September 16, 2015 International Examiner

INTERNATIONAL EXAMINER September 16, 2015 – October 6, 2015 — 1

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2 — September 16, 2015 – October 6, 2015 INTERNATIONAL EXAMINER

IE OPINION

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Community policing is the safety solution the ID needsBy Ben Henry & Sharon Maeda

Guest Columnists

When Donnie Chin was murdered outside of a hookah bar last July, it sent shockwaves through the Asian and Pacific Islander (API) community. Our sheriff, the Protector of the Chinatown/International District (ID), was slain, and we demanded that the outlaws be brought to justice.

Seattle Mayor Ed Murray’s response was to launch an effort to shut down all of Seattle’s hookah bars. Eventually, he backed off.

And for that, we are grateful. After all, the solution doesn’t lie with closing down all the hookah bars; rather, we must address the underlying cause of the problem: The ID is unsafe due to the fundamental way the Seattle Police Department (SPD) works in neighborhoods.

True justice lies in a shift to culturally appropriate community policing. It’s about building a trusting relationship between police and the people they protect. It should be more a partnership than an institution enforcing on a community. Police should be seen as trusted allies making a community stronger, not an outside entity there to keep people in line.

That starts with hiring a diverse police force that grew up, looks and feels like us.

According to an analysis by Governing Magazine, three out of four SPD officers, or 75.3 percent, are white, as of 2013. That means less than 25 percent of the police force are comprised of people of color, compared to 34 percent of the overall population in Seattle. And just 8.6 percent of SPD are Asian, compared to 13.9 percent citywide.

“Service, Pride, and Dedication” is the SPD motto. But the badge is not there to hide behind. It is not just the role of police to protect, but to serve. And that happens by being a part of a community.

True community policing is not a box you check, a tidy program you launch, or

shutting down a hookah lounge. It’s about transforming the fundamental way you do business.

It might be complex, but community leader Maxine Chan, who served as an SPD community liaison to the Chinatown/ID neighborhood for 12 years throughout the’90s, boils it down to one question.

“What is going to make people feel safe? And that’s the key,” she says.

However, it’s more than just importing cops to the ID. Yes, Donnie called for more police presence, but the long-term answer is what Donnie did all his adult life: being someone the community could trust who cared about them.

Whether it be the elder in the high-rise apartment or the homeless guy on the street; the tourist or the API families who—despite living all over the region—come back to where their cultures and

ethnic identities are not questioned.“It’s great to have police presence,

but it has to be in partnership with the community and businesses down here,” Chan says. “Police that come down here have to know what’s happening. Donnie always knew what was happening.”

Donnie was deeply involved and empathized with everyone he knew in the neighborhood. But this kind of empathy can also be taught. Chan recalls “cultural awareness, cultural competency game” that used to be part of police basic trainings when she was an SPD community liaison.

Cadets were divided into different “families,” or pods, she remembers. The scenario was like this: the cadets were refugees who just arrived in the U.S. after their home country got nuked. The goal of the game is to get a job, learn the language and support your family. And

no one speaks English to you the whole time.

Then the participants get arrested.“I remember, I watched these people,”

Chan says. “In those few hours of simulation, people got what it’s like to be a refugee. It started out, people were laughing, and it was fun. Then, people got put in jail. People were no longer laughing; they got pissed. ‘I know it was a game, but I was ready to punch out the jailer,’ they would say. That shifting, for that brief second, that gave me hope.”

Donnie’s death does not have to be in vain. We urge Mayor Ed Murray and the SPD honor Donnie’s gift of building trust in the community by engaging with us. Without this service, true public safety cannot be attained.

This column originally appeared in the Seattle Globalist.

Community leader and former SPD community liaison Maxine Chan spoke at Donnie Chin’s vigil on July 25. • Courtesy Photo


IE OPINION

The following is an open letter from activist Devin Cabanilla to James Franco, who is starring in and directing a film titled, In Dubious Battle:

Dear James Franco,First, I want to thank you for seeking to

film part of In Dubious Battle in Yakima, WA. I saw your extras casting call on my sister’s facebook feed. It was awesome. Secondly, thank you for highlighting the amazing work of John Steinbeck. He is arguably the best 20th century American author I’ve enjoyed. Your own work in film has been something I have enjoyed greatly as well. In lighter fare, I thought This is the End was hilarious with the cameos and camp. More recently, you deserve extra kudos for The Interview and your decision to stand up to the oppressive regime and policies of the DPRK. I want to encourage your continued courage in film and admirable efforts by asking that you please specifically call for Asian American actors as part of your extras casting in Yakima. (You only asked for bearded guy extras.)

The reason I am asking you to highlight and include Asian Americans is because they were integral to the farm work and labor movement of California and America. Steinbeck effectively highlights class warfare, and socialist labor union efforts in his work. Race issues are definitely part of that schema. Chinese,

An open letter to James Franco about farm labor movement filmingJapanese, and Korean farm workers were part of early California’s population, and at one point they were barred from coming to America by racist laws. Filipinos began migrating to the United States to supplant the farm labor force and were still among the most oppressed. During the 1930’s Filipino Americans in particular began organizing farm labor unions amidst riots. All ethnic groups travelled to wherever agriculture needed harvesting. Asian Americans continued to seek the American Dream in their new homeland and sought to gain acceptance. Even John Steinbeck accepted Asian dilemmas in the United States. He wrote in an integral and intelligent Asian character in the form of Lee for East of Eden. Steinbeck was authentic, ahead of his time, and honored the Asian American population of the era. Like him, please highlight the reality of the era with Asian American cast inclusion.

I did make some effort and reviewed the cast of In Dubious Battle on IMDB for hints of diversity. There were some likely Hispanic actors cast in memorable roles like “Apple Picker” and “Migrant Woman #2.” I did not notice any Asian names in the list. Also, your instagram pictures I found seem to show a mostly white cast on set. Granted your film is probably almost done, and you’re in post-production; this my overall request may seem a bit late. However, I’m not

even asking for anything drastic like re-shooting the whole movie. I just want you to have more historically accurate Asian American extras which you can definitely find in the Pacific Northwest. Washington for sure has real good apple trees. We for sure had Japanese American apple pickers in Washington state too, their descendants are here still. Cast them. Additionally, the Yakima area is actually home to one of the largest Filipino communities on the west coast in Wapato. They would be some of the most authentic extras. Some of them are even still farmers! Maybe you want a late Lee character cameo now. Chinese people? They’re here still too.

I wish you the best success and want to constructively guide you, not just criticize. I am just a hobby historian, and maybe a concerned citizen at best, but I can rec-ommend groups who can testify on this history and give you advice on accurate ethnic casting. I recommend the Filipino American National Historical Society (I’m a member), the Japanese American Citizens League (I’m not a member), and the Chinese Citizens Alliance (I like their food). All of them have, or know, legit historians. There is even a new documen-tary film maker named Marissa Aroy who made a piece on the Filipino Farm Labor Movement you could track down. Maybe it’s best you just go to a university and grab an ethnic studies professor to spruce things up in post-production.

This whole letter may have a Chinaman’s chance to change things, but more personally, I ask you on behalf of the past relatives I’ve had here in the United States who suffered through farming in the 1930s to include historically accurate Asian American extras. Don’t whitewash your film. Do not oppress or be part of a system that ignores social history. While I’m getting real here, honestly I haven’t even read In Dubious Battle. Even more honestly white farm laborers would have been in separate work camps from other groups; but artists have a choice to express fiction in truer realities. Please, be authentic like Steinbeck by better honoring the ethnic labor and class landscape in the story that you are telling the world. Cast AAPI’s.

Sincerely & Satirically,

Devin Israel Cabanilla, MBA4th-generation Asian American

Migrant Office Worker #3

“There is more beauty in truth, even if it is a dreadful beauty. The storytellers at the city gate twist life so that it looks sweet to the lazy and the stupid and the weak, and this only strengthens their infirmities and teaches nothing, cures nothing, nor does it let the heart soar.”

—John Steinbeck, East of Eden

Announcement

IE News Services

Join St. Jude supporters in Seattle and in 58 cities nationwide in the St. Jude Walk/Run to End Childhood Cancer to raise money for St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital. Here in Seattle, the walk/run takes place at Seattle Center at 8:30 a.m. on Saturday, September 19. Registration starts at 7:00 a.m. The walk/run begins at the Mural Ampitheater.

To register online, visit http://fundraising.stjude.org/site/TR/Walk/Walk?pg=entry&fr_id=40408.

Cost to register for adults and children 6 and up is $10. Raise $100 and earn your official event T-shirt. Raise $250 to become a member of St. Jude’s Fearless Fundraiser Club and earn additional St. Jude gear as you fundraise.

St. Jude freely shares the breakthroughs it makes, and every child saved at St. Jude means doctors and scientists worldwide can use that knowledge to help others.

St. Jude Walk/Run to End Childhood Cancer at Seattle

Center on Saturday


IE COMMUNITY

Job

The CIDBIA is hiring for an Executive Director!

More information: http://cidbia.org/about/

Please send resume and cover letter to [email protected] by 5pm, Friday, September 18, 2015.

No phone calls or agents please.

Job

Part-time Dishwasher & KitchenHelper needed Mon, Sat, Sun.

Chinoise Restaurant located inIssaquah Highlands (936 NE ParkDrive, Issaquah, WA 98029).

Drop off resume or call 206-790-3611 for immediate interview.

Job

The YWCA Seattle | King | Snohomish seeks a part-time Human Resources Specialist. This position is responsible for a variety of Human Resources programs and activities which include Employee Relations, Employment Verification requests and inquiries, Special Projects, and other HR activities; assist and support Human Resources Generalist with data entry and record maintenance of HRIS system; assist with On-Boarding, Job Descriptions and other assigned projects. This is a job share position. Flexibility in scheduling is required. As an equal opportunity employer, we highly encourage people of color to apply. Part-time, 20 hrs/wk. Rate $15.38/hr or DOE. Respond to [email protected]. Details @ www.ywcaworks.org.

Announcements

IE News Services

The Center for Asian Pacific American Women’s 2015 National Leadership Summit, titled “The Power of Change: Greeting the Challenge and Making the Difference,” will be held on the weekend of September 26 to 27 at the Microsoft Conference Center: 16070 N.E. 36th Way Redmond, WA 98052.

The convention focuses on building leadership capacity across all areas of life. Sign up for workshops that cover career development skills: Political skills, communication skills, et cetera. Find your voice and confidence, business savvy, health, and a host of other topics and issues of concern to AAPI communities. A 20th anniversary celebration will be hosted on Saturday evening at the Bellevue Hilton.

For more information and registration visit www.apawomen.org.

Center for APA Women summit

celebrates 20 years

Ethnic Roundtable

ConversationsShare your ethnic community’s

concerns regarding equity and social justice at the Ethnic Roundtable Conversations co-hosted by the Ethnic Heritage Council and King County Office of Equity and Social Justice held on September 26 and 30.

Help to define the challenges and opportunities for achieving equity in King County. Your input will contribute to the formation of an actionable, county-wide strategic plan to remove barriers to opportunity and equity for all.

The first roundtable happens on Saturday, September 26 from 1:00 p.m. to 4:00 p.m. at Polish Cultural Center, 1714 18th Ave., Seattle WA 98122.

The second roundtable happens on Wednesday, September 30 from 6:00 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. at Nagomi Tea House, 519 6th Ave. S., Seattle WA 98104.

For more information and to RSVP, email [email protected] by Thursday, September 24.

The “Do You Know Bruce?” Bruce Lee exhibit reopens for its second year on October 2 at the Wing Luke Museum.

Get to know the man who said, “To hell with circumstances, I create opportunities.” Retrace Bruce’s footsteps: his first martial arts studio, his first practice space, and his hangouts. The first year of the exhibit included handwritten poems by Bruce, training equipments, original press kit materials from Bruce’s films: Fists of Fury, The Chinese Connection, Return of the Dragon, Enter the Dragon, and Game of Death. This year, there will be the largest display of Green Hornet toys and collectibles ever in the U.S, handwritten film notes by Bruce, and a rare photo taken inside his early studio in Seattle’s Chinatown.

For tickets and more info, visit www.wingluke.org/bruceleetickets.

Bruce Lee exhibit reopens for second yearat Wing Luke

Wing Luke is Seattle host for WikiAPA Art

All throughout September 2015, the Smithsonian APA Center is working with museums, universities, and community groups across the country to bring you WikiAPA Art, focused on Asian and Asian Pacific American art and artists. Learn to edit Wikipedia pages with guidance from Cascadia Wikimedians User Group and improve the coverage of artists on Wikipedia.

The Wing Luke Museum is the Seattle host. If you are an art buff, an advocate for free-content internet encyclopedias, or just curious, stop by for a casual evening of learning, art, information, and snacks.

The WikiAPA Art event happens on Thursday, September 17 from 5:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m. at Wing Luke Museum, 719 S King St., Seattle, WA 98104.

To RSVP, visit www.eventbrite.co m /e /wik ia p a -wik iped ia - a s ia n -pacif ic- american- ar t- sea t t le-wa-tickets-18139466633.

For more information on WikiAPA, visit smithsonianapa.org/wiki/.

INTERNATIONAL EXAMINER September 16, 2015 – October 6, 2015 — 5INTERNATIONAL EXAMINER September 16, 2015 – October 6, 2015 — 15

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IE COMMUNITY

ELEMENTARY EDUCATION AGES 5-11

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2015-2016 OPEN HOUSESDECEMBER 5, 2015, 10AM JANUARY 9, 2016, 10AM

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By Jocelyn MooreIE Contributor

For first generation Cambodian Ameri-cans who have been through the Cambo-dian Genocide, the memories can be the toughest thing to talk about, even after 40 years. Yet, to move past those traumatic times, a bridge is needed between genera-tions in the community.

Organized by 16 Cambodian organiza-tions across Washington state, “Remem-bering the Past & Welcoming the Fu-ture: 40 Years Since the Killing Fields” at North Seattle College on August 29 aimed to spark conversations that reflect on the roots of the Cambodian Ameri-cans.

“It is a bittersweet thing. You are gather-ing as a community but it is such a tragic history,” said one of event planners Son-nora Meas. “You are opening old wounds. But by doing this, it helps the community heal. The elders gets to heal the pain, it gave them a closure.”

While planning the commemorative event, many community leaders witnessed a major problem faced in their commu-nity—the lack of communication between the older and younger generations about what caused Cambodians to flee from their home country to the United States.

“There is a big gap between Cambodian elders [who went through the turmoil] and the youngers because they do not commu-nicate,” said Bill Ong, the head planner of the event. “The first group of elders can-not communicate in English well enough for the youngsters to understand what they have been through.”

During the Khmer Rouge regime, Cam-bodian leader Pol Pot killed two millions people between 1975 and 1979, burying a quarter of Cambodia’s total population of eight million at the time.

Nonetheless, the mass gravesites that are known as the Killing Fields are something that Cambodian parents hardly talk about to their children.

“It is a really sensitive topic depending on the person,” Meas said. “Some people still can’t talk about it. It is too hard for them to go back and seeing people got killed in front of you.”

Remembering the pastBut the ones who are willing to share

their stories always send a strong message about the history of Cambodia, especially to the younger generations who were born and raised in the United States.

“Whenever I talk to my parents about their lives in Cambodia, I see the sad-ness that overwhelms them,” said Laura Vong who is currently the president of the Khmer Student Associates of University of Washington.

