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Tell me what you think! I am ambivalent about this…

A while ago, I was talking with someone I care deeply about (who is Asian Am) and made some comments about times when it’s possibly better for a multilingual speaker not to attempt using one language over another if it offers no advantage; I told her I was once watching a show on KTSF in which an interviewee was trying to describe something in Chinese (Mandarin) but ended up using English for all the important words — it’s like if I were to say, “C’est tres ambiguous et メチャ disconcerting, parce que psychologically, je suis totally mixed up, でしょうね?” Certainly these kinds of multilingual combos have interesting flavor, but is there much to be gained from them?

So we were talking about this, and she was humored by it because we’ve both seen (and been) people trying to show off their mad linguistic skillz (and it is unnecessary or backfires), but she then made a remark that totally threw me. I think basically she said something like, “Well, sometimes you just want to chinx it up!” which seemed to mean mixing Chinese language/culture into situations that don’t obviously need it. (So I guess I could chinx up my hamburger by putting Hoisin sauce on it…)

At first, I was like, “What? People actually say that?” And we were walking through Chinatown at the time, so I was wondering if/almost dreading that some dude would start arguing with her/us. But then as I thought about it later, this strikes me as a curious phenomenon of linguistic evolution with possibly complex nuances and consequences. I have no idea how “chinx up” got coined, but it feels like it must be based on the derogatory C-word, but does that make this new slang offensive by association/allusion? Or is it an instance of (re-)appropriation — taking the C-word and repurposing it to make something benign? Clearly, she didn’t intend to use chinx offensively at the time; from the tone of her voice and the nature of our conversation, I know it was definitely meant to humor… but still, I have reservations about this word/phrase. Am I just being too uptight about this? Should I try to discourage the use of this word or feel empowered by it?

BPRLive readers and contributors, help me get some direction on this! I need your opinions!!!

Tags: appropriation, chinx, language, slang.

Prompt! is a regular feature, in which a BPRLive contributor will post a prompt for you to make whatever you are compelled to with it. If you’d like to share, post your response (like a poem, thoughts or sudden/micro fiction) or a link to your response (like a blog post, scanned drawings, video, an mp3 of a music composition or photos) in the comments section of the Prompt! blog post.

The contributor will (probably) also respond to the prompt and post that in the comments section at some point.

An “acrostic” is a form of poetry in which the first letter, word, or syllable of each line combines to form a coherent phrase or message. For many elementary school students, an acrostic is the first form of poetry they write. You know, you write the letters of your name down the left side of the paper, then you write a poem with those letters as the first letter of each line. Familiar?

So today’s Prompt! is to write another acrostic just like you did in 2nd grade, but with some slight modifications. Please read on:

Look at the “Random Posts” to the right of this page. Click on the title that looks most interesting to you.

Starting from the beginning of that post, find the first word that contains the first letter of your name and write it down. If your name is Steve, and you see the first word with an S is “obnoxious” then write it down; if your name is Erica, and the first word with an E is “the,” write it down.

Go on and find the next word that contains the next letter in your name; now write that one down. And so on and so on until you’ve found every letter in your name once.

You now have the first words of every line in a modified acrostic poem you are about to write. Have fun!

Oh, and let us know which Random Post inspired your masterpiece.

Tags: Prompt!.

Want to listen to some Asian American tunes by artists you may not have heard yet even when you can’t stream from BPRLive’s server? As long as you’ve got an mp3 player handy, you’re all set! Here’s another podcast in our efforts to share our impressions of API* music and allow you to form your own by sharing with you clips of music by API* artists!

We have two artists this time: Benny Mao and Miss Vintage. They provide plenty of variety — not only do their styles differ, but each has a range of songs with various subjects and vibes. This podcast includes some comments (not that many) and samples long enough to get a pretty good idea of these songs: Benny Mao – “Angst”, “Identity”; Miss Vintage – “Sincerely,”, “Twenty Twenty”, “The Last Time We Cried”.

All of these are available on iTunes (which is where I bagged these awesome tracks to expand my own music library) and CDBaby.com.

 Impressions: Benny Mao and Miss Vintage: Download

Tags: Impressions, music, Podcasts, Reviews.

It is the time again.

Get ready for the APIA Spoken Word & Poetry Summit, something very close to the hearts of many of us here and there. After the inaugural summit in Seattle in 2001, Chicago, Boston, and New York have all had their turn putting one on.

2009, it’s back to the West Coast. Bay Urrea in the house!

There will be more to whet your appetite as the summer draws closer, but as a refresher, check out some reflections posted on BPRLive after the 2007 NYC edition from Dandiggity – one of the organizers of this year’s summit – by clicking here.

Tags: Community, spoken word.

In the middle of this week, j. lizzles brought to our attention that So Yong Kim’s film Treeless Mountain will be screening at Film Forum in New York City on April 22 (but it doesn’t have anything directly to do with Earth Day) and get broader distribution thereafter. I saw a screening of this enchanting film at the Harvard Film Archive but didn’t mention it here since that was right before ECAASU 2009.

