Kai Huang Returns Home and features at East Meets Words

Kai Huang comes back home, our tenant in the bookstore's attic - we welcome him at the first open mic of the year. Kai is the big man who plans the EMW program East Meets Words. The team has been taking the lead during his travels and we've eagerly booked Kai as this month's feature! It only sounds fair to give former member of the Providence slam team and Brown University slam team a humble feature on home turf.

However, Massachusetts seem a little less inviting compared to the sunny-side-up California.  The week leading to the open mic felt like the temperature was way below zero. Daunting for even New Englanders to troop it outside for any post school/work activities. On the flip side, we can always count on our fam for a full house and a full open mic list. The room elevated with hands, half of the audience were new faces, the other half were regulars like Jelyn Masa.  She has been attending the open mic since the Summer of last year.  She is a student at Bryn Mawr College in Pennsylvania.  Jelyn was introduced to EMW and the open mic through the ROOT Collective, a group of self-identified Asian American women, trans, and gender queer individuals seeking community in shared histories of personal experiences.

"In this space, I experience vulnerability and growth. I hear truth so raw I lose my breath for a second and then five minutes later, I'm laughing like crazy.  Thanks for filling a void I didn't even know I had," she shared.

Sharing the stage that evening was Sabrina Ghaus, a long time friend of EMW. Performing at the open mic, she reads a brave piece about language and her internal battle between cultures.  Sabrina tells us that the only reason she feels comfortable is that this space feels safe.  "I feel that family is here. EMW is one of the reasons I moved back [to Boston]".  Sabrina did absolutely amazing and the cool thing is, her first time ever performing poetry was here at East Meets Words!

Sitting right in front of the stage was Ayo E., a writer, comedian and student at NYU.  This was her first time in the space. She planted herself in the first row with several friends.  All of them were close enough to be in "spit range" some might call it.  After the event we got her thoughts, "...coming from New York, the vibe between the two cities could be competitive," but Ayo left with a very different impression.  She felt extremely welcomed at the bookstore.

It was also Amanda and Ricky's first time co-hosting together.  As they introduced Kai Huang, they asked one another how would they describe him in two words.  Amanda answered thoughtfully, "endearingly abrasive." Ricky added, "very attractive," - both of which are true and both are two of the many qualities that make this man an incredible artist and human being.  Kai premieres his set responsibly rocking his accent piece, a red knitted scarf, which he tells us that it is first colored garment he has worn in four years.

"2015 is the year of humility!" Kai repeatedly announces during his feature. "The sheep shall inherit the earth."

Regardless of your astrologically and zodiacal beliefs, we can't deny how amazing last Friday was.  Kai opened up with "Private Institution," a hard-hitting, truthful piece about higher education. He performs a few throwbacks like "Mao" and "Miseducation Revisited," then sneaks in a few new gems, two persona pieces to be exact. One in the voice of Samson speaking to Delilah, the second was in the voice of his revolutionary glasses.

Thanks to all the new faces, regulars, organizers, performers, Kai Huang, ITSYERBOI - we out here! Take a look at all the photos from East Meets Words featuring Kai Huang here.

EAST MEETS WORDS FEATURING KENNY PENGUIN & FRIENDS (SEPTEMBER 2014)

Dearest EMW Family,

As a long time lurker at the EMW Open Mics, I was honored to be asked to feature. At the time (late 2013), I didn't know what I was going to do nor what I even wanted to do. Having not actually made anything shareable since college, I felt like it would be a good opportunity to share some old videos, as well as good motivation to get up and start making something new.

Since that time, a group of friends and I decided to start working with puppetry. Due to the simple fact that doing animation projects takes far too long for any of our ADD riddled heads, and being fans of the Muppets and Sesame Street, we decided that making puppets was our easy way out. For the most part it's been a good time coming up with skits and sketches, mostly based on various conversations or slightly twisted experiences that we've had. Since then, we are slowly gaining more and more creative friends and funny people to work on future episodes with. I am very proud and curious to what the future holds.

