To see how the article appeared in the Weekender Magazine, you can download the pdf here: “A Place of Her Own”.

I’ve also pasted the text below with the permission of The Weekender editor so that people who follow my blog can read about these amazing artists and the San Francisco-based Asian American Women Artists Association. (Note: the pdf shows the much nicer layout from the magazine)

A Place of Her Own:

San Francisco’s Asian American Women Artists

By May-lee Chai

What does it mean to be an Asian American woman artist today?

Apart from superstars like Maya Lin and Yoko Ono, very few Asian American women artists ever make it into the public eye.

But one San Francisco-based art group is working to change that invisibility.

“Most of this country has not talked to an Asian person,” said artist Cynthia Tom. She recalls participating in an art exhibit in Indianapolis where she stood in a room full of people, but no one came up to talk to her. At first she felt perhaps they hadn’t liked her paintings. After she approached a few people, she realized that the problem was far more basic. “They weren’t sure I could speak English.”

That’s one of the reasons why Tom has dedicated herself to increasing the public’s awareness of Asian American women artists.

Tom is the current president of AAWAA, the Asian American Women Artists Association based in San Francisco, the first national organization dedicated to promoting such art.

“We fight for recognition all the time,” said Tom.

For this reason, for the past few years AAWAA has created an innovative series of exhibits and workshops to bring artists and the public together. Called “A Place of Her Own,” after the famous Virginia Woolfe essay about a woman needing a room of her own in order to be creative, the project asks, “If you had a place of your own, what would it be?”

Asian American women artists were invited to create original art installations that would answer this question and allow members of the public to participate in this “space.”

For example, artist Vivian Truong made a giant bathtub filled with foam “bubbles” and surrounded it with giant papier-mâché boulders covered with her own Post-It note “To do” lists. Members of the public were encouraged to write down on Post -It notes things that they wanted to let go of and stick them onto a giant cork board on the wall. Then they could climb into the giant tub and relax.

Another of the exhibits’ biggest hits was Irene Wibawa’s miniature dioramas that fit inside baby food jars. People could walk around her mini-worlds and imagine the life of the tiny characters depicted.

“I wanted to make my dioramas in jars using everyday materials. I wanted to say you don’t have to have a lot of money to make art. It’s accessible to everyone,” Wibawa said.

Wibawa, who is a biological science technician with the USDA (United States Department of Agriculture), says she came up with her idea because of her work. “I work with plants and insects. I look into a microscope, looking for damage to leaves. Some of the insects are so small, you have to pick them up with an eyelash attached to a toothpick.  So I thought, ‘If I were this mite or this beetle, I’d want to hide. Where would I hide?’”

Besides engaging the public, the art exhibits also allowed the women to get to know each other. Because most of the women also have day jobs outside the art world, it can be hard to get to know other artists or have any sense of community.

Wibawa has felt this lack since immigrating to the U.S. from Indonesia when she was eight. “I’m always disappointed when I go to the Asian American section of anything and Southeast Asian women are less represented. The numbers aren’t there,” she said. “I wanted to join AAWAA if for no other reason than to say, ‘I’m Indonesian and I’m here.’”

In fact, through AAWAA’s exhibits, Wibawa was able to meet San Francisco-based artist Nining Muir, who like Wibawa was born in Indonesia.

“Prior to joining AAWAA, I didn’t know there were other Indonesian American women artists!” Wibawa said.

Muir echoed that feeling of excitement. In fact, she said her primary reason for joining AAWAA was to counter the sense of not having a community in America since she moved to San Francisco with her husband in 1996.

“I think it was a little surprise that there’s such a group of Asian American women artists,” Muir said. “Not that I wanted that label. But then I ran into Irene so I joined. I’m here as a foreigner, no family, so it’s a comfort thing.”

Muir feels their Indonesian heritage is in many ways more conducive to creating art than America’s culture. “In Indonesia, we think of art as a part of life. It’s a little bit exclusive here [in America],” Muir noted.

Muir who liked to work in wood as a sculptor in Indonesia now primarily paints, as wood is prohibitively expensive in the U.S. Her artwork has been featured in eleven exhibits and ten group shows in San Francisco since 2006.

Most recently, Muir’s oil paintings have been of cows. “I’m fascinated by cows because of the Hindu background, the holy cows concept from Indonesia,” she said.

Her latest series, entitled “This Little Sapi,” using the Indonesian word for cow, was inspired by a recent trip back to visit family.

When she discovered her nephew was thrilled with the English nursery rhyme “Five Little Pigs,” Muir decided to make paintings of the rhyme, but substituting cows for pigs.

The result is a series of five delightfully whimsical paintings depicting life-size heads of cows poking out of a red barn, each titled after one line of the re-invented nursery rhyme: “This Little Sapi Went to the Market,” “This Little Sapi Went Home,” “This Little Sapi Had Roast Pork,” and so on.

