Thank you to everyone who joined us on the afternoon of Saturday, March 3, 2018 for our AASU retreat, artivism: love reax only [love reacts only].
It was exciting to see everyone. We hope you all can join us again for more upcoming events!
Thank you to Sarah Wong SCR’18 for the wonderful poster!
This is a video I saw recently in my Social Documentation class with Tad Nakamura! He introduced it as an example of how as Asian Americans we have the power to make our own media, not reactionary to other media. It moved me and strongly touched upon the complexities of Asian American masculinity.
Check out this spoken word video from Bao Phi!
About Bao Phi(from his website):
Bao Phi has been a performance poet since 1991.
A two-time Minnesota Grand Slam champion and a National Poetry Slam finalist, Bao Phi has appeared on HBO Presents Russell Simmons Def Poetry, and a poem of his appeared in the 2006 Best American Poetry anthology. His poems and essays are widely published in numerous publications including Screaming Monkeys and Spoken Word Revolution Redux. He has also released several CDs of his poetry, such as the recently sold-out Refugeography to his newest CD, The Nguyens EP.
He has performed in venues and schools across the country, from the Nuyorican Poets Café to the University of California, Berkeley. He was featured in the award-winning documentary feature film The Listening Project as an American listener who traveled the world to talk to every day people about global issues and politics. He also returned to acting in 2008 with a feature role in Theatre Mu’s production of Q & A.
Photo courtesy of Michael Tran
In addition to his creative work, he was nominated for a Facing Race Ambassador award in recognition for his community work, and has published essays in topics from Asians in hip hop to Asian representation in video games. He maintains a popular blog for theStar Tribune’s website, which he uses to bring issues and alternative perspectives on Asian American community to light. Currently he continues to perform across the country, remains active as an Asian American community organizer, and works at the Loft, where he creates and operates programs for artists and audiences of color. He was the Coordinating Chair of the National APIA Spoken Word Poetry Summit, 2011.
His series, Equilibrium, recently won the Minnesota Council of Nonprofits Anti-Racism Initiative Award.
His first collection of poetry, Sông I Sing, is published by Coffee House Press. In 2012, the Star Tribune’s inaugural Best of Minnesota issue named Bao Phi as Best Spoken Word Artist.
Check out Bao Phi’s website here: http://www.baophi.com/
If you haven’t seen her newest music video for Fog Over Water, I’ve embedded it below! This is one of my favorite songs from Connie Lim. We’ve had her come to campus before, and she is amazing! Take some time out to appreciate her song and to support her work:
Here’s some info about her that I’ve gotten from her website!
As a child, California girl Connie Lim was imaginative yet shy. She loved drawing, painting, and writing short stories in her endless stacks of Sanrio notebooks. She then began writing short piano compositions at age eight, and spent most of her childhood overcoming stage fright. “The rush of pushing myself to do something I was so scared to do became addicting.”
From elementary to high school, Connie sang in the choir and various acapella groups. She was very active in school: from being student body president to homecoming queen. Connie’s future held many possibilities, and her parents had expectations for Connie to become a doctor or lawyer.
So rather than pursuing her musical talents, Connie followed in her family’s footsteps and enrolled as a pre-med student at UC Berkley. “I always loved the academic world because it gave my mind a place to challenge itself. However, I wanted to pursue the arts, yet was always told that a life as an artist would be impossible.”
Regardless, music continued to play a part in her life. Connie often found herself in the dormitory basement’s piano, playing music between study breaks. While trying to find her purpose, she also found her voice. She was even awarded best soloist in the International Competition of Collegiate Acappella, and “Cal Idol”. She took the awards as a sign of encouragement to form a band, and began playing live around the San Francisco area as much as possible.
“I never want to let the word ‘impossible’ limit my lifestyle, so I worked hard and continued to be thankful for any opportunities to share my music.” Now Connie’s dreams are becoming more possible than ever, and her team of supporters grow by the day. She signed with Jay Frank’s Nashville-based record label, DigSin, and released her debut single in March, 2012.
Connie and DigSin’s debut song “LA City” (Produced by Colbie Calliat’s producer, Mikal Blue.) is a beautiful and delicate love song filled with hope and heartbreak. The lush sounds of the piano combined with Connie’s stunning voice inevitably take the listener on the same romantic journey that inspired the song. Her youtube video continues to be shared across the world, with well over a quarter of a million views. “LA City” also gains radio play with one of Hong Kong’s main rtHK radio stations, and independent stations in California.
To top it off Connie was also chosen as a top 60 contestant out of the 70,000 auditionees on NBC’s first season of The Voice, and has graced the Staples Center as a national anthem singer for The Clippers this recent January. She now empowers herself by booking tours all over the nation, sharing her solo performance from city to city to city.
On Feb. 19, we wrote collaborative poems with each other during our AASU general meeting . AASU women wrote for 5 minutes on “home and family” or “my favorite food.” Then, we traded the poems with a partner and wrote a new poem based on the verbs in our partner’s poem! Here are some (anonymous) poems from the workshop. Enjoy!
