April 19, 2017 International Examiner

INTERNATIONAL EXAMINER

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April 19, 2017 – May 2, 2017 — 1

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Executive Order 9066: Artists and activists draw parallels to the present

By Chetanya Robinson IE Assistant Editor When Tom Ikeda gives presentations on the incarceration of Japanese Americans during World War II, he likes to show a black-and-white photo of his grandparents accepting an American flag in honor their son, who was killed by a sniper in Italy.

Ikeda never met his uncle, who died fighting for the 442nd Regimental Combat Team, which was the most decorated unit for its size in U.S. military history, and made up mostly of Japanese American soldiers.

What’s not immediately clear from the photo is that, as they accepted the flag, Ikeda’s grandparents were incarcerated in Minidoka concentration camp (or War Tom Ikeda’s grandparents Fred Suyekichi and Akino Kinoshita (left and center) accept the flag in honor of Relocation Center) in Idaho. And before their son, Staff Sergeant Francis “Bako” Kinoshita. • Photo courtesy Tom Ikeda he enlisted in the war, their fallen son had also been incarcerated, first at the Order 9066, which led to the incarceration gerous, subversive group that can’t be Puyallup Fairgrounds and then Minidoka. of an estimated 110,000 Japanese trusted,” Ikeda said.

Americans, two-thirds of them U.S. Arsalan Bukhari, executive director Ikeda, the founding executive director of citizens. It began in earnest on March 30, of the Washington Council on Amerithe nonprofit Densho, never experienced with 200 residents of Bainbridge Island can–Islamic Relations (CAIR), points life in the concentration camps himself, rounded up by the military and put first to nearly half of the American public— but his organization records the oral on a ferry, and then a train, bound for the of all political persuasions—supported histories of those who did, and seeks to Manzanar concentration camp in central Trump’s travel ban. educate people. Ikeda has personally California. conducted over 250 interviews.

Looking at this way, Bukhari argues, Ikeda sees troubling parallels to the it wasn’t Trump who created the public In August 2016, the parents of slain U.S present. will to ban Muslims or create a registry.

Army Captain Humayun Khan famously “I grew up in the Japanese American It was there all along. Bukhari said that rebuked Donald Trump at the Democratic National Convention for his xenophobic community—it just didn’t make sense that even if Hillary Clinton or someone campaign. The Khans’ speech brought the government did this,” he said. “But else became president tomorrow, not Ikeda to tears, as he wrote in the Seattle then you see how powerful the media and much would be different for American Globalist. The speech was something his the government can be in terms of shaping Muslims. grandparents could have said after they perceptions. And it’s clear to me, it’s so “I think the executive orders might be clear that that’s what’s happening to the the only thing that’s different. The hate posed for that photo in Minidoka.

Muslim community.” crimes, and coverage, the portrayal, “Where I ache most is that my Ikeda points out that incarceration public sentiment, will continue on,” he grandparents weren’t able to accept the American flag in Seattle,” Ikeda said in was preceded by decades of government said. banning and restricting a recent interview. It was the city they policies While Ikeda sees some hope in Japanese immigration and preventing immigrated to near the turn of the century. the willingness of American citizens “They had to accept it in this dusty field land ownership, as well as media and to stand up to injustice if something in a concentration camp. That saddens me entertainment depicting Asians as a similar to Japanese incarceration that they were seen to be so dangerous that sinister, scary force threatening American happened today, Bukhari is less that’s how they were treated, when I know values. optimistic. they weren’t. Going forward, I just don’t Donald Trump’s executive order ban“God forbid if there were ever a want another community to be treated ning citizens from seven predominantly proposal for incarceration of American that way. It’s just so not American.”

Muslim countries from entering the Unit- Muslims, the same public will ...

February 2017 marked 75 years since ed States—intended as a legal “Muslim President Roosevelt signed Executive ban”—portrayed Muslims “as this dan9066: Continued on page 5 . . .

Hate crimes bring anxiety, action for South Asians

By Kamna Shastri IE Contributor “Go back to where you came from,” “Go home”—these were the words uttered by perpetrators just before they pulled their triggers in hate crimes targetting South Asians over the past two months. In February, Srinivas Kuchibhotla of Kansas was shot and killed while his friend Alok Madasani was wounded in a hate crime. Locally, the shooting of Deep Rai, a practitioner of the Sikh faith, in his own driveway in Kent caught the attention of local and national news. The man was approached by his assailant who had covered his face on an early March evening. An argument ensued.

Then the gunman shot Rai in his arm. For the South Asian community in the Pacific Northwest, these incidents have sparked new concerns as well as activism.

Neeti Mittal, president of The India Association of Western Washington, is seeing the emotional consequences take shape around her. Families that once spoke in their regional languages in public, and people who wore traditional salwaar kameez to run errands, are changing their habits to keep a low profile.

Mittal says that this environment of hostility has created tension for the community’s American-born children: “I just feel bad that the kids who were born here, they are starting to feel confused and that is not good for the fabric of our nation,” she said.

Crimes targetting South Asians are happening at rates comparable to post-9/11 panic after dipping over the past decade, according to a report published last month by the organization South Asian Americans Leading Together. In a report published earlier this year, SAALT found that 94% of the crimes collected in their database between January and November 2016 were motivated by anti-Muslim sentiment. The victims of these crimes however held varying identities and spanned countries of origin from Ethiopia to Bangladesh.

What the Data Says The Seattle Police Department’s (SPD) Bias Crime Unit reports its citywide bias crime data, collecting and categorizing incidents by motivation. Since the beginning of 2017, the SPD has collected 50 incidents of biasmotivated crime in total. Twenty-one cases HATE CRIMES: Continued on page 4 . . .

2 — April 19, 2017 – May 2, 2017

INTERNATIONAL EXAMINER

IE OPINION

Letters to the Editor

When two sides of a historical debate are not equal The following is a letter to the editor by Joseph Shoji Lachman in response to the article, “Millennials Reflect on Executive Order 9066 and its Modern Parallels,” which appeared on the International Examiner website on March 23, 2017. The article quoted a student who said that he believed World War II justified Executive Order 9066.

The IE acknowledges that more historical context should have been added within the article to reflect the writer’s intent of showing that there are some young people today who misunderstand Executive Order 9066 and the injustice of the incarceration of people of Japanese decent during WWII; and that there is a need for more education about the actual history of the United States. The IE regrets not taking the opportunity to effectively and directly address the quote and expand on this context more within the article itself. The IE appreciates the continued discussion in Lachman’s letter to the editor. The article will be updated online to better represent the historical context.

*** As an occasional contributor to the International Examiner, I appreciate its commitment to high quality journalism for the local Asian American community.

However, this also means calling it out when it is not achieving that mission.

Recently, an International Examiner article was published online titled, “Millennials reflect on Executive Order 9066 and its modern parallels.”

I was glad to see thoughtful responses from today’s youth showing an understanding of the past and what kind of parallels exist in modern times. However, one stood out to me, and that was an opinion from a student in Bellevue who claimed somewhat paradoxically that there were no parallels between the Japanese American incarceration and modern immigrant and

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Established in 1974, the International Examiner is the only non-profit pan-Asian and Pacific Islander American media organization in the country. Named after the International District in Seattle, the “IE” strives to create awareness within and for our APA communities. 409 Maynard Ave. S. #203, Seattle, WA 98104. (206) 624-3925. iexaminer@iexaminer.org.

refugee ban, but that both were justified for apparently similar reasons. This seems to be an attempt at providing balance, but it differs in one other important way—its lack of basis in historical fact.

First, I would like to emphasize that I am not opposed to the inclusion of dissenting opinions. It is healthy for news media to acknowledge that a variety of opinions exist so that we can confront them. The problem was the lack of historical context given here.

For example, the student gives the tired argument that “we were in the midst of WWII, [and] the lives of those serving at Pearl Harbor had already been taken.”

Attacks by foreign military and wartime itself have since been rejected as legal basis for denying civil liberties to American citizens and their families. On top of that, the student says, “We had very little knowledge about our new enemy, and we knew that there were millions of Japanese immigrants living here in America.” This is not a statement of opinion, and shouldn’t be treated as such. The most obvious part is that the 1940 census showed only 127,000 people in the U.S. of Japanese ancestry, not “millions.” A little further research would have shown that indeed the government had been conducting extensive surveillance of Japanese Americans for quite some time, and the navy and FBI both recommended against forced removal and incarceration.

The Immigration Act of 1924 had already banned the immigration of people of both Asian and Middle Eastern descent decades before incarceration, which is why over 60% of those incarcerated were American citizens by birth, while the rest were banned from citizenship until the law changed in 1952. All of this information has been available for decades, and yet the illusion of controversy persists.

My main concern is actually not this student’s uninformed take on history, although it does reveal a need for improved Japanese American history curriculum

IE BOARD OF DIRECTORS Ron Chew, President Heidi Park, Vice President Gary Iwamoto, Secretary Arlene Oki, At-Large Jordan Wong, At-Large Edgar Batayola, At-Large Lexie Rodriguez, At-Large Peggy Lynch, At-Large Nam Le, At-Large

nationwide. What worries me most is the fact that these falsehoods were presented without any context or refutation. Even though I could immediately identify them as false, many readers will not be as familiar with the history, and can be misled into thinking that this “opinion” has just as much credibility as that of Seattle JACL President Sarah Baker, who is quoted in the next paragraph, but not given a chance to refute anything from the student.

Again, this is not about silencing voices, but ensuring that we maintain the integrity of our media organizations. Over time, objectivity has become a sacred ideal of journalism, but it should not be a crutch or a shield. Objectivity should not mean juxtaposing any two opposing opinions and refraining from commenting on their validity.

In the end, opinions based on falsehoods are indeed less valid than those based on historical fact, and we must recognize this when choosing what views to publish, and

Joseph Shoji Lachman

Conscious Choices: Sound Transit inflated car tabs—bait and switch—fraud?

The Seattle Times’ April 8, 2017 cars to their home grown car valuation article titled, “Talk, little action on method, particularly for older cars, the whole thing feels like a bait and inflated car tabs,” got my goat.

I voted for the increase in car tabs switch, and a breech of public trust.

If the legislation won’t—not can’t, but won’t—fix this, then our fearless Attorney General Bob Ferguson and Secretary of State Kim Wyman should put their heads together to see Without honest prior notice to if the increased car tab vote should be voters on the ballot that Sound Transit investigated, overturned, and/or take would change the industry standard Sound Transit to court. “blue book” reference valuation for Maria Batayola because I support Sound Transit’s build out. Never did I imagine that they would bait and switch the car tabs calculation method to collect more money from us .

EDITOR IN CHIEF Travis Quezon editor@iexaminer.org

ASSISTANT EDITOR Chetanya Robinson news@iexaminer.org

ARTS EDITOR Alan Chong Lau arts@iexaminer.org

COMMUNITY RELATIONS MANAGER Lexi Potter

DIGITAL MEDIA EDITOR Anakin Fung

lexi@iexaminer.org

DIGITAL MEDIA INTERN Kai Eng

BUSINESS MANAGER Ellen Suzuki

STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER Isaac Liu

finance@iexaminer.org

what context to provide. This is particularly important when discussing well documented human and civil rights travesties. We can still stay grounded in historical fact while having a meaningful discussion of modern issues, and in fact it is vital that we do so to honor the legacies and sacrifices of those who came before us.

Finally, I would like to thank the International Examiner, which unlike the Tri-City Herald, proved that it is receptive to constructive criticism, and allowed me to submit this response. I hope this will not discourage the author from continuing to write, and that it will be a learning experience for all. No newspaper is perfect, but it is encouraging to know that the International Examiner can learn from its mistakes to avoid repeating them, just as I hope American society will learn from its past to ensure that it also does not repeat its past wrongs.

COPY EDITOR Anna Carriveau

CONTRIBUTORS Kamna Shastri Sharon Maeda Kunthy Nouv Betsy Aoki Laura McKee Frances Lee Justine Chan Michael Schmeltzer Tarisa Matsumoto Misa Shikuma Chris Potter DISTRIBUTORS Joshua Kelso Makayla Dorn Maryross Olanday Rachtha Danh Antonia Dorn Kristen Navaluna Kat Punzalan

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COMMUNITY VOICES

INTERNATIONAL EXAMINER

April 19, 2017 – May 2, 2017 — 3

Cling to your heritage, the journey is worth the growth

By Kunthy Nouv F.I.G.H.T. My name is Kunthy Nouv. There are a number of ways one can pronounce my name, but how I choose to pronounce it is (Gon’–T).