Muir is amused by the reactions from the public. She remembers at one show, a few male patrons came up to her and expressed their surprise. “They were shocked. They didn’t think a small female would paint such cows!” she said.

It is exactly this type of reversal of expectations that fuels AAWAA and its members.

“Some people question us, [asking] do you still need a women’s organization?” said artist and AAWAA board member Shari Arai DeBoer. “And we say, ‘Yes!’”

****

Copyright of the artwork belongs to the artists.  1st work ©Irene Wibawa. 2nd work: “Self Portrait” ©Nining Muir.

So thanks to Professor Isabelle Pelaud, I was able to attend her amazing class on “Asian American Women Literature and Arts.” I don’t think I’ve ever been at a school that specifically looked at Asian American women artists before! I’ll blog more about the incredible artists I’ve now met because of this course, but today I wanted to look at the literature side of the equation. In addition to various critical works, we read three novels: Maxine Hong Kingston’s The Woman Warrior, which was published in 1975 and was the first real break-out hit for an Asian American writer; Fae Myenne Ng’s beautiful Bone, about a Chinese American family from Chinatown who are trying to cope with the suicide of the middle daughter; and lê thi diem thúy’s poetic novel The Gangster We Are All Looking For, which explores a Vietnamese refugee family’s sense of loss as they try to adapt to life in San Diego.

One of the questions that came up in class was whether these works (two of which are considered canonical in Asian American literature) are relevant to today’s Asian American students. Can young people today still relate to the struggles of a Chinese American daughter trying and failing to meet her mother’s expectations? Or to the travails of a very poor family in Chinatown? Or to the story of the so-called “boat people”? I know that there’s a feeling amongst some editors in the publishing industry that these kind of “ethnic” stories are harder to sell these days, that we’re living in a “post-racial” era and young people today just don’t relate to these issues and don’t need stories that specifically show anyone’s ethnic background or experiences. There’s certainly a feeling in Hollywood that generic sells better.
From my experience in class, I can say students today DO relate to these stories and they wonder why these vivid portraits don’t seem to penetrate into other areas of the media–like TV shows or movies! Yes, I wonder that, too.

In our last week of classes, I asked students if they’d be willing to state publicly on my blog why they related to any one of the books that we studied in class. Many of the students had great responses and I’m now going to post them below so everyone can read them, too.

“The sentiment that literature produced by Asian American women has never been or no longer is relevant speaks not only to an unfounded lie but also to a dangerous one. For a long time now, the voices of Asian American women have been silenced by a mainstream that refuses to acknowledge their presence in society. The justifications are largely racist, sexist, or both, but remain nonetheless accepted or infrequently questioned, such is the way we have been conditioned to viewing Asian Americans as ‘others’ and women as inferior. More than ever, there exists the need for that silence to be broken, that lie to be challenged, and that cycle of exclusion to end; to cast aside literature written by Asian American women is to deny the expression and perspectives of those who only enrich our sense of culture as a whole and allow us to see what is familiar to us in a new light.”—Christine Lee

“Maxine Hong Kingston’s The Woman Warrior was a controversial book during the 80’s, yet it is still important today. Children of immigrant parents and their experiences are still relevant. Expectations of what parents want and what children want for themselves are what I can relate to. Balancing two different generations and two nationalities are what young Asian Americans have to confront today as they did when this book was first published.”—Terry Nguyen

“I live in a paradox where my parents, especially my mother, think that I should act a certain way or do certain things. I feel like no matter what I accomplish, it will never be good enough for my mother. Similarly, I felt that sense while reading Woman Warrior as she felt like her life has been a disappointment to her mother because she hadn’t achieved the accomplishments that she [the mother] had, such as getting a medical degree. It was nice being able to read and relate to someone about this because although my Asian American friends are supportive we rarely talk about our feelings of inadequacy.”—Jessica Angat

“How do you know where your soul comes from if no one ever told you? In Maxine Hong Kingston’s Woman Warrior she brings to life part of your soul in her short stories. Even though her work was published generations before my time, the interpretation of her stories opened up my soul in acknowledging the meaning behind each story. Not only did I get a better understanding of myself, I also became aware of many struggles and explanations behind Asian American women stereotypes.” –Andrew Shotiveyaratana

“In The Woman Warrior I was stunned by how strongly the idea of silence was demonstrated throughout the book. Speaking as a male Asian American in the 21st century, [I find it] hard to imagine the struggles that many women (especially Asian) had to go through. Even today we continue to struggle for our voices to be heard especially as Asian Americans. I believe that the only way for us to break the silence altogether is if men and women join together for our voices to be heard.”—Jesson Ballesteros

