10/8/2022 #84
Here & Now, Art, Six Questions for Tony Robles, Totem Carvers, Kameelah Janan Rasheed, Nishant Jain, more Tony Robles (reading), Aretha Franklin, and Marvin Gaye.
HERE & NOW
A couple weeks ago, I received a text notifying me that the Republic Café and Lotus Inn, in Salinas Chinatown, had caught fire. It was sad news because the nonprofit I work for, Asian Cultural Experience (ACE), has had plans to turn these adjoining properties into a community cultural center and museum, where we would house our archives of Chinatown’s AAPI immigrant community. While there have been positive changes there, for many years the neighborhood has been considered blighted. So, this feels like a setback—but hopefully not for too long. While the Lotus Inn has fire damage, the main building we want to renovate, the Republic Café, has water damage—so we’re hoping the building can still be saved. If you’d like to help out, here’s the Donations page.
Meanwhile, we had been gearing up for a daguerreotype art exhibit about Chinatown by Binh Danh, as I had mentioned in EO #83. The opening on Oct. 6 went well. His images are striking and ghostly, focusing on the AAPI immigrants who founded the neighborhood, the current multicultural population, as well as the unhoused folks living on the streets and near the railroad tracks. During the discussion, Binh and Prof. Angelica Muro addressed the controversy already arising about the exhibit, as well as the importance of dialogue and uniting the community to create a safe and revitalized Chinatown for everyone.
ART / WRITING
I took a lesson from artist Steve Keene and decided to work on multiple pages of my handmade artist books all in one go—instead of one page at a time. Worked wonders! Sometimes you just need to stop being so precious about every drawing or page. Here are the pages from my “four-letter-word” accordion-fold book project. I used a dictionary in a rule-based process. Each letter in a word generates instructions for what goes on the page. The result is always a surprise, and sometimes a little goofy; this ended up having an interplanetary theme with flower vases:
You can see it in person, along with other examples of my art, at the Carl Cherry Center for the Arts on Oct. 15-16, for the Arts Habitat Artists Open Studio Tour.
SIX QUESTIONS FOR TONY ROBLES
I think I first met Tony Robles in the 1990s. But I should preface this by saying that when I joined the Bay Area Pilipino American Writers (BAPAW) group in San Francisco (1980s), I met poet Al Robles (Tony’s uncle), who, with writers like Jeff Tagami, Catalina Cariaga, Shirley Ancheta, and Lou Syquia, were a big influence on my writing at the time. Much like his uncle Al, Tony Robles became a “people’s poet,” a writer who attends to his daily encounters with people and, as he notes, “the goofiness and contradictions that are all around us.” He spoke to one of my classes at UC Berkeley, and the students loved his forthrightness and engaging way of speaking. I thought of him as quintessentially a San Francisco writer—but a few years ago he surprised me by moving to North Carolina. Apparently, it’s been a good change for him.
1. Where did you grow up and how did that (and/or any other significant experience you’d like to address), influence your art?
I grew up in San Francisco, but I also lived for a time in Orlando, Florida and Waipahu Hawaii. The Orlando of 1977 was different from the Orlando of today. There was very little diversity and I lived in an all-white neighborhood; you could call it a suburb. I didn't realize it at the time, but we weren't that far from Eatonville, the first incorporated black town in the country and home to the great writer Zora Neale Hurston.
But I was just a kid, junior high school age just making a few bucks mowing lawns and attending a Christian school called Agape school. We said our pledge of allegiance to the American and Christian flags in the mornings as well as wearing uniforms of red, white and blue. I came to find out that the word Agape is Greek for "God's Love." I hadn't been exposed to a non-Catholic Christian church so reading bible passages and memorizing them was a very different experience. I remember reciting a passage from the book of Isaiah, chapter 53, which predicted the coming of Christ and his suffering.
Some folks didn't know what I was. Was I black, was I Latino? I knew I was Filipino but didn't really know what that meant. In 1977 we put together a track team to compete against other track teams from Christian schools throughout Florida. I remember we all ate in a cafeteria. I had my tray among all the others when slid it towards the serving table. I looked and saw this short, middle-aged Filipino man. He looked at me and said, “kumusta?” And I said, “mabuti,” which came out sounding like, muh-boot-tay. The man smiled. He was serving cornbread squares and he put one on my tray. I stood there looking at him, expecting him to—since we were both Filipinos—to put an extra cornbread square on my tray. But he just looked at me and I looked at him. I then realized that I was holding up the line and got moving. In fact, I wrote a funny short story about this experience in a collection called Finding God: True Stories of Spiritual Encounters. Cecilia Manguerra Brainard was the editor.
Much of my work as a writer is focused on these connections or epiphanies that happen in moments we do not expect. The others in the line were oblivious to this encounter but it was something that stayed with me. Was there a connection between me and the man at the serving table? What did he think of it? Or was it just a fleeting thing? As an artist I'm still looking for that manong and that extra cornbread square. But rather than that piece of cornbread, I got something much more fulfilling from him—a poem.
