Bridging Futures: Letters To Our Younger Selves by The W.O.W. Project

y r o u unge o o t r s s r el e v t es t e l

ABOUT BRIDGING FUTURES Dear readers, Thank you for opening the pages of this magazine! We are so thrilled that you’re holding the final product in your hands - this publication represents a year of sessions, which included meeting with artists and writers involved in Bridge Magazine or Asian American activism, engaging with our archive of Bridge Magazine, and meeting twice a month to envision the potential of this publication as a resource and as a space of conversation for our intergenerational community. We first envisioned this program after realizing that we had a near-complete archive of the original Bridge Magazine, which was published by the Chinatown-based Basement Workshop in the 1960s-70s. The now-defunct Bridge Magazine showcased works of political art and creative writing by and for Asian Americans. After realizing that W.O.W. was one of the few organizations in Chinatown with the full collection of Bridge Magazine, we realized that we had an opportunity to make our archive more accessible. We also hold unique and deep-rooted connections to many of the original Bridge artists and writers and realized that digitizing our collection provided an opportunity to engage more deeply with the material and to seed new roots of our own. We began to imagine a cohort of young people who were women, queer, trans, or non-binary, a cohort that could draw inspiration from the original Bridge, while at the same time creating leadership opportunities for people who may not have been centered during the Asian American movement of the 70s. Our cohort has created this imaginative and interactive publication that expands upon and reinvents what we originally imagined. Throughout this year, as we held our program sessions both virtually and in person, we have been gratified to see the moments of intergenerational connection, peer-to-peer bonding, and lively discussions and conversations that have unfurled organically. We have all been in awe of guest speakers like Tamara K. Nopper, whose words on the possibilities of Afro-Asian solidarity and activism in academic spaces were revelatory, and we have all been challenged and invigorated by group discussions about pan-Asian coalitions, the limits and possibilities of Asian American identity, the legacy of imperialism, and the complications of trying to “represent” a community. What we have appreciated the most about these conversations and questions is that we don’t necessarily land on an answer: rather, we are allowed to sit with the complexity and impossibility of our questions and concerns. In some ways, this cohort has taught us that language, community, and identity aren’t stable or fixed. And while this can often feel problematic, as if every decision we make might be a mistake, it’s also freeing. If we accept the inherent contradictions, instabilities, failures, and successes of community and identity, what might be possible? What might be new? What could change? We are buoyed by the idea of infinite possibility. And we hope that this genre-blurring, multifaceted publication can make room for more possibilities, more ways of thinking and questioning and being. In Solidarity, Kristin & Mei

© 2022 The W.O.W. Project All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or used in any manner without written permission of the copyright owner. wowprojectnyc.org programs@wowprojectnyc.org

PROGRAM LEADERS FACILITATOR & LEADER

Mei Lum is the founder and director of The W.O.W. Project. She is passionate about how art and archives can connect memory and place, and act as portals to the past for a strengthened future.

FACILITATOR & EDITOR

Kristin Chang joined The W.O.W. Project in 2017 as a Resist Recycle Regenerate fellow and has since been a part of program management and RRR leadership. She is a writer currently based in San Jose, California. Kristin is interested in archives, Asian American literary history, and the intersection of art and activism.

ARCHIVIST

Noa Kasman joined the W.O.W. project in 2021 as a consulting archivist for the Bridging Futures project. She currently works on contract archive projects in New York City. She is passionate about preservation and activating archives.

DESIGNER & Singha Hon joined The W.O.W. Project in 2019 as the 4th Storefront Artist in Residence and has been involved ever since. She is grateful for the opporunity to delve into the rich archive of Bridge Magazine as part of this program. For the design of this publication, she was ILLUSTRATOR deeply inspired by the styles of Bridge and hopes the power of the archive resonates throughout this publication.

COHORT Celia Bùi Lê is a Queer painter and illustrator. Her work has been exhibited at and published in the International Human Rights Art Festival, the Weatherhead East Asian Institute, the Woodman Foundation, and more. She takes joy in working towards QT (Queer & Trans) Việt liberation.

Hua Xi is a writer and artist. Their poems and drawings have appeared in places like The New Republic, The Nation and American Poetry Review. They have also written about art for The Observer and Hyperallergic. They love large clouds.

Helen Yang is a zine-maker, writer, reader, and labor organizer with Amazonians United. She is constantly exploring what communal care really looks like, Marxist-Leninist thought, community-building, and political education. In her free time, she plays competitive Super Smash Bros. Melee, tries to avoid falling off her skateboard, and searches for the world’s best jasmine tea. Everything she does is in honor of 小海伦.

Kim Savarino is an artist working in theater and dance. She creates performances that weave together folklore and movement —Kim is a proud company member with Third Rail Projects and La MaMa’s Great Jones Rep, and has worked with artists including Anne Teresa de Keersmaeker, Jawole Zollar, and Andrei Serban. She grew up in Los Angeles and West Virginia.

Lynn Huynh is a writer, designer, researcher, food service worker, and lover of orange wines. A student of abolition, Black feminism, and queer theory, her practice explores food justice, critical geography, and design systems in the urban built environment. Her current work investigating the aesthetics of restaurant gentrification in Houston’s Asiatown is to be published in the forthcoming Radical Food Geography.

Ying Yu Situ is an educator and community organizer based in Queens doing her best to cultivate a clean heart. She loves reading, going on long walks, DJing for her friends, and getting really close to bodies of water. Her first creative publication was a fanzine she made in middle school about Chinatown.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS We would like to acknowledge and extend gratitude to the below individuals for making Bridging Futures possible: Tomie Arai Noelle Chan and Lausan Marilyn Chin Rockwell Chin Toya Dubin and Hudson Archival Tamara K. Knopper Vida Kuang Melissa Levine Lillian Ling Merle Matooka Okada Brian Niiya and Densho Vivian Truong Mark Tseng-Putterman Tiffany Tso and Asian American Feminist Collective Ryan Wong Eleanor Yung

BRIDGING FUTURES - 3

Table of Contents VOLUME 1 J U L Y

Southern Origins Postcards

Illustration by Tomie Arai for Asian Women United Flyer

NUMBER 2 0 2 2

Letters

7, 21, 35, 39

Reflections Reflective Prompts

8, 10, 15, 24

Letters Southern Origins Postcards by Lynn Huynh, Helen Yang, Kim Savarino & Celia Bùi Lê

Essay How We Find Each Other: A Chinatown Soundwalk by Ying Yu Situ

Prose

History

Letter from the Cohort

Sensing by Helen Yang Garment Worker Commemoration by Mei Lum & May Ying Chen Interview

16 A Conversation with Tomie Arai by Kim Savarino Collage

22 Archive Collage

by the Bridging Futures Cohort

Photo Essay by Tif Ng of Tomie Arai

DIY

25 What Does Your Lantern Look Like? by Celia Bùi Lê Interview

26 A Conversation with Lillian Ling & Merle Motooka Okada by Kim Savarino & Lynn Huynh Poetry

33 Rabbits Run Rampant by Merle Motooka Okada Poetry

34 Dear (Fill in Names)

by Merle Motooka Okada Map

36 (Re) Mapping Chinatown (Re)Mapping Chinatown Illustration by Singha Hon

by Lynn Huynh

Art Credits: Cover Art by Celia Bùi Lê Lantern Illustration p. 24, 25 by Celia Bùi Lê Photography of Tomie Arai, p. 16, 17, 19, by Tif Ng Asian Women United Flyer p. 18 by Tomie Arai From Basement to Godzilla p. 20 by Tomie Arai BRIDGING FUTURES - 4

