even your fave celebrities (such as: Target, Google, Michelle Obama, Naomi Campbell, Stephen Curry). Follow Isabel @unconventionalbliss and check out all of her offerings! __________ If you're ready to be expanded, challenged, and supported (without the spiritual bypassing), so you can pioneer your own legacy work, come join us! Re-Wilding: The Mastermind is now accepting applications for Summer 2024 start!  Grab the details and apply here: http://soulflow.co/rewilding Other ways to work with me: THE ALCHEMY ROOM: A 6 Month Holistic Business Coaching Program And Lifetime Community For Newer Healers And Coaches who wants to launch and grow their business in a soul-aligned way.  https://soulflow.co/the-alchemy-room RE-WILDING: THE MASTERMIND: A 6-month high-touch immersive mastermind for the experienced entrepreneur who wants to scale their business by liberating their wild feminine and being the go-to thought leader of their industry. http://soulflow.co/rewilding Other ways to work with me: http://soulflow.co/offerings Connect with me Instagram @soulflowco Kickstart your business. What's your Soul Biz Magic? Take my quiz and find out!: https://soulflow.co/magic-quiz2 Play Bigger. Watch my Free Masterclass: How I Created my $70k Launch: https://soulflowco.myflodesk.com/70kmasterclass Scale Your Business with Ease. Watch my Free Masterclass: How to Structure Your Healing or Coaching Business for Sustainable $10k Months: http://soulflow.co/10k-masterclass-sign-up Visit my website: https://soulflow.co   

