Saturday I had the privilege of performing at the 2nd annual IMPAACT Conference at the University of Connecticut. (Really clever acronym: Identifying the Missing Power of Asian Americans in Connecticut. Fiyah!) And got a chance to see old school homie Corky Lee do a presentation about some of his work, which spans several decades of photos of Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders from all walks of life just in their daily. His work has meant a lot to a lot of people, including myself, and so seeing him again was a real thrill.

When I moved away from DC back in 2002, some friends bought me an original print of one of Corky’s photos, which currently hangs in my hallway. It’s a kid’s eye view of a young Chinese boy holding a sign that says “More Jobs!” amid a larger scale protest, and I’m assuming it was taken in Manhattan’s Chinatown when they were building Confucius Plaza and not offering construction work to the Chinese laborers. In the background of the photo is many grandma-looking women holding signs as well. Some folks have asked “is that you?” and of course it’s not, but in a way it’s all of us. It’s representative of the first step any one of us takes in the movement, whatever moved us to fold our fingers around a sign in the first place.

In addition to Corkeezy, I also got to see someone else tied to my DC days, Porthira Chhim, who gave a very interesting presentation about the history of Cambodians in the States, tying in connections to the PATRIOT Act, Armenian genocide, and country music, as well as more typical topics of discussion like the Kim Ho Ma case or the IIRAIRA of 1996. Good thing Porthira was doing it, because if it had been someone else, I don’t know if I would have learned as much as I did. For example, did you know that Cambodians were recruited to attend American universities as far back as the 1950s? I was able to flip through one of his resources, and it was truly fascinating. I’m itching to find out more…

I also peeped a film “Whose Children Are These?” expertly directed by Theresa Thanjan about the fallout from 9/11 for Muslim communities in America, with specific attention to three teenagers in New York. It was great, because it’s not that the information was really new to me, but the storytelling was so powerful that it felt new, and that can go a long way in pushing people not to grow complacent.

Unfortunately, I missed Ishmael Ileto, who was so genuine and kind to me when I met him back in 2000. In fact, if you look on the inside of the re: verse CD, the shirt I’m wearing is actually the shirt he gave me of his brother’s image. It’s strange how many connections that this past weekend had to my time living in Washington. There are a lot more actually, but you don’t have all day now do you…

But the show was just me and a hip hop act GNE, who were really ill. You may not have heard of them because they’ve only started working together recently, but definitely keep checking for them, because they will be making themselves known. And the message they are spreading needs to be heard. It really was my pleasure to be sharing a stage with them, and I know I’ll be seeing them at many more venues in the future. I’m gonna go out on a limb and also say they are the dopest Sikh hip hop duo I have ever seen. So take that for what you will.

Anyway, I really appreciate the hard work that Mike and the rest of the student organizers put into the conference. They taught me about the new fashion trend of rocking a t-shirt over your dress shirt, which gives you the benefit of the relaxed look of the t-shirt, plus the business attire of a dress shirt. That’s the new shit. Trust me.

Also, it was really cool to see the resources available to Asian American students at UConn! Not only space, but dedicated staff, and just looking back on photos from past events, I see they’ve really done their work trying to bring the rest of the country to their campus, including Dith Pran, Yuri Kochiyama, and my mellow Ed Bok Lee. I hope I get a chance to go back there real soon, because I’m always impressed to see the work that happens on behalf of API students in rural campuses. And believe me. UConn is about as rural as it gets.

Aite yall. It’s hard trying to keep up this blog pace. Hope to see you again soon.

This entry was posted on Monday, November 12th, 2007 at 12:42 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.