Honoring the past for a louder future: The 40th Anniversary of the Killing Fields

Like many Cambodians who went through the Khmer Rouge regime, Vong’s parents were separated from their immediate families and were forced to live in the countryside where they worked in the fields with barely anything to eat.

But the physical hardship was incomparable to their emotional pain. The Khmer Rouge re-gime took everything away from Vong’s par-ents—their homes, education, loved ones, and hope.

“My mom and dad both lost their parents during the war so I’ve never had real grandpar-ents,” Vong said. “Not only did my mom lose her parents, but she also lost two of her seven siblings.”

According to what Vong learned from her parents, the only way for Cambodians to get out of the suffering was to escape to Thailand.

“They lived in the refugee camps in Thailand temporarily and then got sponsored by families in the U.S.,” she said.

However, arriving to the United States as refugees was just the beginning of another long journey. For many Cambodian refugees, they were not aware of the American Dream until they achieved it. Most of them just wanted to start a new life in the foreign country.

“Once my mom arrived, she worked in the agriculture fields, restaurants, and attended school,” Vong said. “The adjustment was very hard but my mom was strong and determined. She went on to attend community college in Ya-kima and went to school for dental hygiene.”

Welcoming the futureStories like Vong’s parents are the ones that

are often lost in translation, and community leaders want to help pass down the memories through stronger community interaction so that the younger generations can reflect on what it means to be Cambodian-Americans.

“To me, being Cambodian is such a big part of my identity,” Vong said. “It’s what makes me different than being just an American. I’m a Cambodian American.”

Vong thinks the best way for Cambodi-an-Americans to learn about their culture is to engage in it. She said that she learns about the Khmer culture “by speaking the language, learning how to cook common Khmer dishes, and learning classical or folk dances with other Khmer students at UW.”

To Connie Mom-Chhing, the previous CEO of Southwest Washington Behavioral Health, understanding the root of her cul-ture means taking action of her civil duty in the American society.

“I came from a culture where people sac-rifice their life to vote,” Chhing said during her speech. “So when I turned 18, I regis-tered to vote and I am very proud.”

Meas said this event planted seeds for the community to bridge between generations and move forward together.

“This event is not an end point,” he said. Actively involved in the Cambodian or-

ganization Seattle-Sihanoukville Sister City Association, Mes has been involved with crafting a City of Seattle proclamation to recognize Cambodian Genocide Memo-rial Week. The final version of the procla-mation was read by Seattle City Council-man Tom Rasmussen at the event.

Such recognition is particularly impor-tant to Cambodian Americans who strug-gled with their cultural identity while grow-ing up in America.

“I was ashamed to speak Cambodian as a kid because people would make fun of me,” said Sokheng Cheng during his speech. “But I am proud of my culture. I want my kid, kid’s kid to speak Cambodian.”

The first step is to talk about the past, and then to learn about the culture, and fi-nally—the most importantly—to preserve the roots.

“Our parents had to fight to get here,” Cheng said. “We have to fight to preserve our culture.”

Among all the community events he has planned within the Cambodian community, Ong viewed this event as “magnificent and unprecedented in the state of Washington for Cambodian Americans.”

“In my life time I have done many work, this one is for all age groups to raise aware-ness,” he said. “I want people to come out of the conversations today and have a vision to make the Cambodian community more visible in the American society.”

Ong said the key is to stay positive. “It’s good to learn from the past but we

don’t want to be in a loophole of the past. We’ve got to move on,”Ong said.

And the success lies among the future of the Cambodian-Americans, Ong explained.

“The younger generations don’t have the language and cultural barrier,” Ong said. “They don’t have the pain. They are going to make the Cambodian community stron-ger and louder.”

Connie Mom-Chhing speaks on what it means for her to be a Cambodian American at the event, saying it is important for young Cambodian Americans to practice their civil rights in the US and not to take it for granted. • Photo by Jocelyn Moore


IE COMMUNITY

By Anna CarriveauIE Contributor

Helping Link is a non-profit organiza-tion dedicated to helping Vietnamese-American immigrants transition suc-cessfully into society via social services and education programs, such as ESL for adults, after school care, homework tutoring, leadership programs, and more.

Minh Duc Phạm Nguyen, the founder and executive director of Helping Link, started the volunteer-based organization with a few friends after visiting her mom in Vietnam during the early 90s. She was able to see firsthand the awful living conditions and poverty people experienced during that time, living under the communist regime. “When I went back there, I felt so bad. I thought, ‘Okay, I have to do something.’” Nguyen said.

What started as a drop-in center in 1993, helping Vietnamese Americans read bills and fill out paperwork, evolved into an ESL program a year later. Nguyen and several friends met with students twice a week in the Rainier Beach Library conference room. The classes catered to Vietnamese immigrants from all backgrounds, including those granted citizenship through the Humanitarian Operation Program.

With the Vietnamese immigrant population skyrocketing, in response to the Humanitarian Operation Program, “from about 231,000 in 1980 to nearly 1.3 million in 2012, making it the sixth largest foreign-born population in the United States,” according to MigrationPolicy.org. Helping Link’s programs, students, and volunteers also grew. In 2001, the volunteer-based non-profit moved into their current location on Jackson Street in the Little Saigon neighborhood, where they incorporated bilingual computer classes, additional after school programs, and more ESL learning opportunities for Vietnamese Americans into their social service repertoire.

Understanding how overwhelming and scary starting over in a new country can be, and all the hoops Vietnamese Americans have to jump through to get here, Nguyen said she strives to create an inviting atmosphere at Helping Link that inspires confidence. She also embraces diversity through Helping Link’s friendly, eclectic mix of volunteers and a teaching style that’s focused on goal setting and completing student milestones, “so they feel like they can accomplish whatever it is they want to do.”

In addition to feeling intimidated living in a strange place, with new culture norms, laws, and ways of life, studies show people with language barriers tend to earn less, have limited access to health care, and are less likely to participate in politics or exercise their right to vote. With nearly 53 percent of Vietnamese Americans throughout the United States possessing limited

English proficiency, according to an AmericanProgress.org study. Over 30,500 Vietnamese immigrants living in King County alone. Organizations like Helping Link, with free access to adult ESL classes, in exchange for volunteer hours, are critical for bidging social equality gaps in the API community, Nguyen said.

Helping Link’s ESL programs are designed to teach students basic english while also helping adults and elderly get in the workforce and excel once hired, instead of getting stuck in entry level positions. The ESL classes are broken up into 10 week quarters. They are two hours long, twice a week, and taught entirely by volunteers. Melissa Galarneau started teaching ESL at Helping Link in February and is amazed by her students’ enthusiasm and progress.

“They are so eager to learn and happy to be here.” Galarneau said. She mentioned one student in particular, who moved to Seattle from Vietnam in January, and had no prior English language skills. “She has gotten to the point now where she can ask basic questions and you can try to have a conversation with her and she understands most of it,” Galarneau said.

Beyond teaching English, the classes also give students a chance to meet people sharing similar struggles and a few students have found new job leads through classmates in the program.

Helping Link offers two levels of ESL classes, one for Vietnamese Americans with limited or no English speaking skills and a second level class for those who complete the first class or have little or moderate english abilities.

At the start of each quarter, students set goals for what they would like to accomplish during the 10-week quarter. Teachers then work with students toward those goals. They also help students create a bio, so by the end of the quarter, students can tell their story, who they are, where they live, and why they are here. Holidays are also celebrated throughout quarters granting students an opportunity to experience, enjoy, and better understand American traditions they might be unfamiliar with.

On Sunday, September 20, from 6:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m., Helping Link is holding its 22nd Anniversary Gala at the Mercer Island Community and Event Center to raise funds for the continued growth and support of their many social services and education programs, which include ESL for adults, after school care, homework tutoring, leadership programs, and more.

“The gala is an opportunity for the community to partner with us to make a difference.” Said Nguyen. “We are going

Helping Link celebrates 22 years of assisting Vietnamese immigrantsto feature Vietnamese cuisine and culture entertainment. It’s going to be a very fun night.”

In addition to dinner and entertainment, guests can partake in a cake dash and silent auction to help raise funds for the continued growth and support of Helping Link’s social services and education programs. Tickets can be purchased now through the day of the event on helpinglink.org. VIP tickets are also available; they include early entry and access to a cocktail reception from 5:00 p.m. until 6:00 p.m. The semi-formal event is Helping Link’s largest fundraiser of the year. All money raised will be used to ensure the organization can continue to serve Vietnamese Americans via ESL programs, social services, and other educational programs throughout 2016.

“The Power of Inspiration,” the theme of the anniversary gala, highlights the importance of motivation and opportunity, and how they are key elements of change and success. The theme also encourages community members to celebrate the thousands of Vietnamese Americans Helping Link has taught and inspired thus far and what possibilities lie in the future for Helping Link and Washington’s Vietnamese community.

A volunteer helps a student at Helping Link. • Courtesy Photo


IE COMMUNITY

By Ron ChewIE Contributor

Over 300 people crowded into the Blaine Memorial United Methodist Church auditorium on Sunday, September 13 to hear a parade of speakers pay tribute to Al Sugiyama, longtime social justice activist and former director of the Executive Development Institute (EDI).

Sugiyama, best known as the founding director of the now-defunct Center for Career Alternatives for 30 years and the first Asian American elected to the Seattle School Board, has been fighting an aggressive battle with cancer since last year.

In February, Sugiyama stepped down as head of EDI, a Bellevue-based agency

providing training and support for local Asian American leaders, after being diagnosed with cancer of the pancreas and esophagus. He still serves EDI as emeritus executive director.

Sugiyama came onto the stage near the end of the program after over a dozen speakers—lifelong friends and former co-workers—shared personal stories of Sugiyama’s deep commitment to educational and job equality and his extraordinary fighting spirit. After the speeches, Chris Marr presented a samurai sword to Sugiyama, and Sugiyama, to the amusement of the crowd, stripped off his sports coat to reveal a Superman t-shirt he had been wearing underneath.

“I’m really not Superman,” Sugiyama said, “but I feel like it with all of you here.”

Over 300 honor Al Sugiyama at appreciation eventHe said “what is giving me super-strength” is the “collective” support of friends and community members, including the crew who drive him to and from his radiation treatments, those who bring him food, and those who have taken him to lunch and sent cards, prayers, and good wishes his way.

He spoke movingly about his fight against cancer, a fight he says he intends on winning: “I plan to live into my 90s. I’m not going anywhere.”

Sugiyama thanked his “excellent medical team,” especially the oncologists who have been “keeping me alive.” He said treatments have dramatically diminished the size of the cancers in his esophagus and pancreas. The pancreatic cancer “has gone down so far you can’t even see it,” he said.

Sugiyama asked if there were other cancer survivors in the audience. Dozens of hands shot up. “When you have love and support, cancer doesn’t stand a chance,” he said.

Sugiyama, noticing the huge crowd in attendance, recalled how difficult it had been to organize protests against the construction of the Kingdome in the early 1970s. Asian American activists had decried the siting of the stadium near the Chinatown-International District. At the time, he had asked Frank Irigon, a fellow organizer, how many people had been recruited to participate in one of the demonstrations. Irigon told Sugiyama there were only three: Irigon, Irigon’s wife and Sugiyama.

“I wish you all were here when we had the demonstrations,” he said.

An event was held to honor Al Sugiyama at Blaine Memorial United Methodist Church auditorium on Sunday, September 13. • Photo by Diana J. Lee

Photo by Frank Tsuboi Photo by Diana J. Lee


IE NEWS

By Chetanya RobinsonIE Staff Writer

At a September 10 rally held at the International District’s Summit Sierra High School, a charter school barely four weeks old, hundreds of members of the charter school community spoke out against a recent Washington Supreme Court decision declaring charter schools in the state unconstitutional.

The school’s common area was packed with people who came to hear speakers and chant the slogan also displayed on their blue shirts: “Save our schools.” On a stage, students from several charter schools (of which there are nine in the state) took the microphone to speak in support of their schools, now in danger of losing public funding.

“It was so disappointing,” said Kathy O’Neill of the ruling. O’Neill’s son Elijah had been able to experience Summit Sierra for only four weeks before the decision came. O’Neill chose Summit Sierra after meeting Executive Director (akin to principal) Malia Burns. Private school wasn’t a financial option for her, and public school “was either at the honors level, or you were in special ed,” which was an imperfect fit for her son who needed the middle ground of grade-level instruction.

The strong relationship between home and school, personalized learning strategy and diversity of student body were other things that attracted O’Neil, whose son was often the only black boy in his class throughout middle school.

Summit Sierra’s 120 students come from 15 different zip codes in the city, economically and linguistically diverse backgrounds, according to Burns. Eighty percent are students of color. “We truly are kind of a microcosm of the south end of Seattle,” Burns said.

Other Summit Sierra parents said the school provides a supportive environment and high quality education.

“It’s an amazing educational model,” said parent Lynn Gilliland. “I’m not sure if people really understood what charter schools, the actual schools inside, were doing, I think there was a lot of ideology.”

The September 4 ruling was not about the merits of charter schools, but whether they were constitutional—whether they qualified as “common schools” and could thus be funded by the same budget set aside for public schools. The court found that charters are not common schools, citing the 1909 case School District Number 20 v. Bryan, which defines common schools as a “subject to, and under the control of, the qualified voters of the school district.”

Charter schools are exempt from rules that public school boards of directors must follow (including decisions about personnel, curriculum, and scheduling). They must provide basic educational requirements

WA charter schools declared unconstitutionalInternational District’s Summit Sierra High School rallies in protest

established by the Superintendent of Public Instruction, but the curriculum varies from school to school.

“I opposed the initiative that created char-ter schools because I did not believe that public money belongs in schools that lack public oversight and accountability,” wrote Governor Jay Inslee in a letter to the Wash-ington State Legislature on September 11.

The Court’s decision was criticized by the Washington State Charter Schools Association, an advocacy group for charter schools.

“WA Charters is shocked and deeply disappointed with the State Supreme Court’s ruling, which rejected the public charter law that voters approved in 2012—recognized as one of the strongest in the nation,” they wrote in a statement.

“Clearly the people of Washington believe that charter schools are valuable—we passed the law through the initiative process,” said Burns. “We believe that it wasn’t the correct ruling.”

Summit Sierra opened its doors only a month before the ruling, in the building that once housed the Asian Resource Center. As founding Executive Director, Burns, a graduate of Seattle University who previously taught in the Bronx and Chicago, worked for a year recruiting students for the first ninth grade class.

Burns cites diversity and rigorous college preparation as the school’s strengths. She is glad the school is located in the ID, and sees engagement with the local ID community as important.

“It’s very important for us that they know the history of this place,” she said. Burns plans for seniors at Summit Sierra to intern at local ID nonprofits, for example.

For now, Summit Sierra and the other charter schools in Washington will remain open. According to Inslee’s letter to the Legislature, they have secured private funding to continue to operate. Students at Summit Sierra will turn in a form saying they are being homeschooled. The long-term goal of the charters is still to change the law.

From the beginning, State Superintendent Randy Dorn told drafters of the Charter Schools Act that it was unconstitutional. “Now that school is in session, we need to do everything we can not to disrupt the education of the students caught in the middle of this argument,” he wrote in a September 9 email to the State Legislature, in which he called on the Governor for a special legislative session.

Inspired by this, attendees of the rally on September 10 were instructed to text Governor Inslee to call an emergency session to address the court’s decision.

