Saymoukda Duangphouxay Vongsay is a Lao American writer focused on creating tools and spaces for the amplification of refugee voices through poetry, theater, and experimental cultural production. As guest editor of Mn Artists from December 2018 to March 2019, she asked Asian Pacific Islander American (APIA) artists the question, “What would it mean for you to be given agency?” and asked them to write into clarity their unapologetic truths. Vongsay reflects on the full series of articles here.
Asian and Pacific Islander American women/nonbinary artists are often placed into boxes that are not often constructed by us. When we make art that seems misaligned with who we are supposed to be, we are questioned and/or doubted.
Asian women don’t talk like that.
Asian women don’t act like that.
Asian women can’t think those things.
Asian women shouldn’t be that way.
Asian women wouldn’t write that.
We are often denied our full humanity. Because of the bodies that we occupy, we are often subjected to certain expectations and criticisms around the art-making that we do, the causes that we choose to support/interrogate, and the ideas/identities/histories that we choose to explore/interact with.
It’s no single person’s fault that these perceptions exist. We can blame more than a century of image-conditioning in popular culture, media, history books, and daily conversations. What are they? You’ve seen them and may not have thought twice. You may not have thought twice because it is so normalized. It has become the default. From the silent era of film to today’s pop culture, harmful imaginings of Asian Americans include the sex-addicted subordinating damsel and the restaurant owner with the perpetual accent.
The pieces commissioned from Naomi Ko, May Lee-Yang, Xiaolu Wang, June Kuoch, May Losloso, Heather C. Lou, Simi Kang, Su Hwang, Tori Hong, and Monika Hetzler aimed to sabotage all of that.
Writings Commissioned by Saymoukda Duangphouxay Vongsay for Mn Artists
Filmmaker just wants to tell everyday stories and interrogate what it means to tell a Korean story? It means whatever she is choosing to tell.
Here to Make NICE and Changes to the Asian American Canon
Writer, actor, and filmmaker Naomi Ko expands the conversation on representation in media, asking what it means to create a TV show about your home and community when the world doesn’t believe you’re from there—and what it means to create for your community when parts of your community do not accept your work.
Writer who lifts the veil that has covered “controversial” women and the effed up relationship between labels and women—labels created by the patriarchy (and unfortunately, perpetuated by everyone).
The Ethics of Writing About Throwaway Women
Writer and performance artist May Lee-Yang speaks back to the critics—advocating for greater specificity in telling Hmong women’s stories, proposing a fresh take on the responsibilities of the audience, and considering the role of the artist as bad girl.
Filmmaker pens a courageous love letter to her creative collaborators for their unwavering support and loving push-backs in her journey to see her fuller self.
To Come Back to Love: Reminders for Making Visible the Invisible
Filmmaker Xiaolu Wang shares a love letter to her collaborators, revealing the complex dynamics of friendship, family, and internalized oppression that arise through the practical and emotional labor of creating an autobiographical film.
Poet/activist claps back unapologetically to conventional gender confines and fuckboys.
“Selfie” and “Complicated”: Two Poems
Two poems by abolitionist-activist-academic-artist June Kuoch seek to navigate the corporality of the trans Asiatic body, love, and justice, asking: What does it mean for an object to object? Do we regain our own humanity?
Storyteller/activist comes out as the Miss Universe we all deserve.
How Comedy Unmasked My Inner Queen
Community organizer May Esperanza Losloso details the lead-up to her comedy debut, considering how everyday humor and a space without censorship brought her to remove some of her masks and claim her place as a Filipinx Humorist/Miss Universe Impersonator.
Visual artist/educator recounts seasons of challenges and makes humble gestures toward healing and calling out white supremacy ideology.
does this mean i’m a real artist now?
Artist-educator heather c. lou documents a year of transition from Oakland to Minneapolis, illuminating how artistic process is intimately affected by personal and professional lives, and sharing the search for voice and healing in a white supremacist environment.
Visual artist/scholar has receipts on individual and collective expertise—(re)defining which experiences and voices count when it comes to expertise.
Artist, poet, and scholar Simi Kang reframes the notion of expertise, examining which stories we are allowed to retain from our ancestors, what qualifies as a “valid” story, how institutions tell stories for us, and how we tell stories about and for ourselves.
Poet/community builder gives a shout out to her people’s han—collective woe—and her own pains and rage incited by toxic institutions, words, bodies.
Poet Su Hwang digs into the influence of han in her Korean lineage, the kickassery of untranslatable words into English, and the toxicity of white gatekeeping in the arts—and ultimately delivers an ode to crazy dreams coming true anyway.
Visual artist writes an overdue love letter to most things that need time to open—themselves, their practice, and their blueprints.
Arriving In Between Homecomings and Liberation
Visual artist Tori Hong depicts the tension between process and profession, personal and public that weaves throughout their collection of self-portraits exploring homelands and homecomings.
And… finally, comedian and writer who embraces all of the awkward she never asked for but weaponizes it to further empower a fuller self.
Comedian and improviser Monika Hetzler recounts how comedy—while it is still often inaccessible—allowed her to shift her relationship to the “confused mixed kid” narrative, discover her own agency, and embrace the awkward.
All these artists. Asian. Multidisciplinary. Diverse points of living. We deserve it.
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