“I can definitely relate to Maxine Hong Kingston’s book, The Woman Warrior. Also coming from an Asian family, the feelings of inadequacy and pressure that the narrator feels are applicable to my life growing up. I got good grades in school, constantly on the honor roll and extremely obedient. To other parents, I would seem like the ‘perfect daughter.’ But the truth is, whatever I did, my parents usually never saw the glass as half full with my excelling grades or my compliant behavior, but only half empty and constantly wanting more. I wanted to be an artist, and they would tell me, ‘Artists don’t make money, you should be a doctor.’ That’s confusing when you’re a young girl. It left me thinking whether I should do what I want or if I should listen to my parents and be what they want me to be, even if it’s what I don’t want for myself. Like the narrator in The Woman Warrior, her mother wanted her to be a doctor but she refuted and expressed that she desired to be a ‘lumberjack or a news reporter.’ Reading passages like this from the book made me feel sympathetic towards the main character, considering I fully knew how she felt. –Kris Bondoc

“In reading The Woman Warrior this semester, [students] could clearly relate their own life to the reading. Coming from an immigrant family myself, [I know that] adjusting to life in America is not always easy to accomplish. Although witnessing and having pain within herself and her family, a family’s bond can be able to withstand any obstacles that come forth. [That’s] something that is timeless and everyone could relate to.”—Luis Cruz

“As an Asian American, I’ve noticed that my Asian culture does not receive as much attention as it should. It wasn’t until after reading Maxine Kingston’s The Woman Warrior that I could find [something to relate to]. In Kingston’s novel, it was evident that storytelling was an important aspect in her life and I can also relate and say storytelling is important in my life as well….The Woman Warrior presented so many stories that it almost felt like reading a book of life lessons, one after another, and it is this format and presentation that really caught my eye, connecting the mind, body, and heart with my Asian American culture. If more novels like these were published and made accessible to the public, more audiences like myself would be able to receive the same experience.”—Lauren Lew

“After I read the book Bone, I knew something that I never knew before. It is very interesting. I think I would recommend it to someone who had never read it before. Also if we want to know more about Asian culture and stories, we should support Asian writers.”—Jianhui Zhou

“[In] the book named Bone, written by Fae Myenne Ng, the author describes the relationship between daughter and parents. I like the way of the [narrator], as the daughter cares about the family and has the responsibility of her family. I like this novel because she makes me feel that I have a similar situation, like being a good daughter and taking care of the family.” –Yen Trieu

“After reading Fae Myenne Ng’s Bone, I found that I could relate to the daughters. As an Asian American young woman, I come from a family of five. I have a younger brother and older sister, and my two parents. I am not so close to my older sister as Leila was not close to Nina. However through distance, when Nina moved to New York, they built a stronger bond. When my sister left for college two years ago, I felt that the distance strengthened our bond as well. Also as siblings I could relate to the [parents’ idea] that one sibling’s wrongdoings could be prevented by another sibling’s influence. When Ona ended her life through suicide, Leila couldn’t help but wonder ‘what if.’ What if she had spoken to her sister? Could her suicide have been prevented? With my family, my brother was failing pre-calculus. My father blamed me for not stepping up to prevent that earlier. I also couldn’t help but feel a little bit responsible. Fae Myenne Ng’s book, and Asian American literature in general, is important to me and to many others. I can definitely relate to most situations. Therefore, we must encourage more of these writings and publish more Asian American literature.” – Corinna Tsieh

“[I really related to] the book Bone by Fae Myenne Ng because I grew up in San Francisco’s Chinatown and her story was similar to mine. Leon the stepfather really reminded me of my father. The old man going to the park gambling with other old people and the relationship between her mother and Leon. Even though my parents weren’t separated sometimes I feel they shouldn’t live together because it was better off that way. No one has to yell and scream at each other. And how her mother sneaks money to Leon. Even though she says she doesn’t care about him, she really does, just like my parents. They would never say they love each other or they care for each other. Although it is the 21st century now and things might seem like [they’ve] changed, it is still very relevant to every 1.5 generation, 2nd generation, and 3rd generation and so on.”—Carol Wong

“As an Asian American woman, I grew up in a large household of 4 sisters and two brothers. My mom was a very strict and strong woman who sacrificed long hours and work shifts to live in America. My dad was an accountant who lived in the Philippines, but transferred money to my mom monthly. Since I’m the youngest out of my siblings, it was always hard for me to speak up and have my voice heard. As the youngest, I was always picked on, made fun of, and never really had a voice. I relate to the book The Woman Warrior as I am trying to find my identity of a strong Asian American woman and having a voice to speak up with my opinions. I think it is always important to say what you want or believe in because it defines who you are as an individual. Voice is a weapon and it’s used to help and individual with the choices and actions they make. Still today, I am learning and working on having my own opinions and saying what I want to say. Breaking the silence is taking a risk, having self-confidence, and courage to break the fears of Asian American women being [seen as] passive and not expressive.” –Fergie Sabado.