The next day, the text writers got an answer. In his letter to the Washington State Legislature, Inslee ruled out calling a special session, but noted that Attorney General Bob Ferguson will file a motion for reconsideration. There is no final decision from the court yet.

The Tuesday after the court’s decision, parents from Summit Sierra met to discuss what the ruling would mean, and there were few dry eyes in the room, Burns said. Given this showing of support, Burns wasn’t too surprised by the large turnout to the rally. From her perspective, the whole episode has been a humbling experience. “We have come together as a community in a way that I could have only dreamed of.”

Members of the charter school community rally at Summit Sierra High School in the ID on September 10, protesting a Washington Supreme Court decision calling charter schools unconstitutional. • Photo by Chetanya Robinson


IE NEWS

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By Lexi PotterIE Contributor

On September 1, community members attended an evening meeting at the Inter-national District/Chinatown Community Center to get to know Jesús Aguirre, the new Superintendent of Seattle Parks and Recreation. Alan Lai translated into both Cantonese and Mandarin for Chinese el-ders at the meeting, who made up over half of the audience.

Aguirre is a recent transplant to Seattle, previously serving as the Superintendent of Parks and Recreation in Washington, D.C. He is taking an active approach to the position, and has been on a listening tour of Seattle’s Community Centers to speak with and hear out local residents.

For its size, Seattle has a very extensive system of parks and recreation spaces. This includes 6,200 acres of space, 465 parks, 25 miles of boulevards, 26 community centers, four golf courses, swimming pools, and more. There are hundreds of play areas, tennis courts, fields, and other recreational areas. Over 36,000 volunteers help run community programs across the city. Seattle’s parks and recreation system is ranked 9th in the country based on investment and the degree of access that community members have to parks and programs.

Aguirre said that with limited resources in the areas of education, preventive health care, police, and security, there has been increasing pressure on the Parks Department to pick up the slack. When extra-curricular activities are cut as schools become more focused on reading, writing, math, and science, parents come to Parks and Recreation looking for programs for their kids, he said. Parks is also feeling pressure to provide additional before and after school programming for at-risk youth in association with the growing perception that crime is on the rise in Seattle. Aguirre said this requires funding for more staff and supplies at local community centers, but the Parks Department is still recovering from significant budget cuts.

120,000 new residents are expected to arrive in Seattle over the next 20 years, making Seattle one of the fastest-growing cities in the United States. With increasing density and diversity, residents expect the Parks Department to provide more green spaces and recreational programming. People also expect Parks to address homelessness, provide park security, create public programs to promote exercise, increase access to healthy food by building community gardens, and provide spaces for dogs to play off-leash as the population increases.

Aguirre suggested that the Parks Department’s past attempts to do everything stretched its resources too thin, contributing to the public perception

that Parks was not doing many things particularly well. As OCA board member Doug Chin clearly summarized: “The Parks Department can’t be all things to all people.”

Aguirre said he recognizes that the Parks Department does not have the resources to do everything it is being asked to do and will have to make careful decisions over the coming months about which projects and programs to invest resources into.

The superintendent opened up the floor for questions and comments. Community members expressed appreciation for the park rangers and for our local park concierge. They requested that Parks employees be given more hours to attend to the parks, and that we get dedicated staff for the Danny Woo Community Garden, which needs better security.

Brien Chow of Chong Wa Benevolent Association welcomed Aguirre to Seattle, and requested that the new Superintendent change the name of the International District/Chinatown Community Center to the Chinatown-International District Community Center out of respect for the Chinese community.

Along with others in the audience, Chow shared the community’s desire to rename the International Children’s Park to the Donnie Chin Children’s Park. There was substantial audience support for a renaming. Aguirre noted that Parks is already in talks about renaming a park in honor of Donnie Chin, but that the process of renaming is likely to take multiple years.

Regarding the Hing Hay Park extension, the Parks Department reported that it would begin construction this November, and that the extension project is expected to complete 12 months after breaking ground. Additional questions addressed increasing the number of programs for children and seniors, getting an early childcare program for low-income families, fixing broken or concealed park lighting to improve safety, and treating local homeless people with respect and dignity.

Community members can report park maintenance issues to (206) 684-7250. To learn more about Seattle Parks and Recreation’s upcoming projects, visit http://www.seattle.gov/parks/projects/default.htm

Community meets with Parks and Recreation superintendent

Jesús Aguirre, the new Superintendent of Seattle Parks and Recreation speaks to community members at the International District/Chinatown Community Center on September 1. • Photo by Lexi Potter

By Tiger SongIE Contributor

Asian Pacific Americans for Civic Empowerment (APACE) was founded in the 1960s by Asian American activists who were facing discrimination at work, school, and in their everyday lives.

“Dozens of community organizations were created by young people who said, ‘Hey we need services that aren’t there,’” said APACEvotes board member Akemi Matsumoto.

The privilege to vote was perceived more as a gift rather than a burden in the ’60s, said API activist Sharon Maeda. It was not until 1943 that Chinese Americans were first permitted to become citizens, much less vote, Maeda said.

“As a daughter of Americans put in concentration camps during WWII, it was mandatory that everyone vote ‘so we won’t get put in camps again’ was the community saying,” Maeda said.

Nonprogressive Asian Americans are victims of the lack of civic education, Maeda explained, while some have a hard time breaking the language barrier, which APACE is working on.

“In terms of understanding the material, we (APACE) can take people to the elections, and they can witness how ballots are counted,” Matsumoto said. “We certainly haven’t set that up yet, but we are working on it.”

Language is not the only problem. API immigrants who came from countries where there was little trust in government also deal with a fear of government when they come to the United States.

“The problem with Asian Americans and APIs, especially [recent immigrants], is that they have a hard time trusting government,” Matsumoto said. “Voting requires giving them all of your confidential information.”

Getting young people to vote is another problem according to APACE. Complacency prevails within the API community when we forget about our roots, the days when voting was enormously different, according to Maeda.

“I remember what a big celebration it was when my grandfather became a naturalized citizen,” Maeda said. “[We had a] big dinner that was as elaborate as New Year’s celebrations complete with cake with little American flags all around the edge.”

APACE is currently hosting a contest to get more Asian American young people to vote. Groups of college students compete by canvassing with different tactics: knocking door-to-door, sending emails, posting flyers, etc. The focus of the contest is on the Puget Sound region of Washington, particularly South Seattle and South and East King County because the API population is overwhelmingly represented in the Puget Sound region. According to APACE, nearly 80% of the entire API population lives in King (54%), Pierce (13%), and Snohomish (13%) counties. The team that registers the most voters wins $400. Second place wins $300 and third place wins $200. To register, visit http://apacevotes.org/slider/2015-student-voter-registration-contest/. Teams must be affiliated with Asian and/or Pacific Islander student organizations (social, political, cultural,religious, fraternity, sorority) on a Puget Sound campus.

APACE contest rewards young people for registering voters

Announcement

Kin On gala celebrates 30th

anniversaryIE News Services

The Kin On 30th Anniversary Gala happens Saturday, September 19 at the Westin Bellevue. Gary Locke will keynote the event.

Net proceeds from the gala will go toward Kin On’s $3.5 million capital campaign to expand its existing stand-alone nursing home into a multi-site aging friendly campus. The completed expansion will offer services such as a community center, assisted living facility and adult family home, and a short-term rehab wing and sun room. For more info, visit kinon.org.


Bie Sukrit, center, and the Company of Waterfall. Photo taken at the Pasadena Playhouse. • Photo by Jim Cox

By Roxanne RayIE Contributor

The newest production at Seattle’s 5th Avenue Theatre is a vast collaboration across countries, cultures, and generations: Waterfall is a new musical created by composer David Shire and librettist Richard Maltby, Jr., based upon the classic Thai novel Behind the Painting, which was adapted into a Thai musical by the same title under the direction of producer-director Tak Viravan.

Maltby told the International Examiner that Waterfall is years in the making. “The project came to me about five years ago, when I was approached to write lyrics for a proposed American adaptation of a musical called Behind the Painting,” he said. “I suggested that the story would be transformed if the female lead were changed from an aristocratic Thai woman to an aristocratic American—but this seemingly simple idea required re-conceiving the show from top to bottom.”

This huge change required an expansion in the creative team. “Soon I was writing the script as well as the lyrics,” Maltby said. “The change also required taking a fresh look at the

Waterfall a vast collaboration across culturesscore, and I asked to have composer David Shire join the team.”

Maltby and Shire have a long history as successful partners in musical theatre. “David Shire and I met in our freshman year at Yale,” Maltby said. “In 1956!”

From the beginning, they shared common interests. He said: “We both came to Yale with the not-so-secret intention of writing a musical that would be produced by the Yale Dramatic Association. We were the only two people in our class (actually in the whole school) with that intention, and we really had no choice but to join forces.”

Maltby considers them both to be very fortunate. “We often marvel at our good luck, since we were basically thrown together, to have found partners who were actually talented,” he said. “We did indeed write two musicals at Yale—after which we came to New York and started working professionally. Our first break came when that young beginner Barbra Streisand recorded five of our songs in her earliest award-winning albums.”

Now, Waterfall is the latest in their series of successes. “Its producer-director, Tak Viravan, the brilliantly

multi-talented creator of Behind the Painting—a classic love story—wanted to bring it to America,” Maltby said, “but wasn’t sure how to do it.”

That possibility got the attention of producer Jack Dalgleish. “When I met Tak Viravan at the opening of Spring Awakening on the West End, we immediately hit it off!” Dalgleish said. “As I got to know Viravan and his work and aspirations, we started talking about developing his original musicals for Broadway.”

Dalgleish watched videos of more than a dozen of Viravan’s Thai musicals, and developed a short list of possibilities. “We narrowed it down to two—both tales of forbidden love, a common theme in my work,” he said. Ultimately, Behind the Painting was chosen for an American adaptation.

The project began slowly with a workshop production. “After we did the lab production of Behind the Painting, two of my colleagues separately suggested the Pasadena Playhouse,” Dalgleish said. “They contacted Sheldon Epps, the artistic director there, on my behalf and we set up a meeting.”

The conversation was a success, Dalgleish said: “I came from the meet-

ing knowing that the Playhouse would be the perfect home for our develop-mental production. Sheldon and I have very similar visions when it comes to diversity in our work and there is a large Asian Pacific Islander (API) community in the Los Angeles area (including the largest Thai community in the United States).”

As a producer, Dalgleish then sought to expand support for his production on the west coast. “With its high standards of artistic excellence and reputation as a premier incubator for new musicals, I always knew The 5th Avenue would be the perfect place for our Broadway tryout,” he said. “In fact, I started the conversation with David Armstrong and Bill Berry back in early 2013. The theatre’s Chinese-inspired design and Seattle’s large API community also made The 5th Avenue attractive to us.”

Librettist Maltby and composer Shire worked alongside Dalgleish the entire time. “We did readings of early versions of the script, in which we just brought in some actor friends to read the script around a table,” Maltby said. “After that we did a few official Actor’s Equity-approved readings, each a bit

WATERFALL: Continued on page 12 . . .


more elaborate, ending in the fully staged ‘Lab’ reading in early 2014.”

Maltby and Shire found this slow process beneficial to the current version of Waterfall. “I have done many musicals but none have made such genuine use of the ‘reading’ process,” Maltby said. “With each reading and performance, the show grew. The characters became more complex, and the historical context became more and more a force in the plot.”

This historical context was deemed crucial by the creative team. “The impact of America on Asia in the pre-WWII period is a fascinating story, and one which most Americans know little about,” Maltby said. “Americans know about Pearl Harbor and everything after that, but little about the time before it.”

It is this earlier time period of 1932 to 1940 in which Waterfall is set. “In 1932, Siam ended its monarchy and became a democracy, and based, as all new democracies are, on the model of America, Siam was being drawn towards America,” Maltby said, contrasting Siam with nearby Japan. “In Japan in 1932, American culture—music, dances, movies, clothes—was sweeping the country, so much so that it was considered a threat to the greatness of the culture of Imperial Japan.”

This proved to be a harbinger of dangerous things to come. “Japan, in contrast to Siam, was turning away from America,” Maltby described. “By 1940, American music was banned in Japan, and anti-American sentiment grew in tandem with Japan’s desire to reclaim its greatness by expanding outside its geographical borders.”

Combining this history with the original Thai story of Behind the Painting was a great undertaking. “All musicals are challenges, but musicals with original stories are the hardest,” Maltby said. “With all of this additional factual material coming into play, the story of the musical began to achieve an unexpected and quite thrilling scale.”

Maltby also considers Waterfall a good opportunity for Americans to understand their role on the larger world stage. “Americans don’t really understand how profoundly America and its culture, not to mention the ever-gleaming universal presence of the ‘American Dream,’ has affected the great world,” Maltby added. “America may be reviled, distrusted, embraced, idealized—sometimes all at the same time—but its presence as a moral and

defining concept never disappears. We often don’t understand the impact we have on the rest of the world.”

To communicate this impact, Maltby relied on the contributions of the entire creative team. “Musicals are living things. They change and grow. Sometimes they even grow up,” he said. “In some ways, I think Waterfall is now more mature.”

Producer Dalgleish believes that Waterfall offers not only a beauti-ful spectacle onstage, but that its story is relevant to multicultural audiences everywhere. “It’s an epic love story that tackles one of the most pressing questions facing the U.S. (and the world) today: How does one not lose one’s cultural identity in a modern world?”

He sought to produce a story that addresses contemporary cul-tural fears. “As we, as a people, be-come more homogeneous, we fear losing our cultural heritage and our identities, so we hold them tight,” he said. “It’s apparent today in the politics of the confederate flag, gay marriage, and immigration, by ex-ample.”

Writer Maltby agrees. “The show conjures up perhaps the greatest is-sue confronting America and the world today: How do you deal with cultural identity in a world that, as it becomes more modern, also becomes more homogenized?” he said. “Everywhere on the planet, people are dealing with variations on this issue. It is behind Ameri-ca’s immigration issues, Russia’s neo-imperialism, the extremists of Islam—the list is endless.”

Waterfall takes a different approach to these concerns. “In Waterfall, the issue is presented through the Asian, pre-World War II politics that are the backdrop to our love story,” he said. “Our protagonists, Noppon and Katherine, are running from themselves and think the answer lies in running to another culture, only to find, in the end, that they can embrace their heritage (or not) and live in a modern world.”

Dalgleish believes that the en-tire creative team has fulfilled this mission well. “It’s an inspired col-laboration,” he said, “and one of the most fulfilling of my career.”

Waterfall runs from October 1 to 25, at the 5th Avenue Theatre, 1308 Fifth Avenue, Seattle. For more information, visit w w w. 5 t h a v e n u e . o rg / s h o w /waterfall.

WATERFALL: Continued from page 11 . . .


Waterfall is a story of forbidden love, a story that will be familiar to Western au-diences who have grown up with Shake-speare’s Romeo and Juliet and other love-centered classics.

The new musical Waterfall is based on an original Thai story, Behind the Paint-ing, which focuses on the character of Noppon, who seeks his true yet forbid-den love. “Noppon is one of the great characters from Thai literature, and the production in Thailand was the first time the story of Behind the Painting would be performed on stage,” said leading Thai actor Bie Sukrit. “It was an honor to play Noppon in Behind the Painting in 2008 in Thai-land.”