This hour on Disrupted, we're challenging long-held assumptions about parents and caregivers. First, Angela Garbes, author of Essential Labor: Mothering as Social Change, explains how care workers are undervalued. She touches on the way the early days of the pandemic spotlighted issues in caregiving and why the legacy of American colonialism in the Philippines influenced both her family history and the disproportionate number of Filipinx nurses who died from COVID. Then, UConn professor Kari Adamsons talks about her research on fathers and the problem with the way many people think about "traditional families." GUESTS: Angela Garbes: author of Essential Labor: Mothering as Social Change Kari Adamsons: Associate Professor of Human Development and Family Sciences at the University of Connecticut This episode originally aired on February 15, 2023. Disrupted is available as a podcast on Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, Spotify, TuneIn, Listen Notes, or wherever you get your podcasts. Subscribe and never miss an episode.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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. Living Legacies: LARRY THE MUSICAL x MISTER REY TRIBUTE Host Aisa Villarosa covers “Larry the Musical” a new theatrical production based on the book “Journey for Justice: The Life of Larry Itliong” written by Gayle Romasanta and the late Dr. Dawn Mabalon. Nomi aka Power Struggle and Aisa also honor an anchor and leader of the Bay Area Filipinx and civil rights community –  Mister REY. Links to Episode Features: Larry The Musical website: https://www.larrythemusical.com/   Allyson Tintiangco-Cubales: https://www.instagram.com/pinayism/?hl=en Billy Bustamante: https://www.billybustamante.com/ Mister REY Memorial GoFundMe https://misterrey.bandcamp.com/album/wonders-mysticisms-beat-tape Power Struggle https://soundcloud.com/mario-de-mira Show Transcripts Living Legacies: Larry the Musical x Mister REY tribute 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 Aisa Villarosa: [00:00:28] You're listening to Apex Express on 94.1 KPFA Berkeley, 89.3 KPFB Berkeley, 88.1 KFC at Fresno and online at KPFA. org. Welcome, welcome, welcome. I am your host, Aisa Villarosa. I'm an artist, attorney, ethnic studies advocate, general rabble rouser, and lifetime fan of the Apex Express crew. Shout out to my homie Miko. Get comfy, get cozy. We have a wonderful show for you tonight. It's a show about a show, that is Larry The Musical, which is based on the book Journey for Justice: The Life of Larry Itliong, written by Gayle Romasanta, and the wondrous late great Dr. Dawn Mabolon. The story and songs are influenced by and honor our ancestors, and the musical debuts at San Francisco's very own Brava Theater running March 16th through April 14th, 2024. That means, seats are limited. So, in addition to checking out the show we have for you tonight, visit www.larrythemusical.com to get your tickets today, learn about this cast and crew. Now for our show. First up we'll hear about Larry Itliong's legacy of organizing, resistance, and community power building from Dr. Allyson Tintiangco-Cubales. Next, Larry The Musical director Billy Bustamante, previews the heart, soul, and talent behind this production. And, because we're pretty big of a deal here [laughs] we'll also hear a sneak peek of two songs from Larry The Musical. Finally, the artist Power Struggle will help me wrap up this episode by honoring an anchor and leader of the Bay Area Filipinx and civil rights community and our friend, Mister REY. Rest in power. All right, that's the show. Let's dig in. I'm here with Dr. Allyson Tintiangco-Cubales, one of the country's leading Ethnic Studies and Filipinx studies scholars and professors, co-founder and director of Community Responsive Education, and the educational consultant for Larry The Musical. Allyson, it's so wonderful to have you here. Allyson Tintiangco-Cubales: [00:02:34] My gosh, thank you so much for having me. I really appreciate this show and all the work that you've been doing for many years. Thank you so much. Aisa Villarosa: [00:02:41] For our dedicated Apex Express listeners who may not be familiar with the wonderful Larry Itliong. Can you talk a little bit about who he is and who he is to this particular Civil Rights Movement? Allyson Tintiangco-Cubales: [00:02:57] Larry Itliong. He was born in the Philippines, in San Nicolas Pangasinan. He came here at 15 years old. Imagine coming here at 15 years old. He only had a sixth grade education. And he came here, actually in order to pursue his studies and he moved to the United States in 1929. As you probably know, because of the Great Depression, it was difficult to find jobs. He was forced to work in the railroads and then eventually became a migrant farm worker. And he traveled all the way from like Montana, South Dakota, Washington, and finally landed here in California. So during that time, Larry Itliong learned of the plight suffered by Filipinos and other immigrants working in the fields. Larry Itliong was a prominent leader in one of the most important social justice movements in the US, and we call that the Farm Worker Movement. A lot of Filipinos involved along with Mexicanos. He organized a group of 1500 Filipinos to strike against the grape growers in Delano, California. Some people call that the great Delano Grape strike of 1965. Basically they were trying to fight for workers' rights. They had this strike for eight days. And there was tons of violence by the growers, hired hands, and even the sheriff department, and they were thrown out of the labor camp. Larry Itliong. He was strong and he remained tenacious and resilient. And he called upon someone very famous that many of us know Cesar Chavez, and Cesar Chavez' community, to join forces with the Filipinos and they striked again. Because of Larry Itliong, the two groups combined and they ended up becoming the United Farm Workers. And a lot of us know the United Farm Workers and a lot of it is attributed to Cesar Chavez, but really Larry Itliong really pushed that ability to create a coalition. To create a connection to really fight for collective liberation. So this unification between the farmworkers of all different ethnicities, not just Filipino and Mexicano was really unprecedented. And really set an example for many of us—many of us meaning workers and organizers—many of us learned from that movement, how to really create alignment, how to really create a coalition, how to really fight alongside each other. And that movement was very successful. You may or may not know this, but Larry Itliong also was the president of the Filipino American Political Association, the first national political Filipino American organization. And it was very crucial, between Filipino professionals and laborers, that grew out of the Delano Grape strike. Larry Itliong was instrumental in founding lots of things including the Pablo Agbayani Village, a Retirement Home built by volunteers for retired Filipino Manos, who no longer had families and needed a place to call home. I recently visited Agbayani Village with my family. Even in my own family, my husband, his father was one of the farm workers, and it means a great deal to actually be there at Agbayani Village, quite literally, you feel the spirits. And having, having brought my daughter there and she got to, you know, see, where our ancestors lived. Larry Itliong, he passed away in 1977 at the age of sixty-three, very young. He left behind his wife and seven children. But his accomplishments and his legacy, continues to live and we really reap the benefits from all the work that he did. Aisa Villarosa: [00:06:41] I got shivers at several points when you shared Allyson. Thank you. And I am told that as part of your work as educational consultant for Larry The Musical, that one of your unique roles is helping the cast see history in this moment and see what Larry's struggle and Larry's story is to them and their families. So I love that sort of full circle practice. It also means that for a musical to take on you know you've named some, some pretty heavy things, right? You're naming organizing struggle, you're naming the struggle against white supremacy. Can you talk a little bit about what makes this musical special and, and even to be able to do right by Larry and his story, how did you all bring this to life? Allyson Tintiangco-Cubales: [00:07:33] Whoa. That's a really important set of questions and I really appreciate the connections between what's happening on the stage and what's happening in our classrooms and, you know, what's really happening in our communities. It is a really important show. I think a lot of shows have said, “Oh, we're a hundred percent this, we're a hundred percent that.” But when I go into working with the cast, I really see a hundred percent Filipino, Filipina, Filipinx Americans who are really telling a story that is important. Larry's story is not glamorous, [laughs] you know, and I say that because I've seen a lot of Broadway shows. You know, I have a child who's a performer and I spend a lot of time in New York, and I really do love watching musicals. And so this genre is like happy times for me, right? I go in and I get, I mean, they start singing and I, I just want to cry right away [laughs]. But there's something so powerful, yes, about a hundred percent Filipino cast, but also telling a story about struggle, and about labor, about someone who's working class, who really has changed our lives. I think sometimes when I go to musicals, I try to find myself, you know, like on stage I'm like, which character am I? You know? And in this musical I really feel like I'm all the characters. And you will see this, you know, because there's Larry, of course, this, it's a story about Larry Itliong, but you will see characters, and the creative team has wonderfully weaved characters from different parts of that era, and then also maybe even parts of their own lives and their own families, and they land on stage. They are telling this story alongside Larry, and it's beautiful and I'm really, really excited for people to see it. I'm not going to, I'm not gonna give too much away. Aisa Villarosa: [00:09:39] [Laughs] People gotta buy tickets. Yes. Allyson Tintiangco-Cubales: [00:09:41] Buy your tickets and bring your tissue [laughs]. Because I really feel like people are going to not only see Larry on stage, but they're gonna see themselves, their families, their parents, their community, their ancestors, all of them there. I will say that, I had the fortune of working with the cast, specifically on a project called Tatlong Bagsak Talambuhay and what I said to the cast was, this work has to be different. This work cannot just be about telling one man's story. And so it's really important for them to understand their own story, their own family's legacy, and why they're doing this work. And so at the beginning of each of the rehearsals, there's one cast member who tells their story. Talambuhay, you know, telling their life story. So that every person is allowed to share their story on the stage, quite literally. And also to be able to make the connections to why they're there on that stage. I had one cast member come up to me last week and say, “I've never been part of a [laughs] a show like this. You know, like where I was seen.” And that's the power of Larry The Musical. It, it's definitely about Larry and how he has inspired us, but it is so much more. And so I'm really excited for people to be able to experience that. Aisa Villarosa: [00:11:18] I was lucky enough to attend the community preview y'all had put on in the fall. It was smashing and I could feel Dawn Mabalon's love and spirit in the room because so much of what you're saying is how are we creating a living archive, right? And there's so many stories that make up history that ultimately is intentionally not told or kept away from people. So it sounds like this is hopefully one of many opportunities for folks to either learn that history for the first time, or to learn it in a really freeing way. I want to talk a little bit about women. If we look at various movements across labor, thinking about the figures of labor, you know, you have Larry, you have Philip Vera Cruz. I am sure there are some strong, strong women in Larry. And as a Filipina we also see that the value of care work, of women really it's often invisibilized by history. Talk to us a little bit about, you know, what can we expect to see from the women in Larry? Are there any toxic narratives that are reversed or addressed by the musical? Allyson Tintiangco-Cubales: [00:12:32] I feel like you saw the script. [Laughs]. Aisa Villarosa: [00:12:34] I didn't. I did not. [Laughs]. Allyson Tintiangco-Cubales: [00:12:36] Oh, okay. Okay. I can't give up too much. It'd be really unfair, but I'll say that this begins with the strong women who did the research and who wrote the play, the musical, the book, the script. And I'll start with, a lot of the work is rooted in Dr. Dawn Bohulano's research. I mean, she really was going to tell Larry Itliong's story in an academic book. And before she passed, she was able to write Journey for Justice with Gayle Romasanta. It was, it quite literally went to press the day that she passed. Dr. Dawn Bohulano Mabalon had a dream to really tell Larry's story, but I know deep inside it wasn't just about Larry's story, it was a story about her family. It was a story about her ancestors, including the women. And so I think how beautiful it is to have quite literally the voice and research of Dr. Dawn Bohulano Mabalon in the script that Gayle Romasanta really was able to bring forth. So we have writers like Gayle Romasanta, Kevin Camia, and then writing the music we have Brian Pangilinan, and then you'll hear the sounds of course of Sean Kana. But when we talk and think about the women, the voices quite literally, the singing voices of the women are so powerful. I think sometimes people imagine women during that movement as being behind the men. In this show, that's not the case. I think of the work of Stacey Salinas, Dr. Stacey Salinas, who writes about Filipina farmworkers in the movement. She has some beautiful archives of Filipina women during that time. And you literally see them on the stage and you see them challenging men and you see them saying yes, we are part of this struggle. And so, although it's called Larry The Musical, Larry definitely isn't the main character by himself. Aisa Villarosa: [00:14:40] I love that. And what you shared also reminds me of thinking about the people power movement and the phrase makibaka huwag matakot, where there is power in struggle, right? If, if we can come together collectively. Turning to the musical, it's going to premiere soon. We hope that folks visit the Apex Express website [kpfa.org] where y'all can buy tickets. Please support this incredible work. What is your greatest hope for this musical? Allyson Tintiangco-Cubales: [00:15:11] Ooh, that's a good question. It caught me off guard. I secretly hope that this musical goes beyond the Bay Area, potentially travels, potentially goes to Broadway, maybe the Philippines. You know, I want people to know how wonderful our story is, our story. And you will really see our story in this. So yeah, I hope it makes it big. [Laughs] I, I really do. We deserve it. Aisa Villarosa: [00:15:41] Well, it's not a secret anymore. You, you manifested it, so now it's gotta happen, right? [Laughs]. Allyson Tintiangco-Cubales: [00:15:47] Yeah, I really do. I mean, I hope, I hope for all of that. And to be honest, I don't think the Pinnacle is Broadway in my mind. It might've been when we first started the project, but really, I, I feel like most importantly is for people to know the stories of our people. And Larry The Musical can really bring that out. And I hope people can see themselves on stage. I mean, that is a big goal for them to be able to see themselves on stage. Aisa Villarosa: [00:16:13] Allyson, it's been so wonderful talking with you. Before we head out, is there anything else you'd like to share with the listeners? Allyson Tintiangco-Cubales: [00:16:21] There's so many struggles going on right now in the world, whether that be, like the manifestation of colonialism and imperialism everywhere, to what's happening in our classrooms. I feel like really key that Larry The Musical is ethnic studies. I think [it's] important that people know that the goal of ethnic studies is collective liberation and we do that by centering the voices of people of color in the first person, ultimately to eliminate and eradicate racism and white supremacy. I mean, like it's all of that. Aisa Villarosa: [00:16:50] Yeah. Allyson Tintiangco-Cubales: [00:16:51] But I want people to know that Larry is that, and I think sometimes we get stuck on wanting representation, like, oh, I wanna see a Filipino on stage. And so we vote for people on those shows and we get so excited. Aisa Villarosa: [00:17:05] Or that becomes the ceiling, right? Allyson Tintiangco-Cubales: [00:17:08] Exactly. It becomes the ceiling. We have made it because we've seen ourselves on TV or we've seen ourselves on a stage on Broadway, but I think it's not enough. Because those stories oftentimes are not the stories of our own people. We often play characters who are not ourselves, and we oftentimes have to compromise our integrity to actually become famous. And so for me, when I think about Larry The Musical, it does not compromise. It does not compromise. And it really is about our stories and us telling our stories in the first person. I'll leave it at that. Aisa Villarosa: [00:17:44] I love that. It's such a great way to send us off. And as someone who used to work in the arts and has been shushed at primarily white events, I love the decolonization of the arts as well. It's arts and ethnic studies. So many folks in our work do this work because of a really important moment in ethnic studies that came to them. Unfortunately, because of the forces that are out there trying to stop ethnic studies, for many that revelation comes kind of late in life or sometimes doesn't come at all. So, please let us have more Larry, more stories like Larry and more ways for folks to access this sort of awakening. Thank you so much, Allyson. It has been a pleasure. Allyson Tintiangco-Cubales: [00:18:31] Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for all the work that you do. Aisa Villarosa: [00:18:34] As Allyson shared, Larry The Musical is a lesson in living civil rights history, a chronicle of the racial violence faced by Filipinx organizers and how they mobilize to overcome it. This plays out in the musical's track, “Watsonville,” which we're about to preview. In the 1930s, violence against Filipinos was a daily occurrence. It was not out of the ordinary for Filipinos to get shot at, be beaten, or have their campos bombed. Two major events happened in January 1930, the Watsonville Riots and the bombing of the Filipino Federation of American Building in Stockton California. The Watsonville riots saw hundreds of Filipinos beaten and Fermin Tobera killed over four days of mob violence. White mobs beat and shot Filipinos, and in the end, no one was arrested. “Watsonville” follows our characters as these historic events unfold. It was written by Gayle Romasanta and Kevin Camia, music composed by Bryan Pangilinan and Sean Kana. Let's take a listen. SONG Aisa Villarosa: [00:19:39] You're listening to Apex Express on KPFA Radio with me, Aisa Villarosa. That was a special preview of “Watsonville” from Larry The Musical. I'm here with acclaimed New York City-based theater artist, director, performer teacher, and community-driven artivist Billy Bustamante, director of Larry The Musical. We are so honored to have you join us, Billy. Billy Bustamante: [00:21:02] Hi there. Thank you so much for having me. I'm so thrilled to be here. Aisa Villarosa: [00:21:06] Awesome. Well, we are going to dive into Larry The Musical. And a few months ago I had the honor of catching the community preview at the Brava Theater in San Francisco and it blew my socks off as a mentee of the great ate Dawn Mabalon, a hero and mentor gone too soon, it was beautiful to see her archiving come alive in song. For those who are new to Larry The Musical, can you tell us a little bit about what audiences can expect? Billy Bustamante: [00:21:38] Sure. When you come to the Brava Theater this spring, you will see a story about our shared Filipino American history, but even greater our shared American history brought to life on stage. You will see a story that centers Filipino Americans in the telling of that history. It is a musical that will make you laugh, will make you cry, will make you dance in your seat, and will hopefully make you step back out into the world as you leave the theater with a little more power in your hands. Aisa Villarosa: [00:22:06] Those all sound so incredible. Billy, can you share more, as someone who has been in the arts world for so long, why is this project near and dear to your heart? Billy Bustamante: [00:22:18] Larry means so much to me for so many reasons. I've been making theater now for a little over 20 years professionally. And throughout that time I have kind of had to hold two sides of myself in various capacities, right? I have my American-ness, and I have my Filipino-ness. As a born and raised Filipino American here in the States, I have always had to examine unconsciously how much of myself I can bring into an artistic space just because those spaces have predominantly been white led. Now that we are in a space that is created for by and about Filipino people telling a story that is for by and about Filipino people that really centers not just Filipino story, but the Filipino identity, not just in the product but in the process, that is a feeling I have literally never had before in my 42 years on this planet. And every time I step into this space, I am amazed at how much more myself I feel, and I can see that sensation flashing in every single person in the room. And it's on one side beautiful. It's like a beautiful thing to witness us all kind of come alive a bit more, expand into the space, be more of ourselves. And it's also a bit infuriating to know that it's taken me 42 years to get to this moment. This feeling of true belonging is something that I have grown more and more addicted to and that I continue to chase in any other experience that I have. Aisa Villarosa: [00:23:46] Wow. I'm getting a little goosebumps over here. I am hearing that it's, it's almost like coming home to yourself, that often, and I too have a Filipino family, grew up here I'm second generation, and often the dominant culture's understanding of Filipinos is limited to very simplistic notions, whether that's our food, even if food is very political. Billy Bustamante: [00:24:11] Yes. Aisa Villarosa: [00:24:11] There's often sort of a niceness, and the arts and culture world is no exception. So thank you for sharing. And in thinking about the cast of the musical, can you share what makes this cast special and unique? Billy Bustamante: [00:24:29] I am a firm believer that theater artists of any background are some of the most exhilarating people in the world [laughs]. As a theater artist, specifically as a musical theater artist, there is so much skill you must be able to access in order to do your job. It's not just one thing at a time, it is all things at a time. So we are making a show that sings, acts and dances all the time [laughs], and within that there's that triple threat of skill while also incorporating this fourth ingredient of identity and shared history. So each of the actors that we have brought into this cast has really shown up with not just those first three skills in brilliant capacity, but also a hunger and an enthusiasm to be generous about how they bring this fourth ingredient into the process. Again, another thing none of us have been able to do in an artistic space before. For so many of us, it's our first time bringing ourselves to the work in this way. Because none of us have had a chance to do it. So many of us have never played Filipino on stage before, let alone Filipino Americans specifically. I know I've been lucky to have played Filipinos on stage and have been telling Filipino stories, but none of those have been led by Filipinos or written by Filipinos. So there's a level of not just authenticity, but integrity