“I can still relate to this [The Woman Warrior]. Women are still being looked down upon. In the Vietnamese culture, I feel that if a woman was pregnant without being married or pregnant with someone else’s kid [not her husband’s], they are known to have shame. When I am around people, I can still hear gossip, mean comments about these pregnant women. … I can also related to the way Maxine Hong Kingston explains in her book, women are always expected to do certain things. Everything that I do, my mother always reminds me to think of the family and don’t do anything that would cause the family to look bad. This [book’s issues] still exist today. Asian women are still facing the same problems.” –Tina Truong

“In the book The Gangster We Are All Looking For by lê thi diem thúy is something that is still relevant. Domestic violence is a big problem everywhere in the world and there are still a lot of women dealing with this type of situation. We don’t often hear a lot of Asians when it comes to domestic violence because they don’t really speak about it to other people. One of the reasons is they don’t want their kids to have no father figure in the house or they just want their family to be complete. Being a divorced Asian woman is bad to their profile, it is something that Asians make a big deal about. So this book is still relevant because not a lot of Asian women speak up about the abuse that happened to them at home.”—Honely Hinaniban

“The books Ingratitude and The Gangster We Are All Looking For are books that are still very relevant to us young Asian American readers today. Having to read this for class helps the readers deal with the hardships that they are facing in their own lives. Not only can these books be relevant to Asian Americans but anyone from any race can relate to it too since not only Asian Americans go through what the characters go through in these books.” –Olivia Peshev

“The Gangster We Are All Looking For holds a certain meaning for me since the main character is Southeast Asian. As a person who is Southeast Asian I am able to relate. Oftentimes there isn’t much media representation for this group of people so it’s refreshing to read. More importantly reading this novel makes me realize that it’s okay to not fit certain images of Asian America that is perpetuated in the media.” –Mey Saechao

“The Gangster We Are All Looking For is an inspirational epic…that closely relates to my life. …The novel has allowed me to take a step into the lives of a dysfunctional gangster’s home through the eyes of a young daughter. The novel helps me understand why some of the friends I have may turn to this lifestyle. Whether they are male or female, the unstable household pushes the children away making them want to seek a new home where people will accept and care for them. Some children commit crimes to go to jail so there is a safe place to stay with food and water.”—Nicholas Lew

“I can relate myself to the main girl from the novel The Gangster We Are All Looking For. In the book, the girl is not able to express herself because she does not know English. When I first moved to America, I only knew a little bit of English. It was hard to make friends because I could not communicate with them very well. I understand how she feels when she cannot tell others what she thinks and how frustrating it is to not be able to fit into the community because of her poor English skills.”—Karina DeFazio

The students had prepared great questions and observations about Hapa Girl, and we discussed the impact of fear mongering in the media on communities and individual lives, ongoing fear of interracial marriage (including the case of the Kentucky church that recently voted to ban interracial couples!), the current atmosphere of hostility against Muslims and Mexican immigrants compared with the anti-Japanese fears of the 1980s, and the need to speak up in the face of injustice.

I was impressed with all the students’ intelligent comments, questions, and conversation. Whenever I meet a great class, I know I’m also witnessing the work of a great teacher who has taken a lot of time and thought to put together her curriculum (in this case students read literature on social justice themes), and then teaches it well. Brava to Sheryl Fairchild!

(You can see Sheryl in this photo–she’s second from the right, leaning forward:)

I was very fortunate to be able to interview retired U.S. Foreign Service Officer Stanton Jue who was stationed with his wife Florence in Phnom Penh in 1956!

(I also interviewed Florence Jue, who has fascinating memories about daily life in Phnom Penh–including waiting for the royal elephants (!) at an intersection and going to see the Royal Ballet at the Palace!)

 (My publisher Trish O’Hare at GemmaMedia  just sent me a link to this review of Dragon Chica by Lyn Miller-Lachmann, author of the novel Gringolandia about life in Chile under Pinochet. This review just made my day! Writing can be a lonely affair, as writers never know if our works will be meaningful to other people. When I hear back from readers that the story resonates with them, I am cheered immensely!–May-lee)

Crossover Dreams: A Review of Dragon Chica

CUT to a street scene. A bored looking man sits at a table on a sidewalk. He offers to register people looking for work, promising them for a fee he’ll send their forms to employers. Several migrant workers bargain, pay cash, fill out the forms, affix a photograph.

But the man is a grifter. A cop comes by and the man pays him off. Later the man goes home and affixes the photographs of the unemployed to his wall. Another sucker, he tells his girlfriend, who smokes on the bed in his spartan, otherwise unfurnished apartment.

So opens Zhao Dayong’s quirky and deliberately surreal first feature. Zhao is primarily known for his documentaries, including the extraordinary Ghost Town, which documents life in southwest China’s border towns and villages, where many ethnic minorities live and try to find work.

In his first fictional feature, The High Life, Zhao has given his film the look and feel of a documentary as he mixes actors (all nonprofessional) with real people and street scenes. Whereas this technique has been widely used in China at least since Zhang Yimou’s The Story of Qiu Ju, Zhao’s film feels very different from any other contemporary Chinese films I’ve ever seen.

