What was your message in the first poem you’ve ever written and how have you grown from that perspective?
In my first book of poems in 1st grade, I think all my poems were like little rhyming haiku or some other short form of rhyming poem about things like the rain and my guinea pig Caramel. In 3rd grade, I won a poetry contest with my poem “What It Means To Be Old” which was judged by a local senior citizens’ center. That’s hilarious to me now – I wonder what I had to say about being old at age 7 or 8!
The first poem I remember having a strong message based off of my life experiences was one I must have written when I was in 4th grade called “The Other.” When I looked at it recently, I was pretty shocked because it felt very honest and had a kind of emotional depth about what it feels like to be excluded and on the outside of everything. As an adult, I can look at my childhood and realize that it was my first attempt at talking about my experiences growing up as a minority in the United States. But I didn’t know that then. I was just writing how I felt.
A lot of my writing has come from that pain of exclusion, from feeling like I’m not expected or allowed to have a voice in this world as an Asian American female. As I’ve grown up, that personal experience has allowed me to connect with other people who might feel the same way whether because of race, culture, class, sexual orientation, gender, nationality, or just feeling out of step with other people.
How has being a part of Sirenz impacted your writing today?
Ahhh…those days in Sirenz were very pivotal, but I wouldn’t have known it back then. We were just doing what was natural to us and what we loved to do. Although I slammed a lot in high school, Sirenz was my first experience writing collaboratively with other spoken word artists. We had such different ways of writing, performing, seeing the world. Although we were all women of color, our families were from different ethnic backgrounds. We performed at political events all across campus at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and some in Chicago too.
We only performed group pieces, so it wasn’t like how some groups are where poets all spit indie poems and then tour as a group. We had to hash out and explore how we each felt individually and as a collective about the issues we were writing about whether it was about racially motivated hate crimes for the Not In Our Town rallies or sexuality and silence for Day of Silence or about embracing your own natural beauty in all of its diverse ways. We had something very special and were very good friends. I can recognize now that those couple of years that we were writing and performing together created a lot of foundation for what I did in the five years after that, and even now.
Since you are familiar with Louder Than A Bomb (LTAB) do you feel that poetry slams are progressing or decaying with the teen writers?
Decaying? What?! Lol 
Definitely progressing. I was talking with a writer here in NYC today about what it feels like to watch folks in the youth poetry slam scene today – and I feel that youth poets today have a much higher level of sophistication in terms of understanding content, lyricism, poetic devices, choreography, and innovative performance than ever before. Take someone who was a spoken word artist from the 90’s (who, ah hem, maybe didn’t advance with the times, so to speak) compared with a youth spoken word artist today, and it’s no contest. I’ve seen some old-school poets who can’t even ride a beat today when they do their poems. They just perform the poem off the page oblivious to the music that’s going on behind them. Now, you don’t have to be an mc or anything – but rhythm and music is in everything that we write as poets and I think youth poets on average have a much stronger sense of that now than before.
The tricky thing with the slam is that I hope that people continue to hone their craft rather than just be satisfied with the props from winning a slam. There’s a lot more work for us to all to do, a lot more people (an entire world!) to reach than just the people that show up at the poetry slam. So we each have to be constantly honing, developing, testing, ciphering, all of that to find the next level in ourselves, each other, and spoken word. Also, some times people get caught up in the flash these days or sound alike (because I think spoken word is more popular so there are more style to emulate than before), which I think is a huge problem. But I think in Chicago there’s generally a strong emphasis on not being on any b.s., creating authentic emotions and experiences through your words, and putting the quality of the writing first, which is GOOD!
Describe the feeling you had when you first experience the Uptown Poetry Slam in Chicago. What were some of your emotions and/or thoughts?
Ahhh…I remember the shadows in that place, the curved wood, the bright green neon sign. The huge piano and the cocktail waitresses whirling around. Everyone waiting at their tables waiting to see something. I remember Marc Smith, Patricia Smith, Mama Maria McCray, Regie Gibson, Tyehimba Jess, Chuck Perkins, Kent Foreman, Kent Green, Trooper Tru, Cin Salach, Sheila Donohue, Daniel Ferri. This is probably a few different times that I went there which are all melded into one at this point. I remember every single voice being so unique, so different, so urgent and passionate.
