Where Stardust and Poetry Meet: A Conversation With Bao Phi

Olga García Echeverría
 


At Dinner by Bao Phi

In Vietnamese:
They put salt from the sea on chocolate now!
Then, sudden as a dip in a wave,
tones in the language
all hats and heavy dots and slashes up or down,
intuitively rising and falling,
how the Americans, keeping track,
dropped their clipboards once the mortar shells started raining.
In the chaos,
who slipped onto the planes,
who got left behind.
Laughter about almost dying.
Small pauses for those who did.

Any one of my family
could walk down the street,
and suddenly
ching chong ching chong wah wah go back to where you came from,
or some sudden fist,
seeking jaws
taught to sing their words
to make sense,
English slurs straightforward as bullets
to pierce, to leave
smoking and full of holes,
without once even considering
what they survived.

Our language like a bubbling brook, they say
you, Bao - you were three months old, but you were the least scared - you didn't cry, didn't make a single noise.
The world exploding all around a quiet baby,
grown up to be a man who's afraid of everything.




Bao Phi: Photo by Min Enterprises Photography LLC


I can't remember exactly where I first met Bao. It was about 13 years ago and we were both featured readers at a poetry event somewhere in Southern California. Although the specifics are a blur, I never forgot Bao or his reading that day. His words were fierce, poignant, original, full of fuego and flow. Since then, I've never really stopped reading or listening to Bao's work. He is the author of several chapbooks, Surviving the Translation (2002), The Way We Pay (2004), Last Name First (2005), the CDs Flares (2000) and Refugeography (2002), and his first book of poetry, Sông I Sing, was published in 2011 by Coffee House Press. Here's an excerpt from his bio highlighting more:

"Bao Phi is a multiple Minnesota Grand Slam poetry champ and National Poetry Slam finalist who has been on HBO's Russell Simmons Presents Def Poetry and whose work was included in the Best American Poetry anthology of 2006. He has toured as a featured artist in hundreds of venues across the country since 1999, including the blockbuster diasporic Vietnamese variety show Paris By Night. He has been named a City Pages, Star Tribune, and Urban Griots Artist of the Year. His first book, Sông I Sing, was met with strong sales, is taught in classrooms across the United States, and enjoyed rave reviews, including the New York Times which stated "In this song of his very American self, every poem Mr. Phi writes rhymes... with the truth."
 
On September 12, 2015, Bao will be sharing some of his newest poems at the Loft Literary Center in Minneapolis. The event, No Star Where: New Poems by Bao Phi is free and open to the public.

https://loft.secure.force.com/portal/EventCalendarDayView?date=9/12/2015

Those of us not in Minneapolis will miss out on this event, but we're honored to have Bao with us at the Bloga today, talking about poetry, identity, language, politics, and all kinds of stellar things.

Bao, so great to have you here at La Bloga. You have some new poems you will be sharing at the Loft Literary Center in Minneapolis on September 12^th. Are these poems from a new collection?

You know I am a fan of you and your work, so I’m grateful you’re giving me some space on La Bloga. Regarding the reading, it’s new poems I’ve been writing over the past two years. I’ve been unexpectedly prolific – I think I wrote more new poems over the last two years than in the previous five years before that, combined. I have a new manuscript, who knows if it will ever get published. I was fortunate to be awarded a Minnesota State Arts Board grant, which supported me this past year and enabled me time and space to write a bunch of new poems. I’ll be reading poems from my new manuscript as well as some experimental stuff that will probably never get published.

The description of your event says, your new “poems deal with [your] history as a Vietnamese refugee born during war and raised in the Phillips neighborhood of South Minneapolis, through [your] newly formed lens of being a man of color raising a daughter.” In general as a country we tend to think of the Vietnam War as something that happened a very long time ago, especially when we live in a country addicted to war, but really it hasn’t been that long nor is it far away, as there are generations of people here in the US today who are still living with and through the traumas of that war.

I agree – for those of us who are Vietnamese, Southeast Asian, and veterans whose lives were directly transformed – and often traumatized – through that war and its aftermath, it goes beyond theory and history. There’s also this idea that trauma gets passed down from generation to generation. Now that I’m a father, I wonder, since the Western world is not too good at educating the masses with any nuance about the war and Vietnamese people, and if my daughter has inherited our trauma, what tools will she have to understand this? That’s a big reason I’m writing the poems that I am writing now. I seldom wrote about my own personal history. But now that I’m a dad, what if I get hit by a truck? Or a racist police officer decides to make an example out of me? I want my daughter to have some record of who she comes from, and hopefully that will add to her toolbox for what she’s going to go through.