to the work and the story we're telling that allows each of these cast members to be greater like artistic citizens and contributors to the work. Aisa Villarosa: [00:25:58] I love that. There's in Filipino culture, the word kapwa, right? Which is collective identity. And I was reading a quote from you and you said, “My favorite thing about Filipinx culture is creating community. If you've shared a meal with a Filipinx family, you're family.” And it sounds like here you're talking about a meal but this theater experience and all the prep that y'all did, there's a family feeling to that, and can you share some of the behind the scenes love and care and intentionality that went into creating Larry? Billy Bustamante: [00:26:33] Yes. Yes. I, I love that you found that quote. I can't remember when I said it, but I know I say it a lot. [Laughs]. Aisa Villarosa: [00:26:39] I was creeping on the internet. [Laughs]. Billy Bustamante: [00:26:40] I love it. I, and I do firmly believe, like that's one of my favorite things about Filipino culture. Yeah. If you sit at my table, you leave as a family member, right? And I do think that's the environment we wanna create for the audience as well. This piece of art that we are creating is what I hope will be a fully nourishing seven course meal of artistry that again, audience members come into the theater as guests and they leave as family. That is my hope. How we get there is, has been a thrilling experiment, again, as a theater maker for like 20 plus years, the pandemic, this pandemic pause that was forced upon us as artists, really forced me to examine, but I think forced the greater industry to examine the dysfunction in how we do what we do. And now that we have started creating theater again, I've personally been on this, you know, mission to honor the science experiment that we're all on in terms of a, how to be in a room together and then how to create art together and hopefully a healthier more empowering way across the board. So knowing that's been a mission I've been on with any theater project I take on, for this one specifically there is so much more importance laid onto that particular ingredient, right? How do we make a healthier room? How do we make a more restorative healing process for everyone? Recognizing that the story we are telling impacts the actors and their bodies in a way that no other story does, right? There is an additional toll and cost to reckoning with your own history on stage. And it's, it's a privilege to get to do that, but that does mean we need to reexamine what supportive systems and structures we are creating in the room. Again, this is all an experiment [laughs] and it's going well so far, but some steps we have taken or to gather our company. Our company, on the first full day of rehearsal when we got all the actors together. One thing I was excited about our first day of rehearsal was that we took a good amount of time to sit in a circle and create what we called community commitments. Like a set of shared agreements that we all were participatory in creating that gave us all a guideline of how we treat each other in this space. So now it's thrilling, it's freeing to have this social contract in place that we have all agreed to, that not just allows for the pursuit of an ideal space, but also a way to kind of move through conflict as we pursue that space. So to me that feels really helpful. Another thing we just did in rehearsal yesterday, was we brought Allyson in to lead a facilitation of how we bring our personal individual stories to this greater story that we are telling. We are telling a history and we are living history in this moment. So it was amazing to hear Allyson give us a technique for how we share our individual stories as humans to the rest of the company, which is a practice we will start incorporating at the beginning of every rehearsal. And I can only wait to see how much that impacts the art that we make on stage, knowing that everyone will know more and be more invested with each other as humans. Aisa Villarosa: [00:29:32] And you're talking about living history, right? And as you were sharing, I wrote down safety to create. It's rare that we as folks of color as Filipinos can be in these safe liberatory spaces. Taking it a little personal, has your family seen Larry yet? Billy Bustamante: [00:29:50] Well, I mean, no one really has, [laughs] you know, our world premiere in March will be a world premiere. No one will, even if people have seen every workshop, this is a version of the musical in its fullest form that no one will have ever seen before. So in that way, I'm very excited. With that said, my parents have been keeping up with all the filmed workshops and the interviews, and that's all been amazing. Both of my parents are on the east coast. They're in the DC area, which is where I'm from. So they're keeping up with it virtually. But I am so excited for them to fly out here, to catch opening weekend. I'm getting a little emotional talking about it right now, but my parents are incredibly supportive as is the rest of my family. And they do a great job at coming to see and support whatever I do. And this one, having them in the room to watch this one, I think will be a really special experience. Aisa Villarosa: [00:30:43] I, I can feel love and as a huge fan, a mentee of folks like Dr. Allyson and Dawn Mabalon there's a moment where a lot of Filipinos, Filipino organizations are trying to archive the struggle, the triumphs of the past, and it's incredible that through theater y'all are doing that in a way that will be fresh for new generations. And speaking of theater, you are always creating, you wear so many hats. Tell us what is coming down the road for you in addition to Larry, would love to hear more. Billy Bustamante: [00:31:26] Yeah. I'm gonna put this into the ether here. I, my hope is that this world premiere of Larry will be the first of many steps for this musical. So what I hope is that the next few years includes more productions of Larry at a bigger and wider scale. With that said, there are a few other projects that I'm really excited about. I am a theater leader, but also an educator. So I'm on teaching faculty at Circle in the Square Theater School, which is the only theater training ground attached to a Broadway theater. So, in that way I feel really excited about the work I get to do with young artists there. We are developing a new musical called The Rosetta Project, which I hope everyone checks out. It's gonna be amazing. I'll be directing that. From there I have a couple of, you know, other pots on the stove. I'll be directing, choreographing a new off-Broadway show called Straight Forward in spring of 2025, which I'm very excited about. There are a couple of other things that I cannot release at this moment, but if you want to keep up with the [laughs] shenanigans I am up to, please check out billybustamante.com because I'll be sure to be shouting from the rooftops with excitement once I can. Aisa Villarosa: [00:32:36] Beautiful. And we will include links to your website, Billy, as well as links for folks to get tickets for Larry at the Brava Theatre. And folks can check that out on the Apex Express website [kpfa.org]. And Billy, before we go, is there anything else you want to share? Billy Bustamante: [00:32:55] I think there is one thing. I'm usually not a person who really is enthusiastic about promoting my projects [laughs]. I've always kind of felt some sense of ickiness around that. Some sense of like transactionality around that [laughs]. But Larry is so special to me and there's a spirit that we are creating in this piece that I think everyone needs to experience and be a part of. And I also recognize that, you know, where audience members choose to spend their money is a big investment and a big decision and I hope that everyone who is excited by anything I've said today or anything we've talked about today finds a way to grab a ticket and join us at the theater. This time will be fleeting and it's gonna be over before we know it, and I really hope everyone gets to be a part of it because I think it's gonna be really special so get those tickets if you can. Aisa Villarosa: [00:33:49] Adding a plus one to that. And Billy, you earlier mentioned the impact of these covid pandemic years and yeah, that was the longest period of theater closures, right? Since World War II. As someone who used to work in the arts I also recall that often there's sort of an elite nature to the arts and one of my favorite things when I go to the Larry website is there are so many people who gave all sorts of amounts to make this happen, right? There's folks who gave like 50 bucks. It's such a welcoming site, so I too hope that this is only the beginning. Billy Bustamante: [00:34:28] Awesome. Thank you so much and thanks to everyone who supported us so far. I'm so grateful. Aisa Villarosa: [00:34:32] Our final track from Larry The Musical is called “Train,” which is about Filipinos jumping trains throughout the western United States, traveling from town to town in search of work in the 1920s and 1930s. Train was written by Gayle Romasanta and Kevin Camia, music composed by Brian Pangilinan and Sean Kana. They wanted to create a broad picture of how the thousands of Filipinos must have met each other, built friendships, planned labor meetings, and all while traveling. Here is the exclusive preview. SONG Aisa Villarosa: [00:35:03] You're listening to Apex Express on KPFA Radio, and I'm your host, Aisa Villarosa. That was a preview of “Train” from Larry The Musical. You just heard Dr. Allyson Tintiangco-Cubales and Billy Bustamante talk about what makes the world premiere of Larry The Musical so special. Larry debuts at the Brava Theatre in San Francisco March 16th through April 14th, 2024. Seats are limited, so visit www.larrythemusical.com to buy tickets today. Finally, tonight's episode of Apex Express is dedicated to the life and legacy of Reynaldo Timosa Novicio Jr. a father, son, friend, and prolific sound producer, artist and guiding light of the Filipinx American and Bay Area Music and Civil Rights community. Rey passed away on February 2nd, 2024. I'm joined right now by a friend, a colleague, an incredible artist, activist dad, and a martial arts practitioner, Nomi, AKA Power Struggle. Nomi, it's so great to have you on the show today. Nomi (Power Struggle): [00:37:12] Hey Aisa, thank you for having me. Thank you to the KPFA and the Apex Express listeners. What's up Bay Area? Aisa Villarosa: [00:37:19] Nomi, you rep the Bay Area hard. I think a good way to start our conversation is given all the hats you wear, all the ways that you're making change: What does it mean to be Filipinx American in the Bay Area right now? Nomi (Power Struggle): [00:37:34] I think right now it is a really important moment to, there's been so much happening in this particular moment around the liberation of Palestine and the end of the genocide in Gaza, and I think that a lot of folks in our community have been really seeing this moment as a way to express their solidarity and mobilize and take action against what's happening to the Palestinians. And I think that is just reflective of the bigger, historical context that a lot of Filipino, Filipinx, Americans, immigrants, have experienced and live under, right? So I believe like a lot of folks are just seeing those connections between colonization, the colonization of the Philippines from various different occupation nations and armies, to what's happening in Palestine. And they make those connections and they even are not that far removed, maybe like two generations removed from the experiences of their grandparents that went through the Japanese occupation during World War II and lived through some of those horrors and they remember that stuff and the stories that they were told and I think that informs a large amount of our community to, to mobilize and take action. I'm not saying that, we don't have more conservative folks in our broad community across the Bay Area, but I believe for a lot of young folks, a lot of folks that have taken time to be part of other movements, whether it be the movement for Black Lives, or Indigenous movements, or even for liberation movements in the Philippines, they kind of understand all these connections, and are building bridges and building solidarity with folks. Aisa Villarosa: [00:39:16] Yeah, it's the young and it's the young at heart, right? I think folks who can be ever curious, and, you know, we have made some headway in ethnic studies where folks are connecting the dots, right, between those shared histories, those living histories of struggle. Tonight's episode started off with a tour of Larry Itliong, the new musical coming out. And it's quite clear that to be Filipino in so many ways means to resist. And as it relates to Larry The Musical, resistance through music is such a powerful form of political organizing. Nomi, you're here today because this episode is also a tribute to our friend who passed away, the wonderful Mister Rey, who you have collaborated with, you have made music with. Can you start by just sharing a little bit about who Rey was to you and maybe talk a little bit about what made your musical collaboration so special? Nomi (Power Struggle): [00:40:27] I'm really thankful for this opportunity to just share the story of Mister REY with the entire Bay Area with the country. Mister REY, Reynaldo Novicio, and I worked on one of our first records together. It was called Remittances. And I met Rey back in around 2009. I can't remember specifically where we met. It just happens in life, especially in the art community, you start talking with people and collaborating, and he would invite me to a spot in Daly City, where he was living at the time with his family, and every Saturday morning we would session. I would go over there with Dennis and Kane, Drew, Vi, and we would just, he would just play beats that he had made, and we would write. And after a few months of that, we slowly started to create this body of work that was starting to be more cohesive that would be like the material for the album, Remittances. A couple months after that, we decided to move in, him and his partner, and their family were moving into a spot in the Excelsior District and they had an extra room. I think I was going through a displacement. I think I was going through an eviction in the mission. And so it all kind of worked out and I ended up moving in with them. And that really was just a great opportunity to live together and continue this process of working on this album, which is to me my favorite piece of work. It's so meaningful. The title Remittances. You know, is a remittance obviously, when you send money to your family back home or abroad, was just such a symbol of the immigrant experience, especially for our community and the Filipino community. And so the title was like an offering of culture and love, for our community through music. And that's why we chose that title Remittances and that offering and love transcends beyond just this neighborhood, but also across the seas to our homelands and throughout our diaspora. That project was just really important. For all the artists out there, when you go through a creative process you're partnering with someone and you live with them it's just like a deeper level of connection and struggle [laughs] as well, right? Because, you live together so and Rey has two twin daughters he has one more now. But at the time, and so, you know, you're just really immersed with the family. And for me, it was also such a beautiful experience because Mister REY was a bridge builder. He really was a tulay. He immigrated from the Philippines at a pretty young age, I think late elementary school or middle school, still very much had the identity of the migrant community you know, Tagalog was his first language a lot of his folks, his homies were a lot of recent immigrant hip hop heads and folks from that community. But he was also able to just because there, there is this kind of conception that there's a divide often between immigrant communities and first or second generation Filipino Americans. And it is true to an extent. I've seen it manifest in high schools and on the streets and things like that. But Rey was really able to bridge these differences and connect folks. And so for me, especially someone that grew up in the Midwest, that didn't really grow up around Filipinos, getting to experience living with Mister Rey and his family and living in the Excelsior District, which has the highest concentration of Filipinos in San Francisco, was just such an immersive and beautiful thing and a reconnection to our culture, on so many levels, and I'm already in my, late 20s at the time, and so to go through this experience was really powerful and eye opening. I think it also related to just like what we're fighting for in San Francisco. You know what I mean in the sense of upholding this identity of being a city of multiple languages, a city of multiple classes and incomes. And, and this is what, like, that experience really upheld. At the time I was also doing a lot of work with the Filipino Community Center as a worker's advocate. I was doing some organizing with Migrante, which is a migrant workers organization. And, for all of these kind of different things, from like the organizing work, to my day job, to living with Mister Rey, and being with the Filipino community in the Excelsior, coming together was like one of my favorite periods of my life where I was really understanding more about our culture, our history, our positionality in society and on a local level, on a national level, and on a global level to really understand how politics and history have brought us to America and to really experience it, right? All of these things were super impactful, and I feel like they helped inform and mold what that album, Remittances, was about. And Mister REY was such a huge part of that, right? He was, you know, he wasn't like this crazy political scientist but through his lived experience and his own way of analyzing his life and things he had been through was very sharp and also informing the kind of political influences of this record. So yeah, it was just such a really important time. I don't think I can ever come close to doing something like that again. I just thank him for that year or two that we lived together, embracing me and letting me come into their family life and just being in community with them. His work in terms of, if you visit his catalog of albums, which I highly recommend folks to check out his bandcamp. And it's just Mister REY, M-I-S-T-E-R R-E-Y, check that out and you can hear all of his work. So much like high level art, beat production wise is really sophisticated. He still embraces most of all of his writing and his rapping is in Tagalog. He sprinkles a lot of English in it too but it's just a really beautiful body of work where people in our diaspora can really identify with and just get a lot of nourishment from. So I really suggest folks go check out his catalog. It's really accessible on Bandcamp. Aisa Villarosa: [00:46:40] Nomi, thank you for opening your heart and sharing about what sounded like a really intimate process, right? To make music with someone. And I know the last time I was at Rey's place, he loves his kitchen so I feel like y'all also broke bread, right? Not just making the beats. I was also struck by Rey was such a multi-dimensional advocate, right? Whether it was mental health, whether it was youth issues, right? All of the sort of organizing he did to challenge juvenile curfew laws, for example. You've today brought a track that you worked on with Rey. It's titled “ArtOfficial Freedom” and I'd love for you to cue up the track and just share a little bit about the music. Nomi (Power Struggle): [00:47:31] This was a signature single on the album. It was produced by Mister REY and it also features Mister REY singing the chorus, where he just does a pretty basic refrain where he says, “round and round.” This was like, I feel like for me at least, or many hip hop artists, I think they have that one single on every album that represents the whole album, and I think this is the one. Like I mentioned earlier, around like all the different things that I was doing at the time in terms of community organizing and workers organizing and all the stuff that he was doing, at that time, he was really focusing on mentoring a lot of Tagalog hip hop rappers in the community. And so all these young cats would be at the apartment all the time [laughs], recording in the kitchen. And it was really a lesson for me in Tagalog where I had to like try to learn as much as possible. For all these things to come together, I think are reflected in the song. This song, “ArtOfficial Freedom” is just a great representation of the album. And the title itself is just like a play on words. It spelled art official freedom, to mean that like through art, we can try to aim towards some sense of freedom, some, you know, towards the goal of freedom using art, but then a play of words of artificial freedom that what we are currently existing in and under is an artificial form of freedom. Through this, capitalistic, imperialistic, racist society [laughs]. So that's kind of the play on words, artificial freedom. That was a long time ago. That was like 10 years, no, 14 years ago that we dropped that album. It's great to, I'm glad you're bringing it back on the airwaves. And I just want to give a shout out to also Fatgums, who was the number three part of this record. Lives in LA and is also the CEO of Beatrock Music and Beatrock Art Collective but he was just also a big part of this record. So shout out to Fatgums. Aisa Villarosa: [00:49:25] Here is ArtOfficial Freedom from Mister REY and Power Struggle SONG Aisa Villarosa: [00:53:29] Nomi before we go, is there anything else you'd like to share with the listeners tonight? Nomi (Power Struggle): [00:53:34] When our people leave us in the physical world, there's so many ways that we can continue for them to live on and their legacy to live on, especially through art, and especially through the technologies that exist now. Like I said before, please, check out Mister REY's catalog on Bandcamp, it's just Mister REY, M-I-S-T-E-R R-E-Y and look up his music. He also has a project with MrRey and Aristyles called America is in the Dark. That's a beautiful EP. Please check those things out and promote and propagate them, share them with your friends, download them. It's great music. If I could also please plug, to support his family, Mister Rey leaves behind two twin girls and a young son of the age of nine and their mother. And so if you could please donate to the GoFundMe, if you just look up Reynaldo Novicio, his name will pop up, and any donation is greatly appreciated. Lastly, on March 15th Fifth Elements and Hummingbird Farm is going to be organizing a life celebration, for Mister REY, his creative life and his legacy. It's going to be at Hummingbird Farm, which is in the Excelsior District right by Crocker Park, behind the soccer fields. Check that out on March 15th, 4 to 8 pm. The program is still being crafted, but I guarantee it's going to be a really special time. I think there's going to be some films, there's going to be performances, music, and the space in general, Hummingbird Farm, is a really dope community space that is really people power driven. So please check those things out. And again, just really appreciate this time to share about Mister REY and our work together. Aisa Villarosa: [00:55:14] Thank you, Nomi. And Rey would talk about how the Guitar Center in SoMa was a hub for him early on, and he would just meet people, and you have called Rey a bridge builder. So thank you for being with us here tonight and paying it forward with love. Please check out our website kpfa.org to find out more about Larry The Musical, Mister REY, Power Struggle, and the guests we spoke to. We thank 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 Aisa Villarosa, Anuj Vaidya, Ayame Keane-Lee, Cheryl Truong, Hien Nguyen, Jalena Keane-Lee, Miko Lee, Nate Tan, Preti Mangala-Shekar, and Swati Rayasam. Tonight's show was produced by Aisa Villarosa and edited by Ayame Keane-Lee. Have a great night. Mga kababayan. Makibaka, huwag matakot. The post APEX Express – 3.14.24 – Living Legacies Larry the Musical appeared first on KPFA.