Since I can remember, so many of my teachers and peers has had trouble with pronouncing my name. For 19 year,s I’ve said my name as I would any of these words; with an English dialect, as many people would while reading English. Then it was pronounced (Kun–Thee).

That was before I began to say it as it should have been said.

Looking at my name reminds me of Tobi from Roots. That was not always his name. I hadn’t realized at the time, but I was beginning to conform into a way of life I knew less about than how I was brought up, and growing up Buddhist in America ... well I was all sorts of confused. How do you carry your self as a young Khmer son growing up in America?

There was no instruction manual for that. All I knew was if I didn’t listen to what grandma told me, then repercussions were inevitably delivered with a pinch to the arm or a knuckle to my big ol’ head.

When I was in the streets, grandma tried hard to keep an eye on me. That lady would follow me in her ’93 Honda Civic when I would take the metro to the community center to play ball with friends. She would chase all the girls away. During my youth I allowed myself to be misguided. I allowed myself to believe that hurting others would gain me respect. I have only learned within the last two years that fear and respect are two very different things. As I began to see all the hurt and pain I inflicted upon others, and in my own life, I realized the morals and values of the streets I once upheld could not resonate with who I was becoming.

Who I was meant to be.

I was booked into county jail in 2014.

During my year-stay I became painfully aware of a greater “need.” That something was not tangible. As I work toward that something now I can only describe it as spiritual. I see that as long as this need can put an end to

unnecessary suffering, and can help to better me all her ethnic Cambodian food secrets. one’s life and way of living. I see no harm in Even helping her plant flowers in her garden. calling that need a spiritual journey.

I would have never thought that I could I was told once that when a man loses his be witness to a sense of unity in this kind of culture he loses a part of his identity. Although environment—an environment where inertia we as humans are so much more than skin and submission is rewarded. I learned so color, ethnicity, or religion, or our career much from my brothers’ Islander dances that path—whatever else that describes us, or even I wanted to contribute as much as I could to yet what we may relate to our character— the next event. I was able to share about the without a sense of who we are or what we genocide of my people during the time of the should do with our lives there is always a Communist War, caused by a man named Pol longing. So what do we do? We fill that void. Pot. Also that my Chinese ancestors were the We find and do things that interest us and we do first to make paper out of wooden pulp. It’s it so much it becomes a part of who we are. We clear to me that so much of my culture has often get so involved in our daily rituals; work, been lost and there is still yet more for me to sports, social media, videos/games, partying, learn. you name it. We forget about things ranging I came to the United States at the age of from great importance to little importance. So two. That being said I am Americanized, but answer for yourself: “How hard could it be to Grandma made sure I was raised a child of forget the customs of your culture, heritage, Cambodia. The traditions and experiences maybe even our racial identity?” Can’t be to I’ve witnessed must be preserved. I am hard. Maybe none what’s been mentioned responsible for that. holds meaning to who you are. However, it As of this moment I am residing at Stafford should.

Creek Correctional Center. This facility does For me a big portion of having a greater not give us the opportunity to have an API need had to do with who I was—The urge for Cultural Awareness Group. There are men me was to start from the beginning, straight here who are trying to change that. Stafford to the very roots of my identity. My only Creek implemented a group called Cultural problem was that my resources were limited. Diversity Group (which I am apart of). The That urge started when I was at Walla Walla Diversity Group focuses on so many other State Penitentiary. Our Asian Pacific Islander groups, I wonder if there will ever be time for Cultural Awareness Group was getting ready our API group to learn more of our culture to celebrate our API Event; a day to bring our than what we may already know. I’m afraid families together and show them that we are that we are being reduced to stagnation. I am still keeping and holding onto our customs by unsure why other prisons allow for a diversity teachings through dance, speeches, lectures, group as well as an API group while SCCC and food. Our API Events are also there to does not. What I do know is that as long as show our families that we aren’t letting the that urge, that fire within stays lit, my racial normality of prison politics dictate how we identity and the customs of my ancestors will put to use our time. never die.

The experience for me was surreal. The We all have problems. People in prison time I spent with my Asian Pacific Islander face opposition just as people on the outside brothers preparing for the event was in itself do; pertaining to anything that we may set a learning experience: physically, spiritually, as a goal. For our API Cultural Awareness mentally, as well as morally. Most importantly group, our goal is to actually establish such a we all grew to understand a deeper meaning of group here at SCCC. We all must persevere, family. I can’t wait to have my grandma teach especially during times of adversity. If we

don’t, we can’t even claim the fact that we at least tried.

If we all could see life as being more than what meets the eye, we would all be less ignorant and more conscious. We may be a product of our environment but we can rise above that norm. We can begin to see that our environment does not define us. It is how we choose to live our lives that makes us who we are. Past, present, and future. When that is done, we can then say that we have transcended.

I hope others will cling onto their heritage— whatever that may be—so that they in turn can pass down this cultural identity to others as well. In the end, wherever you may find yourself, take heart and believe that we will all make it. To all with love. Peace and truth be within us all. The journey is worth the growth.

Formerly Incarcerated Group Healing Together (F.I.G.H.T.) was started by a group of Asian & Pacific Islander (API) men who were at one time incarcerated in the Washington state prison system.

F.I.G.H.T. is a direct outgrowth of the organizing that many of us did through different API groups in different prisons.

This organizing built deep bonds of unity among us. Together we learned about our own diverse cultures and political histories, life experiences, and perspectives. We also created cultural celebrations featuring various forms of traditional arts, like language, music, and dance.

Upon being released, we stayed committed to continuing to support each other, whether inside or outside of the prison system. We support both current and formerly incarcerated APIs through mentoring, advocacy, outreach, and political education. We encourage each other to embrace positivity, compassion, strength, hope, confidence, and building healthy lives and healthy communities, while breaking the cycle of mass incarceration. For more information, visit www.fightwa.org.

Seattle Mayor’s Race: Your vote will count now more than ever

By Sharon Maeda Guest Columnist

the field of candidates, the harder her chances and the more refined her campaign will need to be.

While the President was bombing Syria and Afghanistan—and still determined to end the Affordable Care Act, deport immigrants, and create a Muslim ban—the political buzz in Seattle has been all about the race for Mayor.

Two months ago, Mayor Ed Murray was headed for any easy reelection.

Then, last month Nikkita Oliver, a progressive activist woman of color announced her candidacy, exciting diverse young activists.

Nikkita Oliver

For IE readers, we need to pay close Today, former mayor Mike McGinn attention and keep our eyes on the prize. announced at his home that his band We know that Murray has done some good things for the community and is coming together for another run. neglected us on others (think Donnie What could have been a lazy Chin and Navigation Center). But, will a campaign has just turned red hot lawsuit against him for sexually abusing and there’s still a month before a teenager decades ago be too much? At filing closes … and rumors abound best, it is a sad situation for him, his that other potential candidates are family, and the city at a time when we considering a run as we speak.

And, for McGinn, four years out of office can be an eternity. Clearly, he learned a lot the first time around, and would hit the ground running and advocate for the big issues facing the city vs. Trump. Can he win? Where are all those communities of color, environmentalists, immigrants/ refugees, and unions? Will the big unions dump Murray and go with McGinn? Will the Seattle Times rehash Mike McGinn old news or give him a fair chance? can ill afford distractions. Whether true How many of his supporters have been gentrified out of Seattle? or false, this election is up for grabs.

And, the biggest question of all is For some API activists, Oliver reflects their hopes for a new society but has lim- whether Murray will spare us all the ited campaign or governance experience. salacious details and drop out. And who She’s an attorney and compelling spoken else will get in the race? Stay tuned. It’s word artist who reflects a new generation going to be a real race. register to vote of political leaders. Running against Mur- and pay close attention. ray would certainly frustrate him at canTo register, visit www.kingcounty. didate forums if nothing else. The larger gov/de pt s/elect ion s/sos/reg i steronline.aspx.

4 — April 19, 2017 – May 2, 2017

INTERNATIONAL EXAMINER

IE OPINION

How to answer, ‘So, what’s next?’ after graduation

By Brandon Hadi IE Columnist

questions than answers. Here’s what I wish someone told me when I was in your shoes:

Almost a year ago, I walked across the stage to receive my college diploma. It was a moment I imagined since I was a child— college was meant to be the pinnacle of adolescence, the marker of adulthood, and I couldn’t wait to claim my newfound freedom.

It’s okay not to land a job right away (or even several months) after graduation.

I was caught unawares, however, when the euphoria was subtly replaced with anxiety. “Congratulations” was quickly followed by “What’s next?,” breeding anxious thoughts and nervous laughter. My plan to enjoy my “time off,” taking it easy during my gap year to sort things out, soon turned into a frantic search for career opportunities, driven by madness.

Once I found a job, the questions kept coming. “When are you going back to school? For which program? How about the GRE or MCAT? Letters of recommendation? Research experience?” More frantic searching.

A few months later, with a job, research experience, and other projects that have prepared me for the next step, I’ve found answers to most of these questions. Truthfully, though, this period of my life has been exponentially more challenging than I imagined. After all, I was expecting to have some “time off”!

After I graduated, I ran away. Literally.

I went to Thailand for 5 weeks, and almost decided to stay there for good. With all the anxiety that went into looking for a job, I chose to remove myself from the situation entirely, hoping that the distance and novelty would rejuvenate me for the job hunt ahead. Unfortunately, I didn’t have the foresight to anticipate “what’s next?” questions from friends and family there, which added to the pressure I was already feeling. Ultimately, I decided it was best to return to Seattle and figure things out through action.

being in the “real world” means less structure. For an anxious, over-thinker, overplanner like myself, I find the ambiguity trickier to schedule around than when I had limited free time. Through lots of trial and error, I’ve figured out that the best time for me to do some self-development is during my commute to and from work. If I’m feeling tired, I’ll switch in a nap instead. After work, I’ll hit the gym and meal prep for the week.

Photo courtesy of Brandon Hadi

By streamlining the necessities to maintain my own mental and physical health, I have time to focus on having fun—spending time with loved ones, going to community events, and exploring new places.

You will be alright. Your job search won’t be the end of you, and whatever you manage to find does not and will not define you. Be patient with yourself and your career, and remember to take care of yourself by doing the things that make you feel loved and alive.

When I came back, I still had no job, no plan for what was next, and no idea where I would be living. Leaning on friends, being open to more options for employment than I originally had in mind, and finding a practice to cultivate my self-esteem (yoga, reading, and listening to podcasts) helped me navigate the uncertainty without allowing my stress to become unmanageable.

I still enjoy my job, and my coworkers are especially awesome, but I’ve come to terms with the fact that, truly, a career is built across a lifetime. And for our generation, that most likely means a myriad of work experiences with different organizations.

Patience is key. In the meantime, I plan to enjoy this period of my life as much as I can, while still strategizing and mapping out what will serve my future self best.

tative took to the stage to assure community members that the BPD stands with them and that they should turn to the police department at any time.

The mood was somber at the #WeBelong vigil. Homemade signs were hoisted in the air.

A gray sky and the bone-biting cold mimicked the tragedy behind the vigil’s premise. Even in extreme weather, more than a hundred-people huddled together listening to speakers who unanimously called for the South Asian community to organize and get involved rather than to stay at home, worried and fearful.

IAWW has been organizing hate crime workshops in Bellevue, with help and support from Bellevue Police Department. So far, two workshops have taken place, with March’s workshop bringing 200 attendees. The workshops provide attendees with a combination of best practices for self-protection, emergency response, and awareness. Upcoming workshops plan to expand to other places and focus on appropriate physical and mental steps to take in the face of a hate crime.

Lalita Uppala is the community program director for IAWW’s programs. “There is ... the realization that we are not necessarily emerging unscathed from the irrational anger and racism towards immigrant communities hence the need to act has intensified and the understanding of what other immigrant communities experience dawned clear,” she said.

South Asians are already immensely diverse, with intertwining and diverging histories, religions, and cultures that brush up

against one another under the same label mak- Pramila Jayapal, Kshama Sawant, and Vaning collaboration across and beyond South dana Slatter.