Garment Worker Collage p. 14 by Tiffany Wang Photography of Lillian Ling and Merle Matooka Okada 27, 28, 31 by Tif Ng Bridging Futures Logo & Magazine design by Singha Hon

Letter from the Cohort To our younger selves: Letters to our younger or future selves often begin with questions: How are you feeling right now? What would you like to do one day? What did you dream about? How do you spend your time? Simply the act of asking these questions can be an act of care, of calmness, and of curiosity. We are not sure we have the answers, but we hope this publication can be an act of questioning. At the beginning of this year, our cohort began to meet in the basement below Wing on Wo & Co just like the original creators of Bridge Magazine had done several blocks away half a century ago. Bridge: the Magazine of Asians in America started publishing in 1971 as a project of the Basement Workshop, a local Asian-American arts collective. The political and media landscape in America was markedly different at that time. The term “Asian American” was only beginning to be used starting in 1968. Bridge was not only a place to publish stories but a necessary facet of its related political movements. Its pages provided a place to have dialogue between Asian Americans with diverse experiences, curated and edited by other Asian Americans. Its writers and editors were also often community organizers, political activists or otherwise involved in the tides of social change. It is our hope that in creating a publication at this time, inspired by the original Bridge Magazine but in a newer form, on newer platforms, with new voices, we can help connect the issues faced by Asian Americans today to the movements of the past. We also hope to bring updated perspectives that stem from our own personal and movement-related experiences. The 70s and 80s were a time when feminist movements fought for progress alongside Asian American movements. Our cohort has been intentionally inclusive of queer and femme identities. We hope to build on the work of the past to create something of our own. During the year that we worked on this publication, we met with many movement elders in the Wing on Wo & Co basement who shared with us their experiences of building a new publication, often while being young, while also growing up and while also finding their own individual ways in the world. The culmination of these learning experiences shaped our collective framework in building Bridging Futures: one focused on connecting the past, present, and future temporalities of New York City’s Chinatown. The theme of our issue is therefore “Letters to Our Younger Selves.” “Letters to Our Younger Selves” is both this issue’s theme and an invitation for participation. During our time working on Bridge, we were reminded every day of the value and significance of staying connected to our pasts. To past movements. To past challenges. To past hopes and past dreams. Waves of activism can surge and then fade over time. Publications can pop up and disappear. With these ongoing changes, community and movement memory can often be lost. But so much about being Asian American ultimately has to do with the past, with where we came from and with who was here before us. We wanted to make this issue as a way to remember. We wanted to tie together memories of when we were younger with memories of when the movements around us were younger. We hope the letters in this issue and inspired by this issue will bridge age and generational gaps. A letter to a younger self might be a letter from a movement elder to a young student. It might be a letter from who you are now to who you were before. It might be a letter from you to your inner child today. It might be a letter from a student today to a young person in the future. We hope these letters will help us learn from past experiences but also help us to sustain the spirit and excitement and idealism of being young. This issue includes a range of letters from our Asian American community, as well as prompts and activities encouraging you to write your own letter. BRIDGING FUTURES - 5

Asian Americans today face our own challenges of discovering how to be in the world, and this ranges from the political to the very personal. Politically, the Asian population in the U.S. is now 20 times what it was in 1970 when Bridge first started publishing. Yet we are also making this publication at a moment when anti-Asian violence has been on the rise, a fact we feel keenly as we all live in NYC. There is a sense of urgency at this time that reminds us of the urgency present in the early pages of Bridge, which highlighted imperialism and the anti-war movement, racism and exoticism, housing and mental health, and other social issues facing the community. At the same time, we also believe that the personal must be considered alongside the political if we are to truly care for ourselves and our communities. During one of our working sessions, we talked about what we wished our younger selves had known. We talked about so many different aspects of growing up, and how it is a constant process that takes place over our whole lives. We were particularly inspired by a children’s issue of the original Bridge Magazine that highlighted the joy and the necessity of a multigenerational emphasis. We write these letters believing that it will always be important for us to make space for personal growth alongside movement progress. In line with the theme of growth, we also hope this is a publication that will grow and change each year like the original magazine did. When Bridge began, it was a primarily China and Chinese American focused publication based on NYC’s Chinatown. Over time, the publication evolved to include stories on a broader range of national Asian American issues. This year, the group of us that worked on this magazine were East and or Southeast Asian, which likely follows from both Bridge Magazine’s original history and from the fact that this project is still based in Chinatown. Many of the stories in this collection focus on Chinatown and the movements that are a part of its history. We believe that having a Chinatown-focus in this publication is valuable and timely because of the rich diversity of stories in this area, which could easily fill more than one publication. However, we do also recognize that this is not the only representation of the Asian American experience and that South Asian, Central Asian, and many other experiences must be included for a publication to be truly “Asian American.” In this publication, we did not want to speak for other communities and instead tried to narrow in and give due attention to the Chinatown community we worked out of. We acknowledge this focus upfront as an intentional celebration of this space, but recognize its limitations in encompassing the full range of the Asian American experience. We all still have a lot of learning and growing up to do. We believe that everybody does over their whole lives, and so do the political movements that we are a part of. So we thank you for taking a moment in your days and your journeys to spend a bit of time with this publication that we have put together. One day we hope to read this issue again and remember the younger selves that we were. Celia Bùi Lê Helen Yang Hua Xi Kim Savarino Lynn Huynh Ying Yu Situ

BRIDGING FUTURES - 6

Reflections Reflective Prompts These prompts were inspired by conversation cards created by Ying. Throughout the year, we used the conversation cards to start each session. We hope these prompts provide a way for you to ground yourself in the intention of this publication.

Share a story about coming home

BRIDGING FUTURES - 7

Southern Origins The feeling, the experience, the nostalgia of place is what binds our origins, what grounds our temporalities, what connects our past to our present to our collective futures. Our Bridging Futures cohort found the root of our origins threaded along common yet distinct geographies: the US South, in Southern Vietnam, in Southern China, Southern Italy. This postcard series is a memorialization of how place shapes both identity and community. No matter the geography, our memories recall the same heat commonly found in southern regions, the similar fruits of labor and love across diaspora, and our shared visions of future changes.

