Podcast appearances and mentions of jason chu

I got the chance to hang with my friend Jason Chu in Los Angeles, and I knew we were in for a conversation that would challenge, inspire, and empower. Jason, a rapper, spoken word artist, historian, and advocate, has been using his platform to highlight the richness of Asian American history while also confronting the challenges our communities continue to face. The post 419. Jason Chu on the importance of Asian American history first appeared on Sifu Mimi Chan.

Rapper & Poet, Jason Chu, discusses his experiences as a musician and the role of music in his healing and understanding of culture. alsoHe shares insights on self-care & recognizing warning signs of burnout. Takeaways Hip hop music and culture decenter normative gazes and reclaim communal agency. Collaboration in music can lead to powerful and meaningful creations. Recognizing warning signs of burnout and practicing self-care is crucial for maintaining well-being. There is a difference between disclosure and venting, and it's important to be intentional about sharing personal experiences. Mantras and wisdom evolve as we progress through different stages of our careers.

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.

May is Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month. Joining me is my friend Jason Chu, a passionate activist, and a dynamic rapper whose music serves as a platform for social change. Together, we explore the often overlooked and hard truths of history, particularly concerning the AAPI community. The post 380. Jason Chu on AAPI Heritage Month first appeared on Sifu Mimi Chan.

While it has been so encouraging to see the increasing awareness of mental health across the board in recent years, that is just half the battle. There are so many pockets and nuanced areas within the mental health spectrum that are yet to be normalised. In this episode, we zoom in on men's mental health. We talk to Lowhi (Leo Xia), a Chinese-American Alt-R&B/ Lo-Fi Artist whose work has been heard on hit TV series on Netflix, HBOMax and Disney+, about his music career, how he became an avid men's mental health advocate, and what the world should know about men's mental health. Find Lowhi on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lowhiofficial/ Songs Featured: Lowhi - Lonely NITEMRKT (ft. Jason Chu, Lowhi, Sakyboi) - Bag That Bao ------------------------------------------------------- Stay Connected with Proudly Asian: Website - ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://proudly-asian.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Instagram - ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://instagram.com/proudly.asian⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Youtube - ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.youtube.com/@proudlyasianpodcast⁠⁠⁠ TikTok - ⁠⁠https://www.tiktok.com/@proudly.asian⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Support us - ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://ko-fi.com/proudlyasian⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Email us - ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠proudlyasianpodcast@gmail.com --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/proudlyasian/support

This week on 20 Minute Takes, we talk with Jason Chu. He's a rapper, public theologian, and activist.  He and Nikki talk about Gospel imagination, and having a Christian faith that navigates today's complexities and contradictions.  He shares from his new album "We Were the Seeds."You can listen to Jason's music on streaming platforms like Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube, Amazon, etc.Catch him @jasonchumusic (on all social media): Instagram, TikTok,  Twitter/XAnd learn more about him at jasonchumusic.com20 Minute Takes is a production of Christians for Social Action.Host: Nikki Toyama-SzetoEdited by: Wiloza MediaMusic: Andre Henry

Volvemos la San Francisco de finales del siglo XIX para encontrarnos con nuestros amigos chinos, irlandeses, etc, porque a Sopapo Oriental llega la temporada tres de Warrior y su correspondiente RE: seña. Si, esa serie de piña y patada basada en un concepto de original de Bruce Lee, y que nos muestra los enfrentamientos de diferentes banda de criminales, como los Hop Wei, Long Zii, y el departamento de policía. Western, artes marciales, y más. Soy MaGnUs, y escribir el texto que acompaña cada episodio es la parte que menos me gusta de hacer el podcast. Con música de Warrior All Stars (Chops, Jason Chu, Lowhi, Niu Niu, sobre música de Salinas & Safinia), e Illya Kuryaki and the Valderramas. Próximo programa: Star Wars - Ahsoka (Temporada 1). ------------------------------------- #perdidoseneleter #TV #series #crimen #artesmarciales

Jason Chu sat down with Rob Herrera in his home studio for an interview on the creative process behind new album ‘We Were The Seeds.' Thank you for listening! If you enjoyed and learned something from this podcast please be sure to follow and rate it in order to help us grow in the podcast space. You are also welcome to help support this podcast with a small monthly donation to help sustain future episodes. If you'd like to watch my video interviews, I invite you to Subscribe to my channel at www.YouTube.com/FrontRowLiveEnt Follow Us: @FrontRowLiveEnt | @Robertherrera3 #JasonChu #FrontRowLiveEnt --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/frontrowliveent/support

Jason Chu sat down with Rob Herrera in his home studio for an interview on the creative process behind new album ‘We Were The Seeds.' Thank you for listening! If you enjoyed and learned something from this podcast please be sure to follow and rate it in order to help us grow in the podcast space. You are also welcome to help support this podcast with a small monthly donation to help sustain future episodes. If you'd like to watch my video interviews, I invite you to Subscribe to my channel at www.YouTube.com/FrontRowLiveEnt Follow Us: @FrontRowLiveEnt | @Robertherrera3 #JasonChu #FrontRowLiveEnt --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/frontrowliveent/support

Happy 50th birthday to Hip Hop! As a hip hop fan, I am excited to welcome Oscar and Jason Chu on the show to discuss hip hop culture. We dive into all the reasons hip hop is meaningful to us and relive some of the 80s, 90s and early 2000's nostalgia. Does music change or do we? Honored to share in this conversation with Jason and Oscar as we dedicate this episode to the love of hip hop. The post 347. Jason Chu on Hip Hop turns 50 first appeared on Sifu Mimi Chan.

Jason Chu speaks hope and healing in a hurting world, blending high energy performances with thoughtfully crafted lyricism. As an Asian American kid in suburban Delaware, he found a vocabulary for racial identity and liberation in rap music and hip-hop culture. Starting out freestyling with friends at school, he began recording and performing music in college.