Bao Phi: Photo by Min Enterprises Photography LLC

I grew up in East LA. Although we were marginalized, we were in some ways protected from the daily sting of racism because the entire community was made up of us—Mexicans and Latinos who spoke Spanish and/or were bilingual. What was it like growing up Vietnamese in the Phillips neighborhood of South Minneapolis?
 
I can relate. It’s complicated, and contradictory. Though I grew up as a refugee in a poor, not-English-first family, in a neighborhood that was majority people of color and indigenous, and poor white people, when I was young I pretty much wanted to be white. Because white meant normal, attractive, carefree, American. And since we were refugees from war and the first large Asian population in Minnesota, there was tons of racism, misunderstanding, and hostility towards us from all different races of people. It went the other way, too – we had stereotypes and racist assumptions about the people around us. Put simply, we bought into what America taught and reinforced regarding non-Asian people of color and Indigenous people. And going the other way, Asian people like my family were the foreign enemy, the dog eating, dirty, cheap, inscrutable, betraying enemy.

Yes, it was similar in my community and family too in regards to stereotypes we had of other people of color. It wasn't until I went to college that I actually interacted, made friends with people from other cultures. The college I went to was small, private, and predominately White, so it was quite a culture shock to go from brown/bilingual East LA to there. The retention rate for people of color was so low that they had to initiate special programs to try to keep us there.

When I got a full ride to college, in many ways it was a way out for me. But no one tells you or really prepares you for how different it is, to go from Phillips to a private liberal arts college. To tell you the truth, I don’t know if I even had the capacity to understand that when I was 17. Though I was already trying to educate myself and get involved in social justice, I was also pushing carts and mopping up spills at the grocery, and dealing with a great number of personal issues. It was all a mess. And I was one of the lucky ones!

I often see your posts on FB. So many of them are about your daughter and the everydayness of being a parent. I recall one post in particular where you were picking up your daughter from school wearing an “Angry Asian Man” t-shirt. The image made me think about the general assumptions that 1) anger is a bad thing and 2) that as people of color we are always angry.

There’s so much to be angry about. At the same time, for our own health and sanity, and for the sake of my child, I strive for a balance. A lot of my anger stems from love. The people I love getting abused, rendered silent, erased – I am angry about that. I’m angry at the continued violence towards Black bodies, Native bodies, Black and Brown bodies, trans people… I’m angry at the nonchalantly racist attitudes most Americans have towards Arabs and Muslims. I get angry when cat videos get more circulation than nuanced, vital essays regarding Asian American issues – and I *love* cat videos! I get angry that no one seems to care about Asian Americans who suffer from racism. I get angry that so much attention goes towards grandstanding on the internet, how seldom Asian American people are treated with any degree of nuance, and I get angry that the many strong, tireless Asian American activists (I am not including myself in that group) are devalued, taken for granted, will be lost to history. But I am trying to divert that anger towards more constructive, loved based actions and attitudes. 

You know, I've been trying to read Thict Nhat Hanh's book Anger: Wisdom Cooling the Flames, but every time I try to read it I get pissed off. The book talks a lot about compassion and although I think I have a lot of that in my heart, it's extremely difficult to be compassionate when systematic racism and violence continues to destroy the lives of so many marginalized people in our society. Sandra Bland comes to mind right now, but I can think of so many other examples. How can we have compassion for those who are responsible for her death and who take no responsibility or show any remorse or compassion? I have no compassion for millionaires who spew hatred against immigrants or religious fanatics who bomb abortion clinics. I'll stop here before I start getting angry again.

Yeah – compassion is good but can only go so far. I don’t have an answer for you, because honestly, I think it might take a better person than me to say that compassion should rise above it all. I’m just not that good of a person. But you know, maybe one way to look at it is, we should be angry at the system, and those that continue to reap benefits from it or kill the ones we love without any remorse or passion. I do try to have compassion for those who may not understand, but who are trying. I have little patience for people who are bigoted and snide and just mean spirited towards people who actually give a shit. You know? But if someone is trying to understand, to be reasonable, and to learn, I always try to remember that I myself am a deeply flawed person, I have had to ask for forgiveness, I have been rash and ignorant, and that I am continuing to grow. I have to cut others the same slack as I’ve been given. The current environment seems to stress this idea that there is a perfect activist or position to occupy. I don’t know if such a person or position exists. 
 
Have you shared your work in Vietnam?

