Day 366, March 18, 2021
Atlanta
Tonight's soundtrack (because I didn't get to finish it last night): Colonel Claypool's Bucket of Bernie Brains, New Orleans, LA, 2003
It has been raining all day and it is chilly again. It is hard to not feel like the world is cold and tired.
Drawing on work of my colleagues, I helped craft a message for an organization I work with to respond to the Atlanta murders. I managed to stay relatively positive and hopeful.
Dear Community,
The Coronavirus pandemic has exacerbated the rise of violence against Asian and Asian American people across our country. The horrific violence in Atlanta Tuesday highlights the impacts of this violence against Asian American women in particular. We stand in solidarity against hate crimes that impact all people across the ALANA/BIPOC communities.
We urge all our campuses to redouble our efforts to support our students, faculty, staff, and community members who are marginalized and face challenges due to sexism, racism, homophobia, transphobia, xenophobia, religious intolerance, and and other forms of prejudice and discrimination. Our campuses and our communities are made stronger by the diversity of our humanity. The spectre of White supremacy or binary thinking is a poison that affects us all, victim, perpetrator, and witness.
Together, let us continue to stand for racial justice, for equity, for a society that is more diverse than it is homogenous, for a society that embraces love and compassion, and for a society rejects hate and violence. We must combat hatred and violence with education, love, and compassion.
You can learn more at:
Today we mourn the loss of life and we offer our support to our worried, distraught, and angry brothers and sisters. Tomorrow, and every day there after, we will continue to create the world we wish to inhabit through our actions.
In solidarity and justice,
...After writing this, I read that four of the victims were Korean. It shouldn't make a difference, but it made every thing feel heavier. Atlanta has a marvelous and thriving Koreatown, a whole suburb where English signs are optional, and everywhere one looks there is a pan-Asian melange of peoples. It is hard to recognize that you are still in Atlanta or somewhere that people would stereotypically call The South. But the reality is, this too is The South, a region where all the signs are in Hangul, where you can get the most fantastic pho in a strip mall, and a few block away in a Chinese restaurant order a North Korean specialty of fried chicken. There are H-Mart supermarkets that are bigger than any Walmart superstore that I've ever been to. And of course there are spas, massage parlors, and nail salons.
I have relatives in Atlanta who are florists, dry cleaners, architects, and everything in between. I have an aunt who after 20 years still hasn't had the need to become fluent in English, because, aside from dealing with customers, she can exist almost entirely in a Korean community.
There are, of course, countless versions of these communities in Fort Lee, Los Angeles, near almost any large metropolitan area Koreans will congregate and create community. These Koreatowns exist along with Chinatowns, Little Italys, Portuguese communities, Brazilian communities, all the wonderful markers of a thriving nation.
Of course, there are many places where the communities are much smaller. Growing up in the Boston area, I always thought our Korean community was vibrant and thriving, but it was nothing like the scale of some of these other regions. It is an entirely different reality. Visiting Atlanta a decade or so ago felt like the closest thing I've experienced to visiting Korea.
It feels ironic that I spent a lot of time in The South, but it was not The South of Koreatown, Atlanta. It was The South of truck stops, bluegrass, and a part of the country that was nearly devoid of Asian people except in the one Chinese restaurant several towns away. Yet, we were only four hours from Atlanta. A mere long day trip and I would have experienced an entirely different reality in my college years. It is amazing that we live in a country where this is possible. It is amazing that there are people who live in Atlanta and do not know that a vibrant Koreatown exists in their own backyard, or for whom it is a place to be avoided or only traversed under cover of darkness, as if the entire area is a red-light district.
Our country is becoming irrevocably diverse. By 2042 our diversity will outnumber our homogeneity and the nation will look more like Koreatown in Atlanta than the Chinese restaurant in South Pittsburg, TN; more like Springfield and Holyoke than Amherst and Northampton. Imagine how rich and exciting our future will be!
Take care and be safe,
Leo
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| An amazing covered market in Korea. |
From Our Friends:
From the AAG:
From the UMass Fine Arts Center:
Virtual Opening Reception Tuesday, March 23 at 6 p.m. ET
Carolyn Mae Lassiter’s vibrant and uniquely executed paintings and drawings are inspired by dreams, spirituality, life in the country, family, and animals. In particular, the soulful female body often shows up with pride and marvelous eccentricity. Using bold saturated color, or ink with muted watercolor accents, or adding relief incorporating her sculpture into her paintings, even as the mediums change, evolve and combine, the core spirit of Carolyn Mae Lasssiter’s art is unmistakably hers and undeniably her. Originally from Ahoskie, North Carolina where she and her family picked cotton, tobacco and peanuts, the artist has lived in Santa Fe, New Mexico since 1982.
From It Gets Better:
Stories From Around the World to Brighten Your Day
This week, Elliot Page celebrates being "fully who I am" on the cover of Time, all of the queer highlights from the Grammy Awards, and LGBTQ+ youth thriving on social media.
Resources and Stories for AAPI LGBTQ+ Communities
To our Asian American & Pacific Islander LGBTQ+ family: we're here for you. Explore resources serving AAPI queer communities and view stories uplifting queer AAPI voices.
From the Asian American Studies Certificate Program at UMass:
Event title: DEMYSTIFYING THE CHINA SYNDROME: CHALLENGING THE DOMINANT NARRATIVES
Date & Time: March 19th, 8pm
The Chinese, Chinese-American, and Asian-American students and workers of our community face more threats and hostility, and the pandemic has only made the situation worse. The US has a long history of anti-Asian and particularly anti-Chinese racism. Politicians and the media reproduce discourses that demonize and dehumanize Chinese people. The increasingly belligerent China-bashing is called by some as “the China Syndrome”. Join us for this discussion on its origins, current manifestations and reflections on what can be done to oppose new techniques of ‘hybrid war’ that threaten the populations of both countries. We need money for education, not for war.
Register in advance for this meeting:
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| Skates at a streetmarket in Seoul. |
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