Join us in a delightful conversation with Amelia Rampe, Senior Editor at Food & Wine, as we uncover the multifaceted world of food and travel. As a food and travel writer, recipe developer, video host, and food stylist, Amelia delves into the intricacies of the Filipinx kitchen and shares how she skillfully brings Filipinx food stories to life. In this conversation, we tackle:  The intricacies of the Filipinx kitchen, and why it cannot be defined by just one word. Amelia's mid-life transition into the culinary profession and the transformative power of embracing new opportunities. Amelia's perspective on using grief as an opportunity to embrace life to the fullest. In 2020, Amelia wrote a piece on grief, wherein she discusses lentils and ditalini, From Scratch, and her own process of making the nourishing dish. Feeling hungry? Check out Amelia's substack Did You Eat Yet? to find delicious recipes for any season.  More from Amelia:  Website  Instagram Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Episode 100 of Mexipino Podcast

Without community, a I wouldn't have lasted through grad school and the years since. For me, in grad school, a special community that I was with were the group of critical Filipinx scholars who I've since grown with over the years. We called ourselves the “Kritikal Kolektibo,” and we were grad students and junior faculty at the University of Toronto who met regularly, to hang out of course, but also to share our work, and dream about what Filipinx Studies in Canada could look like.We shared stories of what was going on with our lives. We talked about the gendered and racial microaggressions - and outright aggressions - that we experienced, our strategies for subversion, and our moments of triumph. One member of this group, and our guest this week is Dr. John Paul Catungal. JP and I started our PhDs at the same time, in different departments with very different research projects. And yet, we were oftentimes pitted against each other. We knew this too: we knew, for example, that if one of us got shortlisted for a position, the other cannot be, because there can be “only one of us,” – there can only be one Filipino, no matter the differences in our research and our approaches. This is how the neoliberal academy operated, and how it still operates. On today's episode, we talk about friendship, our parallel paths through academia and our attempts to do and be otherwise.Thanks for listening! Get more information, support the show, and read all the transcripts at academicaunties.com. Get in touch with Academic Aunties on Twitter at @AcademicAuntie or by e-mail at podcast@academicaunties.com.

Join us in this episode where we sit down with fellow kapwatid, Verma Zapanta: circle keeper, student of hilot, and educator. In addition to all the organizations and movements she plays a part in, Zapanta hosts the yearly Filipinx healers market/gathering, Ginhawa Marketplace in the SOMA. We speak to her about how hilot came into her life and how she first learned hilot in the back of a Walgreens! We also touch on the importance of finding your people on your remembrance journey. Listen in! …Don't forget to like and follow your ates on the YouChoobs & Instagrams, hah?! Maraming salamat sa iyong continued supporta!  links in bio    Ingat Lagi- Ate Ims & Ate Steph  #babaylan #babaylanic #babaylanbruha #babaylanbruhahas #babaylanbruhabookclub #filipinx#filipinoamerican #filipinxpodcasters #podcasts #precolonialphilippines #intergenerationalhealing #decolonize #backfromthecrocodilesbelly

Tyrese Haliburton and the Indiana Pacers versus LeBron James and the Los Angeles Lakers -- who would have seen this coming? Tune in as the Toronto duo summarize their overall thoughts on the in-season tournament and the introduction of a new segment called "What They Said."(1:00) Boni and Felix talk about their experience with Rise Tribe(4:01) Toronto Raptors mock trades and where would DeMar DeRozan fit best? The Miami Heat or the New York Knicks?(11:19) In-season tournament final thoughts/pros and cons - is this another win for NBA commissioner Adam Silver?(20:14) What They Said: On the Point Forward Podcast hosted by Andre Iguodala and Evan Turner, Iguodala says that Paul George is the second most talented player in the league behind Kevin Durant. Do you agree? Who else would you add to the list?(24:56) On Club Shay Shay host Shannon Sharpe asks former NBA journeyman Trevor Ariza why he thinks Dwight Howard gets the "disrespected" treatment. Ariza goes on to say that Howard was too goofy and that the only person on the court who could be that type of guy AND be a killer on the court was Magic Johnson. Do you agree with Ariza? Who else off the top of your head gets disrespected in general?(28:27) Would You RatherPURCHASE YOUR TICKETS TO THE FAMJAM ON DECEMBER 16TH! See y'all there! Follow @rise_tribe and these Filipinx small businesses:@thepurplecoconut, @alpha_beautyyy, @beadedbyhaven, @slowjams.to, @mamas.mamon, @maybeperhapsoneday, @apothegeri, @raqi.bakesJoin the #fcpfam and follow @fcpthepodIf you're a fan of the game and want to join the convo, DM us on Instagram @fcpthepodIf you're a small business owner, entrepreneur, and/or a creative and would like your work to be advertised on our episodes, DM us on Instagram @fcpthepod ~ LET'S WIN TOGETHER! Check out us here - - https://linktr.ee/fullcpress.toShop: https://hoopnbrand.com/ use code FULLCOURT and get 15% off your orderThinking of starting a podcast of your own? CLICK HERE!Thanks for listening! Subscribe and download episodes on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your shows!

