Summit reflections: Kristen Sajonas

I’ve been struggling over how to write this for months now.

Why is the Summit important to me?

Sounds like a simple question, right?

…for myself, it isn’t.

I attended my first Summit in Chicago in 2003, my second in New York in 2007, and helped organize the last one here in the Bay Area in 2009. For the past eight years, thinking about the Summit has always felt like a tidal wave swelling inside of me.

Why?

Because for so many reasons, the Summit has reminded me of how strong I not only can be, but indeed am.

My 21st birthday on a stage in a Chicago theatre in front of 200 people…I’ve replayed that night in my mind over and over and over again, trying to keep hold of every single detail so that when I feel like nothing, I can remember that I am worth a whole lot more.

I will never forget how nervous I was, dry heaving as the poet before me wrapped up their performance. I will never forget the rousing rendition of “Happy Birthday” sung to me by everyone in the audience when Kelly called me on stage. I will never forget thinking to myself”These people have no idea” as I stood there and smiled. I will never forget hearing those in the front rows cry along with me as my hands shook and voice trembled, eyes glued to my paper. I will never forget the old friends I came with and the new friends I made crawling on stage after to hold me and gather around me backstage to put me back together when I had utterly and honestly fell apart. I will never forget concentric circles on stage after, everyone healing with me as we sang together: “Ikalat muna, pass it around.”

For myself, that is what the Summit is about: passing “it” around. “It” being this identity of community and responsibility for one another – more so than creating, practicing, and perfecting our craft of poetry and spoken word (really, they’re just vehicles, another way for us to be human) – the Summit is truly about building and growing with and for each other, from the ground up – heads high, eyes skyward, raw, and revealing – because in the words of June Jordan: We are the ones we have been waiting for.

The fact that no one gets paid to organize the Summit, the fact that we are not a 501(c)3, the fact that every two years a group of people dedicate two years of their lives to ensure the Summit happens again for those anxious to return, but more importantly for those who desire to be introduced… This selflessness, solidarity, connection, and interconnection; this tidal wave of emotion that I am sure I am not the only one who feels – this is why the Summit is important to me.

The Summit is recognition – love and history made manifest. The Summit is resistance against the blunt truth that in this world – not only for human necessity, but politically, socially, culturally, and economically in pursuit of real deal revolution-making – we are nothing if we are without each other. For myself, most importantly, the Summit is a reminder and dedication to the fact that though individually we are indeed strong, in each others arms we are even stronger.

Kristen Sajonas, 2009 Summit organizer, sometimes-poet, all-the-time community organizer, wannabe kultural worker.

Summit reflection: Hanalei Ramos

For what it’s given me as an artist and community member, I love what every Summit brings.

Flashback to 2005. Hurricane Katrina hits the Gulf Coast with such insistence homes and communities are swallowed by the floods. A small group of friends, fresh from the Boston APIA Spoken Word and Poetry Summit, organize an event called RELIEF: A Benefit for APIA Survivors of Hurricane Katrina. The night becomes an incredible line-up of writers, singer/songwriters, and other performers donating their time and packing about 500 people into the ImaginAsian theater. Soon, artists/former Summit participants from the Los Angeles and the Bay Area throw fundraisers, too. Together, we raise something like six or seven thousand dollars in donations for Southeast Asian communities in Mississippi and Louisiana.

The same group of friends who organized the NYC Katrina Benefit begin organizing a monthly open mic. This gradually evolves into the SULU Series, first at Galapagos (when it was still in Williamsburg), then at the Bowery Poetry Club in the Lower East Side. The total 50+ SULU Series shows between 2005 and 2010 created a lively and dynamic platform for up-and-coming APIA artists of various disciplines to face the loving kindness of an ultimate audience of thousands. While the NYC SULU Series is no longer, the DC SULU series was born in 2010 out of the same need: good folks believed in the importance of an APIA arts performance venue. (AndI also like to think that the DC-based 2009 Bay Area Summit attendees had a little something to do with it, too…)

I tell you this shortened story in this way because an APIA performing arts venue in two cities is the direct result of the inspiration, empowerment, and general magic generated by Summits past. The SULU Series is just one response by a group of spoken word artists and poets in a specific region, at a specific time. But without the Summit community, we wouldn’t have been able to respond to Hurricane Katrina with such timeliness. And a good hundred APIA artists might have never met a crowd as wonderful as a SULU Series audience on a Sunday night at the Bowery. What Summit created was essential for the growth of NYC, its audience, and every artist who blessed that stage.