2. What’s your creative process like?
My creative process is to not step on or get in the way of the process. When writing a poem, the poem takes the shape it wants. I do not dictate how the poem will breathe or grow. I don't get in the way; I don't step on the voice with my own dictats. I let the poem do what it wants. The collaboration happens when I am respectful of the poem, letting it take the lead and, when appropriate, taking the reins.
I tend to write a little better in the morning. I keep a journal. My late uncle, poet Al Robles, taught me that everything springs or grows from one's journal. Natalie Goldberg, in her book, Writing Down the Bones, calls journaling a process of composting. We take our experiences which are raw and write them down. Those experiences and thoughts are like coffee grinds, egg-shells, steak bones. We put those things in the compost bed and they begin to generate nitrogen and heat. In much the same way, our journals generate energy and heat and nutrients in our subconscious and blossom from our journals.
I have had short stories, essays, poems, and novel chapters take shape from my journal so I find it to be indispensable. Walking is very important to my creative process. Many of my good story and poem ideas come from long walks. I walk for about an hour and 15 minutes a day. I also like listening to music at times when I write. I love Frank Sinatra, Sam Cooke, Aretha Franklin, Sam and Dave, Tony Bennett and many others. I am currently in the creative writing program at Vermont College of Fine Arts. In my first semester I found myself listening to the Four Tops while doing my assignments. I'm just a sucker for that kind of music.
3. What puts a damper on your creativity? What do you do—if anything—to remedy that?
The Goddamned interruptions, especially from telephone calls. For some reason, all my good ideas happen when I'm at work. I keep a note pad close by. And when I have a good idea and start jotting it down, that phone rings. I can't stand it. The only thing I can do is jot things down when they come so that I don't forget them. I work at a library in the circulation department so I'm swimming in books. The books give me solace among the distractions. Getting a job there was a 40-year process. I earned the right to be there. I was hired by the managers—on paper—but it was those authors on the shelves that really allowed me to be among them. They knew what I'd gone through. They said, "You're ready."
4. Does age [any age] factor into your creative process, and if yes, how?
I was born in 1964 so I am a tail end baby-boomer. I'm right at the tail end. I guess I can apply for AARP. But I feel closer to the baby boomers in terms of writing. I relate to the folks my uncle knew, writers like Oscar Penaranda, Jeff Tagami, Lawson Fusao Inada and others. Tagami reminds me of the writers of the 30's. There was something about that generation that just can't be duplicated, and I think Jeff came really close—not in duplicating—but in capturing the spirit. I don't write a lot of politically inspired poetry. Not that I'm oblivious to it, but much of what I hear sounds like preaching and it becomes redundant.
My poems are about encounters that I experience such as working the deli counter at the supermarket and a woman asks me for a pound of "white American" (cheese) or when a guy approaches, wearing a MAGA hat, and asks me for three pieces all dark fried chicken lunch plate and when I ring him up, he says, "Thank you, brother." I am very much interested in the goofiness and contradictions that are all around us. All ground is fertile ground for poetry. I worked at a thrift store here in western NC for 2 years and wrote a lot of poetry about it. I'm hoping to get it published.
5. What are you working on, currently, and what impels or inspires it?
I'm working on a novel called Fillmore Flip. It is a novel inspired by my father and our family's life in San Francisco's Fillmore District, a black, Filipino, Japanese neighborhood. I am almost finished with it. It is my creative thesis work for my MFA at Vermont. I'll be graduating in January 2023.
6. What’s your favorite imperfection?
My favorite imperfection is being a left-handed person in a right-handed world. It allows me to see things differently than most. I'm kind of ambidextrous—I'm left-handed but play tennis with my right hand, use scissors with my right hand.
Bio: Tony Robles was born in San Francisco and is the author of 2 books of poetry and short stories, Cool Don't Live Here No More--A letter to San Francisco, and Fingerprints of a Hunger Strike. He was named “Sandburg Writer in Residence” by the Carl Sandburg Historic Site in Flat Rock, NC in 2020 and is a two- time Pushcart Prize nominee. He is currently an MFA candidate in fiction at Vermont College of Fine Arts where he is working on his novel, Fillmore Flip, based on his family's history in the Fillmore District of San Francisco.
LINKS
Titania Buchholdt pointed me to this: “Carvers across Southeast Alaska are working on totem poles that will line Juneau’s waterfront.”
The art of Kameelah Janan Rasheed focuses on reading, re-reading, and re-writing: “The Edge of Legibility” (Art21):
Nishant Jain makes Sneaky Art (and has a newsletter here on Substack):
SOUNDINGS
Tony Robles reads from his children’s book, Lakas and the Manilatown Fish:
It’s 1968 in Amsterdam. Aretha Franklin kills it singing “I Never Loved a Man”:
Marvin Gaye singing “What’s Going on” (1973 film, “Save the Children”):
Almost 1 a.m. here. Thanks for reading this newsletter!
Love love love kameelah’s work! Thanks for this, lots to think about