I remember laughter and poignancy. I remember each person’s story like it was yesterday. Kent Foreman used to say that he was trying to publish his poem “Chicago” in the consciousness of people who came to the slams, and it worked! Most times, when Kent performed that poem, everybody knew all the words. An ode to poetry and this place and the power of words when people come together out of passion, necessity, and love. Maybe I remember it more romantically than it was, but such is the nature with my life-long love affair with poetry
What is your background experience like being an Asian American poet in Brooklyn?
The Asian Pacific Islander American (APIA) community here in New York is definitely a lot larger and in some ways differently diverse than the APIA community in Chicago. I live in Bed-Stuy in Brooklyn, which is mostly Black/African/Caribbean American and famous for being the birthplace of Biggie, Jay-Z, Chris Rock, ODB, Mos Def and where Spike Lee’s “Do The Right Thing” and Dave Chapelle’s “Block Party” are set. There’s actually a community of elderly Chinese folks that live here in the neighborhood, which surprised me. It’s a neighborhood full of history and culture and it’s undergoing a lot of gentrification right now.
In general, New York is less segregated than Chicago. There’s so little space everyone is pretty much on top of each other. Every type of person rides the subway and the buses since they run through a lot of the neighborhoods and it’s expensive and inconvenient to have a car here. Of course, there’s still beef and issues that come up between different communities, stereotypes, etc.
My experience being Asian American here is that most of the time when people try to guess what ethnicity I am here they think I’m Korean (because there are so many Koreans here) and in Chicago, people used to think I was Filipino (because there are so many Filipinos in Chicago), lol. So yup, people barely ever guess that I am in fact Chinese and Taiwanese!
There is also a great history of second-generation (born in the U.S.) Asian Pacific Islander American artists in New York who got started in the 60’s, 70’s, and 80’s like Jessica Hagedorn, Tomie Arai, Corky Lee, David Henry Hwang, Faye Chiang and institutions for Asian Pacific Islander American artists like the Asian American Arts Alliance, the Asian American Writers Workshop, 2G Theater Company, Kundiman Poets Retreat, Ma-Yi Theater Company, Pan-Asian Repertory, The Sulu Series, which have definitely helped me in my growth as an artist.
In your book No Sugar Please, why did you choose to write a letter to Lauryn Hill?
I’ve always been a big fan of Lauryn Hill, and I found myself really frustrated that she up and quit on all of us, lol! But writing the poem allowed me to try to empathize with her and understand the enormous pressure that she was under at such a young age to not only save hip hop or commercial music or represent for femcees, but also to bring emotional truth to people who are so starved for emotional truth all around the world. It’s daunting and probably very consuming to be looking into that kind of immense need and knowing that you at one time or another have had the opportunity to give something to people’s souls that is so necessary can be so empowering but also isolating. Who was tending to her need for emotional truth? Who was her support under all of that pressure? Who did she listen to when she needed inspiration and a little re-charge and an honest way to understand that everything can and will be okay not because it’s necessarily the natural order of things but because we work to make it so?
I think it speaks to the larger question that I have of who’s supporting our leaders as individual people when they are working so hard and brilliantly to support all of us through their vision, insight, and forward movement? Like I can’t even imagine what Barack Obama is going through right now having the different ideals of actually working for the people as a community organizer and being in the belly of the beast trying to maintain his ideals, create relationships across factions, and deal with the crazy ish that only a president would know about. We criticize him, but who is supporting him (as an individual man on this earth) right now?
What would you say to other teen girls who aim to be spoken word artists? What challenges and advantages would you want them to be aware of?
It is time for you to come to the page and the mic and SHOW YOURSELF! You got paper and pen? Scratch that. Some poets don’t even need a paper and pen, lol. Then you’re good to go. You have to constantly be searching for fresh meaningful ways to put your words together, for new content that you care deeply about, for paths to stretch yourself as a performer. There are few other art forms that allow you to exercise as much control and freedom and possibility as spoken word. You are the sculptor and animator of words. You transport the audience from the performance venue to anywhere in time or space. You create the electricity that ignites and unifies an entire group of strangers to absorb and recognize something new about that moment, themselves, the world. This and so much more is your opportunity every time that you come to the page, every time you come to the mic. You’ve got your call. Now answer it
– Adorah Harris (2010 GirlSpeak editor)