But Waterfall also builds on Behind the Painting to combine both Thai and American elements. This is what interested director Tak Viravan in creating both musicals. “Behind the Painting is considered one of the most precious love stories in Thailand. It is about the emotions, and the inability to express those emotions,” Viravan said. “As Waterfall, it becomes another kind of love story.”

The theme of forbidden love is still prominent in Waterfall, but its cultural reach has become more expansive. “Our leading lady is now changed into an American,” director Viravan said. “Wa-terfall is about the differences of cultures in the world. It becomes about opening up to one another, as we learn about each other’s differences, as the world gets smaller.”

Actor Sukrit, who continues to play Noppon in this new version of the story, has found that his own experience as a performer is mirroring these intercultural encounters in Waterfall. “I was presented with this incredible opportunity to be a part of the American adaptation, Water-fall, and to do this project with Maltby & Shire,” he said. “And this is my first experience doing a musical in America.”

Sukrit reports that his learning curve has been steep. “I have had to learn so many new things including American acting, theater singing, theater dance, not to mention the English language,” he said. “That’s challenged me so much.”

Viravan agrees that it’s been a great challenge for the entire creative team. “The pacing is usually faster for Ameri-

can audiences, and we don’t waste a word or a sentence,” he said. “For the Thai audi-ences, it was more easy-going. However, as the show has grown, it becomes about how to balance our differences, which is what the show is all about.”

Sukrit says he continues to work on finding that balance in Noppon’s charac-ter. “In Thailand, I know Thai audiences. I know how to make them laugh, how to make them happy, or how to make them cry,” he said. “But I don’t have that sense yet for American audiences.”

As an actor, Sukrit has expressed ap-preciation for the support he has received

from the American performers in the ensemble. “They are all so nice and everyone helps me so much with my English, as well as helping me to learn ev-erything I want to know about America,” he said.

Director Viravan said that the entire team has been gener-ous with their feedback. “The Asian cultures and American cultures are so different, so it is about how to communicate to the American audiences, while still being true and sincere to our culture,” he said. “We have to listen very carefully to everyone in the team, and hon-or every note and comment.”

Seattle audiences should also expect some surprises in this latest version of Waterfall. “There is a scene in which we have to communicate to the audience that a Thai man and a Thai woman are lovers, and they are in a public place,” Vi-

ravan said. “Naturally, for an American audience, the characters would kiss.”

But this typical American gesture would not ring true in Thailand. “Some Thai women in the audience in Pasadena knew that kiss was wrong, and were quite offended,” Viravan said. “I knew that that was wrong, too.”

Yet, as the director, Viravan had to find a balance between cultural authenticity in Thailand and cultural recognition in America. “We let it be that way in Pasa-dena [with the kiss], because it was the best way to communicate to the Ameri-can audience,” he said. “But with this new version, we know we have to find another way to communicate, since we want it to be true as well.”

Both Viravan and Sukrit have found the parallels of promoting intercultural understanding within Waterfall’s story and in their own creative experience to be illuminating, and Viravan summed it up by echoing what many artists have found over the centuries: “Art imitates life, and so life imitates art.”

Behind the musical: Thai tale inspiration for Waterfall

Bie Sukrit makes his U.S. debut in Waterall. • Photo by Jim Cox



Waterfall’s main character Noppon is surrounded by half a dozen female performers, and two of the most prominent are actors J. Elaine Marcos, who plays Nuan, and Lisa Helmi Johanson, who plays Kumiko.

Both characters are integral to the broad palette of Waterfall’s story. Nuan is a Thai servant to the Thai Ambassador to the United States, Chao Khun, during the 1930’s, and Kumiko is a Japanese-American woman who overcomes discrimination to become an entrepreneur.

Both Marcos and Johanson are excited to be part of the Waterfall ensemble. “When I heard Waterfall was the new Maltby/Shire musical,” said Marcos, “I thought, ‘Who wouldn’t want to collaborate with a creative team like that?’”

Johanson was likewise initially interested in the creative team. “That’s really all that it took to get me on board and I’ve been gratefully enjoying the ride!” she said.

While Marcos is Filipino-Canadian, rather than Thai like her character Nuan, she feels other connections to Nuan’s position in society. “She is traditional, proud, and very good at serving her Master although she is very reluctant about the modern changes that are happening in society,” Marcos said. “I can relate to trying to adapt to new ways of doing things.”

Primarily a specialist in comedy, Marcos sees the role of Nuan as an opportunity

Women of Waterfall help to tell story of struggleto deepen her experience as a performer. “When I read the part of Nuan, I thought I would be able to bring to life the humor of that character,” she said, “and at the same time stretch myself as an actor to also show my ‘dramatic’ side, which I haven’t had a chance to do yet.”

During this new exploration, Marcos en-gaged in extensive creative experimenta-tion. “During the rehearsal process in New York and Pasadena, the way I played Nuan changed daily,” she said. “I am sure I made the creative staff wonder, ‘will she ever find the [expletive] character?’”

But Marcos didn’t let fear impede her. “I pretty much used all six weeks to discover how to say simple lines like, ‘I see,’” she said. “It wasn’t until our first performance in front of an audience that I figured it out.”

Marcos believes that the performer-audience interaction is key. “I had explored all these ways to play Nuan, but since the audience was the last piece to the live-theatre-puzzle, they informed me which choice was the strongest,” she said.

This experience brought her back to her root motivation as a performer. “It made me realize again why I love live theatre,” Marcos said. “I love the interaction with the audience, hearing them laugh or clap, or just having the feeling that they are with you, even without them making a sound.”

Lisa Helmi Johanson, playing Kumiko, also found Waterfall to be a good developmental project. “The role of Kumiko has actually changed a bit from the previous production that we did at the Pasadena

Playhouse just a couple of months ago, but I think that they are changes that help to more specifically define her character,” Johanson said. “While I loved the work that I got to do in the previous run, I’m even more excited at the beginning of this process here at the 5th Avenue Theatre because the changes that have been made add layers of depth to Kumiko, which is a delightful thing for any actor.”

Johanson, who grew up in Northern Virginia outside of Washington D.C., describes the changes in Kumiko as being almost like night and day. “She went from being a sassy student who loves American

dance and music to a conniving entrepreneur who owns a dance club almost Prohibition-style in the basement of an empty warehouse and takes risks in her own little fight for freedom,” Johanson said.

But at heart, it is Kumiko’s strength that Johanson finds compelling. “Kumiko has a heart of gold,” she said. “I think that it’s from her pain of not being accepted in either America or Japan that she wants to provide an outlet for others who may be constrained or oppressed in their own way.”

But for Johanson, Waterfall is not just a compendium of various strong characters. “It’s an important show to be done for Asian Americans because, while it does have certain plot points that deal with ethnically specific parts of history, it’s also about Asians dealing with problems that humans universally struggle with,” she said.

She believes the commonality of human experience is often given short shrift. “Sadly, that’s something that is generally lacking in mainstream media,” she said. “People of different races can have problems that don’t involve their race. It seems obvious but is somehow not said in mainstream media.”

Johanson hopes that Waterfall can add this perspective that she finds lacking elsewhere. “I relish the opportunity to contribute to a story that is about a beautifully true but forbidden love,” she said, “and the discovery of growing into the person you’re meant to be through the cultivation of experience.”

Kumiko (Lisa Helmi Johanson, center) in Waterfall. • Photo by Jim Cox

By Orlando MoralesGuest Columnist

As The 5th Avenue Theatre gears up for its upcoming production of Waterfall, individuals within the organization are taking the opportunity to evaluate The 5th’s progress in its efforts to bring more diversity to the musical theater genre. While Waterfall marks an important inclusion of Asian history and culture on a major regional stage—both in terms of the stories being told on the stage and the actors that appear on the stage, equally focused efforts toward a more diverse and inclusive theater community are also being made offstage—namely, through the efforts of our growing education department which reaches over 75,000 students a year.

As education departments among nonprofit arts organizations go, the 5th’s team of five is substantial. It’s also a team for which the terms “diverse” and “diversity” are not just bullets on a mission statement, but also self-descriptive. “We’re like the Planeteers!” jokes Anya Rudnick, Director of Education and Outreach, referencing a popular animated TV-series which featured delegates from

each major continent. Rudnick is also referencing the fact that combined, the small staff represents no less than Jewish, Japanese, Norwegian, Celtic, Filipino, and Zimbabwean heritages.

Recently, The 5th’s education team—Anya Rudnick, Orlando Morales, Lauren Ruhl, Connie Corrick, and newest member Kwapi Vengesayi—found time to sit down with Bill Berry (Producing Artistic Director) to talk about musical theater, a recent touring show that introduced the history of Japanese American Internment in the Pacific Northwest to elementary and junior high students, and what it is like to be a “diverse” department implementing a number of diversity and inclusivity initiatives.

BRINGING THEATER TO THE COMMUNITYBill: We are working on multiple

initiatives that deal with “inclusivity” and “diversity” in our theater programs. But are we feeling like our programs reach out to all students equally? Are we representing the communities that surround us?

Anya: Well, we’re working on it. I don’t think we’re there yet. But we’re definitely trying to work towards it. And

it’s important that, as a department, it’s at the forefront of our thinking. Some of our programs are making big strides—like Adventure Musical Theater—which performs in elementary and middle schools. In that regard, yes. We are reaching so many students from every background and we’re bringing stories—like Baseball Saved Us [a musical based on the book by Ken Mochizuki]. We went all over the state with a show about the Japanese American experience in the Pacific Northwest during World War II,

including into school communities where the audience (students and teachers) have personal connections to the history.

Lauren: It was interesting to me how many of the students we performed for—Japanese American students included—didn’t know the internment story. Or at least didn’t understand what the experience meant—both emotionally and historically. But actually looking back, I was the same way. It was the story of my grandparents.

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Commentary: 5th Avenue Theatre committed to education, diversity

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And we knew that it happened, but it wasn’t something that they really talked about. They wanted to move on past it. But we had people come to see Baseball Saved Us who had lived through the internment experience who then wanted to talk more about it after seeing the performance.

Anya: And the number one question that I heard students ask was some version of “were their rights really taken away?” I was amazed that even the younger students internalized that—that they understood what it means to have one’s civil rights taken away.

Bill: That’s important given that one of the biggest obstacles for our theater is the notion that musical theater isn’t relevant.

MAKING RELEVANT MUSICAL THEATERConnie: Well, in the mind of most people

who don’t know it well, musical theater is a light and fluffy form of entertainment.

Anya: That’s something that we need to combat as a department. Along with the perception that The 5th Avenue Theatre and our programs are only for a certain group of people.

Orlando: But you could argue that every traditional culture places value on theater and music.

Kwapi: Yes, my experience being from southern Africa—these were the ways to pass down morals and traditions…

Bill: Yet, we’re still facing the reality that people of color, and immigrants, and non-Western experiences are currently underrepresented in musical theater.

Orlando: Well, we also have to look at what’s happening in the schools. When I go into schools that are labeled as “underserved” and encounter students that lack arts education and seem totally disconnected to both “traditional traditions” and to the American musical theater tradition, nothing is more frustrating. There are so many forms of expression and storytelling between theater and music and musical theater, but so many students in our area are missing out on this heritage. And the fact that access to arts education is still predictable along lines of socioeconomic and racial disparity… that kills me.

Kwapi: But we should also acknowledge that students can be connecting to aspects of that heritage—just not at school. Maybe at churches and community centers...

Orlando: You’re totally right. I used

to do Filipino folk dancing at church, growing up…

Connie: But students aren’t necessarily seeing how their experiences could inform what we do here at the theater.

Orlando: Exactly! We’re not going into a community simply because we believe that it needs musical theater. It’s actually, “We’re reaching out to you in the community—musical theater needs you.”

Kwapi: Ideally, we’re helping create a new crop who will become tomorrow’s artist and storytellers. And that their art is informed by what is relevant to them. It’s an investment in the future.

Anya: They’ll write the next Sound of Music! And have that big of a mark on society.

Lauren: Okay, but after premiering at the historic 5th Avenue Theatre.

A SYMBOLIC THEATERBill: That brings up another point

to consider—that our theater, with its Chinese-inspired design, at least symbolically connects us to the idea of Asia.

Kwapi: … And the idea of a global community.

Orlando: And now, this is where we’re creating American musical theater.

Connie: Well [in 1926], it was a time when Seattle was reaching out to Asia—it was “The Gateway to The Orient.” There

was an importance in connecting with another part of the world.

Orlando: And now it’s kind of symbolic of what we’re trying to do in our education department.

Lauren: Become a gateway to the community!

Kwapi: Exactly…Anya: But, it’s also more complicated…

the theater was built in 1926, when there were all kinds of federal exclusion acts, preventing Asian immigrants from settling here—or becoming citizens.

Orlando: Yes, that’s messy—there’s a lot to unpack there. But that’s also the history of America. And this region. And musical theater, in a way. But here we are—in a place with this complicated history but with the opportunity to take what we’ve inherited, celebrate its significance, and share it with as many people as we can.

Bill: Some kid should write a musical about that.

The 5th Avenue Theatre reaches over 75,000 students a year through musical theater classes and workshops, performances at elementary and junior high schools through the Adventure Musical Theater Touring Company, the annual 5th Avenue Awards which recognizes outstanding achievement in high school musical theater, and Rising Star Project, a professional development and career exploration program for Washington State teens.

Audience at AMT. • Photo by Anya Rudnick

By Maria BatayolaIE Columnist

The 5th Avenue Theatre’s commitment to multiracial casting is laudable! They have created rich, mind-bending, and mind-opening musical theatre experiences for greater Seattle audiences.

A couple of years ago, the 5th took tremendous risk with the vintage Rogers and Hammerstein’s musical Oklahoma. They cast the malevolent character Jud Fry with a black man—yes, a black actor named Kyle Scatliffe. The conflict in the plot between ranchers and farmers and who’s going to get the girl quickly morphed to a black and white racial conflict from the audience perspective.

I know this because I attended one of the post show discussions. From the comments, audience members could not suspend their black and white racial constructs, albeit learned, and stop them from overlaying the play. I believe that transformative tough dialogue has allowed the 5th Avenue Theatre to continue to socialize its audiences to look beyond color with continued multicultural casting.

How far have we gone? In looking back at the early ’70s when I was a theater and political science major at the University of Washington, I recall closed artistic doors. The only UW student production

Commentary: Theatre Multiculturalism—How Far? How Deep?role I got was playing a smoking, hard-drinking black reporter in the Vietnam era play Coming Home. Yes.

Even though I got very positive feedback as an actress, I also got a lot of soft letdowns with, “I hope you understand but the audience is not going to buy it,” and with the unspoken, “with you brown girl in this or that role.” I held my tongue to sustain my likability factor. For me, the logic is simple. I am paying a lot for this education to get stage experience for my resume and I am told the real world cannot see beyond my color therefore I cannot get the part. Ergo, I don’t have any stage experience on my resume ergo I can’t get jobs after I graduate with a degree in Theatre.

The lack of opportunity prompted seven of us to co-found TEA (the Theatrical Ensemble of Asians), the forerunner of Northwest Asian American Theatre (NWAAT). We were artists looking to tell our own stories and use our own talents on and off stage. As an emerging phenomena, we had a new title—“Ethnic” theatre. I would further say “American Ethnic” theatre.