There’s a lot I could say about this film, but I think it’s best the film speak for itself through the immersive images of its characters and the environments they come to inhabit. Let me just say a few general things… Treeless Mountain follows two young sisters after they leave their home to be left in the care of their aunt as their mother goes to find their father. The films is slow and may take a while for viewers not familiar with films of similar pacing (like Nobody Knows, Grain in Ear and I Don’t Want to Sleep Alone) to acclimate to the feel, but once you settle into the world So Yong Kim brings you so immediately and intimately into, you almost can’t help but discover the wonder that dwells within it. Watching these two children catch then roast grasshoppers to sell, wait earnestly for their mother’s return and erect a broken branch upon a mound of rubble, it’s hard not to develop a fascinating observational and even empathic relationship with them. After seeing the film, Brian Chan said that the consistency of the film’s child’s-eye perspective “is cool.”

Incidentally, So Yong Kim mentioned that she studied Nobody Knows pretty extensively before working on this film. Also, Asobi Seksu did the end credits song and also (surprisingly and delightingly) have songs in the soundtrack of So Yong Kim’s previous film In Between Days, a film which is also slowly draws you into the world of the main character, in that case a high school student who is a recent immigrant from South Korea.

If you must, you can watch the trailer on IMDB.

[ Image of the Treeless Mountain poster from soandbrad.com. ]

We were caught without good recording equipment at this month’s East Meets Words open mic, but when ChunFai asked me if we were recording and I had to dejectedly tell him we were not, I was prompted to make a rough recording with an iPhone, which accompanies this post as a podcast! The quality is reasonable and gives you a feel for Emily’s high-spirited hosting and the vibe of Kevin’s music. If you like what you hear in this podcast and don’t have some (or all) of Kevin So’s music already, you’ll love the tracks you can find on Kevin So’s website and iTunes.

Since the entirety of Emily’s wonderful intro for Kevin wasn’t recorded, Emily kindly gave us typed version of that intro…

Intro by Emily P. Lawsin

My name is Emily Lawsin and it is a great honor to be able to introduce you to tonight’s East Meets Words featured artist, Kevin So. I first met Kevin in 2002, when I lived in Detroit and we were organizing the Vincent Chin 20th Year Remembrance. For those of you who don’t know, in 1982, Vincent Chin was a 27-year-old Chinese American who was beaten to death with a baseball bat by two white former autoworkers on a street in Highland Park, Michigan, just outside of Detroit. The two men who murdered him were sentenced with only probation (never spending a full day in jail) and a mere $3700 fine (“the price of a damn used car”, as I say in one of my poems). The case sparked the Justice for Vincent Chin movement, led by the Detroit-based American Citizens for Justice (ACJ), which brought nationwide attention to the issue of hate crimes and anti-Asian violence.

If you want to learn more about Vincent Chin, you should read Helen Zia’s book, Asian American Dreams (which devotes a chapter to Detroit and the Chin case) and watch the Academy-Award nominated film, “Who Killed Vincent Chin?” by Christine Choy and Renee Tajima. Another film on what today’s generation knows about the case entitled “Vincent Who?” has been recently released too. Read more

 Kevin So at East Meets Words: Download

Tags: Open Mic, Podcasts.

We hope this will be the start of a new series of podcast that will share our impressions of API* music and allow you to form your own by sharing with you clips of music by API* artists!

Before I start telling you about this podcast’s group Cast of Thousands, let me just mention a little about how this podcast got started…

Even before Eugene handed me a portable HD with gigabytes of Asian American music from BPR’s library of songs to review and podcast, I was psyched. I had been craving more Asian American tunage since leaving the Bay Area, where there was a stupendous exuberance of API* music. So just hearing about, then looking at the line-up on the BPRLive server was mind-blowing. Then, after getting the HD from Eugene, I loaded track after track on to my iPod Shuffle, and my mind has ever since been altered in stunning, irrevocable ways…

Cast of Thousands was a group I recognized immediately in the BPR collection, thanks to Mango Mic, a lively Bay Area Asian American open mic hosted by Peter of Tensegrity Nine that totally opened my mind and heart to the Asian American arts scenes. Although the Cast of Thousands album This is Where I Confess has already been excellently reviewed by Van, I couldn’t help but want to share my enthusiasm about Cast of Thousands as well and cover some of the softer sounds of this album too. That’s all I’ll say here so as not to be too redundant with the comments made in this podcast.

 Impressions: Cast of Thousands: Download

Tags: Impressions, music, Podcasts, Reviews.

You know the drill.
Rain or shine.
It is going to be fire.
It is going to be crazy awesome.

Bring an instrument to play or play one of ours. Or just come and watch. Bring $3. Open Orchestra is open to all ages.

Tags: Open Orchestra.