Transcript - "The Space Between Body, Spirit and Migration: A Poetry Reading and Drag Performance"
October 28, 2021 -- Radical Kinship Series
Listen to "The Space Between Body, Spirit and Migration: A Poetry Reading and Drag Performance".
LETI VOLPP: Good afternoon and welcome to this afternoon's event at the Center for Race and Gender, “The Space Between Body, Spirit and Migration: A Poetry Reading and Drag Performance.” For anyone who requires a live transcript, please click the live transcript CC button on the screen.
Let me begin with the land acknowledgement. We take a moment to recognize that Berkeley sits on the territory of xučyun (Huichin (Hoo-Choon) the ancestral and unseated lands of the Chochenyo speaking Ohlone people, the successors of the historic and sovereign Verona Band of Alameda County. This land was and continues to be of great importance to the Muwekma Ohlone tribe and all familial descendants of the Verona Band. We recognize that every member of the Berkeley community has, and continues to benefit from the use and occupation of this land. Since the institution's founding in 1868. Consistent with our values of Community and diversity, we have a responsibility to acknowledge and make visible the university's relationship to native peoples. By offering thisland acknowledgement, we affirm indigenous sovereignty and will work to hold the University of California, Berkeley, more accountable to the needs of American Indian and indigenous peoples.
My name is Leti Volpp and I'm the Director of the Center for Race and Gender here at UC Berkeley. We are thrilled that you can be with us for today's exciting event.
Before I introduce the moderator and curator of today's event, let me thank our events co-sponsors for today. A big thank you to our generous sponsors “On the Same Page program, the Multicultural Community Center, the Undocumented Student Program, and the Berkeley Interdisciplinary Migration Initiative.
Let me now introduce Alan Pelaez Lopez, who is CRG’s Art and Humanities Initiative, Research Scholar and the curator and host of the Radical Kinship Series. Alan is an Afro-Zapotec artist and scholar from Oaxaca, Mexico. They are the author of Intergalactic Travels, Poems from a Fugitive Alien, published by The Operating System 2020, which was a finalist for the 2020 International Latino Book Award, as well "To Love and Mourn in the Age of Displacement", published by Nomadic Press also in 2020. Thank you. And I will now turn it over to Alan.
ALAN PELAEZ LOPEZ: Thank you so much, Leti, for that introduction. Welcome, everybody to CRG's digital space. I'm very excited for today's conversation, which is on the radical possibilities, you know, of creative writing, drag and performance.
I have gotten to know our two presenters over the last couple of years, primarily through following them on social media and I feel that their contributions to how we understand race or civilization and gender migration are by far beyond what I have read in scholarship. So thank you for accepting this invitation, Gladys and Wo. I want to introduce both of you and then each presenter is going to talk about their art. Ad following that, we'll have a Q&A. So please hold your questions to the end. You can feel free to type your questions in the chat box at the bottom of your screen and if you are viewing via Facebook, you can type in your questions on Facebook and then they'll be sent to us.
So before, I mean, before they get to present I’ll introduce each artist. Our first presenter Gladys Wangeci Gitau-Damaskos is a Kenyan-born writer, artist, designer, teacher and activist from Lawrence, Massachusetts. As an artist, Wangeci lives by Audrey Lord's words quote, your silence will not save you. End Quote. Her writing and activism centrists around her experiences taking up space on American soil as an immigrant, queer African, African femme. Gladys is a hopeless romantic painter, a recently converted gardener and a sticky note enthusiast has seen her her debut poetry collection, “There's the truth, and there are other things”, published in 2019. As a recovering Twitter addict Wangeci wants to focus her efforts on publishing more intentionally and helping others do the same, in addition to being a co-founder and prose editor at exposed Great Literary Magazine, she loves writing and making art with her friends. When Gladys is not teaching humanities or students or listening to audiobooks and pretending she reads them, she can be found in her garden in South Lawrence, next to her husband William, and their tortoise tortoises and Sakis and Reto. She's currently pursuing her masters and literary arts from the Bread Loaf School of English at Middlebury College and recently published, “I'm not allowed to explain, only for shadow and reminisce”, which is a wonderful collection of poems which you'll get to hear about in a sec.
And our second presenter, Wo Chan, Chan, AKA the Illustrious Pearl, is a poet and drag artist. They are a winner of the 2020 Knightfall Poetry Prize and the author of “Togetherness”, forthcoming in 2022. As a member of the Brooklyn based Drag Burlesque Collective Switch and Play, Wo has performed at the Whitney Museum of American Art, MoMA PS1, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and elsewhere. You can follow both Wo at @theillustriouspearl. All right, so now I'm going to give the digital stage to Gladys.
GLADYS WANGECI GITAU-DAMASKOS: Thank you so much, Alan. Thank you so much for being here, everyone. Like Alan said, I will be doing a poetry reading for my new book, which is called “I'm not allowed to explain, only foreshadow and reminisce”. So. Thank you so much for being here with me today, actually. So funny this photo on this cover actually took on this couch, so I'm gonna. I'm going to show you guys just like some of the ways that we did this shoot and like, some of the ways that this book came together. I'm going to start off with the poem, which is the first poem in the book is called “The End”.
The end, as I suspected, didn't come with any fanfare, no trumpets or parades, no celebration, no clarity that didn't have at the beginning, only me returning quietly to myself.