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. Host Miko Lee is joined by Guest Host Aisa Villarosa for another episode focused on Filipinx American History Month. This episode is focused on artist, activist, I Hotel survivor and rebel rouser Jeanette Lazam. We also hear a poem from Emily Lawsin and music from Bay Area's Power Struggle. Learn more about and support collective resistance to militarization and genocide in Palestine: https://www.instagram.com/ucethnicstudiescouncil/  https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSe7SomsNyhrKIuR-FzwTKjPC5bM1lCi3i6GsXJLRXJvKK7JrA/viewform Jeanette Lazams life and artwork: https://convergencemag.com/articles/coming-home-jeanette-lazam-returns-to-the-i-hotel/ https://www.instagram.com/lazamjg/ Emily Lawsin Power Struggle https://www.powerstrugglemusic.com/ https://beatrockmusic.com/collections/power–struggle. No More Moments of Silence Show Transcript 11.2.23 [00:00:00] Aisa Villarosa: In this episode, we're providing a content warning. Our guest, Jeanette Lazum, discusses personal instances of racist threats, police violence, and utilizes a racial epithet. [00:00:47] Miko Lee: Good evening and welcome to Apex Express. This is Miko Lee and I am so thrilled to have a guest co host this night, the amazing and talented Aisa Villarosa. Aisa can you please introduce yourselves to our audience? Say who you are, where you come from, and a little bit about yourself. [00:01:09] Aisa Villarosa: Thank you so much, Miko, and it's a joy to be with you and the Apex Express family. My name is Aisa, my pronouns are she, her, and I'm a Michigan born gay Filipino artist, activist, attorney with roots in ethnic studies organizing and teaching Filipino studies, in the wonderful Pa'aralang Pilipino of Southfield, Michigan. If you ever find yourself at the intersection of Eight Mile and Greenfield near Detroit, stop on by. And the genesis of our talk today started with a conversation around Filipino American History Month, right? [00:01:54] Miko Lee: That's right. And that's what we're going to be talking about tonight. so Tonight Aisa and I are going to be talking about Filipino American History Month. We know that it's the month of October, so Filipino history, that's something that's deep and should be all year round, just like all of our histories should be something that we study. Tell us a little bit about who we're going to be speaking to tonight. [00:02:17] Aisa Villarosa: We have the honor of speaking with Jeanette Lazam, who is a many decades long living legacy, an artist, an activist. Jeanette has worked in spaces like the capital of California, but has also faced down state violence. Both at the hands of the U. S. government through the very violent eviction of elders, primarily Filipino and Chinese elders, at the International Hotel or the iHotel in San Francisco, what was then Manila Town and Jeanette also is a survivor of political violence at the hands of the Ferdinand Marcos regime in the Philippines and is a champion of Nonviolent people power and that is only just the tip of the iceberg. Jeanette is also a prolific artist . She is the only surviving Filipino Manang to return to the iHotel After being a young person who stood and locked arms with the seniors to fight the eviction decades and decades ago, and she'll be sharing some of her story with us. [00:03:34] Miko Lee: I love this. We get to hear firsthand from experiences of people who were engaged in a fight for equality and still continue to do so. I love elders just taking the reins and keeping on fighting out there. Because we're talking about issues that are deep and complicated, including Marcos' dictatorship in the Philippines, and what went down at the iHotel in San Francisco, we'll have some links in the show notes so that folks can delve deeper and find out more. But Aisa can you back us up a little bit? And for folks that might not know, give us a little quickie about the iHotel. I know we talk about it in the interview, but for folks that don't know, give a little bit of background about the importance of the iHotel within Asian American movement spaces. Why do people need to know about this? [00:04:23] Aisa Villarosa: Such a great question and a grounding question Miko. The iHotel is both a physical site, it is in San Francisco, and it is also in many ways A symbol of the struggle for collective liberation, for housing rights, for justice in the city of San Francisco and beyond. And that is why often in many ethnic studies courses, in many Asian American and Pacific Islander courses, students learn about the iHotel. But as Jeanette will share with us, there is really no text that can describe the violence of an eviction, 3 a. m. in the morning on August 4th, 1977, when Armed police officers on horses essentially rounded up the peacefully protesting tenants and supporters of the International Hotel. And This was part of a larger movement, a violent movement across the country that was under the guise of urban renewal, but was really about the continued criminalization of Black and brown and Indigenous and AAPI people. And Jeanette was a survivor of that. It is a story that is painful and yet one that we must not forget and that our generations must learn from in order to continue the fight for social justice. [00:05:55] Miko Lee: Thanks, Aisa, for the little Asian American history lesson. We appreciate it. Folks should find out more if this is the first you're hearing about this. It is a seminal moment. I also think one of the things we didn't actually talk to Jeanette about is how Intersectional, the folks that were protesting at the iHotel were. That there were Black Panthers there, that there are folks from the disability movement. , that's one of those things that really gets hidden under the rug is the different people that were engaged in that fight. [00:06:23] Aisa Villarosa: Absolutely, Miko. The fight for the survival of the International Hotel was intersectional. It really is a demonstration of what healthy movement building can be. It is never easy. It's often complicated. And yet, They answered the urgency of the moment and they did so together. [00:06:46] Miko Lee: There were thousands of people that were involved in that movement. There were hundreds that were there. And tonight you get to hear from one person's story, a little bit about the iHotel, and mostly just from an amazing activist, artist, and social justice champion. So we get to listen to the brilliant interview with Jeanette. [00:07:08] Aisa Villarosa: It's so meaningful to hear from Jeanette and as someone who is living currently in San Francisco's Chinatown is someone who is revered enough to be on murals in Chinatown and yet popular culture and history often forget that Manila Town and Chinatown Coexist, that these are two powerhouse cultures, identities, people who, in some ways, as Jeanette shared, were forced together due to redlining, due to discriminatory housing practices, and yet the activists in Chinatown today are trying to preserve the stories of elders like Jeanette and also telling new stories through art and through activism and protest. [00:08:00] Miko Lee: Aisa, please introduce me to your mentor, the amazing Jeanette. [00:08:05] Aisa Villarosa: Thanks, Miko. We are so honored to have with us today Jeanette Gandianko Lazam. Jeanette, hi, how are you doing today? [00:08:14] Jeanette Lazam: I think I'm doing okay, yeah. I like the warmth, so I'm glad we have sunny days here in San Francisco that are not windy nor cold. [00:08:26] Aisa Villarosa: Are you cuddled up with Samantha? And for the audience Samantha is Jeanette's adorable cat. [00:08:33] Jeanette Lazam: Samantha is cuddled up by herself. Oh, [00:08:37] Aisa Villarosa: that's all right. She can support us from afar. [00:08:39] Jeanette Lazam: Yes, she most definitely will. [00:08:43] Aisa Villarosa: And you know, in these, heavy times, sometimes okay is okay. So we are, we're so happy to have you with us. I'm happy to be here. Thank you. Um, Miko, do you want to kick us off? [00:08:57] Miko Lee: So we are here talking about Filipino History Month and the significance of that. Can you tell us what the significance of the History Month is to you, Jeanette? [00:09:08] Jeanette Lazam: I think it's a time where, you know, for many Filipino and Filipino American organizations, they come to the fore. And what I mean by that is they come and expose the culture, the languages, not just one language, but the languages and the food, the this, the that. And it really comes to the surface. And you can see how much pride people have, I was talking with somebody the other day about the colonization of the Philippines. And when you look at the history of the Philippines, you have to take it for what it is. You can't take something out just because you don't like it. So many people have decided that the colonization of the Philippines shouldn't be… demonstrated during Filipino American History Month. I disagree. And so do a lot of other people. You have to tell that history because that's over 300 years of history right there in terms of the Filipino community. In a nutshell, culture, language, food, dance, They all come to the fore during this particular month, Filipino American History Month, and I'm really happy about that. That's what it means to me. [00:10:46] Aisa Villarosa: Thank you so much, Jeannette. What you're naming is so important that to be Filipino American is to take stock of the good, the bad, the joyful, the challenging. And you mentioned colonization. So much of what colonization forced upon us was almost an incomplete. identity, right? That we had to ignore the pain, pretend it's not there. Or there's the concept of hiyap, right? Which is shame. And, And you know, this really more than me and Miko, but for the listeners, can you share In terms of Filipino history, and because we are currently seeing a second Marcos regime, you've lived through some of the toughest attacks on civil rights, both here in the United States and in the Philippines. Can you just share a couple stories for the listeners about that time? [00:11:53] Jeanette Lazam: We're talking, Bongbong Marcos, who is now the president of the Philippines, his father, Ferdinand Marcos was the president of the Philippines for 20 some odd years. He declared martial law in 1971 and it stayed for 20 years in the Philippines. I don't think I've ever experienced direct fascism, up in your face and very personal. Civil liberties that people had. We're totally stripped the press in the Philippines was shut down and only one press was allowed to function which was the mouthpiece for Marcos. You could not congregate on corners of more than three people, you would get arrested. Many got arrested because they were journalists, because they were activists, because they were civil libertarians. Thank Anyone and anything that posed a threat to the Marcos regime was either arrested, deported, or killed. And I was there during the imposition of martial law and it was really scary. I have never experienced that kind of fear in my lifetime. In the United States, I was traveling with a group of friends. When I was about, I don't know, maybe nine, 10 years old, we stopped in Macon County, Georgia, and it was the 1960s, late 50s, 1960s, and we were very thirsty, so we all jumped out of the car, and I did not notice there were two water fountains, and I went to the first one, and it turned out to be a white people's water fountain. And um, about a few seconds later, as I was leaning down and drinking from it, I felt a very cold piece of steel against my neck. And I thought, it's not a knife, so it's got to be a gun. And sure enough, it was. And I'm nine or ten years old, and this sheriff is standing over me with this gun pressed against my neck and said to me, you're not allowed to drink at a white person's water fountain. And he said, if I could kill you right now. There'd be one less, and this is exactly what he said to me, one less nigga. And no one would mind. That point on, from that point on, I knew where the color line was. I'm not black, but I'm not white. And I wasn't allowed to drink at a white person's water fountain. scared the living daylights out of me. And I backed up from that water fountain. All of us backed up and we got into the car and we left that example of the incredible racism in the United States. just steered into my brain. I was just like, totally taken. I was so scared. I'm a kid. I'm nine years old, 10 years old. I'm a kid. And to have a gun pointed straight directly onto your, neck ain't no laughing matter. [00:15:50] Miko Lee: That sounds so scary. I'm sorry that you had to go through that. I'm wondering there's such a vivid memory that you have from being a child. I'm wondering at what point was a turning point for you in becoming an activist. [00:16:04] Jeanette Lazam: Oh, was that right then and there I was a kid from New York, so I knew that there were stratas and class levels and where people of color fell in, but it never came that home to me. I was finally able to take the whole question of low income or working class people of color, and racism. It all intersected on that one day. And I thought to myself, no we can't go on this way. And it was that moment I decided I have to do something about the situation. Because I am not going to allow people to do this without a fight. Yeah, it was that day. And it continued all the way when I lived in the Philippines. And martial law was declared. I fought it there and I fought it when I came back to the United States. [00:17:09] Miko Lee: Is there a difference in being an activist in the Philippines versus being an activist in the United States? [00:17:15] Jeanette Lazam: Yes. First of all, in the Philippines, you're dealing with an island nation. And so with an island nation, there are all these islands that you have to You know, deal with dialect, with culture, with this, with that , it's a very difficult process undertaking to do to bring out democratic notions when people have been so oppressed and repressed for over 300 years because the Americans come in after, the Spaniards. So we. We never as a nation never really experienced our own homegrown democracy, and it's very hard to deal with that over here in the United States. It's much different. You're not dealing with an island you're dealing with, yes, many states, but they're all contiguous and there has been a history of revolutionary. Fervor and revolutionary sentiment throughout the history of the United States, and it exposes itself in the labor movement, the gay and lesbian, bisexual, transgender, queer movement, women's movement. It gets manifested in those movements. In the Philippines, very difficult to do. So the concentration for revolutionary organizations happens within the larger cities in the Philippines. And the, New People's Army is more in the rural areas outside of the major cities. you can't compare it. It's like apples and oranges. You can't do it. You have to look at the concrete conditions where people at and work from there. You can't go into a situation and wish that it could be this way. It takes hard work and long days, [00:19:41] Aisa Villarosa: so many long days and Jeanette always appreciate your nuance and the ethos of humility that you are challenging organizers and activists to have right that we in whatever space we're in cannot come in with assumptions. And yet. At the same time as you were sharing, one could see similarities between the oppression in the Philippines. In the States, and that oppression is around, how is your home stolen? How is your home and your sense of safety ripped from you? And you just talked to us about your experience as a nine year old, not being safe enough to go to the drinking fountain you wanted, right? And I know that at this moment, you're talking to us from the Senior Center, the iHotel can you share? about what the iHotel means to you, knowing that you've had possibly more history with the iHotel than maybe anyone alive at this moment. [00:20:55] Jeanette Lazam: The iHotel has to be situated Within the context of a Manila town. Generally, anytime you get a Chinatown, there's some sort of other town that kind of is adjacent to it. And you have it in Stockton, you have it in Sacramento, you have it in Seattle, you have it in Portland, you have it here, you have it in Los Angeles. Manila Towns are very is the hub or was the hub of the Filipino community starting from the 1920s on up. And so the International Hotel, as part of Manila Town, plays a very significant role in how Manila Towns functioned, what they offered. What they did and why they were established. It's not just because of the proximity to Chinatown, the Chinatowns and Manila towns of the United States get set up mainly because of racism. We are not allowed to move or to buy outside of those established boundaries. And who established those boundaries, the local governments, the state governments. Which were predominantly white people. It's like the history of Oregon. Oregon was a state that was supposed to be set up for white people only. And many people don't know that. But the iHotel is a very significant place. Historically significant, it welcomes in the first Manong generation. Now these are the people who came before me. The Manong generation, mainly elderly men. Some of them are married and their wives and their children are in the Philippines and some of them are single. And they come to the International Hotel and stay, and then they go away. Merchant Marines it's the first generation, the Manong generation, that started this all. It's the Larry Itliongs and the Philip Veracruz and Joe Dionysus, that all started the activism of the Manong generation. And it's important for people to understand who and what. And where this Manong generation stood for and where they went in terms of labor and how they stood up, how they stood up against the brutal, the incredibly brutal oppression of the contractors and the large agribusiness of California, Oregon, and Washington, and then the Alaskan canneries. To understand that history is so important because that's where we begin in many ways. We begin with that history of understanding the plight. Of the Manong generation who lived in Manila town and who lived and sometimes died at the International Hotel. My father was one of those guys. And when I found that out, I was even more curious, more thirsty to want to know what did they go through and how in the world they withstood the onslaught. Of worker oppression and racism and still kept on going I look at myself and, that's my inspiration. That's what's kept me going for the last 60 somewhat odd years is looking at that initial generation, the Manong generation, and what they brought to our community. [00:25:34] Aisa Villarosa: And Jeanette, I love you because you keep it real, and I know we've talked about the Manongs both as what you're describing as revolutionary in so many ways, right? These are labor activists and fathers, and yet they were also human. And flawed. And so I've appreciated the stories you've talked about where Manila Town, at that time, as you describe it, before the violence and the eviction surrounding the iHotel, it was bustling. It was loud. It sounded noisy. When you talk about it, I picture people like my dad who were walking around and Zoot suits, because Filipino men at the time, I've read, were trying to go to tailors and were outfitting themselves in the best suits they could just to really stand up to some of the hostility and the racism they were encountering. [00:26:38] Jeanette Lazam: That is so very true. it put everybody else to shame. They were so sharp with their double breasted, sometimes zoot suits, polished shoes. Fedora hats. They were genuine and incredibly good looking. And I've seen, I have pictures of my father he's standing on this little bridge in Central Park with his friends, with his army buddies, and they were all dressed up. And you'd think they were going to a fancy dancy, whatever place. No, they had swag. That's the only thing I could say. [00:27:19] Miko Lee: I love that, and I could picture it perfectly, and I like the way that you describe all these people strutting around, and the way you describe it is so visual, and I was saying to you when we first got on how honored I am that I have a piece of your art that's hanging in my house, from the amazing Aisa and Lauren, and I'm just wondering if you could talk to us a little bit about it about your artistic practice. What inspires you and how do you combine your work as an activist with your work as an artist? [00:27:51] Jeanette Lazam: I had always wanted to draw, but I never really did because my sister, my oldest sister she was a graphic designer. And so I was always like in her shadow. Years passed, so I'm sitting there doodling, and and in twenty, sixteen or seventeen, I moved to Taos, New Mexico. And my bedroom window faces Taos Mountain. Taos Mountain is a vortex, and you can feel the incredible energy. That vibrates from that mountain and I would get this every morning and it was telling me draw. This is your time to draw So I did. So I started drawing the Pueblo. And I started drawing scenes in and around Taos. And Taos is a very artistic community to begin with. So that also provided a lot of inspiration. And as the years went by, I started to draw more and more outside of Taos. When I finally moved I started doing owls. I suddenly realized that there's a whole level of animals and insects and so forth that are on the endangered list. So I started drawing bees and bumblebees and all sorts of bees. Then I started doing the American bison or the buffalo, how all of these creatures Were on the endangered list or practically at that point where they didn't exist anymore. And I knew that I had to do something about that in terms of my art. And so I stayed with that for several years. And then I turned myself to culture. I started looking at the Inca, the Maya and the Aztec and how rich and often bloody, but rich. history they had in building civilizations that somehow disappear from the face of this earth. And I started looking at their colors, their color schemes were incredible. So I did that for a while and I wanted people to get exposed to that. However, In between that, I found myself getting wrapped around Philippine mythology, and when I went to look at our gods, our deities so forth and so on, our supernatural forces, I found very little. There weren't pictures so if there was something written, there were no pictures. And so I finally found a book that gave me some sense of what they looked like. And I have to say, fi Philippine mythology, whomever interacted with it, had an incredible creative mind. We had the most blood thirsty, , mythological creatures that I could think of. Anywhere from the Aswang, which everyone knows about, to this creature called the Pugot, P U G O T, which is mainly from the Ilocos region. And it's a huge mouth with a body from the mouth that walks on its legs and hands and feeds on children. And when I found, I was like, Oh yeah. I was absolutely mortified. But you know, that's what Philippine mythology is. We do have the supreme bakala, who is the supreme god, and all the other deities, his daughters and his sons. But there are also these horrendous and wicked mythological creatures. And the reason why I was trying to bring it out was, I firmly believe, and I found this out, In my research and drawing that you cannot. Cannot understand the history of the Filipino people unless you take into account their mythology and their religions, whether you disagree with it or not. That's part of the history of our people. And that part is incredibly rich. So I learned a lot from it. [00:33:02] Aisa Villarosa: It is rich, and it is a mythology that has been threatened by colonization, when you mentioned that it was difficult to find writings that is all by design due to colonial oppression and the myth that Filipinos We're always Catholic or always followed Spanish culture and religion is completely false, right? So I always appreciated your deep diving, not only into Filipino mythology and culture, but connecting those dots, especially to other indigenous cultures. Jeanette, for our listeners, can you briefly share for folks who aren't familiar with the Aswang, and because even for me, I remember watching the Filipino channels as a kid, and they're usually depicted as cheesy vampires, but we'd love to hear your [00:34:10] Jeanette Lazam: your take on them. They are. They are. They are vampires. They are usually women. They have the body up to the stomach of a woman and the rest is a fish tail and then they have bat wings and they fly around at night and your parents tell you about them because they want you to go to sleep and it's scary enough. They are very, very scary. [00:34:46] Aisa Villarosa: Yeah, that's effective. It also reminds me of, there's a wonderful older book by Dr. Clarissa Estes called Women Who Run With the Wolves, and it unpacks mythology and also often, it was a culture's way of depicting women's power and I have to say, as someone who identifies as gay, so much of your art has spoken to me, particularly because there is real homophobia in Filipino culture. Part of that's due to colonization and religion, but your art really centers deities who go beyond a sexual binary. I suppose somewhat similar to two spirit indigenous depictions, and that's really special. [00:35:39] Jeanette Lazam: I'm hoping to do more research on the movement of gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, queer Filipinos here in the United States. As well as in the Philippines, and try to be able to capture that in art. So I think that's my next real challenge. [00:36:04] Aisa Villarosa: I would love to see that. [00:36:06] Miko Lee: You are tuned into apex express, a 94.1 KPFA and 89.3 KPF. Be in Berkeley and online@kpfa.org Next up, take a listen to Live It Up. By Bay Area's Power Struggle. [00:36:21] Aisa Villarosa: You were listening to Live It Up by the artist Power Struggle. Jeanette, in terms of thinking about the future, talk to us more about that. Talk to us about your hopes and dreams. [00:40:01] Jeanette Lazam: My hope is that, in particular to the Filipino community here in the United States I hope that they will be open and above board take whatever knowledge my generation can give that generation, that they appropriate the genera that, they appropriate the knowledge and the history that my generation is releasing. It's important for several reasons. One, it makes our, history of Filipino people alive, very alive in the faces of the ones that are coming up after that generation. It also provides the continuity in our history. If there's a break in continuity, it's very hard to kind of climb back because what happens then is that people die. And if my generation dies, and it will, it's important that your generation and the generation after yours appropriates whatever we're giving, you don't have to like it. You don't have to love it. You just have to take it and then sort it out for yourself and then transfer it to the next generation. So there's a level of continuity. That's my hope and in the broader, population. I want people to understand what it took to build the United States, what it took the level of sacrifice that the working class of this country had to make in order for this country to be built. California's agribusiness. Would not be where it's at today if not for the Filipinos, if not for the Mexicans, and a few other Asians like Japanese. That's also true for Hawaii. Who built this country? Who built this country? And people have to answer that question with fervor and knowledge. [00:42:38] Aisa Villarosa: And with honesty. [00:42:39] Jeanette Lazam: Yes, total honesty. [00:42:44] Aisa Villarosa: Jeanette, you end… Each of your emails with, when I dream, I dream of freedom. And what you're saying to us is that in order for us to realize this freedom, we must do so collectively. [00:42:59] Jeanette Lazam: Yep. And that's no easy task. Because at every twist and turn of the struggle for true democracy in the United States, true social justice, You're going to be making allies and you're going to be leaving other allies behind because you no longer agree with some of the things they do, but it's not to mean that they're enemies. And you're going to be meeting new people, and you're going to get involved with their lives and their struggles. And get to know them. So it's every step of the way for the larger struggle at mind is a very intense and deep personal struggle. Do you choose to say you're gay or lesbian or bisexual, transgender or queer? Do you choose to say that openly and above board to let people know? That this is who I am that happened to me when they had the first time they had district elections in San Francisco, I was at a open forum and somebody asked so how is this going to affect at that time the Castro and everybody knew this person was talking about how is the district elections going to affect the Castro. I didn't see anybody raising their hands and I just said as a lesbian, it will affect me greatly because we finally will have some level of and form of representation on the board of supervisors. Sometimes it's a split second decision. Sometimes it's something that's well thought out. And that's also true when you're walking where you're working with people. Sometimes it has to be. A split second decision, and other times, it's longer. When I say I dream, I dream for freedom. I dream for freedom for all people. Freedom from the shackles of sexism, racism, homophobia. That's what I dream of. A true, functioning, honest democracy. Where social justice is not a movement, it is, it simply is. [00:45:46] Aisa Villarosa: It simply is. Gosh, that brings to mind the image of an ocean and that saying that the ocean is so many tiny drops. And what you're challenging us to do is, in those moments where there is a sometimes split second decision, that we choose bravery. And we choose truthfulness in those moments. Jeanette, thank you so much for talking with us today. We've pictured Filipino deities. We've jumped from the Castro to the Philippines. And I am always in awe of your imagination and your artistry and your advocacy. Thank you. [00:46:33] Miko Lee: Thank you so much for sharing with us, Jeanette. It was an honor to spend a little bit of time just learning from you, hearing about your artistry, your activism, and your vision for the world. We really appreciate you. [00:46:47] Jeanette Lazam: Oh, I appreciate people like you because it's through you that we have a voice and that's important. That's important. One of the first tasks is always going to be On some type of journalism and media, and we have to protect that we have to protect the progressive and revolutionary sources of media. [00:47:15] Miko Lee: Thank you for sharing your wisdom with us. [00:47:18] Jeanette Lazam: Thank you. [00:47:20] Miko Lee: I really loved talking with your mentor, Jeanette. Tell me what's your walk away. What did you hear her saying? [00:47:27] Aisa Villarosa: It was such a rich conversation and. One of the many things I adore about Jeanette is she is a world builder in that she encourages anyone who is in her space to exercise their imagination. And as someone who's been a bit of a veteran of the nonprofit industrial complex for, almost three decades now, it is shocking how frequently our imaginations are shunned, how we are often sent to work in siloed areas. The solution to so many of our heartaches is intersectional, is creativity. So my big takeaway is hearing Jeanette talk about the trajectory of her life and how it essentially led her to really lean into becoming an artist. She has shared that she became an artist rather later in life. It's a great example that You're never too old or too young to start anything, to lean into your true self, and so many of Jeanette's art pieces are odes to her identity as a social justice leader. How about you, Miko? What's your takeaway? [00:48:42] Miko Lee: She's just a delight. She's funny. She's smart. She has so much wisdom. I really love interviewing OGs because it's just constant pearls of wisdom. So I appreciate that. But I have another question for you, which is how did she come to be your mentor? When did you first meet? [00:49:00] Aisa Villarosa: I first interviewed Jeanette during the Earlier parts of the COVID 19 pandemic, at the time, and this is a bit of my personal story, I was struggling with coming out to my family as a gay Filipino, and Jeanette shared with me her identity as someone who is LGBTQ, and it was such a moment of connection, even if we have many decades between us. The story she shares of being an artist, of being a Filipino, a gay person, a civil rights defender. It's just a reminder that we don't have to be only one thing. We are so much more alive if we can lean into our multiple identities, and Jeanette is a living example of that. [00:49:56] Miko Lee: Oh, thanks for that. That is so right. We are all multifaceted. We are all these kaleidoscopes of change given where we are in life and the experiences we have. And it's a delight to talk with your mentor and somebody I've heard about from a long time. So thanks so much for celebrating Filipino History Month by really talking with somebody that you admire so much and I can see why. [00:50:23] Aisa Villarosa: Last week for our part one of Filipino American History Month, we talked with Pinay scholar, poet, activist, and historian, Emily Lawson, about her poem, No More Moments of Silence. It is Ate Em's chronicling of the power, complexity, heartache, and love. Behind Filipino American identity, held together by centuries of struggle against colonial oppression and white supremacy, our Makibaka heritage, one shared by Black, Indigenous, and people of color grappling with settler colonialism and government extraction. Now, to close out Filipino American History Month, I'm honored to share with you an excerpt from No More Moments of Silence, taken from a 2011 Michigan State University performance by Emily Lawson. No more moments of silence in memory of Joseph Aletto and Chongberry Zhang by Emily Lawson. With respect and apologies to Emmanuel Ortiz and Doria Roberts and thanks to Reverend Edwin Rowe who taught us to pray out loud with our eyes open at Vincent Chin's grave. This is a scream, not a shout out, at all of those right wing Christian conservatives and wannabe left wing liberals. Who start all of their speeches with a moment of silence. Crossing themselves, genuflecting, lighting boat of candles and incense for every single damn lost soul on this earth, but their own. This is not an old Simon and Garfunkel song. This is a fighting song for you flag waving, war on terrorism, 9 11 memorial addicts. Clean out your ears and your skeleton closets, because I cannot take any more moments of silence. You hear me? I cannot take any more moments of silence. For silence is what buried one million of my ancestors in a hundred American wars. Silence is what drove the stakes through the backs of my people, whipped with chains of cane fires as low paid migrant workers burned out of their bunkhouses as they slept and white collar neighbors watched in silence. See, I cannot take any more moments of silence. Silence for silence is what robbed our Filipino people of our multiple tongues as the noose of colonialism wiped out 7, 000 islands of surnames and languages. Leaving us with a bastardized Hollywood identity of John Wayne Dust Bowl movies with Panoi Indios playing Indians in silence. I cannot waste any moments of silence because they add up to decades and years like the 10 plus that kept my cousin estranged from her brothers and sisters who refused to acknowledge how they all inherited. The brunt of the beatings brought on by their father, in the bedroom of their mother, even ten years after their deaths. The wounds still lie wide open in silence. I cannot waste any more moments, for our concept of time has been warped by the violence that pervades our homes and hearts. Like the self righteous, now terminated governor, who stood at the cold stone podium, singing the heroic praises of the North Valley Jewish Community Center's staff. While signing a historic anti gun bill into law, looking down and right over the entire family of Joseph Aleto, who had also been shot nine times by a white supremacist a month earlier while he delivered mail. And the bold faced governor, in his corporate suit and tie, looked right past the family and only into the TV news cameras. As Joseph's mother, Lillian, hung her head in silence in the front row, ashamed that the governor couldn't even offer his condolences, didn't even mention her son's name, Joseph Aletto, what more, his death or existence. Her surviving children's fury helped her stand up, and that is why she is not silent. That is why they are not silent. That is why we cannot be silent anymore. For silence is what allowed the Warren cops to storm in a Hmong American family's home, barge down the steps to their Michigan basement, shoot 18 year old Chong Berizhong 41 times, killing him with 27 bullets at close range, and say the force was… Justified? Silence is what prevents our Hmong teenagers from telling their story. Afraid that they will be the next casualty of police brutality. Afraid that they will be deported for being unpatriotic. Sent to a landlocked country they have never seen. Even though they obey all laws, pay taxes, go to poor schools, and work three jobs no other Americans dare want. See, we cannot waste any more moments of silence. And this ain't about just taking back the night, I'm talking about taking back the day to day, because I am done with the silence. Our feet can no longer be bound. Our eyes cannot be taped. Yell your prayers as poems. Scream the names of the dead out loud. For I cannot take any more moments of silence because silence has already taken too much from me. Emily Lawson. September 11th, 2003. Revised September 17th, 2007. Detroit, Michigan. Amidst protest for an immediate ceasefire and end to occupation in Gaza, may all who continue to resist against colonization and militarization root in Atta Emily's call, now and always, no more moments of silence. Visit our Apex Express website to learn more. [00:57:06] Miko Lee: Thank you so much for joining us. Please check out our website, kpfa.org backslash program, backslash apex express to find out more about the show tonight and to find out how you can take direct action. We thank all of you listeners out there. Keep resisting, keep organizing, keep creating and sharing your visions with the world. Your voices are important. [00:57:30] Miko Lee: Apex express is produced by me. Miko Lee. Along with Paige Chung, Jalena Keane-Lee, Preeti Mangala Shekar, Anuj Vaida. Kiki Rivera, Swati Rayasam, Nate Tan, Hieu Nguyen and Cheryl Truong tonight's show is produced by me Miko thank you so much to the team at kpfa for their support have a great night. The post APEX Express – 11.2.23- No More Moments of Silence: Filipinx Identity & Critical Resistance appeared first on KPFA.