Asian communities necessary.

Watson also brought to light an interesting and contested situation in the South Asian So, what should we do? community. While there is a range of inDuring IAWW’s workshop in March, Mit- comes and issues faced by the many groups tal brought up a question: What do we do that make up a larger South Asian regional when verbal harassment is protected under diaspora, South Asians’ image as educated, the freedom of speech clause, but has the skilled professionals calls into question how consequence instigating fear in an individual such privilege should be used. “We are a very or community? The Bellevue Police Depart- large part of the King County for sure and just ment’s response was to report any instances of in general ... we are one of the most educated, verbal harassment and derogatory speech just and high skilled ... communities in the counas one would report a violent hate crime; re- try,” she said. “Why are we not out there, repporting will help law enforcement track these resenting our communities even more?” instances and create a record.

Watson notes that some people are hesitant SAALT lists recommendations to combat to get involved due to a lack of time, or feelhate crimes on the governmental, legislative ings of helplessness. Her suggestion, echoed and community levels. The recommendations by others like Mittal, is to tackle challenges call for more action and less lip-service from head-on by organizing people with varying government agencies, and for a state, federal, skill sets who can “come to the table” and and community-based cooperatives to im- work together, much like dividing and conprove crime reporting. They also stress the quering. Those people need not only be lawimportance of political and civic engagement yers and educators, nonprofit organizations, education for South Asian, Muslim and Arab and healthcare advocates. Everyone must communities, something that is already hap- bring their talents and interests to the forefront, using unique strengths to create an enpening. vironment where hate crimes and hostility are Tahmina Watson, a lawyer and community not ‘just the dark side’ of society’s status quo. advocate at Watson Immigration Services Watson put it this way: “Every drop makes who also spoke at the #WeBelong vigil, said the South Asian community is already taking an ocean. Every drop done by somebody will the first, crucial step: civic engagement. “Be- ultimately have a bigger impact, but sitting ing part of the dialogue and decision making back and thinking someone else is going to do is absolutely crucial at this point,” she said, it? That notion must go away.” listing local and national political leaders like

Those “what next?” questions will only get under your skin if you allow them to.

Don’t follow a cookie-cutter career just to please the haters. Next time you are asked that question, try saying “who knows!” and get comfortable with the uncertainty that surrounds your future and all our futures.

Be yourself, put in the effort, add a little faith, and things will work out—even if it doesn’t match what you envisioned. The world works in mysterious ways.

Remember to live. You’re still young Realize that your career is a mosaic of experiences; your first out-of-college job and full of life. does not and will not define your greatWhat with understanding 401(k)’s, investness. ing in stocks, and calculating paid time-off, Working in the corporate retail world, make a point to remember that just because it isn’t uncommon for our quarterly meet- you aren’t in school anymore doesn’t mean you’re limited to “adult things.” Have fun.

That being said, I’d like to share a few ings to award employees for “30 years of Be spontaneous. Go on a road trip. insights for those who are creeping up on service.” And while the opportunities for “We have more faith in what we imitate This one has been especially difficult for their graduation—likely with several more learning, growth, and networking are abundant, my endgame involves a different track. me to remember. Unlike being a student, than in what we originate” —Bruce Lee

. . . HATE CRIMES: Continued from page 1

of malicious harassment have been reported, compared to 16 cases of non-criminal bias incidents, where derogatory comments— though protected under free speech—might incite fear in a person or group. Under racially motivated crimes, eight targeted Blacks, one targeted a Latino, one a multi-racial person, and three targeted whites. Religiously-motivated incidents targeted Muslims and Jews.

Ethnically motivated incidents targeted Arabs and “unspecified” groups.

A large South Asian population clusters to the east of Seattle, namely in Bellevue, Redmond, Sammamish, and Kirkland. The Bellevue Police Department’s 2016 data reports 16 hate crimes overall for that year. Seven explicitly note anti-Muslim motivation and one crime details a Sikh Uber driver who was threatened and beaten by his passenger. 2017 hate crime data is not yet available. The BPD has stood in solidarity with the South Asian community and other immigrant communities.

On Sunday March 5, shortly after the shooting in Kent and two weeks after Kuchibhotla was fatally shot dead, Tasveer took the lead in organizing a vigil for the shooting victims in Kansas. Over 43 other local organizations— many based in the South Asian community, but many others as well—joined a diverse group of community members at Crossroads Park in Bellevue. Along with speakers like Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal and Kshama Sawant, a Bellevue Police represen-

INTERNATIONAL EXAMINER

April 19, 2017 – May 2, 2017 — 5

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Wing Luke exhibit marks 75th anniversary of Executive Order 9066 “Folks have to understand our own collective power to organize and resist probably allow for that action to be the impositions on our lives,” she says. taken just as it was back then,” he said. And, “it’s important that we speak out “Back then it was the same ‘safer than for each other.” sorry’ sort of mentality, again despite all Ikeda of Densho is also hopeful facts on the ground, knowing that there that ordinary people can stand up to were no Japanese Americans who were injustice. He and Shimabukuro both found to have been conspiring with that point to the protests at Sea-Tac airport government who were arrested.” and around the country after Trump’s Dee Simon, executive director of first travel ban in January. Within just the Holocaust Center for Humanity in a few hours of the order, hundreds of Seattle, urges caution when drawing people had came to the airport bearing parallels between history and the signs in support of immigrants and refugees. present day.

“It’s amazing—this is not something “I think the state of affairs right now that we would have seen in 1942,” said is very different,” she said. “I do think ... we should learn from history and we Shimabukuro. At that time, almost no should be mindful of the incremental one spoke up for the Japanese Americans steps and build-ups that lead to being incarcerated. But today, she said, “there’s that kind of shared feeling of discrimination and violence.” intense damage, that feeling that we’re Some of the steps that led to the in this together.” creation of concentration camps in For Ikeda, it’s up to individual Europe also existed in the United States people to stand up for justice because during World War II, says Simon, including prejudice and the willingness historically, when the country feels at of ordinary people to look the other threat, the executive branch often tries way. Opinion polls conducted during to override civil and constitutional the Holocaust showed Americans were rights. “I think the only thing that against accepting thousands of Jewish prevents these things from happening refugees, including thousands of is a very active, knowledgeable group children, for many of the same reasons of individuals to fight back,” he said.

For Shimabukuro, it’s important to people oppose immigration today. remember that the incarceration was “I think one of the lessons we can legal, and upheld by the Supreme Court. take away from history is our individual To mark the 75th anniversary of Japaresponsibility to stand up and do the nese American incarceration, the Wing right thing and not be bystanders as we Luke Museum opened a new exhibit watch history unfold,” says Simon. based on the work of two men who spent Mira Shimabukuro, a lecturer at the their early years in Minodoka concentraUW who studies the Japanese American tion camp. Lawrence Matsuda, a Seattle movement for redress for incarceration, poet, was born in the Minidoka camp in agrees. For her, there are many lessons 1945, and artist Roger Shimamura spent to learn about activism and resistance the early years of his life there. from this period in history. At the time, Shimomura, whose artwork often many Japanese Americans resisted deals with themes of racism and incarceration and the draft, fought for for better living conditions in the camps, prejudice, thinks public opinion has changed for the better in some ways and later demanded redress.

“Race trumped everything,” he said.

“Everyone just sort of lost their senses and figured, well there’s only 120,000 Japanese Americans in this country, what rights and how much noise can they make? Years later it rears it’s head again, frightfully, and it shows that America is taking a deep breath and getting ready to do the same damn thing again.”

. . . 9066: Continued from page 1

Tom Ikeda, Executive Director of Densho. • Photo by Matt Mills McKnight/Cascade Public Media

One of the messages of Matsuda and Shimomura’s exhibit is to not let it happen again.

Matsuda believes that because of their history, it’s the legacy of Japanese Americans to stand up against injustice.

“For another group, it won’t happen in the same way that it happened to us— it’ll be a little different, but it’ll be the same flavor,” Matsuda said.

Lawrence Matsuda, Seattle poet who was born in Minidoka camp, co-authored the book Glimpses of a Forever Foreigner, which was the basis of an exhibit of the same name at the Wing Luke Museum. • Photo

by Chetanya Robinson

since the 1940s, with people now more aware of racism. But he’s alarmed by the connections between the racist attitudes that led to Japanese incarceration, and a federal government today seemingly motivated in part by white supremacy.

Though he sees hope in the way people stood up to Trump’s travel ban, Matsuda said there’s too much uncertainty about the way prejudice manifests to be blindly optimistic.

“Things have changed. But have things improved to the point that it wouldn’t happen again?” he wondered.

“I read my poems in hope that America would live up to its promises. But with the current political climate, one can never say that we’ve made progress firmly.”

6 — April 19, 2017 – May 2, 2017

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EPA Grant funds long awaited Air Toxics Study in the CID

By Kamna Shastri IE Contributor A highly-anticipated EPA grant awarded to Puget Sound Clean Air Agency (PSCAA) will fund the use of various air quality monitoring technology to inform a larger study documenting air quality in the region. The grant totals $400,000 and allows the agency to measure a kind of pollutant called “air toxics” which they usually do not have the means to monitor.

The various monitors will also measure a few other kinds of pollutants; particle pollution which is a product of burning or combusting processes, diesel pollution, and nitrogen oxides (NOx).

and 5th Avenue a major transportation hub, the neighborhood receives pollution from vehicles that pass through it.

advocate Daniel Faber, the reasons why certain communities are more prone to living in toxic environments than others are complex. While racial and ethnic residential segregation began during a historical period of discrimination, the repercussions of history continue as communities are stuck in the middle of marginalizing industries and government policies around housing, welfare, immigration, and transportation.

Currently, three monitors have already been placed around the neighborhood, one of which is permanently installed at the intersection of 10th Avenue and Weller Street.

PSCAA will be using multiple tools and method to measure air toxics. One is a basketball-sized canister that will be placed in each of the six locations for a few days over the winter and summer.

It will absorb the contents and toxic pollutants in the air. Data for the winter season has already been collected. Five of these canisters have been sited, along 8th and King, 8th and Lane, East Main Street, Air Pollution is documented to be 5th Avenue and Yesler Terrace. PSCAA is injurious to health currently trying to find a location in Little These pollutants are harmful to Saigon. human respiratory health. Studies have Another method of collecting data are found positive correlations between mobile, handheld monitors that track air 1 cardiovascular health and air pollution. A pollutants along a given route. PSCAA classic 1993 study, called “The Six City will be enlisting the help of Interim 2 Study” followed 8,111 people across six U.S cities from 1974 to 1991 and found that CDA’s Wilderness Inner-city Leadership not only were there positive correlations Development (WILD) youth fellows to between particle pollution and death by capture data with the mobile monitors. As respiratory and cardiovascular causes, fellows walk around the neighborhood, but as the Clean Air Act came into play the monitors will pick up pollution levels, and pollution decreased, mortality rate allowing spikes in pollution concentrations also decreased. The study was important to be mapped geographically. in determining that limiting pollution is Once the data samples are collected crucial to human health. they will be sent to the lab. The lab results will determine exactly what pollutants are in the air and at what concentrations.

Monitoring Air Quality in the CID In the Chinatown International District, These findings will inform a larger study air monitoring equipment will help collect which will provide specific, quantifiable data until September 2017 for a larger data about airborne toxics levels and study of the area which will assess the provide data on cancer-risk for those who air quality in the neighborhood. With two work and live in the neighborhood. major highways going through the area

Faber writes in his 2008 book Capitalizing on Environmental Injustice that “over 164 million Americans are now at risk for respiratory and other health problems from exposure to excessive air pollution. But this is only part of the story. Clearly, Asians, African Americans, Hispanics, and the working poor are bearing the greater health risks from air pollution coming from nearby industrial facilities, highways and transportation infrastructure.”3 The CID isn’t so different from the communities Faber highlights. _______________________________________________ 1 Morello-Frosch, Rachel and Russ Lopez. 2006. “The riskscape and the color line: examining the role of segregation in environmental health disparities,” in Environmental Research, 102:pp 181-196.

2 Douglas W. Dockery, C. Arden Pope, Xiping Xu, John D. Spengler, James H. Ware, Martha E. Fay, Benjamin G. Ferris, Jr., and Frank E. Speizer. 1993.

“An Association between Air Pollution and Mortality in Six U.S Cities” in New England Journal of Medicine 327: pp 1753 – 1759.