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 talks about Theatre & Memory with Bay Area native artists: composer Byron Au Yong and playwright Lauren Yee. They provide behind the scenes news about their upcoming productions at ACT and Berkeley Rep. More info on our guests: Byron Au Yong, composer The Headlands, ACT   Lauren Yee, playwright Cambodian Rock Band, Berkeley Rep   Transcript: Theatre and Memory or Why Art Matters [00:00:00] Miko Lee: Good evening and welcome to APEX Express. I'm your host, Miko Lee, and tonight we're talking about theater and memory or why art matters. So many artists grapple with this concept of memory and how each of us has a different story to share. And tonight we get to hear from two bay area locals, a playwright, and a composer, each share a bit about their creative process and why art matters to them. I have the pleasure of speaking with composer, Byron Au Yong who had been creating music for the Headlands, which opens this weekend at act. And with playwright Lauren Yee who's musical Cambodian rock band comes back home to Berkeley rep at the end of the month. First off. Let's take a listen to one of Byron Al Yong's compositions called know your rights. This is part of the trilogy of the Activists Songbook. This multi-lingual rap, give steps to know what to do when ice officers come to your door. song That was know your rights performed by Jason Chu with lyrics by Aaron Jeffries and composed by my guest, Byron Au Yong. Welcome, Byron Au Yong to Apex Express. We're so happy to hear from you. [00:04:11] Byron Au Yong: Thanks, Miko. It's so great to be here. [00:04:13] Miko Lee: I wanna talk to you about a couple of things. First and foremost, you have the Headlands that is opening up at ACT really soon. Tell me about who your people are and where you come from. [00:04:27] Byron Au Yong: Sure. So my grandparents, both maternal and paternal, left China in the late thirties and they both immigrated to the Philippines. And so both my parents were born to Philippines in different areas. And so I come from a family of refugees who then settled into Philippines and my parents were not the first in their family. They were actually both the fourth and they left and immigrated to the United States when the United States opened up immigration in post 1965. So they were part of that wave. And then I was born in Pittsburgh. They, they were actually introduced here in Seattle. And I was born in Pittsburgh because my dad was in school there. And then they moved back to Seattle. So I'm from Seattle and in 2016 I moved to San Francisco. [00:05:17] Miko Lee: Thank you. So you are a composer. Have you always played music and have you always been attuned to audio? Tell me about how you got started as a composer. [00:05:28] Byron Au Yong: Sure. As a kid my parents divorced when I was age seven and I was an only child up until age 16. My mom worked. In the evenings. And my dad wasn't in the household and so I had a lot of time to myself and I would sing a lot to myself. And then my next door neighbor was a piano teacher, and so I started to play the piano at age nine, and then at age 11 I started to write stuff down. And yeah, so I've been doing music for a bit. [00:05:59] Miko Lee: So music has always been a part of your life, essentially. It's been your playmate since you were young. [00:06:04] Byron Au Yong: Yes, absolutely [00:06:05] Miko Lee: Love that. So tell us about the Headlands that's gonna be opening at ACT pretty soon. [00:06:11] Byron Au Yong: Yeah so The Headlands is a play by Christopher Chen, who you may know is playwright, who is born and raised and continues to live in San Francisco. And it's his love letter to San Francisco. It's a San Francisco noir play. It's a whodunit play. It's a play about a main character who's trying to figure out who he is after the death of his dad. Which causes him to wonder who he is and where he is from. I'm doing original music for the show, this is gonna be an American Conservatory Theater, and Pam McKinnon, who's the artistic director, will be stage directing this production as well. I actually met Chris Chen in 2013 when I had a show called Stuck Elevator that was at ACT. And I've been really fascinated with his work as a playwright for a while, and so I was thrilled when ACT invited me to join the creative team to work on music. Miko Lee: Oh, fun. Okay. I wanna talk to you about Stuck Elevator next, but first let's stick with the headlines.This is a play that's about memory and storytelling. I'm wondering if there is a story that has framed your creative process. Byron Au Yong: Yeah. Thinking about this show as a memory play, and, memory as something, we go back in our memories to try and figure stuff out, which is very much what this play is. And also to claim and to. figure out if something from our memory was recalled maybe in completely. And so the main character is, piecing together fragments of his memory to figure out who he is in the present. And considering this I actually went back to music. I composed when I was still a teenager. I actually dropped outta school and was working a lot. I think I realized early on that I was indeed, I wanted to dedicate myself to being an artist and was very concerned about how I would make a living as an artist in the United States. And so I thought I'll figure out how to make money away from the music. And so I had a lot of jobs and I was trying to write music, but, I was in a sad place, and so I never finished anything. I have a bunch of fragments from this time. But on Memorial Day I woke up and, it was sunny in Seattle and so I said, I'm gonna finish a piece of music today. And that became part of a project in mine where every Memorial Day I finish a piece of music and it's a solo piano piece that I finish. And so, going back in my personal history, I found one of these Memorial Day pieces and thought, oh, this actually works. Because it's a bit awkward and it doesn't resolve, and I remember who I was back then, but it's also me piecing together things and so I used that as the foundation for the music, for The Headlands, which is a different thing. If you didn't know that was my source material, that's in some ways irrelevant. But that's my personal connection in thinking about music for this. And of course I've also done a lot of research on film noir. A lot of noir films were set in San Francisco. And and the music is awesome, amazing of this genre. And, it's mysterious it is a certain urban Americana music. And so I include those elements as well. [00:09:36] Miko Lee: Thank you. That's so interesting that you have a Memorial Day ritual to create a piece of music. I'm wondering if, aside from the Headlands, have you used the Memorial Day Music in other pieces you've created? [00:09:48] Byron Au Yong: No this is the first time. [00:09:51] Miko Lee: Wow. Yeah. That's great. [00:09:53] Byron Au Yong: I think Miko is because, it's a private thing for me. I think the other thing too is as you mentioned, music was my friend growing up. The piano was. Definitely one of my best friends. And so solo piano pieces for me are, it's where you can have an audience of one. And one of the things that helped me, when I was not in school was. Playing through a lot of different other solo piano pieces. And so part of these Memorial Day pieces too are that they're meant to be simple enough that they could be sight read. And so if, if there's a musician who you know, is in a similar state of, oh, I'm not able to really do anything, but I want to be with music. I can sight read through, these different Memorial Day pieces. [00:10:38] Miko Lee: And do you have them set in a specific part of your house or where, how, where do you keep your Memorial Day projects and when do you open them up to look at them? [00:10:48] Byron Au Yong: Oh yeah. They're handwritten in a folder. None of the things so special. [00:10:54] Miko Lee: What was it that inspired you to go back and look at them for the headlands? [00:10:58] Byron Au Yong: Oh, you know what it is there are, be, because I know you, you also create stuff too in your memory of your catalog.I'm wondering if you have. If you have works that, that you remember that you made and then tho those works may remind you of a certain mood you were in or a certain room or and so I think they're musical things from certain or, things I was experimenting with for these Memorial Day. Said, I'm like, oh, I remember this. Let me go back to the folder where I collect this stuff every year and look through it. And I think that parallels actually the headlands and what the main character is doing because he recalls, and what's so cool about the production is we go into the same scene, but there's like a clue that's been revealed. And so we as an audience get to revisit the scene again. And there's a different interpretation of what was happening in the scene. And so what might have been like a scene between Henry's parents, Lena and George, which he thought, oh, this is how it was when I was a kid, when I was 10 years old. Thinking about it, remembering it, but now with this new information, this is how I'm gonna interpret the scene. And so I think similarly with, music from my past, these Memorial Day pieces, I'm like, oh, this is what I was interested in working on. But now as a older composer, I'm like, ah, and I can do this with this material. [00:12:26] Miko Lee: I love that. And I also really appreciate that this play about memory you pulled from your Memorial Day pieces, that it goes with this whole flow of just re-envisioning things with your own frame and based on where you're at in any given time. [00:12:42] Byron Au Yong: Totally. [00:12:43] Miko Lee: I know that the show was created 2020, is that right? Yes. Is that when, first? Yeah, Byron Au Yong: I think it's right before the pandemic. Miko Lee: Yeah. And you've had several different directors, and now in a way you both are coming home to San Francisco and artistic director, Pam McKinnon is directing it. I wonder if you have thoughts about some of the difference approaches that these directors have brought to the process. [00:13:06] Byron Au Yong: Oh, yeah. And, miko, this is the first time I'm working on the headlands. And so when it was at Lincoln Center, there was a different creative team. [00:13:12] Miko Lee: Oh, so the music, you're just creating the music for this version of the show. [00:13:16] Byron Au Yong: Yes, correct. Wow. And it is a new production because that Lincoln Center was in a stage called LCT 3, which is a smaller venue. Whereas this is gonna be in a Toni Rembe theater, which is, on Geary. It's a 1100 seat theater. And the set is quite fabulous and large . And what's also great is, aside from Johnny, all the cast is local. And like it will have the feel of a San Francisco production because many of us live here, have lived here and know these places that are referenced in the show. [00:13:51] Miko Lee: Thanks for that clarification. So that's really different to go from a small house at Lincoln Center to the big house at a c t Yes. With local folks with, your local music. That brings a very different approach to it. I'm excited to see it. That sounds really interesting. And now I wanna go back to talk about Stuck Elevator, which I was so delighted to learn about. Which was your first piece That was at ACT what, back in 2013? So tell our audience first about where Stuck Elevator came from and then tell what it's about. [00:14:23] Byron Au Yong: Sure. So stuck elevator. So I was living in New York in 2005 and there were some there were some images of like photos in the newspaper, initially it was local news because it was a Chinese delivery man who was missing. And most of the delivery people at the time, they carry cash, they won't go to the police. And there, there had been a string of muggings and then one was actually beaten to death. And so it was local news that this guy was missing. And then a few days later, and in New York Times, there was a big article because he was found in an elevator in the Bronx and he had been trapped in his elevator which had become stuck. And he was trapped for 81 hours, which that's like over three days. And so it made international news. And then when I read the article and learned more about him, there were many parallels like where he was from in China, which is Fujan Province, which is where my grandparents left that he was paying a debt to human smugglers to be in the United States. And different things that I thought, wow, if my grandparents hadn't left I wonder if, I would be the one who was, paying to be smuggled here rather than paying for grad school. And so I became quite fascinated with them. And then also, realized at the time, in 2005, this is like YouTube was just starting, and so all like the Asian American YouTube stars, they weren't as prominent in the news. And, BTS wasn't around then. So for me to see an Asian male. In the US media there was always this feeling of oh why is this Asian male in the news? And then realized, oh, it's actually part of a larger story about being trapped in America about family obligation, about labor, about fear of, in his specific case because he's an undocumented immigrant, fear of deportation. So there were many issues that, that I thought were broader than the specific story. And so I thought, this would be a great opera slash musical. So that's what it became at [00:16:23] Miko Lee: you, you basically read a story and said, whoa, what is this? I feel this is so wild. And then created it into an opera. Yes. Also, it just resonated with me so much as a person who has been trapped in elevators, in broken elevators six different times, . Oh my goodness. Yes. I'm like, wow. And his story, that many hours, that has to be like a record. Byron Au Yong: Right? Nobody else has been trapped that long. Yeah. It's a record. Miko Lee: So you created this piece, it premiered at ACT? Yes. Did you ever connect with the guy that was stuck in the elevator? [00:16:59] Byron Au Yong: No. So the New York Times did something which is actually not cool. They they revealed his immigration status and that at the time I'm not sure if it's still the case,but at the time, you're not allowed to reveal people's immigration status. Especially, in such a public way. And so what was cool was that the AALEDF, which is the Asian American Legal Education and Defense Fund, they the volunteer attorneys there step forward to represent Ming Kuang Chen and his case and ensure that he had legal representation so he would not be deported. The thing is, he was suffering from PTSD and there was also another case at the time it was a different un undocumented immigrant case that AALEDF was representing that had a bit more visibility and so he actually didn't want to be so much into public eye, and so he went back into hiding. And so while I didn't meet him specifically, I met his translator. I met other people at AALEDF met with other people who were related to the stories that he was a part of. So for example, used to be an organization, which I think they've changed their name, but they were the Fujanese Restaurant Workers Association. Most of the undocumented immigrants who worked in restaurants at the time are from Fujan Province. Also, Asian Pacific American Studies at New York University. Is a mix o f people who were working in restaurants as well as people, scholars who were studying this issue. [00:18:46] Miko Lee: Can you describe a little bit about Stuck Elevator for folks that haven't seen it? Sure. How did you conceive of this piece, that song? [00:18:53] Byron Au Yong: Yeah so it's a thru sung piece about a guy who's trapped in America. He's a Chinese food delivery man, and he's, delivering food in the Bronx. And what I think is You know what I didn't realize when I started it. And then I realized working on it was the thing about being stuck in the elevator is, especially for so long, is that you and I don't know if this is your case, Miko it's so fascinating to hear you've been trapped six different times. There's the initial shock and initial oh my gosh, I have to get out. And then there's this. Maybe not resignation but there's this, okay. Okay. I'm gonna be here so now what? Now what I'm going to do and the time actually, especially for someone who works so much delivering food and sending money back home to his wife and son in China and his family is that he actually is not working, right? And so he has time to consider what his life has been like in New York for the past, the two years he's been there. And to consider the choices he's made as well as to remember his family who are back in China. And part of this too is you're not awake the entire time. Sometimes you go to sleep, and so in his sleep he dreams. He has hallucinations. He has nightmares. And this is where the music theater opera really starts to confront and navigate through the various issues of being trapped in America. [00:20:22] Miko Lee: Any chance this will come into production, somewhere? [00:20:26] Byron Au Yong: Yeah, hopefully, we were just at Nashville Opera last week, two weeks ago. [00:20:30] Miko Lee: Oh, fun. [00:20:31] Byron Au Yong: so Nashville Opera. So the lead Julius Ahn who was in ACT's production is an opera singer. And and he had told the artistic director of Nashville Opera about this project years ago. And John Hoomes, who's the artistic director there had remembered it. Last year John Hoomes reached out to me and said, you know, I think it's the time for to be an operatic premiere of Stuck Elevator. And so we had an amazing run there. [00:20:58] Miko Lee: Great. Wow. I look forward to seeing that too somewhere soon. Yes. I also wanted to chat with you about this last week, a lot of things have been happening in our A P I community with these mass shootings that have been just so painful. Yes. And I know that you worked on a piece that was called The Activist Songbook. Are you, can you talk a little bit about that process and the Know Your Rights project? [00:21:23] Byron Au Yong: Yeah, absolutely. And I'm gonna back up because so Activist Song Book is actually the third in a trilogy of which Stuck Elevator is the first, and related to the recent tragedies that have happened in Half Moon Bay and also in Monterey Park. The second in the trilogy is it's called the Ones. It was originally called Trigger, and it also has the name Belonging. And I can go through why it has so many different names, but the first in the trilogy was Stuck Elevator, and it was prompted by me again, seeing an Asian male in the US media. So the second actually all three are from seeing Asian males in the US media. And the second one was an incident that happened in 2007 where a creative writing major shot 49 people killing 32, and then himself at Virginia Tech. And and when this happened I realized, oh shoot Stuck elevator's part of a trilogy. I have to figure out how to do this show called Trigger or what was called Trigger. And then realized of the different layers in a trilogy. Yes. There's this initial thing about Asian men in the US media, but then there's this other thing about ways out of oppression. And so with Stuck Elevator, the way out of oppression is through the main character's imagination, right? His dreams, his what ifs, right? The possibilities and the different choices he can make with the second one, what me and the creative team realized is that, the way out of oppression is that the creative writing major who you may remember was a Korean American he was so isolated at Virginia Tech and the tragedy of him being able to purchase firearms and then kill so many people, including himself in working on it, I was like, I need to understand, but it's not this story I necessarily want to put on stage. And so what it became is it became a story, and this is also the national conversation changed around mass violence in America. The conversation became less about the perpetrator and more about the victims. And so it became a choral work for community performers. So rather than a music theater opera, like Stuck Elevator, it's a music theater forum with local singers. And this was actually performed at Virginia Tech during the 10 year memorial of the tragedy. And this one I did eight site visits to Virginia Tech and met with people including the chief of police of Blacksburg. First responder to director of threat assessment to family members whose children were lost. A child of, teachers were also killed that day to counselors who were there to Nikki Giovanni, who was one of the faculty members. So yeah so many people. But this one, the second one, the way out of oppression is from isolation into community, into belonging. And Virginia Tech Administration said we could not call the work trigger. And so the work there was called (Be)longing with the be in parentheses. And now we've done a new revision called The Ones partially influenced by the writer, one of his teachers was June Jordan who was at UC Berkeley. And she has a phrase, we are the ones we've been waiting for. And so the ones which is a 2019 revision, the show, what it does is Act three youth takeover, right? It's about coming of age and an age of guns, and the youth have become activists because they have no choice because they are being shot in places of learning, and so Parkland in Chicago and other places have been influential in this work. And then the third in the trilogy is Activist Songbook. And for this one we went back to an earlier asian male who was in the US media, and that was Vincent Chin who you may know was murdered 40 years ago. And so activist song book is to counteract hate and energize movements. And it's a collection of different songs that is even further away from musical theater opera production in that the rally component of the songs can be taught within 10 minutes to a group of people outdoors to be used right away. And that one, the way out of repression is through organizing. [00:25:49] Miko Lee: Well, Byron Au Young, thank you so much for sharing with us about all the different projects you've been working on. We'll put a link in the show notes to the headlands that folks can see at a c t. Tell our audience how else they can find out more about you and your life as a composer and more about your work. [00:26:05] Byron Au Yong: Sure. I have a website. It's my name.com or b y r o n a u y o n g.com. [00:26:12] Miko Lee: Thank you so much for spending so much time with me. [00:26:14] Byron Au Yong: Of course. [00:26:15] Miko Lee: You are tuned into apex express on 94.1, KPFA an 89.3 K P F B in Berkeley and online@kpfa.org. We're going to hear one more piece by composer, Byron Al young called This is the Beginning, which was prompted by Lilly and Vincent chin and inspired by Helen Zia and other organizers. song That was, This is the Beginning by Byron Au Yong and Aaron Jeffrey's. Featuring Christine Toi Johnson on voice and Tobias Wong on voice and guitar. This is a beginning is prompted by organizing in response to the racially motivated murder of Vincent Chin in Detroit. This hate crime was a turning point for Asian American solidarity in the fight for federal civil rights. Lily chin Vincent's mom refused to let her son's death be invisible. Next up, I have the chance to speak with playwright Lauren Yee who's musical Cambodian rock band. Returns to Berkeley rep where it first got its workshop and it will be there from February 25th through April 2nd. And here's a teaser from Cambodian rock band by Lauren Yee. Take a listen to seek CLO. song Miko Lee: Welcome Lauren Yee to Apex express. [00:34:35] Lauren Yee: Thank you so much, Miko. [00:34:37] Miko Lee: We're so happy to have you a local Bay Area person. Award-winning playwright. Coming back to town at Berkeley Rep with your show, Cambodian Rock Band. Yay. Tell us about the show. [00:34:51] Lauren Yee: Yes so Cambodian Rock Band. Is actually a piece that has some of its like earliest development roots in the Bay Area and also like specifically at Berkeley Rep. Getting to bring the show to Berkeley rep really feels like some sort of poetic justice. In addition to the fact, that it's like my old stomping grounds. . Essentially Cambodian rock Band started in 2015, or at least the writing of it. It actually started, if I'm being honest much earlier than that. I think it was about 2010 2011. I was down in San Diego in grad school and one of my friends was just like dying to go see this band play at a music festival. She was like, I saw this band play. They're amazing. You should totally come. And I was like, sure. And I don't know if you've ever had this experience, but it's like, going somewhere, hearing a band, and even before you know anything about them or their story, you just fall in love. You fall like head over heels in love and you say, oh my God who are these people? And I wanna know everything about them. And that band was Dengue Fever. Which is amazing. You fell in love with the band first. Yep. Before the play. Yes. And it was the band Dengue Fever which is an LA band. And their front woman Choni Mall is Cambodian American and she leads this sound that I think started in covers of Cambodian oldies from that golden age of rock for them, and has over time morphed into Dengue Fever's own original sound. Like we're nowadays, they're coming out with an album soon, their own original songs. But I fell in love with Dengue Fever and I was like, oh, okay, who are these people inspired by? And I just went down that rabbit hole of learning about this whole musical history that I never knew about. My own background is Chinese American. I'm not Cambodian American. And so a lot of kids who grew up in the public school system, I did not get basically any education about Cambodian history and America's role in seeding the elements that led to the Khmer Rouge's takeover the country, and the ensuing genocide. [00:37:12] Miko Lee: So you first fell in love with the band and then you went down an artist rabbit hole. We love those artist rabbit holes. Yes. And then what was your inspiration for the play itself? The musical? [00:37:22] Lauren Yee: Yeah so I fell in love with the music and I was like, there is something here because you had all these musicians in Cambodia who like, when 1975 hit and the communists took over the country there was just a time when like the country was a hostile place for artists where artists were specifically targeted among other groups. And so much of Cambodia's musicians and its musical history, was snuffed out, and I was like, there is a story here, that I find deeply compelling. And for a long time I didn't know how to tell that story because there's just so much in it. And then came 2015 where two things happened. One was that I was commissioned by a theater in Orange County called South Coast Rep, and they invited me to come down to their theater and just do research in the community for two weeks on anything you want. So I was like, I wanna look at malls, I wanna look at the video game culture down there, all kinds of things. And one of the things that I was interested in and just bubbled to the surface was the Cambodian American community, which is not in Orange County proper, but in, situated largely in Long Beach, right next door. And it just so happened that while I was there, There were just a lot of Cambodian American music related events that were going on. So the second annual Cambodian Music Festival, the Cambodia Town Fundraiser, Dengue Fever, was playing a gig in Long Beach. Like all these things were happening, that intersected me, with the Kamai or Cambodian community in Long Beach. And the other thing that happened coming out of that trip is that I started beginning to write the seeds of the play. And I did a very early workshop of it up at Seattle Rap. And I'm the sort of playwright. probably like writes and brings in collaborators like actors and a director sooner than a lot of other people. Most people probably wait until they have a first draft that they're comfortable with, whereas I'm like, I have 