And then this is a photo of the back of my book as well. And it's also on this couch (laughs). So some visuals to go along with the the poetry. So this is a brief like overview of what we're going to do today. I wanted to do just explain the book real quick, read some poems and then I have a challenge for you all at home. To try.
So here we go about me, like Alan said, I am from Lawrence, Massachusetts. I was born in Kenya. I came to the US when I was seven years old and I came as an undocumented. I didn't come undocumented, but I became undocumented for a very long time. I was undocumented for 20 years. I actually just got my green. Green card this year, so a lot of my feelings about being in America have to do with just having to, like, fight for space and fight for resources and fight to have a voice the way that I've done that is by writing. I think I started writing because it was very nostalgic for me. It helped me remember back home. Um and it helped me just explain myself to people who didn't understand me, especially as an undocumented black person. So yeah, and there's this lovely photo from the photo shoot from my book.
So this project I'm not allowed to explain is something that came about after I want to say like after undergrad, but like it's been so long since undergrad. Like I need to stop talking about it, but it's something that reflects on that time in my life, which was a time where I went through a lot of different challenges and just had no way to process them together. So I'm I'm just going to briefly read.
Some of this I'm not allowed to explain is an attempt to recollect the space between our bodies and our spirits when we give in to the journey that life sets before us. The poetry I explore, the elusive nature of an American coming of age for black, queer, undocumented femme, specifically recounting the dispossession of personhood I experienced at a predominantly white. College, as my family back home went through deportation proceedings. Between interpersonal balance and systemic oppression, I'm not allowed to explain. It's about the stories we cannot tell in real time and what happens when we are left to ferment in the shadows with prayers and confessions name what I'm most afraid of. That sometimes surviving means starting over and starting over means we forget everything we were. Alchemy is tragic. That is, as it is redeeming.
So this is just pretty much the title of this book came from. This need to always. I always feel like I need to explain myself as a black person, as a queer person, as a immigrant. Um and they came a time in my life where I just didn't have any control of what was going on, and I felt that I couldn't explain things to people. And there was a lot of consequences. To do that, like I, I realize you know when you're a kid, you're taught, like, always tell the truth and you know, always share yourself and be honest and express yourself. But I realized that there were times where expressing myself and being honest actually put me at risk. And it also put the people that I love that risk, especially as an undocumented person.
Um and like I'm going to go into the dispossession and what I mean by that and some of the things that I felt dispossessed of briefly. But I just want to say real quickly that the title I'm not allowed to explain also comes from, I think, something that my mother and I speak about often in the journey of being undocumented. My whole family is undocumented. My mother and my brother. Um my my mom, my dad and my brother. My sister, actually, my sister's here. Hi, Grace. My sister is the only one who's born in America. So well, a majority of my family's undocumented. And I think something that. I I realized a lot growing up is that my parents were always like sometimes like in a crisis. But they never explained the crisis. They never were allowed to sort of reflect on what was really going on because to name the things that were happening would, in a weird way, allow like a reality that they didn't want to, like, admit to and couldn't handle and and didn't know how to explain to children. So. It was sort of this like this hush like understanding of like I'm not allowed to explain right now, but maybe I'll explain later or I'm not allowed to explain right now. But maybe later it won't matter. So I just like, I think I internalized that idea of like. Like I don't have to explain, but then later on it became more empowering. Like sometimes things people might not understand things about me, but I don't have to explain like I'm not allowed to explain. In fact. And like you just have to put it together yourself because I've spent so much time explaining that I actually I'm. I'm no longer allowing myself to explain.
So it's a little bit about the concept of the book. So dispossession. When I speak of this word, dispossession shout out to Cessie Lewis, who is a a mentor of mine that did a presentation on feeling dispossessed from education. And I think about the things that I felt dispossessed of, especially during this time when I was in school, where I just felt so far from myself. The first thing that was happening is I felt dispossessed of education. I've always very much valued education. My parents where some of the first college-educated people and their families growing up in Kenya, they both grew up to be teachers. Education was like very important in my family and when I went to school, I just no longer felt smart and it felt like the information that I was learning was not for me. It was for others to understand me for their own purposes.
And then I I felt dispossessed of home. I think this is a feeling a lot of undocumented folks feel just feeling like you're not home, and especially when you're on campus in a place that doesn't feel safe, I feel that I felt like I just didn't have a home for four years and that that does something to a person I felt very dispossessed of my body. I went through a lot of, you know, interpersonal violence, a lot of toxic and abusive relationships that made me feel like my body didn't belong to me. I felt dispossessed of blackness, even though I was like. 1.6% of the black pot. Oh, I was so the black population was 1.6% of the student body, which is a ridiculous statistic. Like, but even though I was like one of the only black folks on campus, somehow it felt like the blackness on campus was never for me. It was always for other folks to co-op for them to entertain themselves with, but they also, at the same time, even though they owned that blackness, they actually did not care about the nuance of my struggle.
And I think the most devastating for me as an artist. Was the disposition of my voice where I forgot to speak. I had always grown up as a writer, had always been very expressive, but I lost that courage to tell the truth and and some of those reasons were good reasons, like protecting other people. And I allowed that to stop me from being the person that I knew I had to be.
