I’m about to be in the Bay Area for two Hapa Tales and Other Lies events soon and want to invite you to both of them! You’ll find me at the Howard Zinn Book Fair in San Francisco, December 2, presenting on critical multiraciality. You’ll also find me at the Oakland Asian Cultural Center, November 30, for an awesome (and rare) gathering of Mixed writers, authors, and poets. This Oakland event is especially near and dear to my heart because, as I’m always saying, there are still few spaces for multiracial-identifying people to gather and discuss our unique experiences living in a highly raced and racist country. At the Asian Cultural Center, there will be readings followed by a panel conversation and Q&A with all us creators. Take a look at the outstanding artists joining me and please come be a part of our evening if you can. We’d love to see you!
Hapa Tales and Other Lies at Oakland Asian Cultural Center
Friday, November 30, 2018
6:00-8:00pm
Oakland Asian Cultural Center
388 Ninth Street, Suite 290
Oakland, CA 94607
This event is free and open to the public.
Facebook Event Page: Hapa Tales and Other Lies @ Oakland Asian Cultural Center
ASHA SUDRA ~ Asha is an artist, educator, and revolutionary. Originally from LA, she worked as a community organizer for workers/tenant rights, anti-police brutality, and anti-domestic violence, as well as a coach with the non-profit Playworks in East-Oakland. Her passion for social justice informs her work educating youth. She is currently an 8th grade teacher and is actively training teachers around California how to teach with a social justice lens in order to create authentic change using Teaching Tolerance. As a performer, she has toured London showcasing her poetry, including at the famous Troy Bar, Emceed the Womxn’s March in January 2017 and performed in 2018, as well as performed at the March For Our Lives Event in 2018. She has also Emceed the Womxns Showcase for all 3 years, featured at Cinequest Film Festival in 2017 and 2018, and graced the cover of South Bay’s CONTENT magazine in August of 2017. KQED created a short documentary on Asha and her artistry this summer. Her music, art and spoken word act as a mirror into the passion and activism she lives out daily.
WEI MING DARIOTIS ~ A San Franciscan born in Australia, Wei Ming is an Associate Professor of Asian American Studies, with an emphasis on Asian Americans and Chinese Americans of Mixed Heritage and Asian American and Chinese American Literature, Arts, and Culture, at San Francisco State University. Wei Ming co-curated and co-edited War Baby/Love Child: Mixed Race Asian American Art, an art exhibit and related book. She was the Special Guest Editor of the 2012 issue of Asian American Literatures: Discourses and Pedagogies, on Mixed Heritage Asian American Literature. She also co-coordinated the Inaugural Critical Mixed Race Studies Conference, at De Paul University, in 2010. Her poetry has been published in Mixed Up, Too Mixed Up, 580 Split, and Yellow as Turmeric, Fragrant as Cloves: A Contemporary Anthology of Asian American Women’s Poetry.
NIA MCALLISTER ~ Living at the intersection of blackness, womanhood, art, and activism, Nia uses writing as her sharpest tool for understanding and interrogating the complexities of her mixed identity and the world around her. As a Bay Area born poet, avid reader, environmental justice advocate, and museum professional, Nia draws creative inspiration from ideas of home, environment, and identity. In her work at the Museum of the African Diaspora and as a Bay Area Liaison for Blasian Narratives, Nia enjoys connecting her artistic outlets with opportunities for community engagement. In recent years, Nia has begun contributing to online poetry collectives, cultivating networks of writers through social media, and regularly performing at and hosting open mic around the San Francisco Bay Area.
FREDRICK D. KAKINAMI CLOYD ~ Fredrick was born in 1955 in Ōme, Japan to an African-American father in the U.S. military and Japanese mother. He received a Masters degree in Cultural Anthropology and Social Transformation. He has been a teacher and consultant in cross-cultural, intercultural, diversity and anti-oppression trainings for over 40 years, and is regularly involved in academic, arts, cross-cultural, interdisciplinary spirituality and social justice/anti-oppression programs in person, online, in print, and on radio and television. He has been published in Oakland Word, the National Japanese American Historical Society Journal, as well as on Discover Nikkei, an online journal. His poem For Kiyoko, Epitaph/Chikai was published in Kartika Review Spring 2012 issue and was exhibited in Generation Nexus: Peace in the Postwar Era exhibit for the grand opening of the Historical Learning Center for the National Japanese American Historical Society in San Francisco in 2013. His essay: On Being a Black-Japanese Amerasian Being, will be included in the 2017 anthology: The Beiging of America: Personal Narratives About Being Mixed Race in the 21st Century. He was a chief organizer for the first-ever symposium on Japanese war brides at the University of Southern California in June 2018. His first book: Dream of the Water Children: Memory and Mourning in the Black Pacific, is due for release in March 2019.