I’ve been back a couple of times, but not since the late 90’s. I did share some of my work in Vietnam back in ’96, and it was generally well received, but to be honest that was a very small and selective group of people – teachers, friends, community members. I have no idea how my work would be received in Vietnam at large.

I’m dying to know—the title of your event, No Star Where--what does it mean?

There’s a phrase in Vietnamese, Không Sao Đâu, which means “no problem”, but literally translates to “No Star Where.” I love that it’s a plain, common phrase but that the literal translation has quite the poetic meaning when broken down into its component parts.

Through your work at The Loft and your series Equilibrium, you have supported and promoted so many writers, especially writers of color--me included! What does it feel like to be the featured reader at the Loft versus being the organizer?

Yeah, I’ve been there for like, sixteen years, starting as a receptionist. I feel really lucky, that I’m able to do work that I believe in, with an organization and staff that is so supportive. In terms of my own show, it’s kind of business as usual – handling logistics, doing outreach, setting up the physical space, making sure the stank ass artist shows up on time, it’s just in this case the stank ass artist is me.

Ha! Ha! I hope your stank ass shows up on time to your own reading. Anything else you'd like to add before we bid you farewell?  

I recently had a short story published in OCTAVIA'S BROOD: Science Fiction Stories from Social Movements. It's an amazing anthology -- please check it out.

 
Thank you, Bao. Here's wishing you a spectacular reading in Minneapolis. May the poetic force of the stars be with you.



Flaming Star Nebula by Jim DeLilo
http://fineartamerica.com/profiles/jim-delillo.html

 

The real Superhero. And Caravana 43 in Colo.

What's "better" than a sci-fi or fantasy or thriller about One White Guy to Save Us All? What about, One Chicano Hero to Save Us All? Or better than that, One Chicana Heroine? Or maybe a multinational superhero team of both sexes. We've come a long way, bebé. But is it enough?

In fact, new books, movies and network series seem to be coming out every week where the old White Guy won't be hoarding the hero role. This has been resisted by white male writers and fans complaining about how they're being "oppressed," if you can believe.

Unqualified white guy leader

A year ago, noir author Daniel José Older analyzed a sci-fi movie and exposed how white-male privilege works on the screen. His Al Día News article was called "Snowpiercer and 'the one white dude to rule them all'." When picking a new leader, the white guy gets chosen over the People of Color (PoC), even though he was a cannibal and of course saves humanity at the end. Because he's the guy. And white. And not even "oppressed."

Then, last month on thenerdsofcolor website, Walidah Imarisha wrote about sci-fo and social justice in the article "Rewriting the Future: Using Science Fiction to Re-envision Justice." Her article is worth reading in its entirety, and many of her points made me wonder about protagonists I've created in  speculative stories.

Some of the old [white-male] guard of speculative fiction haven't totally understood the achievements that new PoC--Chicano, Latino, black, Indian--authors have accomplished by reinvigorating the literature. Some of the old guard still maintain that science and technology just have to be re-imagined better to bring new life to spec-lit.

For instance, Project Hieroglyph emphasizes "technical innovation, techno-optimism and a forward-thinking approach to the intersection of art and technology that has the power to change our world." Not about changing the inequality of the social structure. Or about people organizing to stop fossil fuel production or neverending wars or the oligarchy of the 1%.

a book that promises hope

But the lessons of nonfictional history apply to the cycles of fiction. To forget the lessons--worse, to ignore them--is to be condemned to relive them. Or as Imarisha put it, "We forget to envision what could be. We forget to mine the past for solutions that show us how we can exist in other forms in the future."

The history in question is the exclusion not only of minorities of all types. What nearly all of spec-lit also ignored is that the changes in Earth history were not accomplished by lone heroes. Good leaders led, yes. But the strongest movements were those supported by the collective of humanity, carrying out to the best of their ability the desires of their peoples. That's history.

In creating fantasies, futuristic sci-fi tales, many historical lessons can be appropriated by today's new, rising and especially young authors. Latino, Chicano, black, red--it doesn't matter. Imarisha states, "The science fiction — or speculative fiction, fantasy, horror, magical realism, etc. — we humans create doesn’t appear out of the ether." It comes from what we were, are and could become.

Writing about possible futures should inspire, not depress, the young people who will replace us and be reading our works for years to come. The dismal dystopias of vampires, Armageddons and Snowpiercers don't provide hope; they inculcate sheepish acceptance of bleak powers beyond anyone's control. Even if you're a young person, of any color.

Will this contain any hope?