BRIDGING FUTURES - 8

HOW WE FIND EACH OTHER: A CHINATOWN SOUNDWALK Ying Yu Situ

I drift out of my friend’s apartment like a ghost and walk

from one end of Chinatown to the other to get to the train station. Nothing holds, like hands passing through water, as my body knowingly takes me down the block and makes a right and turns at the corner. With my eyes half-closed and my scarf double-looped around my head, it is the sound of Chinatown that filters in. Whole blocks where a cavernous din of silence subsumes the city and then others that are permanently changed, pumping reggae at 1 AM, the sound of someone pissing against a wall. The only people out in this neighborhood are those that Saturday night puked up onto the streets. There’s a strand of sound writing that hypothesizes that the past is still vibrating in the present. As if in our palimpsest city, we are always walking atop of and tuning into an unbroken past, the rocks and matter of the earth trapping the tremble of what was once emitted. I imagine I hear Chinatown when it first formed, sprouts from a cracked lot in the segregated quadrant it was allowed. The drench of fear mellowing into Toisanese floating down the streets where marbles click, soft paper folding the news to rest. And here, in the present, sneakers slicking across the hollow concrete of Grand Street court at night, hoop dreams still alive. Two people running into each other on the street, the joy of crossing and greeting in different dialects. If space is generated by “the intersection of mobile elements,”1 then sound is the thumbprint of a neighborhood. Everything gives off its own charge and becomes layered in time as one. Field recordings are a dense 3D impression of crossings: the erhu gliding over a shake of wind amidst a shuffle of cards, seniors practicing opera in Columbus Park as a soccer ball thwacks against the cleated feet of delivery workers. A moment oscillates in the present, yet is always already becoming past. I become a hoarder and a mad archivist when walking through Chinatown, finding every soundprint precious. My impulse to preserve comes from being trapped in feelings of anger and loss whenever I return to the neighborhood I grew up in. It’s a deep injustice to see the place where immigrants and people of color are allowed to feel right at size shrink because its land is seen as for profit rather than for the people who call it home. The unspoken stories of displacement, the names snipped out of awnings to prevent parasite restaurants

or art galleries from using their shell like a Chinese tattoo. Whole blocks have become silent, desiccated by For Rent signs. I’m reminded of the tradition of documenting oral history in America, where only in the face of total loss were other cultures considered of value: memory becoming history, predicated on extinction first. Sound can mark the totality of an event, like hearing thunder after you see the lightning. But it can also ground one in the present, “leaving evidence”2 of the life lived here and giving clues to what persists. There’s a bird chirruping above the market on Elizabeth, a joong vendor ululating maiiii gannnn（米卷) by Grand, an open hydrant singing water as children scream in playgrounds and get scolded by their parents in Seward Park. Decades ago, a golden record was sent into space on the Voyager, etched with all the sounds of our earth. Civilization is trapped in recordings of wind and thrush, the music that made us dance, the words we used to say hello to each other. In the voice, in sound, is a germ of life. And it’s how we find each other. This sound walk is not a catalog of loss, nor do I want to write in a way that denies Chinatown of its dynamism. Among many other things, it is a place that held people when nowhere else could, a place that grew out of immigrants deciding whether to stay or to leave. We fill it in with our memories and our relationships in this neighborhood, bits of our hearts strewn along the blocks. These days, I hold an ear to the ground. Fights against luxury towers going up, fights for unionized workers to stay, fights against letting the neighborhood be a site of incarceration for others, the longstanding struggle to feed and house our neighbors. There is a charge of voices stippling the air. If you listen to noise long enough, it’s not illegible, indecipherable. One can make out the shape of something approaching, morphing through our actions. Next time you are in Chinatown, follow your curiosity (or our map). Take a sound walk. Use this mixtape as a tool to move through the past, ground in the present. Remove your headphones, wet a finger and lift it to the air. And listen. The future is on its way.

1 Michel de Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life 2 Mia Mingus BRIDGING FUTURES - 9

Southern Origins

BRIDGING FUTURES - 10

Prose This is a story dedicated to all the Asian women who deserved the endless love, care, and compassion that capitalism and misogyny stole.

he first earthquake you ever experienced woke you up, rumblings underneath like the ones that sometimes happen in your heart. A light pounding that has almost become soothing, a swaying greeting from the morning, reminders of life in a secret language only you and the earth can share. Sometimes, you want to fracture and slip and break and shake too. You reach out to your sides, hands flat against the bed because you cannot remember what it feels like to be still, calm, quiet. Can movement be noisy but not loud, so light it’s heavy? You look at the leaves on your plants the same way they tell you to look at doorknobs in a dream because you’ve started to forget real from natural from fact. If they are moving, you tell yourself, then this is not you. They dance like there’s a breeze, little metronomes off-rhythm but so lost in each other, a consumption that pulls you in for just long enough before pushing you away. She’s not like us, they whisper to each other, not hearing me as you beg them, please, teach me how to be free. You hear the news story trickle in slowly and then immediately, a bilingual stream of consciousness fed by information so overloaded you worry whether your brain circuitry will become a fire hazard. Quickly, you look for that waltz of the leaves, eyeballs clutching for any kind of reminder that you are clear of the brain fog, free of your own neurotic pollution, absolved of the sin that comes with living a double life. When you were five years old, you grew too exhausted to maintain the world in your mind, so you opened the door and never looked back; this is liberation, you said, not realizing that it was really the absolute click of a lock. Nicely wrapped around your understanding of truth, your mind sits and hums to itself in a state of feigned ignorance. The leaves do not move, but you see them holding in their breath. You wonder whether they’re also frozen in fear, paralyzed in a silence that they’ve never known before. You want to ask them, what do you look at when you are not sure what is real? You try to ignore the frenzy, but there are chants and choruses propelling the violence of your existence in every direction.

sen

sing by Helen / 小海伦

You look in the mirror and avert your eyes, thinking you can purge this kind of racialization out of your life, out of everyone’s lives, but the loss of one of your senses only grows the others. It is only a few days that pass before you realize your sense of touch has heightened. Under the covers, you slide your hands gently down your body. And suddenly, you remember the first time you did this, scared and tense like the staccato of a language you hear for the first time, and you feel grateful you’ve learned. Tender with the longing of a love letter filled with cursive strokes and familiarity, your fingers bring you to the edge before they stop — a tease just as much as a warning. Don’t you want to hold onto this feeling? You can feel the tightness of your skin meet the soft sheets. Eyes still closed, you decide this is the moment you have fallen in love with your body. You wake up the next morning and make yourself some tea, because you like to see the leaves dance in the water too. You pick up your mug and listen to the news and realize that you have been burned — fingertips only slightly warmed but heart aflame with rage, you know now that they have stolen from you, stripped you of a love so genuine you can still feel it in your throat. You hear them talk about your communities, and you wince. How have you allowed this to happen again, you say to them softly. You say it again, this time thundering in clarity, thinking maybe they did not hear you at first. They can, and choose not to listen. You feel more naked now than you did when you were underneath the covers. There is anger first, then denial as you hear them call it isolated incidents and anything-but-because-of-capitalism; the only acceptance you have is that this grief will follow you everywhere. How can you understand this as something that is not everything, you want to scream, but you know you will never be louder than them. BRIDGING FUTURES - 11