By his own admission, the story is “surreal,” mixing realistic and completely impossible scenarios. Audaciously, Zhao drops his first protagonist half way through the movie and instead picks up the story of a male prison guard in a women’s prison. The guard likes to write poetry . . . about official corruption, June 4th (the date of the Tiananmen Square crackdown, as it’s known in the West), and his own sense of despair before society’s many ills. He forces his prisoners to recite the poems and even memorize them. In a scene that mocks contemporary police interrogations in China, the guard forces the grifter to read a poem and then critique it.

Zhao’s film is not going to be appreciated by everyone. At one showing at the San Francisco International Film Festival this spring (2011), Zhao said he knew it had no chance of commercial success: “It’s not beautiful and it has no story.” (Many would disagree with that statement.)

What it does have is attitude. His editing, gritty cityscapes and urban soundtrack made me think of early Martin Scorsese. As in Mean Streets and Taxi Driver. Definitely not The Age of Innocence or Shutter Island. Zhao’s unusual choice of camera angles, where the viewer watches characters askance, glimpses through doorways or else peeks over their shoulders reminded me of Roman Polanski’s Rosemary’s Baby.

At the San Francisco screening, I asked Zhao if he was worried how China’s offiicials and censors would react to a film that so daringly directly addresses contemporary issues that are verboten in Chinese state-sponsored films: corruption, rape, prostitution, crime, even June 4th. He said (in Mandarin), “My film’s an underground film. No one will see it. The censors don’t care.” He explained that he and his friends show each other’s films in small private screenings, even in bars or restaurants, but not in regular theaters.  That’s too bad, because Zhao’s sensibility would provide Chinese cinema with a welcome dose of street cred.

Western critics (and Chinese officials) may prefer the artful, slow pace of directors like Jia Zhangke whose more statically framed films are quite pretty, but those films seem anemic compared to the restless, nervous energy of THE HIGH LIFE.

***

Links:

dGenerate Films (his distributor in US) Profile of Zhao Dayong

New York Times article about Zhao Dayong and his documentary “Ghost Town”: Times profile of Zhao

Electric Sheep magazine interview with Zhao Dayong: Interview with Zhao Dayong

First they performed “Ghost Opera,” an original work composed by Tan Dun (1994) and a new multimedia work entitled “A Chinese Home.”

I had heard “Ghost Opera” on CD but nothing compares to the live performance. The musicians from Kronos Quartet started out playing from various sections of the small gallery theater at YBCA while Wu Man sat stage right, later moving to center stage where she performed behind a long, ghostly white veil.

“Ghost Opera” combines traditional Western-style symphonic music and Chinese pipa solos as well as Chinese opera vocalizations. There were snippets of a Chinese folk song as well as lines from Shakespeare, shouts (meant to evoke the cries of a traditional shaman), the shaking of paper, gongs, and dripping water as the musicians dipped their hands into clear bowls of water positioned around the stage.

I personally love “Ghost Opera” and find its music transcendent of any place or time, although of course it strongly evokes many Chinese musical traditions. But like many of Tan Dun’s more experimental works (for example, his score for the opera “Peony Pavilion,” which had its debut in Berkeley’s Zellerbach Hall in the 1990s [available on CD as "Bitter Love"]), the music stands as its own uniquely modern composition, a hybrid that would have been impossible in any other time period.

The second half of the performance was a newer, multimedia work called “A Chinese Home,” inspired by the rebuilding of a traditional Chinese house that was shipped and re-assembled in the Peabody Essex Museum in Massachusetts. The musicians played in four segments, each meant to evoke different periods of time in Chinese history while video images flashed on the screen behind the performers.

Personally, I found the video distracted me from the music, especially in the first segment, called “Return,” which was meant to evoke “traditional” China. The images showed contemporary scenes from rural China and minority groups living in China’s southwestern provinces. Furthermore, the handheld video was shaky and a little hard to watch. Yet the screen was so large, it was hard to ignore the video and watch the live performers, which was a shame.

The second segment was entitled “Shanghai” and featured some of the great jazz and pop music of Shanghai in the 1920s and 30s. Here Kronos Quartet and Wu Man seemed more clearly to be playing music meant to “accompany” the images, which ranged from the U.S. Deparment of War’s newsreel footage of the Japanese bombing of Shanghai in 1937 (edited by Frank Capra) as to clips from the best of Shanghai’s silent films from the 1920s and 30s. Here I didn’t even try to focus on the musicians; the images were too compelling and featured both scenes of actual suffering as well as some of the era’s most famous movie stars. The emphasis on suffering (as opposed to the hybrid quality of life in Shanghai or open-minded nature of its residents) did not account for any of the creative brilliance that was clearly evident in the music. To juxtapose the suffering of war with the brilliance of Shanghai’s culture is an artistic choice that I’ve seen a lot of recently in Chinese mainland works about Shanghai.