So I'm going to read another poem. This is part of four poems in the book called just “During the first crisis, during the second crisis, during the third crisis and during the fourth crisis”. I'm going to read about the third one.
So during the third crisis, she's underneath a different sky on adjacent sky in the South, where she can truly attend to the pieces. This one hidden inside a teacup with her mother's high school written on it, the others over a mosaic of beer brands inside of a metal Bosque, the rustling behind her keeps her vigilant, lets her imagine someone who cares enough to ask questions, but you, of all people, knows that she hates questions. It's the same feeling she gets whenever she dreams of school. Any school at any part of campus, for example, she could be on a couch or in a bedroom or on a field. But there's a taste to it, like a group of eager lacrosse players could run her off the school grounds at any moment. Or maybe they didn't see her. Or maybe they drunkenly corner her at a party in a frat house. The tallest and boldest of them threatening to light her hair on fire because she told them she moisturizes her Afro with oils. Her black friends watching in shock, too traumatized to get involved because. Too traumatized to get involved, she justifies for herself later. But now she's married to a Greek boy and Sigma Chi means something different. A math term, maybe, that she doesn't understand, because in high school her sophomore year math teacher was in her first year of teaching. And since she's been a first year teacher herself, she knows it's not her fault that she didn't learn anything. But what if she had? What if she knew math? What if she had studied sciences? Maybe even had self esteem. Maybe she wouldn't be outside at 4:00 AM throwing rocks at lizards, watching them scurry over the walls of a parent's property, trying to guess if the sores in her mouth were from smoking cigarettes or kissing strangers, or both.
This is a poem about I think dreams that I have. I always have dreams about being in school, and I think part of it is that growing up in Kenya, my parents taught at a campus like at a private school, and we lived on campus with my parents. And I consistently just. I was always on the school grounds. So I feel like. All my dreams have to do with school. I'm a teacher now. I'm in grad school and like I said, like this book is a lot about undergrad. So it's just like I have so much imagery of school and it always feels weird. It's always like a mystical place to be in school. And I really wanted to reflect on that.
Then I have another poem called “Justice Died Before the Cross”. This one is a little bit about. What does it mean when the story ends before it begins/
Early in the first chapter, I collapsed to my knees. Pillars fall, a burning cross strikes my back like Johnny inside the church as my mortal body returns to ashes. I see all things true in this realm that good things come in twos and true love is a burning Bush with a bright blue flame cool to the touch. Doesn't see my flesh with heat, or maybe by the time it reaches me I've lost all ability to heal. In my last breath, I removed my shoes and what's left of these earthly garments offer myself up to the one true God. Knowing in what's left of my bones as surrender does not mean salvation and sacrifice has little to do with redemption. This is not the story of how we make it, nor will there be a phoenix to rise in this premature death. Where I know the end. Before I know the beginning, like in all things, the wrath of the Father will always be satisfied.
I think this is a poem where I I was playing with a lot of religious imagery. I grew up in the church and my parents were very religious and I think being in the church is what created the community that we needed to survive here in America as undocumented immigrants. But then I realized at some point I was like sometimes there is no redemption. Sometimes the story is over before it begins, and I think some of that imagery became relevant to me again in that moment.
Once again, here we go with some more biblical tropes. I think one of the things I was insecure about when I was in college is just feeling very righteous. I think when you're the only black kid on campus or one of the only, you know students of color, you feel like you're always right. I mean, I we were always right. Right. But you know, it's like people somehow. It's like that became a sin, right? It became like a bad thing to always be right. Like somehow calling people out for their fuck shit somehow became like, you know, annoying. And I I just think about, like, my insecurity around telling the truth, because people made me feel like it was, you know, it was a sin. So this is about that.
If righteousness is my sin, then my karma is that I've become the same type of reckless as you. My own dark blood colors, the steps to the side door. My deepest fear isn't that I'll be hurt because what's being black? Except for giving others for their first impression of you, hurt is my birthright. The scar torn into my back that night in the dungeon as you stood and watched. All I wanted was a witness to this death. To hurt isn't in my nature. But you taught me that even good people fuck up sometimes. And if it's any consolation, I wouldn't have let you hold me if I wasn't desperate to hide my face. Last time I was dust covered and mint soaked. Ugly crying after we levitated off me and said in the course. And you teased me endlessly. Got me to throw hands in your direction. My lips clipped against my teeth. The way your fingers clipped onto the edge of my shirt pocket and I could feel all the layers of you begging me to stay. Telling myself I would, as long as we both looked off into the same setting, sun.
Yeah. And then I think the book starts off sort of grim. And then I I try to, you know, redeem myself by telling myself, like, it's important to tell the story and that maybe that is the redemption, the redemption is the story being told, even if it's a sad story. So this is sort of a meditation I used to have for myself. It goes.
I'm giving myself permission. To tell each part of the story exactly the way it needs to be told backwards in slow motion in film, fast forwarded with names removed with scenes redacted and metaphors and lines, and in color. And like if you go back to that first image of. Me. On the um on the back of my book, it's like a lot of doodles, and these are doodles that I used to draw before I could tell. The. Story I would just like like frantically. Just doodle and I feel like that was one of the first iterations of this of the book, so I really wanted to give myself permission to tell the story in all the ways.