It was amazing to see peoples reaction and hear them laugh; as our usual course of action is to upload them online and hope someone out there laughs at them. I also have a lot of thanks to all of my friends that have helped me work on various creative endeavors throughout the years and currently. I was glad to include them in the show. Not having planned a good chunk of what was going to happen until about a week or 2 beforehand, I'm happy to have an overall positive response, as well as no casualties.

Lastly, having seen the EMW Bookstore evolve into what it is today, it's amazing to still be a part of it. And I hope to see it continue to grow. Keep up the good work, EMW family.

Sincerely, Kenny Penguin

STINE AT EMW - JUNE 2014

What up y'all. It's your colleague Kai Huang back in the building with another update on our most recent East Meets Words open mic, which took place this past Friday here at 934. I just got back from double weekend shifts at the hospital, so now I've got Monday off to kick back and reflect and give y'all the science.

So this open mic was pretty dope. People brought it on all fronts, but what I really want to talk about is our feature performance from the girl Stine, who is a stand up comedian, comic artist, and ukulele player. Damn, her set was beautiful.

Well, actually, Stine got held up somewhere and couldn't make it to the bookstore that night, so her whole set was performed by her receptionist Gregor Spamsa, who incidentally bears a striking resemblance to Stine herself. Shouts to Kafka for you lit heads out there. Spamsa held it down strong, but he kept remarking that Stine was really hard on him and that he hated working for her. Ugh, it was a poignant commentary on self-doubt and it reminded me a lot of that classic Chris Rock bit when he talks about, "When you meet someone for the first time, you're not meeting them... you're meeting their representative."

Damn. I guess we all got insecurities, fam. It can be tough being yourself out here. And that's a lot of what this feature was about. Stine's work examined her own anxiety and in the process, she held a two-way mirror up to help us examine ours. Which is wild, because most people go out on Friday nights to escape things, but here we were being forced to confront things - big, scary things about the people we were and the people we are. I mean, her work brought so much vulnerability to the table. It was super disarming for me as an audience member. At one point, she played a song called "Everyday in Every Way, I'm Getting Better," which is my new turn up song. She was all like:

I used to get panic attacks I used to get panic attacks everyday I still get panic attacks But only once in a while Everyday, in every way, I'm getting better and better and better and better and better and better and better

It fucked with me, y'all. The shit was simple and tender, like a paper cut.

...BUT I MEAN, THE WHOLE SET WAS LIKE THAT THOUGH!! Look, it's cliche, but everyone knows that the best comedy is usually laced with some pretty significant tragedy. A big part of what makes art beautiful is that we can peer inside ourselves and learn to do battle with our boggarts by laughing at them. And sometimes, maybe by crying with them. And other times, maybe by giving them a much-needed hug.

Fuck, I don't know what I'm trying to say, man. But hopefully y'all do. Shit is real. Art continues. Life continues. I'll see y'all next month for another round. Till then, fam, this has been Kai Huang AKA Mr. It's Yer AKA the boy in the black v-neck AKA the Allen Iverson of EMW AKA emotions on emotions. Peace. Please remember to feel things.

K. Dot

Bonus: Fellow stand up comedian Josh Do hanging out with a life-sized stuffed bear at Stine's exhibit, signifying how comfort objects designed to help you bear (lol) your anxiety can actually magnify that shit in their own way. Haha look at my man posted up with that look of ennui on his face. Vicious.