“We hope that this information will Air quality measuring instruments have been posted start discussions with the community throughout the International District. • Courtesy Photo about what kind of actions we can take together to improve air quality and residents’ health in the neighborhood,” community engagement with the CID for said Landon Bosisio, who heads PSCAA’s the air toxics study.

The CID is Not Alone: air pollution and health disparity Neighborhoods like the CID that are home to communities of color and lowincome residents are often exposed to higher levels of pollution. According to Northeastern University sociology professor and environmental justice

3 Faber, Daniel. 2008. Capitalizing on Environmental Injustice; The PolluterIndustrial Complex in the Age of Globalization. Roman and Littlefield Publishers. Print

INTERNATIONAL EXAMINER

April 19, 2017 – May 2, 2017 — 7

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PSCAA collects community input on Volkswagen settlement funds

By Kamna Shastri IE Contributor A lawsuit filed against vehicle manufacturer Volkswagen for programming diesel vehicles to cheat emissions tests between 2009 and 2016 resulted in a settlement of close to $15 billion in October of last year. Volkswagen knowingly installed a software program that cheated on emissions tests. The settlement funds will be used to pay for and mitigate the damage caused by illegal amounts of pollution from about 500,000 diesel vehicles.

While some of the funds will be administered

by Volkswagen, up to $112.7 million will be given to Washington state for programs to mitigate pollution from nitrogen oxides (NOx).

Nitrogen oxides are commonly combusted in diesel engines, and when released into the air cause harmful environmental and health effects. NOx combined with volatile organic compounds and sunlight creates ozone. Ozone is a major pollutant which is harmful to the lungs, causing respiratory issues over time and exacerbating pre-existing conditions such as asthma and cardiovascular diseases. It also affects neonatal development. This kind of pollution follows a nationwide trend of disproportionately affecting low-income communities and communities of color, not just in the Puget Sound but across the country.* In the Puget Sound, various neighborhoods, especially those in south Seattle are disproportionately exposed to pollution. In the Chinatown International District, for example, two heavy traffic-bearing pathways—I-5 and I-90—bisect the neighborhood. The addition of King Street Station and the underground bus tunnel on 5th Avenue, Union Station, as well as traffic brought in by sports games at nearby stadiums, also make the neighborhood a pollution-heavy traffic corridor. The CID area is in the 99th percentile for number of hospitalizations due to respiratory illness regionally, according to the Puget Sound Clean Air Agency (PSCAA).

PSCAA and other regional clean air agencies are advocating for the settlement funds to be used in part to mitigate pollution impacts for unfairly impacted communities, such as the CID and south Seattle neighborhoods.

However, there are very clear guidelines on how the mitigation funds can be used, namely that they go towards making heavy-duty diesel engines cleaner so that they may pollute less.

disproportionately impacted communities and neighborhoods,” said Debolina Banerjee, climate justice policy analyst at Puget Sound Sage, an organization focused on climate and social justice.

Popular ideas included a cash for clunkers trade in model, and investing in newer, electric buses for school and for senior services, and training mechanics in local communities to maintain heavy diesel engine vehicles and “Anything that reduces diesel pollution by keep them clean, said Park. replacing dirty truck, or a bus, or construction Some additional ideas fell beyond the paequipment or cargo handling equipment or rameters of uses for the NOx mitigation funds. boats, those are the kinds of things that money These included ORCA cards and bus passes can be used for,” said Landon Bosisio, com- for lower income families. Single occupancy munications specialist at PSCAA. vehicles are a “one time fix,” said Park, and

mate justice organization, said settlements such as Volkswagen’s are crucial; they bring to light the importance of how and where state spending is directed. “Front and Centered exists to ensure communities of color and people with lower incomes most impacted by pollution receive net environmental and economic benefits from state environmental spending.

If they do not, we’re only widening environmental and economic inequality -- which has been proven to impact the health and wellbeing and overall quality of life of everyone in Washington,” he wrote in an email to the International Examiner.

Next Steps

The PSCAA will collect input from the four counties it covers and compile the suggestions into a report that will be sent to the Washington State Legislature. The current legislative session will determine how much money the state will give to regional government agencies to fund programs that fall within the criteria for NOx mitigation. Now, said Gruen “the Because these suggestions fall outside of question is only whether state legislators have the eligibility requirements for settlement the will to direct funding to where pollution funds administered by the state, it would be reduction is most critical”. challenging to provide such services through To get involved and lend your voice to how the mitigation funds. However, the feedback is still valuable. “If you can’t utilize it for this the Volkswagen Settlement funds will be used Engaging the Community in Climate VW purposes, however direct or indirect, in Washington state, fill out this public survey what other opportunities can we seek out in from the Washington Department of Ecology: Equity the future and leverage to support what we www.ecy.wa.gov/programs/air/cars/vw_fed.

PSCAA and other regional climate justice heard for in the community?” said Park htm. organizations met with stakeholders in Janu______________________________ As Park worked with communities, she ary to see how community members would found that the effects of pollution weren’t al*Publications that support this claim: like the settlement funds to be used. ways foremost on the minds of community Morello-Frosch, Rachel and Russ Lopez.

“A lot of the input we got from community members. Low-income community members members was really oriented towards services often have priorities such as food and hous- 2006. “The riskscape and the color line: exambecause that’s really what impacts them and ing on their minds. But Park emphasized that ining the role of segregation in environmental matters to them the most,” said Tania Tam education is crucial to recognizing the harm- health disparities,” in Environmental Research, Park, Equity and Community Engagement ful and serious impacts of pollution. It is an 102:pp 181-196.

Manager at PSCAA. Faber, Daniel. 2008. Capitalizing on Environinvisible force, one that isn’t easily seen, but mental Injustice; The Polluter-Industrial ComIn addition, “questions from the commu- has far-reaching consequences. plex in the Age of Globalization. Roman and nity members were around how the funds …

Deric Gruen, policy and communications Littlefield Publishers. Print. can be leveraged to meet the actually impact- specialist at Front and Centered, a local clied communities, and be prioritized towards PSCAA, a regional government agency dedicated to ensuring healthy communities and clean air, has been tasked with reaching out to community organizations and members to collect feedback on how the funds could best be used to benefit communities exposed to pollution. The feedback will be pooled with data collected from King, Pierce, Kitsap, and Snohomish counties, and sent to the state legislature to help inform how the state will administer the Nitrogen Oxides Mitigation Fund.

“not a long-term solution that sustains communities and uplifts communities.” Providing affordable ORCA cards and bus passes would also provide access to transport and other services that could potentially keep students in school and provide opportunities for further advancement.

Announcements Gateway, light poles causing Hing Hay Park delays The Seattle Department of Parks and Recreation announced that while the majority of Hing Hay Park is complete, there are a few items that are outstanding including the artistic gateway and light poles which are causing delay.

installed in late summer, however, we will open the park before then. The gateway is being fabricated off site and the artist’s schedule shows on site installation from July through August. During installation, a section of the park will need to be fenced for public safety.

Once the gateway is installed the full park will open and a community celebration will be planned. Thank you for your patience and cooperation.”

In Washington, over 3,200 volunteers services for a cycle of IVF, in kind to the Footsteps for Fertility Foundation, to be across 13 cities will be involved in dozens awarded at the 5k race as a Footsteps for of projects, including volunteering at urban gardens, YMCAs, Boys & Girls Fertility Foundation Grant.

The First Footsteps for Fertility Clubs, and a forest preserve. The projects Foundation Seattle 5k race will be held benefit veterans, people with special at Seward Park, Seattle Washington from needs, seniors, communities of color, 9:00 a.m. to 11:00 a.m. on April 22, 2017. youth, families, and more.

The drawing for Footsteps for Fertility Grants will take place after the race. All runners, walkers, sleep-ins, children, To stay up to date on the project, visit babies, and other supporters are welcome www.seattle.gov/parks/about-us/current- to the festivities. For more information, projects/hing-hay-park. visit footstepsforfertility.org.

The City said in a statement: “We are currently addressing the light poles. They arrived at the site with deficiencies. The manufacturer has taken responsibility and will fabricate and deliver replacements, however, they have a long lead time.

We are waiting for a schedule from Footsteps for Fertility 5k race the manufacturer for replacement light Footsteps for Fertility Foundation is a poles. Once we have information on the charitable organization created to raise lighting installation we will work with awareness surrounding infertility, and the community to determine when we can provide grants for those who require open the park. fertility treatments. Various clinics in “The artistic gateway structure will be the Washington area have donated their

Comcast Cares Day at El Centro this Saturday, April 22

Volunteers get a free Cares Day t-shirt, free breakfast, and lunch at Plaza Roberto Maestas with a live Latin band, food trucks, vendor carts providing food, and a closing ceremony.

Free residential parking is available nearby and the Beacon Hill Light Rail Station is across the street.

HOW TO SIGN UP Be a part of Comcast NBCUniversal’s 1. Visit: www.comcastinthecommunity.

16th annual Comcast Cares Day this com Saturday, April 22, 2017 from 8:00 a.m.

2. Sign in as a “guest” and select the to 1:00 p.m. This year, Comcast’s Seattle volunteer project benefits El Centro de la Seattle El Centro project.

Raza on Beacon Hill.

8 — April 19, 2017 – May 2, 2017

COMMUNITY VOICES

INTERNATIONAL EXAMINER

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Celebrating Poetry And Making It Local Welcome to part two of our celebration of National Poetry Month. We continue our focus on local writers with an interview with Seattle-raised writer Paisley Rekdal. She just came out with her fifth poetry volume titled Imaginary Vessels (Copper Canyon Press). As a prose writer, she burst onto the literary scene with a book of essays titled The Night My Mother Met Bruce Lee, followed by a multi-genre memoir titled Intimate. Her latest upcoming book is called The Broken Country: On Trauma, A Crime, And The Continuing Legacy of Vietnam which looks at the cultural trauma of the Vietnam war and how we still struggle to understand it. We conclude with a mosaic of short reviews of new books of poetry by a dazzling array of literary talent.

Enjoy poetry and keep reading!

Alan Chong Lau, IE Arts Editor

Poetry books explore mind-bending philosophy, family tales

By Betsy Aoki IE Contributor

***

Meanwhile, Wild Grass on the Riverbank by Hiromi Itō, translated to English by Jeffrey Angles, (originally published in Japanese as Kawara Arekusa) offers a different kind of invitation: a book-long narrative poem of family dysfunctional and betrayal. Borrowing from the medieval Japanese travelers’ tales (sekkyō-bushi), Itō describes the trials of a family oscillating between two homes—an arid desert that seems suspiciously like California, and a lush, practically mythological riverbank full of sexual, poisonous, friendly invasive vines. There is the death and putrefaction and mummification of the stepfather’s body, the theme of the “bad passport” and the bad mother who is set on her own agenda, with the children as afterthought:

Unbearable Splendor by Sun Yung Shin (Coffee House Press) is a book of poetry that begins with a cyborg manifesto and a quote from the movie Blade Runner will always find a soft spot in my heart, but then it has to deliver. Sun Yung Shin’s Unbearable Splendor, a compilation of storytelling poetry and lyric essays, makes good on its promises. We explore with Shin—in graphs of the uncanny valley, in prose-poems that explore the liminal spaces of Pinocchio’s body, reproductions of adoption papers for a Korean orphan (last of their family), “Once again we were getting on board/ But no matter and an ad for candidates to become surrogate mothers. how many times we arrived, our journey still did not end.”

Even the ancient Greeks make their appearance: What makes this a modern poetic tale is the cadenced voice of the older sister protagonist, the narrator of the “Is Antigone the original cyborg?

The limits of woman, human. Everything put to the test.” story. She is watchful as the mother copes (or does not cope) with life’s details. She can see the truth of the And a Turing Test applied to Eugene, the software stepfather’s corpse’s deterioration even if the mother program: decides to stay in denial. She deals plainly with the stranger on the riverbank, and all the officials. Instead of “Hurtling toward my milestone.