So before I finish with my last poem, I wanted to let you all know about a a challenge that my friend started. My friend Joel right here. My my friend Joel read my book and Joe went to school with me and we've recently been connecting about, you know what, what that experience was like, actually Joel's here. Hi, Joel. So Joel is had mentioned that like me being upside down on this couch on the cover actually reminded him of this like hanged man card which represents, you know like you know change perspective like seeing things in a different way that like sort of is completely different from the way that your life is. And I think I identify with a lot of that imagery of being upside down and being like unbalance. So Joel started this challenge where they used this sort of prompt of my book to allow themselves to remember something without judging. Right. Like, what if you just allowed yourself to remember something that was harsh, something that you repressed and you just didn't judge yourself and you didn't explain, right? What would happen if we all did that? So Joel did it, and this is Joel's poem. I'm going to read it briefly.
When I remember, do I feel I do? I must. I'm a Cancer, after all. Symptom mentality is my reality. Even if I don't admit it to myself, it's there. When I feel the ascension through my spine in the chorus of all the moments euphoric or how you pointed it out. It was anti-cancer to listen. Some music just because without having it be a spiritual experience and I responded with two minutes of describing the precise moment when I first heard “Castaway Angels”, before even talking about the song. How easy is it to have someone else explain me? Remember, I remember where I was, what I was doing, driving out of the desert and towards the forest long hours alone thinking of hurricanes. And fires. I remember Ennars voice glow growing from a crystal falsetto to a blended blended warm vibrato that stirred through my fingers. But what was I feeling? It must be in the song, right? Not in me in my family will forgive me for myself is when I remember. Maybe this time and surrender I'll remember it. I'll remember as if I was there.
So this is Joel's poem. Thank you so much, Joel. You really inspired me by taking it to this next level. So. Then I asked people to do the challenge. I asked my friends. You'll ask his friends, and I had my friend Julie, this is Julie. She also was upside down on her couch, and she wrote a poem. And then this is Ezra. Ezra also did the challenge not on the couch per se, but also allowed themselves to remember something and record the the results. So that's going to be my challenge to you. Is when you have a moment to yourself, just like lay upside down somewhere doesn't have to be a couch recall, a memory that you have been suppressing. Allow yourself to feel it without judgment. um and then you can write it down and take a photo of yourself. And these two last things are optional and you can post it online with the hashtag. I'm not allowed to explain challenge. I'd really love to see y'all. What y'all are remembering and allowing yourself to remember. But also remember like you don't have to explain anything. Not to yourself. Not to me. And you just allow yourself to feel the freedom of that.
Alright, so this is going to be my last poem. This is called “Every time I open these pages”.
Every time I open these pages I find the answer or I find that I've already found the answer. If it's written in green then I found it in abundance. If it's written in red, then I found it in the middle of grading and desperation. If it's written in ballpoint then I must have been in the desert for 40 days and 40 nights. Must have fashion sheltered with these pages. Screen squeezed ink from a nearby carcass, both blood and bone, forced myself to tell the truth. With only the sun and the shadows of my limbs, as is the case with ballpoint. Nonetheless, the answer is there in the cursive. Only decipherable to teachers and lovers. My only fault is this. That I close this book and forget it, forget the answer and spend my day looking for it all over again.
Um, and that's mostly about how I don't like ballpoints. So show me out if you also hate ballpoints in the chat. I and that is my presentation. Thank you so much. These are all the people who are involved with the beautiful photo shoot that you saw on my creative people. My creative direction, my stylists, my photographers and all that. My editors for the book. And if you're interested in buying the book, you can buy it at gladysonedash.com. I can also put it in the chat. I have a Patreon. Just patreon.com back slash Gladys Wangeci and then my Instagram @gladyswangeci. Thank you so much.
ALAN PELAEZ LOPEZ: Thank you so much, Gladys. I wish you were in person so that you could, you know, interact with people IRL, but you're going to track people URL in a few. So now we're going to give the digital space to Wo. And then we'll convene the three of us to dialogue. Wo take it over.
WO CHAN: Thank you Alan, for having me and thank you, Gladys, for your presentation. I hope to be as organized and intentional and open in in the way in my candor, in my way of speaking in my presentation, as you were. My name is Wo Chan. I'm a poet and. A drag performer. I'm turning 30 in a couple weeks and I'm in Brooklyn right now on the Lenape Land, so I'm going to give that acknowledgment. I'm I'm really excited to be here.
I'm supposed to be in drag. I'm not in drag right now. I want to say thank you, Alan, for understanding. I'm pretty burnt out. You know, it's something I'm thinking a lot about is like the the double work of, like, being a queer person and like, creating queer content and queer culture or stuff and then having to show up for it and like. Double kind of like to the double left, you know so. You know what? Am I what? What can I say? I'm turning 30 and I have less energy, but I'm excited to show you all the digital drag that I've been making for the last couple of years. For better or worse, that's kind of how drag has adapted and moved.
As a drag performer, though, I am deeply needy of your affirmation. So if you're feeling something when I show these videos, or when I'm reading my poem and you have access to the chat spam chat, you know, like, give me some emojis, show me some love. This can be like a very alive thing. So yeah, I need it to survive. Honestly and. much less to get through this. So thank you all.