20 pages and I think if I go up and get some collaborators, I think I can generate the rest of it. So I went up to Seattle with kind of my, 20 or 30 pages and we brought in some actors. And that workshop had an actor named Joe No in it, and I knew Joe from previous work I'd done in Seattle. But during our first rehearsal when we were just like chatting he said to me like, this is my story. And I was like, oh, it's a story that calls out to me too. Thank you. And he was like no. You don't understand. Like, So my parents were born in Battambang Cambodia. They were survivors of the Khmer Rouge. I feel deeply connected to this material. And that conversation sparked. a very long relationship, between me and Joe and this play. That I, I think of him as like the soul, of this play. He became just like an integral part. And in the South coast rep production and in subsequent productions he's kind of been like our lead. He is Chum, and it's a role that I think is like perfectly suited for who he is as a human being and what his like essence is. And also he plays electric guitar which I think influenced things a lot because initially it was a play about music, right? It wasn't a musical, it was just people like talking about a music scene that they loved. And as I went along and found like the perfect people for these roles it was like, Joe plays electric guitar. It would be crazy not to have him try to play a little electric guitar in the show. And that kind of began that, the evolution of this play into a piece where music is not only talked about, but is an integral part of the show. You know that it's become a show that has a live band. The actors play the instruments. They play about a dozen songs. And it's a mix of Dengue, half Dengue Fever songs, half mostly Cambodian oldies. It's kind of been an incredible journey and I could not have imagined what that journey would be, it's hard to replicate. [00:41:53] Miko Lee: I love that. So has Joe been in every production you've done of the show so far? [00:41:57] Lauren Yee: So he hasn't been able to be in everyone. There were two productions happening at the same time, and so he could only be in one place at one time. But I bet you he would've tried to be in two places at once. But he's basically been in almost every production. And the production that he's in currently running at the Alley Theater in Houston is is like the production, the original production directed by Chay Yew. [00:42:24] Miko Lee: Wow. And was it difficult to cast all actors that were also musicians? [00:42:30] Lauren Yee: In some ways there there's I think if you were starting from scratch and you like open your window and you're like, where could I find some actors? I think it would be tough. But I just kept running into kind of like crazy happenstance where I would find a person and I wasn't even thinking about them musically. And they'd be like, yeah, like I've played bass, for 15 years. and I could kind of do drums, right? That what was remarkable is that there were all these Asian American actors who were like known as actors. But then once you like, dig down into their biographies, you're like, Hey, I see like you've actually played drums for X number of years, or, Hey, I see that you play like guitar and bass. Miko Lee: Tell me more about that. Lauren Yee: So it's almost like finding all these stealth musicians and like helping them dust the instruments off and being like, Hey, come back here. Fun. And so it's just been, it's just been like a joy. [00:43:27] Miko Lee: Oh, that's so great. I know the play is about music and also about memory, and I'm wondering if there's a story that has framed your creative process that stands out to you. [00:43:39] Lauren Yee: I don't know if it's one specific memory, but I find that just a lot of my stories I think they deal with family. I think they deal with parents and their grown children trying to reconnect with each other, trying to overcome family secrets and generational struggles. I would say I have a great relationship with my father. But I think, in every parent and child relationship, one thing that I'm fascinated by are these attempts to get to know someone, like especially your own parent, even when you know them well, and especially when you know them well. That kind of is able to penetrate that barrier that sometimes you hit in generations, right? That there's a wall that your parents put up. Or that there's this impossibility of knowing who your parents were before you had them because they had a whole life. And you only know this like tiny bit of it. And I think I'm just like fascinated by that. I'm fascinated by the impact of time. I'm fascinated by extraordinary circumstances and the ordinary people who lived through those times. And I think for a large part, even though Cambodian rock band features a family whose lived experience is different from my own. I think there's a lot of my own relationship with my father that I put into that relationship. This desire to know your parent better, this desire to know them even as they're trying to protect you. So yeah. [00:45:06] Miko Lee: What do your parents think about your work? [00:45:10] Lauren Yee: I think my parents are incredibly supportive, but like different in the way that one might think because my parents aren't arts people they of course like enjoy a story or enjoy a show, but they're not people who are like, I have a subscription to this theater, or I'm gonna go to this museum opening. and so their intersection with the arts, I feel like has been out of a sense of like love for me. Their ways of supporting me early on when like I was interested in theater and trying to figure out a way to go about it, like in high school when I was trying to like, put on a show with my friends and they were like in the back folding the programs or like building, the door to the set. And hauling away, all the furniture, so we could bring it to the theater. So like my parents have been supportive, but in a very, like nuts and bolts kind of way. Miko Lee: That's so sweet and that's so important. When I was doing the theater, my mom would come to every single show. Lauren Yee: Just Oh, bless that is, bless her. [00:46:14] Miko Lee: Ridiculous commitment. Yeah. I don't that for my kids, like every show. I wanna back up a little bit cuz we're talking about family. Can you tell me who are your people and where do you come from? [00:46:27] Lauren Yee: Ooh. That's such a great question. I think there are like many ways of answering that. When I think of home, I think of San Francisco, I live in New York now. But my whole youth, I grew up in San Francisco. My parents were both born there. My grandmother was born and raised there, one of my grandfathers was, born more like up the Delta and the other side of my family, my grandparents came from Toisan China. So on one hand, my family's from like that Pearl River Delta part of China. And at various times, like made a break for the United States. I think starting in the 1870s and spanning into the early 20th century you know, so we've been here for a while. And another way of thinking about it is we're all very, I think, suffused in our family's history in San Francisco. It's hard for me to go to a Chinese restaurant with my family without somebody from our table knowing somebody else in the restaurant, like inevitable. And it's something that never happens to me. I don't think it's ever happened to me when living in New York. Yeah. And I think And that's fun. That's fun. I love that. Yeah. Yeah. And I think b eing able to be Chinese American. Growing up in San Francisco, it's different than other, Asian Americans living in other parts of the country. Like in a strange way, it allows you to like be more of whoever you wanna be, right? When you're like not the only one. That it allows you to like, potentially choose a different path and not have to worry about. I don't know, just like carrying that load. [00:48:01] Miko Lee: That is so interesting. Do you mean because there's safety, because you're around so many other Chinese Americans, Asian Americans, that you can bring forth a greater sense of your individuality? [00:48:13] Lauren Yee: Yeah, I think so, like I went to Lowell High School where, you know, two thirds of the class is Asian American. There's just such a wide range of what an Asian American student at Lowell looks like. And what we're interested in and how our weird obsessions manifest so I think I just felt more freedom in differentiating myself cuz I like theater and I like storytelling. [00:48:36] Miko Lee: That's really interesting. Thanks so much for sharing that. I'm wondering, because Cambodian rock band is partially about when the communists took over Cambodia. If, when you were growing up as a multi-generational Chinese American, did you hear very much about communism and the impact on China? [00:48:57] Lauren Yee: I did not. And possibly it was swirling around. And I was too young to really understand the impacts. But when I look back on it, a lot of my plays, Cambodian Rock Band included, have to do with the intersection of Communism and American culture. Like another play I have called The Great Leap which was at ACT in San Francisco, also dealt with American culture like basketball, intersecting in communist China in the 1970s and then the 1980s. And like, honestly, in retrospect, the effects of communism were all around me growing up in San Francisco in the nineties. That the kids that I went to school with, like in elementary school, came there in various waves, but a lot of them pushed from Asia because of the influences of communism that you had of a wave of kids who came over. In the wake of the fall of the Soviet Union, you had kids who came preempting, the Hong Kong handover back to China. You had kids, who came to San Francisco in the wake of the fall of the Vietnam War. So there were like all these, political movements the effects of war that were like shaping the people around me. And I didn't realize it until like very much later. [00:50:19] Miko Lee: Oh, that's so interesting. Thank you so much. By the way. I really loved the Great Leap. It was such an interesting thank you way of really talking about some deep issues, but through such an American sport like basketball I enjoyed that so much. So thank you so much for sharing about your San Francisco influence. I'm curious because you've been writing TV now limited series like Pachinko and also congrats on writing the musical for Wrinkle In Time. Amazing. Thank you. [00:50:49] Lauren Yee: That is a book that I loved and just shook me, I forget what grade I was in, but I was probably like, 10 or 11 or something. So I think the fact that I get to interface and get to dig into such an iconic work as Wrinkle in Time, blows my mind. [00:51:05] Miko Lee: That is going to be so exciting. I'm really looking forward to that. Yeah. Yeah. But my question was really about you working on Pachinko and these other series, how different is playwriting to screen versus TV writing? [00:51:17] Lauren Yee: Yeah. I think in a way like the work that I did on Pachinko, for instance, like I was on the writing staff, that's a role where you're like supporting the creator of the show, which in this instance is Sue Hugh, who is just an incredible mind. And she had like kind of this vision for what she wanted to do with the adaptation of Pachinko. And, you know, you, as a writer on staff you're really helping to support that. So I think your role is a little bit different when you're brought on staff for tv that you're helping to birth the thing along and contribute your part. Whereas when you're a playwright like the piece remains with you, and you just have I think a greater sense of control over what happens to it. [00:52:00] Miko Lee: What surprised you in your creative process while you were working on this play, this musical? [00:52:08] Lauren Yee: I think the thing that I realized when I was writing Cambodian Rock Band is that in order for the play to really click together is that joy has to be at the center of it. That Cambodian rock band is a piece about art and artists and family surviving really horrific events. And in order to tell that story, you need to fall in love with the music. You need to understand why these people might have risked their lives. For art, you need to understand why art matters. And I think a feature of my work is finding the light in dark places that there is a lot, in the play that is heavy. There are points where it is surprisingly and shockingly funny and that there are moments of just incredible heart in places like you probably won't be expecting. And I think that's been a big lesson of developing this piece. [00:53:14] Miko Lee: Lauren Yee thank you so much for talking with me and sharing about Cambodian Rock Band and your artistic process. I know it's gonna be running at Berkeley rep February 25th through April 2nd. Where else is it running for folks that might not live in the Bay? [00:53:30] Lauren Yee: Yeah, so if you live in the Bay Area, or if you want just see it again, which is totally fine. Lots of people see it again. This same production is going to travel to arena stage in DC over the summer in the fall it'll be at Fifth Avenue and Act Theater up in Seattle, and then at the very beginning of 2024 it will be at Center Theater Group. [00:53:54] Miko Lee: Thank you so much for chatting with me today. I really appreciate you and your work out there in the world. [00:54:00] Lauren Yee: Thank you, Miko. [00:54:02] Miko Lee: That was playwright Lauren Yee. And I'm going to play you out, hearing one song from Dengue Fever, which is in Cambodian rock band. This is Uku. song [00:56:55] 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. Apex express is produced by Miko Lee Jalena Keane-Lee and Paige Chung and special editing by Swati Rayasam. Thank you so much to the KPFA staff for their support have a great night. The post APEX Express – 2.9.23 Theatre & Memory or Why Art Matters appeared first on KPFA.