I am failing the human test and passing the machine test.” the Japanese gods coming to the rescue (as would happen in sekkyō-bushi), it is the older sister who prevails to At once sensual, philosophical, mind-bending in bring herself and her little brother to a happier ending. its juxtapositions, Shin’s exploration of what we take In translating Itō’s poetry Jeffrey Angles has invoked for granted—bodies, labels, time, and what it means a kind of incantatory language, repetitive and childlike, to be human—crosses many intellectual landscapes so that when words like “naturalize” or the Latin names at once. For those who like more traditional forms, or of the plants the older sister speaks to/with/about are traditionally broken-line free verse—the lyrical prose mentioned, it startles an English speaker as much as still remains inviting, hinting at a formality by its rigor the katakana of the original breaks the mainstream of thought. And for those who don’t care much for Japanese. His notes are very helpful in understanding poetry, but want a beautiful space to explore modern and the context in which the original Japanese edition came fluid ideas will find refuge here. Unbearable Splendor out. Interestingly, Itō herself has high praise for this is a liminal book, but one that invites the reader to cross English edition, that it feels to her as though the original all its boundaries. was written in English and the Japanese version that she wrote first, a translation. Where the father comes back *** from the dead with open arms, and the daughter persists.

In Night Sky with Exit Wounds by Ocean Vuong (Copper Canyon Press), it is the son who persists amid all the memories of family and violence and sexual awakening.

Many of these poems first made their appearance in high-profile venues over the last couple of years—The New Yorker, The Nation, PANK—and other literary reviewers have commented on Vuong’s mastery of the beautiful image and the flashier, gut-wrenching moment.

What I’d like to highlight here then is the quiet zeroing in, the intrinsic heightening of feeling the Vietnam-born Vuong offers in his poems.

In “Always & Forever” the speaker, a young boy, is being awakened by his father: “ Open this when you need me most/ he said as he slipped the shoe box wrapped/in duct tape, beneath my bed…”

Then a quick shift to the modern-day awakening, no father present, the adult son taking out the gun from the box to see “if an entry wound in the night/would make a hole as wide as morning. That if/ I looked through it, I would see the end of this..” A lesser poet would stop there, satisfied to be drawing the parallel of early trauma and an insufficient father with the adult’s current despair.

Instead, Vuong takes us immediately back into the memory to make his point about guns, wounds and what happens after, and end the poem without punctuation: “…the boy pretending / to be asleep as his father’s clutch tightens. / The way the barrel, aimed at the sky, must tighten / around a bullet/to make it speak” With one gesture, we see the gun aimed not at the narrator, but the sky (a happier ending). We now must hold parallel the father’s hug and the metal barrel of the gun, and must see the son as the bullet, silently transformed by this firing into the speaker of the poem.

Night Sky with Exit Wounds is a tour de force of evoked memory, heartache, and loss even as it affirms the persistent, present moment.

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April 19, 2017 – May 2, 2017 — 9

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Imaginary Vessels: Poet Paisley Rekdal explores how we memorialize the dead

By Laura McKee IE Contributor The International Examiner caught up with poet Paisley Rekdal, who recently completed a collection of poetry titled, Imaginary Vessels.

……Through you, I’m drawn

deep into the emptiness that you’ve encased, one more fleck of dark added to the negation that is most truly us: what’s left the face of everything to be undone. You: gray, freckled, weightless. Closer to me than a cousin— (excerpt from Portrait of C8: Male, 32 Years Old) Laura McKee: One of the most compelling, fascinating qualities of Imaginary Vessels, is the width of its scope: from the opening poem in a glass blower’s studio to a sonnet sequence on Mae West, to another sequence / meditation on unknown patient skulls dug up in 1993 at the Colorado State Mental Institute. Can you talk a little about how this book came together for you as you were working on it? Did you start with a plan, or did the collection emerge more organically?

Paisley Rekdal: The collection emerged organically, in part because I was traveling during the entire year that I wrote it. I was the fortunate recipient of an Amy Lowell Poetry Traveling Fellowship, which allowed me to live in Vietnam and Paris, and to use those cities as hubs to travel to different locations. I traveled a lot to war museums, and sites of genocide and historical trauma. It got me thinking a lot about how we memorialize those that we’ve lost, and the ways in which we are constantly trying to resuscitate the past through representational art. The book is filled with monologues of those that have died, or those who themselves have become emblematic of a period of history that we either fetishize, or want to reclaim or understand better, such as Thomas Jefferson.

Each person, and poem, became a little “vessel” for me of historical imagination.

LM: “Shooting the Skulls: A Wartime Devotional” juxtaposes your poems with Andrea Modica’s arresting photographs of the skulls. These poems come in the fully roaring heart of the book. Their perspective shifts back and forth between more personal family memories to sometimes speaking as the imagined persona of the skull. When you first saw the photographs, what was your original connection?

PR: The first time I saw the photos, I was stunned.

It wasn’t until I began writing sonnets in response to them that I found myself, instinctively and wrongly, reaching back to war. In part this was because I had just visited Cambodia and the killing fields. In part

Paisley Rekdal

this is because war was always in the international news. I had also been reading the work of Shannon Novak, a forensic archaeologist who was doing work on recovering bodies that had been killed during the Mountain Meadows Massacre. She argued that, absent actual physical remains for traumatic loss, survivors and their relatives will begin to fetishize objects they see as emblematic of that loss, and transfer their emotions onto these objects. It’s both ethically problematic and very human: we fashion memorials for our dead out of real objects and imaginary material. Reading Novak’s work explained why I began writing about such unrelated events when thinking about these skulls.

LM: I have a friend who is a rock climber. At the end of each climb, she takes a moment to think about what was hardest about the climb, and why. As a writer, in writing these poems, was there a moment that stands out for you in this way?

PR: Every moment of writing is and exhilarating. I can’t point to one moment.

hard,

LM: The book has simultaneously a deep empathy for people who often are least able/allowed to speak for themselves, but also moments of blazing selfdetermination—how does this speak to your project or motivation as a writer?

PR: I think there’s a tension that exists between how we represent the world, and other people besides ourselves in the world, and how the world actually is.

Poems, and representational art, are always ways of

“overwriting” events, people, and places, with our own self-importance and our own desires. It’s inevitable, and problematic, but it’s also fascinating to find a way of writing that approximates personal experience. I’m always aware of the failure, and yet I keep trying. I think I like the failure.

LM: Lastly, you have a new book on the way in September, The Broken Country: On Trauma, a Crime, and the Continuing Legacy of Vietnam.

Can you tell readers a little bit about it?

PR: The Broken Country is about the long-term cultural and psychological effects of war on both post1975 Southeast Asian refugees and returning U.S. veterans. The book centers on a recent violent crime that took place in Salt Lake City in which a young Vietnamese man stabbed a number of white men purportedly in retribution for the Vietnam war: one of the men he stabbed was a student in the English department, where I teach. The book examines transgenerational and cultural trauma, the literature and film that memorializes Vietnam, and the complicated ways in which we still struggle to comprehend the legacies of war.

Imaginary Vessels was published in 2016 by Copper Canyon Press and is Paisley Rekdal’s fifth book of poetry. She teaches at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City, Utah. She grew up in Seattle, Washington.

Her many honors include a fellowship from the National Endowment of the Arts Fellowship, a Pushcart Prize, and a Fulbright to South Korea.

10 — April 19, 2017 – May 2, 2017

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Two API poets defy dominant power structures and explore the violence and absurdity of capitalism

By Frances Lee IE Contributor Gracing the cover of Victoria Chang’s slender book of poetry The Boss (McSweeney’s Poetry Series 2013) is what looks to be a photograph of a spotless knight in shining armor, scepter raised high in powerful triumph. Yet upon inspection of the cover credits, the “photograph” is revealed to be a photorealistic pencil drawing by Karl Haendel. Chang resides in Southern California with her family, straddling the business world and creative writing education. In The Boss, she pens single page poems about corporate New York, motherhood, 9/11, Edward Hopper, and her ailing father. Like the cover, her sparse poems appear to be straightforward in presenting linear narratives. However, her careful details and jarring imagery outline meaningless systems of capitalist labor without satisfying alternatives.

In the first poem, “I Was Once a Child,” Chang recalls the year her father “lost his words to a stroke,” and how his employer’s response was to fire him. For the rest of the book, Chang gently surfaces the monotony, violence, and most of all, absurdity, of being a worker cog in corporate America. She repetitively references the faceless character of “the boss” to represent not only her managers, but the capitalist condition to which we all, as wage-earners, agree to in exchange for money to survive. In “We Are High Performers,” Chang makes a mockery

of the spectacle of performance reviews in mises required to pursue a hollow Amerithe business world and the impossible stan- can Dream. dard of a never-ending, increasing worker *** productivity. She writes, “we are high pere f g (exchange following and gene flow): formers former high hopers on a high wire a trilogy / balance a ream of paper on our heads / —Valerie Hsiung no net under us just the boss with her arms crossed.” e f g (exchange following and gene In “We Can’t Say Anything,” Chang flow): a trilogy (Action Books, 2016) is references her father’s former job as an ac- Brooklyn-based contemporary poet and count manager (“ass-kissing for his large performer Valerie Hsiung’s third book of accounts”), but that his failing memory can poetry. This trilogy brims with sharply no longer retrieve his own passwords or unexpected wordplay and strategic line earnings for those accounts. At the same breaks and whitespace. It is a book that time, she reflects on her relatively new demands the reader’s patient engagement identity as a mother and her position as an and close reading. The inscription at the authority figure to her young daughter. In end of the book provides key clues on the “The Boss Wears a White Vest,” she ad- subjects and voices in her writing: “for all mits to us, “my four-year-old daughter still the lost and for all the survivors / of sys/ listens to me I am the boss and I like it I temic geopolitical, sexual, socioeconomic / see why the boss likes.” For Chang, the and, / more than ever, speciest abuse and economic structure that allows one person torture / for all the lost and for all the surto wield power over another is inherently vivors forced into captivity, homelessness dehumanizing. She asks, why do I accept and hunger.” There is a thread of sufferthis status quo… why do we all? Why do ing that runs taut through every stanza to we expend so much energy trying to get on represent the broken, cruel world in which HR’s good side, monitoring our 401(k)’s, all we exist. writing emails in Outlook, collecting ofIn “Rape Kit,” the speaker is presumably fice supplies, and letting our bosses break talking about her rapist: “you are the saint our spirits? As corporate workers, these of torture / your entire life has never done are questions we must allow ourselves to anyone any harm.” Rape culture sells the ask ourselves, if we are to get closer to an narrative that the female victim/survivor understanding of what it is to be human. did something to deserve this violence, and Without ranting, The Boss is a thoughtful, the perpetrator is a decent guy who merely digestible meditation on corporate urban made a poor decision. Near the end of the life and the descending stair of compro- piece, the speaker states that “it’s an honor

to be killed by you.” It is unclear whether she is referring to inhabiting a physical or spiritual death- either way, the profound damage has been done. In “try,” the speaker describes the disjointed existence of a life that continues after trauma, telling someone that “you will regain feeling, it could / take a while but you’ll regain. / you may need to sleep more than usual, sleep without guilt ... if you can.”

For the most part, these poems are not easy to read due to their loose forms and non sequitur interjections. Hsuing invites us in to experience them anyway, because the world also is not easy and existence in it requires regular examination via use of language that resists rules and disciplinization. There is a logic to the English language and traditional poetry that is imposed upon every subject in Western society, and the foundation of this logic resides in white hetero able-bodied patriarchy. Women, people of color, LGBTQ people, rape survivors, disabled people, immigrants, Muslims, and other minority groups live and struggle under this reality of subjugation, which has become exponentially more apparent under this new U.S. administration. In “e f g”, Valerie Hsuing defies these dominant forces with the tools at her disposal: language, mythical sources, space, nothingness, arrangement. She shocks the reader’s mind with ice water, trickling away tired expectations, and leaving a surface open to clarity and new forms of meaning-making.

Celebrate National Poetry Month with Sandra Lim’s The Wilderness and Brandon Shimoda’s Evening Oracle

By Justine Chan IE Contributor There’s a catch to Sandra Lim’s The Wilderness (Norton & Company, 2015), winner of the Barnard Women Poets Prize: the kind of catch that throws one off guard for all its quiet fury, beauty, precision, and brilliance.

The wilderness that Lim grapples with is not meant to be a recognizable geographical landscape so much as the wilderness of a mind in between a harsh Northeastern winter and an even harsher and sorrowed spring.