“Families I work with tell me it's like being on pins and needles every day of their life. It really impacts their mental health, their physical well-being, as well as their housing and job prospects. These families can't mess up at all. It's not a way to live.” In previous episodes of the podcast, we've covered the history of family separation and family policing from the era of chattel slavery through the late 1900s. Now we're going to get into the current iteration of this system and how it functions to surveil, regulate and punish families, specifically Black and Indigenous families. In this episode, Victoria's written responses are voiced by our mutual friend Maya Pendleton.   About Our Guests:  Brianna Harvey is a scholar, practitioner, and researcher that engages in community-rooted inquiry. Through her work, she utilizes liberatory praxis that strives to combat the carceral conditions inflicted upon oppressed communities. Brianna received her PhD in Education from UCLA, and her MSW from USC.  Victoria Copeland is a Black and Filipinx researcher, organizer, and spoonie, with training in social welfare and social policy. They are currently a Senior Policy Analyst at Upturn where their work focuses on the use of data and technology in the criminal legal and family policing systems. Their research is centralized around black study and surveillance studies, and is primarily done in collaboration with local abolitionist organizers. Victoria is dedicated to learning more about how we can sustain community power and care from the intersections between racial, economic, & disability justice movements. Episode Notes:  Episode Transcript: upendmovement.org/episode1-4 Support the work of upEND: upendmovement.org/donate  Continue learning with additional resources in our syllabus: upendmovement.org/syllabus Victoria Copeland and Brianna Harvey are authors in the essay collection Help is NOT on the Way.  Jaison mentions Katy ISD's new policy to surveil transgender students in Houston.  Victoria mentions “A Complete Guide to The Family First Act” from The Imprint in addition to “Calculating the Souls of Black Folk” by J. Khadijah Abdurahman. Brianna cites what scholar Dr. Subini Annamma calls the “rhetoric of responsibility”.  Victoria is a co-author of chapters 1 and 4 in “Confronting the Racist Legacy of the American Child Welfare System” by Alan Dettlaff. Read Victoria's recent report “DCFS stands for Dividing and Conquering Families.”Brianna Harvey has an upcoming article with disability scholars, Subini Annamma, Brian Cabral, and Jamelia Morgan.