It is a week later but you do not remember the time passing; you begin to question whether or not you are trapped in a VHS tape someone keeps rewinding and fast-forwarding, not sure where the right place to stop is, but before you can think of an answer, you hear 宝贝，你怎么样？纽约安全吗？It is so unrestrained that all you can hear now is your own voice cracking, and you realize this is the beginning of your earthquake. Fissures and schisms and a splintering so big that it makes another ocean between you two; you think to yourself that at least you have enough tears to fill it. You realize just how much you miss your family. You feel like an island on an island, severed from the roots that survived airplanes and migrations and despair and new beginnings. Crossing the street into Confucius Plaza, you find it odd how borders can be made in almost no time, invisible barriers signaled on cracks of sidewalk and arbitrary markings. You remember being a child and pretending the floor was lava; jumping from cushion to table to ottoman to cushion to table to ottoman, you never thought about how furniture would never withstand such heat anyways. You never thought that one day you would be the lava. In the middle of the intersection sits two giant trees, branching out almost in agony. Are they trying to push these worlds away or are they trying to keep them together, you ask, wondering where they belong, or if they care, or if they know. The wind blows, and its leaves oscillate from side to side to up to down to backwards telling you, this is how you can be free. For the next twenty minutes, you decide to walk with no direction in mind, desperately trying to erase the boundaries around your body. It is the first time you’ve eaten alone in almost a year, and your food taunts you, almost daring you to tell others about how good it tastes because it knows nobody will believe you. Picking up your chopsticks, you decide in that moment that you never wanted to tell anyone anyways. In that moment, you know it doesn’t actually matter because the ghosts have already seen you, and they smile. By your side, they carry out your favorite dishes, riddled with savory oils and colorful spices; ginger and garlic and greens in endless supply — you eat until you cannot feel your stomach and then you eat some more. Fill up your reserves, because in a quarantine, you wonder how much flavor you will forget, taste slipping away from your reservoir of knowledge like the water flowing through your fingers. You devour the ma-la dishes hoping the numbness will devour you instead, pleading for a moment suspended in an escapism so strong that you will always remember. Pressing the peppercorns into your tongue, marking it with a burn that feels more BRIDGING FUTURES - 12

like a hug, you swallow fire. Breathe out lightning bolts and flames that dance the same way the leaves do. The ghosts disappear and emerge once again, this time holding plates filled with jidan bing. This was the last meal you had in China when you were eleven, but time has not aged this memory. You feel full in a different kind of way and keep eating. Suddenly, you remember the face of the man who stood outside your grandparents’ apartment selling milk and fruit and you wonder how he is; where he is, when he is, if he is. You try and speak to the ghosts, but they do not reciprocate. Instead, they begin to laugh. Sitting in an empty room with chairs tucked in, untouched for weeks in a way so familiar it does not need to be explained, you somehow feel less alone than you have in years. When you were six years old, you tried to use laundry detergent as shampoo because the smell of linen made you feel graceful and light when all you ever knew was heavy and slow. When you were nine years old, your mom took you to the candle store, where you realized money was the magic power that could buy you this feeling forever. One by one, you picked up candles and tucked their scents in the folds of your body, filing them away so chaotically, it became a euphoria too catastrophic. You do not remember fainting in the store, only coming to consciousness, although you can never really be sure what really happened. This was one of the first times your brain decided to give you the silent treatment, a cold shoulder so dark it was deafening. Don’t you know how to be delicate with yourself, it asked quietly. Soon, you wipe and spray everything down once, then twice, then three times, then seven times, then two years later, until the scent of linen and laundry and ocean and clean fogs up your glasses in the same way a warm bowl of soup does; you know you want to consume it, so you know you must apologize — send flowers and handwritten notes to your brain, cross the oceans, climb the tallest mountains, scream from the wilderness so loudly that it will last long enough to be captured. You know you must make a home-cooked breakfast, let the music boil until it is steaming, fill the house with a sunlight so warm that even the leaves will be on your side; you know you must apologize. You wonder how you can be delicate if you were never taught what that even meant. Soon, you wash your hands — once, then twice, then three times, then seven times, then two years later — and you realize you don’t feel graceful and light at all, or heavy and slow.

You are not sure if you feel at all. It is a week later but you do not remember the time passing; you begin to question whether or not you are trapped in a VHS tape someone keeps rewinding and fast-forwarding, not sure where the right place to stop is, but before you can think of an answer, you are riding in your Lyft through the city because the sun is down, and you don’t want to get grabbed again. You used to think that a home is a people, not a place; now, you realize that a home is a sanctuary, because to the rest of the world, it is a home that makes you a people. You understand now that money is not a magic power; it is just power. Your driver tells you about very important celebrities you’ve never seen and athletes that play sports you’ve never watched, and you are impressed with your ability to pretend to care, vocal ticks and small talk paced strategically for every mile until you get home. Before you exit the car, you tell your driver about someone very important too — he asks you who it is, and you tell him it does not matter. Everyone is very important to someone.

Every night before you go to sleep, you take three big breaths as if you’re suffocating because you do not want to forget you are alive. You listen for the earth’s rumblings and wonder if maybe the earth is ever listening for yours. The next morning, your world shakes. You reach out to your sides, hands flat against the bed because you cannot remember what it feels like to be still, calm, quiet. Can movement be noisy but not loud, sifting through a scuffle so light it’s heavy? You look at the leaves on your plants the same way they tell you to look at doorknobs in a dream because you’ve started to forget real from natural from fact. If they are moving, you tell yourself, then this is not you. They are still asleep, paused and snoozing and motionless as a way to say, this is a rumbling reminder of your own anxiety. You will never forget that there are many different kinds of health, that society does not care for any one of them. Today, you fracture and slip and break and shake and decide, it is your turn to dance for the leaves.

CLASSIFIEDS Q-Wave

The Asian Sewist Collective

Looking for a space exclusively for queer Asian women, trans folks, and gender nonconforming people? Join Q-Wave for upcoming events, community happenings, and food-fueled fun! To sign up for our listserve, visit: q-wave.org/contact-us Follow along at @qwavenyc and q-wave.org ABOLITION ZINES AND RESEROUCES BY ASIAN AMERICAN RESOURCE WORKSHOP Our team has poured love into creating this tool in solidarity with Black abolitionists’ calls to do the work of confronting the relationship between AsAm communities, the model minority myth and the PIC. View our resources at: https://issuu.com/aarw-zine/docs/ aarw-abolition-zine

The Asian Sewist Collective is a group of people of Asian descent who sew! Listen to our podcast as we explore the intersection of our identities and our shared sewing practiceasiansewistcollective.com

BRIDGING FUTURES - 13

Commemoration The 1982 Garment Workers Strike was a landmark strike led by the International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union (ILGWU) and grounded in solidarity with Chinatown’s immigrant woman workers. On June 24, 1982, 20,000 women filled Columbus Park and marched through the streets, demanding the renewal of their union contracts and better working conditions in garment factories. For the 40th anniversary of the strike, we honor this historic victory in workers’ rights and uplift this continued legacy of femme and queer-led people power. The thriving history of the 1982 strike encourages us to center and celebrate Chinatown women’s work today as much as we did 40 years ago.

