FIRST THERE WAS THE WORD, THEN THERE WAS THE FIST: Yearning/Learning to Speak at the 3rd National APIA Spoken Word and Poetry Summit

by Todd Lee

On August 18 through 21 in Boston, over 160 spoken word artists came together to “ build community, reconnect and expand the summit family, share our art, love and laughter, and strengthen a movement.” Poets came to Boston from Los Angeles, San Francisco, Texas, Utah, Chicago, Minneapolis , New York , Philadelphia and even Seoul, Korea. The summit was locally sponsored by Boston Progress Arts Collective, the Coalition for Asian/Pacific American Youth (CAPAY) and the Asian American Resource Workshop (AARW). The summit featured a youth day where artists worked with APIA youth and writing activities; a community day featuring field trips to Boston Asian communities, a community dinner and showcase; and a family day where summit participants attended workshops with artists such as Regie Cabico, Dennis Kim, DJ D Double, Janet Kim, Leah Lakshmi Piepznap-Samarasinha, and “unofficial Asian American photographer laureate” Corky Lee.

The Azine had the pleasure and privilege of being one of the community organizations that participated in the community dinner and showcase. Both events were a great opportunity for artists to learn about the community organizations and for community members to meet, interact with and learn from the artists.

At the showcase, artists spoke to the significance of the summit and their aspirations for their art. As co-host Leah Lakshimi Piepzna-Samarasinha said in kicking off the night, “This is us being the majority people of color we are here”, referring to Boston newly becoming a majority people of color city, “this is about us making history”.

“It’s so important for Asian poets to have a space to be able to express themselves in ways that are both artistic and political,” said Vietnamese American poet Bao Phi. Marian Thambynayagam explained that, “ Coming together through art is a way to heal ourselves, empower ourselves and challenge each other with love”. Isa Nakwazawa talked about how “everyone’s on the same playing field” and expressed appreciation for being on stage with artists she’s looked up to and feeling support and community, not competition or onesupsmanship. Summit organizer Giles Li summed up the diversity and community of the night and week, saying, “So many different points of view – but when it comes to supporting each other, these differences only accentuate what’s similar”.
The appropriately named showcase event really displayed the poets’ diversity and the tangible community feeling of the summit. About 30 different artists performed , and each was greeted with the whoops, cheers and applause usually reserved for rock or pop stars. From the theater-like balconies to the floor to the stage, there was much love in the Jorge Hernandez Cultural Center on the night of the showcase.

The telling of our stories, and the power of claiming that and shouting it to the rooftops, was a continuing thread in the performances. The substance and style of these stories covered the range of our experiences. Robert Karimi and DJ D Double told the story of his mother and father coming together and produce Robert, weaving together Robert’s dancing, theatrical narrative and the jump-cutting soundtrack of D Double’s musical commentary. When 911 hit the Karimi household, Robert’s father declared Robert as “poison” and the piece becomes an in-joke/diatribe and refutation against an America that would turn all Iranians, all Arabs into “poison”, degrading their humanity. In similar fashion, Marian Thambynayagam turned the erotic/exotic typecasting of whites into a powerful, roof-raising voice with volume to match it’s exalting message, “I be rage; I be fury; I be hope …I am the poet who seeks the truth”. With her cellist’s haunting accompaniment, her arms and legs and expressively undulating body punctuating the words, Marian transformed the performance into a multi-media tone poem of word, dance and music. In contrast to the subtle ironies of other performers, Omar Tanaka went into a full-on revenge fantasy, in a sick, twisted parody of a white racist world turned around so that Asians are the tormenters. Khanh Le’s intense piece was not ironic in the least; he courageously took on the “big dick” machoisms of some male Asian spoken word artists, imploring/demanding that Asian men build our masculinity without alienating and isolating gay men and reducing Asian women to accessories to our trips. Isa Nakazawa barbed some of our current fascination with bling bling materialism and celebrity worship, reminding us that “I’m pretty sure Kanye West has copped diamonds from Sierra Leone”. Ed Bok Lee told a survivor’s tale, landing on the ground after a desire to fly from the repression and self-hatred of APIA alienation leads to drugs, pointlessness and the suicide of his friend Andrew. When Tamiko Beyer, in a piece meant to “celebrate all things gay” , says “we are coming” she is both being literal about her and her lover and declaring her/our arrival in the world. Likewise, Michelle Myers loves the fact that her little Black neighbor “proclaims: my block; my hope; my life” and celebrates the promise of young people, the “laughter of sunflower children blooming beautiful in Detroit”, the triumph of beauty by the people in a city that much of the country dismisses as blighted. Bao Phi takes this one step further, with terrifying clarity and horrible beauty recalling the image of his mother’s death. His mother “became a thousand red stars … falling”.

In these poets’ words, the beautiful, terrible, endlessly messy stuff of life comes alive. Vinh Hua paints striking, but familiar images when he talks about “too strong and too sweet coffee” and “sometimes we drown in love”. In his funny, poignant tribute to a Korean farmer/anti-WTO activist who took his life in protest, Terry Park says, “ I remember the first silence of the morning … cool like well water … big buckets of stillness”. This is terrific stuff. It is this real stuff of life, in contrast to the often-plastic slickly commercial product of mass culture such as MTV, that the artists claim, proclaim, and celebrate – the truth of the poet. It is aggressive truth-telling in the midst of misinformation and oppression; it is a form of resistance.

My favorite quote from African American poet Amiri Baraka is “the purpose of Black Art is to find the self, then kill it”. While there’s a self-hating edge to that statement that is troubling, the first part of the statement is golden. Everything in American society, and even remnants of some of our own feudal culture, tells APIA people to deny the self, and distorts our sense of self, and the truth of our lives. While we must realize the inextricable way our selves are tied to the other selves in the APIA communities, and beyond that, to the oppressed peoples of the world, if we avoid the trap and illusion of individualism, the true excavation and exaltation of self – especially if done collectively - can be liberating. It strikes me that in their dedication of seeing, proclaiming and exalting the true stuff of our lives, these poets are creating a language for our experience, and articulation of our APIA-ness. And in the aggressive assertion of that, against all the bullshit distortion and noise of corporate, distorting culture, there is much power. It’s the beginning of the word becoming the fist, and more power to them and us.