So I am a poet and a drag performer. I do have a book coming out next year called “Togetherness”, it’s with Night Boat Books and I'm really excited for it. I'm going to start by reading a poem and then I'm going to move on to show how I've tried to adapt poetry into my drag practice and kind of meld the the two together. Um hopefully strengthening each practice where one is lacking. So maybe some things to know is that I grew up. I was born in Macau, which is a part of China. It's like the sister colony of Hong Kong. And I came to the States when I was 5 years old when I came to the States, my parents opened the restaurant in Virginia where my brothers and I worked growing up. It was. Pretty it was pretty. It kind of ruined our family dynamic. I'm going to put it that very lightly on top of migration and stuff, the the family business thing made it really stressful. And my book is largely about growing up in a Chinese restaurant, also navigating my queerness as a teenager as the most Americanized one in my family, and kind of like holding that secret. And. And then it kind of culminates in basically the story of my family's deportation proceedings that I had to kind of navigate as like the English-speaking person in my family from the time I was 19 to 25. I thought (inaudible) my life I had started. I had. I had started doing drag. So it was this. I guess big test for me really to figure out how do I contain this or how do I express this on a page?Aand feel safe and feel seen and valued and not feel like I'm making a product for some academic thing. Um for people who, you know, quite frankly, may never know how that feels like or ever go through any similar experience, right?. My fear was that I would write a book about my experience, and it would just be bought by a stranger and sit and get dusty on a shelf. You know, like that's not how I want my story to live. And I think drag or I'm getting a little ahead of myself.
So I'll read the I'll read a poem called, “Years flow by like water”, which is a the name of a a Cantopop song that I really love that I translated. It's a really poetic song, but the title is called years flow by like water and um, I can share. Actually. Yeah. I can share my screen for this so that you all can also see.
(whisper) I like water.
Years flow by like water. Flowers do yoga in the sun in ways I cannot. Opps/ Stretching comes difficult because it is too simple and I believe I am complex more than I actually. And light cool water to be touched with intention. The permission to root and spill into a lust for plain air. When will you let somebody love you Wo Chan? I love flowers. I know that is not a radical statement. But I love loving them. John says after I send a snapshot of the colonial garden. Pine mulch romance the crying of voluptuous bees, the world that eats a strange barn owl. Tenderness for my friend. I gasp like a new page in a calendar, July 3rd, 2018. There is much I don't say. You can have an unimpressive sense of self. iPhone 6 kissing the mouths of dayglow lilies. The punk rock Daisies that wear a choker of spiked white leaves. Swollen yellow head. Dusty and free of the mind. In my childhood I knew a myth, 10 brothers born to a mother who swallowed a string of 10 pearls. Each child could do one incredible thing. The oldest seen miles away. The third lift the boulders. The 5th could fly. The 6th impenetrable. Seven could grow tall as a palace gate. Nine could shout the walls down. Their youngest brother, though the 10th was powerless throughout. A nuisance who wept from fear at each encounter with the villain. Though, who antagonized us? The bureaucrat, who named US high on his sign of cure. The children in sheets tapping at our gates. My brothers and I projected on this drama a schematic for boyhood where we could be mythic, incredible, and Chinese in Virginia's townhouses set across from the Chuck E. Cheese. I was the youngest, my brothers strong and clear sight, protected me from what I couldn't see then and then tormented me for my uselessness. I cried for help until I learned to stop crying. I drew blood. We opened a restaurant. We became something. My oldest brother, hot tempered and silver hatchback slingshotting noodles from city to suburb. The 2nd glamorous in peanut sheen, teenaged and shifting a walk one handedly, like a black chariot, a crossfire. The third lead, orman draped in steam, all smiles near the behemoth high. He was a child, really. I showered with him, shared a room until I was 16. I loved them. I know that is not a radical statement, but I love loving them. I hate how we were raised, though it is done now. I think it is over. The restaurants sold to our neighbor who makes very bad food. Our parents, they are in bed and resting, diabetic, stone and varicose veins. We lived through these decisions. The air is heavier than when we first arrived in San Francisco Airport. My mother staring down the wall of terminal glass that shines a vision of my brothers. Hauling duffels, dragging luggage and my babyish hand, already sweaty and floating through the shift home that wills to move us and will remove us from each other.
(long sigh, blowing out air) That's always a really hard poem to read. So thank you all for being here and being here, being present for it. and I think this is like. One of those poems that I'm going to be editing up to like the final date, you know, I just found that you saw me find that typo too. And I need to clarify this. I'm gonna. I'm just gonna. I'm just gonna highlight this. Sorry. (laughs) Well. But thank you all. Oh, and the chat the chats, the chats going. Thank you all for the love. I continue to exist purely from that. Yeah. So that's a poem I wrote. Ah. 2000. My my deportation, something that you said, Gladys, that I really resonated with is that when you talk about. Deportation or documentation. People always want to ask, like, so what's going on now? Like, are you? They want to. They want to know you're safe, right? They want to know that you have. The Green Card, the citizenship, but it's like there's a whole other side of that which is like I have feelings. Like, I have feelings about what I. Went through, you know, like I'm mad. I'm mad at like the systems that feel so. That feels so overwhelming and like unfindable, you know. I'm mad that I had to go through that. I'm mad that other people will never understand or or they can empathize, but maybe they won't ever really understand. Right? I'm mad at the power and balance I. Have feelings about this? And people just want to know that, like, I mean, and you can't blame them, right? But like. They want to know you're good and then once they know you're good, they're like, oh, I'm so relieved. Right? So. But there are feelings about this, which I think I try to hold my first book, and honestly, I. I I I don't know how it's going to go until it's out in the world and whether I know that I did right by myself, because there were plenty of scenes from my deportation hearings that I wanted to put in there, and I I visualized that like my book would be one epic arc where I would tell all and then it got to the point where I was just like, I don't think I'm ready to tell all. I don't think I I don't think I I don't think I want everyone to know like how painful it was for me.