Our companions on the journey included Black Arts West, which was well on its way, Red Earth, and of course the anchor team, The Group, led by our most experienced director Ruben Sierra

(my UW Theatre program counselor). We all thrived in the newly created UW Ethnic Cultural Center and Theatre ecosystem. This incubator was hard fought by student of color demonstrations vis-à-vis the listening heart of former President Charles Odegaard under the able stewardship of Center directors Roy Flores then Sharon Maeda. An incredible legacy hopefully to be celebrated at the UW Drama Department’s 75th Anniversary this 2016.

(And to be fair, I did stay for summer stock after my fourth year and thanks to Greg Falls, founder of ACT, he casted me in a substantial Greek male role in The Kitchen to make up for being Bifur and a girl scout walk on in a British play. An yes, I graduated as a double Husky with degrees in Theatre and in PoliSci.)

Today, the core question is still the same—“Will audiences believe in the ‘truth’ of what is presented on stage?” This is at the constant heart of every producer and director’s decision. Is the story believable? Are the characters believable? Is there excellence in the production? Is the theatre a heart and mind transformative experience?

Through years of Gene Roddenberry’s Star Trek, ethnic productions of mainstream theatre shows and emotionally tough ethnic plays, audiences

have become more sensitized and used to visual multi-ethnic casting, relieving us of our fear that our world will come crashing down with these mind bending experiences. As Rick Steves would say, “rearranging our cultural furniture.”

Seattle is the top ranked in the nation for having the highest ratio of cultural and recreational venues for each resident (1 to 354). Theatre productions the past six weeks show quite a phlethora of American ethnic shows including an original libretto, American Dream at the Seattle Opera; original musical by rock star Kevin So in Great Wall at Issaquah Village Theatre; Tom Stoppard’s Indian Ink produced by South Theatre Company and Pratidhwani; Jenny Lim’s Paper Angels produced by SIS; Jeanne Sakata’s We Hold These Truths at ACT; Zephyr by Pork Filled Players.

The question now is what is the status of American multicultural theatre? This question will be explored in a two part series of articles: “American multiculturalism in mainstream theatre” and “American multiculturalism in Asian Pacific Islander theatre.”

By the way, this is a dialogue, please share your thoughts in a Letter to the Editor by emailing [email protected].


IE ARTS

IE readers, welcome to our 2015 Fall Arts Guide. We help celebrate the 5th Av-enue Theatre’s American debut produc-tion of Waterfall, a musical from Thai-land with a series of “behind-the-scenes” reports on how the production came about. We also have the first in the series of articles by Maria Batayola about multi-cultural casting in Seattle’s theatre world. Ken Mochizuki looks back on his memoir of growing up on Beacon Hill and how it became a movie (anniversary screening at the Wing). We also look at new mov-ies and the tales behind them. Also a pro-file on writer Naomi J. Williams and so much more. Below you will find a small sampling of what to look out for this fall in the arts. For the comprehensive Fall Arts Preview, go to www.iexaminer.org. Dress warmer and enjoy all that fall has to offer.

Alan Chong Lau, IE Arts Editor

Visual Arts“Genius/21 Century/Seattle” is a large-

scale celebration of exceptional multidisci-plinary and collaborative artistic practice in Seattle in the twenty-first century. Featured are over 60 visual artists, filmmakers, writ-ers, theater artists, composers, musicians, choreographers, dancers, and arts organi-zation. Artists participating in “Genius” were selected by leading arts writers and the Seattle artistic community to be recipi-ents of “The Stranger Genius Award”. Ey-vind Kang, Lead Pencil Studio, Susie J. Lee and D.K. Pan are among the list of distin-guished artists included in this exhibition. The exhibition and its more than thirty-five events will from from Sept. 26, 2015 to Jan. 10, 2016. Frye Art Museum. 704 Terry Ave. (206) 622-9250. Admission and parking are always free. Closed Mondays.

Cornish instructor/sculptor Robert Rhee who ran an artist Airbnb earlier has a solo show of his own work made from gourds in cages. The work is stark, spare and ulti-mately moving if his earlier work in “Out of Sight” is anything to go by. This solo show is entitled “Winter Wheat” and is on view Nov. 5 – 28. Both shows at Glassbox Gallery at 831 Seattle Blvd. S. Go to glassboxgallery.com for details.

New work by Megan Quan Knight opens Oct. 22 at ArtsWest Gallery. On view through Nov. 22. 4711 California Ave. S.W. (206) 938-0339 or go to artswest.org.

Bellevue Arts Museum brings a wonder-ful show of handcrafted collaboration be-tween husband and wife in “In The Realm of Nature: Bob Stocksdale & Kay Sekima-chi.” Individually and together, these two artists pushed the use of wood/paper as a material to new creative heights. Stocksdale specialized in the use of woods from around the world in his bowls. Sekimachi’s work in-spires as visual poetry applied to material. Up until Oct. 18, 2015. Signe S. Mayfield, the curator of this show will talk about the col-lection on Fri., Oct. 2 at 7pm. $5 admission. 510 Bellevue Way NE. (425) 519-0770 or go to www.bellevuearts.org.

Photographer Michael Kenna has spent a considerable amount of time in Japan taking images of landscapes and still-lives. There is a pristine, precise delicacy to his work that

catches every detail. A new series entitled “Forms of Japan: Photographs” comes to G. Gibson Gallery with an artist and booksign-ing reception set for Nov. 5th from 6 – 8pm. 300 South Washington in Pioneer Square. Go to www.ggibsongallery.com for details.

Fram Kitagawa is Director of the Echigo-Tsumari Art Trienniale, one of the largest art festivals in the world. He gives a talk entitled “Art in the Age of the Global Environment” on Nov. 12 at Henry Art Gallery. Free. 15th Ave. NE & NE 41st St. (206) 543-2280.

“Hello! Exploring the Supercute World of Hello Kitty” is a show that should prove to be a family favorite. On loan from the Japanese American National Museum, the show lands in Seattle at the EMP Museum at Seattle Center on Nov. 14 and remains on view through May 15, 2016. 325 – 5th Ave. N. (206) 770-2700.

“Mugen/Infinity” is a show of new work by local lighting designer Yuri Kinoshita who creates wonderful illuminated sculp-tures for rooms both private and public. Oct. 20 – 31 with tea ceremonies set for Oct. 23 & 24. Pottery Northwest at 226 First Ave. N. (206) 285-4421 or go to potterynorthwest.org/index.htm.

New and recent shows /activities at the Wing include the following: “Tales of Tails: Animals in Children’s Books is the latest show to open at the museum. “CONSTRUCT/S” is a new group show that presents a diverse group of six inter-national, national and local female artists who will transform The Wing’s art gallery into a multi-sensory, interactive exploration of identity, subjectivity, history, culture and gender. It is curated by Dr. Stacey Uradomo-Barre. It remains on view through April 17th, 2016. “Do You Know Bruce?” is a major new show on the personal, intimate story of mar-tial arts artist and film star Bruce Lee and the significance of Seattle in his life. Opens Oct. 4th with the full support of the Lee Fam-ily. Year 2 of the exhibition opens Oct. 3rd, 2015 and digs deeper into the significance of Bruce Lee and his impact in media dur-ing a time of racial stereotypes and barriers. Includes text panels by national blogger Phil Yu (aka Angry Asian Man) plus Green Hor-net toys, personal letters, behind-the-scenes photos from the sets of “Way of the Dragon” and “Enter the Dragon”, hand-written film

notes, rare photos inside his early China-town studio and much much more. A new set of Bruce Lee’s Chinatown Tours begin Oct. 6th. 719 South King St. (206) 623-5124 or visit www.wingluke.org.

Currently on view at Seattle Asian Art Museum in Volunteer Park, “Paradox Of Place: Contemporary Korean Art” is a new show set for Oct. 31, 2015–March 13, 2016 at the Tateuchi Galleries. This is the first ma-jor exhibition of Korean contemporary art in over a decade in Seattle. This show was put together in collaboration with Ms. Choi Eunju, former chief curator of the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art Korea. Six leading-edge Korean contempo-rary artists’ representative works will be in this show. Works range from mix-media, installation, video art, to photography, all of which are prominent forms in Korean con-temporary art. Co-organized by the Seattle Art Museum and National Museum of Mod-ern and Contemporary Art, Korea with gen-erous support from the Korea Foundation. For complete information on all events, go to seattleartmuseum.org.

“New Stories from the Edge of Asia: Ta-baimo” marks the first solo museum exhi-bition of this amazing Japanese artist who uses alluring large-scale surreal animations that combine everyday objects and experi-ences. Opens Feb. 5, 2016 at the San Jose Museum of Art. 110 South Market St. (408) 271-6840. Not to miss!

The Japanese American National Muse-um has an important photography show en-titled “Making Waves: Japanese American Photography, 1920—1940” tentatively set for late Feb. of 2016 and curated by South-ern California photography historian Dennis Reed who has curated a previous excellent show of the Japanese Camera Club of Los Angeles. 100 North Central Ave. (213) 625-0414.

“Ishiuchi Miyako: Post War Shadows” is a retrospective of his self-taught photographer who emerged out of the shadows of WW II in a mostly male generation of Japanese photographers. Her work offered a differ-ent perspective on the Japan she knew, the hometown port city of Yokosuka. Later work would fuse both the personal and political as she did work on Hiroshima/Nagasaki, Frida Kahlo’s clothing and the map of the skin found on different torsos. Opens Oct. 6, 2015

and remains on view until Feb. 21, 2016. “The Younger Generation: Contemporary Japanese Photography” is a complimentary group show of young women photographers that have surfaced in the 1990’s influenced by Ishiuchi’s work. They include Kawauchi Rinko, Onodera Yuki, Otsuka Chino, Sawa-da Tomoko and Shiga Lieko. This show has identical exhibition dates as Ishiuchi’s show. J. Paul Getty Museum. 1200 Getty Center Dr. (310) 440-7330.

Opening Sept. 10th and on view through Jan. 3, 2016 is “Philippine Gold: Treasures of Forgotten Kingdoms.” It showcases re-cently excavated objects that highlight the prosperity and achievements of the little-known Philippine Kingdoms that flour-ished long before the Spanish discovered the region and colonized it. They affirm the unprecedented creativity, prosperity, and sophisticated metalworking tradition of the pre-colonial period. They also attest to flour-ishing cultural connections and maritime trade in Southeast Asia during what was an early Asian economic boom. Also showing at the same time is “Video Spotlight: Philip-pines,” an exhibition of contemporary video art by Poklong Anading, Martha Atienza, and Mark Salvatus. Asia Society Museum at 725 Park Ave. in New York City. Go to AsiaSociety.org/museum for details.

“Martin Wong: Human Instamatic” cov-ers the full trajectory of this Chinese Ameri-can painter from his Bay Area roots to his pivotal role in documenting the multicultur-al environs of the Lower East Side of New York. Opens Oct. 9 and remains on view through Feb. 12, 2016. Bronx Museum of the Arts in Bronx, New York. 1040 Grand Concourse. (718) 681-6000. The West Coast site for this traveling exhibition will be Sept. – Dec. 2017 at the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive in their new loca-tion on Center St.

Performing ArtsNonsequitur’s Fall Concerts at the Cha-

pel present a wide-ranging series of experi-mental music and sound art as part of the Wayward Music Series at the Chapel Per-formance Space in the historic Good Shep-herd Center in Wallingford. Some highlights include the following: Scrape is a collective string orchestra founded by Jim Knapp and Eyvind Kang. They will perform composi-tions by Wayne Horvitz, Sumi Tonooka, Jarrad Powell and Knapp himself on Oct. 8 at 8pm. Two Americans and Two Japa-nese collaborate in the give-and-take world of electroacoustic improvised music. With Tetuzi Akiyama on guitar, Bryan Eubanks on saxophone, Jason Kahn on percussion and Toshimaru Nakamura on electronics. Set for Friday, Oct. 30 at 8pm. Judy Dun-away is considered the “mother of balloon music” and she comes to Seattle on Sat. Nov. 14 at 8pm to improvise with local instrument builder and sound-finder Susie Kozawa and friends. 4649 Sunnyside Ave. N. on the 4th floor of the Good Shepard Center. For de-tails on the whole series, go to websites for Nonsequitar or Wayward Music Series.

Dr. L. Subramaniam makes a rare Se-attle appearance with Fareed Ayaz and Abu Muhammad as part of the Seattle Theatre Group’s 2015/2016 season. They will appear on Sept. 10th at the Moore Theatre. Subra-mamiam is an acclaimed South Indian vio-


IE ARTS

linist, composer and conductor. He is trained in the classical Carnatic music tradition and western classical music. He is respected for his virtuoso playing and compositions in orchestral fusion. He comes from a fam-ily tradition of musicians and has released over 200 recordings. Fareed Ayaz and Abu Muhammad come from a South Asian fam-ily that are masters of Qawwaili Sufi music. They belong to a music school founded in the 14th

Oct. 9 – Nov. 18 are the dates for Earshot Jazz Festival 2015 bringing exciting lo-cal, national and international musicians to various Seattle stages. Performing as part of this series is local percussionist/composer Paul Kikuchi and his “Songs of Nihonma-chi”, an evocative collage of turn-of-the cen-tury Japanese popular songs re-interpreted in modern arrangements. Kikuchi’s great grandfather who settled in Eastern Washing-ton had a record collection of such tunes. Re-cently Kikuchi was able to go to Japan on a Japan/U.S. Exchange Artist Fellowship and research more of this early music of the era. Tues., Nov. 5 at the Panama Hotel at 6pm. To get the full schedule of the Earshot Jazz Festival 2015, go to www.earshot.org. The Panama Hotel is at 605 S. Main St. in the Nihonmachi section of Chinatown/ID.

The Modern Sky Festival originated in Beijing a few years back and has now gone global. This year this festival comes to Seat-tle at Seattle Center Mural Amphitheater on Oct. 11th from 1pm to 10pm. Headliners in-clude noted rock groups from the West and a batch of Chinese rock bands as well. The Gang of Four, The Black Lips, Ariel Pink and Mirel Wagner are names you might know. But what’s impressive about this fes-tival is that you also get a peek at what Chi-nese rock bands are up to. Bands scheduled to rock the stage include New Pants (“synth-heavy dance punk anthems”), Song Dongye , Miserable Faith and Hedgehog (“noise-pop trio from Beijing”). Go to http://www.ticketfly.com/event/899401-modern-sky-music-festival-seattle/ for details.

Nikkei taiko virtuoso Kenny Endo pres-ents a show that features over 40 years of his music in a concert with Kenny Endo Con-temporary Ensemble at Kent-Meridian Per-forming Arts Center at 10020 S.E. 256th in Kent. Oct. 16. (253) 856-5051 or go to www.kentarts.com.

ON The Boards has another exciting sea-son of performance art in all genres. Of par-ticular interest is Degenerate Art Ensemble’s (led by Crow Nishimura and Joshua Kohl) “Predator Songstress” which has been cre-ated in stages and zeroes in on the theme of totalitarianism, surveillance, and control filtered through a modern day surreal fairy tale dusted with butoh and anime crumbs. Dec. 3 – 6, 2015. Tanya Tagaq is an amaz-ing Inuit throat singer who digs into past, present and future with a flexible, power-ful voice that will have you on your feet as she blends native tradition with electronica, industrial and metal influences to tear apart the reels of the silent movie, “Nanook of the North” projected behind her as she sings. One night only on April 6, 2016. 100 Roy St. (206) 217-9888.