In many ways, she evokes T.S. Eliot’s vision of spring in The Wasteland—“April is the cruelest month”—but her vision of spring is also joyful and complicated; the poems are at once both tenuous and full of ire. There is no better time than now, in April, to pick up this collection.

In her poem “Certainty,” Lim describes that, “A poem may hold the unwieldy pieces of the earth together with a whole heart; a poem may cut that heart to lace.” Indeed, Lim treads this fine line through her whole work, always with an exactness and sense of surprise. It is absolutely thrilling. She is bold and stern in her journey to try to give words to emotions (and even goes to the point of ironically numbering them in “At the Other End of the Wire”), find meaning and define the boundaries of her own soul, and much else in uncertainty and transitional states. Her wildernesses are many, and oftentimes worlds crafted with impressionistic detail: “I want bars again, restaurants

that stay open late, gossip in the kitchen; the bright tessellations of painful wishing, movies, plumes of envy, flower stalls.”

In an interview with the Poetry Society of America, Lim explains, “In [The Wilderness], one of the things I’m interested in is in telling other people’s stories and my own stories through whatever can bestride the ‘facts’ and the ‘social.’ The gesture of going back and forth between them, or of thinking them at once, seems to me to get at how we both capture and ward off identifications.”

Certainly, Lim never gives us the full narrative, only glimpses, sometimes startling, between the trees of her wildernesses. Even so, she does not need to; we get such marvelous lines that strike and sear: “As I do my work, I think, let me topple, / wear thin. Let the world eat me, but / then, let the world sob, not me.”

Just as Lim’s speaker in “The Concert” says, “Let me be like a mouse in an enormous cheese / excited by how much cheese there is to eat,” let us be such mice in her Wilderness. *** The premise and constraint of Brandon Shimoda’s Evening Oracle (2015), winner of the Poetry Society of America’s William Carlos Williams Award, is simple: “The poems in Evening Oracle were originally handwritten at night in the beds of friends and strangers in Japan in July-August 2011 and July 2012.” More specifically, he wrote

the poems in different cities, “in sketchpads at night, in bed, glasses off, before sleep . . . They are all the exudates, or ashes—gossip—of their days.”

And yet, that is not all: Shimoda’s collection is beguiling and wondrous, sleepy and wandering, awake and prophetic and self-conscious. It is definitely worth a read.

Inspired by “An elegy on the death of Prince Iwata,” an 8th century poem by Prince Niu, the collection works like a chimera and a collage. It shifts between poetry to prose and incorporates many different voices, seemingly working in three movements. It feels surreal, comical, and heavy in its elegiac gestures.

In Shimoda’s artistic statement on Black Ocean, he says, “There is a kind of negative space that overwhelms me when I’m walking around, eating sandwiches, sitting in a chair, looking at the arms of my friends— poetry is one means of giving a form to that negative space; making things is another.”

Indeed, the first and third movements of Evening Oracle capture so well much of this negative space, bringing to form the fine details and flickers of these Japanese cities Shimoda traveled through. And yet, the poems should not be considered as travel writing or as a diary or a brain dump of observations but rather, as impressions swimming back through the darkness. Even so, Shimoda defies any lyrical gestures; his voice is sometimes childlike, absurd, and funny, and, at times, transcendent and charged.

The second movement, written all in prose, is the most poignant gesture of the collection. It is composed almost entirely of excerpts of emails between Shimoda and his friends, including Mary Ruefle, Don Mee Choi, and Etel Adnan. In particular, so many of these excerpts are personal stories on the death of parents and grandparents.

One cannot tell until the end notes which email excerpts are written by whom, and in this way, all the voices weave and meld together, making these losses, inevitable for all of us at one point in our lives, feel shared and universal. Although this second movement feels sorrowful and elegiac, it is also a celebration of personal history and all of these lives.

In the poem “Motoyasu,” Shimoda writes, “I want to sit on this bench / With this box of deep-fried pork / And eat the deep-fried pork out / Of the box / Forever.” It is this hunger that propels the poems throughout the book, but it is also more complicated: it is a hunger to fight against Death and all the little deaths of not remembering, noticing, or even being conscious of little memories and feelings.

And yet, it is ever more complicated.

At his best, Shimoda prophesized, “To be always free / Is to be always longing // To walk with your yourself / Become yourself / To walk with yourself / To lose.” To journey through this work, there will be some sense of loss but of course so much more to glean.

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April 19, 2017 – May 2, 2017 — 11

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Chen Chen, Sjohnna McCray tackle nuanced relationships, identity

By Michael Schmeltzer IE Contributor

mother. In “Bedtime Story #1” he writes the couple strolls together “as if / they could… like an ordinary couple: / the unassuming black and the Korean whore / in the middle of the Vietnam War.” It’s a blunt ending with no poetic flourish to ease the blow. However, it’s not complete misery; McCray’s talent lies in his ability to contrast the darker moments with a luminous, lyrical touch. For instance, he pairs this direct ending with earlier descriptions of his father bringing candy from the base to give his mother. The minute the soldier “touches his pocket / the face she reserved for his English crumbled / like sweet toffee.” It’s a tender scene. McCray’s lines are so controlled, the music, rhythm, and pacing so finely tuned, one almost forgets the harsher truths he brings to the page. Even the mother, at one point, “forgets why she’s standing there” but the reminders of the “diaphragm and condoms in her purse” are ever present.

When I Grow Up I Want to be a List of Further Possibilities by Chen Chen is the latest A. Poulin, Jr. Poetry Prize winner from BOA Editions, and it’s easy to understand why.

While Emily Dickinson famously said poetry makes her feel as if the top of her head were taken off, Chen’s charming, aching poetry debut creates the sensation of hypersensitivity. I am placed firmly in the body and the surrounding world is made fresh. When Chen describes the sea as making “a sort of sensual / moo” or when he dreams of “one day being as fearless as a mango,” I am taken aback. How did I miss the empowering nature of this fruit, the common ground between sea and cow? This mix of bold imagination and gorgeous dream-logic welcomes the reader on every page. I am moved and delighted to the core until it feels as though I “fell in love in midair.”

The writing itself is as “friendly as a tomato,” but Chen’s poetry is in no way trite; he expertly navigates the challenges of being a queer Asian-American with lyrical grace and wisdom. Chen delves into the complexities of society, identity, and family through a unique lens that is critical without being cynical. He projects a joyful maturity that contains an expansive, childlike wonder combined with intellectual insight. It’s a delicate balance but he handles it like one born on a tightrope. He tackles struggles with compassion and wellplaced humor. More than once I laughed out loud and then nearly doubled over as he turned a grin into a grimace with cutting commentary. It’s an effective poetic maneuver that strikes a powerful chord.

In the poem “Talented Human Beings,” Chen opens with “Every day I am asked to care about white people.” His humor, always with a slight bite, immediately disarms, and so when he follows this later with a line like “Pop Quiz: Who was / Vincent Chin? Theresa Hak Kyung Cha?” the impact stuns.

Chen acknowledges the wider history of the Asian-American experience in America while also writing from a personal perspective. He describes the domestic tension between his burgeoning queer identity as a teen and the expectations of his family. “I didn’t tell him I spent all night in a tree / because my mother slapped me / after I told her I might be gay. / I didn’t tell him that I hit her back.” Despite the conflicts Chen describes, I’m convinced,

however, no matter how difficult it is, “it’s always possible / to love bigger & madder.”

This is a masterful book I’ll revisit repeatedly.

Sjohnna McCray’s prize-winning debut “Rapture” finds itself in some of the same troubled waters as Chen’s book of poetry: both authors tackle the nuanced relationships between parents and children as well as their own racial and sexual identities. Both convey a reverence to the people and experiences around them, but while Chen often evokes a sense of worshipful whimsy, McCray’s McCray may shed an “unwelcome influx of worship primarily acknowledges “darkness is light” on the personal histories that haunt his / more of a presence than desire.” family. He may see our bodies in a way that “Rapture” reads fairly chronologically and appears unflattering, but if there’s a lesson begins with the troubling courtship between McCray wants us to learn, it’s that “There’s his father, an American soldier, and Korean proof of God in light like this.”

Writing Trauma: The Nisei Voice of Suma Yagi

By Tarisa Matsumoto IE Contributor There is a unique psychology among the Nisei, the American-born children of Japanese immigrants, most of whom came of age during World War II. I have witnessed it in my own family, in my community, and in almost every other Nisei I’ve met. It is a psychology of silence, of persevering through an unspoken trauma, a trauma that was dormant for decades. The trauma is, of course, the forced removal and incarceration of people of Japanese ancestry in the United States during World War II. While we reflect this year on the 75th anniversary of the signing of Executive Order 9066, which paved the way for the incarceration, we should also remember those Nisei who broke that psychology of silence to speak out against the incarceration and to share their experiences with their communities. As the 90-year old poet Suma Yagi writes in the preface to her collection of poems titled, A Japanese Name: An American Story, “My Nisei disposition sometimes makes me uncomfortable when sharing personal experiences about my cultural heritage, and yet I feel a special responsibility to both past and future generations.” It is this gift of sharing that gives me the sense that not only do I know Yagi’s life and family after reading her collection, but

McCray allows the reader respite from the darkness through gorgeous language and musicality, but the poet’s gaze itself is unflinching. Throughout the book he observes people, bodies of lovers and strangers, “the prickly hairs, the moles and bumps, / the scarred trenches along the shoulders.” He writes about his father’s prosthetic and the stump that remains of the leg. As the book’s title implies, however, it is with rapture McCray stares. His look sanctifies the subject even as the body “refuses the terms, / the slang-by-number words, / we try to assign.”

that I know my own family more intimately lingered for days. Camp Harmony is the Puyas well. allup Assembly Center, where Yagi and other Yagi’s publication is almost a mixed genre people of Japanese ancestry from Western in that in addition to her poems, she includes Washington were held until they were moved family photos, autobiographical snapshots or to the incarceration camp at Minidoka, Idaho. micro-essays, and extensive notes of the his- The indignity of the communal living, which torical references in the poems. If you know I knew about before reading Yagi’s poems, nothing about the Japanese American expe- became even more horrendous to me through rience during World War II, one thing that Yagi’s description in poems such as “The Day will come with reading A Japanese Name: After.” In this poem, she describes lining up An American Story is an understanding of in the communal showers “like cattle/in front that time in our history. That was one of the of a trough.” Yagi continues with the image of goals for Yagi. When I asked her about this, being treated like cattle in “Solitude.” In my she said she feels that “it’s important to write conversation with Yagi, she admitted that it because the community outside is unaware, was just embarrassing to have someone right and younger people need to know about it.” In over her at those times of bathing and going reference to the notes section, Yagi’s son Vic- to the bathroom. However, it is a horror-filled tor said: “These histories didn’t come out a lot. symbol of the way our government and miliWe made a decision to put it into the notes.” tary treated people of Japanese ancestry, like This inclusion speaks to the focus of Yagi’s cattle hemmed in by the ever-present barbed poems as well. Yagi said that all of these ex- wire. periences are part of our history and that it is Yagi’s narrative poems are endearing, filled important to speak about them “in an honest with memories of her father bringing in the way.” washtub each night and her mother’s pride at Yagi speaks about these histories as re- gaining citizenship and the right to vote. But flected in her own experience through seven her poems about the indignity of confinesections of poems. The sections focus on dif- ment are the ones that stand out most to me. ferent parts of her family’s life, including her And perhaps in this age of travel bans and parents’ struggles as immigrants and the after- sanctuary cities, Yagi’s book is really a gift math of the incarceration. For me, Yagi’s sec- of remembrance, a reminder of what humans tions titled “Camp Harmony” and “Minidoka” are capable of, of “man’s inhumanity/toward man.”

12 — April 19, 2017 – May 2, 2017

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I Am Another You an intimate portrait of the human experience

By Misa Shikuma IE Contributor

Despite being a modern-day street urchin, it’s difficult to watch Olsen on the streets without seeing an embodiment of white boy privilege. He chose to live like this, despite growing up in a loving household. He is educated, at one point telling Wang he completed high school and dropped out of college. And he attracts the charity of strangers in a way that young, homeless black men surely wouldn’t.

In I Am Another You, documentarian Nanfu Wang blurs the lines between friend, subject, and director after meeting enigmatic drifter Dylan Olsen at a Miami hostel and deciding to join him in his perpetual quest for liberation. For several weeks she immerses herself in life on the streets, documenting Olsen and his interactions with strangers, before a disagreement forces them apart. Wang returns to China for another project, only to be drawn back to Olsen’s story months later.