So as this was happening. This whole deportation proceedings that happened started when I was like 19 and did ended because it never really ends, right? It ended when I was 25. I'm back on my green card. I started feeling like the page wasn't. I couldn't access the page. That's pretty much how it was. It just wasn't there for me anymore. When I tried to write about documentation. Maybe that's the thing about like. Having to navigate my own papers and having to do all my own paperwork and stuff, but I just couldn't. Maybe I wasn't. Maybe I was too close to the experience to put it down into words, but I had. I had drag and I was like, fuck it. I'm going to bring this to my drag. And when I start trying to do like some drag that I can elevate or like expand with projections and stuff.
So here is I'm going to show a piece called “Some where over the rainbow”. This was something I started doing when I was 24. When I started playing with projections.
[video audio - music playing]
You'll see some footage at the end, and some of you'll see my parents and the parent. Footage is of footage that I took. Well, actually let me play.
[video audio - audience laughing, song “Somewhere over the rainbow” playing, audience clapping]
Hi. Hi. OK, I'm back. Thank you all for watching. Your rage is welcome, haha. Uh, I'm seeing these. Yeah. So. That was that was my “Somewhere over the rainbow” piece. A lot of the footage that you see that so that's like my own footage, right. So I was trying to mirror the the somewhere over the rainbow. Like or like the the where the like black and white. The color kind of like transition filmically, whatever. Put that footage. There's some pieces that are really fun for me, which is like. The one where. I'm zooming in with my parents in the lobby. That's right. Before they go into their, to our deportation hearing. So we were just sitting at the hotel lobby across those have mundane this shit is too right. Like, like you wait for years, right. And you. You show up and the judge is like. You're waiting for the judge to speak and the judge just goes like, can someone get another chair? And then you just have to stand there waiting like it's absurd. But that was like lobby from, like, the freaking Panera across the street or whatever.
And then the footage of me following my mom in the supermarket, like, immediately after our hearing and we were told that we could go back on our green cards. My mom just went to like the Chinese market like like nothing happened and bought a bunch of crabs like like every other day. She was like, OK, go buy crabs now. And I was like, what? OK, mom, let's do that. Yeah. So I don't know, these are like little details that are like really important to me to put in there.
I I started performing with projections and like mixing in my own documentation like my own pieces of video and text and words. And I thought that like oh, this is something potent and interesting for me and I want to do more of it.
So this is a piece. Here. And get rid of this. And I had I I realized it was a potent form and I could do this thing where I feel like with drag today what we see, what we understand as like a drag performer is can be so flat. And I think that also ties in with femme performance as well. The idea of like a femme character is a very so it's so stylized that it becomes flattened. And I wanted to bring in my own words. To say like, hey, I am a person with a history with a mind with like questions and like. I'm not always here to be friendly or like entertaining, right? I like sometimes my what I feel inside in terms of rage or energy is like diametrically opposed to like the audience. And that is like a legitimate performance relationship as well. So I wanted to capture some of that. Sometimes.
(video audio “And welcoming Brooklyn (audience) song “Memory” playing, audience shouting/laughing/clapping)
(inaudible) That's the thing, OK? Yeah. And then we just say like that was 2018 and like the adult media like. The the porn landscape was very different back then than we just say. So people, I don't know if people, if everyone knows what Tumblr is, but I'm not going to explain it. You just got to do your own digital research about the archives.
But yeah, as I'm watching this, I'm just thinking like. How drag? I think the thing about drag that felt really helpful for me was being able to access beauty as a tool of self-connection and expansiveness. The spaciousness that like knowing, knowing how to access beauty for yourself and playing in that in the way that beauty is the thing that makes the space grow, right? And it's not like. It's not like you're you're. You're like. Well, hopefully, if it's a genuine connection to yourself, it's not like you're co-opting another person's space. You're really you're literally expanding your understanding of like who you are and how you can present and you're feeling new feelings as you as you play as you play. Like with your appearance and your presentation.
And I think that was, you know, I think I you really need something to counteract the poison of like. The state. Yyou know, you really need that you really need to nurture that. Especially as a as a queer person, especially as a queer person, and especially as a non-white person too, because beauty is also such a personal connection to what you look, your history, your culture. Like everyone has a beauty history and a beauty culture. Which is all maybe that's a good way to a good segue. Two into um. Oh, I I might have to jump ahead, so I have. I have I can share with you some the link that I was something I was going to show. But let me how much time do I have? Alan? May I ask?
ALAN PELAEZ LOPEZ: Let's do like 5 max.
WO CHAN: 5 max OK, so let me just end. Let me just end and I can send I can. No, let me just end with one more video, sorry and I can send maybe the other video that I wanted to show.