Set for 5th Avenue Theatre’s 2015/2016 season is the World Premiere of “Waterfall, The Musical” (see various connected ar-

ticles in this issue) based on the Thai novel “Behind the Painting” about a forbidden love affair between a young Thai student and the American wife of a Thai diplomat in 1930’s Thailand on the eve of WWII. It marks the U.S. debut of Thai music super-star Bie Sukrit Wisetkaew as the student and is directed by Tak Viravan. With book & lyr-ics by Richard Malty Jr. and choreography by Dan Knechtges. This is a co-production with Pasadena Playhouse and is billed as “a groundbreaking collaboration between Os-car and Tony-winning American and Asian theatrical artists”. October 1st – 25th. ThGo to www.thavenue.org or call (206) 625-1900.

“Ikebana Power” highlights the art of Japanese flower arrangement in a differ-ent way as living sculptural ikebana turned into performance art. Flower arrangement master Tetsunori Kawana makes his U.S. debut, takes Japanese floral art off the table and sculpts it large across the stage. Oct. 3 at 1:30pm at Kirkland Performance Center. For tickets, go to ikebanapower.org.

The UW World Series season for 2015/2016 has some extraordinary perfor-mances booked from around the world. For their UW Seattle Meany Hall location. In the “World Dance Series”, Seattle favorites Sankai Juku return with the North Ameri-can premiere of “Umusuna: Memories Be-fore History” Oct 1 – 3 at 8pm (Co-present-ed with Seattle Theatre Group). This work by this contemporary butoh group evokes the essence of duality and unity encapsu-lated in the Chinese characters for “birth” and “earth” that combine to form the work’s title. The Akram Khan Company is known for fusing the classical Indian form of kathak with contemporary dance. They make their northwest debut with “Kaash” in which the theme of Hindu gods, black holes, Indian time cycles, tablas, creation and destruction all play key roles. Nov. 12 – 14th at 8pm. (206) 543-4880 or go to uwworldseries.org or get tickets in-Person at 1313 NE 4lst St.

As part of Seattle Rep’s 2015/2016 new season, Pulitzer Prize winning playwright Ayad Akhtar’s “Disgraced” will be per-formed Jan. 8th – 31st. The story is about a Pakistani-born successful New York lawyer whose life is turned upside-down when his Muslim heritage is questioned. 155 Mercer St. (206) 443-2222 for tickets.

“Ethnomusicology Visiting Artists Con-cert: Ade Suparman; Sudanese Music of Indonesia” takes place on June 2, 2016 at 7:30pm at Meany Hall on the Seattle UW campus. Go to www.music.washington.edu or call Arts UW Ticket Office at (206) 543-4880.

“Monstress” is a theatrical adaptation based on a book of short stories by Lysley Tenorio created by Philip Kan Gotanda and Sean San Jose as Directed by Carey Perloff at A.C.T’s Strand Theater in San Francisco from Sept. 16 – Nov. 22. 1127 Market St. (415) 749-2228 or [email protected].

The Written Arts/TalksCommunity activist/author Bob Santos

discusses “Gang of Four: Four Leaders, Four Communities, One Friendship” (Chin Music) with guest Larry Gossett on Sept. 17 at 7pm. Northwest African American Mu-seum. Free. 2300 S. Massachusetts. (206) 518-6000.

KOBO at Higo presents a free book read-ing event for the whole family. Local chil-dren’s writer Sanae Ishida will appear with her new book entitled “Little Kunoichi – the Ninja Girl”. Sat., Sept. 19 at 2pm. 604 S. Jackson or (206) 381-3000.

Elliott Bay Book Company has another list of readings set for spring in their store as well as at various venues around the city. All readings at the bookstore unless other wise noted. When it comes to Indonesia, probably the only writer of stature that has reached our shores in any quantity is Pramoedya Ananta Toer. Of course there are dozens of talented writers from that island country that remain unknown to us because of lack of translation. Eka Kurniawan represents that new generation and luckily for him and us, there are two new translations of his work now available. “Beauty Is a Wound” (New Directions) translated by Annie Tucker and “Man Tiger” (Verso) translated by Labodi-lah Sembiring. He makes his first US tour on behalf of these books and will be in Se-attle on Tues., Sept. 15 at 7pm at the Seattle Asian Art Museum. Co-presented with the Gardner Center For Asian Art & Ideas. The museum is at 1400 East Prospect in Volun-teer Park. Christina Lopez, Sarah Scott and Miriam Padilla are three local contributors to a new anthology entitled “Talking Back: Writers of Color” (Red Letter Press) as ed-ited by poet/activist Nellie Wong. On Sun., Sept. 20th at 3pm. Francis Terpak appears as part of the Saturday University Focus on Asia: Photography Past and Present Lecture Series”. She will talk about “Photography in China: The First Fifty Years”. Presented by the Gardner Center For Asian Art And Ideas in partnership with UW Jackson School of Int. Studies and Elliott Bay Book Company. This reading on Sat. , Sept. 26 at 9:30am at Seattle Asian Art Museum’s Stimson audi-torium. Go to www.seattleartmuseum.org for details. Naomi J. Williams reads from her debut novel entitled “Landfalls” (Far-rar, Straus & Giroux) Mon. Sept. 28 at 7pm. In this book she re-imagines the doomed French attempt to circumnavigate the world in the 1780’s with each chapter devoted to a different point of view of explorer, indig-enous people, loved ones and other Euro-peans. The voyage went through Alaska, Siberia, the South Pacific and other locales. Oct. 10 brings Amitiav Ghosh who will read from his highly anticipated new novel that is the final part of the best selling Ibis Trilogy entitled “Flood of Fire” at Town Hall Seattle. Award-winning poet Kimiko Hahn in town for a Hugo House writing workshop makes a rare Seattle appearance on Mon., Oct. 19 at 7pm paired with local poet Betsy Aoki whose “Work Dreams of Coder Girl” won an Honorable Mention for the Marsh Hawk Press Poetry Prize. Novelist Nina Revoyr reads from “Lost Canyon” (Akashic), a novel of a multi-cultural group of Angelenos on a hike in the Sierras who get more than they bargain for on Fri., Oct. 23 at 7pm. Again at Town Hall will be journalist Deepa Iyer on Dec. 1 who will talk about the new war on South Asians in the US in the wake of 9/11 in “We Too Sing America” (New Press). Noted journalist Meera Subramanian tack-les the complex issue of water and society in India and the activists dedicated to pre-serving the environment in a her first book entitled “A River Runs Again - India’s Natu-

ral World in Crisis, from the Barren Cliffs of Rajasthan to the Farmlands of Karnataka” (Public Affairs). Her Northwest tour takes her first to Powells in Portland on Nov. 2 and Nov. 3rd to Elliott Bay. Elliott Bay Book Company is on Capitol Hill at 1521 – 10th Avenue. (206) 624-6000.

Acclaimed Washington writer Alex Kuo and retired Professor of English at Wash-ington State University has been busy. Re-cent books include “My Private China” (Blacksmith), a collection of sketches of contemporary China on issues the Chinese find important and “Shanghai, Shanghai, Shanghai” (Red Bat Books), a new novel about a culture writer/closet novelist and his encounters with a myriad of characters that populate Chinese society including a Bogota pickpocket, a defiant Uighur woman with a borrowed baby, a German navel attaché, American evangelicals working the Beijing Olympics, and China’s first female conduc-tor of western classical music. He will be reading from these books during his North-west tour. Venues/dates are as follows – Nov. 30 at 2:30pm at Anacortes Public Library, Nov. 22 at 3pm at University Book Store in Seattle on the Ave., and Dec. 2 at 7pm at Vil-lage Books in Bellingham.

Hugo House, that local treasure of literary arts brimming full with readings and classes presents the following. The local edition includes Western University Professor and prize-winning poet Oliver de la Paz, Arlene Kim and others. Judged by Nancy Guppy and hosted by musician John ‘Roderick. Sept. 27 at 7pm and free. Award-winning poet Kimiko Hahn makes a rare West Coast appearance at Hugo House. Have you ever been interested in exploring classic Japanese poetic forms and see what it will do to your own poetic voice? Hahn will be in town to teach an Intensive entitled “Japanese Forms to Tilt the Western Mind” the workshop runs for about a week from Oct. 20 – 24 from 6 – 9pm. Hugo House members pay a discounted price. If you want to become a member, go to http://hugohouse.org/support/become-member/. To register for this class, go to http://hugohouse.org/classes/teach-ers/#18039. 1634 11th Ave. on Seattle’s Capi-tol Hill. (206) 322-7030.

Adrian Tomine has been telling stories in his comic format since he was a teenager with the ‘zine, “Optic Nerve”. Of late his work has been featured prominently in the New Yorker. His latest book entitled “Kill-ing And Dying” (Drawn & Quarterly) with no great fanfare simply zeroes in on the hole of the American heart and dwells there with incisive, stark portrayals of different Ameri-cans just trying to get through their lives day by day. Tender, heartbreaking and real. Catch him live at Portland’s Wordstock Fes-tival on Nov. 6 & 7.

The University of Washington continues to revamp its Asian American literary clas-sics with new cover art and new introduc-tions by scholars in the field. The latest to get this upgrade is Bienvenido N. Santos’ “Scent of Apples,” a beautifully crafted series of short stories that tell the stories of those early Filipino immigrants who came to this coun-try to build a new life and the hardships they found. With a foreword by Jessica Hagedorn and a new introduction by Allan Punzalan Isaac.


IE ARTS

By Karen Maeda AllmanIE Contributor

Novelist Naomi J. Williams’ novel, Landfalls, published this summer by Farrar, Straus & Giroux, is a fictionalized account of the ill-fated Lapérouse expedition of 1785, in which 200 men sailed in two frigates in an attempt to sail around the globe. After visiting Tenerife, Siberia, Sakhalin Island, and other places in the Pacific, the ships disappeared without a trace. The author was interviewed via email from her home in Davis, California.

Karen Maeda Allman: I’m always curious about why authors write particular stories and so I always ask about this. So, why this story? And, what did you learn in telling it?

Naomi J. Williams: I first learned of the Lapérouse expedition about 15 years ago, when my husband bought me an antique map that the seller said was of San Francisco Bay. It turned out to be a map of a bay in southeast Alaska, however, and to come from this interesting, ill-fated 18th-century voyage of exploration. I became obsessed with the expedition and with the idea of fictionalizing some of its stories.

Why this particular obsession? That’s harder to explain. I like nautical fiction, but it’s not necessarily my favorite genre. I’d certainly never imagined myself writing a novel of the sea. But I’ve always been fascinated by stories about people who leave home, cross borders, and generally end up where they don’t belong. This is no doubt connected to my upbringing, which involved changing countries and cultures and identities and the resulting, persistent sense of “unbelonging.”

As for what I learned through this project… Of course I became something of an expert on this particular expedition. But I also learned about how messy history and the writing of history can be. Among the numerous books and articles and websites I consulted, I came across all sorts of interesting irregularities: conflicting versions of the same incidents, unsubstantiated claims repeated from one source to the next, accounts that baldly favored one institution or regime or person in its telling, out-and-out plagiarism, hagiographies masquerading as scholarship—the works. Having said that, though, I remain very grateful to the many, many historians and record-keepers whose careful work informed this project from beginning to end.

I’m also tempted to say I learned how to write a book, but I don’t think I did. I only learned how to write this book. The next one feels just as impossible as this one did.

Allman: You’ve picked an interesting structure, bringing in points of view not only of the explorers but also of loved ones left behind and people encountered on the voyage. I think it’s more usual to do one or the other, but bringing them together really opens up the story for me. These story lines are not really happening in isolation, after all, historically. “Our” insistence that they be treated separately

seems to be related to what I’ll call the “creole anxiety” that crops up for some of your characters. What do you think about this?

Williams: I find your identification of “Creole anxiety” in the book and its connection to the book’s hybrid, multi-strand structure really interesting. I’ve never quite articulated it in that way before. I think you may be onto something. There’s certainly an undercurrent of anxiety throughout the novel around race, ethnicity, class, place of origin, authenticity, what constitutes full personhood, who has authority, et cetera, and maybe the way I distribute the story-telling across multiple narrators is an outgrowth of that general set of concerns.

One impetus for the book from the outset was an explicit desire to broaden the scope of traditional nautical fiction. Most such stories are told from one person’s point of view—often, though not always, the great white captain. I wanted to dethrone that figure and complicate the telling. I’m glad you found that that approach opened up the story rather than simply muddling it.

Allman: One of my favorite chapters, “Snow Men,” stands out in part because the character telling that story has a world view (and perspective) so completely different from that of the explorers. The story could function on its own but yet it’s also integrated into the telling of the larger story about the many types of people coexisting (but not knowing much about each other) during that time. Could you tell us a bit about the story or about the Lituya Bay people?

Williams: I knew from the beginning I wanted to include the story of the tragedy that struck the expedition in Lituya Bay, Alaska (the place pictured in the mislabeled map that started the whole project). In my research, I came across an early 20th-century article, written by an American ethnographer, about the Tlingit Indians of southeast Alaska and a story from their oral tradition that closely matched the experience of the Lapérouse expedition in Lituya Bay.

When I found that, I knew I wanted to tell the story twice: once from a French point of view and once from a native person’s point of view. I then did as much research as I could about the Tlingit, some of whom would come to this part of Alaska every summer to fish for salmon. In my depiction of the girl who narrates “Snow Men” and her community, I tried to be faithful as I could to what I learned about their culture. “Snow men,” for instance, was apparently one of the terms they had for white people. Also, the

debate among the girl’s relatives about what happens to the bodies of people who drown came directly from reading about different understandings of that question. Having said that, of course, I may have been grossly inaccurate about some things. I try to be a responsible writer, but at the end of the day, it’s fiction.

Allman: This particular book seems to have involved an incredible amount of research (and in multiple languages!).

I think that your use of the historical detail really helps bring readers into your narrative, helping us connect with the story that you are telling. Could you tell us a bit about your research process?

Williams: When I started this project, I could neither read nor speak French. So one of the first things I did was enroll in an intensive French class. My French—especially spoken French—is still quite rudimentary, but I got to where I was able to work through French-

language sources, even old ones, without too much trouble. I had help, of course—a much-used Larousse dictionary and access to some people who know French quite well.

This project would have been difficult, if not impossible, without the Internet. Most of my initial research was done online. But I also spent hours at the UC Davis library, which is just over a mile from my house. I read everything in their collection pertaining to the expedition, then used interlibrary loan for sources they didn’t have.

Honestly, the research was kind of endless and often threatened to take over from the writing. I always felt—I think I still feel—as if I should have done more research. It was a constant source of anxiety and even guilt. But some years ago at the Tin House Writers

Conference in Portland, I got some good advice from author Jim Shepard, a writer of literary historical fiction whom I really admire. He acknowledged in a Q&A that the research could go on forever, but that at some point you need to, as he put it, “put on your floatie and jump into the deep end of the pool” and start writing. I often remembered that as I was working on the book.

Allman: Given that this interview is for a pan-Asian American paper, could you tell us a bit about your background? You’ve said that you were born in Japan and moved to the U.S. as a child?

Williams: So I was born in Fukuoka, Japan, on an American Air Force Base, to a Japanese mother and a white American father. My father learned to speak and read and write Japanese fluently, and after he left the Air Force, he enrolled at Waseda University in Tokyo as a regular student.