So, dear reader, I ask you these questions: how do you use your art/writing/discipline to propel the needs of your community? How can you help develop the trajectory of APIA arts in your area? How does your work engage your community?

The Summit remains a place where our ideas grow the legs to run, the arms to hold up a beautiful people, and the eyes to see our own work as significant contributions to the evolution of APIA art. For this space and for you, I am, and always will be, grateful.

Hanalei Ramos is a writer, cultural worker, and community organizer. She was also a lead coordinator/organizer for the 2007 APIA Spoken Word & Poetry Summit in New York City.

Tags: activism, APIA artists, apia summit, Asian American, Asian American spoken word, new york, New York spoken word, SULU Series

Housing Forms due today!

A gentle reminder good peoples: the form for affordable dorm housing for Summit is due today!

See you soon.

First Generation Spotlight: Joe Kadi

Joe Kadi, picture by Juliana Hu Pegues

Get to know our four first generation poets and activists before Summit! This spotlight is on Joe Kadi

Joe Kadi is a writer, teacher, and editor who lives in Canada’s Rocky Mountains. He edited the groundbreaking anthology Food for Our Grandmothers: Writings by Arab-American and Arab-Canadian Feminists in 1994. This book, the first of its kind, gave voice to the histories, experiences, and visions of Arab feminists. Kadi is also the author of Thinking Class: Sketches from a Cultural Worker, a book of essays and poetry addressing issues of race, gender, sexuality, and class. He contributed to the recent anthology Arab and Arab American Feminisms, edited by Abdulhadi, Alsultany, and Naber.

Kadi lived in the Twin Cities for most of the 1990’s and participated with arts organizations such as Asian American Renaissance and Mizna, A long-time member of the GLBTQ community, Kadi now lives as a transgender man. He is a musician, a yoga student, environmentalist, and a teach of Women’s Studies at two Canadian universities.

Personal Statement: “I’m excited to learn from creative people and to connect in meaningful ways with artists and activists. This Summit provides us with such a wonderful opportunity!”

Tags: apia summit, Arab Americans, Arab Canadians, Arab feminists, Arab LGBTQ communuty, Asian Canadians, Asian feminists, class, gender, poetry, race, spoken word

Info on nearby hotels

Hello all, just a gentle reminder that we have dorm rooms reserved nearby for very cheap rates. Just fill out the housing form, which is due July 1 in order to procure a super-cheap dorm room.

For those of you who prefer to book a hotel, here is a list of the four hotels within walking distance of the Loft/Open Book building, where most Summit activities take place. Included is the current cost of the rooms when I plugged Summit dates into Travelocity today – of course, rooms may be more expensive or cheaper depending on when you search and book them.

Aloft Minneapolis
1 block from the Loft/Open Book
900 WASHINGTON AVE SOUTH MINNEAPOLIS MN US 55415
Minneapolis, MN 55415
Travelocity search: $119/night

Holiday Inn Minneapolis Metrodome
3 blocks from the Loft/Open Book
1500 WASHINGTON AVE S Minneapolis, MN 55454
Minneapolis: Downtown Minneapolis
$122/night

The Depot Renaissance Minneapolis
4 blocks from the Loft/Open Book
225 S 3RD AVE Minneapolis, MN 55401
$219/night

Residence Inn Minneapolis Downtown at The Depot
4 Blocks from the Loft/Open Book
425 South Second Street • Minneapolis, MN 55401 USA
$209/night

If you want to try to find something cheaper, you can elect to find a hotel near the Mall of America, and just take the light rail train back and forth for the Summit. This is *not* recommended, as you’ll be pretty far away from all of us. But if you are working on a budget, can find a supercheap hotel in the Mall of America area, and don’t mind working the 25 minute train ride (each way) into downtown, it’s an option. I’d suggest, if you go this route, to pull up a map and see exactly how far the hotel is from the Mall of America where the light rail stop is.