Collage by Tiffany Wang

There are so many wonderful souvenirs and memories from the decades I worked with the garment work-

ers’ union. The workers had great creativity and sewing skills, and the International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union (ILGWU) had a “Union Label Department” that provided yards of fabric with the union label design, as well as lots of tsotchkes and trinkets that were given out to people everywhere: pencils, rulers and book covers for students, sewing kits, rain hats and nail files, tee shirts, baseball caps, and LOTS of buttons for every campaign and cause. Most of the union members were women, so we became active in the Coalition of Labor Union Women (CLUW). In New York, there even was a “Chinese CLUW” - a committee that was built after the 1982 Chinatown strike to develop women’s leadership skills and encourage women’s participation in union issues, voting, and other causes. And being mostly immigrants, we supported many rallies and lobby days on immigration issues. All of us were incorrigible bag ladies - always carrying stuff - groceries, flyers, trinkets to give out … you can never have enough bags! May Ying Chen 5/31/22

BRIDGING FUTURES - 14

Southern Origins

BRIDGING FUTURES - 15

Interview

Photography by Tif Ng

A CONVERSATION WITH TOMIE ARAI

Tomie Arai is an NYC-based artist and organizer who contributed illustrations to Bridge Magazine in

the 1970s. Arai has continually been an important voice in NYC Chinatown activism and also co-founded the Chinatown Art Brigade (CAB), an arts and activism collective that has fought back against displacement and gentrification. Arai’s artworks, which are typically public works, have appeared in public spaces around the city and are also part of collections at the Library of Congress, the Bronx Museum, the Japanese American National Museum and elsewhere. We had the chance to speak with her in April at Wing On Wo & Co about making illustrations for Bridge Magazine, painting murals across Chinatown, and her many years of work in organizing Asian American organizing spaces Tif Ng is an American-born Cantonese photographer raised in Hong Kong and Beijing. Her research and arts-based practice includes photography, and the manipulation of archival materials. Her work explores the relationship between documented and fictionalized memory, themes of longing and belonging, and Cantonese family histories. She is currently based in New York City. See more of her work at: http://tif-ng.com/

BRIDGING FUTURES - 16

Interviewed by Kim Savarino & Mei Lum, with editing by Hua Xi Kim Savarino: You’ve contributed some beautiful illustrations to past issues of Bridge Magazine. How did you get involved in that? Tomie Arai: I was one of many people who were participating in Yellow Pearl, an anthology of poetry and art being made by Asian American artists in Chinatown. I heard about Yellow Pearl through Alan Okada, a childhood friend, who was also the graphics editor for Bridge magazine. Alan also invited me to submit illustrations for Bridge and I wound up doing a few covers as well. Alan and I were both born and raised in New York and we grew up together. We had attended the same Buddhist Sunday school on the Upper West Side. Around 1972, Alan was hired to be a project director for Cityarts Workshop, which was a community murals program on the Lower East Side. The first mural Cityarts painted in Chinatown was in Chatham Square, and through Alan, I got involved simultaneously with Bridge and painting murals with the community. Savarino: That’s really amazing that through this person that you knew from Sunday school first, you got involved with murals. Large-scale public artworks ended up being such a big part of your work and life. Arai: Yes, I didn’t have the benefit of going to college, so I really think that the murals became my classroom. I was 23 when I started painting murals, and that’s where I learned how to make art. At that time there were a lot of artists of color in the city who were trying to find a voice and gain some measure of control over the cultural institutions that claimed to serve them. They wanted to create their own institutions and develop new venues for their work. Community murals and public art in local neighborhoods offered something new. BRIDGING FUTURES - 17

for the whole group. I also think that location and visibility were so important. In the end, it just felt like everyone was so proud to be a part of the project. At the time, we weren’t thinking the murals were going to last very long but this one was up for decades. A few years ago, an elderly man who had lived at 81 Bowery for almost 20 years told me that he loved that mural, that every time he saw that mural, he knew he was almost home. Mei Lum: Can you talk about that process of saying goodbye to the mural?

©Tomie Arai, 1983, for Asian Women United Flyer

Savarino: You’ve always been really committed to making murals in a community-centered way. Could you talk a bit more about those values and that process? Arai: I worked for over seven years and one of the hallmarks of Cityarts was its commitment to community-based public art, which included working with people who didn’t consider themselves to be artists. As mural directors, we were always trying to figure out how to work as democratically as possible. We would have these long meetings where we would discuss what it meant to work collectively. We would study other artists from around the world. In the early days of the mural movement, there were only a few models we could turn to, such as the Mexican muralists, the murals coming out of Third World countries like Cuba and the peasant art from the People’s Republic of China. Savarino: Could you tell me some more about a specific mural you worked on, perhaps one that you remember in particular? Arai: My goal was always that the finished mural would really reflect the neighborhood and the group that worked on it. With the 1977 Hester Street mural, “The Wall of Respect for the Working People of Chinatown,” I really felt like this was the one time it actually seemed to work out, that everybody felt included. One of the ways we tried to get around the problem of people not knowing how to draw was to project photographs of the mural members and have people trace them. Having people’s portraits in the mural was very exciting BRIDGING FUTURES - 18

Arai: The Municipal Art Society had designated that mural one of the “Place Matters” sites in NYC. And when they did that, I went down to Chinatown to take another look at it and noticed it was in disrepair. It was starting to peel. There was some graffiti on the bottom. I had thought the Arts Society was going to photograph it and maybe even touch it up a little bit. But then I heard the building got sold. And eventually the building, which was also Chinatown’s last movie theater, got demolished. A hotel was built in its place. That was when I started looking around at all of the changes in Chinatown, and it really hit me that all along Mott Street I could see new buildings. Savarino: How would you describe some of these other changes you saw happening throughout Chinatown? Arai: Asking how Chinatown has changed is such an important question. Trying to answer this really leads me to trace the trajectory of a lot of the work that I’ve done over the years. Sadly, I’ve realized that all these spaces that were so important to me are now gone. They’re just not around anymore.

“There’s much more knowledge being shared now that wasn’t accessible then. And I wouldn’t have expected it then, but Bridge has actually become this incredible archival project.” - Tomie Arai Arai: We can start, of course, with 22 Catherine, which was the home of Basement Workshop. I met my husband in the Basement Workshop and we’ve been together for almost 50 years now! We both got arrested at a demonstration at Confucius Plaza in 1974 when it was first being built. The Chinatown community picketed at the construction site to demand jobs for Chinatown workers and end discrimination in the construction industry. Confucius Plaza really politicized a lot of people. Later, when we got married, we had our wedding banquet at the Port Arthur Restaurant on Mott Street. It was a really fabled establishment, and we got to have our dinner there

“When I started working with Basement, I was in my 20’s. I think a lot of people were students. They were trying to figure out what they were going to do with their lives. In terms of learning from the past, Bridge documented what was happening before we forgot, or before it was erased. It was action research. Or research in action. It was proof that we were a movement.” - Tomie Arai

BRIDGING FUTURES - 19

right before it closed. Their specialty was this roast chicken stuffed with sticky rice that I still think about to this day. We also used to have these late night dinners at a Toisanese restaurant called Joy Luck. I remember going there with Yuri Kochiyama, Kazu Iijima, and all the folks from the Asian Coalition Against the War. And when we worked at Basement Workshop, we used to hang out at Mei Lei Wah. In those days, you could hang out ‘til 3 in the morning over a cup of coffee. Now most of those places are closed. Savarino: Looking back now on all the changes you’ve seen, do you think there’s advice you would give your younger self about the work you were involved in? Arai: I don’t know what I would say to myself. I think we learn from our mistakes. I feel like I made a lot of them. I remember having horrible arguments with ©Tomie Arai, 1999, for 'From Basement to Godzilla', limited edition print my parents because I just portfolio produced by Godzilla: Asian American ArtNetwork. insisted that I was right. I guess that was part of being young, but it’s also part of wanting to believe in something so deeply that you don’t want to have any doubts about what you’re doing. And that doesn’t allow for a lot of empathy, or even generosity. Looking backward I wish I had been a little more forgiving. Maybe I would have wanted my younger self to practice more humility. But I think then you would also lose a little of the edge, the passion that you feel, which is also so important. Savarino: We did an exercise as a cohort where we made a toolkit for a past version of ourselves. If you could put something in a toolkit for a past version of yourself, what might that look like? Arai: That’s such a reflective and thoughtful exercise, and I regret the fact that I didn’t have more opportunities to be reflective until much later. There’s much more knowledge being shared now that wasn’t accessible then. And I wouldn’t have expected it then, but Bridge has actually become this incredible archival project. When I started working with Basement, I was in my 20’s. I think a lot of people were students. They were trying to figure out what they were going to do with their lives. In terms of learning from the past, Bridge documented what was happening before we forgot, or before it was erased. It was action research. Or research in action. It was proof that we were a movement.