Chinese American rapper jason chu has been traveling across the USA spreading positivity and awareness for the AAPI community.  He is known for his high-energy live performances that blend introspective lyricism with crowd-moving passion. On a mission to "speak hope and healing in a broken world", his songs and videos tell stories of youth, family, and history. The post 313. Jason Chu on performing, AAPI history and spoken word first appeared on Sifu Mimi Chan.

What does it mean to be fully seen and truly known? How do we create multiethnic spaces where everyone belong? Listen to a virtual panel featuring AAPI pastors and activists reflecting on “Visibility in Multiethnic Spaces.” From their unique experiences and expertise, each panelist reflects on Asian identity and the power of visibility. The panel features Michelle Reyes, Anh Johnson, Michael Lee, and Jason Chu. This is a powerful conversation that you don't want to miss!

Chinese American rapper jason chu is known for his high-energy live performances that blend introspective lyricism with crowd-moving passion. On […] The post 269. Jason Chu on hip hop and activism appeared first on Sifu Mimi Chan.

“I always say there's three strands in my life. There's racial identity, there's hip hop culture, and there's religion. And all three are actually synonymous to me.” Jason Chu is a rapper and activist, speaking hope and healing to a broken world. His music has been heard on Warrior (HBO Max), Snowpiercer (TNT), and Wu Assassins (Netflix). He has shared poetry at the Obama White House, been featured in the Chinese American Museum of Los Angeles, and presented at the Getty Center. He has been named one of two 2022 “Artists At Work” by the Japanese American National Museum and Advancing Justice-LA.  In this episode, Jason and Nancy chat about how to bring together disparate parts of ourselves in synergistic ways.  “Without Jesus, I don't know who I am as an Asian American. Without hip hop, I don't know the God that I know. Without being Asian American, I don't make hip hop music because I don't got an identity, I don't got a community.”

  Alan Z is a triple threat within the entertainment industry who carved his own lane as a versatile artist that raps and sings to bridge the gap between hip-hop and R&B but also bring more diversity with the music and acting industry. With his music, Alan Z intricately weaves pop, R&B, and hip-hop aggression into a tapestry that defines stereotypes and labels. Alan Z is planning to continue his platform to bring attention to social issues, bring diversity to the entertainment industry, and support other upcoming Asian and Pacific Islander artists. Alanʻs music has also been featured on the Netflix series, Wu Assassins. Alan recently released his hit album Face Value in collaboration with Jason Chu featuring other Asian artists such as Dante Basco, Chow Mane, and Neela. Alan also wrote and produced an exclusive song for us here at the Moana Nui Podcast that highlights the untold stories of Hawaiiʻs long-standing history.    You can find more about Alan at: http://www.alanzmusic.com/ http://www.instagram.com/alanzmusic https://www.facebook.com/alanzmusic https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCpUZULtrIfCQqxFehxcK63w Follow the Moana Nui Podcast: http://www.moananuipodcast.com http://bit.ly/MoanaNuiTube http://www.facebook.com/moananuipodcast http://www.twitch.tv/moananuipodcast Contact: moananuipodcast@gmail.com About Moana Nui Podcast: Moana Nui Podcast is a storytelling podcast to celebrate and honor the history, culture, & perspectives of POC, indigenous, and African Diasporan peoples.  #MoanaNuiPodcast #AlanZ #AlanZMusic #FaceValue #AAPIExcellence #AsianAmerican #StopAsianHate 

Joe Kye @JoeKye joins Jerry on Episode 128 to share his story of leveraging his talents and background to storytell and create content for good. We talk about fatherhood, career, and life and stay tuned until the end for a special performance from Joe!Meet JoeBorn in Korea and raised in the Pacific Northwest, Portland-based composer, violinist-looper and vocalist Joe Kye “discharges world[s] of emotion” and delivers “divine messages” with his lush string loops and eclectic style (Guitar World). Drawing upon his migrant upbringing, Kye blends indie-rock, jazz, classical, and pop to create a unique sound that “leaves everyone in awe” (SN&R). With his innovative use of digital effects and looping, Kye weaves together diverse textures, catchy melodies, and rich, “song-bird sweet voice” (PopMatters) to create songs that groove, uplift, and empower listeners: "A single violinist...one mesmerizing symphony" (Sacramento Bee). A powerful storyteller with an inclusive sense of humor, Joe's performances weave his immigrant narrative through his show, inspiring audiences to compassion and empathy in these divisive times: “…the American dream as it should be, [with] Kye reaching across the divide with music to try and heal it - for everyone” (PopMatters). Audiences will “learn about life as an Asian-American” (New York Times) and "believe anew that something glorious awaits the lovers, the dreamers and you" (Willamette Week). After studying music and culture at Yale University, Kye left a career as a high school educator to pursue music full-time. Kye has toured the United States with performances opening for cellist Yo-Yo Ma, comedian Hari Kondabalu, rapper Warren G, and Senator Bernie Sanders, along with nationally broadcast performances on NPR and BBC. Kye recorded his first TedX talk in November of 2018, and has been invited to speak on immigration, creativity, and cultural activism at schools, community organizations, and spiritual centers. Kye is a board member of BRAVO Youth Orchestras in Portland, Oregon.Previous collaborations include the Seattle Repertory Jazz Orchestra, the Sacramento Ballet, Seattle Artivist Sharon Nyree Williams, Alvin Ailey Composer/Percussionist William Catanzaro, and LA hip-hop artist Jason Chu. Kye has performed in venues like Benaroya Hall (Seattle), the Alberta Rose Theater (PDX), the Baryshnikov Arts Center (NYC), the White House, Carnegie Hall's Migrations Festival, and the National Portrait Gallery (DC). Kye is a Fishman and Neunaber Audio Effects sponsored artist, and has studied violin with Marjorie Kransberg-Talvi, John Kim, and Jim Mihara. (Source: JoeKye.com)Connect with Joe:Instagram: @joekyeFacebook.com/joekyetwitter: @joe_kyetiktok: @joekyewww.joekye.comLearn more about The Woori Showhttps://www.woorishow.org/Instagram: @thewoorishow// Support Dear Asian Americans:Merch: https://www.bonfire.com/store/dearasianamericans/Buy Me a Coffee: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/jerrywonLearn 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.com: http://www.instagram.com/justlikemedia