On Bodies and Ghosts: Franny Choi and Jess X. Chen at EMW

     

I first saw Franny Choi at EMW a couple of years ago, when she and a bunch of talented students from Brown U (including one of our current EMW residents, Kai Huang) featured. So it's been a real treat witnessing her rise as a poet, from all the national poetry slams she's dominated to doing a TED talk, from publishing her first book to being profiled by the Poetry Foundation. I suppose I should clarify that I'm not a stalker, but that I follow, teach and write about Asian American literature for a living. ;)

I could get all academicky about what Franny is doing with spoken word poetry as a form and how Jess X. Chen's haunting illustrations serve as interlocutors to Franny's poems in their volume, Floating, Brilliant, Gone, but I'm not going to. In the four years that I've been coming to EMW, I come not as a prof, but as any other person who is constantly processing what it means to navigate this world in my body, who needs community in order to validate/embrace/resist/negotiate all the mechanisms that inform my day-t0-day experience. Which is why for me the most memorable line from Franny's reading last night came from her poem, "Orientalism (Part II)"-- It's about being an Asian woman with a white boyfriend, and having to deal with all the pasts and presents that their bodies signify. The lover tells the speaker: "Please, my love,/ Not every house is haunted."

That got me thinking about what ghosts I'm constantly battling, that we're all constantly battling. I've never been more aware of what it means to walk around the world as an Asian woman until I've had to navigate two things: working as a professor in the lily white world of academia, and dating as a single woman in Boston. Just as Franny writes about being cat called by men who shout, "I like pork fried rice!" I could testify to having fucked up things said to me. It was at work, not on a date, when an older white man asked me if I wanted to sit on his lap. It was on a date, not at work, when a man (not white, which makes this more sad) marveled at my "outspokenness," as if it's some genetic anomaly. It's in the pursuit of both work and love that I constantly have to explain where I am really from. We could wish that these interactions, however frustrating, are ultimately benign, that they're just the faux pas of some stupid and ignorant individuals. We fear, though we know to be true, that they indicate something deeper: that the reason why these and far worse violences happen is because we have built the world in a way that allows them to.

It's easy to walk around angry, jaw clenched so tight that you have a chronic headache, as I have. What's not as easy is containing that anger, channeling it towards something productive, all the while figuring out what moments are residues of some larger forces of oppression that are worth fighting and which moments welcome forgiveness.

That, I suppose, is why poetry is so important. We get to figure that shit out. And take comfort in knowing that we don't have to figure that shit out alone. And, moreover, we get to sigh, cry, and laugh together in that process.

I think that's why one of my favorite poems of Franny's is "Pussy Monster." Through such a simple move, of rearranging the words to a Lil' Wayne song by order of frequency, she incisively highlights the narcissism with which misogyny operates, as the poem culminates in an outpouring of "me me me me me..." and "I I I I I I I I I I..." But by the end the word "pussy," which signifies so much violence done towards women, gets reclaimed as both political commentary and as a word we can chuckle about. Even better, it becomes a collective mantra-- It's telling that Franny's reading last night ended with the entire audience chanting with her, "pussy, pussy, pussy, pussy..."

As Franny would say, that's magic.

FRANNY THIS FRIDAY

You already know, y'all. Franny Choi this Friday, May 9 at 8 pm. Be there. Poster credit: Jess X. Chen (who featured last month with Paul Tran and will also be having a gallery opening this month!!)

April 11, 2014 EAST MEETS WORDS OPEN MIC FEATURING: JESS X CHEN & PAUL TRAN

Poster credit: Jess X. Chen

Hey hey! This April's open mic came out with a lil Pacific Northwest twist, with Iris and I MC'ing the event, and my longtime friend Jess X Chen and my newtime friend Paul Tran featuring their poetry, shadow theater, and film.

Photo credit: Ye Eun Jeong

Open mic participants came through with honesty and courage, like Ricky (above) performing spoken word on gambling addiction and body positivity, and Tomas sharing his poetry for the first time. There was also an interesting moment when someone did a stand-up routine that turned out kinda racist. Though the audience remained disapprovingly silent for his bit, everyone clapped for the guts it takes for someone to go up on stage and tell jokes, and that person stayed for the remainder of the night. That was one of the realest moments I've experienced at EMW: witnessing a community hold one of its own accountable for making mistakes in a way that wasn't about punishment and telling someone to GTFO, but about believing that people can do better.*

Vulnerability and accountability. These themes resonated with me as Jess and Paul turned off the house lights and immersed the audience in their intimate, visually haunting set, sharing their poetry on the effects of war/trauma/colonization on the body/mind/earth. How are our abuse of the land to the abuse of a body to the abuse of a nation's people all interrelated? How do we come to die? Who kills us? How do we come to survive? And what does survival look like?