But yeah, I think something where I'm at now, I guess also with the space that COVID or like being at home gave me. Is like I have. This. I'm revisiting Cantopop in this way that is really important to me. I'm revisiting like Divas and icons like Anita Mui. Who is like with internationally like, well known in the 90s and like became a superstar in the East. I could go on forever about her but like. The basically like when she retired, she gave like a 40 night like concert tour. That's how big she was, right. And she was like a, a superstar in cinema. By the time she passed away from ovarian cancer. And I've been my first language is Cantonese, and I've always wanted to perform. Cantonese more, even though I don't know all the words. I know the vowels and I know how to shape my mouth to like fit it. So as I'm learning Cantopop. It's kind of occurring to me that like I'm I'm learning candle pop and Cantonese are relearning it at the same time that my mother must have been learning Cantonese and being exposed to Cantopop music outside of mainland China because she moved to Macau to have more kids or like start her family.
So let me show you this third piece. It's also called “years flow by like,” well it is, it is years flowed by like water”. It's the song from which the title of the first poem I lifted.
OK. And before, yeah, I do. I just want to thank everyone for staying here and being being here. I know it can be. It's it's. It can be staring at Zoom can be a tiring thing. And watching drag videos on Zoom is bizarre. But here we are and I'm thankful to share this space. So this is a video I made on my rooftop last. Maybe like last September, yeah. And this was for a drag show, a digital drag show. And I just I I kind of like hauled everything around by myself and, like, climbed up the ladder and like, set up all the lighting and like. Dressed myself. Iit was a it was exhausting. But I'm so happy I did it. The words you see are from a poem. They're not. They're not. A translation of the song there from a poem that I wrote. And I'm like fascinated with our like image or like. Media consciousness or like our image shared image culture. Where it's like whenever I whenever I see an Asian face on screen and they're saying they're speaking in Cantonese or Chinese or Mandarin, and they're words underneath, I think it's like a subtitling. But like, if this is not the case, so. It starts off silent.
Oh, sorry. Start again. Hold on. Let me get this. Let me get this buffer.
(silence)
[video audio - music playing]
(silence)
[video audio - music playing]
Can we just pause for one second? I think I actually have this loaded on another tab and I'm just like. I'm just being ridiculous, actually. Maybe it's better if I. Like open it on in YouTube.
Right. Open.
[video audio - music playing with singing]
OK. I think. I'm really sorry folks, I don't know what else to do besides doing this, so I'm just going to try this again and maybe we can skip towards the end, but it's, yeah.
[video audio - music playing with singing, video froze]
Yeah, I don't know. I don't know what to do. I apologize. Ah.
ALAN PELAEZ LOPEZ: We can post the links to your videos on the underneath the Facebook live and also we'll post it on the website so that people can still access them after this.
WO CHAN: OK. Yeah. I'm so sorry. I wish. Oh, no, I don't know if this is any better.
(inaudible)
[video audio - music playing with singing]
WO CHAN: OK, I'm seeing people's comments, so I'm just going to give you all the links. Thank you for your time. I'm sorry that the video didn't load as quickly as I wanted. To. Um. But you get the idea. I'm bummed that I. Couldn't share it, but here is the link for the Google doc that I was referencing anyhow. And I can maybe just drop it here. Yeah. So all all of my drag videos that I was going to share is on that link along with the first poem that I read. So if folks wanna watch it or I don't know. Yeah. Thank you so much.
ALAN PELAEZ LOPEZ: Thank you so much for yeah. If anybody wants to click on the Google Doc now so that you can save it, because you're going to lose the chat when the event ends.
But Wo and Gladys, your presentations are making me think about a lot of different things. Particularly Gladys, you. You talked about dispossession and the dispossession of voice. Wo, I feel like I when you were talking about your immigration case and the page. Not necessarily being it for you and kind of turning to drag it, it kind of also reminded me of Gladys's notion of dispossession and how you might be using drag as a way to speak back to a form of dispossession, of voice. And in the the last video you just tried to show us, there was one line that I saw that it said I represent. Myself on the streets and in the People's Court. And I'm like, damn, this is exactly what I think. That Gladys's book is doing and what your draft performance is doing. And and the thing about both of you having books is that under this empire right books I think have a mobility that sometimes the migrant subject does not have. The book can circulate in spaces where the migrant subject might not be allowed and and and looking at that book, not just as a book but as an artifact, a testimony. A, like even even a relative, right, I think really speaks to this denial of this possession of like, one refuses to continue to be in dispossession of voice. So thank you. I'm wondering if either of you have like questions for one another question that you might want to ask one another, since I think this may be the first time you're meeting.
WO CHAN: This this is our first time meeting.
GLADYS WANGECI GITAU-DAMASKOS: Yeah. Yeah, it is. I have so many questions. I mean, I'm not even questions. Just like having somebody recall what their like deportation like the time it took. I think I also my family is going through deportation along with me literally when I was 19. So it's like 24. Or as well.