The third segment, “The East Is Red,”  opened with a quote from Mao, and featured images of kitschy Cultural Revolution operas and ballets while the musicians played rollicking folk music that seemed to come directly from the era. There was no hint whatsoever of the suffering of the Chinese people during the Cultural Revolution or Mao era.

The final segment entitled “Made in China”  had the most sophisticated, abstract video imagery of China’s fast-growing cities, featuring modern skyscrapers, billboards, Shanghai monorail, and people engaged in leisure activities from singing to sitting to shopping, but there were also hints of destruction in the image of China’s ubiquitous wrecking cranes. While the Kronos Quartet literally unleashed boxes of Chinese-made electronic toys that crawled across the stage, Wu Man plugged her pipa into an amp and synthesizer and literally rocked it like an electric guitar!

I still need time to think about this exciting program.

Meanwhile, “Ghost Opera” with its delicate and nuanced score will remain one of my most precious musical memories and I feel infinitely grateful that I was able to hear and see it performed live. Perhaps the abstract quality made it easier for me to appreciate than the almost documentary nature of the second program.

However, I also have a purely personal reason to love Tan Dun’s work. When I was a student at Nanjing University in 1988, our American coordinator for CIEE (Rich Lufrano) played for us a casette tape of music recorded by Tan Dun called “Mong Dong.” In those days, Tan Dun was not famous but rather happened to live down the hall in New York City from Rich (who was a Ph.D. student at Columbia) and they had become friends. As a result, Tan Dun had given Rich a copy of his composition. The name is made up of invented, nonsense characters, and the music included chanting, moaning, singing that evoked not only Han Chinese musical traditions but ethnic minority music that Tan Dun had heard when he had traveled in the south of China. I loved “Mong Dong.” As we listened in our unheated classroom to the crackly tape player, I was transported by the power and inventiveness of this new kind of musical composition. In those days, I never imagined that one day Tan Dun would become a famous, Oscar-winning composer nor that I would get to hear Tan Dun’s music performed live by amazing musicians like the Kronos Quartet and Wu Man as I sat in a chair mere feet from the performers. Such a life seemed very far away.

***

The Yerba Buena Center for the Arts also opened to concert goers its gallery exhibit by Chinese contemporary artist Song Dong “Dad and Mom, Don’t Worry About Us, We Are All Well.” The exhibit featured video displays of the artist’s family and a spectacular full-room installation of literally 10,000 items his mother had been hoarding in their house in Beijing. (For the New York Times review and photos of the installation “Waste Not,” click here .) The artist was able to get his mother to give up the items after his father died by promising to turn her possessions into a work of art. And indeed he did. From balls of ordinary twine, displays of bottle caps, neatly arranged pairs of shoes, hats, shirts, even shopping bags, Song Dong has made a beautiful tribute to his mother, his family, and to a generation of Chinese who learned never to throw anything away because of the terrible shortages they faced. (In fact, seeing the mother’s collection of styrofoam containers, I thought of my own grandmother, who had survived the Sino-Japanese War and Civil War in China when starvation and deprivation were common. Even after immigrating to the U.S., she could not bring herself to throw away newspapers, twist ties, old clothes, slippers or even styrofoam containers. These items of so-called “junk” stand as a testament to the suffering of people who have lived through war and hardship, but also the resilience of women like Song Dong’s mother and my grandmother, who saved everything and lived so thriftily so that their own children would have a better life.)

The exhibit is open until June 12. I highly recommend it.

At CCSF with librarians Mary Marsh and Mauro Garcia

Every reading at colleges that I’ve given for Dragon Chica has yielded new and important questions from the students. Today was no exception. One student who is himself originally from Cambodia stood up and asked, “Why did the Khmer Rouge kill?” He explained that he wanted to know what have scholars found out all these years later about why the Communist regime that ruled Cambodia from 1975 to the end of 1978 killed 1.5 million to 2 million Cambodians.

The answer is not simple. And many scholars have debated what the motivations of the Khmer Rouge were. Here are some of the explanations: 1) at first the leadership wanted to eliminate anyone that they felt could threaten their hold over the people, so they wanted to kill anyone who was associated with the previous government and with America and thus possibly with the CIA. They also wanted to kill anyone who could become a leader or voice of dissent against their regime: so that meant killing anyone with an education (even a junior high education was considered dangerous), teachers, Buddhist monks and nuns, professionals like engineers or doctors, etc. Trained artists including singers, dancers, actors, poets, and musicians were also eventually considered a threat.

Since they had no way of knowing who was educated or not after they’d evacuated all the cities and forced everyone in Cambodia to move to work camps in the countryside, soldiers began to use arbitrary methods to determine if someone was educated: if that person wore eyeglasses, had soft hands, had a lighter complexion, if a person understood a foreign language (despite the fact that anyone living in a city might learn some foreign phrases, for example, as a street vendor or a pedicab cyclist), if a person could read and write, if a person used correct grammar when speaking, etc.