Until we moved to the U.S., when I was almost 6 years old, I lived as a Japanese child and spoke only Japanese. I knew my father was an American, but I don’t think I sensed my difference from other Japanese children; at least I don’t remember sensing that differ-ence. Years later, my Japanese grandmother told me that when she’d take us to the play-ground, Japanese children would sometimes taunt me and my younger sister by calling us gaijin. I have no memory of this, however.

When we moved to the U.S., my parents were eager for us to learn English, so we switched to an English-only household, and in the way of small children, we very quickly acquired English and, sadly, lost our Japa-nese. I do have very clear playground memo-ries of being taunted by American children who called us “Jap” or “Chink.”

I’ve always identified pretty strongly with my Japanese side. When I went to college, I majored in East Asian Studies, concentrat-ing on Japanese, and eventually spent two years in my early 20s living in Japan. My Japanese was pretty good back then. It’s got-ten kind of rusty in the intervening decades.

For many years, I wasn’t really sure if, as a mixed-race person, I was “allowed” to claim myself as Asian-American. I once had a Japanese-American boyfriend who told me his family would think of me as “white.” This despite the fact that I had been born in Japan and my mother was a Japanese citizen and I spoke better Japanese than he did. On the other hand, when I met my great-uncle in Kagoshima, he tsked in open disappointment that I looked “90% Japanese.” He’d expected someone tall and blonde and blue-eyed, and here I was, none of the above. Many white people have also seen fit to declare that I look “totally white” or “totally Japanese” or some other calculus they’ve invented.

I think this is a common experience among mixed-race people, where other peo-ple feel entitled to define and evaluate their racial or ethnic make-up or “balance.” Over the years, I’ve encountered less of this. I’ve also stopped feeling sheepish about calling myself an Asian-American writer and I’ve stopped apologizing for not being Asian “enough.” Part of this is just me growing up.

Landfalls: Williams broadens scope of nautical fiction

Naomi J. Williams. • Photo by Kristyn Stroble

LANDFALLS: Continued on page 19 . . .


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“A wonderful, generous teacher, Kimiko Hahn inspired her students to do their absolute best work. And her craft talk on Japanese poetic forms was riveting. Superb all around!” —Cristina Garcia, founder of Las Dos Brujas Writing Workshop Retreat, Ghost Ranch, NM

JAPANESE FORMS TO TILT THE WESTERN MIND a workshop with poet Kimiko Hahn

This class is for writers who are interested in exploring classic forms from Japan, which will open up new possibilities for exploring raw material and expanding one’s notion of what form and structure are.

SIGN UP AT HUGOHOUSE.ORG

Oct. 20–246–9 p.m.

But I think part of it is also the Asian-Amer-ican community becoming much more open to embracing people of mixed heritage.

Allman: What books are on your nightstand (or by your reading chair) right now?

Williams: I’m an incredibly promiscu-ous reader, constantly flitting from one book to another and simultaneously reading too many at a time. Right now my daytime read-ing includes Edward Seidensticker’s transla-tion of The Tale of Genji, part of my research for my next book. I’m always reading a book of poetry; at the moment, it’s an early col-lection by Denise Levertov. I’m also reading through Graywolf Press’s amazing “The Art of…” series. This is in conjunction with an online writing class called ScribeLab run by my friend, poet Rae Gouirand. We’re read-ing and writing our way through the whole series in six months. Right now I’m on El-len Bryant Voigt’s The Art of Syntax. And I have a whole mess of books next to my bed for night-time reading. Currently they include Pushkin’s Eugene Onegin (a novel in sonnets, something I wish I had the writ-ing chops to do) and Anthony Doerr’s All the Light We Cannot See. Oh, and today I went to the library to check out Murakami’s short-story collection after the quake. I just suddenly had to read it.

Allman: Is there anything I didn’t ask that you’d like to talk about?

Williams: I’ve alluded to my new book project, so I’ll just add briefly that it’s an-other historical novel and it also involves France, but this time it’s a 20th-century story, and the main character is real-life Japanese poet and feminist, Yosano Akiko. Akiko traveled to Paris by herself in 1912 after entrusting her seven children, all under age ten, to the care of relatives. In college I wrote my senior thesis about her, and I have never forgotten her or her brave and trans-gressive trip to Europe. The project marries all of my chief interests: Japan, France, po-etry, feminism, people leaving home. Plus it’s a really interesting time period both in Japan and in France, and the clothes were awesome. And I’m finally making use of my college degree!

Naomi J. Williams will speak about Landfalls at The Elliott Bay Book Company on Monday, September 28 at 7 p.m. Elliott Bay is located at 1521 Tenth Avenue (between Pike and Pine in Seattle’s Capitol Hill neighborhood). Free/no tickets needed.

LANDFALLS: Continued from page 18 . . .

By Yayoi L. Winfrey IE Contributor

Four API films to keep an eye out for

Boy (Bryan Greenburg as Josh) and girl (Jamie Cheng as Ruby) meet cute in the feature narrative It’s Already Tomorrow in Hong Kong. While bored at a birthday party at an outdoor bar in Hong Kong, Josh is distracted by Ruby stumbling onto his path, lost and looking for her friends at a nearby club. Although he’s white and Jewish, Cantonese-speaking Josh has lived in Hong Kong for 10 years. Ruby, on the other hand, is a true Cali girl from L.A. who happens to be of Chinese descent. She doesn’t seem interested in learning much about her ethnic heritage while she’s in Hong Kong and looks forward to returning to L.A. That is, until Josh offers to help find her buddies and the two embark on a marathon walk-and-talk around the city. By the time they locate the club where Ruby’s pals are waiting, the two are deep into each other’s lives and opt to spend more time walking and talking. But there are complications. One year later, the two meet cute again (this time on a ferry) and another long conversation ensues. The script features clever, hipster dialogue as Josh and Ruby explore their emotions, but the real star is Hong Kong--glittery, glamorous and downright gorgeous.

‘It’s Already Tomorrow in Hong Kong,’ shows September 17 at Women in Cinema at SIFF Cinema Uptown. For more info, visit www.siff.net/cinema/women-in-cinema-2015.

It’s Already Tomorrow in Hong Kong

When former Utah governor Jon Huntsman, Jr., was appointed ambassador to China in 2009, his adopted Chinese daughter was a blessed accessory that imbued him with credibility. Along with his speaking Mandarin, Huntsman’s daughter, Gracie Mei, charmed the Chinese.

In the documentary, All Eyes and Ears, three stories are intertwined—Huntsman’s, Gracie Mei’s and Chen Guangchen, the blind activist who sought asylum in the U.S. By far, Gracie Mei’s is the most intriguing as she’s dragged to parties and presentations displayed like a mini diplomat. Looking uncomfortable, eager to please and just a little scared, she seems to be a naturally shy child thrust into the political spotlight based only on her Chinese ethnicity. While adults like Huntsman and Guangchen play politics with grown-ups, it’s the scenes of Gracie Mei visiting the vegetable market (where she was found as an infant) and the orphanage (where she spent her childhood) that linger long after the screen goes dark.

‘All Eyes and Ears,’ shows September 19 at Women in Cinema at SIFF Cinema Uptown. For more info, visit www.siff.net/cinema/women-in-cinema-2015.

All Eyes and Ears

A girl’s struggle to stay in school is the focus of the documentary Drawing the Tiger. On a small Nepal farm, Shanta Darnal works hard alongside her family, feeding their meager livestock and growing scanty crops. Unfortunately, her father has a second family with another wife and child, so they all remain impoverished. But because of her quick mind and determination to learn, Shanta is offered a scholarship in Kathmandu. Even though it means her mother will toil harder without her help, it’s also an opportunity for Shanta to pursue a career in medicine that will eventually support her family.

Living with her older brother in the city, she’s encouraged by his support, but

Drawing the Tiger

finds disappointment in his wife’s scornful comments about her educational pursuits. Like a lot of women around her, Shanta’s sister-in-law married as a teenager. She’s wary of girls like Shanta whose own mother says of her, “I don’t think she’ll marry. She has a brain.”

It seems frivolous to Shanta’s sister-in-law that Shanta is being educated while her husband plods along removing mud from Hindu statues for a living. With such heavy expectations weighing on her, Shanta is like the vulnerable prey for a hungry tiger. Undervalued, overwhelmed, and on her own, Shanta meets tragedy head on.

‘Drawing the Tiger,’ shows September 25 at Local Sightings at Northwest Film Forum. For more info, visit www.brownpapertickets.com/e/2252279.

An absorbing anthropological documentary, Dreadlocks Story covers a lot of history. Besides exploring the relationship between the dreadlocks hairstyle and pioneers of black pride like Marcus Garvey and Leonard P. Howell, the film also makes a connection between Afro-Jamaican Rastafarians and Indian Hindu Sadhus, and their similar lifestyles.

While European slave traders took Africans to the Caribbean, the British brought along indentured Indian servants who had sometimes been kidnapped. Both Africans and Indians shared common spiritual beliefs based on animism and, like Rastafarians who stopped cutting and combing their hair, Sadhus also allowed their hair to tangle, twist and mat together.

Using interviews, archival footage, reggae music and scenes of religious rituals, the fascinating tale of two groups that merged together in Jamaica is eloquently explained.

Keep an eye out for film festival announcements for ‘Dreadlocks Story.’

Dreadlocks Story


IE ARTS

By Alia MarshaIE Contributor

The day Seattle-filmmakers Amy Benson and Scott Squire met Shanta Darnal in Nepal in 2008, they were mesmerized by the smart, confident young girl. Right away they decided to follow Shanta, who then had just won a scholarship from an American non-governmental organization (NGO). She planned to become a doctor, her dream profession. But she never did.

Shanta killed herself at 16, one year shy of her high school graduation. Benson and Squire were shocked by the news. The plan to film each year in Kathmandu to track Shanta’s progress and growth fell apart.

“The NGO told us, well, there are other girls! Tell the stories of the other girls, why tell her story?” recalled Benson in her and Squire’s production company Nonfiction Media headquartered in the International District. “But then who’s going to tell her story? Clearly it was an important story.”

After seven years in the making, the documentary film titled Drawing the Tiger will be screened at Local Sightings Film Festival produced by the Northwest Film Forum this month. This film is the married couple’s first feature-length film.

ID film team documents life and tragic end of Nepali girlIt took a number of turns and going out of cul-de-sac before they agreed on the best angle in which to create this film.

“We thought about telling the story of how NGOs are full of it and not doing good work. Then we went with the suicide angle, but we ruled that out because we’re never going to be able to explain why girls in Nepal are killing themselves,” Benson said. “Shanta was just one person, and that’s what it came down to.”

The final result became an intimate portrait of Shanta’s life that was filled with determination and hope, and the impact of her death in her family and village.

Prior to this, Benson and Squire’s bread and butter had been making promotional short films for NGOs. After Shanta’s incident and looking at how the NGO handled the matter, however, the filmmakers were disillusioned with the industry. The couple then decided to go with their guts, ran a few fundraising campaigns, and told Shanta’s story the best they could with the cooperation of her family, most of whom cannot read and write. Benson and Squire were also joined by a production crew of local Nepalese filmmakers and journalists.

Shanta’s life and death as portrayed in Drawing the Tiger problematicize a widespread quote that has been attributed

By Ken MochizukiSpecial to IE

I’m an “old guy”—although age is a number others pin on us.

So, it was 32 years ago when I lived in a studio apartment within Seattle’s University District, right off the “Ave.” A neon fish sign for a market right beneath my window blinked a steady red and green through my place—could’ve been scenes from a private-eye film noir, only missing the sexy sax soundtrack and tendrils of cigarette smoke drifting upwards.

Into this apartment entered Dean Hayasaka and Bill Blauvelt—Evergreen State College film students and fellers I had worked with in other Seattle APA organizations—in search of a graduation project.

For two years prior, I had been writing (typing) an intended adult novel titled Beacon Hill Boys. The central characters, four college-age, Japanese American guys from Seattle’s Beacon Hill neighborhood, hang out together like typical American juveniles during the early ’70s, but with the added onus of coping with a society viewing the Asian male as either nonexistent, emasculated, or existing as a negative foil. Their search for self-worth leads to escapism via drugs, violence and imitating other ethnicities considered “cool.” Meanwhile, they try to navigate

Beacon Hill Boys continues to inspire after 30 years

to several individuals: “If you educate a woman, you educate a nation.” The well-meaning quote, when thought about carefully, is full of old stereotypes of women’s roles and the pressure to fulfill those roles. According to a 2012 study conducted by Nepal Health Sector Support Programme, the nation’s suicide rate is highest in women ages 15 to 24. The study cites stress due to raised lifestyle expectations and educational pressures as some of the negative sides of modern developments and urbanization.

Though Benson and Squire said the film focuses more on Shanta and her family rather than the faulty operations of the NGO who gave her a scholarship, they couldn’t help but think of ways things could have turned out differently. Benson said Shanta might have felt isolated because she was not the same person before she went to school in the big city. Returning home to her unchanging village on school holidays might have been a shock. This, then, begs the question that maybe that particular NGO and probably many others should do more to prepare the children they are helping as well as the families to cope with possible changes in the family dynamics when one member gets an education others do not have.

“Her mother told me that they didn’t know each other anymore,” said Benson.

Squire said that they never tried to find solutions to the problem exposed in the film as they acknowledged the issues are so much bigger than them. From the beginning of the filming process, they were careful not to fall into the trap of a white savior complex, Half the Sky-esque style of telling the story of developing nations and its problems.

“We felt like we have this great intimacy with the family but we also realized that there’s a power dynamic,” he said. “Maybe it was harder for them to say no to us. We got to be sensitive about how much we were asking, how intimately we were probing.”

The Darnal family watched the completed film a day before the earthquake hit the country. They laughed and cried, and gave Benson and Squire their blessing.

“There was this pressure, especially in the beginning when she had just died that people were looking for one straightforward answer,” Benson said. “We hope that this film will help people realize that there are many layers to her life—to our lives.”

‘Drawing the Tiger,’ shows September 25 at Local Sightings at Northwest Film Forum. For more info, visit www.brownpapertickets.com/e/2252279.

the “generation gap” within their own APA community.

I converted the plot into a short-story version to submit to an International Examiner literary contest. While I didn’t win, Dean and Bill happened upon the manuscript at the IE office.

What about turning my unpublished novel into a film? they proposed.

Get outta here...Youthful idealism and naiveté are

necessities for such grandiosity. However, apparently possessing as much, I went along.

A film begins with a script and, after many revisions, two-and-a-half years elapsing in the story got converted into two nights and one day. Then, an article in the IE appeared announcing that Beacon Hill Boys, the film, was on the boards. We received overwhelming support and offers to help from Seattle’s APA community. Of key assistance was Northwest Asian American Theatre.

The power of the press.Producer extraordinaire Dean Hayasaka

went to work, enlisting the help of his extensive circle of friends, friends of friends, fellow Evergreen students, and secured the use of APA businesses for locations to film. This was a project of Kingstreet Media, a multimedia group

with members carved out of IE freelancers and staff.

We shot in the dead of winter 1984, in the middle of nights after businesses closed—until the break of dawn shone too much light to look like night.

Dean and Bill then spent the rest of the year huddled in editing and postproduction rooms at Evergreen. Beacon Hill Boys was ready for a public screening in January 1985.

All those involved with the film might have thought we would have our showings at our town hall back then, the Nippon Kan Theatre, and that would be it—we did it for our community. But then John Hartl, reading-between-the-lines film critic for The Seattle Times since the ’60s, wrote a cover story on the film and turn-away crowds filled the theatre. It was off to the races.