SOLA Network is pleased to release its new series “Artists in Motion.” We hope to platform Asian American Christian artists, as well as encourage all artists to root their identities in Christ and use their callings to share art and truth with the world. In our first installment, SOLA video manager Jason Chao interviews rapper and activist Jason Chu (also stylized jason chu). The two discuss how Jason Chu's Christian journey impacted his art, how the Asian American church can support artists, and more. Check out their conversation. Watch the video on YouTube: https://youtu.be/MltlS4CXu98 Read the transcript on our website: https://sola.network/article/speaking-hope-and-healing-in-a-broken-world-an-interview/ Email us your questions or conversation topics: podcast@sola.network Links: Weekly Newsletter: https://mailchi.mp/sola/tgif Monthly Newsletter: https://mailchi.mp/sola/newsletter Facebook: https://facebook.com/thesolanetwork Instagram: https://instagram.com/thesolanetwork Twitter: https://twitter.com/thesolanetwork YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCqsoKbSYBbZZoovA24PhqAg Podcast: http://anchor.fm/solanetwork Website: https://sola.network

What does it mean to be the "Model Minority"? Alan Z is a recording artist who's latest song off the album with Jason Chu, entitled "Model Minority" takes a deep dive into the myth of "White-adjacency" often attributed to Asian people.   Find Alan Z at:https://www.soundcloud.com/alanzmusichttps://www.youtube.com/alanzhttps://www.instagram.com/alanzmusic/The Upgrade Guyshttp://www.theupgradeguys.comhttp://www.instagram.com/theupgradeguyshttp://www.youtube.com/theupgradeguyshttp://www.twitter.com/theupgradeguyshttp://www.facebook.com/theupgradeguys

Listen in to this exclusive interview and find out more about the Face Value Project with entertainment industry triple threat Alan Z, and rapper-poet Jason Chu. -------- Follow BLOGTALK HOLLYWOOD with MJ Racadio! Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/BlogTalkwithMJRacadio/ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCz6ONIGY7_wc_wAHawcL8Vw --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/blogtalkhollywood/support

Jason Chu is a rapper and activist that is laying thoughtfully crafted lyricism over jazzy lo-fi beats and high energy trap bangers. He has performed at the White House during Obama's administration, The Getty Center, and the Chinese American Museum of Los Angeles. You can hear his music on Netflix (Wu Assassins), Cinemax (Warrior), and network TV. He tours extensively with shows across the US and worldwide.      You can find more about Jason at: http://www.jasonchumusic.com http://www.instagram.com/jasonchumusic http://www.twitter.com/jasonchumusic http://www.facebook.com/jasonchumusic Follow the Moana Nui Podcast: http://www.moananuipodcast.com http://bit.ly/MoanaNuiTube http://www.facebook.com/moananuipodcast http://www.twitch.tv/moananuipodcast Contact: moananuipodcast@gmail.com About Moana Nui Podcast: Moana Nui Podcast is a storytelling podcast to celebrate and honor the history, culture, & perspectives of POC, indigenous, and African Diasporan peoples.  #MoanaNuiPodcast #JasonChuMusic #FaceValue #AAPIExcellence #AsianAmerican #StopAsianHate 

Asian-American rappers Jason Chu and Alan Z are on Knew Amsterdam Radio this week to discuss their proactive collaboration, Face Value. The rap album, featuring appearances from Dante Basco, Ruby Ibarra, Ronny Chieng and more goes in-depth about the Asian and Asian-American experience. Learn more about their project at https://www.facevalue.world/. KnewAmsterdam.com --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/knewamsterdam/support

If you didn't know that the KMT government killed about 20,000 Taiwanese people in a one-month span in early 1947 and imprisoned about 140,000 more during the 40 years after, that's no accident. In Part 2 of a 2-part series, we share the way that the 228 Massacre and White Terror were handled since these events ended and the parallels to how governments handle similar events like the Tulsa Race Massacre and the Tiananmen Square Massacre.  Trigger warnings: violence, police/military brutality, totalitarian government.Invitation:Tells us how you define Taiwanese! Send us a voice message on Instagram, Facebook, or at heartsintaiwan.com/voicemail and we'll send you a Hearts in Taiwan sticker. Credits: "Making the Banned" by Jason Chu and Alan Z"Ronny's Outro" feat. Ronny Chieng from Face Value by Jason Chu and Alan Z Alan Z's Instagram: www.instagram.com/alanzmusicAlan Z's YouTube: http://bit.ly/alanz-youtube"Close to Home" by Vienna Teng (Spotify)Cover image: modification of a photo by Hung Jui-chin for Taipei TimesSee our show notes for  links to further reading about the events described in this episode.heartsintaiwan.com/blog/massacres-and-coverupsConnect:instagram.com/heartsintaiwanfacebook.com/heartsintaiwanheartsintaiwan.com/voicemail

Welcome back to Season 3 of Gold & Great, featuring bite size conversations with APIDA creatives and community leaders empowering you with action steps to get involved and engaged through entertainment. We kick off with Josh interviewing Jason Chu, rapper and activist, about his new multimedia project, Face Value, an album that delves deep into APIDA history with a diverse lineup of guests including Kollab SF alums Chow Mane and Ruby Ibarra. In this present moment of activism, how can we reflect and learn from our past? Please take 2-3 minutes to fill out a quick survey to better your podcast listening experience! Send questions, comments, and episode ideas to goldandgreat@kollaboration.org. Follow Jason Chu: Stream Face Value on all platforms Instagram: @jasonchumusic Twitter: @jasonchumusic Facebook: @jasonchumusic Follow Kollab SF: Twitter: @kollabsf Instagram: @kollabsf Twitch: @kollabsf Facebook: www.facebook.com/kollab.sf Website: www.kollabsf.org/podcast --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/gold-and-great/message

Emphasizing the importance of solidarity and unity across all Asian American communities, David is joined by rapper/activist, jason chu, and triple-threat in the entertainment industry, Alan Z. They dive deeper into why being unapologetically yourself is crucial, the importance of Asian American ancestors, and the need to always push the conversation one level deeper. Podcast Show Notes Guest Title: jason chu & Alan Z Recording Date: 2021-05-05 Episode Title: Music As a Catalyst For Change w/ jason chu & Alan Z Topics Discussed In This Episode: Topic 1 - Introduction Topic 2 - How they approach music as a social movement Topic 3 - Their journey into rap/entertainment industry Topic 4 - How they identify and how they bring that into their music Topic 5 - People they want others to learn about Topic 6 - Rapid Fire Questions Resources Mentioned In This Episode: E. A. R. L.: The Autobiography of DMX - https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/earl-dmx/1103476090 Be Water, My Friend: The True Teachings of Bruce Lee - https://www.waterstones.com/book/be-water-my-friend/shannon-lee/9781846046667 Face Value Album - https://orcd.co/jasonchu-alanz-facevalue Links: Handles: Jason's Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/jasonchumusic/?hl=en Alan's Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/alanzmusic/?hl=en Jason's Twitter - https://twitter.com/jasonchumusic Alan's Twitter - https://twitter.com/AlanZmusic Jason's YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCR0GLbbr3humz46fGwijwHQ Alan's YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCpUZULtrIfCQqxFehxcK63w Jason's Website - https://www.jasonchumusic.com/ David's Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/davidmoriya/?hl=en SAL Links: https://www.strongasianlead.com/ Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/strongasianlead_ / SAL's Feature in Feedspot's Top 20 Asian Film Podcasts - https://blog.feedspot.com/asian_movies_podcasts/ SAL Podcast Team: Project Manager - Sanjana DeSilva (www.theangryelephantproductions.com) Audio Editor - Ravi Lad (www.itsravilad.com) and @itsravilad on Instagram) Podcast Producer - Kenna Tanouye (Connect with her on LinkedIn) Podcast Volunteer Intern - Sadia Hussain Episode Transcript: Transcript of the episode's audio Full Episode Shownotes: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1OGNwTj-_UvXi5BUY1ZA2o9kOoP_gu7ySQp-gsU2K7VM/edit?usp=sharing Calls to Action: Join the movement, stay tuned, and follow us on Instagram!

We've been inspired lately by musicians who are making waves in genres where Asians are vastly underrepresented. Angela unpacks what The Linda Lindas' punk performances mean to her, and Annie finds flow with rapper Alan Z.Featured:“Never Say Never” and “Missing You” by The Linda LindasSpotify: http://bit.ly/linda-lindas YouTube: http://bit.ly/linda-lindas-youtube "Foreigner" by Alan Z x Jason Chu “Model Minority” by Alan Z x Jason Chu (feat. Dante Basco and Neela)Instagram: www.instagram.com/alanzmusic YouTube: http://bit.ly/alanz-youtube Connect:instagram.com/heartsintaiwanfacebook.com/heartsintaiwanheartsintaiwan.com

Today I sat down with a friend and inspiration of mine the very talented activist and musician, Jason Chu. In today's pod, we talk about our influences, upbringings, and the many collaborators of Jason's recent project, Face Value.