BRIDGING FUTURES - 20

Reflections

What are seeds you’d like to scatter as you move along?

BRIDGING FUTURES - 21

Collage The Bridging Futures cohort created these collages from photocopies of Bridge Magazine and recycled confetti paper, drawing inspriation from the words, images, and illustrations of the archive to express present-day experiences and feelings

BRIDGING FUTURES - 22

BRIDGING FUTURES - 23

Southern Origins

BRIDGING FUTURES - 24

fill in the blank and color

what does your lantern look like?

er n nt la y m fo r w is h a 1

letter to yourself in 1-2-3

Interview

Photography by Tif Ng

A CONVERSATION WITH LILLIAN LING & MERLE MOTOOKA OKADA

illian Ling and Merle Motooka Okada are NYC-based artists and organizers who were part of Basement Workshop in the 1970s. Ling and Merle were original members of the group of artists and writers that created the Asian American focused art book Yellow Pearl. Merle served as the Poetry Editor of Bridge Magazine, and also contributed poems. Both Yellow Pearl and Bridge Magazine were publications that encapsulated the Asian American culture of their time. Merle also co-established the critically acclaimed taiko group Soh Daiko, the first taiko drumming group on the East Coast. Ling is a founding member of the United Asian Communities Center and served as the assistant director of the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund. We spoke with Lillian and Merle about their time at Basement Workshop, their favorite Chinatown spots, and what the future of Asian American activism might look like. BRIDGING FUTURES - 27

BRIDGING FUTURES - 28

Interviewed by Lynn Huynh & Kim Savarino, with editing by Hua Xi Merle Motooka Okada: Being here is kind of like going to Basement again! Kim Savarino: That’s wonderful! We’re so curious to hear firsthand what it was like to be involved in that community. Lillian Ling: Well, I grew up out in Long Island. My mom ran a Chinese laundry, and my dad was a waiter. It was a very white, conservative farmland where I grew up. I didn’t really know that many Asians or Chinese people, other than a few other families who also had laundries or wet washes. I never even thought of myself as Chinese American. Then I started getting involved in Chinatown. I got involved with Yellow Pearl, but there was so much other activity around as well. And there was a lot of anti-war protest. It was a very energizing, hectic time. Merle: An abundance of energy and organizations forming all over the place. Savarino: A lot of Asian American organizations that are major community gathering spaces today were founded during the time you guys were active in the organizing spaces. Ling: The Chinatown Health Clinic, Asian Cinevision, Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund, the Asian American Arts Alliance … Merle: The Chinatown History Project… And Basement Workshop was, of course, an umbrella organization with so many different projects under it. I was in charge of the poetry group. Ling: All these places had their roots in the movements of the 70s and 80s. Merle: Another one was Triple A for example. Ling: Triple A was very influential. Mei Lum: What does it stand for? Merle and Ling: Asian Americans for Action. Merle: Most of the people in these organizations tended to be young, college-type or post-college. But Asian Americans for Action was made up of the mothers of these kids, like Kazu Iijima, Minn Matsuda, and Yuri Kochiyama. It was like, what are these middle-aged women doing in the political movement? But nothing stopped them. They would go out and get things printed up. Actually, one of the bargains that they found was with this nudist printer! They opened the door, and the printers were nudists. The very sort of prim-and-proper ladies with Triple A would go, “Ah, well… could you do this job for us?” Very funny! Savarino: But the prices were good? Merle: Yes, it was very good. They just tried to look up! Ling: Triple A was really active and anti-war. They were more political than any of us. Savarino: It’s so exciting to hear about a group like that. It seems like it was such an era of activism and action. Merle: Back then, “Asian American” was also kind of a new term. Coined in one of the papers, it started to become a term in 1968. BRIDGING FUTURES - 29

Ling: Yeah, in California. Merle: The activism of the anti-war movement and the Civil Rights movement brought all these people together in common cause. People were fighting racism, sexism, the whole smear. It was a cultural revolution for the rights of people. And many of the women in the groups were really pushing a feminist agenda as well. Ling: We had men’s groups and we had women’s groups. They were very different groups. Because we were also trying to deal with sexism at that time. Also at the time was the Love-Ins, the Be-Ins. Women were starting to try to understand themselves. Merle: And how Asian women are portrayed as being super sexy or passive. And I’m not passive. I’m not quiet. Like, what are you talking about? Ling: Basically, during that time, everyone did everything. Lynn Huynh: What places in Chinatown hold particular memories or meaning for you from that time? Merle: I guess the old IWK (I Wor Kuen) headquarters on Market Street. Or 51 Division Street, where a lot of young Asian Americans active in the community gathered.

“I think we were innocent, or you might say dumb. But it also meant that we were very open-minded. We weren’t stuck to one ideology. We were just open to ideas and other projects and other people.” - Merle Motooka Okada Ling: I would also say 54 Elizabeth or 22 Catherine, which were the organizing spaces of the original Basement Workshop. At 54 Elizabeth, we were meeting other Asians or Asian Americans. At that time, the community was mostly Chinese, with a small Japanese American community. There was not much South East Asian, South Asian, Korean presence at that time because the immigration laws didn’t change until ‘65, and the immigration for the Korean community didn’t come until a little later. So it was all based on immigration patterns. Our friend Teddy Yoshikami would also do dance classes at 22 Catherine Street. A whole bunch of us took dance classes. Even when we were pregnant, we were there with our big bellies doing the plié. I also used to go to Jade Cafe on Catherine Street, a little tiny place where we would get, for 25 cents, stuffed tofu and cheung fun. It was so cheap back then. BRIDGING FUTURES - 30

Merle: And because we were always short on funds, we always looked for places with a lot of food for a little bit of money. Yuen Yuen had a sam bo fan, so you could get a whole meal for a few bucks. Ling: And Half-Ass on Pell Street, with the roast beef and the corned beef. They served American food. Merle: And Mei Lai Wah, the old Mei Lai Wah, used to have dai baos. It was a whole meal in one bun. Ling: Yes, they were open late. And a lot of us were smoking at the time too. Merle: I never figured out how to smoke. Couldn’t figure it out. Inhale, and then I would have to … pfft … I didn’t get it. I don’t get it! Also, there was Hop Kee! After a Chinatown health fair, we’d go to Hop Kee, and after a march, we’d go eat at Hop Kee. Ling: Then we would either go to Nobody’s or Grampa’s, to the bar. And it was like, are we really meeting at the bar, or are we having a meeting? But it was a lot of fun. Huynh: Sounds like it was such a fun time with everybody hanging out and getting food together. Ling: We actually also had our own bands. The Dynasty was one. They played at all the Sweet 16 parties in Chinatown. And Alex Chin, one of our old friends, was a really good singer. He could sing rhythm and blues, motown, anything. Merle: He could do Freddy Fender, with the big voice. And he would entertain all the Yellow Pearl staff people. When we had breaks from the long talking, talking, talking, he would start singing, and we’d go holy moly, this is talent, man! He’s not just an art director. Ling: At some of the fundraisers for Yellow Pearl, he was the feature entertainer. Merle: We were also at that age where everyone is in their 20s, and so there was a lot of checking each other out. Yellow Pearl resulted in a whole bunch of marriages. Ling: Yeah, we were all in our 20s. We were still in school. I mean, I was still in college. Merle: In a way, I think that both of us kind of never really left the community, or it influenced the community our whole lives because those friendships continued through. Savarino: When you look at what’s happening today, do you feel the spaces young people move in have changed a lot since when you were in your 20s?

