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…
Author: Evan Yi
Anglerfish
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
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.…
Spoken Word as Revisionist Education: Digital Learning Module
For my digital learning module, I’d like to unpack how spoken word – digitally transmitted throughout the Asian-American world – can be utilized as a form of revisionist education that de-centers white narratives. Furthermore, I’ll examine how digital poetics – here as a video of my spoken word performance and later in my final project as a digital collage of hyperlink poems – exists as a powerful representation of Asian-American identity. The contemporary movement of spoken word is rooted in a protest tradition; specifically, I trace it back to the Black…
asian art
after “black art” by Amiri Baraka english is bullshit/ unless tongued/ by a boat child/ come from the womb of some/ napalm land set ablaze/ he later calls a continent/ decolonization is bullshit/ unless there are no more rusty land mines/ to blow up the boat child’s cousin/ on the other side/ of the pacific/ i want a community of/ fuck your model minority/ type chinks/ i want a community of/ drown tom cruise in the village pond/ type samurai/ i want a community of/ anarchist math professors/ refugees holding…
The Duty of Remembrance
My most vivid memories as a child are the summers I spent in my grandmother’s house in Xinzhou, China. She spent those days making sure her grandsons – all of my paternal cousins are male – were happy, and more importantly, full. Every immigrant child thinks their grandmother makes the best food in the world, and every immigrant child is right. I only ever remember my grandmother being joyous. Her tears and her anger are wholly unfamiliar to me. However, at a certain age, I began to hear stories of…
Questions for Jim Crow from the Curious Asian
Where do I sit on the bus? If there is a white man in my seat, do I wait for the next bus? Am I colored if I am darker than the brown paper bag? If I have a half-black child, will you hold your tongue before them because you know not which slur to use? If I am in love with a white man, will I be the only hell-bound one? If you baptize my son in your church today, will he be welcome in your school tomorrow? If…
Course One: Literature
Course One – Literature This course seeks to examine contemporary Asian American literature through its different parts: novels, short stories, and personal essays. While reading all of the texts is highly recommended, the course objectives can be applied to individual texts as well. Prominent themes that emerge throughout the readings in this course include form, national identity, intergenerational family, blackness, and fiction versus nonfiction. Course Readings Novels Native Speaker by Chang-Rae Lee The Other Side of Paradise by Staceyann Chin Short Stories & Essays “The Paper Menagerie” by Ken Liu…
Course Two: Poetry
Course Two – Poetry This course seeks to examine how Asian American poets have utilized page poetry as narrative storytelling. Particularly, it seeks to interrogate how Asian American writers have used poetry in a distinct way from literature to express complex lived realities. Themes in the readings include the production of history, biracialism, postmodernism, Asian futurism, immigrant masculinity, colonialism, and language. Course Readings Collections Engine Empire by Cathy Park Hong Lucky Fish by Aimee Nezhukumatathil Poems “The Gift” by Li-Young Lee “Thaw” by Jane Wong “March of the Hanged Men”…
Course Three – Hybrid Storytelling
This course seeks to expand the conventional understanding of Asian American narrative storytelling beyond literature and poetry. Particularly, it engages with new forms and mediums afforded by the modern era that blur the line between traditional forms. The seminal text in this section, Dictee, is a postmodern work demanding complex analysis and secondary sources. This section also explores spoken word poetry as a unique vehicle for Asian American narrative expression. The central themes in this section include fragmented identity, gender, sexual assault, queerness, imperialism, language, and family. Suggested Readings Hybrid…