Jess and Paul's set opened with a screening of #1 BEAUTY NAIL SALON.

Whether or not Jess and Paul intended for that train of thought to go in that direction, that was what was going on in my headspace that night. Just as extraordinary as it was to witness Jess and Paul's immense talent and intellect, it was also wonderful to see the audience breathe and sigh in understanding, bearing a kind of collective testimony to the histories that often remain silenced.

So what did survival look like that night? I saw a community come together to receive difficult truths with grace. I saw a community that, even despite struggle, could laugh and celebrate.

Photo credit: Ye Eun Jeong

Photo credit: Ye Eun Jeong

Photo credit: Ye Eun Jeong

Next month, Franny Choi will be featuring with her new book of poetry, Floating Brilliant Gone, whose cover art is done by Jess. Come by 934 Mass Ave on Friday, May 9th! * For further reading, I recommend Ngoc Loan Tran's article, Calling IN: A Less Disposal Way of Holding Each Other Accountable on Black Girl Dangerous.

East Meets Words 9th Anniversary and Silent Auction

Hey fam! It's Amanda, one of the organizers, along with Evelyn, of the silent auction for East Meets Words' 9th anniversary open mic.

Since this was our first time organizing this fundraiser, Evelyn and I were a little nervous but we soon found out that we really did not need to worry. When we asked the community to show up and donate their time and resources to the space, the community came OUT! We auctioned off beautiful prints and artwork by Jeffrey, Rich, and Christopher Huang; poetry and cypher 101 workshops by artist in residence Kai; flavor Bible culinary lessons by Evelyn; DJ and photography lessons by Kongo, and much, much more.

As the night continued with poetry and music, hilarious and heartfelt messages from folks attending in spirit, and origin stories and future plans for the bookstore, I reflected upon how much this monthly open mic means to me. As a young person trying to make sense of this world, I'm coming to understand how rare it is to find community and creative spaces centered around Asian American experiences. It's not every day that we can come into a space that invites us to be vulnerable, to be real. This is a space that I hope we continue to nurture and care for, just as how it has nurtured and cared for us.

Shout out and love to all those who came to support us with their generosity, creativity, and conscious energy. I hope to see you in many future months.

IT'S THAT CARLTON!

Damn. The boy Kai Huang here with a recap on our 9th anniversary open mic for East Meets Words, fam. Ish was crazy. It was truly a magical night on all fronts, but I gotta say that the highlight for me was when the feature artist, my roommate, DJ and electronic music producer Scooter Oyama AKA Go Yama AKA the Asian Carlton Banks dropped this fucking silliness:

Ugh. The room exploded. Dance cyphers broke out on all countries and continents. Children laughed. Women cried. Withered old men smiled for the first time in decades. And me? Well, I remembered why I love living in a rat-infested old Chinese bookstore where the pipes freeze every winter. Holler. It's ya motherfucking boy. Music continues. I'll see y'all next month.

Oh, and big ups to the folks over at the Mindful Music YouTube channel for putting that video together with Scoot's track. Good looks, y'all. Breathe in breathe out.

9TH ANNIVERSARY OPEN MIC COMING UP

Featuring my goddamn roommate. Scooter Oyama AKA GO YAMA. Be there.

JANUARY 10, 2014 EAST MEETS WORDS OPEN MIC FEATURING: OMNI

NOTE: This blog post is late as hell since it's taken us a minute to get the interface up and running again, but here we go. Check it after the jump. More to come soon as we get EMW's online presence on and popping again!! Ugh.

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What up y’all, it’s Kai Huang coming at you live from the left side of the attic at 934 Mass Ave with an update on our most recent East Meets Words open mic. It all went down last night, so let me give you the play-by-play.