“I think what we went through during that period shaped the way we think about things, and how we viewed ourselves. Which started with, basically our generation, because before that, we weren’t ‘Asian American.’ Fifty years later... It’s kind of amazing to me that your generation, you look at us like elders.”- Lillian Ling Ling: All these groups, like Think!Chinatown or the kids who stepped up to help their family business have more of a social media presence, I have so much respect. Your generation is doing this. It’s very heartwarming to me. Because for a long time in between our generation and yours, there wasn’t as much activism, not that we could see. Merle: It seemed to get quiet. Ling: Things became very institutionalized. You guys, your generation, brought back activism like when we were growing up. Savarino: It’s interesting what you’re bringing up, because one of the questions we had was if you could put something in your past toolkit, what would you want to give a younger version of yourself? Ling: You know, back then we just did everything by the skin of our teeth. We didn’t really think about things, we didn’t have a lot of experience. We just had a lot of enthusiasm. Merle: I think we were innocent, or you might say dumb. But it also meant that we were very open-minded. We weren’t stuck to one ideology. We were just open to ideas and other projects and other people. Ling: We had no money back then. Merle: We had no money. Ling: We were first or second generation, so we were just exploring things on our own. Our parents kept saying, “No! Don’t do that. Don’t get arrested! Don’t do picketing!” Oh, they were so shocked that we were protesting, and I said, “Mom, I’m protesting so you have better wages when you’re

sewing those garments.” Merle: We also thought that anything is possible. You know, we didn’t see the challenge … the obstacles, so we just went ahead. Huynh: Were there challenges that you realized later on? Ling: I think one regret I have is that at a certain point people became very dogmatic. And then splits happened. Merle: Then you started getting the schisms. The people who decided, we’re going to be hardline on this, or hardline on that. And then people who should’ve been friends suddenly became enemies, or it became one group versus another group. Ling: And you know, part of it is justifiable in terms of the principles, but you know, at what point … Merle: Sometimes it split families too. Huynh: Thank you for sharing that with us. It’s definitely enlightening to hear about the challenges you guys faced because I feel like movements today face challenges as well. Merle: If you talk to our friend Bird, he says, why isn’t there a place like Basement today? Back in the 70s, 80s, there was a place for young people to go and hang out, to share and cross-fertilize ideas. And he feels like there is no one place now. BRIDGING FUTURES - 31

Ling: There are small movements of trying, but I think it’s hard to get space. Lum: It’s due to outside pressures with real estate. Merle: The Chickens Come Home to Roost people didn’t have any money. So what they did was break into buildings that were abandoned. They squatted. People don’t do that anymore! There are no more squatters rights anymore. So just sneak in … we did a lot of illegal things. But we didn’t care. Savarino: It sounds so scrappy — I’m glad we were able to hear these experiences from you guys first-person today. Huynh: Yeah, thank you so much for sharing with us. Ling: I think what we went through during that period shaped the way we think about things, and how we viewed ourselves. Which started with, basically our generation, because before that, we weren’t “Asian American.” Fifty years later... It’s kind of amazing to me that your generation, you look at us like elders. Merle: When did that happen now? When did we get our gray hairs! Ling: We just kind of lived that period.

CLASSIFIEDS

Think!Chinatown Chinatown Night Market

AAIFF 45 HYBRID FESTIVAL

The Asian American International Film Festival (AAIFF) is proudly known as “The First Home to Asian American Cinema.” Organized by Asian CineVision, it’s the first and longest-running festival dedicated to showcasing the moving image work by media artists of Asian descent for and about the Asian diaspora experience. This year the festival theme is “Celebrating the Retrospective.” “Celebrating the Retrospective” considers the archive:

How can the archive be activated by artists with today’s technology? How can engaging with past material teach us about the present, and even the future?

In considering the archive, we aim to draw out and elevate dialogue across generations of artists and community activists in the AAPI community. Aug 3 - 13, 2022 https://www.aaiff.org/

BRIDGING FUTURES - 32

Join Think!Chinatown for the second year of our summer series of food, art & music at the iconic gateway of the Manhattan Bridge. This open-air cultural festival features Chinatown-focused programming alongside local art & food vendors. https://www.thinkchinatown.org/nightmarket

Poetry

RABBITS RUN RAMPANT by Merle Motooka Okada

enough

BRIDGING FUTURES - 33

DEAR (FILL IN NAMES) by Merle Motooka Okada

BRIDGING FUTURES - 34

Reflections

What from your past gives you strength as you enter uncharted waters?

BRIDGING FUTURES - 35

(RE) MAPPING OUR CHINATOWN

by Lynn Huynh

Map

Moving through past, present, and futures is a reflection of how time and space influences our lives. Even as we watch buildings get demolished and storefronts close, the simple act of remembering a place, the memories it holds, and the history that surrounds it can create a sense of permanence in our minds. We grow to cherish space through the food, the people, and even the tiniest sensory details that accompany it: the smell of fresh baos, the sound of fish merchants, that one time we found the only restaurant open at 2AM and stayed until closing. This map reconstructs the Chinatown remembered by Bridge, Basement, and Yellow Pearl elders Tomie Arai, Lillian Ling, and Merle Motooka Okada. Using this map as your guide, we encourage you to walk through their Chinatown and reflect on how memory is a constant in the face of change.

BRIDGING FUTURES - 36

Map illustration by Singha Hon

Space as Nourishment 1. Lonnie’s - 21 Mott Street Lonnie’s, “the center of Chinatown,” 1 was a regular hangout spot for Asian American high school and college students doing homework and socializing. Lonnie’s served all-American franks, hamburgers, coffee, doughnuts, chocolate sodas and egg creams to their young after-school crowd. Lillian: When I was 16, I started hanging out in Chinatown. We met up with the Chinatown kids at that time and we would go to Sweet 16 parties, Betty’s, Lonnie’s, JCafe, all the old Chinatown places. Hanging out in Chinatown was my introduction to being Chinese. 2. Hop Kee - 21 Mott Street Since opening in 1968, Hop Kee now and then is the go-to for Cantonese American cuisine, serving classics like family-style platters of salted lobster, Chinese broccoli in oyster sauce and beef chop suey. Merle: After the Chinatown Health Fair, we’d go to Hop Kee. After a march, we’d go eat at Hop Kee. The food was affordable, and we were poor.