-Bao

Tags: APIA Summit Twin Citirs, nearby hotels

reminder: call for workshops and featured performers due tomorrow

Hello all, a friendly reminder: Summit workshop applications and Featured Performer applications are both due tomorrow, June 1st. For more information, click on “Program.”

Also, registration and housing forms are up. Registration is not due immediately. However, the earlier you do it, the more it helps us plan. Also, housing requests for cheap dorm rooms are due next month, July 1st.

Please help us spread the word amongst your APIA peeps. Looking forward,

Bao

Tags: apia summit, get on it y'all!, housing, poetry, registration, spoken word

First Generation spotlight: David Mura

The Minnesota APIA Summit is proud to announce the involvement of four first generation artists: David Mura, Brenda Wong Aoki, Joe Kadi, and Lawson Fusao Inada. Over the next couple of months, we will be publishing a bio and special message from each of these four poets who broke down barriers for Asian American artists

David Mura

David Mura is a poet, creative nonfiction writer, fiction writer, critic, playwright and performance artist. A Sansei or third generation Japanese American, Mura has written two memoirs: Turning Japanese: Memoirs of a Sansei (Grove-Atlantic), which won a 1991 Josephine Miles Book Award from the Oakland PEN and was listed in the New York Times Notable Books of Year, and Where the Body Meets Memory: An Odyssey of Race, Sexuality and Identity (1996, Anchor/Random). His most recent work is the novel Famous Suicides of the Japanese Empire (2008, Coffee House Press), a finalist for the Minnesota Book Award, the John Gardner Fiction Prize and Virginia Commonwealth University Cabell First Novelist Award.

Mura’s third book of poetry is Angels for the Burning (2004, Boa Editions Ltd.). His second, The Colors of Desire (1995, Anchor), won the Carl Sandburg Literary Award from the Friends of the Chicago Public Library. His first, After We Lost Our Way (Carnegie Mellon U. Press), won the 1989 National Poetry Series Contest. He wrote a chapbook, A Male Grief: Notes on Pornography & Addiction (Milkweed Editions). His critical essays, Song for Uncle Tom, Tonto & Mr. Moto: Poetry & Identity, were published in the U. of Michigan Press Poets on Poetry series (2002).

Among his awards, Mura has received a Lila Wallace-Reader’s Digest Writers’ Award, a US/Japan Creative Artist Fellowship, two NEA Literature Fellowships, two Bush Foundation Fellowships, four Loft-McKnight Awards, several Minnesota State Arts Board grants, and a Discovery/The Nation Award. He has also received a Jones Commission, a Multicultural Collaboration Grant, and a McKnight Advancement Grant for playwrighting from the Playwrights’ Center.

Mura’s poems have appeared in anthologies like The Language of Life (edited by Bill Moyers), The New American Poets of the ’90′s and Western Wind and in journals such as The New Republic, The American Poetry Review, The Nation, The New England Review, and Crazyhorse. He has written numerous essays about race and multiculturalism for such publications as Mother Jones, The New York Times, The Utne Reader, Racism Explained to My Daughter, The Graywolf Annual V: Multi-Cultural Literacy, and These United States.

Mura currently teaches in the Stonecoast MFA program. He has an MFA in creative writing from Vermont College and has taught at the University of Minnesota, Macalester College, St. Olaf College, the Loft, Hamline U., the U. of Oregon and VONA. He has served as the Artistic Director of the Asian American Renaissance, and as an Artist Associate at Pangea World Theater. He gives readings and speaks on the issues of race and multiculturalism throughout the country.

“For me the Summit brings together so many elements I feel passionately about–spoken word/poetry, community, justice, inter-generational dialogues and of course Asian Americans. It’s so important that Asian American artists connect with and inspire each other. I’m excited about the exchanges and dialogues the conference will foster. I’m also proud of the thriving Asian American arts scene here; there’s groundbreaking work being done here and people should know about it. ”

- David Mura

Tags: Asian American poetry, Asian Americans in the arts, David Mura, Japanese American poets, Sansei