Hi LagimFam!I am releasing this episode a week earlier as it is my birthday weekend and I want to fully be in the moment for the next weekend and the next couple of weeks as I go travelling again.So today, I am presenting the story of Blessie Gotingco, a Filipino expat in New Zealand who in 2014 met a cruel fate at the hands of someone who was not completely unknown to the authorities. This was a heartbreaking one for me to cover because at the very core of this case is the fact that this crime, Blessie's fate was avoidable. A maelstrom of bad decisions, lack of accountability and murderous intent ultimately led to her early passing, leaving behind a family that will forever feel this huge loss and how the system ultimately failed them and Blessie.Link to sources is here.Support me:https://www.buymeacoffee.com/juzewobaLAGIM is on social media, so make sure to check me out:https://www.instagram.com/lagimpodcast/https://twitter.com/LagimPodhttps://facebook.com/lagimpodcast/https://www.tiktok.com/@lagimpodcastLagim is now also on Threads! Just search for "lagimpodcast".Subscribe to LAGIM's YouTube channel:https://bit.ly/3rFdWCgFollow, rate and review LAGIM on Apple Podcasts and Spotify:https://spoti.fi/3qamBxlhttps://apple.co/3r3XjzT

"Nursing These Wounds" showcases the impacts of colonization on Filipinx healthcare workers, who make up nearly a third of immigrant registered nurses in the US.

Jeanne Jalandoni is a painter and textile artist born and based in New York City. Her practice involves personal research, relating family stories to historic Filipino American archives, in order to draw out a mythological narrative that traces the complexities of inheriting two cultures. Jeanne received her BFA in Studio Art from New York University, and has had solo shows with Taymour Grahne Projects, Real Art Ways, the Little Underground Gallery, and the Berkshire Art Museum. She has exhibited in various group shows and in 2019, she curated "Cultural Cousins: a show of Filipinx and Latinx artists" for ChaShaMa, New York, NY.  In addition, Jeanne was an artist-in-residence at 36 Chase & Barns Residency, the Textile Arts Center, and ChaNorth Artist Residency, Jeanne has been awarded the 2019 Real Art Award and is a past recipient of the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council (LMCC) Creative Engagement Grant. Discover her work at www.jeannejalandoni.com 

This is the final episode (at least for now!) of The Moving Project. During the Covid-19 pandemic we worked with a group of people from all over the world, teaching them to podcast and helping them to tell personal stories about the experience of moving from one place to another. The results of this course are a series of episodes: each one about a very different migration experience, and each person bringing their own style and personality. We hope you love them as much as we do. *** From Élaina:I'm a crip Filipinx philosopher of disability currently working on a long-COVID research podcast. You can listen to my other podcasts Philosophy Casting Call, Bookshelf Remix, and Women of Questionable Morals on all platforms. You can find out more about my work on my website www.elainagauthiermamaril.com and attend my performance of "Zombies, Long COVID, and Crip Prophecies" for the Cabaret of Dangerous Ideas at the Edinburgh Fringe: 8 Aug: https://www.thestand.co.uk/performance/15597/making-great-dancerslong-covid/20230808/fringe22 Aug: https://www.thestand.co.uk/performance/15648/cabaret-of-dangerous-ideas_long-covid-zombies-and-crip-prophecies/20230822/fringe *** Our Accentricity t-shirts are out now! Get yours here. They're designed by artist Cat Ingall, who also makes other cool things that you can buy from here Etsy shop. You can also support the podcast on Patreon or Steady, or with a one-off donation to help keep Accentricity going. *** Find us @accentricitypod on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook.

Our next guest has scored everything from comic book adaptations to award-winning documentaries. He is a Filipino-American composer who has scored some of the most exciting projects of the last few years. His dark synth and guitar-driven work was heard on the Russo Brothers' adaptation of the acclaimed comic 'Deadly Class'. And his emotional and poignant music was featured in the powerful Peabody Award-winning docu-series 'Surviving R. Kelly'. For the latter, he also took home an ASCAP 2020 Screen Award.Born to Filipinx immigrants, his family taught him music at a young age. His curiosity would lead him to play in bands and to study film scoring at USC's prestigious Scoring For Motion Pictures and Television program. He would go on to be mentored by and collaborate with Oscar-winning composer Ludwig Goransson (Black Panther) and Theodore Shapiro (Bombshell). With the former, he co-composed the A24 film starring Chance The Rapper, 'SLICE'. He recently scored the Adele Lim directed Joy Ride and I'm so excited to talk with him on the podcast. And the composer is... Nathan Matthew David --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/composertalk/support

Dr. Maryal Concepcion is a Filipinx creator and connector. She discovered her love of being a cradle-to-grave family physician while at Creighton Med School on a rotation in Superior, NE. She trained for residency in Modesto, preparing to be a rural family doc, then moved to rural Northern CA after residency. She worked in the broken corporate model of medicine because she did not know any other option than to be employed.​Then, she learned about DPC, and the bands holding her wings were clipped. Now she flies free as a Direct Primary Care physician, able to practice medicine how she has always wanted to. With this freedom, she is charged up to share with other physicians the power of the Direct Primary Care model. She will tell any and all about DPC because the model is truly at the core of how we will take back healthcare.More from the EntreMD Brand:// COMMUNITY: EntreMD Private Group on FacebookJoin a group of physicians who have decided to build profitable businesses, so they have the freedom to live life and practice medicine on their terms.https://www.facebook.com/groups/entremd// FOLLOWFacebook - https://www.facebook.com/drunachukwuInstagram - https://www.instagram.com/drunachukwuYouTube - https://www.youtube.com/@DrUnachukwuTikTok -  https://www.tiktok.com/@dr.unaLinkedIn - www.linkedIn.com/in/druna// WORK WITH MEEntreMD Business School - https://www.entremd.com/business

This hour on Disrupted, we're challenging long-held assumptions about parents and caregivers. First, Angela Garbes, author of Essential Labor: Mothering as Social Change, explains how care workers are undervalued. She touches on the way the early days of the pandemic spotlighted issues in caregiving and why the legacy of American colonialism in the Philippines influenced both her family history and the disproportionate number of Filipinx nurses who died from COVID. Then, UConn professor Kari Adamsons talks about her research on fathers and the problem with the way many people think about "traditional families." GUESTS: Angela Garbes: author of Essential Labor: Mothering as Social Change Kari Adamsons: Associate Professor of Human Development and Family Sciences at the University of Connecticut This episode originally aired on February 15, 2023.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

As we've discussed on the show, as biracial people with Japanese immigrant parents, anti-Asian hate is something we've had to be even more keenly aware of over the last few years.  Even beyond that point of tension, let's be honest, the world is just a lot - for everyone - nowadays. So we wanted to present you with a gift. The gift of connecting with spiritual energy, along with an actual sound healing that you can pull over to the side of the road for, or sit or lay down in a safe space to listen to and absorb.   What to listen for: What this concept of “Asian” means to a first-generation Filipina What the ancestral, divine art of sound healing can do  What to look out for when choosing a practitioner  A brilliant xx minute sound healing session - our collective gift to you starting at xx:xx into this show About Christina: Christina Ifurung is the owner of Kapwa Healing. She has a 1:1 sanctuary where she holds sacred sessions that include, reiki, chakra assessments, sound healing, and mentorship in Centennial. Kapwa is derived from the Filipinx term “pagkikipagkapwa” coined by Viriligio Enriquez which stands for an inner connectedness and shared self. She is a certified sound healer under Ali Young and the Medicine of Sound Academy. She was certified as a Reiki Practitioner with Jess Priesta (aka @jessbeinspired). She is also a registered nurse with 10 years of Newborn ICU experience and is currently working in infusion therapy as well. Healing runs in her veins as she also has tracked a Babaylan (Filipinx Shaman) bloodline that links to her mother's side from the northern Ilocos region of the Philippines. She is also a mother to a bi-racial Hispanic and Filipinx spunky brilliant six-year-old boy. Also recently married to a White American male from a small town in Illinois who dedicates his life to supporting others in their health journeys. For Christina, honoring her ancestry is a strong sacred piece of her practice that she leans into daily and shares with others in her ceremonies in hopes to inspire you to Re-Member your lineage and who you Be.

In this conversation Briq House and Moonyeka share their perspective on Seattle Opera's La traviata. Speaking with Gabrielle Nomura Gainor, the two sex-positive artists and community leaders discuss the "fallen woman" archetype in Verdi's opera, the joy and challenges surrounding sex work—and other politics of pleasure for women and femmes–particularly QTBIPOC (Queer, Trans, Black, Indigenous People of Color). Briq House has been featured in The Seattle Times, Time Magazine, and on the cover of The Stranger. She was honored in the Top 50 Most Influential Burlesque Performers in the World List (21st Century Burlesque Magazine). Moonyeka is a nonbinary Filipinx interdisciplinary artist who provides sacred, erotic, healing spaces. With roots in street-styles dance (including Tutting and Popping), you may have seen them on the award-winning film series, If Cities Could Dance. Learn more at msbriqhouse.com and instagram.com/m00nyeka.   Notes: This conversation includes a candid discussion of human sexuality, sex work, and pleasure. 

Gericault De La Rose is a queer trans Filipinx woman, and refuses to change for anyone."Being that queer trans person completely owning herself I hope gives other people permission to be themselves, too," she says. A master's student in UC Berkeley's Department of Art Practice, Gericault explores in her art Philippine mythology and her experience as a trans woman. One time, she dressed up like a manananggal — a kind of monster that detaches from her lower body at night to look for unborn babies to eat — and then slept in an art gallery for six hours. "I look at the manananggal as kind of a metaphor for how society sees trans women — how this is literally a woman detached from her reproductive organs. And what are you as a woman if you can't reproduce?"When Gericault came out to her parents as trans in her early 20s, they disowned her. For her thesis project, Gericault will unravel huge tapestries with images of her parents' stomachs on them. "It's about disconnection and severance," she says. "I'm thinking about how much of myself is a part of them and how much of them are a part of me, and it's kind of this final goodbye."Gericault's final MFA piece is part of the Annual UC Berkeley Master of Fine Arts Exhibition, which opens on May 10 at the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive (BAMPFA). Listen to the episode, see photos and read the transcript on Berkeley News (news.berkeley.edu).UC Berkeley photo by Sofia Liashcheva. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

(S8 Finale) Check out my interview with Tuan Huynh, founder of VietFive Coffee which is the featured sponsor of the 8th season of the podcast. Bio: Tuan Huynh, founder of VietFive Coffee, is also an award-winning Creative Director, business man, and community organizer. He fled to the U.S. as a toddler and refugee from Vietnam after the fall of Saigon. Growing up in the Midwest, he has developed a uniquely diverse sense of creativity. This experience has afforded him recognition from global fortune 500 brands, receiving the Mosaic Champion by the American Advertising Federation and named one of 2019's Most Inspiring Chicagoans by Streetwise Magazine.   Aside from his sharp design talent, Tuan's work in the arena of diversity and inclusion is tireless and expansive – both within the ad industry and beyond. He is responsible for instituting a youth program at Leo Burnett that invites Chicago youth to learn first-hand about careers in advertising. Over 800 students have been provided the opportunity to immerse themselves in the exploration of new professional avenues. Tuan also partnered with local organizations to develop a creative lab in the Woodlawn neighborhood on the Southside. Tuan also spearheaded The Pencil Project which is a collegiate scholarship program where students submit their creative portfolios defining why they are “the difference that makes a difference.” Additionally, Tuan became founding member of Chicago PEACE, a nonprofit that seeks to create positive generational impact with the focus on families.   Today, he is able to combine both his experiences in advertising and philanthropic work to elevate his family's coffee story through his company VietFive Coffee. VietFive Coffee is serving up authentic Vietnamese coffee, grown and harvested in the place of his birth, roasted in Chicago and served at their west loop location (1116 W. Madison). Sponsored by: VietFive Coffee: Start your day right with VietFive Coffee. Freshly grown coffee harvested straight from Vietnam and roasted in Chicago, VietFive offers rich quality tasting Vietnamese coffee straight to your soul. Visit VietFive Coffee in Chicago to grab a fresh cup and a Banh Mi to go along with it, or go to www.vietfive.com and use the code in all Caps: VMNCHIV5 to get 15% off your purchase. Circa Pintig: Circa-Pintig stands for The Center for Immigrant Resources and Community Arts and Pintig meaning “Pulse” in the Filipinx language.- CIRCA Pintig is a 501c3 organization that engages communities through the power of the arts to challenge injustice and transcend social change. Circa Pintig produces timely works to provide education, activation, and advocacy. For information about upcoming events and to learn about how to get involved, visit www.circapintig.org --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/banhmichronicles/support