3. Joy Luck - original located on Mott between Bayard and Canal Not to be confused with the dim sum joint, Joy Luck Palace, Tomie remembers Joy Luck serving Toisanese cuisine on Mott. Joy Luck as a “movement hangout” in Chinatown, where many Asian American organizers would bond over late night dinners. In her interview with us, Tomie recalls “Joy Luck” closing sometime in the 1980’s. 4. Port Arthur - 7-9 Mott Street Opened in 1897 by Chu Gam Fai, Port Arthur Restaurant fed Chinatown patrons for over 80 years at its 7-9 Mott Street location. Tomie also remembers Port Arthur as the restaurant where she held her wedding banquet. 5. South Wind - 21 Division Street Lillian: My favorite place in Chinatown is South Wind, which was across from PS 124 where my kids went to school. I have fond memories of meeting the parents and the kids. We’d drop off the kids and hang out there....and they had the best chang fen... We loved South Wind, we’d see all our friends there. We were there the last day it was open.

Space as Movement & Community Building 6. Confucius Plaza: 1-9 Bowery 1974 protests led by the Chinatown community demanded the end of discriminatory anti-Asian hiring practices during the construction of the first major public housing project built for Chinese Americans in New York City. In Tomie’s interview with us, she also references Confucius Plaza as the site where she and her husband were arrested. 7. Basement Workshop - 54 Elizabeth Street, 22 Catherine Street Basement Workshop was a home to Asian American political and creative organizing during its existence from 1970-1986. The collective organized healthcare clinics, youth programs, creative workshops, and Asian American focused publications such as Bridge Magazine and Yellow Pearl, amongst other resources for the greater Asian American/NYC Chinatown community. Lillian: At 22 Catherine, the 2nd Basement Workshop location, our friend Teddy Yoshikami did dance classes there. Even when we were pregnant, we were there with our big bellies doing the plié!

9. The Collective - 51 Disivion Street Merle: I call Corky Lee’s apartment on 51 Division St “The Collective,” since he sublet to us and filled it with young Asian Americans active in the community, which included William “Charlie” Chin, Sandra Samori, May Ngai. 10. Mei Lai Wah - 64 Bayard Street Merle: We used to hang out at Mei Lei Wah. In those days, you could hang out until three in the morning over a cup of coffee. The original owners of Mei Lei Wah had the same waitstaff for over 30 years, the same waiters as when they opened the restaurant.

11. Chinatown Health Fair - First Chinatown Health Clinic - along Mott Street & Pell Street “Eight booths were set up for physical examinations of the area’s residents, closing one lane on Mott Street and shutting Pell Street to traffic. The examinations were for such things as lead poisoning, diabetes and venereal disease.”2 Lillian: That was the first Chinatown health clinic....we actually felt connected to the community and wanted to do more for it...Our generation was the first to go to college 8. Old IWK HQ - 24 Market Street here, go to school here, and know enough to help start these Merle: IWK was I Wor Kuen on Market St. The Central Com- arts and cultural groups, health groups, and legal groups. mittee lived as a collective. I was a “member-in-training” and lived elsewhere, as did the majority of members and supporters of IWK activities, which included organizing discussion groups, movies, a newspaper, and a mini health clinic with a real doctor. 1 Wallace, Ed. “Only the Crowd is Chinese.” New York World-Telegram and Sun, 20 Oct. 1965. 2 “Youths in Chinatown Open Health Fair.” New York Times, 1 Aug. 1971, pp. 47. BRIDGING FUTURES - 37

Space as Creative Placemaking 12. “History of Chinese Immigration to the United States” Mural in Chatham Square “[“History of Chinese Immigration to the United States”] featured large faces of a family against a background showing railroad, garment and mining work — the industries historically available to Chinese laborers. 3 Tomie: Around 1972, Alan Okada was invited to be a project director for City Arts Workshop, which is a community murals program. The first mural they did in Chinatown on Chatham Square was called “History of Chinese Immigration to the United States.” It was a project they did with Basement and a youth program called Project Reach. Alan invited me to simultaneously work on Bridge and on this mural project, and that’s how I got involved with painting community murals. 13. "Wall of Respect for the Working People of Chinatown" - Hester & Bowery (mural site) and Chuan Kung Music Palace Theatre - 91-93 Bowery Painted in 1978, "Wall of Respect for the Working People of Chinatown" adorned The Music Palace, a neighborhood theater and the last of NYC’s Chinese-language movie theaters. Until their 2006 demolition, the Music Palace’s building, along with the mural, stood as a symbol of what makes a neighborhood a neighborhood: their people. Tomie: On Bowery, there’s a mural that I did with young students from IS 131, which at that time was Junior HS 165. At that time, we didn’t think these murals were going to last very long, but I remember a few years ago, I met an elderly man, Mr. Wong, who lived on Bowery. He told me that he loved that mural, and that he had been in this SRO (single-room occupancy housing) for almost 20 years and every time he saw that mural, he knew he was almost home. It was a marker, and a lot of people mentioned that to me. When they saw the mural, they knew they were in Chinatown. It had special meaning to people that I never thought it would reach.” 14. Museum of Chinese in America - originally located at 70 Mulberry Street, now 215 Centre Street Tomie: The Museum of Chinese in America was originally located at 70 Mulberry Street--when I first started working there in 1988, it was called The Chinatown History Project. 70 Mulberry or the old PS 23 building is probably the most historic site in NY Chinatown. I spent 40 years at MOCA as their first artist-in-residence. I worked on exhibitions where they recreated tenements in Chinatown based on abandoned or donated artifacts MOCA had collected from different places...I have very fond memories of that physical space. I remember how cramped it was, but at the same time, it was a space where, if you walked into the office, the entire staff was there so every time you walked in, you had a conversation with every single person in the organization. MoCA didn't move to Centre Street until 2009. 3 Wong, Ryan. “A Brief History of the Art Collectives of NYC’s Chinatown.” Hyperallergic, 7 Feb. 2017, https://hyperallergic.com/330442/a-brief-history-of-the-art-collectives-of-nycs-chinatown/ BRIDGING FUTURES - 38

CLASSIFIEDS AN ARTISTS’ GROUP An Artists’ Group is searching for artists craving dialogue, collaboration, discussion about craft/process, & building community. Meet once every six weeks IRL in NYC starting in Sept 2022. Follow us at @ambienttraffic or visit https://www. ambienttraffic.net/artists-group

LUNAR NEW YEAR FOR ALL

Join Q -WAVE, GAPIMNY, Project Reach, and API Rainbow Parents in making NYC Chinatown’s Lunar New Year Parade a space for all! We are a grassroots coalition that affirms, connects, and celebrates our queer & trans API identities with our families and communities. We march at the Lunar New Year Parade in Manhattan to empower and bring visibility to #QTAPI folks, so we can all celebrate together. Follow us for more info! https://www.facebook.com/ LunarNewYearforAll

sinθ sinθ (Sine Theta) is a creative arts magazine by and for the Sino diaspora. We publish quarterly themed issues featuring art and writing by diasporic Sino creatives around the world. Follow us @sinethetamag on Twitter or Instagram to stay up-to-date on open submissions periods and read our weekly web-only features.

Reflections

What is the community you yearn to see?

An illustration of the altar created by the Bridging Futures cohort, inspired by the prompt “Create an altar to your younger self ”

BRIDGING FUTURES - 39

Parting Thoughts

How can the archives be reimagined as a public space?

BRIDGING FUTURES - 40

BRIDGING FUTURES - 41