The awe and magic and wonderment of speculative literature requires we look further than simply replacing the old White-Guy Hero with a multinational cast of Superheroes. What Imarisha called "decolonization of the imagination." To merge Daniel José Older's and Marisha's articles, that replacement is the people. Organized. Engaged. Democratically. Not blindly hero-worshipping another Big Hero Saves the Day. Hundreds, thousands, millions of people determining the revolutionary future as they've determined the past.

The youth and all PoC and all people deserve hope. Their literature should reflect that. In a world of Climate-Change-for-the-worse, assaults on all civil rights, and the gentrification of the U.S. that's driving poor, ethnic and working people out of the cities, speculative literature can spread seeds of how to save and rebuild society.

How do you write a thriller where the protagonist succeeds by keeping the peoples' interests at heart? How can a society be saved from Global Warming with masses of people as the prime movers? Will a successful blockbuster be written that shows young people, or even us, avenues whereby they can save their planet? That's up to speculative fiction writers.

No one novel, movie or series could accomplish all that, though we'd all love to experience such a work. In the meantime, many short stories and longer works, on-screen too, can chip away at the One or A Few Heroes myopic trope. Maybe an example will better explain my meaning.

Below, I took, and edited for this article, part of a chapter from my debut novel, the alternate-world of The Closet of Discarded Dreams. How the book's characters begin to face their own dystopia is one of my endeavors to get away from the One or A Few Heroes Save Us All. I'm not the first to put the lessons of how history has been changed into a novel's plot. And I am definitely not the last. I welcome comments about other stories that accomplish this better than mine has.

[extracted from the chapter entitled A Gathering of Souls]

People had covered over a stage constructed from ornate coffins, pirates' chests and inverted Jacuzzis, covered by scores of Oriental rugs and medieval tapestries. Someone in the audience yelled, “We’ll do anything that’ll keep us safe. But why are we here?”

I didn’t respond. Our plan or strategy couldn’t develop out of my ideas alone. It didn’t help that the reason many had come centered on their worries about losing their regular lives. Conservatism motivated those who wanted to maintain the routines. But the times called for the opposite.

People had shifted the flooring to form a shallow amphitheater. Several thousands sat around inside it, leaving aisles every hundred feet or so. Not everyone I knew had shown up, but most had. Apparently some mosquitoes too, given the slapping sounds.

A solution to save us had to spring from a new source. Even the nearly limitless knowledge I’d acquired didn’t meet our needs. Something was missing that was beyond me, likely beyond any one of us. From that we’d reasoned that everyone needed to pool their resources, put their heads together and close ranks if a solution were to be found. We had nowhere else to turn. Our first problem now was how to begin.

Brian presented the report covering logistics. "People can access the database through terminals here and at specific locations in other sectors, or search for info via the Grapevine. Ideas, questions, clarifications will be centralized in this area."

He withdrew, waved me forward. My turn had arrived, an honor I’d tried to decline. “I hope to make this short. We think the new, strange incidents indicate it may be the end of us all. We have no idea of how to stop the process, help it heal, fix itself. That’s why we’re all here or tied in via the systems.

“There’s nowhere else for us to go, nowhere to seek safety. Even

escaping the affected areas might only amount to a temporary reprieve for a handful of us. We need something more, to save us all. That’s how it is, as best as we can guess.” I gave them time to digest that before continuing.

“In reality, we have a greater task than that, a responsibility, if you will. We are not real. There is no us. We’re the dreams of Earth’s people. We’re not from Earth, because physically we never lived there. That's just a fact.

“We are the ethereal, what every human being ever aspired to, dreamed to one day be, or maybe even envisioned angels to be like. We’re not all angels and not all the dreams we live sound desirable, judicious or in some cases even humane. That’s not our concern at the moment. Something to discuss another time. What we do have to deal with, face up to is how to change our destiny, and not just for our own sake.

“We don’t know what the repercussions would be for people on Earth if we all disappeared. Whether humanity would survive. We have to assume, not!”

Close by a child giggled, which for no apparent reason irritated some listeners.

“Out there amongst you are ideas, questions, possibilities that no one has thought of before, some way of stopping the destruction. At least, that’s what we’ve got to come up with. If we don’t, so be it, but we’re here to make the attempt.

“As we come up with an idea, we’ll allocate resources to

implement it. We can't imagine what that may require, but we’ll

mobilize for it. For all our sakes.

“Whoever you are, whatever you come from, you can contribute.