So like the same time in our lives and I, you know, when you were talking about like the just the mundaneness of just, like being in court and just like, like, I remember being in court and the prosecutor was reading something about my mother’s. It was an asylum case about how part of the reason why we're filing for asylum is because my mother had gone through this very, very traumatic, intimate. Violence as a child and the prosecutor was just reading it and I was just like, literally had to fly in from college, like, tell all my professors and I literally was just there, like, frantically. And then I heard the prosecutor say this, like, deeply traumatic thing about my mother. There and my mom was just there. Like she's in a court proceeding. And then after I got on a flight and I went back to school and I was like, there was something super weird about being in those proceedings and also the fact that, like, if you can't talk about it, like the people in your life don't even know that you, like, experienced that. And I really, I I like even watching those scenes and how like. It's like for me. I know it was moments where I got to see my family was doing those court proceedings right, because I wasn't always around. I was always in school, so I really appreciate how you took the time to capture those moments with your family, even though it was going to this thing that you couldn't really speak on at the time. So thank you.
WO CHAN: Yeah. And I think the inability to speak on it, it feels like shame, right? It feels like someone is imposing shame on you because it's like it's separating you from your, like, usual support networks and you like. You're like, I shouldn't feel bad about this, but I do feel bad about it because I can't talk about it and it's like, am I supposed to be? For me it was like I I was there. The judge like saw me and my dad sitting next to each other. And he looked on his paper. And he was like. He. Said, which is which, which was like, like, who's the dad? Because he he just names, right? It's like, Wo Man Chan and Kinso Chan. So now I was just like, am I in a fucking Beckett play right now? Like, what is like which, like, is this, like, comedy, is this is this is. I mean it is racist, but like this is dark. And like, it's like dark humor.
You know. Yeah. So I mean, it's nice to just like. I didn't know that our experiences echoed each other in time, so it's nice.
GLADYS WANGECI GITAU-DAMASKOS: (inaudible) Alan
WO CHAN: Alan foyered the papers and Knew. And it's also. It's like I learned so much about in the sad way. Like I learned a lot about my parents from having to process their papers.
GLADYS WANGECI GITAU-DAMASKOS: Good parents Alan. Alan knew something.
WO CHAN: And down. Like the exact amount of money that was in my dad's bank when he was 26 years old and had just came to the states, you know, it's like I wish that my parents could have told me this about their lives rather than finding it out through, like, court documents. It's very. It's sad for me. Yeah.
GLADYS WANGECI GITAU-DAMASKOS: And I think also just like the irony of how much documentation like my lawyer has pages on pages on pages on like just me and it's like the irony of being undocumented when there's so much documentation about our lives is like, so like. It's a comedy and, you know, and it's a comedy when you make it, when you're in it. It's like not so much a comedy. So I thank you for, you know, validating those experiences.
WO CHAN: I think the thing with like books just speaking about writing that about like documentation and that kind of trauma. Within books is that I think. That people will go. To the reading and buy the book and maybe feel some kind of absolution or something, Or just like ohh I I did this great. I participated in like a civic affair today, and I I was engaged in, like the conversation. And yeah, that was. That's me in my most cynical mind. It's like, oh, you're just gonna let this book get dusty on your shelf? I know it because I own books, but like with poetry or with, like, drag with performance, it's like it's never just like you. It's you. Don't just you don't buy an object. You're always like.
What is it you're always complicit in the performance, you know, as an audience member like you build a performance with the performer. It's confrontational, it's collaborative. And it's real in the way that, like, this possession doesn't just happen out of nothing. Like there was a taking away right that benefits another group of people. And maybe when you're making a product that gets hidden, but when you're performing and you're in someones face or you're demanding that they give you a dollar. Never like there is at least an interaction that is visible and clear between human. Things.
GLADYS WANGECI GITAU-DAMASKOS:I like the. I'm gonna really think about that, cause I I like. I want people to forget about my book. Like I write for people who just buy books and don't read. And I think I'm afraid that that people are gonna read it and know something about me. But I like what you say about performance. Like it really. Does. Force people to confront, yeah. I'm going to take that with me. Cool.
ALAN PELAEZ LOPEZ: Thank you so much to the two of you. I feel that there's a larger conversation right about what art can teach us about migration and also the right to to opacity the right for other people not to know that I think both of you have touched on in this conversation we are at time. But I do want to. Let everybody know who is here that on the Center for Race and Gender website under this event description and title, we're we're going to add some links to both of Gladys's books and then the performances that will has shared with us. So please be on the lookout in the same place that you registered for this.
Thank you both of you for joining the Center for Race and Gender. I hope that the three of us can continue to be in conversation outside of this space. And yeah, if there's any final words you want to say before we end the event, please do so now.
GLADYS WANGECI GITAU-DAMASKOS: Thank you so much for having me. It's so validating
WO CHAN: Thank you.
GLADYS WANGECI GITAU-DAMASKOS: to get to this morning and like just even to be in community with folks who understand, like you were saying, well, about people are not just empathetic, they're actually, you know, understand that journey. I I really appreciate that space, so thank you.
WO CHAN: Yeah. Thank you so much. It's just I always so confused to like why systemic violence makes us feel alone when it's systemic, you know. Like it by definition, there are like thousands of people, right? So it's like it should actually make us feel like connected in a fucked up way. But it makes us feel so alone. So thank you for reversing that just a little. With this pairing along and I'm so happy to have met you, Gladys.
(inaudible)
If you're ever in the city in New York, let me know.
GLADYS WANGECI GITAU-DAMASKOS: Yes, I will definitely let you. Know.
WO CHAN: Thank you everyone for being here.
ALAN PELAEZ LOPEZ: Thank you, everybody. Enjoy your evenings. We'll see you again next time.
WO CHAN: OK, bye.