What better way to usher in May -Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month- than to hear Asian-American rapper and activist, Jason Chu talk about his musical career, his work with racial justice, and how his faith weaved his music and activism together? To start, he shared his journey of following the call to pursue music as the means to entertain, heal and educate people and coming to love and engage with Los Angeles and its issues. He then delved into his music career -and what was coming next (you NEED to hear all the artists that have partnered with him on this project -tune in to listen to Jason naming several of them! ). Featuring numerous artists, Jason's newest album of 15 tracks will each highlight a topic in Asian American history and its relevance to our current society, such as the model minority myth, beauty standards and the economic opportunities that ethnic food afforded the Asian American community. His full album will be out this Friday, May 14th, on all music platforms including Spotify, Pandora, and Youtube. For more updates, follow him on his social media handle @jasonchumusic. While speaking about his music, Jason also shared a multitude of profound encouragements to the Asian American community and aspiring artists. To name a few, he touched on not falling into "oppression Olympics" (in which struggles are authenticated or dismissed in the comparison game), learning to be constructive than reactive, being aware of the oppressors within us, holding onto the hope that those who mourn will be comforted and not spurning adversity and pain because they can lead to the unique blessings of "liminality", a term coined by theologian Sang Hyun Lee (listen to Jason speaking about this term -it was one of the most inspiring and edifying concepts we've heard on this podcast!). We know you'll be on the edge of your seat listening to Jason's thoughts on music building God's kingdom, on how to find hope through these challenging times of witnessing the increasing rates of violence against Asian Americans, and what is being released in his newest album so tune in!

Alan Z, a Chinese American Hip Hop, R&B artist from Atlanta joins Bao Vo for Coffee with BAO. We talk about his international upbringing, early infatuation with rap music, and his new album Face Value, a collaboration with Jason Chu dropping May 14, 2021. The album was partially sponsored by The Slants Foundation. We also get some advice from Alan Z about preserving personal spaces as an entertainer and harnessing the power of your own unique voice. Find info on Alan Z and Jason Chu's album Face Value at http://alanzmusic.com or on social media @alanzmusic Coffee with BAO is a series of casual conversations with Vietnamese American songwriter and music producer Bao Vo. The show explores the cultural identity, creative process, and personal growth of diverse guests from the creative and business world. Coffee with BAO is available as a Youtube video series and audio podcast. Your financial support is super appreciated. You can donate to help create this content at http://coffeewithbao.com --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/baovomusic/message Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/baovomusic/support

Rapper, poet, and activist Jason Chu joins BAO for the inaugural "beer with BAO" as they discuss his Chinese family's history in Southeast Asia, his journey building a decade-long career in hip hop, and his latest album "living.room," released with support from The Slants Foundation. Find Jason Chu at http://jasonchumusic.com Coffee with BAO is a series of casual conversations with Vietnamese American songwriter and producer Bao Vo exploring creative process, cultural identity, and personal growth. Coffee with BAO is also available as a podcast. Your financial support is super appreciated. You can donate to help create this content at http://coffeewithbao.com --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/baovomusic/message Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/baovomusic/support

What a year it has been... However you are celebrating, we're wishing you a happy New Year! In a matter completely unrelated to those celebrations, in this episode we're talking about hangover cures. Katie and Luke are joined by the delightful Jason Chu and are tackling news articles they have seen about alcohol, hangovers and hangover cures. Apologies for the poor sound quality, here's to a less interrupted 2021, with more episodes of the Have You Heard Podcast.Have you heard?Best cure for a hangover? Sprite, scientists claimBeer before wine not fine, scientists find after vomit-filled testsHangover cures: A Full English breakfast really is the FASTEST acting remedyYou can find the Have You Heard Podcast on YouTube, iTunes, Spotify or your favourite podcasting app. We'd love you to send us any interesting news articles you've seen, questions you have, or feedback for us. Leave a comment below, send us an email at haveyouhearduk@gmail.com or use our contact form. You can also contact us on Twitter or Facebook.Music in this episode:"Funkorama"Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

Jason Chu is a poet, musician, artist, and activist who in part is inspired by his progressive faith as a Christian. He talks about the renewed partnership of AAPIs with BLM. He also expounds on how his music has evolved since landing in LA several years ago.

The Model Minority Myth is often used to wedge Asian Americans between Black and White America. In this episode, we explore how that is a problematic ideology, and why we need a new approach to understanding race. We also address how African immigrants are wedged between racial groups in the same way. This episode features Mo Sibyl - a fellow podcaster - and Jason Chu - and Asian American rapper. Furthermore, we look to LA Race Riots as an example of racial tensions between Blacks and Asians, and try to see what we can learn. I'm Nidhi Shastri, and this is Model Minority: Uniquely American. The intro clip is from an interview done by Asian American activist Grace Lee Boggs. All music is from the CC Creative commons. Art: "Thick encyclopedias with colorful hardcovers" by Horia Varlan is licensed under CC BY 2.0 --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/nidhi-shastri/support

Jason Chu is a Chinese American rapper, poet, and activist. His music has been featured in Warrior (HBO/Cinemax) and Wu-Assassins (Netflix). He has opened for Snoop Dogg and Bernie Sanders, performed at the Obama White House and the Getty Center. He has lectured and spoken at UPENN, ArtCenter College of Design, the Philadelphia Asian American Film Festival, Stanford, NYU, Yale, Dartmouth, and beyond. In this episode, we discuss his journey to becoming a rapper and musician, including the struggles with mental illness, quarantine during this time, and activism in art. Connect with Jason: @JasonChu on all streaming platforms and social media platforms Connect with us: IG: @mxasianamerican Email: mxasianamerican@gmail.com Support: patreon.com/mxasianamerican

Welcome to Episode 7 of the Asian Hustle Network Podcast! We are very excited to have Jason Chu on this week's episode. We interview Asian entrepreneurs around the world to amplify their voices and empower Asians to pursue their dreams and goals. We believe that each person has a message and a unique story from their entrepreneurial journey that they can share with all of us. Check us out on Anchor, iTunes, Stitcher, Google Play Music, TuneIn, Spotify and more. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe and leave us a positive 5-star review. This is our opportunity to use the voices of the Asian community and share these incredible stories with the world. We release a new episode every Wednesday, so stay tuned! Jason Chu is a rising Chinese American rapper and activist. His music has appeared in Warrior (HBO/Cinemax), and Wu-Assassins (Netflix). Jason has opened for Snoop Dogg and Bernie Sanders, performed at the Obama White House and the Getty Center, and been presented at Flushing Town Hall and the Nate Holden Performing Arts Center. His lyrics and videos have been featured in the Chinese American Museum of Los Angeles. An Asian American cultural expert, Jason has lectured and spoken on arts, media representation, Asian- Black polyculturalism, and racial history at UPenn, ArtCenter College of Design, the Philadelphia Asian American Film Festival, Stanford, NYU, Yale, and beyond. His work has been covered by the BBC, NBC Asian America, South China Morning Post, NPR Sacramento, and other outlets. He holds a BA (with Distinction) in Philosophy from Yale College and was a contributing writer to the St. James Encyclopedia of Hip Hop Culture. --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/asianhustlenetwork/support

Jason Chu is a rising Chinese American rapper and activist. His music has appeared in Warrior (HBO/Cinemax), and Wu-Assassins (Netflix). Jason has opened for Snoop Dogg and Bernie Sanders, performed at the Obama White House and the Getty Center, and been presented at Flushing Town Hall and the Nate Holden Performing Arts Center. His lyrics and videos have been featured in the Chinese American Museum of Los Angeles. An Asian American cultural expert, jason has lectured and spoken on arts, media representation, Asian- Black polyculturalism, and racial history at UPenn, ArtCenter College of Design, the Philadelphia Asian American Film Festival, Stanford, NYU, Yale, and beyond. His work has been covered by the BBC, NBC Asian America, South China Morning Post, NPR Sacramento, and other outlets. He holds a BA (with Distinction) in Philosophy from Yale College and was a contributing writer to the St. James Encyclopedia of Hip Hop Culture.

In episode 10 of the GEMMA podcast, GEMMA intern Odysseus Quarles reviews the discovery and naming of Pōniuāʻena, the second-most-distant quasar discovered to date, and the oldest known billion-solar-mass quasar in the universe. Special thanks to the ʻImiloa Astronomy Center, for allowing us to use audio from their interviews with Jason Chu, Kaʻiu Kimura, Larry Kimura, and John O'Meara, and for leading the A Hua He Inoa program to unite cultural leaders, astronomers and students to share traditional knowledge with modern astronomical research.

In this episode, minister Larry Varghese joins Der and Melba to talk about the joys and challenges of building community in his Indian American Mar Thoma congregation. Centering is produced by Jason Chu, engineered by Alexander Catedral, with music by Mark Redito.