There are no limits to what we should consider. Nothing is too silly or outrageous. Any idea may be the key. Open your minds, talk amongst yourselves. Share anything you've noticed or you once thought about or that just pops into your head … especially what pops into your head. That’s all we’re here to do.

“Despite whatever you heard about me, I don’t have the answers.

I need your help. We all need each other’s help, for our, for Earth’s survival. For all the living things in that beautiful blue place.”

I took my first full breaths since I’d started, wondering what had happened to my keeping it short and why they’d let me go on and on. Someone

handed me a liter of Knob Creek. I took two swigs and saw Stubby

pantomime a scissors cut with his one hand.

I took a last breath. “Until we’re forced to move, this is our headquarters. Facilitators will always be up here and regularly going through the aisles. If you have questions, direct them to us or relay them through the system. Ask, suggest, talk with your buddies alongside you. Anything you think of, however absurd it may sound, might provide a clue to our predicament.”

I hadn’t wanted an ovation, and I didn’t get one. People turned, formed circles and started talking with one another. I turned the podium over to Stumpy and headed down the aisle.

* * * *

What transpired next astonished more than me. There were the expected suggestions about physically dealing with the spreading erosion, like cementing up the cracks. Some people wanted to stack vehicles to create some sort of dam out of the larger, heavier machines to prevent the ground from shifting, just as a temporary solution. Nevertheless, people and equipment were mobilized. We had ample resources and little to lose.

We knew there’d be those who’d advocate mass, spiritual meditation or prayer marathons to gods they followed and we’d made preparations to channel the religious types into supervised areas.

We gazed at the Jumbotron, listening to Fedir who wielded a laser pointer.

“Dr. Martin Luther and Cesar Chavez’s marchers have encampments here, here and here. They’re doing what we’re doing and told us they’re ready whenever we need them, for whatever. They’ve got one zany idea: to link themselves all the way across, making themselves into a human dam. We’re letting them go with it even though the engineer types think the forces involved make that a moot effort.”

Fedir ignored some moans. “We’re still bringing the densest, heaviest material we can find along this line: lead, gold, platinum, tanks, tractors, etcetera. It’s our last line of defense, you might say, against draining away what’s under us. It won’t last long.”

Brian scooted in, touched computer keys and took over. “We’ve

put hundreds of psychics, magicians, prophets, sorcerers, levitationists,

shamans and all the Houdinis as close to the here as we can. There’s more juju, black magic and karma being thrown at it. So far, no response.”

Brian was giddy, nervous, stressed. “On the theoretical side, the cosmologists, the Einsteins, Hawkins, and Alcubierres can’t come up with a model to answer our questions. The physics here isn’t what they studied and has its own rules. Since we're in a box with walls, no matter how thick, there should be an outside, something out there. However, it’s also possible there’s nothing behind them, or something we couldn’t survive. They just can’t imagine with any certainty what’s…”

“…out there,” a bunch of people murmured.

Over the course of the next few days, what impressed me most were ideas that had little to do with saving our necks. A village of Quiché Maya proposed mystical methods to contact Earth, to inform them they needed to keep on dreaming. There was more. Some of it choked me up, from people’s unselfish hopes for the future, even if we all would soon cease to exist.

Whenever the committee deemed new plans were worth attempting, teams were organized to develop the details and carry them out. Thus, when a group came up with the idea of using the increasing abundance of Pink Stuff as glue, eight thousand people joined those already building dikes from Sectors 242 through 334.

We didn’t want to kill creativity, nor assume we could foretell what wouldn’t work. In some sense, almost anything was worth the effort, since it might give us additional breathing space till we came up with a real solution….

– – – –

Learn the cost of our drugs-&-guns addictions

On a more contemporary, historical note, family of the 43 missing students from Ayotzinapa, Guerrero, Mexico, who were tortured and disappeared by the Mexican state, will be in Colorado April 12th and 13th, as part of the national speaking tour, Caravana 43 (Caravan 43). The group will visit Denver, Greeley and Longmont.

The purpose of their visit is to provide to share their continued struggle for justice and to bring national attention to the systematic violence and impunity that continues to plague Mexico. The arrival of Caravana 43 in Colorado will mark over six months from the night of the attack that occurred in the city of Iguala on the evening of September 26, 2014, which left six people dead and 43 students forcibly disappeared.

Caravana 43 will be in other cities, listed here.

Es todo, hoy,

RudyG, a.k.a. Chicano lit author, Rudy Ch. Garcia, hoping to help bring back some wonderment and promise, like in The Closet of Discarded Dreams