2) Secondly, the Khmer Rouge leaders claimed they wanted to re-make society and banish all “un-Cambodian” influences: so they targeted ethnic minorities such as the Cham Muslims, as well as “city people” whom they felt had absorbed influences from foreigners, including the French. As Cambodia had been a “protectorate” under French colonial rule in parts of the 19th and 20th centuries, there were many French influences in Cambodian cities–from Catholic cathedrals to pastries and other cuisine to the French lycées (high schools) to the pervasive way many French phrases had become part of the Cambodian language.

3) The Khmer Rouge became increasingly paranoid and began killing anyone they thought did not support them 100 percent and then they killed the family members. As a result entire families including babies were slaughtered.

4) Because the Khmer Rouge’s decision to return Cambodia to “Year Zero,” ending all city life, commerce and schooling, Cambodia went from a highly civilized, complex society to a land of primitive slave camps. Famine and illness resulted, killing even more people.

4) Finally, scholars have pointed out that the Khmer Rouge had been hardened during years and years of warfare. Even before they came to power, the Khmer Rouge recruited children and teenagers (many orphaned or displaced after American bombing raids and border fighting with Vietnam), and trained these young people to be obedient soldiers who would kill whomever their commanders deemed the Enemy.

I also showed a clip from the documentary “The Trials of Henry Kissinger” that explained Kissinger’s rationale for the secret and illegal bombing of Cambodia during the Vietnam War. Cambodia was a neutral country up until 1969′s coup d’état. Technically speaking, President Nixon should have sought authorization from Congress before ordering bombing raids on Cambodia. He did not. Under Kissinger’s policy advice, Nixon ordered “Operation Menu” in which B-52s were sent to drop bombs on Vietnam but then mid-flight their coordinates were changed so that they instead dropped bombs over parts of Cambodia, code-named after menu items: Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner, Snack. As a result, 3,630 bombing raids were flown over Cambodia during a 14-month period and an estimated 600,000 Cambodians were killed just during this short time period.  (You can read the account by Christopher Hitchens in Harper’s Magazine by clicking on his name). Cambodian civil society was disrupted, people fled from their villages to the cities (straining resources and leading to much upheaval), and the Khmer Rouge–once a fringe group of about 10,000 members–was able to increase its ranks to 200,000 members by recruiting people and even children to fight against this mysterious “Enemy” who was dropping bombs from the sky on Cambodia.

As a result of the disruptions to Cambodian society, after the U.S. forces left Vietnam and Cambodia in 1975, the Khmer Rouge were able to take over the government and the country.

Some 150,000 Cambodians came to America as refugees in the 1980s, after having fled Cambodia and the Khmer Rouge. Many lived in refugee camps for years, and some Cambodians were even born in refugee camps while their families awaited sponsorship to another country.

In Dragon Chica, I re-create the era when Cambodian refugees first began arriving in America in large numbers in the early 1980s. I want to bear witness to the many struggles Cambodians still faced as they learned to survive in the U.S.

I’m so happy that schools across America celebrate Asian Pacific American Heritage Month so that the history of the many different Asians in America will not be lost and that opportunities for writers like me to speak with students exist.

(With CCSF librarian Maura Garcia and bookstore manager Eden Lee)

For more background information, check this previous blog posts and pdf:

Dragon Chica, Liberation and the Sequel

dragon-chica-book-club-and-classroom-guide (questions for discussion)

Here are a few nonfiction, mostly academic books that provide some useful background on Cambodia:

David Chandler’s A History of Cambodia (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1996); J.-P. Dannaud’s  Cambodge (Lausanne: Éditions Clairefontaine, 1956); Wilfred P. Deac’s Road to the Killing Fields: The Cambodian War of 1970-1975 (College Station, TX: Texas A&M University Press, 1997); Christopher Hitchens’s The Trial of Henry Kissinger (NY: Verso, 2001); Ben Kiernan’s The Pol Pot Regime: Race, Power, and Genocide in Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge, 1975-1979 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996); Samantha Power’s A Problem from Hell: America in the Age of Genocide (NY: Harper Perennial, 2003); Dith Pran’s Children of Cambodia’s Killing Fields: Memoirs by Survivors (edited by Kim DePaul, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1997); William E. Willmott’s The Chinese in Cambodia (Vancouver: University of British Columbia, 1967).

(This list is far from comprehensive; it is meant simply to be one possible  starting point for students who want to read more background.)

CCSF John Adams Campus library's display for APA Heritage Month

It was great to meet essayist Melissa Cistaro, whose essay “Calico” is one of my all-time favorites. It reads like a fantastic short story, full of suspense and unusual characters, about a young girl whose cat is a more reliable emotional companion than her own mother.