At first glance, Olsen seems like the consummate free spirit. In his early twenties when he and Wang first meet, Olsen possesses the youthful good looks of Zac Efron and the mellow drawl of James Franco. He is prone to uttering phrases such as, “The world is my home,” and, “Being lost is where I’m found,” between taking drags on cheap cigarettes, and prefers to keep his shoes tied to his backpack than on his feet. Olsen’s very being has a magnetic pull, as evidenced later by complete strangers’ desire to want to help him, and Wang is particularly intrigued by the vast differences between their backgrounds; he who left his family behind in Utah to traverse the country,

I Am Another You

she who hails from a small village in China bound by rigid social expectations.

Wang confesses her insatiable hunger to see more of the world; how, in China, her birthday present to herself was to buy a train or bus ticket to a place she’d never been before. The Miami jaunt was no different—feeling restless in her new home base in New York, she booked a one-way ticket down to Florida. In that respect, driven by wanderlust and curiosity, Wang and Olsen are eerily similar.

In the course of their travels through the urban centers of Florida, Olsen proves an uncanny ability to charm others, scoring free rides, the occasional place to spend the night, and even money.

On the one hand this generosity proves that hope for humanity is not totally lost, on the other it hints at the protagonist’s potential to be a great con artist. Indeed, only when Wang distances herself from her friend and reviews the footage on her own is she able to recognize telltale signs of Olsen’s murky history.

In the course of finishing and promoting her debut documentary feature, Hooligan Sparrow (2016), which she took on after the homeless stint with Olsen, Wang finds herself in Utah and decides to pick up the trail that her friend left behind. She gets in touch with Olsen’s father, a prominent detective with local law enforcement, who reveals the crucial backstory that casts everything that she knows about Dylan in a new light.

Olsen resurfaces as well, only this time appearing more haggard, that youthful glow from earlier times extinguished. Though ultimately a sympathetic figure, Olsen’s big reveal forces Wang and her viewers to confront their perceptions of freedom and social stigma. Recognized at SXSW for Excellence in Documentary Storytelling, I Am Another You is an exquisite, intimate portrait of how the human experience transcends all boundaries, be they cultural, social, political or otherwise.

Fits and Starts offers hope for positive diversity

By Misa Shikuma IE Contributor Korean-American actress Greta Lee is best known for brief but memorable appearances in the Tina Fey and Amy Poehler comedy Sisters, as well as Lena Dunham’s HBO show Girls. Now, she proves that she can hold her own as leading lady in Fits and Starts, which had its world premiere at SXSW. The film also marks the directorial debut of writer Laura Terruso, and follows New York literary darling Jennifer (pen named the gender-ambiguous JM, and played

by Lee) and her husband David (Wyatt Cenac) as they journey to suburban Connecticut for an exclusive artists’ salon. Jennifer, who has just released her second novel, insists that their attendance will benefit David, who hasn’t published anything since a fictional account of a man suffering from HPV that appeared in The New Yorker “a few years back.”

JM’s success only accentuates David’s lack thereof.

Similar to Hello, My Name is Doris, whose script firmly established Terruso as a talent to watch for, Fits and Starts is acerbic yet heartfelt, making fun of the pretentious art scene while teasing out the characters’ hopes, fears and insecurities, which are all too relatable. In Austin to promote Fits and Starts as well as Gemini, in which she has a supporting role, Lee sat down to talk about subverting convention both onscreen and off.

Born to Korean immigrant parents who had settled in Los Angeles, Lee was immersed in a creative environment from the start. Her mother, a classical pianist, bestowed a lasting passion for music upon the children. Lee also dabbled in dance and, of course, acting.

“I was adapting The Babysitters Club into plays and short films and casting my siblings,” she recalled of her childhood.

After studying theater at Northwestern University, Lee continued eastward to New York City, where she currently resides, and launched her career on the stage before shifting toward film and television. Despite the stereotypes of Asian immigrant parents, Lee’s were supportive of her artistic aspirations “once it became undeniably clear” that she had her mind set on joining the entertainment industry.

Rather, the challenge lay in breaking down the expectations set by society for what it means to be an Asian woman.

“It wasn’t that I was ever explicitly told, ‘Don’t be funny,’” she said. “It was more that stereotypical, ‘Keep it down now,’ ‘Don’t be so present.’ It was the norm that you were expected to be submissive—and I’m not saying that my household was like that, but that definitely contributes to this mindset of what a woman should be.”

Lee is anything but submissive, as evidenced in her performances as well as her real-life demeanor, which remains steadfastly animated and candid even at the end of a long press day. And, as anyone

familiar with her most recent work knows, Lee has a distinct flair for comedy.

“Recently, the comedy world has been much more inclusive and has so much more variety in terms of the types of people that I’ve been able to play,” she said.

Meanwhile, in drama films, especially when she was starting out as an actress, she was only getting jobs to play the stereotypical technician, nurse, or a lawyer, she said.

But thanks to Carruso, Fits and Starts provides Lee with ample opportunity to flex both her dramatic and comedic chops. The best part? Despite depicting an interracial couple, the narrative doesn’t make race a plot point. Instead, the story focuses on the tensions that play out within the relationship when one party seems more powerful than the other—with fame being the currency— and both are members of the same tightknit industry. Lee was grateful that race was never discussed on set, but agreed that casting her against Cenac, who is AfricanAmerican, added nuance to the story that viewers can interpret how they will.

“My husband and I are both creators,” she says, on how she relates to her character in the film.

“We work in similar industries…it’s a minefield to navigate, to be totally blunt. I appreciate in this film that you see that they love each other, that they are committed and, for the most part, a functional, happy couple, and they’re dealing with it. That seemed very real to me.”

As other actors and actresses of color will freely admit, Lee shares the same concern of being pigeonholed by casting directors because of her heritage and appearance. Echoing recent statements made by fellow Korean-American actor and Gemini co-star John Cho, Lee alluded to “this unspoken feeling of a ceiling that you can’t break through that exists.”

“Without trying to be political in the roles I’m choosing—there’s only so much I can control, unfortunately, [being pigeonholed] is absolutely something that I’m thinking about,” she said. “And the hope that there is no ceiling in place.”

It’s a fine line to walk because, for Asians and other minorities, the roles that are available are often merely derivatives of stereotypes rather than fully fleshed out individuals. However, films like Fits and Starts offer hope for positive diversity and complex characters.

“This is not to say that things haven’t gotten better, and I do feel lucky with the opportunities that I’ve had,” Lee said.

Currently Lee is shooting the second season of Hulu drama Chance opposite Hugh Laurie, but looks forward to producing more of her own material in the near future. She just directed her first short and is developing a digital series called Hibiscus. Ceiling or no, Lee’s trajectory pushes onward and upward, no doubt inspiring other actresses of color to do the same.

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April 19, 2017 – May 2, 2017 — 13

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Director Miao Wang returns to SXSW with Maineland

By Misa Shikuma IE Contributor Director Miao Wang, whose first full length documentary feature, Beijing Taxi, debuted at SXSW seven years ago, returns to the festival with her latest project, Maineland. Through the eyes of the two teenaged protagonists, Wang explores the recent phenomenon of affluent Chinese families sending their children overseas for education—in this case to a small, secluded Northeastern boarding school.

Wang first became interested in the subject when wrapping up Beijing Taxi, which focused on the rapid gentrification occurring ahead of the 2008 Olympics.

However, finding schools—let alone families, willing to grant the director full access was no easy feat. Eventually she met an admissions officer from Maine’s Fryeburg Academy, a small private boarding school established in 1792, one of many institutions actively recruiting Chinese students. Of the forty prospective students interviewed by Fryeburg representatives that year, less than half are offered admission.

Stella, Maineland’s female lead, has a seemingly perfect life. Conventionally pretty and graceful as a ballerina, she is vivacious and bubbly, freely babbling to the camera how much she admires the American lifestyle and culture based on her two favorite films, Bring it On and High School Musical. Her family owns a mansion in a gated community replete with grand staircases, marble, and a small dog; a setting that wouldn’t look out of place on an American reality show. But beneath the veneer of the nouveau riche, her life isn’t so picture perfect; between her first and second years at Fryeburg, we learn that her father’s affairs have led to

a divorce, and that the family business is struggling.

“My English still isn’t good,” she jokes to her mother upon coming home for summer break. “But I have a lot of friends!”

Harry, Wang’s other focus within the Chinese contingent at Fryeburg, is quite the opposite. Prior to moving to Maine, we see how reserved and studious he is, composing a piano ballad for a video message to be shown to his soon-to-be classmates. Later, in the dormitories, he prefers playing World of Warcraft to socializing with his peers in the evenings.

His father studied in England when he was a young man, and wants to bestow upon Harry the same opportunity and benefits that come with being abroad. Though Stella and Harry exhibit contrasting dispositions, the traditional, patriarchal Chinese attitude may also help explain their differences. Harry, the oldest—and only—son in his family (also the first grandson in several generations) bears intense pressure to succeed in a way that Stella doesn’t.

Both sets of parents, in their own ways, articulate desire for their children to study overseas, citing America’s position as a world leader, an ambition for the teens to become part of a new cultural elite, and a longing for opportunities that they themselves didn’t have access to.

The underlying expectation, though, is for Harry and Stella to eventually return home to China.

As Wang notes, Fryeburg, Maine is the sort of small, American town where everyone grows up there and never leaves.

Thus, as one might imagine, it’s a culture shock for a group of young foreigners who come from predominantly urban areas

Miao Wang

that make Manhattan look like a joke.

There’s a certain disillusionment on the Chinese students’ part, as they realize that life in America isn’t as happy or simple as our sitcoms and movies make it out to be.

None of them have ever been so far away from home, so it’s with comfort that they congregate periodically at a local Chinese restaurant for dinner (probably Fryeburg’s only one).

The camera follows Harry and Stella in and out of the classrooms, catching cringeworthy moments of casual racism—not just from fellow students but from some of the teachers too. It’s obvious that none of them are trying to be malicious, but all the same it reinforces negative stereotypes of Americans; tone-deaf and narrow-minded.

Others don’t like that the group speaks Mandarin amongst themselves but, like the hot pot and noodle dishes, it’s another link to the homeland; a way to feel close to their culture and identity while immersed in such an alien environment.

Although Maineland was shot several years ago, Harry and Stella’s experience is the rule, not the exception. A producer for the film, in the post-screening Q&A, stated that it’s not just the elite—most middle class families are sending their children overseas, saying they’ve “lost hope in education in China.” Thus a symbiotic relationship has emerged.

Boarding schools like Fryeburg that have faced declining domestic application rates of late are actively recruiting international students to make up the difference, and in large markets like China there is essentially an endless pool of prospective students.

And it’s not just small, private institutions taking advantage—everyone from Seattle Central College to the University of California network is doing it too, especially since they can inflate tuition costs for international students. A family friend and US diplomat who has spent years stationed in Asia admitted that while she had qualms approving student visas for Chinese youths who had barely passed high school and were pursuing higher education in America, other did not, knowing the financial incentive for colleges and universities here to accept them.

Maineland works so well because its subjects are so malleable and naive. Even though the camera captures nuances that the students may not consciously register, like a discreet “English-only” sign in the common room, oftentimes the most powerful moments lie within Harry and Stella’s revelations; how their views of both China and the US have changed, and how they’ve changed themselves.

Equal parts coming-of-age story and cross-cultural discourse, Wang’s film is an intimate portrait of how globalization affects everyday life.

Mayhem: Fans will rejoice seeing Steven Yeun back in fighting form

By Misa Shikuma IE Contributor In Mayhem, directed by Joe Lynch, Steven Yeun portrays Derek Cho, a disgruntled mid-level associate at a top consulting firm with a bone to pick with the company’s partners. But on the day he gets fired, thanks to some corporate backstabbing, the entire office is placed under quarantine for eight hours on account of a virus that eliminates normal inhibitions and reduces the infected to impulsive, aggressive, violent animals.

Trying to work the situation to his advantage and plead his case to the big bosses seeing as no one can leave the building, Cho gets booted by security to the basement, where rival lawyer Melanie Cross (Samara Weaving) is also being held. Setting aside their differences, Mayhem Cho and Cross team up to help each challenge? Getting there before the The first feature-length script from other battle their way to the top-floor quarantine ends and their targets cease to writer Matias Caruso, Mayhem strikes a boardroom, where each can exact revenge be sitting ducks. similar tone to Zombieland what with its on the C-level suits of their choice. The winning combination of action, humor and

satire. Having spent his career climbing his way to the top like a mindless drone, the outbreak serves as a wakeup call to Cho, reminding him that there’s more to life than having a corner office and an expense account; no doubt, it’s something we could all keep in mind.

It’s refreshing to see an Asian male in the lead, particularly when he’s not a meek, bespectacled nerd with an accent, and when his love interest is a Margot Robbie lookalike who is equally badass - not at all a damsel in distress. Fans of AMC’s The Walking Dead will rejoice seeing Yeun back in fighting form, proving that he has the intensity and charisma to carry a film.

The only thing standing in Mayhem’s way of becoming a cult classic is the unfortunate timing of its debut at SXSW so close to that of the similarly themed, yet critically panned, The Belko Experiment. Regardless, Joe Lynch’s film, bolstered by its talent and writing, is poised to stand up to the test of time.

14 — April 19, 2017 – May 2, 2017

Arts & Culture Asia Pacific Cultural Center 4851 So. Tacoma Way Tacoma, WA 98409 Ph: 253-383-3900 Fx: 253-292-1551 faalua@comcast.net www.asiapacificculturalcenter.org Bridging communities and generations through arts, culture, education and business.

Friends of Asian Art Association (FA3) P.O. Box 15404 Seattle, WA 98115 206-522-5438 friendsofasianart2@gmail.com www.friendsofasianart.org To advance understanding, appreciation and support for Asian arts and cultures, the Friends of Asian Art Association provides and supports programs, activities and materials that reflect the arts and cultures of countries that make up the broad and diverse spectrum of Asia.

Civil Rights & Advocacy Organization of Chinese Americans Asian Pacific American Advocates Greater Seattle Chapter P.O. Box 14141 Seattle, WA 98114

www.ocaseattle.org

OCA—Greater Seattle Chapter was formed in 1995 and since that time it has been serving the Greater Seattle Chinese and Asian Pacific American community as well as other communities in the Pacific Northwest.

It is recognized in the local community for its advocacy of civil and voting rights as well as its sponsorship of community activities and events.

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Executive Development Institute 310 – 120th Ave NE. Suite A102 Bellevue, WA Ph: 425-467-9365 edi@ediorg.org • www.ediorg.org EDI offers culturally relevant leadership development programs.

WE MAKE LEADERS InterIm Community Development Association 310 Maynard Ave S, Seattle, WA 98104 Ph: 206-624-1802 Services: 601 S King St, Ph: 206-623-5132 Interimicda.org Multilingual community building: housing & parking, housing/asset counseling, projects, teen leadership and gardening programs.

Kawabe Memorial House 221 18th Ave S Seattle, WA 98144 ph: 206-322-4550 connie.devaney@gmail.com We provide affordable, safe, culturally sensitive housing and support services to people aged 62 and older.

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Fostering future leaders through education, networking and community NAAAP Seattle services for Asian American Queen Anne Station professionals and entreP.O. Box 19888 preneurs.

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Speak better. Write better. Live better. Improve your English language skills with a professional language consultant at a price you can afford. Learn to write effective business and government correspondence.

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Southeast Seattle Senior Center 4655 S. Holly St., Seattle, WA 98118 ph: 206-722-0317 fax: 206-722-2768 kateh@seniorservices.org www.sessc.org Daytime activities center providing activities social services, trips, and community for seniors and South Seattle neighbors. We have weaving, Tai Chi, indoor beach-ball, yoga, dance, senior-oriented computer classes, trips to the casino, and serve scratch cooked lunch. Open Monday through Friday, 8:30-4. Our thrift store next door is open Mon-Fri 10-2, Sat 10-4. This sweet center has services and fun for the health and well-being of boomers and beyond. Check us out on Facebook or our website.

Social & Health Services Asian Counseling & Referral Service 3639 Martin Luther King Jr. Way S Seattle, WA 98144 ph: 206-695-7600 fx: 206-695-7606 events@acrs.org www.acrs.org ACRS offers multilingual, behavioral health and social services to Asian Pacific Americans and other low-income people in King County.

APICAT 601 S King St. Seattle, WA 98104 ph: 206-682-1668 www.apicat.org Addressing tobacco, marijuana prevention and control and other health disparities in a culturally and linguistically appropriate manner.

Commission on Asian Pacific American Affairs GA Bldg., 210 11th Ave SW, Suite 301A Olympia, WA 98504 ph: (360) 725-5667 www.facebook.com/wacapaa capaa@capaa.wa.gov www.capaa.wa.gov Statewide liaison between government and APA communities. Monitors and informs the public about legislative issues.

Denise Louie Education Center 206-767-8223 info@deniselouie.org www.deniselouie.org

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Keiro Northwest 1601 E Yesler Way, Seattle, WA 98122 ph: 206-323-7100 www.keironorthwest.org rehabilitation care | skilled nursing | assisted living | home care | senior day care | meal delivery | transportation | continuing education | catering services

Legacy House

803 South Lane Street Seattle, WA 98104 ph: 206-292-5184 fx: 206-838-3057 info@legacyhouse.org www.scidpda.org/programs/legacyhouse. aspx Services offered: Assisted Living, Adult Day Services, meal programs for low-income seniors.

Chinese Information & Service Center 611 S Lane St, Seattle, WA 98104 ph: 206-624-5633 fax: 206-624-5634 info@cisc-seattle.org www.cisc-seattle.org Creating opportunities for Asian immigrants and their families to succeed by helping them make the transition to a new life while keeping later generations in touch with their rich heritage.

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Tai Tung Restaurant International District Medical & Dental Clinic 720 8th Avenue S, Seattle, WA 98114 ph: 206-788-3700 email: info@ichs.com website: www.ichs.com

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Bellevue Medical & Dental Clinic 1050 140th Avenue NE, Bellevue, WA 98005 ph: 425-373-3000 Shoreline Medical & Dental Clinic 16549 Aurora Avenue N, Shoreline, WA 98133 ph: 206-533-2600 Holly Park Medical & Dental Clinic 3815 S Othello St, Seattle, WA 98118 ph: 206-788-3500 ICHS is a non-profit medical and dental center that provides health care to low income Asian, Pacific Islanders, immigrants and refugees in Washington State.

7301 Beacon Ave S Seattle, WA 98108 ph: 206-587-3735 fax: 206-748-0282 www.idicseniorcenter.org info@idicseniorcenter.org IDIC is a nonprofit human services organization that offers wellness and social service programs to Filipinos and API communities.

Parking & Transportation Services 206-624-3426 transia@aol.com Merchants Parking provides convenient and affordable community parking. Transia provides community transportation: para-transportation services, shuttle services, and field trips in and out of Chinatown/International District, and King County.

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April 19, 2017 – May 2, 2017 — 15

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Acrobatic juggling runs through the blood of the Famiglia Gentile

By Chris Potter IE Contributor

Locally, SANCA is just a super facility.

It’s really one of the best facilities in the country—the most extensive and expansive.

They teach so many different disciplines.

From flying trapeze, to trampoline, to German wheel, aerial, unicycling, tumbling, clowning. I mean, just so much. You can join at your interest level—take a class a week, or just drop in. They have a dropin flying trapeze on Friday nights where you can just try it out. And there are other [organizations] like Emerald City [Trapeze Arts].

On March 16, 2017, the 14th Annual Moisture Festival opened with a highenergy foot juggling performance by Famiglia Gentile. Carlo and Orlene Gentile and their four children—Guisi (1), Gioia (5), Giulia (8), and Gianluca (10)—captivated the audience, juggling vases, a table, and each other to kick off the world’s largest live comedy/varietè festival. The International Examiner caught up with Orlene, a secondgeneration Filipina-American, to talk about family, the circus, and discovering what we are capable of. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

After that he went to college at Santa Clara University in the South Bay. That’s where we met. We both went to Santa Clara University. He was majoring in theatre first and then decided to go for an Italian major.

I majored in biology. But I had a history of performing in dance. I danced since the age of three, and then continued my dance through high school. In college I was doing ballet and other dance at Santa Clara. I was in the performing arts, but I never thought of performing in the circus until I met Carlo.

So that’s how I got into it, through him.

IE: It seems like circus really embraces diversity, meets people where they’re at, and is very communal. That’s exciting.

OG: Yeah, it’s really exciting! I think in general circus always does that, but specifically with the programming they have here, it really does that.

Orlene and Carlo Gentile will teach a foot juggling workshop at SANCA this April IE: Does SANCA offer financial and May. Dates will be confirmed soon.

To enroll, visit: sancaseattle.org/classes/ assistance? intensive-study/workshops or call 206-652OG: They do! They offer scholarships 4433. and different programs. They have a Social To read the entire interview, visit goo.

Circus Program that works with populations that might not have the same resources, or gl/Gkwn96.

International Examiner: How did you become interested in the circus? What was your experience getting started, and what was the path to where you are now?

Orlene Gentile: Carlo was interested in the circus in high school, and taught himself how to juggle and unicycle. … There was a small circus that came to his school and their performing troupe traveled all across the country. When he graduated high school and was applying to colleges, he also applied to the circus—that particular circus that had come to his school. He was accepted and decided to go with the circus for two years out of high school, and traveled the country with them to see what that was all about.

with kids who might have issues at home, but they’re able to come to the circus and that helps them with their home life.

SANCA’s annual gala fundraiser, “Up, With a Twist!” was held on February 6, 2017 at Teatro ZinZanni in Seattle. • Photo by John Cornicello

IE: What kinds of life skills do you think circus can bring to kids?

OG: I think the great thing about circus for kids is that there’s a place for everyone in the circus. No matter what your interest or skill is, there’s a community in the circus, and a cooperation versus a competition. The individual, like I was in China, is pushing themselves to their own limit. So it’s not like you’re competing with other people to do something. You’re always challenging yourself to do better. You’re not measuring yourself by anyone else. I think that’s a great thing about circus for kids.

We’ve directed circus programs, and it really is amazing the confidence that kids get from creating something, working on skills, and then being able to perform in front of an audience. Having the audience appreciate them, realizing that they shared something really special of themselves that IE: What is it like performing with the audience is grateful for. That’s huge for their self-confidence. your family?

Physically, I think circus is one of the best OG: It’s something really special when activities for health. Training-wise, you have we’re out there with the kids, doing it all together as a family. It kind of shifts the to dedicate yourself. You get to be passionate focus. Sometimes when I perform solo or about something and really focus on an duo, I would kind of get really nervous or activity. That helps your brain, your body, start thinking about other things. But then and your characteristics of determination, when I perform as a family, I just feel like, persistence, and working towards goals.

“Hey we’re out there, we’re doing it.” I don’t There’s so much in circus that is great for even think about those things. I’m just out kids. Growing up in it and being able to use their bodies and use their minds and gain there with my family, having a good time. that confidence and that experience working IE: What do you enjoy most about on something, performing something, and juggling? sharing that with others.

OG: I really enjoy the footwork. I felt like IE: It’s clear you have a lot of passion. it was a good connection for me, having done We have young APIs in our readership. the dancing. Foot juggling is really different Do you have any advice for some of them from hand juggling. I never had very good who maybe aren’t familiar with circus, hand coordination [laughs]. Growing up I who want to become involved? always used my feet a lot, so I felt like it was OG: Well, I think in Seattle there are really a good fit. great resources. We’re actually doing an I really enjoy connecting with audiences. artists-in-residency at SANCA [The School Being out there, it’s kind of like a sacred of Acrobatics and New Circus Arts]. But space, being in the ring or being on stage we’ve seen programs and have been involved in front of people. You’re inviting them in in circuses all around the country through to share a moment with you that hopefully an organization called the American Youth is full of joy and a special experience. That Circus Organization. We were founding moment in time when you are connecting members and I was on the board as president with them and you’re both sharing for four years. Every other year they have the something that is there for that moment and [National American] Youth Circus Festival. then it’s gone. I guess that’s the whole idea … SANCA has been involved in AYCO and with the circus. For one day the circus is they’re going this summer. there, and then the next day it’s gone.