Poets Chin Woon Ping and Garrett Hongo shared their work, life experiences and perspectives on the Asian-American experience with a crowd of engaged students and faculty yesterday afternoon in Sanborn Library.
Ping, currently a visiting professor of English at Dartmouth, is the author of two volumes of poetry: "The Naturalization of Camellia Song" and "In My Mother's Dream."
Many of the poems Ping read examined her heritage and issues related to her Asian-American identity. "In My Mother's Dream" captured her mother's life story and immigration to the United States, as well as her experiences since then.
Other Asian-Americans also inspired Ping's work. While she was living in Philadelphia, Ping saw seven Vietnamese boys who she said "looked like rock stars" with denim jackets and orange streaks in their hair. Upon returning home that evening, she compiled a poem, questioning them about their experiences and whether they still longed for elements of Asian life as she did.
One highlight of Ping's reading came when she redefined negative Asian caricatures in a poem she wrote and performed entirely in the street dialect of West Philadelphia.
Ping also read several poems that made political statements. She used "Daffodils in a Qin Vase" to reflect upon the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the crisis in Bosnia, and ended her reading with a poem she wrote for the Vermont Artists for Peace conference. Ping wrote the piece in what she called the "heat of battle" when she still believed the war in Iraq could be prevented. The poem concluded that "goats are better than politicians," a line the audience greeted with laughter and applause.
Hongo was born in Hawaii and grew up in Los Angeles. He has written two volumes of poetry, Yellow Light and River of Heaven, as well as the memoir Volcano.
Much of Hongo's work focuses on social justice. Indeed, he described his writing as "about rights, how they've been violated, and how the human heart has a way of healing that over."
Hongo began with a poem inspired by those 120,000 Japanese Americans who were interned after the attack on Pearl Harbor. Among them was his grandfather, a member of the first generation of Japanese American leaders who "made a place for us."
He then discussed his native Hawaii, a place he was compelled to view as a "crossroads of violations and losses," he said.
Due to the overthrow of the Hawaiian government, American colonization and exploitation of Hawaiians by sugar growers, Hawaiians felt "a loss of roots or lack thereof," Hongo said.
Hongo's own experience, like many of his peers, has been defined by diaspora, a poignant theme in his work. He was born in Hawaii but then quickly emigrated with his family to California where he grew up. He shared stories from his memoir of returning to Volcano, where he was born. There, he rediscovered his past and his heritage with the help of a postal worker who told him about his family.
"It was not the authorized version my aunts would tell me," Hongo said.
Hongo also shared accounts of his childhood and racial tensions within his high school in South Central Los Angeles. "There was every group you wanted and we all hated each other," he said.
"The Embrace" captured a scene in which high school students used the sharpened ends of can-openers as weapons during conflict.
The poetry reading was part of this week's Asian American Writers' Festival, organized by the Leslie Center for the Humanities. The festival, which will run through tomorrow, also features notable authors Maxine Hong Kingston, Meena Alexander and Li-Young Lee.
