Over the past weekend, my wife and I met Ewuare X. Osayande at Brown University, and I have to say upfront I was slightly intimidated by how intelligent and well-spoken he was. It’s rare to meet someone who has the kind of presence this man has, and what was more impressive was the feeling that he was being completely genuine with everything he did and said. Nothing escaped his lips that was not well thought out. I never met the man before, but I will definitely keep checking for him, and I’m glad we were able to interact in such a positive way.

The reason this past weekend came about in the first place was the confluence of a few different factors at the right time: Asian American Heritage Month, Southeast Asian Heritage Week, and the Black Heritage Series. So the students came up with the crazy plan to bring the aforementioned Ewuare and myself, and the one and only Bao Phi into town to do workshops about interracial coalitions and building a movement for all oppressed people. Apparently, this was the first time those three campuswide efforts had collaborated on one event, and from what everyone was saying, it was successful beyond expectations – although they may have only been saying that so we didn’t feel bad. Following that, we three performed, along with several Rhode Island-based poets and Brown students. Man, it almost made me feel bad because the quality of spit on the mic was making me doubt if I even deserved the status of “feature.” These folks were dope, including old friend Ammala Douangsavanh (of Zawadi), as well as the campus spoken word crew Word.

For a trip that lasted fewer than 24 hours, there was a lot going on. Much respect to the student organizers – and there were many – who battled sleeplessness and apparently school-sanctioned debauchery (Rahul mentioned something called ‘Trick or Drink’ which is probably exactly as it sounds…) to make it happen.

So after the show, we hit up the Vietnamese joint next door, which was called “Phonomenal” “Phonatic” and really lived up to the name. But because my wife grew up making family daytrips to Rhode Island for Khmer food, we knew what we had to do the next day. After soliciting recommendations from the local Southeast Asian population – including the folks from PrYSM (click the link to learn somethin’) we ended up filling up at Apsara Restaurant and also hitting up Sunny Market to buy a box of about 130 persimmons for five dollars – five dollars! – as well as mad frozen fish. Word to the Asian-owned independent stores.

The itis took hold on the drive back, and combined with the end of daylight savings, I ended up missing the end of the Patriots’ ninth straight win along with the rest of my Sunday. Bao makes his way back East this week, as we join up with Kiwi for the second Beat Rhymes and Rice show here in the Bean. See yall there.

This entry was posted on Monday, November 5th, 2007 at 5:49 PM and is filed under show recaps. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.