(S8, EP 8) For this week's episode, I am honored to bring in critically-acclaimed and best-selling author Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai as a guest. We discussed her latest book, "Dust Child", and the issues surrounding AmerAsians who were left behind during the Vietnam War, the discrimination that ethnic minorities face in Vietnam, and the stigmas that is covered in her book. Don't miss out on this episode, and order your copy of "Dust Child". Bio: Born and raised in Việt Nam, Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai is the author of the international bestseller The Mountains Sing, runner-up for the 2021 Dayton Literary Peace Prize, winner of the 2020 BookBrowse Best Debut Award, the 2021 International Book Awards, the 2021 PEN Oakland/Josephine Miles Literary Award, and the 2020 Lannan Literary Award Fellowship for Fiction. She has published twelve books of poetry, fiction, and nonfiction in Vietnamese and English and has received some of the top literary prizes in Việt Nam. Her writing has been translated into twenty languages and has appeared in major publications, including the New York Times. She has a PhD in creative writing from Lancaster University. She is an advocate for the rights of disadvantaged groups in Việt Nam and has founded several scholarship programs, and she was named by Forbes Vietnam as one of twenty inspiring women of 2021. Dust Child is her second novel. For more information, visit: www.nguyenphanquemai.com. VietFive Coffee: Start your day right with VietFive Coffee. Freshly grown coffee harvested straight from Vietnam and roasted in Chicago, VietFive offers rich quality tasting Vietnamese coffee straight to your soul. Visit VietFive Coffee in Chicago to grab a fresh cup and a Banh Mi to go along with it, or go to www.vietfive.com and use the code in all Caps: VMNCHIV5 to get 15% off your purchase. CIRCA-Pintig: Circa-Pintig stands for The Center for Immigrant Resources and Community Arts and Pintig meaning “Pulse” in the Filipinx language.- CIRCA Pintig is a 501c3 organization that engages communities through the power of the arts to challenge injustice and transcend social change. Circa Pintig produces timely works to provide education, activation, and advocacy. For information about upcoming events and to learn about how to get involved, visit www.circapintig.org --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/banhmichronicles/support

Drawing upon a deep connection to the body, memory, spirit, and the land, zaneta's (they/them) art is a process of remembering our interconnectedness or the Filipinx term, kapwa. zaneta currently lives and creates on Lenni Lenape territory (Brooklyn), offering community listening rituals, as well as listening and sound workshops in spaces such as the Brooklyn Museum and online. In 2020, their project, Sacred Seasons, won the Brooklyn Arts Fund grant from the Brooklyn Arts Council and was co-presented with the New Women Space. Their field recording work has taken them throughout the contiguous United States and most weeks they can be found hiking and solo camping throughout the Catskills and Adirondack regions. as a community spiritual worker and host of the Art Witch podcast, zaneta is connected to a vibrant community of queer, multiracial creatixes and healers, and their podcast empowers listeners around the world to make their art and find liberatory expression. Original Air Date: March 29, 2021 Get tickets to Where Land Meets Sky Listen to Art Witch podcast Visit soundartmagic.com Support this podcast on Patreon Book a Tarot Reading with Nick Music by AJ Ackleson. Thanks AJ!

This hour on Disrupted, we're challenging long-held assumptions about parents and caregivers. First, Angela Garbes, author of Essential Labor: Mothering as Social Change, explains how care workers are undervalued. She touches on the way the early days of the pandemic spotlighted issues in caregiving and why the legacy of American colonialism in the Philippines influenced both her family history and the disproportionate number of Filipinx nurses who died from COVID. Then, UConn professor Kari Adamsons talks about her research on fathers and the problem with the way many people think about "traditional families." GUESTS: Angela Garbes: author of Essential Labor: Mothering as Social Change Kari Adamsons: Associate Professor of Human Development and Family Sciences at the University of Connecticut See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Re-Air of Episode 133 from November 30th, 2021 in celebration of Berna's new book Money Out Loud: All the Financial Stuff No One Taught Us (pre-order now!) // Berna Anat, a self proclaimed financial hype woman, host of the Money Please Podcast, and overall amazing human being, joins Jerry on Episode 133 to share her journey as a child of Filipino immigrants who navigated her way through higher education and media leading to her betting on herself as a content creator in the personal finance space. Her brand new podcast Money Please by Betches Media launched in October 2021 and she has a book coming out in 2022. Follow her @heyberna everywhere.Meet BernaBerna Anat is a Financial Hype Woman, which is her made-up way of saying she creates financial education media that lives at @HeyBerna all over the Internet. After slaying her $50,000 debt, she saved up to quit life and has been traveling the world trying to make money fun again ever since.Facts that make her impostor syndrome twerk: Berna has dropped her money mic at venues such as the Girlboss Rally, Google and The Wing, and her work has been featured on platforms such as Forbes, The New York Times, and Buzzfeed. Berna was recently named one of ABS-CBN's Global Pinoy Idols, awarded to the 10 most influential Filipinx people in the United States. Yes, she's Filipina. Yes, she's sure.(Source: HeyBerna.com)// Connect with Bernawww.HeyBerna.comInstagram: @heybernaTwitter: @heybernaPre-Order Money Out Loud: www.heyberna.com// This episode of Dear Asian Americans is brought to you by the Quarter Pounder with Cheese from McDonalds.It's QPC time. Did your mouth just water?The QPC is the burger that breaks the norms of etiquette, the burger that napkins were made for, the burger that's saucy, drippy, oozing with flavor, always cooked when you order.So the next time you want a mouth-watering burger, order the QPC from McDonalds.// Did you know? There are treatments for covid.If you or a loved one is 50 or over, or has a chronic health condition, you're at higher risk for severe covid illness. But early treatment can make covid infection shorter, less severe, and help keep you out of the hospital. It could save your life.So if you have covid symptoms, talk to a doctor right away and get treatment.We can do this. Paid for by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.// Support Dear Asian Americans:Merch: https://www.bonfire.com/store/dearasianamericans/Buy Me a Coffee: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/jerrywonSubscribe to the Newsletter: https://subscribepage.io/daanewsletterLearn more about DAA Creator and Host Jerry Won:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jerrywon/Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jerryjwon/// Listen to Dear Asian Americans on all major platforms:Transistor.fm: http://www.dearasianamericans.comApple: https://apple.dearasianamericans.comSpotify: https://spotify.dearasianamericans.comStitcher: https://stitcher.dearasianamericans.comGoogle: https://google.dearasianamericans.com  Follow us on Instagram:  http://www.instagram.com/dearasianamericans Like us on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/dearasianamericans Subscribe to our YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/dearasianamericans // Join the Asian Podcast Network:Web: https://asianpodcastnetwork.com/Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/asianpodcastnetwork/Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/asianpodcastnetwork/Dear Asian Americans is produced by Just Like Media:Web: http://www.justlikemedia.comInstagram: http://www.instagram.com/justlikemedia

Imagine being the queer, plus-sized, gender non-conforming child of a Black father and a Filipino mother. Writer, director, performance artist, and actor, Roger Q. Mason, grew up in Los Angeles, feeling grateful that their parents followed the way of love and challenged their family's prejudices. But what would you do if the world you lived in fell short of its potential? Would you give up on your dream of a place where you weren't the only one in the room? Or would you ascribe to the belief that theater is the place where we can envision worlds different and more inclusive than our own? More From Roger Q. Mason: Visit: www.rogerqmason.com Finding Roger Q. Mason: Twitter: @RogerQMason Instagram: @rogerq.mason Facebook: @Roger Q. Mason PATREON SHOUT OUTS: Mercedes Cusick LMFT, Website: www.mercedescusick.com, IG: @recoverhealbloom Check Out How To Do The Pot Thanks to Kathleen Hahn Cute Booty Lounge is made right here in the USA, by women and for women. The company is incredible, female, and minority-owned and all of their leggings make makes your booty look amazing. Go to https://cutebooty.com/ today! Embrace your body, love your booty! Join our Patreon: Become an Only One In The Room patron by joining us on Patreon! Starting at only $5.00 per month, you'll get bonus content, access to outtakes that the general public will NEVER see, extremely cool merch, and depending on what tier you get, monthly hang time with Scott and Laura. Join our Patreon today at https://www.patreon.com/theonlyonepodcast Be sure not to miss Scott Talks on Wednesdays, our Sunday release called Sunday Edition & our brand new series On My Nightstand releasing on Fridays by subscribing to the show wherever you listen to podcasts.  Join our Only One In The Room Facebook Group if you'd like to ask a question of any of our upcoming guests for this series.  Also visit the website www.theonlyonepod.com for the latest from our host Laura Cathcart Robbins like featured articles and more. We love hearing from you in the comments on iTunes and while you're there don't forget to rate us, subscribe and share the show! All of us at The Only One In The Room wish you safety and wellness during this challenging time. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This episode, we speak with Anthony Christian Ocampo, Ph.D - sociology professor and author of Brown and Gay in LA: The Lives of Immigrant Sons, an homage to second-generation gay men of color. We discuss the delicate art of writing as an academic while making the work accessible to laypeople, and why Anthony puts himself in his work. We also cover talking bad about books, and current renaissance of Filipinx literature. The Stacks Book Club selection for October is Fairest by Meredith Talusan. We will discuss the book on October 26th with Anthony Christian Ocampo.You can find everything we discuss on today's show on The Stacks' website: https://thestackspodcast.com/2022/10/05/ep-235-anthony-ocampoConnect with Anthony: Instagram | Twitter | WebsiteConnect with The Stacks: Instagram | Twitter | Shop | Patreon | Goodreads | SubscribeSUPPORT THE STACKSJoin The Stacks Pack on PatreonTo support The Stacks and find out more from this week's sponsors, click here.Purchasing books through Bookshop.org or Amazon earns The Stacks a small commission.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

TGIF! Is it restaurant week? Steven reviews buzzy new Filipinx hotspot Gugu Room, Williamsburg Szechuan mainstay Birds of a Feather, and revisits Thai Diner. Meanwhile, Lily stops in at Ramona Singer's Hamptons fave La Parmigiana. Check please!Get it here: http://patreon.com/cbcthepod Our GDPR privacy policy was updated on August 8, 2022. Visit acast.com/privacy for more information.

On today's “Post Reports,” a conversation with author Angela Garbes about her new book, “Essential Labor: Mothering as Social Change.” Read more:In 2020, author Angela Garbes found herself at home taking care of her two daughters, clinically depressed and unable to write. It was a time when people were told to stay home, unless you were an essential worker. “But I remember sitting there being like, ‘What about me?' ” Garbes told “Post Reports” editor Lexie Diao. “What about parents? What about mothers? Like, what we are doing is nothing less than essential. … The pandemic has exposed that without care, we're lost.”Garbes's new book is called “Essential Labor: Mothering as Social Change.” The book examines the history of caregiving in America through the lens of the author's own Filipinx identity, and makes the case that caregiving is an undervalued and overlooked labor that disproportionately relies on women of color.

Glenn dives further into his critique of CNN's claim that an "imposter Christianity" consisting of "white Christian nationalists" is plaguing America. Author Michael Malice shares his thoughts on progressives pushing the woke term "Filipinx" and the latest Big Tech attacks on free speech. Author and executive producer of "The Terminal List" Jack Carr reveals how the Amazon Prime adaption came about and the inspiration behind the Deep State plotline. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Glenn dives further into his critique of CNN's claim that an "imposter Christianity" consisting of "white Christian nationalists" is plaguing America and reveals the simple belief system it takes to be a true American. Bill O'Reilly discusses the week's most important news, including the Left's ongoing mission to change our language. Author Michael Malice shares his thoughts on progressives pushing the woke term "Filipinx" and the latest Big Tech attacks on free speech. Author and executive producer of "The Terminal List" Jack Carr reveals how the Amazon Prime adaption came about and the inspiration behind the Deep State plotline. Recovering investment banker Carol Roth joins to expose the Biden administration's planned recession. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices