July 5, 2017 International Examiner

INTERNATIONAL EXAMINER

July 5, 2017 – July 18, 2017 — 1

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FREE EST. 1974—SEATTLE VOLUME 44, NUMBER 13 — July 5, 2017 – July 18, 2017 THE NEWSPAPER OF THE NORTHWEST ASIAN PACIFIC AMERICAN COMMUNITIES. FIND YOUR INSPIRASIAN.

Our Streets, Our People

Understanding Chinatown International District’s complicated relationship with the homeless Photo by Cathy You

2 — July 5, 2017 – July 18, 2017

INTERNATIONAL EXAMINER

IE OPINION

Turtle Island: Letting go of a false narrative

By Bob Shimabukuro IE Columnist “America,” my father often said, “has the worst history ever.”

I was torn, because he also said, “listen to your teacher.” And listening to my teachers, America didn’t seem so bad.

A conversation in an American History high school class discussion surprised me Regarding plantations: I heard, “I think it just depended on the Master; if you had a good Master, life was good; if you had a bad Master, it was bad,” go unchallenged.

Regarding labor unions: It was the same, “the owner should have the right to do what he wants. It’s his business. If they don’t want to work, they can quit.” (I guess that’s the difference between an “employee” and a “slave.” An employee can quit, while a slave can’t?)

I hated to be the only one commenting on the side of the laborers, and I sometimes would pop up and say something, and everyone would stop ... then go on with their comments.

My teacher, Mr. H came to me after such a class. “Bob, you know, that poor people don’t make revolutions; they don’t have time. The middle class makes revolutions.”

A quick conversation at a meeting over a year ago Older white woman: I don’t think we should be using language that would drive people away from working with us on any given issue. We need to work with everyone that agrees with us on the issue at hand, whether they’re racist or not.

Younger Brown woman: I certainly don’t want to work with any racists.

IE STAFF

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.

Older Black woman: You just rejected a whole lot of people you don’t want to work with. Who are you going to work with?

The worst history ever? At least the last 500 years, for sure Americans are the least educated in the world. We’ve been taught a false narrative from the beginning. The fake news didn’t start with the current fake in the White House. The fake news started with “Columbus sailed the ocean blue” heroically because everyone thought the world was flat. Columbus knew the world was round.

Sailors knew the world was round. He was just a full-time bully, murderer, and pretty much worse guy than Trump could ever be ... (hmmmn, well, maybe not). And because of what we were taught, the rest is “history,” ... well maybe.

When we talk about the future, we need to recognize that (1) our consumer-based world economy is broken, and (2) the environmental crisis that we find ourselves in offers opportunities for a systemic change needed to ensure that ALL people can share equally in the resources available. We also need to heed the words of Naomi Klein, who said to a 2014 audience at the King County Labor Council: “People who have been on the front line of our toxic economy should be the first in line for any benefits of the New Economy. … The first beneficiaries should be the indigenous.”

This idea is not new. In 1974, James and Grace Lee Boggs had written in Revolution and Evolution in the Twentieth Century: The revolution to be made in the United States will be the first revolution in history to require the masses to make material sacrifices rather than to acquire more material things. We must give up many of the things which this country has enjoyed at the expense of damning over one-third of

The late James Boggs and Grace Lee Boggs

the world into a state of underdevelopment, ignorance, disease, and early death. ... It is obviously going to take a tremendous transformation to prepare the people of the United States for these new social goals.

Sharing Power So, can we just stop talking about diversity? Diversity is just a sideshow to not doing anything. We need to ensure that the non-majority white population accepts that power must be shared and the 500-year fake narrative/history of white supremacy be abolished.

Corrections In the June 21, 2017 edition of the International Examiner, The Peoples Party was incorrectly referred to as “People’s Party” in the article “CID community shares neighborhood concerns at Peoples Party Listening post.”

In the article, “Mayoral candidates respond to API community questions,” Seattle mayoral candidate Gary Brose’s names was incorrectly spelled as “Gary Bose.” The IE regrets the errors.

EDITOR IN CHIEF Travis Quezon

IE BOARD OF DIRECTORS Ron Chew, 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

ASSISTANT EDITOR Chetanya Robinson

COMMUNITY RELATIONS MANAGER Lexi Potter

COPY EDITOR Anna Carriveau

lexi@iexaminer.org

BUSINESS MANAGER Ellen Suzuki finance@iexaminer.org

DEVELOPMENT MANAGER Heidi Park CVA COORDINATOR Ngoc Dinh

Slogans like “Make America Great Again,” “Nothing’s Wrong With America,” and “We Need to Rebuild a Strong Middle Class” are insulting to those who have faced exclusion, incarceration, torture and genocide.

In Bob’s perfect world, we would build and strengthen the long-ignored class, which has been doing the heavy lifting for millennia. If you’ve followed “Fo’ Real” columns, you know who I’m referring to: Women of Color.

Take a Deep, Deep Breath, then Keep Moving!

editor@iexaminer.org

news@iexaminer.org

ARTS EDITOR Alan Chong Lau arts@iexaminer.org

CONTRIBUTORS Bob Shimabukuro Sameth Mell Jill Mangaliman Devin Cabanilla Cliff Cawthon Kamna Shastri Laura Simeon

Jo Eom Paul Mori Nalini Iyer Mayumi Tsutakawa Pinky Gupta Roxanne Ray DISTRIBUTORS Joshua Kelso Makayla Dorn Maryross Olanday Rachtha Danh Antonia Dorn Kristen Navaluna Kat Punzalan Eli Savitt Christina Nguyen INTERNS Cathy You Kanami Yamashita Christine Smet

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IE COMMUNITY VOICES

INTERNATIONAL EXAMINER

July 5, 2017 – July 18, 2017 — 3

Sick with worry: Asians and minorities ignore the need to heal in a climate of fear Pathways to Health

By International Community Health Services Increased fear of discrimination and harsh immigration policies are causing mental anguish for people in Seattle’s minority, immigrant, and refugee communities. The unease is so prevalent it’s keeping them from seeing a doctor or therapist, and creating paralysis when the community could most use the support of counseling and other health-related services.

“Patient anxieties have increased along with certain executive actions and the loud national debate on health care,” said Randon Aea, behavioral health manager at International Community Health Services (ICHS).

ICHS providers are seeing distress that interferes with patients’ daily lives and decisions, including an increase in complaints of sleeplessness, paranoia of being followed, difficulty concentrating, and hypervigilance.

“Patients have increased anxiety about their health care benefits being cut and their immigration status questioned, said Jeshmin Bhaju, ICHS psychologist. “Some feel an urgency to apply for U.S. citizenship, while others are not sure about making travel plans to visit other countries because they fear not being allowed back into the United States.”

“I have patients in the process of seeking political asylum. They are worried they will be deported. Some have already experienced trauma in the process of leaving their home country to come to the United States,” said Joe Gobunquin, behavioral health specialist at ICHS. “They may already have post-traumatic stress disorder.”

Lusa Hung, ICHS psychologist, says the impact extends beyond fears of deportation to include those already on the path to citizenship.

“I have seen an increase in anxiety in my patients who hold green cards. More people are asking for waivers for the English and civics testing requirements for naturalization due to mental impairment,” said Hung. “Patients are also hesitant to continue behavioral health services because they don’t know if their insurance will cover it in the future. Rather than risk a personal expense, they are foregoing care.”

Fear is hitting people of all ages and all backgrounds, and can include entire families.

For example, Gobunquin has young patients being bullied because they “look ethnic.”

“They complain of being teased and that other kids don’t want to play with them,” he said. “Family stress includes situations where one partner preys on or abuses the other with threats of ‘I will report you if you don’t do as I say.’ I’ve seen this kind of pressure lead to suicidal thoughts.”

“Several patients are concerned about racial and ethnic discrimination,” said Terra Rea, ICHS psychologist. “Specifically, I have Latino patients concerned about deportation, and Muslim patients concerned about Islamophobia. These macro concerns tend to exacerbate mental health issues.”

But perhaps more alarming than what Aea and his colleagues are seeing, is what they know they aren’t.

with mental health services. Newcomers in a strange land, marginalized from the mainstream—transportation, child care, cost, insurance, and time off already offer a challenge.

Some find other reasons to stay away.

“People with mental illness are taught to feel shame, to believe they have a character or moral deficiency. This perception is especially true among many ethnic communities,” said Aea. “Most people don’t want to deal with why they experience certain feelings, they just want them to go away. Those seeking treatment are the brave ones.”

Sometimes, help literally gets lost in translation. Medical professionals like those at ICHS, who are trained to be culturally sensitive, as well as fluent in other languages, help bridge gaps.

“Communication is influenced by the translator’s cultural filter and biases, as well as their interpretation ability,” said Aea. “We tend to generalize people of different cultures based on our past interactions. People may misread cues.”

Healing starts with community, compassion and kindness

“Whatever the source of anxiety, we can make a difference with how we respond,” said Aea. Health care centers—falling under a category with hospitals, schools, places of worship, protests, funerals, and weddings—are considered “sensitive locations” by Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

This designation generally bars agents from searching, interviewing or arresting potential undocumented immigrants.

In addition to preparing staff in how to respond in the unlikely event of an ICE inquiry, ICHS takes precautions with patient information to ensure privacy and does not require patients disclose the details of their immigration status.

“We assure patients,” said Aea. “We don’t need to know if you are documented. The fear of being ‘caught’ or ‘discovered’ should never keep you from seeking any kind of health care. If you have been feeling anxious or sad, there are welcoming people at clinics near you that would be happy to dig deeper into these feelings, and in doing so help alleviate them.”

“I try to normalize the situation,” said Gobunquin. “I provide information and education. I reassure my patients that they can give us a call with any question and any doubt. We will look for resources to help them.”

Neighbors, family, and friends—all members of the community—need to acknowledge negative feelings and bring them into the light, said Aea. He offered a reminder that it is important that people seek treatment, just like they would with any other illness.

“Mental illness should be seen on par with any other medical diagnosis. Like diabetes or heart disease or any other condition, it needs to be addressed with medication, support and behavior change,” he said. “Minorities, immigrants, and refugees feeling fear and stress need to come see us, especially now.”

July is Minority Mental Health Month, which focuses on the challenges of menBiases about mental health, other tal health conditions and how they are inbarriers add to silence creased by less access to care, cultural Compounding their fear and vulnerabil- stigma and lower quality care in many miity is the long reach it already takes for mi- nority communities. More information can norities, immigrants, and refugees to connect be found at: www.nami.org.

About ICHS Founded in 1973, ICHS is a non-profit community health center offering affordable primary medical and dental care, acupuncture, laboratory, pharmacy, behavioral health WIC, and health education services. ICHS’ four full-service medical and dental clinics—located in Seattle’s International District and Holly Park neighborhoods; and in the cities of

Bellevue and Shoreline—serve nearly 29,000 patients each year. As the only community health center in Washington primarily serving Asians and Pacific Islanders, ICHS provides care in over 50 languages and dialects annually. ICHS is committed to improving the health of medically-underserved communities by providing affordable and in-language health care. For more information, please visit: www.ichs.com.

What it means to be welcome As a Federally Qualified Health Center, International Community Health Services’ (ICHS) doors have always been open to any and everyone. Recently the community health center has taken extra steps to make sure patients feel welcome—including staff training and a welcome statement posted in all clinics that make it clear patient dignity, privacy and security are a priority.

“ICHS is providing staff training to offer consistent and considered responses to patient concerns about issues such as disclosure of personal information and immigration status. We also make sure our staff are aware of resources such as free legal support, that can be passed along to ease some of the challenges facing our community members,” said Michael McKee, director of health services and community partnerships at ICHS.

Patients and visitors to ICHS’ International District, Bellevue, Holly Park, and Shoreline clinics will soon be greeted with multilingual posters offering reminders of ICHS’ commitment to health care for all, regardless of ability to pay.

“We’ve created a message that reminds patients how much we value them—how much we truly value everyone,” said McKee. “We will be launching this as a welcoming statement to further help put people at ease.”

“Our clinic works alongside patients to support them in achieving their health goals. An important aspect of this partnership is that patients feel comfortable and relaxed about going to see their health care team,” said Teresa Lee, ICHS family physician.

ICHS’ welcoming statement reminds patients of its commitment to health care for all; welcoming all people, regardless of immigration status and regardless of ability to pay.

4 — July 5, 2017 – July 18, 2017

INTERNATIONAL EXAMINER

IE OPINION

To tackle Seattle’s housing crisis, we need to clean-up our toxic sites

By Sameth Mell & Jill Mangaliman Guest Columnists More than 1,000 people are moving to Seattle every week and the rise in rent is an all-too-familiar topic. We’ve seen home prices and rent more than double in the last decade. Many in our families, like many families of color, have been displaced by the rising costs of this city and now reside in places like Kent and Federal Way. The city we’ve lived the majority of our lives can begin to no longer feel familiar.

So what is the answer? We need to build more affordable housing in the places hardest hit by rent increases and we need to do it fast. Typical housing issues like zoning, siting, and funding will have a dramatic effect on this process. But our state Legislature has a crucial decision to make that has a major effect on building new affordable housing; toxic clean-up and prevention funding.

It may not be the first issue that comes to mind but cleaning up these sites is a key factor in siting and building new affordable housing in the neighborhoods that need it most. What you can afford can determine whether you are exposed to deeply and dangerously polluted sites or have a vibrant livable community to call home. A 2016 Front and Centered report found that communities of color are disproportionately exposed to toxic sites in Washington state.

Here in Seattle, neighborhoods like South Park, Georgetown, and Skyway are still

The Mt. Baker Housing Association requested state funds to clean up this site for its Gateway Project, which will provide 150 new affordable housing units. • Photo courtesy of Mt. Baker Housing Association

gravely impacted by the health effects from toxic sites and it threatens new investment in these communities.

Since the 1980s, Washington has had a little known program to clean up and prevent toxic polluted sites—in rural and urban communities alike—across the state.

The Model Toxics Control Act (MTCA) has quietly helped clean-up over 6,000 sites statewide.

Through MTCA, Mt. Baker Housing Association’s Gateway Project will clean

up a polluted sited and provide 150 new affordable housing units without displacing any current residents. This is the first MTCA project working in collaboration with a nonprofit land-owner and provides a win-win case study for how these funds can help alleviate our city’s current crisis. But opportunities like this are currently under threat.

Last November, a state report found that MTCA funding varies greatly from yearto-year and demand far exceeds available funds. For years, the state has cut millions

of dollars for cleaning up toxic sites and pollution prevention, and work here in Seattle and around the state has begun to stall.

If funding isn’t restored, we cannot continue the progress we’ve made to improve the health of everyday people and we will fall deeper into our housing crisis, while those who can least afford it will be hit the hardest.

To break this cycle, we have to invest in cleaning-up and preventing what’s still coming into our neighborhoods. To do this right, we also have to fund state public participation grants to give communities a voice in their own futures. Without these grants, communities like those around Seattle’s Duwamish River clean-up wouldn’t have been able to engage in their own neighborhood’s restoration.

Right now in Olympia our legislators are making crucial decisions about the state’s budget. They need to know that we need a solution to fund toxic clean-up and pollution prevention projects. HB 2182 is a reasonable and equitable solution that will restore the MTCA program. It can help Seattle improve the health of local neighborhoods and provide a crucial piece of the puzzle to create more affordable housing.

We know we can work with communities to design housing that improves the neighborhood and creates healthy, affordable properties, places residents are proud to call home. Our Legislature needs to step up and give more people in our city a new lease on life.

A Tale of Two Parks: the Hing Hay expansion

By Devin Cabanilla IE Columnist Seattle can now celebrate and experience the new expansion of Hing Hay park in the International District. After receiving a budgeted $3 million for a parks renovation in 2008, and the old Post Office moving in 2014, the park now spans the entire length of the King Street’s north side. Multiple delays in the process may have increased the cost, but that hasn’t been brought up much, from what I’ve heard in the community. All that we’ve seen so far are people lounging with their dogs along the pristine walkways, and children chasing flocks of birds in the new open spaces.

If you look a little closer at the park you may see something different. A contrast of sorts exists now. The beautiful red steps of the new west side of the park have recessed lighting that outline a motif of Asian dragons and other zodiac animals. The dingy brown bricked area on the east end of the park holds the random litter and cigarette butts of rough locals.

Cheerful seniors use the shiny new exercise equipment as a part of their daily fitness now. Listless greyed men use the shadows behind the World War II memorial to get drunk on rice wine.

Active teens skate and parkour enthusiasts sweat their acrobat moves across the pristine curving walkways. Dishevelled

The Hing Hay Park expansion project was officially opened June 29, 2017. • Photo by Cathy You

people of the street defecate alongside the trees and bushes. All of the public in its many forms of life use the public park in an amazing multitude of ways.

Maybe we can be glad that the park has expanded. Now there is room for the regular people and the street people we have deigned to forget. Local coalition All Home revealed that 11,643 individuals were experiencing homelessness in King County in its “Count Us In” homeless count on January 27, 2017. Homelessness disproportionately affects people of color—approximately 55% of individuals experiencing homelessness in King Count identified as people of color. The “Count Us In” report also found that 1,329 individuals identified as veterans, 2,833 were

in families with children, and 1,498 were unaccompanied youth and young adults.

Homelessness has exploded here, but thanks to our city this Hing Hay Park has expanded so that there is now space for the regular people and homeless people alike. It’s a square deal, they get a park and we get a park. Of course we get the nice part of it.

Seattle is overflowing with as the fastest growing city in the nation. Choice neighborhoods like Capitol Hill have reached a new median home price of $997,000. As word gets out about the park and all our great restaurants, the Chinatown International District can become a new bastion of hipness and homelessness. For just

$2,305 a month you can rent a brand new 1 bedroom/1 bathroom by Weller Street.

If you can’t afford that, you can get 1 bush/1 rock for free in the ignored part of Hing Hay Park.

The new Hing Hay Park will offer movies in the park, with my favorite being Moana at the end of July. I can also walk 40 yards up the street and see daily public intoxication at the old part of the park.

I can’t wait to teach my children how to enjoy the best of what the city offers and turn their heads at the dark part of town.

Hing Hay Park is a microcosm for the Emerald City. Abundant cultural activities and diverse interests cross paths to create a wonderful world city pastiche. With growing middle class incomes becoming common at $200,000, we can rise more and increase our behavioral distance from those who couldn’t cut it in this booming city economy with blistering rental price increases.

With so many things changing, and so many old neighborhoods becoming newly approachable, I don’t have to worry about the kind of public health crises that income disparity is causing. I can just go to the park (the nice side), and sip on my bubble tea while chatting about the new poke fish flavors across the street. The park is a beautiful and endearing addition to the Chinatown International District, I hope that everyone in Seattle can enjoy it this summer.

IE OPINION

INTERNATIONAL EXAMINER

July 5, 2017 – July 18, 2017 — 5

Statement: City Rushes Community Process—CID Community Continues to Address the Navigation Center’s Occupancy The following is a statement from the Navigation Center Community Task Force: Mayor [Ed] Murray agreed to “pause” the Navigation Center’s operations at the March 10th community-city meeting until a detailed plan is vetted by the Chinatown/International District (CID) community. Since then, the Friends of Little Saigon convened a Navigation Center Community Task Force (NCCTF) to meet with community partners, residents and visitors. After several community engagement sessions that were open to the general public, the NCCTF produced a Response Plan that advocates for the community’s existing and future needs exacerbated by the Navigation Center’s siting.

These efforts, however, do not suggest the NCCTF’s support for the operation of the Navigation Center in the CID neighborhood. In fact, the Friends of Little Saigon were surprised

mitigate these concerns. This process has been impeded by the failure of the City and DESC to provide the requested operations and public safety plans for the Center.

There are plans by the City of Seattle to turn the Pearl Warren Building at 606 12th Ave. S. into a Naviagation Center. Mayor Ed Murray announced the plans in Feburary 2017. The Navigation Center is a 24-hour, low-barrier shelter designed to connect homeless individuals to services and transition them to permanent housing • Photo by Cathy You

and are concerned that the City of Seattle and DESC decided to open the Navigation Center on July 12th without the community’s submission of the Response Plan. This puts into question their willingness to work with the community. The NCCTF has been working diligently to collect community concerns and developing a plan to

To draft this Response Plan, community partners, residents, and visitors shared their real experiences and lessons they learned during the past couple of years with the placement of sanctioned and unsanctioned encampments located in and around the CID. Also, members of the NCCTF researched the experiences of other cities that have established similar programs for people facing homelessness to better understand the impacts on those areas, including on the homeless communities. The Response Plan is organized according to the four themes identified by members of the NCCTF: Public Safety & Navigation Center Operations, Public Health & Services, Economic & Community Investments and Community Engagement & Partnership.

On June 30th, the NCCTF will email this Response Plan to the Mayor and City Council. The NCCTF expects a full response from the City of Seattle detailing what the City will do for each proposed strategy including a description of resources to be provided, timeframe for implementation, and identification of City agency that will work with the community.

YOUR OPINION COUNTS Please share your concerns, your solutions, and your voices.

Send a letter to the editor to editor@iexaminer.org with the subject line “Letter to the Editor.”

6 — July 5, 2017 – July 18, 2017

INTERNATIONAL EXAMINER

IE NEWS

A man asks for change from passers by near the crosswalk at 5th Avenue and Jackson Street • Photo by Cathy You

Does the CID have a NIMBY attitude toward the homeless? It’s complicated

By Chetanya Robinson IE Contributer

Sonny Nguyen, then a young activist and founding member of API Food Fight Club, had some blunt words for members of their How easy should it be for the City to own neighborhood at that public hearing, as forcibly move homeless people from the the Seattle Times reported. encampments where they live? This question “My organization has grown really lay at the heart of a City Council hearing in September 2016. Council Members were disappointed in our neighborhood’s weighing a proposed ordinance—strongly response to homelessness,” Nguyen said. “I influenced by ideas from the ACLU understand where the frustration and pain Washington—that would prevent the City is coming from, but we don’t believe that from sweeping encampments deemed should limit our compassion for homeless “safe,” unless residents were given 30 days people.” notice and an offer to stay somewhere else.

Nguyen emphasized that those opposed In other words it would become harder for to the ordinance didn’t speak for all the the City to quickly shut down the camps and neighborhood. force people to move somewhere else.

But Nguyen didn’t mince words in Though it was a debate with city-wide implications, it was particularly important to some residents of the Chinatown International District (CID).

criticizing the City, either. They claimed the City was pursuing the wrong strategy with sweeps, and furthermore was creating a false conflict between two The way many in the CID saw it, the vulnerable communities. encampments and the increased homeless “It seems like the City only comes to presence in the neighborhood were making Chinatown when they need to use us the neighborhood less healthy, less safe. In and pit us against other disenfranchised an email to the International Examiner in communities,” they said.

October 2016, Dorothy Wong, executive In other words, as with many aspects director of the Chinese Information and of the region’s homelessness crisis, it was Service Center blamed the encampments complicated. on a loss of business in the neighborhood, Nguyen now works as public safety elders who were afraid to go out, an increase in crime, violence and drug dealing, and a coordinator for the neighborhood. They pile-up of trash and human waste under still hear anti-homeless sentiment in the the freeway, which runs through the neighborhood. Sometimes, people’s kneeneighborhood, separating the Chinatown jerk response to solving crime and public International District from the Little Saigon safety issues in the neighborhood is to want to kick the homeless people out. neighborhood.

At the Council chamber, seniors from the CID community voiced their concerns, sometimes through translators, to City officials about what they saw as the negative impacts of homeless people in their neighborhood.

But Nguyen thinks to a large degree, people are just misinformed about the causes of the neighborhood’s public safety problems.

“Homeless people are not a public safety concern,” they said. “It’s homelessness

that’s a public health concern, and it’s homelessness that puts vulnerable populations at risk, including in this neighborhood.”

longstanding issue in the neighborhood in its own right. And the perception from outside that the CID is not safe has hurt businesses.

Nguyen doesn’t think people in the neighborhood are as anti-homeless as they themselves think. They see crime, graffiti, litter, a drug problem, and assume it to be the fault of homeless people when this isn’t necessarily the case. Nguyen would like to see more compassionate attitudes towards homelessness in the neighborhood.

“It was more this fear of, ‘Is it a safe place?’ Not blaming the homeless community, but also trying to hold the city and SPD [the Seattle Police Department] accountable,” she said.

Upadhyay remembered, after the Jungle was closed, how a parking lot that InterIm manages under I-5 lost revenue. “People were just way too “I’m not saying we need to throw scared to even park their cars there,” our hands up in the air and give them she said, “Even in the peak season when free reign, but we need to understand games were happening at the stadium.” why these people are coming to our The level of homelessness seems to have neighborhood, and that homelessness is dropped recently, according to Upadhyay, hard,” they said. “The way that we hold perhaps due to extra police patrols, and those conversations is really frustrating the fact that public safety issues have and really disappointing, because I know been addressed more directly, including that this is a compassionate, powerful with the hiring of Nguyen as public safety neighborhood and that we have always coordinator and others in similar roles. stood for disenfranchised people—and But, she said, there’s always room for sometimes that doesn’t show.” improvement. “I think coexistence is Jamie Lee, IDEA Space manager at possible and it can happen if there’s a serious community development organization commitment made towards ensuring that SCIDpda, agrees that public safety often public safety is going to be there.” has a lot to do with perception.

Recently, the ideal of coexistence has “Whether or not encampments actually been tested once again. A proposal to build cause less safety, it is seen as a public safety a 24-hour emergency shelter in the Pearl issue,” she said. “But I also think that a lot Warren building on 12th Avenue near the of it has to do with a misunderstanding of Little Saigon neighborhood, was put on why people are homeless and what puts hold at the end of April after it angered local them in that situation.” community advocates. The shelter, known The frustration that many CID as the Navigation Center and inspired by a residents have felt over the past months shelter in San Francisco, was planned as a and years is more due to public safety low-barrier way to help 75 people at a time issues than homelessness itself, according transition to permanent housing. to Pradeepta Upadhyay, director of the InterIm Community Development HOMELESS: Continued on page 7 . . .

Association (CDA). Public safety is a

IE NEWS

INTERNATIONAL EXAMINER

director of the Low-Income Housing Institute (LIHI), an organization that Community advocates were concerned develops and owns property for the because some of them only learned homeless and low-income earners. about the plans to site the shelter in “I think the Chinatown International their neighborhood—plans the city had District is significantly more impacted negotiated for months—when the plans by homelessness than other typical were officially announced. neighborhoods,” she said. “Every time “It’s not about the Navigation Center, there’s a major sweep in the Jungle or it’s not about homelessness,” Quynh the Field, or anywhere along Dearborn Pham, board chair of Friends of Little or Pioneer Square, then people just end Saigon, told the South Seattle Emerald up in the ID, and it’s unfortunate.” in March. “This issue is about respecting But does the CID bear an unfair burden the public process and respecting our compared to other neighborhoods when voices.” it comes to the effects of homelessness, There’s an unfortunate history of the as some in community meetings or City City bringing projects and policies into Council hearings would say? the neighborhood without engaging the According to Jamie Lee of SCIDpda, community beforehand, Pham said in a homeless people will likely always recent interview. There’s a risk that the be attracted to the CID, because the “great ideas or great policies that the neighborhood is a transit hub, it’s close city implements” will have unforeseen to services downtown, and the food impacts, she said. is cheap. “And also let’s be real—in According to Pham, “When you bring Laurelhurst, they’ll sue the city, whereas in these resources, more illegal things we won’t here,” she said. and public safety concerns kind of spur Sharon Lee of LIHI remembered from it that the city doesn’t predict or the initial discussions with members can’t support or mitigate until it actually of the Vietnamese, Cambodian, and happens, and the community doesn’t Laotian community members when the want that experience to happen again.” Nickelsville encampment was sited close Lee of SCIDpda disputes this to Little Saigon. At the time, people assumption—shared, she said, by some were far quicker to accept the idea than in the community—that bringing more community members in Ballard were in services providers causes more homeless 2016. But before long people in Ballard people to come to the neighborhood. warmed to their new neighbors.

“Folks experiencing homelessness “Part of it is an education process,” are already here,” she said. “They’re Lee said. “Part of it is having people hanging out in the neighborhood. So we understand that you don’t have to fear should offer them services. It’s kind of homeless people, once you get to know this chicken and egg thing.” folks and find out what their story is.”

Pham and CID public safety This is one of the approaches Nguyen coordinator Nguyen are both members is trying—getting to know the regular of a Navigation Center Community homeless residents of the CID by Task Force, which recently put together introducing themself, offering the a response plan after extensive homeless residents cigarettes, learning community input. In a press release this their names and their habits. This way, week, the task force says the City has they’ll listen if Nguyen tells people in ignored their response plan.

Hing Hay Park that they’re being too The City and the community remain loud. They don’t have to call the police, opposed on the issue. The City plans to and if there was an emergency with any have the Navigation Center running in of the homeless residents, Nguyen would July, while the task force still does not be in a better position to help them. support the Navigation Center.

This was the approach the late If the City doesn’t respond to the Donnie Chin took, Nguyen said. Chin community and commit to mitigation was indefatigable in fighting for public strategies, says Pham, “we will oppose safety, and lost his life while looking the opening, and we will push it out as out for the neighborhood. He also saw long as we can or until we’re engaged the homeless as people first and knew them by name. authentically.” . . . HOMELESS: Continued from page 6

“I think there’s a lot stacked against Upadhyay of InterIm CDA criticizes the City for not considering the unique us, as a largely immigrant, largely non needs of the CID when deciding where English-speaking, largely working class or below the poverty-line to site the Navigation Center. neighborhood,” Nguyen said. And even “We are talking about a very, very large given all that, “We can still be NIMBY residential and business community too.” that does not speak the language, does But Nguyen would like to see not know how to navigate the system, has felt that public safety has been more self-reflection from the CID an issue that has been neglected for community—a neighborhood that was the longest time,” she said. “So it’s a founded by vulnerable people. very different scenario as opposed to “I think we as a community need to putting a Navigation Center in [another] understand that people are coming to neighborhood.” this neighborhood because they have The City needs to take a special nowhere else to go,” they said. “And we approach in addressing homelessness as a neighborhood exist because we had in the CID, according to Sharon Lee, nowhere else to go.”

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Candidates reach out to API community at Mayoral Candidate Forum

By Kamna Shastri IE Contributor Members of the API community gathered at the Nagomi Tea House on June 22 to get acquainted with Seattle’s mayoral candidates. The Mayoral Candidate Forum for the Asian Pacific Islander Community was moderated by community leader Maria Batayola.

Out of 21 mayoral candidates in the field, 10 attended the event, including James Norton, Gary Brose, Mike McGinn, Jessyn Farrell, Cary Moon, Tiniell Cato, Jenny Durkan, Bob Hasegawa, Larry Oberto, and Nikkita Oliver. Each candidate was given a minute to provide an opening statement. Following their introductions, Batayola proceeded to ask a series of six yes or no questions, to which candidates held up green cards for “yes” and red cards to indicate “no.”

Out of the six questions, only two resulted in a split. When candidates were asked: “To preserve the historic character of the Chinatown International District, should new construction be no taller than existing buildings?” Candidates Hasegawa, Brose, Norton, Oberto, and Cato agreed that new buildings should not be taller than existing buildings.

Candidates Moon, McGinn, and Farrell thought building height should not be limited to existing heights. Candidate Durkan responded with a green sign (indicating “yes”), but had written “it’s complicated.”

The next questions, about housing and development, garnered a consensus amongst candidates. All candidates said they would impose impact fees on developers. They also all agreed that the Department of Neighborhoods has not effectively reached out to local communities and has failed to involve community members in decision-making processes.

During the second section of the forum, Batayola asked candidates two questions that bear heavily on the future of the CID. The first question invoked the killing of Charleena Lyles by Seattle Police and asked candidates how they would improve relationships between the SPD and communities like the CID.

In one segment of the Mayoral Candidate Forum for the API candidates held up green cards for “yes” and red cards to indicate “no” after a series of questions. • Photo by Cathy You

Candidates responded with a variety of answers. “Police reform is not a destination,” said candidate Jenny Durkan.

“It’s a process of self-improvement.”

Candidate Mike McGinn called on SPD and City employees to understand the culture of the CID and act as a bridge between residents and law enforcement.

Hasegawa remembered Donnie Chin and reinforced how important it is for police to support the community and its homegrown public safety efforts.

Throughout the forum, Batayola brought up questions pertaining to homelessness, affordable housing, gentrification, and development, all very hot-button issues for the neighborhood. All the candidates acknowledged the city is growing faster than residents can handle, and that communities are being pushed out. Oliver said, “We need to stop talking about gentrification as if it is not racialized,” and pointed out that the first gentrified neighborhoods, like the Central

Candidates all agreed that the Department of Neighborhoods has not effectively reached out to local communities and has failed to involve community members in decision-making processes. • Photo by Cathy You

District, were originally inhabited by Black and Brown communities.

Oliver and other candidates said the community must be consulted before policies are put into place, and that decision-making should involve the neighborhood. Candidate Cary Moon said the City must work with neighborhoods under threat to talk about “growing with grace.”

Candidates agreed that developers should have to pay impact fees, and contribute to financing the challenges faced by the city from which such corporations and companies profit.

Candidates also agreed that the recent rate of growth is unsustainable and doesn’t prioritize residents and communities, though their approaches to the issue varied. Several candidates, including Moon, Farrell, McGinn and Oliver—were in favor of public land trusts. Brose preferred to cut costs and

reduce taxation. Hasegawa proposed a publicly owned municipal bank so that revenue will stay in Seattle, which he said would also help keep taxes low.

In their closing statements, candidates emphasized the need to cooperate and listen to clashing viewpoints in an especially divisive political climate.

Candidates also acknowledged the rich fabric of the CID community, and the testament to the immigrant experience that is deeply embedded in the history of the neighborhood.

“This community already has a vision for itself. The City has imposed its own vision on this community,” said Oliver.

She followed up, promising to collaborate with the community to make that vision a reality. Other candidates echoed a similar sentiment, committing themselves to working with communities like the CID on the challenges facing the city, rather than simply imposing policies and agendas from above.

The Mayoral Candidate Forum for the API community was held on June 22, 2017 at Nagomi Tea House in the Chinatown International District. • Photo by Cathy You

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Pacific Reader 2017 all summer long Welcome readers! One of the real pleasures of summer is having the time to catch up on all the books you’ve been meaning to read but never had the time for. And summer marks the arrival of our annual roll-out Pacific Reader, a series of book reviews by or about Asian Americans and new books on Asia. We’ve decided to take it slow and easy this time around and run this book review supplement all summer long, so look out for our book coverage in these pages issue after issue. In this edition we focus on a number of themes. One can never overestimate the trauma of war and how it affects lives and families across generations. Two new books of fiction by writers from Sri Lanka make that abundantly clear as their characters work hard to survive and pick up the pieces. Religion has played a major part in the lives of many, shaping and influencing decision-making and life-altering directions. A couple from Walla Walla in JewAsian look at the convergence of race, culture, and religion and the effect it has on families as they arrive at choices that make sense to them. Many view Japan as a Buddhist country but one of its greatest fiction writers was Catholic: Shusaku Endo. His novel Silence is a penetrating look at the trials and tribulations of early Japanese Christians and foreign missionaries whose beliefs are put to the test in a hostile environment.

In light of the recent film adaptation of the book, our reviewer looks again at this novel and why it remains a vital classic. The global plight of refugees has brought to light the various difficult life experiences of immigrants trying to carve out a living in new and often hostile environments in which they survive within a dominant culture. A recent novel entitled Pachinko looks at the life of a Korean immigrant family living in Japan and how, even after generations, they are subject to discrimination. Enjoy the summer and reading. We’ll see you next time.

—Alan Chong Lau, IE Arts Editor

JewAsian: Questions of identity, belonging will touch people’s lives

By Laura Simeon IE Contributor JewAsian: Race, Religion, and Identity for America’s Newest Jews by Helen Kiyong Kim, Associate Professor of Sociology, and Noah Samuel Leavitt, Associate Dean for Student Engagement, both at Whitman College in Walla Walla, WA, explores the experiences of Jewish-Asian intermarried couples and their children. This demographic represents a small but increasingly high-profile community thanks to power couples such as Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan, and Amy Chua and Jed Rubenfeld.

Seven years in the making, this book is particularly timely given recent discussions of the viral video of Professor Robert Kelly, a white American man whose live BBC interview was famously and hilariously interrupted by his offspring. The widespread misconception by many social media commentators that his Korean wife, Kim Jung-a, was actually the children’s nanny led to the explosion of #NotTheNanny on Twitter, and a public conversation around the visibility of multiracial families and stereotypes of Asian women. Similarly, many people’s mental image of Jews does not encompass people of color, including biracial children of JewishAsian marriages. This invisibility in turn has a direct impact on how many biracial Jews express their faith.

JewAsian is a concise book that covers a remarkable amount of ground in a clear and comprehensive way, starting with an overview of the general state of religious affiliation and racial identity in the United States and moving on to past and present debates over what intermarriage—both interracial and interfaith—means in the context of majority U.S. culture as well as to religious and ethnic minority cultures. The authors relate similarities and differences between the ex-

periences of Jewish and Asian immigrants and their descendants, and present the results of their interviews with people in JewishAsian marriages and with 18-to-26-year-olds who grew up as the children of such marriages. Hundreds of volunteers responded to their recruitment survey, allowing them to choose a deliberately diverse sample of subjects.

As Leavitt and Kim embarked on their research they observed that prior studies about intermarriage tended to focus on either race or religion, but not both; in particular, studies of Jewish Americans “have almost exclusively focused on Jewish-Christian marriages” and have “paid scant attention to racial difference,” while “the literature on intermarriage for Asian Americans does not account for religious difference” (p. 50). In confronting these blind spots their research truly sheds new light on this topic, and just as importantly, their findings turn previously accepted wisdom on its head.

The widespread belief that intermarriage weakens Jewish identity and results in a loss to the community is contradicted by their research, which shows a consistent pattern of Jewish-Asian parents intentionally cultivating a strong sense of Jewishness in their children. In addition, adult children of such marriages—drawn from a completely different sample group than the couples they interviewed—also express a deep and abiding attachment to their Jewish heritage and a clear sense of their identity as Jews. A perceived compatibility between what the couples describe as Asian and Jewish values resulted in virtually no reported instances of serious conflict as they integrated their belief systems into a single family unit.

Kim and Leavitt speculate that demographic

similarities between Jews and Asians (for example, relatively high levels of educational attainment and economic success) have brought many individuals from these two groups into close proximity, resulting in relationships that neither side intentionally sought out.

In JewAsian, Leavitt and Kim cover territory that is not only highly compelling in its own right, but also pertinent to wider conversations about identity in America today. As the child of an interracial, religiously mixed marriage myself, I was intrigued by this book and eager to sit down and speak with the authors via Skype.

An intermarried JewishAsian couple raising two children of their own, Helen Kim and Noah Leavitt have inevitably been personally influenced by the process of conducting this study. During our conversation they described being surprised at how consistently they heard positive messages about identity from adult Jewish Asians. Having anticipated hearing more about stress or internal conflict, they instead found that these individuals drew strength and confidence from the richness and complexity of their heritage. These young adults were characterized by a genuine enjoyment and savoring of their cultural and religious backgrounds. Seeing this in turn encouraged Leavitt and Kim to relax and realize that it was less important to carefully curate their children’s religious and cultural exposure and more important to simply provide as much exposure as possible, whether through language lessons, travel opportunities, or rituals and practices that together will enrich their children’s sense of belonging to both sides of their family heritage.

However, the authors said that many couples reported finding it harder to locate Asian

cultural resources or organizations for their children; by contrast, the Jewish community—through Hebrew school, synagogues, and community centers—offers more readily available networks for families to connect with.

Kim and Leavitt were validated in their belief that it’s important to prepare their children for the realities of the outside world by talking honestly about negative as well as positive experiences. Race undeniably has an impact on one’s encounters with the world at large, and the biracial people they interviewed reported the incredible value of the honest conversations about race and racism they had with their parents.

Following the publication of their book, Leavitt and Kim have traveled and spoken widely about their findings. Jewish audiences have been intrigued by the implications of the fact that intermarriage need not spell doom for their community, contrary to the dominant narrative that has been widely accepted as fact for some time.

One possible avenue for future research would be a longitudinal study of their Jewish-Asian subjects. After all, they point out, they interviewed these teens and twentysomethings at a formative stage of their lives, capturing just one slice of time as they spoke about their sense of self and imagined how they might feel in the future. It would be fascinating to follow them over the long term to see what actually happens as they grow older.

Whether you are Asian, Jewish, both or neither, JewAsian is a thoughtful, engaging, and relevant read given that American society is in the midst of unprecedented religious and ethnic changes. The questions of culture, belonging, heritage, and identity that are at the core of this book ultimately touch all of our lives and we can learn a great deal from the voices of the people you meet within its covers.

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Pachinko explores identity, history of Korean Japanese

By Jo Eom IE Contributor Pachinko is a Japanese game that resembles pinball machines and can be used for both recreation purposes and also gambling. The player receives multiple small steel balls that they spring into the pachinko machine which has multiple pins that direct the balls. Many of the balls fall away into a hole, while some enter specified pockets, which allows the player to gain more balls as rewards. Though the player has some control over how hard the lever springs the balls, the ultimate destination of the ball is left to chance. Some players end up with jackpots, while others may lose their fortunes.

In the way that players have limited control of the game, the novel illustrates how many Koreans during the Japanese colonial era to post World War II, had limited control over their lives. Many lost their fortunes, while some by good fortune were able to strive. Min Jin Lee’s second novel, Pachinko, follows four generations of a Korean family who lives in Japan. The story begins during the time of Japanese colonialism in Korea and introduces a poor, but humble family in Busan (a providence south of the peninsula).

After the death of her father, the protagonist Sunja helps her mother run a boarding house. There she becomes pregnant with the child of a married man and fears the

shame that she will bring to her family.

Eventually, she marries Isak, a pastor who chooses to marry her despite her pregnancy and together they move to Osaka, Japan.

As World War II wages on, we see the discrimination many Koreans face in Japan. They are only allowed in certain pockets of Japan, denied many types of jobs, constantly in fear of deportation, and paid unfair wages. Throughout the novel, we see Koreans who ultimately fall through the cracks, similar to how pachinko balls may just fall into the hole. On the other hand, we also witness some who amassed great wealth and success through fortunate means like working in the black market, hiding their Korean identities, or opening Pachinko parlors.

The storyline plays on elements of bloodline and identity. It questions the importance of blood in the family and also in a nation. What makes someone part of a family? Is your father the one who raised you, or the one who impregnated your mother? And how do you become part of a nation? How long do you need to live in a country? Must you be born there? Must your parents and grandparents need to have been born there? What percentage of Japanese blood do you need before you

Silence an intense, worthy trip

By Paul Mori IE Contributor Shusaku Endo’s much praised novel Silence has been rereleased to coincide with Martin Scorcese’s 2016 film of the same name.

Given the lukewarm box office response to the film, is the book worth revisiting? The answer, like the issues raised in the book, is complex.

First released in Japan in 1966 and in English in 1969, the book garnered much critical praise, as well as controversy in religious circles, especially in Japan.

For a book as complex as Silence, it is far too simplistic to quickly presume that books are always better than the films based on them. But it can be easily said the two art forms use different means to tell their stories, and this is certainly the case here.

The narration of the book takes various forms, leaving the reader to decipher the mystery of an older missing priest who has recanted his faith. Two young Portuguese priests, former mentors, are sent to find him in 17th Century Japan and the reason why he disappeared.

After a preface, which sets the stage simply, Endo chooses to begin to tell the tale in the form of letters by one of the two priests, and Rodrigues’ voice continues for the first third of the book. Without notice, a conventional narration continues for the rest of the story, until an epilogue in which an unadorned official report only hints the final fate of the characters.

Endo’s skillful inventiveness in storytelling is matched by his prose. William Johnson’s translation is more than up to the task and is equally superb. His informative preface provides sufficient historical reference and context, as well as background to religious contro-

versies raised by issues in the book in Japan.

Given the weight and hardships the priests endure, the story’s pace moves with little effort. And suffering does follow, as this is the time in Japan where Christians were hunted down with cold efficiency, and their beliefs were tested by their stamping upon purposemade sacred religious icons called “fumi-e.”

As literature, there is no question that Silence deserves the accolades it has garnered over the years, and given that, it certainly can be appreciated. Yet the story itself puts up challenges in its torture-filled episodes, and the suffering is physical, psychological, and spiritual.

The two young priests face almost impossible situations where the moral choices oppose spiritual ones. And cut off from their life lines to the European church and dropped off in an alien world that could be a different planet, they are confronted by cold silence from every direction.

Their prayers unanswered, the only voice they hear is of a Japanese grand inquisitor, who seems strangely sympathetic, brilliant, and reasonable in his arguments— yet under his cruel hand, many Christians suffer and die. He observes that perhaps a plant that flourishes in one land (i.e. the Catholic Church), may wither and die in “the swamp that is Japan.”

Silence finishes cryptically, yet brilliantly, with a sterile official death report that ends the novel, but does not conclude it.

Full of questions that raise so many more, Silence is a book without resolution and fulfills its mission to amplify an intense and immense silence. If it is indeed the journey, and not the destination, that is important, then Silence is worth the trip.

“count” as Japanese? This play on blood is portrayed by the character of Noa. Even though he was raised by Isak and Sunja, he is haunted by his blood relations to his biological father. In addition, despite adopting Japanese culture and being able to speak perfect Japanese, he is ultimately seen as a “filthy” Korean and cannot escape his Korean heritage.

Similarly, Sunja’s grandson, who is a 4th generation Korean Japanese, is continued to be treated as a foreigner despite being better at Japanese than Korean, and despite never having lived in Korea. Toward the end of the novel, he thinks, “In a way, Solomon was Japanese, too, even if the Japanese didn’t think so ... There was more to being something than just blood.” Concurrently, Korean Japanese who go back to the Korean are ostracized as traitors and cannot escape their Japanese background.

The novel was separated into three parts and is written in the perspective of numerous characters including members of Sunja and Isak’s family, other Koreans, and also the Japanese. At times this can seem confusing and readers may get lost in the midst of all the different voices.

The author also uses Korean and Japanese terms throughout the book, and those not

familiar with the languages may not fully understand the dialogues. In addition, there were storylines outside the main characters that seemed out of place in the context of the whole novel and was quite sexual in various sections.

However, despite seeming long-winded at times, the length is necessary in order to go in-depth to the cultural aspects and family dynamics. It was also nice to have the perspective of the Japanese and what they’re thinking. Min Jin Lee is able to portray the complex relationship between the Japanese and Koreans and was able to show the mutual fear and distrust without villainizing the regular Japanese citizens who were also caught in the middle of the war and national conflicts. In addition, the use of Korean and Japanese terms breeds familiarity with the characters and helps one become immersed in the story.

The story was beautifully written, and allowed readers to learn the history of Korea and Japan in an engaging way.

Throughout the novel, the cultural changes between Koreans, Korean immigrants living in Japan, and Korean Japanese, as well as the generation gaps are portrayed through the different family members.

Although the novel is written in the context of Koreans, the characters and their struggles with identity may resonate with many immigrant families and those of mix nationalities.

Noontide Toll a deep collection

By Nalini Iyer IE Contributor “I go everywhere in this country but nowhere in my mind. Maybe you can never really leave the past behind. It is in your head and outside your control,” writes Vasantha, the narrator who threads the short stories in Romesh Gunesekera’s latest book, Noontide Toll.

Set in post-Civil war Sri Lanka ( or at least the supposed postwar period), the stories in this collection have a remarkably simple plot device at their center: Vasantha, a van driver, who takes many tourists and visitors to trips in different parts of the country and thus gives us poignant and passing insights on places, people, histories.

What seems to knit these stories together is Vasantha’s sense of the passage of time and how different individuals make sense of events and spaces. For example, in the story “Turtle,” Vasantha’s Czech passengers, Eva and Pavel, are on a romantic trip to the coast. They meet a nightwatchman on the beach and Eva exclaims how lucky he is to have ‘The Indian Ocean.’ He replies, “‘Yes, miss.

Like you say, I am lucky to be here.’

He paused, not sure whether he should disturb the eager couple with any more talk about himself. Then, as if unable to stop the flow, he added softly, ‘I survived the tsunami.’” Eva and the

nightwatchman’s encounter is barely half a page long, but in it is embodied the trauma of a natural disaster, how quickly the world moves on from such events, and what is left for the survivors. The island nation’s recovery from decades-long Civil war and the tsunami that killed more than 30,000 people is focused on growing tourism.

Vasantha is a small cog in this economic machine and Gunesekera says much without using too many words.

The collection is divided into two parts: South and North. So, a tourist van driver’s business takes him in both directions, but in the context of Sri Lanka, those two directions signify vast political and cultural differences. The North is predominantly Tamil and the South Sinhala. The North and the South waged a relentless war as the Tamils sought a separate homeland, Eelam.

It is a history of traumatic loss, violence, child soldiers, and suicide bombers, and a controversial government action ended the hostilities in 2009. Through Vasantha’s perspective, we see the festering wounds, the barely healed scars, the long journey toward a tenuous peace Gunesekera’s prose is lyrical, his narrative is economical, and the reader senses more than knows where these stories are headed. Read together, these stories feel like a novel-in-progress and yet each story has a sharp definition, a specific time and place, and the viewpoint of a chauffeur-philosopher who neither mourns nor rejoices in what he sees.

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Junichiro Tanizaki’s translated works remind us of a creative drive within Japan’s strict codes of behavior

By Mayumi Tsutakawa IE Contributor

male and male lovers and their fixations, Tanizaki undertook a modern language translation of the 11th century masterpiece, The fascination for, and popularity of, The Tale of Genji, known as the first novel fiction by one of Japan’s most famous 20th ever written, by the Lady Murasaki Shikibu. century writers, the sexually fixated and ofTanizaki’s most famous book was The ten ghoulish Junichiro Tanizaki (b. 1886, d Makioka Sisters, a detailed view of the lives 1965) continues. As I have explored my own and loves of four Osaka sisters as their famcultural identity through travel to Japan, I ily sank into poverty during World War II. pair that experience with reading translaAlthough the first chapters tions of a wide range of Japanese authors were serialized in magaover the years, and today love the works zines, the Japanese impeof Japanese writers of the international art rial government halted the community (Murakami and Ishiguro). So, publication for its lack of of course I am drawn to two new English patriotic contribution to the translations of Tanizaki’s short fiction: “The Maids” and “Devils in Daylight,” and a reis- war effort. Thus, Tanizaki left the limelight of the Tosue of The Gourmet Club. kyo literary world and its Tanizaki was born in Tokyo at the acceptable political codes beginning of the Meiji era, when Japan and labored over this masfinally opened its doors and minds to terwork in secret until after Western industrial innovation, military the war. It was finally pubstrategy, and the arts, including writing. lished in its entirety in 1949 Although he was born into an upper-class to great acclaim, and made family, by the time he entered college, he into a popular film in 1983. had few funds and little time for study; “The Maids” is conhe left the university to pursue various sidered a kind of sequel to “The Makioka jobs including freelance writing. His first Sisters,” but was written much later, just a notable work of fiction, “The Tattooer,” few years before the author’s death at the was published when he was 25 and focused on a bizarre story of lovers, and it set him age of 79 in 1965. Another book of intense along a path of defying Japan’s putatively and detailed focus on the appearance and strict behavioral codes through his writing. backgrounds of, and relationships between, Like the Japanese reading public, he showed women, it is considerably more delightful, an avid interest in Western writers such compared to the many depressing characas Wilde, Baudelaire, and Rilke and the terizations in the Makioka family story. fascinating magician of horror, Edgar Allan Living in a tightly knit family in a succesPoe. In fact, Tanizaki’s brother, the scholar sion of small houses during and after World Seiji Tanizaki, was a translator of Poe’s War II, these house maids came, one after works, which were immensely popular in another, from poor rural enclaves in Kyushu or northern Honshu, where many farmers or prewar Japan. fisherfolk were impoverished and sent their Beginning to sharpen a focus on the daughters into service in wealthy homes in images and roles of intensely beautiful fe- major cities. The author’s depiction of these

young women in circumstances beyond their control is loving and astute. Some are comely, some are plain, some are intelligent, and some are dull and illiterate. A few attract boyfriends while the other maids either suffer or enjoy arranged marriages back in their home villages. Tanizaki made favorites of generous spirited ones. I loved the level of detail Tanizaki provided here; this helped me understand the strict roles and behavioral codes the family and its servants lived by in a tight proximity. Every nighttime sigh and sob was heard and understood by all in the house of their employers.

By contrast, the novella, Devils in Daylight, as told by a narrator who was witness to a perceived crime, was serialized in 1918 when the author was in his mid 30s. It is a hyper-eroticized mystery involving two men, their midnight peeping into a silent tableau featuring a perfect female beauty being photographed as she strangled a lover and then her collaborator destroying the body in a vat of lye. But did this incident actually happen? The narrator follows the trail to discovery of who these people are and where their motivations lie, and he peels back layers of intrigue about his dapper colleague, who introduced him to this bizarre scenario. The story is rather Poe-like.

The third book is a reissue of the translated The Gourmet Club, a set of six unrelated and often disturbing stories spanning Tanizaki’s writing panoply from 1911 to 1955. His characters are surprising: mean children torturing one another, young monks intensely imagining what women

are like, and a cross-dressing man discovering “an even weirder, more fanciful, and more disturbing affair.” But most striking is the grotesque 1920s tale of “The Gourmet Club,” in which the protagonist convenes a gourmet club of friends, discovering and boasting of ever more decadent and unusual restaurants and meals. Verging more toward the notion of “gourmand,” with its connotation of excess beyond excellence, the gentleman follows his nose on a late-night walk, discovering a secretive doorway that reveals a Chinese men’s club where the patrons consume incredible and possibly disturbing recipes for banquet food and enjoy tantalizing music and performances by stunning Chinese women.

The narrator is drawn to visit this dinner club many times, until he concludes that to continue would result in “either raving lunacy or death.”

Tanizaki was disappointed when the Nobel prize for literature eluded him. Perhaps it is better he died before he could see the award go to his esteemed colleague Yasunari Kawabata in 1968. Is it that the deft English speaking Tanizaki, who also had worked as a film director and writer, and who entertained the foreign press as other well-known authors did not, created books too erotically unusual and macabre to gain world acclaim? In his biography of another infamous Japanese writer, Yukio Mishima, John Nathan calls Junichiro Tanizaki the “the great Japanese decadent.”

Widely celebrated for his literary genius, Tanizaki revealed exquisite and extreme fixations as a narrator with the perspectives of a true Japanese aesthete. As readers today, we are grateful for his intense focus on beauty as we use his works to contemplate the deeper role of the female in life, in love, and in obsession.

Architecture exhibit tells the story of CID street revitalization

By Pinky Gupta IE Contributor The Seattle Architecture Foundation (SAF) exhibit “Main Streets in a Changing America” showcased how five communities across the country have successfully revitalized their main streets. One of the communities highlighted in the exhibit was the Chinatown International District (CID).

While urban populations in the United States are booming, the main streets in many communities are fading away. Some have been able to preserve and revitalize themselves through the Main Street America Program (part of the National Trust for Historic Preservation).

The communities in the Main Streets in a Changing America exhibit have found successful ways to grow and thrive, while preserving what makes them unique, as cultures and economies on a hyper-local scale.

The CID was chosen for the exhibit as an example of one of the few historic Chinatowns in the nation to successfully preserve its distinct character. According to Stacy Segal, executive director of the Seattle Architecture Foundation, the CID was chosen partly because it’s important

“Community by Design: Main Streets in a Changing America” ran through June 10. • Courtesy Photo

part of the city and has a long history.

“The Chinatown International District neighborhood is going through a lot of change and struggling to preserve their cultural identity, affordability, and housing,” Segal said. “But also [the community] realize[s] that they need new development and being sensitive towards the community and resident’s needs. ... The development is happening, and the community is trying to have a voice, but it is hard.”

The exhibit focused on four key strategies that are part of the Main Street America program—economic vitality, design, promotion, and organization.

It is a modest exhibit, according to Segal, but it presents the CID as a case study for preservation and community vitalization— how people can revitalize while engaging the community and creating change in the community.

The CID’s small businesses can thrive, and so can affordable housing, according to Segal, if they are provided with better assistance and guidance be given to the people. Though there is affordable housing, the quantity is currently not sufficient. The community also has a high percentage of seniors who want to stay in their community.

Stacy talked about the community’s dedication, and that it’s very active toward shaping the future of their city. However, the residents of the district haven’t always been able to make change in a big way, according to Segal. The CID is positioned in a critical part of the city. The residents are learning how to implement grassroots changes and also be part of this. The CID will benefit with the Main Street program regarding education, financial, housing and other benefits, Segal said.

Although not all of the communities featured in the exhibition are officially affiliated with the Main Streets program, all of

them demonstrate how community members working together can help keep their downtowns relevant.

The Seattle Chinatown International District Preservation and Development Authority (SCIDpda) has been doing just this since 1975, leveraging relationships with local developers and property owners to help ensure that the CID neighborhood remains the heart of Seattle’s Asian American community. The SCIDpda regularly holds community meetings to understand the needs of the residents and to better help them. The SCIDpda and Chinatown International District Business Improvement Area (CIDBIA) are exploring community-focused developments both old and new, including the International Village District Square, Hirabayashi Place, and the future Asian Plaza redevelopment. Local developers, property owners, and small business owners shared their plans experiences with attendees.

When asked about the how receptive CID residents were, Stacy said the exhibit was a great opportunity for the community to tell the story and also set an example for another community in preserving their history.

IE ARTS

INTERNATIONAL EXAMINER

July 5, 2017 – July 18, 2017 — 15

For team of Taw and Jeffries, Persuasion a ‘grueling’ reward

By Roxanne Ray IE Contributor Harold Taw and Chris Jeffries are pairing up again to create another musical: Persuasion, a musical adaptation of Jane Austen’s final novel.

Taw and Jeffries first met at the 5th Avenue Writers Workshop, where they initially created an original one-act musical called The Missed Connections Club in 2014.

“For me, the 5th Avenue Writers Group was like doing a masters program in musical theatre,” Taw said. “For two years, we met twice a month with the 5th Ave’s New Works staff, including such talents as Ian Eisendrath, presently music-directing Come From Away on Broadway, and our special adviser Albert Evans, an award-winner in all aspects of writing musicals.”

Taw says that the decision to work with Jeffries a second time was easy to make.

“Chris and I love each other,” he said. “The 5th Avenue Theatre was the matchmaker.

We’re an arranged marriage that worked.”

A number of factors led Taw and Jeffries to the choice of Austen’s work as the foundation for their next project. “By background, I’m a novelist. I’m also a huge Jane Austen fan ... obsessively so,” Taw said. “When I’m stressed out, I reread her novels to marvel at how she can make what was so difficult to write appear so effortless.”

But it is the drama of the novel itself that swayed them to pursue the project. “Persuasion features passionate characters filled with regret and nostalgia over the mistakes they’ve made,” Taw said. “To a reader, the

violence of the main characters’ emotions is never in doubt because we can see inside Anne Elliot’s head.”

Taw believes musical theatre is the best medium by which to translate Austen’s work from the page to the stage. “To a viewer of a film, for example, such feelings have to be translated into lingering close-ups, or veiled in coded language,” he said. “A musical can be truer to the spirit of the novel because music can express with immediacy and poignancy otherwise inexpressible feelings and thoughts.”

But that doesn’t mean that the process of adaptation is easy. “In a word, grueling,” Taw describes this work. “In two, grueling and rewarding. The axiom that ‘musicals aren’t written, they’re rewritten’ is true.”

Because of the extensive revision process for new musicals, Taw is grateful for the support, first, of the 5th Avenue Writers Workshop, and later, of the Texas Musical Theatre Workshop. “There are so many moving parts to staging a musical and, as with sheet music, you can’t simply read the page and know what you have,” he said.

“You have to see, hear, and feel it in real time.”

Taw’s appreciation for the actors who helped in Persuasion’s development is unbounded. “There’s no way to overstate the importance of having actors read and sing through a musical,” he said. “You’ve got one shot with the audience, whether in dialogue or in song. You’ve got to make sure it lands.”

While some theatre creators struggle to maintain ownership of their work during the development process, because so

Cayman Ilika, Nick DeSantis & Matthew Posner in Persuasion at Taproot Theatre. • Photo by Erik Stuhaug

many voices contribute to the conversation, Taw instead found the process to be one of growth and creativity. “At our 5th Avenue reading, we learned that our show had good bones, and flagged places we needed to improve,” he said. “At Texas Musical Theatre Workshop, we got to experiment with the solutions, whether through new songs or through emphasizing certain characters more.”

And it was the 5th Avenue’s leadership that helped give Persuasion continued life at Taproot Theatre. “Ian Eisendrath recommended our show to Taproot’s Associate Artistic Director Karen Lund,” Taw said.

“And quite thankfully, Karen was interested in hearing our demos, flew out to see the Texas workshop, and committed Taproot to a year-long development process with us.”

In that new partnership, Taw felt he had met his match. “At Taproot, it was quite daunting to be confronted by people who know and love the novel as much as I do,” he said. “And quite enlightening.”

The Taproot team helped Taw and Jeffries dig into the minutiae that Austen’s novel has to offer. “I have to say, there were certain passages that I glossed over at first because I thought them too difficult to translate,” he said. “But the creative team never let me off that easy. And the show is far better because of it.”

As a fairly new writer in the realm of musical theatre, Taw always hearkens back to credit much of his growth to the 5th Avenue Theatre. “My interest and understanding of musical theatre has grown exponentially,” he said. “As an audience member, I was frequently swept up in the wonder. As a creator, I now have the discernment and tools to try to build that wonder, which involves a remarkable investment of time and sweat, from the ground up.”

Taw already has ideas for what’s next after Persuasion. “There are only two novels in the history of literature that I considered turning into a musical,” he said. “One is Persuasion, which is a dream come true.”

And what’s the other one? “The second is Egyptian Nobel Laureate Naguib Mahfouz’s The Harafish, roughly translated as Urban Riffraff, a sprawling novel about poverty, passion, and democracy that unfolds over twelve generations in a single alley,” Taw said. “I’m still trying to persuade Chris to join me on that one!”

Persuasion runs from July 12 to August 19 at Taproot Theatre’s Jewell Mainstage, 204 North 85th St, Seattle. For more information, visit taproottheatre.org/shows/2017/ persuasion and www.persuasionmusical. com.

16 — July 5, 2017 – July 18, 2017

INTERNATIONAL EXAMINER

IE ARTS

Theatre Puget Sound uses lens of equity in search for new executive director

By Roxanne Ray IE Contributor Theatre Puget Sound (TPS), the local theatre-service organization for theatre artists of all disciplines, is in the process of hiring a new executive director.

Last fall, former executive director Karen Lane parted ways with TPS, and in recent months, TPS has faced turmoil among its staff, board, and members. On April 27, TPS held a public forum to discuss the controversy, and has posted meeting minutes on its website.

According to the board, the focus for this executive director search is equitable recruiting. “The traditional process of recruitment has elements that are inherently inequitable, so it is imperative that we have a search that is intentional in its equity,” said board member Liisa Spink, who also serves as Capital Campaign Manager at Seattle Children’s Theatre.

Board member Agastya Kohli agrees.

“As stewards of equity in the theatre community, and as active participants in the social justice conversation, it is imperative for TPS to practice what we preach,” he said.

Spink and Kohli report that equity is not a new concern for TPS. “Equity has been a focus for TPS for some time, so the conversation around the search at the board level from the very beginning had equitable practices as a main value,” Spink said.

Kohli added, “Right from the first discussion in TPS board meetings, it was evident to us that equity has to be a prominent element in our search process.”

The TPS board views the need for equity in recruiting as a necessarily collaborative process. “The TPS board still has a lot to

learn about equity and equitable practices,” Spink said. “Asking the advice of experts is one way that we seek to address our need to learn more about being an equitable organization, with the understanding that we are on the beginning of this journey.”

To that end, the TPS board pursued multiple strategies. “Several individuals on the board have varied experience and training with equity in organizations,” Kohli said.

“To make sure we didn’t have gaps caused by our ignorance, the board has been working with outside experts as we develop the search process. They have also helped us be more compliant with City of Seattle ethics guidelines.”

Spink reports that the board has tried to be thorough in these processes. “We had two different organizations go over our processes, job descriptions, interview setup, and panel make-up in order to vet them with an equity lens,” she said.

The TPS board is enacting several strategies to ensure that the executive director search remains equitable at each stage.

“One is to redact all names from resumes for the first round of resume review,” Spink said. “The second is to have all panelists undertake implicit bias tests to make them aware of any unintended biases they are carrying into the process.”

Spink reports that TPS is actively maximizing the number of individuals involved in the search evaluation process. “Another strategy is to have three completely different panels for each stage of the process: resume review, first interview, and final interview,” she said. “The goal of this is to ensure that no one person from TPS can, even subconsciously, usher an individual through the process.”

Kohli echoes that position. “Places and publications where the job is posted were chosen to increase the reach and go beyond the normal circles of influence of members of board,” he said. “Selection panels will be constituted by people from different walks of life, within the theatre community, and outside, with diversity as a primary focus.”

The board hopes that reviewers from outside the theatre community will provide an important check on insular community review processes. “By having someone from outside the community, we will be able to tell if any applications are being scored unfairly or outside the parameters of other resumes by watching for any unusual discrepancies with the outside reviewer,” Spink said.

At this time, resumes have been reviewed and the interview process is well underway.

“We hope to have a final recommendation to the TPS board in the July to August timeframe,” Kohli said. “The process will involve a resume review by a panel, a first round interview by a second panel, and a final interview of the shortlisted candidates by a third panel, to determine the final recommendation.”

The TPS board expects to select an individual who will reflect the board’s vision.

“The vision for the new Executive Director,” Spink said, “is for someone to unify and strengthen the performing arts community in the Puget Sound by addressing the realities and challenges both within TPS and the wider community.”

This will be no small task, judging by the recent community conversations. “The new executive director will have their work cut out for them,” Kohli acknowledged. “They will be responsible for hir-

ing new staff, evaluating and shoring up existing programs, as well as recommending new programs to serve our mission and membership.”

All of this effort in selecting a new executive director is aimed at supporting the member-supported and member-driven nature of TPS and fostering a diverse TPS membership at all levels. “TPS continues to reach out to underserved groups within the theatre community,” Kohli said. “The board will strongly encourage the new executive director to make that a focus of future membership drives, not only at an individual member level, but also in encouraging organizations that traditionally work with artists of color.”

Spink elaborated on the work that TPS has in the months to come. “First, TPS is addressing its own policy and procedural inequities,” she said. “It is important to do internal and external work in this field. Diversifying the membership, which is a high priority for our board, is best achieved in a meaningful way when it is done simultaneously internally and externally.”

But mere diversity in membership is not sufficient, if the organization is not meeting true member needs. “The second part is to look at TPS programs,” Spink said, “and put them through a lens of equity to ensure that TPS is a welcoming environment for a more diverse membership.”

Spink and Kohli report that the board is committed to recruiting the best leadership for the local theatre community as a whole.

“Unless we are intentional,” Spink said, “then we are inequitable.”

For more information about Theatre Puget Sound, visit tpsonline.org.

Announcements From Hiroshima to Hope Annual Lantern Floating Ceremony on August 6 Seattle’s annual peace event honoring the victims of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and all victims of war and violence will be held from 6:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m. on Sunday, August 6 on Green Lake’s northwest shore, (the candle-lit lantern ceremony begins at 8:30 p.m).

Pre-program activities include lantern calligraphy and folding of peace cranes. A family program with music and speakers begins at 7:00 p.m. The program features Tom Ikeda, founding director of Densho, an organization dedicated to preserving the story of World War II-era incarceration of Japanese Americans. Performers include Seattle Kokon Taiko, and the event also includes an exhibition from artist Yukiyo Kawano. The event will be held just south of the Bathhouse Theater on Green Lake’s northwest shore at West Green Lake Drive North and Stone Ave North. The event is free and open to the public. For more information, call (206) 453-4471.

It’s PIG ROAST time!

Join InterIm CDA and the CID community for the 42nd Annual Pig Roast on Friday and Saturday, July 14 and 15, 2017, in the Danny Woo Community Garden.

On Friday night, July 14, at 6:00 p.m., there will be a party in the garden with food and drinks.

For more information, Contact Lizzie Baskerville at ebaskerville@interimicda. org, or visit www.dannywoogarden.org/ pig-roast.html.

Seattle Foundation announces eight grants under Engagement Pipeline program Seattle Foundation’s Engagement Pipeline grant program supports leadership development within communities to increase their influence and mobilize their community toward positive change. Eight applicants were selected: • Asian Counseling and Referral Services: $105,000 • Casa Latina: $100,000 • International Examiner in partner-

ship with Asian Pacific Islander Community Leadership Foundation: $80,000 • Latino Community Fund in partnership with Entre Hermanos, Para los Ninos, Puentes and South Park Information and Resource Center: $125,000 • OneAmerica: $110,000 • Potlatch Fund: $100,000 • Puget Sound Sage: $100,000 • Somali Health Board in partnership with African Diaspora of Washington, CARE Center and Companion Athletics: $110,000

CIRCC to hold mayoral candidate forum on July 15 The Coalition of Immigrants, Refugees, and Communities of Color (CIRCC) is holding a mayoral candidate forum on Saturday, July 15 from 10:00 a.m. to 2:00 pm at the Eritrean Association of Greater Seattle and Vicinity, 1528 Valentine Place South. Childcare is available, as well as translators upon request. The event includes food and drinks, as well as a special cultural performance. For more information, visit www.facebook.com/ events/116431575631702.

IE ARTS

INTERNATIONAL EXAMINER

July 5, 2017 – July 18, 2017 — 17

Seattle Opera’s Madame Butterfly unites API artists in dialogue

By Roxanne Ray IE Contributor

Opera is an art form that draws upon five hundred years of tradition—yet it must respond to contemporary concerns in order to resonate with today’s audiences.

In this complicated situation is precisely where Seattle Opera finds itself, as it prepares to stage a production of Giacomo Puccini’s Madame Butterfly next month. Written in 1903 by an Italian composer, together with Italian librettists Luigi Illica and Giuseppe Giacosa, the opera Madame Butterfly is itself a loose adaptation of a short story and a one-act play by the same title. None of these, however, were written by creators hailing from the Japanese heritage depicted in the literary works.

Seattle Opera last staged Madame Butterfly in 2012; however, since then, community concerns about the opera have been voiced— and heard—more loudly, and the Opera’s staff claims to be listening. “Like all of the operas that come to McCaw Hall, General Director Aidan Lang selected Butterfly several years ago, as planning multiple years in advance is standard industry practice,” said Seattle Opera media relations manager Gabrielle Nomura Gainor. “With that said, our understanding of racial equity and work to become more equitable as a company has come a long way since then.”

This is a matter of debate in the local community, in which many API artists and scholars find themselves revisiting prior apprehensions. Kathy Hsieh, a local actor, writer, and director, first heard about this new production of Madame Butterfly last December from both local student actors and from Seattle Opera’s Director of Education & Community Engagement Barbara Lynne Jamison. “They had contacted me because of the racial equity work I do, and specifically because of the forum I had curated in 2014 as a response to a local production of The Mikado,” Hsieh said.

Others echoed this sense of repetition.

When Roger Tang, a playwright, literary manager, and four-decade theatre producer, learned of Seattle Opera’s latest plans, his first thought was, he said, “Well, here we go again.”

Meanwhile, UW Associate Professor of Communication LeiLani Nishime heard of the new production as early as last summer. “At the time, I was both concerned that it would continue to perpetuate old tired stereotypes,” she said, “and I was just so weary of having to have the same conversations over and over.”

Despite these sentiments, Hsieh, Tang, and Nishime will join several other artists on July 9 at SIFF Uptown for a free panel discussion about cultural appropriation and representation. All three feel it’s important to involve the community in an ongoing dialogue with local arts organizations.

Hsieh reports a great deal of consideration regarding how to best create such dialogue.

“The students who had reached out to me were debating whether to organize a protest, or put together a panel discussion, or simply meet with the Seattle Opera staff, and I advised that they should engage in the way that they felt was right for them,” she said, “but that if I were to organize something it would be to create an opportunity that gives visibility to Asian Americans and our perspectives, causes, and artists.”

Simultaneously, Hsieh was continuing her conversations with the Opera’s Jamison. “The Seattle Opera felt a strong need to organize opportunities for the Asian American community to share their viewpoints, and the Opera’s Education and Community Engagement team felt their role is to amplify the voices of the Asian American community,” she said.

New Zealand Opera 2013 Madame Butterfly. • Photo by Neil Mackenzie

“They had already reached out to the Japanese American Citizens League and Densho to discuss possibilities. So July 9 was designed to address some of the current issues, not just in response to Madame Butterfly but in response to the representation, or lack of, for Asian Americans in general, from yellow face to white-washing to appropriation.”

Nishime believes that all of these issues of representation have great importance. “I am invested in improving the representation of Asian and Asian American in the media,” she said. “The influence of the media affects us in overt ways, but years of studies have also shown us the more subtle role it plays in limiting the life chances and options for people poorly represented in media or left out completely.”

For Nishime, the July 9 forum will shed light on under-discussed issues. “I wanted to participate in a public forum that could help bring to the surface the problems with these kinds of representations,” she said. “We can’t address the issues unless we first recognize them.”

Tang cites a number of specific issues with the artistic and media representation of the API community: “One is that Asian Americans are still not represented in stage, TV, and movies,” he said. “The figures don’t lie: we are not used in numbers that represent our share of the population nationally, let alone locally. For example, on stage, Asian Americans take up three to five percent of all roles in Seattle and NYC, but make up fifteen to twenty percent of the population.”

But that is just the foundation of his concerns. “Two, that Asian Americans rarely present their stories in stage/TV/movies; they rarely are protagonists,” he added. “Three, when they do play protagonists, they are often constrained to little boxes that characterize us as being foreign or something not normal.

Four, those factors make whitewashing and yellow face even more insidious and damaging.”

These problems lead Tang to the necessity of adaptation. “I’m not interested in taking away things people enjoy,” he said. “Conversely, doing things ‘the way they’ve always done things’ is not a sufficient reason to do them. I hate cultural embalming.”

Tang does not find convincing the argument that opera and other performance disciplines are steeped in tradition. “Tradition is not enough,” he said “Tradition includes a lot of dumb and harmful things. There should be a whole, human way to present ways while still honoring the original spirit.”

He believes that both creators and spectators have a responsibility to the community.

“We, as artists and as audience, shouldn’t be encouraging cultural embalming,” he said.

“Art has to engage audience in the moment, and encasing works in amber and doing them the same way they always have done them for hundreds of years is a sure way to kill whatever was interesting in them.”

“Don’t just complain about it with those you know.”

She emphasizes that such feelings rarely occur in a vacuum. “I think there are more people out there than we think that are willing to work in solidarity with us, even sometimes the same people we think might be the problem,” she said. “And on the other side, if someone does call you or your organization out for being racist or part of the problem, listen, learn.”

Hsieh advises all to welcome feedback with a spirit of openness. “It doesn’t matter what your original intention might be,” she said. “If people in the community are being hurt and traumatized by what you’re doing, then you are playing a role in upholding racism if you’re not willing to find out why and what you can do to change.”

Tang agrees. “I think producers in general should realize that when we talk about work that could be racist, it’s often because it’s a failure in craftsmanship, not a failure of ideology,” he said. “Not having input from the real world results in sterile art. Not getting input and feedback from minority communities means you’re cutting yourself off from a resource that’s open to you, and your art is more likely to fail.”

Hsieh emphasizes that success requires the whole community. “It’s going to take all of us working together to dismantle inequity, so we all have to be willing to do our part,” she said. “And maybe more than anything else, we each need to expand our ability to work through compassion.”

Gainor suggests that Seattle Opera will be listening closely. “Key leaders within the Seattle Opera staff, Board, and company Equity Team will attend the two panel discussions,” she reported. “Then, following these July events, and following the Madame Butterfly performances which will offer more opportunities for feedback, these company leaders will convene again.”

The Opera will also seek outside assistance. “Working with an independent consultant from The City of Seattle who specializes in racial equity, the group will debrief and talk about they have heard in the past two months,” Gainor said. “Based on this feedback, the group will develop a plan for how the company can move forward in a way that will advance racial equity.”

Hsieh also hopes that the community discussion will move beyond these important issues to considerations of future action.

In that vein, Tang is encouraged by other initiatives forthcoming from Seattle Opera. “I’m encouraged to see the Opera produce An American Dream, a more grounded and realistic views of Asians,” he said. “I think the API community should give positive reinforcement to positive steps taken by the opera. Being open to and being partners with the API community should be a goal of producers.”

Nishime agrees on this priority. “While I think it important to address these kinds of images produced outside of our community and, it seems, meant for an audience outside of our community, we can’t simply wait around for these institutions to change,” she said. “Instead, we should be patronizing work that does speak to us and supporting artists and organizations that do think about us as an audiences. We should also appreciate the fact that the city of Seattle does fund organizations that serve diverse communities and insist that it continue to do so.”

In addition to each of these concerns about gendered and racialized stereotypes and the lack of diverse representation of Asians and Asian Americans, Nishime would also like to address an often-ignored topic: “The roots of the Madame Butterfly images, and images like them, in U.S. imperialism in Asia.”

In addition to attending and participating in this panel, Hsieh encourages community members to make their concerns known. “Barbara Lynne Jamison wanted a way for the Seattle Opera to be very upfront about the controversy that Madame Butterfly might arouse,” Hsieh said. “Barbara, who had participated in our Seattle Office of Arts & Culture’s racial equity learning cohort had actually already had a meeting with her General Director about the production.”

Hsieh reports that these conversations with Opera staff were informative. “I learned a lot in my discussion with the opera, none of which are justifications, but all of which are issues they’ve been dealing with internally,” she said. “I won’t speak on behalf of the Seattle Opera, but actually encourage people to reach out to them directly. There’s many on staff who probably feel exactly as many of us in the Asian American community do about the production.”

Gainor reports that Seattle Opera staff are becoming more conscious of the inequities upon which their art form is rooted. “Opera is centuries-old and comes from a point of view that prioritizes a European worldview above other cultures,” she said. “Not surprisingly, we don’t have a great track record with communities of color, including Americans of Asian and Pacific Islander descent who have been hurt by the cultural appropriation and historic yellowface practices in Madame Butterfly, Turandot, The Pearl Fishers, and The Mikado.”

Recognizing that one conversation is not enough, the Opera’s July 9 community discussion on these topics will be followed by a second event on July 28 entitled Reversing the Madame Butterfly Effect: Asian American Women Reinvent Themselves Onstage. This second event will consist of three short plays by Asian American women playwrights, following by a community discussion.

Hsieh hopes that this second evening will provide examples of more realistic portrayals of Asian American women. “The biggest issue I have with Madame Butterfly is not even dependent on its casting, but because of its depiction of Asian women,” she said. “This opera almost single-handedly spawned the stereotypes that people the world-over still associate with Asian women, that we are submissive to men, willing to sacrifice our own lives for our men and children, victims of fate, objects of desire, that our life’s purpose is to serve white men. Movies, plays, novels, popular culture have all built upon this myth of who we are.”

At the root of all this discussion in the stratCommunity Discussion: Asian Arts Leadegy that Hsieh most clearly advocates. “I always encourage, if you see something you don’t ers Respond to Madame Butterfly will be think is right or appropriate or is problematic or held on July 9 at 2:00 p.m., at SIFF Uptown, racist, speak up, stand up, show up,” she said. 511 Queen Anne Avenue North, Seattle.

18 — July 5, 2017 – July 18, 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.

RAJANA Society Seattle, WA 206-979-3206 sameth@rajanasociety.org

RAJANA Society is an Arts & Civics project focusing on civic engagement and bridging cultural divides with the Cambodian Diaspora.

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.

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

COMMUNITY RESOURCE DIRECTORY

INTERNATIONAL EXAMINER

Homelessness Services

Professional & Leadership Development

YouthCare 2500 NE 54th Street Seattle, WA 98105 206-694-4500 info@youthcare.org www.youthcare.org

Working to prevent and end youth homelessness with services including meals, shelter, housing, job training, education, and more.

Homeownership Services HomeSight 5117 Rainier Ave S Seattle, WA 98118 ph: 206-723-4355 fx: 206-760-4210 www.homesightwa.org NMLS#49289 HomeSight creates homeownership opportunities through first mortgage lending, down payment assistance, real estate development, homebuyer education, and counseling.

Housing Services 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: affordable housing, housing counseling, homelessness prevention, advocacy, teen leadership, and the Danny Woo Community Garden.

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

Seattle, WA 98109 Facebook: NAAAP-Seattle info@naaapseattle.org Twitter: twitter.com/naaapwww.naaapseattle.org seattle

Senior Services

The Kin On Team is ready to serve YOU! www.kinon.org

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.

Seattle Chinatown/International District Preservation and Development Authority ph: 206-624-8929 fx: 206-467-6376 info@scidpda.org Housing, property management and community development.

Immigration Services

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.

Improve your reading, conversation, academic writing, and IT skills.

Washington New Americans Program OneAmerica 1225 S. Weller St., Suite 430 Seattle, WA 98144 Are you a lawful permanent resident? The Washington New Americans program can help you complete your application for U.S. citizenship. Low-cost and free services available – please call our hotline or visit www.wanewamericans.org.

Phone: 1-877-926-3924 Email: wna@weareoneamerica.org Website: www.wanewamericans.org

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.

Cathay Post #186 of The American Legion Supporting veterans for over 70 years Accepting new members—contact us today to learn more! (206) 355-4422 P.O. Box 3281 Seattle, WA 98144-3281 cathaypost@hotmail.com

Offering home visiting services for children birth to 3 and full & part-day multicultural preschool education for ages 3 to 5 in the International District, Beacon Hill and Rainier Beach.

Grammar Captive 409B Maynard Ave. South Seattle, WA 98104 206-291-8468 tutor@grammarcaptive.com www.grammarcaptive.com

Senior Services

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.

Want to join the Community Resource Directory?

Contact lexi@iexaminer.org

COMMUNITY RESOURCE DIRECTORY

Social & Health Services

INTERNATIONAL EXAMINER

July 5, 2017 – July 18, 2017 — 19

Since 1935

Tai Tung Restaurant International District Medical & Dental Clinic 720 8th Avenue S, Seattle, WA 98104 ph: 206-788-3700 email: info@ichs.com website: www.ichs.com

Banquet Facilities - Catering - Delivery

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 The largest Asian, Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander community health center in Washington state, ICHS provides medical, dental, behavioral health and pharmacy care with multilingual doctors, nurses and staff experienced in meeting the needs of King County’s diverse and multicultural communities. All are welcome and sliding fee scales are available for uninsured patients.

7301 Beacon Ave S Seattle, WA 98108 ph: 206-587-3735 fax: 206-748-0282 www.idicseniorcenter.org info@idicseniorcenter.org

Come Enjoy the Oldest Chinese Restaurant in Town!

IDIC is a nonprofit human services organization that offers wellness and social service programs to Filipinos and API communities.

655 S King St, Seattle, WA 98104 (206) 622-7372

Parking & Transportation Services

Mon-Thurs 11am-10:30pm Fri-Sat 11am-12am Sun 11am-10pm

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.

iexaminer.org/ classifieds

Answers to this puzzle are on Wednesday, July 18.

20 — July 5, 2017 – July 18, 2017

INTERNATIONAL EXAMINER

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