I haven’t made a blog post for quite some time. Partially because I didn’t know what to say and what would be appropriate for this new relaunch of Dimsumlove. Then after a month of redesigning and soul-searching, I finally found what I could contribute to this world and what could be the authentic voice of DSL. DSL is a world that celebrates the Asian American stories, experiences and really focuses on the visuals that we can share with our children.
And then the world turned around the sun’s axis, not once but twice. First with the global pandemic and now with the racial pandemic. Nothing seemed more urgent than to hear the cries of suffering and injustice. These recent events, like so many of you, have moved me to take a pause and to really focus on what matters the most. Something like launching a newsletter and relaunching a new website seemed so trivial when there are human rights being violently violated.
Yuri Kochiyama was an activist that worked alongside Malcolm X, and was even there to hold his head during his assassination. Her passion came from the injustices that were done to her own family as they were sent to the Japanese Interment Camps in 1942.
Yet it personally has been overwhelming. My apartment is within a mile of Union Square. The hub of all NYC protests. You can tell if there is one amassing as a helicopter lingers in the air to monitor its movement. Often there will be more than one helicopter and the sky sounds like an airfield. There also have been occasions where the protests have been delivered right by my doorstep, and even though I have been protesting loudly from my 19th floor balcony, I still do not physically feel safe to join these masses of people. So I came up with a solution to utilize my strengths and where I feel the most comfortable.
I’ve always felt in these situations of racism where personally I have even been the recipient of racist interactions in the past, that the aggressor is always detached from the person that they are attacking. It is easy to do harm to someone that you have no personal connection to but can you be just as aggressive to an aunt, a mother, a friend, a roommate, a colleague or a student of yours?
For me when I’m asked why I even care about #blacklivesmatter, the cause becomes personal because I have quite a few black friends. These are people that I love like my own family, and if they are hurting, I am hurting too. These are friends that have shown me kindness, taught me life lessons and have been the example of the fortitude of what it means to live in our world.
As artists, we are able to share insights and perspectives for others to consider. Pictures cause instant emotions because it is visceral. It doesn’t require explanation and only the senses. Therefore I hope that these portraits of my friends will catch your attention, and invite you to hear their story. By doing so, I hope to humanize and to celebrate each life that matters in this world.
Introducing Ms. Nicole Yarde. She is “momma Nicole” to many young black and brown students as she has been the main coordinator of many NYC programs. These programs that I had the good fortune to work on served a singular purpose, to give these underrepresented youth a chance to an equal opportunity to higher education.
Nicole not only put together the environment and programming to serve their academic needs, she also oversaw their emotional needs. This was a supersized college counseling job. She counseled these students to dreaming about a bright future, she matched it with action in terms of chaperoning them to college visits, meeting with their guardians to coach them through this complex process, finding the funding to make college possible, to being available at all hours of the night to dissuade them from making bad teenage choices and to even making sure that they were fed. She told me if I wanted to win their hearts, bring pizza.
One of the conversations that I remembered distinctly was the phenomenon of “code-switching.” You see, from some of these neighborhoods where these young men were from, it is not cool to appear put together or even nerdy. You draw unnecessary attention and may even invite harm. Yet in the collegiate and corporate world where a lot of these young men were aspiring to be, there is another code to abide by in terms of appearance and presentation. I will never forget the day when I was attending one of their sessions as these young men were rolling in from their homes that Nicole just stopped them as they entered the classroom. In her thick Bahamian accent she said to them, “You are out of your hood now, so you can all pull up your pants and tuck in your shirts before you hear what Ms. Chang-Cahill has to say. You can then untuck when you leave this classroom and before you get back on the train.” Needless to say, they all needed her direction and it was an education for me.