Our host for the night was the wonderful Stacy Dimapelis, who held it down strong in between performances and kept the energy real high with her humor and crazy tangential monologues, one of which involved reading the entire text of an ill but mostly incomprehensible love poem by the 16^th century English poet John Donne, as randomly selected by a poetry app on Stacy’s iPhone. Strong move, girl.

The open mic performances were strong throughout the night. Adi (of Subdrift fame) came through and dropped an intelligent and well put together stand up comedy bit, showing some love to our LGBT brothers and sisters in the process. Jeff and Richie of Mix Theory held down solo sets, with Jeff playing the guitar and Richie stepping up his spoken word game to share a reflection on his favorite season, Autumn. Emcees included LuDow AKA LuDeezy and the boy Aaron King, whose father is widely known outside of hip hop circles for inventing gel electrophoresis and teaching EMW organizer Dave Kong biology back in college. Big ups, homie. Speaking of Dave Kong AKA The Landlord, that dude got his usual struggle on as he pieced together words and phrases chosen by the audience into a live freestyle before we transitioned into the cypher proper, featuring all of the above plus ya boy, dropping a little wisdom on they asses regarding my mostly vegetarian diet game based around the Whole Foods on Prospect St.

Word, another highlight last night was the boy Marty, a storyteller and an older white gentleman who’s been coming to the space for some months now. Much like Kong with the freestyle, dude usually asks for some topics from the audience so he can improvise a story for us. So as usual, ya boy sat in the front row and suggested institutionalized racism. Someone else said chocolate chip cookies too. I don’t know, son. Go figure. I guess some people ain’t on that militant wavelength all the time. I don’t understand it either. Anyway, that meant we got to see Marty, this pleasant older white dude, try to put together a story on the spot that involved both institutionalized racism and chocolate chip cookies. Needless to say, y’all, I was anxious to see where this was gonna go!

Marty held it down humorously though and took it in good stride, telling a story about a person of color who moves into a new city (presumably not Cambridge, MA) and is initially met with tremendous discrimination and threats of violence before making peace with his assailants using chocolate chip cookies. On some Indians and pilgrims shit, I guess. Word. I do want to note though, that as positive and charming as the story was and as much as I respect that man Marty for stepping outside his comfort zone and running with the topic I recklessly threw at him, the story he told is one about interpersonal racism, and not institutionalized racism. If y’all confused, get at me later and ask me about this!! Seriously though.

In any case, after it was all said and done on the open mic portion of the evening, that boy Omni the beatboxer came through and veritably fucked everybody’s heads up with a crisp 15 minute set. For those of y’all who don’t know, Omni’s a Cambodian-Malaysian American beatboxer from Providence, RI (401 stand up) who was recently ranked in the top 16 beatboxers in the nation, and so dude is just able to do ridiculous things with his mouth, sonically. He’s also a great dude who stays involved in the community as far as his youth outreach and mentoring (dude’s only 19 himself though!!), so we gotta respect that. And he’s actually moving to Las Vegas TODAY y’all, so he blessed us here at EMW with his last east coast show for the time being. Indeed, big ups to that dude. We’re grateful that he kicked it with us, we’re proud of the work he’s doing for Asian Americans in the arts, and we wish him all the best out in Vegas. Stay up, kid. You know you always welcome back in Cambridge.

Well, that about it, fam. Thanks to everyone who signed up to perform, thanks to everyone who signed up for the mailing list, and we’ll see y’all clowns next month. SAME BAT TIME. SAME BAT PLACE. That would be the second Friday of the month at East Meets West bookstore, 934 Massachusetts Avenue in Cambridge, MA. Next month’s second Friday happens to be motherfucking VALENTINE’S DAY too, so bring your best love shit, or bring your best lovers, or both. You know the rules!

Until then, this is Kai Huang still posted up in the left side the attic. I want to let y’all know that the water’s working in the building again, so I finally flushed my toilet and all is right with the universe. Alright peace.

Kai