~~> HOME IS WHERE MY MOM IS.
My mother called me down to eat
She quietly says “eat rice”.
The smells of the soups come drifting into my room
and the scent lingers on my clothes
The kitchen is dim as I sit beside her.
The vegetables and meat staring straight at me.
Everyone taskes their food away, but I sit
with my mother, bare feet touching
the cold tiles.
An exchange of silent glances.
Home is where my mom is.
—–
Drifting, drifting
Someone called to me from the shore,
begging me to come back,
But all I can do is stare.
They try to force me
to say this
to take that
until all that lingers is but a shell,
or maybe a hologram of a person.
But I refuse to listen.
Drifting, drifting,
until I find my path.
——-
Clouds flipping, lifting
to let daylight through
swirling, curling into each
other
a dragon, cupcake — wisps
of imagination drifting
cooking in my mind pouring
out through my words
imagination creativity dreaming
words power action.
———
She lets panko fall through
the small crevices between her fingers,
flipping the shrimp expertly in the
dim light of our kitchen.
Lifting up the glass lid of the
rice cooker, steam clouds her
expression.
She pours oil into the pan
and cooks the shrimp to a crisp.
Golden particles drift.
by heidi
(x-posted from my personal blog)
i read this poem at the tuesday night cafe show in claremont today. i threw it together last minute from pieces of blog posts and it’s not quite a poem by standards demanding poetic merit (meter! enjambment! ahhh), but i was proud of it because i believe in my words and i finally feel liberated from elitist writing constraints. *sigh of relief* at least, for now.
***************
i know
we must come back down from the heights we reach, because the earth breathes in and out just like we do and the sun rises and falls in crimson half-circles across the sky.
but let the body hum with the power of histories that make us infinite. open our heart to the wave crashing down on our sea. do not dread anything that comes before or after this. have no fear of loss.
to keep this
darkness from spreading through our insides, know that
we are timeless
send the words out into the world like praying. feel the words vibrate. use every word to carve a space in the world for us.
thousands of hands reaching out to touch our hearts, let them. they are covered in ivy and smell like earth. let them lift us up and pull us down to the ground at the same time.
i will not be another quiet casualty, because silence will not heal my wounds. do not push back against my emotion. take my energy as a gift. do not fear me because i believe i can do anything or because i believe i am waking up to a nightmare, because collectively we can survive. do not tell me that my passion is not something you also hold within, because i see it radiating colors near the surface of your skin when i choose to drench you in my passion.
***************
i am constantly unlearning self-absorption and learning to be grounded in community. i’ve been neglecting my promise to myself to write here tonight because i’ve been sitting here listening to beautiful music by indie api artists and basking in the afterglow of the day. seeing the beautiful connie lim walk through the door put a giant smile on my face and i was deliriously excited to be on the same stage as connie and andrew chiang. after i read, connie came up to me and complimented my writing and i kind of melted inside because i’ve been style/friend-crushing on her ever since i saw her at hotel cafe. she might be someone who would go to coffee shops and vintage clothing stores with me while chatting about life, love, art, and the universe. & unleash crazy ideas about random acts of creativity. revel in long dresses and lace.
and then andrew chiang serenaded me because i’m self-absorbed enough to raise my hand for a song dedicated to me and i melted again and reveled in our mutual awkwardness. gosh, i love the creative api community.
and now i’m filled with ideas to use the written word for community building – guerrilla poetry flyering? getting a communal journal for aasu? email poem chains? hmmmm. aasu, got any ideas?
One Sunday night, we all gathered together and wrote about our fear and someone else’s fear. With our creative power, we spun our fears into words, and finished off someone else’s fears. Below is the poetry of our collaborative efforts.
[One pair of poems is on two separate slides. Not because they’re more special than others, but because they just don’t fit in one slide.]
Nüshu
-by Heidi
Nüshu script is a form of simplified Chinese script invented and used by women in Hunan province as early as the 13th century. As women did not have equal access to education, nushu provided a form of written communication.
her mouth opens wider to form
syllables, phonetic against the drumbeat
my hands clap to each stroke falling from her tongue
reading from right to left
the character for
woman arrives first, tilts her head back
palms open and face skylit
beckoning across temporal distances
I am she,
my body arches in the canvas of sky
my limbs paint our liberation
you, sworn sister loving slowly behind the
symbology
i received a poem from you days ago
sewn into my clothes
black ink wrapped around my waist like leather, like cloth
cradling my organs
passed down generations
the words conduct secret choirs
twisted mouths in our abject faces open to sing
together
during the resistance our voices threatened them,
Japanese soldiers who marched to our doorsteps, left
footprints in front of our bedposts
the words are our weapons, the words are maps,
we are meant for this
language, we are meant
we are meaning
together
UNBOUND SPACES 