In this episode of PoPolitickin, we are joined by jason chu. jason chu is a rising Chinese American rapper and activist. His music has appeared in Warrior (HBO/Cinemax), and Wu-Assassins (Netflix). He has opened for Snoop Dogg and Bernie Sanders, performed at the Obama White House and the Getty Center, and been presented at Flushing Town Hall and the Nate Holden Performing Arts Center. His lyrics and videos have been featured in the Chinese American Museum of Los Angeles. As an Asian American cultural expert, jason has lectured and spoken on arts, media representation, Black/Asian cultural interactions, and racial history at UPenn, ArtCenter College of Design, the Philadelphia Asian American Film Festival, Stanford, NYU, Yale, and beyond. His work has been covered by the BBC, NBC Asian America, South China Morning Post, NPR Sacramento, and other outlets. https://grandmaster.bandcamp.com/

Join us for another great episode discussing Asian pride and leading a life of hope and not fear with Jason Chu. Jason Chu is a rapper, poet, and activist speaking hope, healing, and justice in a broken world, so it was only right to have him on to talk about how to move forward during racial injustices revolving COVID-19 and Black Lives Matter. Also check out his new Album "Living. Room".A reflection on growth, presence, and letting go of the past, "living.room" is 10 tracks of casually lyrical lo-fi rap music for warm, thoughtful days at home.Jason Chu:https://www.instagram.com/jasonchumusic/?hl=enhttps://open.spotify.com/artist/4iYrlt4ga3CGYF7Z2mUDxVYou can also listen to us on: Spotify:http://bit.ly/EatingCast Apple Podcast: https://tinyurl.com/EaTingCastEating Cast Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/theeatingcast/Chris Tsang Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dzer0/Vincent Trieu Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/trieu.vincent/4

In Centering, the Asian American Christian podcast, Hmong American minister Der Lor and Indian American therapist Melba Mathew explore how our communities are nurtured, built, and supported. In this episode, Der and Melba share about the tension and unity between their ethnic (Hmong, Indian) and racial (Asian American) identities. Centering is produced by Jason Chu, engineered by Alexander Catedral, with music by Mark Redito.

In "Being Community", this new season of Centering, Hmong American minister Der Lor and Indian American therapist Melba Mathew dive into the many ways Asian American Christian communities can be nurtured, built, and supported. For the first episode of the season, recorded during the COVID-19 global pandemic, Melba and Der look at the ways that Asian American community values are being challenged - or embraced - during this unprecedented time. Centering is produced by Jason Chu, engineered by Alexander Catedral, with music by Mark Redito.

Dear Asian Americans Interview with Jason Chu of NITEMRKT with Thoughts & Tips on How To Respond To and Fight COVID-19 Related Anti-Asian Racism

Based in LA, hip-hop artist/poet/activist jason chu is on a mission to speak hope, healing, and justice in a broken world. He tells stories about friends and families wrestling with fear and joy, greed and hope, hurt and healing. jason has performed at over 170 colleges (NYU, UMass, Wisconsin, Dartmouth, Williams, Yale, etc.), conferences (Urbana, NYCAASC, ITASA, etc.), and community organizations across the country, including a 2015 Asia mini-tour to Hong Kong and Beijing. He has partnered with The White House to fight bullying in Asian-American communities and the Alameda County Government to speak up on mental health issues. jason's work has been covered by the Huffington Post, the LA Times, the China Daily, AngryAsianMan, and other outlets.

In our first episode Jason Chu, from the HYH team, joins Katie and Luke to talk about stories they’ve heard in the news about food and drink. Join us to find out if chocolate can stop you aging, how much coffee you should be drinking, and whether wine is harmful or helpful. Have you heard? You can live longer if you combine chocolate and zinc, according to new studySix cups of coffee a day cuts your risks of dying early by 16%How much wine should you really be drinking? We’re always happy to hear your feedback, so if you have any comments or questions, or if you want to send us a science article that you’ve seen and want to know more about, get in touch. You can send us an email at haveyouhearduk@gmail.com or using our contact form. You can also contact us on Twitter or Facebook. Music in this episode:"Funkorama"Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

The Warrior ft. Chops and Jason Chu - Warriors MT Rap  NITEMRKT - Bang That Bao Megan Lee - Love Potion K!MMORTAL - Longing (Saturn Return) Little Dragon -  Lover Chanting Dumbfoundead -  CHILL FOO EPIK High - HERE COME THE REGRETS (feat. LEE HI) Jay Park -  Get It All (Feat. Cha Cha Malone)  Kero One - 24 Hours (feat. Julia Wu) Ruby Ibarra - Always Be My Maybe THIS! A great blend and balance of lyrical awesomeness, cutting edge beats, funk, and feel-good hiphop! 

Even over the past 12 months, Asian American representation has made historical breakthroughs into popular culture. How do we, as Asian American Christians, think about these new developments? For this final episode of Season 2, Irene welcomes sociologist Nancy Wang Yuen (author, "Reel Inequality" - www.nancywyuen.com) and rapper/poet Jason Chu (www.jasonchumusic.com)!

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 we hear from Artists Shaking Things Up. First we chat with International dancer, scholar and educator Tara Pandeya and then we speak with Visual Artists and curator Justin Charles Hoover about the new exhibit “Don't Believe the Hype, Asian Americans in Hip Hop.” We will also hear some tracks from Jason Chu's latest album and hear the Powerleegirls Miko Lee, Ayame Keane-Lee and Jalena Keane-Lee riff about politics, arts and culture.   The post APEX Express – July 12, 2018- Artist Shaking Things Up! appeared first on KPFA.

We pick up where we left off last week, as Hip-hop artist/poet/speaker/activist Jason Chu joins Brian, Axel and Naldo in the studio. In this second part of the episode, we talk about the idea of empowerment and dive deeper into Jason’s music. We dissect Jason's popular tracks "Marvels" and "Christian Muslim" and discuss Justin Chon's new movie, Gook.  

Hip-hop artist/poet/speaker/activist Jason Chu joins Brian, Axel and Naldo for a two-part episode where he shares his life story and work. We talked about culture identity and Jason's journey around the world and through the hip-hop world. 

Craig Taubman, acclaimed Jewish musician and founder of Pico Union Project in Los Angeles, Zach Lasker, the organization's new Executive Director, and Jason Chu, its Chief Storytelling Officer, bring their insights to Judaism Unbound for a timely discussion of art, "soul," loving our neighbors, and knowing our neighbors. If you're enjoying Judaism Unbound, please help us keep things going with a one-time or monthly tax-deductible donation. Support Judaism Unbound by clicking here. To access full shownotes for this episode, click here!

Weekly Disruption takes a break from our usual format to bring you a special interview with hip hop and spoken word artist jason chu @jasonchumusic. jason chu talks about what inspires him as an artist to create music that makes helps carry his message. In his music, jason chu has touched upon topics such as race, sexism, superheroes, and mental health. We get a special glimpse of his new album Arrivals and talk about his song, Asians for Black Lives. Music by hip hop artist jason chu http://www.jasonchumusic.com/ https://itunes.apple.com/us/album/arrivals/id1148842979 https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/jasonchumusic/arrivals-a-brand-new-full-length-studio-album-and featured music by jason chu - Asians for Black Lives #Apis4blacklives (ft. Jared Grimble) featured music from the album "Arrivals" by jason chu and Joe Kye - I See (Little Sister) Sound & Fury New Eyes (ft Ruth Cho) Speak (ft Chance Calloway)

Pacific Underground brings you a mixtape of kickass API artists: Run River North, jason chu, and Sugar Pie DeSanto.

Jason Chu got a degree in Criminal Justice from San Jose State that led to a job at the US Department of Justice. Working with his DOR counselor, he explored other options related to his field of study and now has a dream job at Google.

Welcome to the only site on the whole World Wide Web with the words: “They were friends forever and lived happily ever after." At least, the only one as far as a giant database of student papers, online texts, and a Google search can tell.  Full credit for originality goes to author Note to Self Producer Alex Goldmark, who spent the past few weeks on a quest to outsmart anti-plagiarism software Turnitin. Turnitin and programs like it are used in a third of high schools and half of colleges nationwide. A student submits their paper through the software, and then it's compared against an ever-growing database of writing (400 million submitted essays to date!), and evaluated with an "originality report." Teachers can see which sections set off warning bells, and a flashing red light goes off if big ideas clearly came from someone else. It's a pretty air-tight defense against copying and pasting culture, but young adults and their grade-wielding teachers have also learned a lesson of another sort in the process: Phrasing an idea in a completely new way? It's pretty rare, especially when the assignments haven't changed. Basically, plagiarism detection software confirms that sneaking suspicion in the back of your favorite English lit student's mind: You're working through ideas that have been thoroughly worked through, many times before. It has become just about impossible to have a truly new idea.  So, on this week's show, we'll admit, we're not the first to ask it: How important is originality, anyway?  In this episode: Sophie Oberfield, teacher at Stuyvesant High School Jason Chu, Education Director at Turnitin* Jack Howard, writing tutor and student at the University of Missouri There's a line of thought called "infinite monkey theorem," which says "Given an infinite length of time, a chimp punching at random on a typewriter would almost surely type out all of Shakespeare." (Wikimedia Commons) *An earlier version of this story incorrectly listed Jason Chu's first name. The text has been corrected.  Subscribe to Note to Self on iTunes, Stitcher, TuneIn, I Heart Radio, or anywhere else using our RSS feed. And sign up for our delightful newsletter here.  

Los Angeles rapper Jason Chu joins the podcast this week, touring the east coast promoting his new album Millennial. Tune in as Jason and Matt bond over mutual travels in China, discussing affirmation, authenticity and turning art into passion.

Hip Hop artist, Jason Chu, and Will Tseng, Editor-in-Chief of Inheritance Magazine, join host Gael Sylvia to discuss the AAPI Faith Conference in D.C.