The power of the press.And, I think all those involved with

the production of Beacon Hill Boys were astounded by the legs a 43-minute student film would grow. For the next few years, it screened at countless APA and mainstream film festivals and series.

Maybe the country, and especially APAs and more so APA guys, were hungry for a realistic portrayal.

Over the years since then, mostly college-age young adults—again, largely APA males—ask me about the availability or showings of Beacon Hill Boys. And, most inspiring is when I hear that seeing Beacon Hill Boys contributed to some APAs pursuing a passion for filmmaking or other visual media.

BTW: The initial, R-rated manuscript for a novel was finally published as a sanitized, feel-good PG young-adult version in 2002—21 years after I rolled that first sheet into the typewriter and clack-clacked BEACON HILL BOYS at the top.

That’s a lotta years in a life ... old guy.

‘Beacon Hill Boys’ will be screened at the film’s 30th anniversary at Wing Luke Museum on Saturday, September 19 at 3:00 p.m. and 5:00 p.m. For more info, visit wingluke.org.

Beacon Hill Boys


IE ARTS

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Apply in person at any King County enrollment location or learn more by calling 206-553-3000 or 800-756-5437or visiting www.orcalift.com.

City of Seattle all aboard Learn more at orcalift.com

More buses,More buses,more options,more options,more affordable.more affordable.Save up to 50% on your fare if you qualify.Save up to 50% on your fare if you qualify.

Save money when you ride transitNew ORCA LIFT card available for income-qualifi ed residents

It only takes a few minutes to find out if you qualify for an ORCA LIFT card. If you do, you can save up to 50% on transit fares. With the ORCA LIFT card, Metro buses during peak times are only $1.50 instead of up to $3.25 for two-zone travel.

Applying in person is quick and easy. You do not need to show proof of immigration status when you apply; just proof of who you are and your income level. Once you qualify, you’ll receive an ORCA LIFT card, which you can load with funds and start using immediately.

Here’s how to get a card:

1. Make sure you meet the income guidelines:

2. Go to any of these ORCA LIFT locations:

• Public Health—Seattle & King County

• Catholic Community Services• Compass Housing Alliance• El Centro de la Raza• Global to Local• Multi-Service Center• ReWA (Refugee Women’s Alliance)• WithinReach• YWCA• City of Seattle—Mayor’s Office of Senior Citizens

3. Bring proof of who you are and your income level.

For documents accepted as proof, go to: www.orcalift.com and click on the “What You Need to Qualify” tab.

4. Get your ORCA LIFT card on the spot.

5. Go to any ORCA retailer, ticket vending machine or online to add value or a monthly pass to your card.

6. Ride and enjoy your savings!

If you take transit twice a day, this card can save you up to $900 a year. Be sure to tell your friends and family about ORCA LIFT so they can save money, too.

For more information, visit www.orcalift.com or call 206-553-3000.

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Max household income to qualify for ORCA LIFT

$23,540x1

$31,860x2

$40,180x3

$48,500x4

$56,820x5

$65,140x6

$73,460x7

$81,780x8

By Eva CohenIE Contributor

Debuting in Hawai‘i in the Spring of 2017, the Honolulu Biennial Foundation (HBF) is gearing up for the inaugural event by hosting ongoing public programs, educational workshops, and through participating in international art shows and events, such as this summer’s Seattle Art Fair.

The mission of the HBF, says Artistic Director Isabella Ellaheh Hughes, is to put a spotlight on the art and culture of Hawai‘i and the Pacific Islands, in a way that has not been seen before.

“Hawai‘i is that type of place that people have connections to—we’ve heard really great stories from people at the Seattle Art Fair about how they have always come to Hawai‘i and really enjoyed it, but they actually don’t know too much about our art and culture scene,” Hughes says. “So, they were are really enthused to learn about the biennial.”

Hughes says she and the other representatives from HBF were especially pleased to be a part of the Seattle Art Fair due to the city’s similarities to Hawai‘i.

“It’s a bit honor for us since we share a mutual interest in the Pacific Rim,” Hughes explains. “As a biennial, we focus

Honolulu Biennial makes strong connections in Seattle

on the Asian continent, the Pacific and the Americas, and so this felt like a natural fit for us.”

Hughes says they are thrilled at how many people stopped by their booth at the Seattle Art Fair who are affiliated with various art communities, galleries, and events that the HBF can forge potential partnerships with.

At the Seattle Art Fair, the HBF displayed its traveling exhibition, “Ring of Fire: VIP Tour,” which acts as a sampling of the types of contemporary art that festival-goers can look forward to at the biennial in 2017.

The primary mission of the HBF is to “foster greater intercultural exchange and

understanding through art.” The biennial will also highlight Honolulu as a “fresh destination for international and national arts and cultural visitors,” and the board is passionate about “fostering a cultural awakening and repositioning of Honolulu as central to the Pacific-wide growth of arts, technology, and commerce.”

This mission, particularly the biennial’s ability to create a platform for Hawai‘i artists, is what really clicked with Katherine Anne Leilani Tuider, and prompted her to come on board as development director.

Another aspect that strongly speaks to Tuider, whose undergraduate degree is

in public health, and who is also a trained artist, is the foundation’s focus on STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Math) programming for Hawai‘i’s youth.

“We have a great program that incorporates both the sciences and art in make art an integral way that you teach the sciences was really encouraging to me, because of seeing how art is being cut across the country in curricula,” Tuider says.

The HBF will be paramount in creating opportunities for local artists, Tuider says, and will also “offer more opportunities for people locally to see international artists, because we don’t have any dedicated spaces for contemporary art in Honolulu, or in fact the entire archipelago.”

There is quite a large local population of people from Hawai‘i living in Seattle, par-ticularly in the arts community, Tuider says, “because they didn’t feel they have the same opportunities in Honolulu as they would in Seattle to really see their career grow.”

“It’s great to be approached by artists from Hawai‘i who say, ‘Oh my gosh, I’m so glad you’re doing this, finally there’s going to be more of an arts scene in Honolulu and Hawai‘i,’—hearing that is what touched me the most, and seeing people from Hawai‘i’s excitement.”

Isabella Ellaheh Hughes leading “Ring of Fire” tour of Pacific Rim artists exhibited at SAF. • Photo by Eva Cohen


IE COMMUNITY RESOURCE DIRECTORY

Community Care Network of Kin On815 S Weller St, Suite 212, Seattle, WA 98104ph: 206-652-2330 fx: [email protected] www.kinon.orgProvides home care, Alzheimer’s and caregiver support, com-munity education and chronic care management; coordinates medical supply delivery for Asian/Chinese seniors and families in King County.

Kin On Health Care Center 4416 S Brandon St, Seattle, WA 98118ph: 206-721-3630 fx: [email protected] www.kinon.orgA 100-bed, Medicare and Medicaid certified, not-for-profit skilled nursing facility offering long-term skilled nursing and short-term rehab care for Asian/Chinese seniors.

Over 2,000 likes! www.facebook.com/internationalexaminer

Get the planthat fits

Call Washington Apple Health at 1-855-WAFINDER (1-855-923-4633). Choose Amerigroup.

www.myamerigroup.com/

Arts & Culture

[email protected] www.deniselouie.orgMulticultural preschool ages 3-5 years old. Now enrolling Private Pay full-day ($900/mo) and part-day classes ($500/mo) with locations at ID, Beacon Hill, and Rainier Beach.

3327 Beacon Ave S.Seattle, WA 98144 ph: 206-725-9740

Education

Housing & Neighborhood Planning

HomeSight5117 Rainier Ave S, Seattle, WA 98118ph: 206-723-4355 fx: 206-760-4210www.homesightwa.org

HomeSight creates homeownership opportunities through real estate development, home buyer education and counseling, and lending.

InterIm Community Development Association310 Maynard Ave S, Seattle, WA 98104Ph: 206.624-1802 Services: 601 S King St, Ph: 206. 623-5132Interimicda.orgMultilingual community building: housing & parking, housing/asset counseling, projects, teen leadership and gardening programs.

Asia Pacific Cultural Center4851 So. Tacoma WayTacoma, WA 98409Ph: 253-383-3900Fx: 253-292-1551faalua@comcast.netwww.asiapacificculturalcenter.orgBridging communities and generations through arts, culture, education and business.

Kawabe Memorial House221 18th Ave S, Seattle, WA 98144 ph: 206-322-4550 fx: [email protected] provide affordable, safe, culturally sensitive housing and support services to people aged 62 and older.

Address tobacco control and other health justice issues in the Asian American/Pacific Islander communities.

601 S King St.Seattle, WA 98104ph: 206-682-1668 website www.apicat.org

Asian Counseling & Referral Service3639 Martin Luther King Jr. Way S, Seattle, WA 98144 ph: 206-695-7600 fx: [email protected] www.acrs.orgACRS offers multilingual, behavioral health and social services to Asian Pacific Americans and other low-income people in King County.

1601 E Yesler Way, Seattle, WA 98122ph: 206-323-7100 www.nikkeiconcerns.orgrehabilitation care | skilled nursing | assisted living | home/community-based services | senior social activities | meal delivery | transportation | continuing education | catering services

Legacy House803 South Lane Street Seattle, WA 98104ph: 206-292-5184 fx: [email protected] www.scidpda.org/programs/legacyhouse.aspx

Description of organization/services offered: Assisted Living, Adult Day Services, meal programs for low-income seniors. Medicaid accepted.

Senior Services

WE MAkE LEADERS

Queen Anne Station, P.O. Box 19888, Seattle, WA [email protected], www.naaapseattle.orgFostering future leaders through education, networking and community services for Asian American professionals and entrepreneurs.Facebook: NAAAP-Seattle Twitter: twitter.com/naaapseattle

Social & Health Services

Chinese Information & Service Center611 S Lane St, Seattle, WA 98104 ph: 206-624-5633 fax: [email protected] www.cisc-seattle.org

Creating opportunities for Asian immigrants and their families to succeed by helping them make the transition to a new life while keeping later generations in touch with their rich heritage.

International District Medical & Dental Clinic720 8th Avenue S, Seattle, WA 98114 ph: 206-788-3700email: [email protected] website: www.ichs.com

Bellevue Medical & Dental Clinic1050 140th Avenue NE, Bellevue, WA 98005ph: 425-373-3000

Shoreline Medical & Dental Clinic16549 Aurora Avenue N, Shoreline, WA 98133ph: 206-533-2600

Holly Park Medical & Dental Clinic3815 S Othello St, Seattle, WA 98118ph: 206-788-3500

ICHS is a non-profit medical and dental center that provides health care to low income Asian, Pacific Islanders, immigrants and refugees in Washington State.

Seattle Chinatown/International District Preservation and Development Authorityph: 206-624-8929 fx: 206-467-6376 [email protected]

Housing, property management and community development.

Executive Development Institute 310 – 120th Ave NE. Suite A102 Bellevue, WA Ph. 425-467-9365 • Fax: 425-467-1244 Email: [email protected] • Website: www.ediorg.org EDI offers culturally relevant leadership development programs.

Professional & Leadership Development

ph: 206-624-3426 www.merchants-parking-transia.org

Merchants Parking provides convenient & affordable community parking. Transia provides community transportation: para-transit van services, shuttle services and field trips in & out of Chinatown/International District & South King County.

Social & Health ServicesSenior Services

Horizon House900 University St Seattle, WA 98101 ph: 206-382-3100 fx: [email protected]

www.horizonhouse.orgA welcoming community in downtown Seattle, offering seniors vibrant activities, independent or assisted living, and memory care.

FAIR! ph: 206-578-1255 [email protected]

FAIR! provides undocumented Asians and Pacific Islanders with access to free immigration services, legal services & financial assistance, with translators available upon request.

Agape Senior Group Activity Center36405 Cedar St, Suite UTacoma, WA 98409ph: 253-212-3957 [email protected]

Japanese Language School for Children on Saturdays. Activities/Programs for all ages. Programs include Calligraphy Class, Chiropractic Taiso, iPad & Computer Classes, and more! Join us and make new friends!

IDIC is a nonprofit human services organization that offers wellness and social service programs to Filipinos and API communities.

7301 Beacon Ave SSeattle, WA 98108ph: 206-587-3735fax: 206-748-0282 [email protected]

Southeast Seattle Senior Center4655 S. Holly St., Seattle, WA 98118ph: 206-722-0317 fax: [email protected] www.sessc.orgDaytime activities center providing activities social services, trips, and community for seniors and South Seattle neighbors. We have weaving, Tai Chi, indoor beach-ball, yoga, dance, senior-oriented computer classes, trips to the casino, and serve scratch cooked lunch. Open Monday through Friday, 8:30-4. Our thrift store next door is open Mon-Fri 10-2, Sat 10-4. This sweet center has services and fun for the health and well-being of boomers and beyond. Check us out on Facebook or our website.

2500 NE 54th StreetSeattle, WA 98105ph: 206-694-4500 [email protected]

Working to prevent and end youth homelessness with services including meals, shelter, housing, job training, education, and more.

Organization of Chinese AmericansAsian Pacific American AdvocatesGreater Seattle ChapterP.O. Box 14141Seattle, WA 98114 www.ocaseattle.org

OCA—Greater Seattle Chapter was formed in 1995 and since that time it has been serving the Greater Seattle Chinese and Asian Pacific American community as well as other communities in the Pacific Northwest. It is recognized in the local community for its advocacy of civil and voting rights as well as its sponsorship of community activities and events.

Commission on Asian Pacific American AffairsGA Bldg., 210 11th Ave SW, Suite 301AOlympia, WA 98504ph: (360) 725-5667 www.facebook.com/[email protected] www.capaa.wa.gov

Statewide liaison between government and APA communities. Monitors and informs the public about legislative issues.

INTERNATIONAL EXAMINER September 16, 2015 – October 6, 2015 — 23ADVERTISEMENT

IN STORESOCTOBER 9, 2015

8/1 8/8 8/15 8/22 8/29

UNHEALTHY

MODERATE

GOOD

August 2015

What does our air quality look like?

Visit pscleanair.org for a daily air quality forecast.

Although we had a few very rare days with wildfire smoke coming from Eastern Washington, we still had 27 days of good air quality and only four moderate days in August. The main sources of air pollution in the Chinatown-International District are cars and trucks driving on I-5 and I-90. Breathing high levels of pollution can cause heart attacks, strokes, asthma attacks,

Particles in the air come from lots of places, like wood smoke, dust, and even sea salt. However, the particles from trucks and other diesel equipment is the most toxic and harmful to our health.

Last month’s review

Did you know?

International District Air Quality

Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec Jan Feb Mar

UNHEALTHY

MODERATE

GOOD

2014 2015

JunJulAugSepOctNovDecJanFebMar

UNHEALTHY

MODERATE

GOOD

2014 2015August 2015

and more.

Check back for Sudoku in the IE every issue! Answers to this puzzle are in the next issue on Wednesday, October 6.


TICKETS START AT $15

(206) 625-1900GROUPS OF 10 OR MORE CALL 1-888-625-1418 ON 5TH AVENUE IN DOWNTOWN SEATTLE

WWW.5THAVENUE.ORG

2015/16 SEASON SPONSORS OFFICIAL AIRLINE CONTRIBUTING SPONSOR

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September 16, 2015 International Examiner

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Transcript of September 16, 2015 International Examiner