Melissa Cistaro

Best-selling novelist Jacqueline Winspear (creator of the Maisie Dobbs psychologist/private investigator series) talked about her essay “My Sal,” about her beloved black Lab.

Jacqueline Winspear

Editor Barbara Abercrombie not only conceived of the book, put together the essays, but also wrote the very moving essay “Winesburg” about her scrappy, globe-trotting kitten.

Barbara Abercrombie

And I wrote the essay “Red the Pig” about my pet pig that I raised when I was growing up on a farm in South Dakota. Here’s a copy of my high-school yearbook photo: Yep, it’s me and my pig!

Me and my pig

I was pleased so many pet lovers came to the reading at Book Passage! Many people shared their stories of pets they loved and lost. But rather than being depressing, we all agreed that the evening felt like a time to honor our special pets and to recognize it’s okay to say we miss them.

And one woman even brought her adorable little dog, a Jack Russell terrier-chihuahua-boxer mix.

I like what Melissa said tonight about contributing an essay to this collection. She says it gave her permission to acknowledge her grief for her pet. (I’m paraphrasing.) I understood immediately what she meant. Until Barbara asked me if I’d like to contribute to Cherished, I’d never written about my pig before. It seemed ridiculous and frivolous of me to mourn his loss. As I write in my essay, “Growing up on a farm, I wasn’t a fool. I knew our animals were destined to become food.” And yet, I did mourn the loss of my pig. I don’t think it’s foolish to admit that we love the animals that have graced our lives.

Signed copies of Cherished can be purchased from Book Passage. (Phone: 1-800-999-7909)

Full list of writers: Carolyn See, Michael Chitwood, Robin Romm, Jane Smiley, Joe Morgenstern, Judith Lewis Mernit, Melissa Cistaro, May-lee Chai, Anne Lamott, Samantha Dunn, Billy Mernit, Barbara Abercrombie, Monica Holloway, Linzi Glass, Jacqueline Winspear, Cecilia Manguerra Brainard, Victoria Zackheim, Jenny Rough, Sonia Levitin, Thomas McGuane, and Mark Doty, (plus a poem by Ted Kooser).

2011 Festival in San Francisco

The community-organized event included traditional dance performances, breakdancing, a spoken word performance, food, a fashion show, and music music music! There was the amazing electric guitar stylings of Khmer pop that was in vogue in Cambodia in the 1960s and early 1970s before the Khmer Rouge, traditional flute (khui), xylophone (krim), mouth organ (kaen), and drum (gong) performances as well as many local singers.

Wuttihan Bussabokon playing the krim

One of my favorite performances was the traditional girls dance known as “Robam Neary Chea Jour,” which is meant to celebrate the beauty and grace of Cambodian women.

The five little girls practiced this dance for four hours every Saturday for the past two months. This was their very first performance!

Their amazing teacher is Ratha Chuon Kim, who volunteers with the Southeast Asian Cultural Heritage and Musical Performing Arts center in Oakland, www.seachampa.org, where she teaches Khmer social dance. “I am not a professional dancer, I just love dance and learning about it!” says the ever modest Ratha. “I first learned social dance from my dad, an art form that’s easily learned through observation and asking questions.” Later Ratha studied folk dance at the Nagara Dhamma Temple for two years, where the head teacher–Theap Kong–had studied dance before the Khmer Rouge takeover in 1975, a rare teacher indeed! Ratha later started a classical Khmer dance program with the Cambodian Community Development Inc. and for the next four years went to every practice so that she could assist and learn from the classically trained dancers.

Ratha and me

If you watch the video of the little girls dancing closely, you can see several women in the background wiping tears from their eyes. It truly was moving to see these young girls learning about the beauty of their culture and heritage.

The vicious Khmer Rouge regime killed an estimated 1.5 to 2 million Cambodians during the 4 years of their reign of terror. During that time, 90 percent of Cambodia’s educated population as well as artists, dancers, and trained musicians died.

Despite the tragedies that almost every single Cambodian family in America has experienced, many in the community are coming together to pass on the rich and beautiful traditions of Khmer culture.

As you can see from the pictures, there was nothing but joy at this Cambodian New Year Festival!

Check out this breakdancing performance:

Breakdance Video

Great food…

Good friends…

Tamiko Wong trying on a krama

And good krama (from the folks at www.goodkrama.com), who buy these traditional scarves directly from the women who make them in Cambodia and donate a portion of the proceeds to help women and children in Cambodia.

krama scarves

Last but not least, I was thrilled to see Sandra Sengdara Siharath, the founder of www.seachampa.org.

Sandra holding a kaen and Philip Siharath holding a traditional drum (gong)Sandra has been a major force in promoting Southeast Asian culture and arts in the Bay Area. She comes from a very talented family. In fact, her father, Philip Siharath, is the man in the green shirt in the videos playing the drum!