Throughout every stage of test-taking in my life, the times I felt as if I’d failed the most were the moments in which I was choosing to respond to questions with pre-selected answers, ones that didn’t quite fit who I was or what I knew I wanted to be. And every time I focused on those answers, I felt as if I was running out of time.
“For a long time I really didn’t know who I was,” Lek admits. “When I was younger, the school I went to was predominantly white. What I thought about how I should present myself came from that image. I dyed my hair blond and put on blue colored contacts to fit in. It was a lot of assimilation and cultural erasure. I started talking less Tagalog and less Ilocano. But art has really helped me find myself. It made me think more deeply about who I really was and what was important to me on an authentic level.”
How can one be intimate with another without really knowing the person? Her philosophy derived directly from the traditional Chinese dating culture. But she knew well from all the shows she watched, one can be as intimate as possible after the first sight in America. She didn’t like that idea at all, but she reminded herself that maybe this would be the window to finally learn about American culture.
“Ain’t Gonna Burn Us All” took me a long time to write. In fact, this was the last song I recorded for my album. I eventually came up with the music, but it took me a long time to pen down lyrics. Perhaps, it’s because that even though this hate crime did not happen to me, and it occurred 221 miles away in Brooklyn, NY, the incident still sort of hit home for me. That could have been mine, or my friend’s grandmother who was set on fire.
Precious Ringor’s first of two artist profiles in this collection is an interview with APAC’s Co-Executive Director, Catrece Ann Tipon. Catrece is a nurse by trade, but a dancer and photographer as an artist. Through her conversation with Precious, I hope you can get a sense of the creative stewardship that drives APAC, one that is committed to always crossing borders, in Catrece’s case finding ways to present facets of herself that are not expected in the spaces she finds herself in — as a Filipina, as an arts activist, and as a woman passionate about her art.
“Though it does not look exactly the same as “white fragility,” nor occurred in the same the circumstances, the reaction that she was describing was exactly the same. The knee-jerk defensiveness. The quick dismissal of personal responsibility. The refusal to acknowledge that one’s own race might have an inherent advantage.”
Jenna Zhu unpacks the privileges and oppressions of Asian Americans, the hashtag #Asians4BlackLives, and posits what accountability the community has in the movement for Black liberation in America.
Asian Pasifika Arts Collective (APAC) is a nonprofit organization that uses art to advocate representation of Asian Americans and Pacific Indigenous Americans in everyday life while building cross-community relationships.
APAC is a fiscally sponsored program of Fusion Partnerships, Inc.
Got questions? Email us: ctipon@baltimoreapac.org
