Month: May 2017

For APAHM, Remember Our Stake in Immigration Justice

Helen Mun

May is an important month for Asian America: the Asian Pacific American Heritage Month is a time when our voices and narratives are centered and celebrated on social media, in museums, in schools. May is also an important month for Asian American history: in 1843, the first Japanese immigrant arrived in the United States. In 1869, Chinese immigrants completed the first Transcontinental Railroad. That is why George W. H. Bush signed APAHM into existence. And while the important contributions of Asians and Asian Americans to the fabric of the United…

Journey to Nepal

Melech Maglasang

This past semester I was awarded a grant by Davidson College and the Freeman Foundation to allow me to get an internship in East Asia.  My parents insisted that I should go to the Philippines because it was familiar territory and I would know how to navigate the culture.  Securing an internship was not even that much of a problem since my family knew some people within the information technology industry and I was almost guaranteed a position in this communication company, but I chose not to go to the…

Requiem (distorted)

Evan Yi

then, I want the dead returned, by the song that played them off & if the punk anthem that fuels an Arkansas mosh pit undulating sound & blood/ moist with liquor-sweat is the swan song of a south/midwest that is losing its only Wal-Mart tomorrow & all the punk youth of the town are here, crashing their warm branches against one another so that the lights are turning this raucous organism into a kaleidoscope & nobody can quite tell what the screaming vocalist is saying but they all know what…

Anglerfish

Evan Yi

I. Emigrating, my father imagined falling into the Pacific. How long will the waters hold me; how long before my bones become rain? he must have asked. Father, these were the wrong questions. Instead: what will feed on my flesh? What might live by the fall – everything that swims beneath us. Picture the fuselage a wheat stalk for the starving seas and your thin body: salvation for a world, unseen. II. A boy who looked like me once asked why I wrote so many race poems. I lied and…

Vivisection: An Autobiography of an Asian-American Cyborg

Evan Yi

For my final project, I wrote nine poems and collated them into a visual collage on my website. With these poems, I focused on examining Asia-America as a solitary body, and then sought to tell the story of that body through the poetics of dramatic monologue. I then turned the poems into hyperlink poems, attaching hyperlinks to key words in the poems. The intent with these hyperlinks was not to explain the poems, but rather, to add layers of meaning and approach the storytelling of the poems in expanded ways.…

Expectasian Magazine

Tommy Chaisuesomboon

                            For my digital module, I decided to turn many of the posts into a magazine format. I think there is the potential to streamline the process of making a print version of the website in case we want to feature some of our best work on the website. I used Adobe Indesign, Photoshop, and Illustrator to make my design for the magazine.

A_____ A_________

Tommy Chaisuesomboon

A____ A______ written by Tommy Chaisuesomboon   ______ Welcome, one and all, to the first meeting of AA. Let’s go around the room and introduce ourselves. I’ll start. My name is Tommy Chaisuesomboon and I’m an Asian American. See, my problem began when I was born because Buddha decided to create me in his image:  Asian. He didn’t take into account, though, that I wouldn’t actually be in Asia, but instead, put me in the womb of some woman who for some reason, saw America as a land of opportunity.…

What’s In a Name?

Tommy Chaisuesomboon

I’ve always been that kid in class. Not the troublemaker, or the class clown, or even the teacher’s pet (well, sometimes). No, I knew that people knew my name because they didn’t know my name. I always held my breath when teachers took roll and read out the last names starting with C because I knew there would be an inevitable pause between they would blurt out some semblance of a response. My existence since Pre-K has been an endless series of introductions, reintroductions, requests to pronounce my name, requests…