APEX Express – AANHPI Special Programming – 5.4.23 Part Two

Powerleegirl Hosts Miko Lee & Jalena Keane-Lee, a mother daughter team continue to celebrate Asian-American Native Hawaiian Pacific Islander heritage month. They speak about the annual United States of Asian-America festival with artist/curator Yeu Q Nguyen. Miko also chats with Marissa Macayan from Kapwa Gardens. They also chat with each other about what AANHPI heritage month means to them.

Show Transcripts AANHPI 2023 part 2

[00:00:00] Opening: Asian Pacific expression. Unity and cultural coverage, music and calendar revisions influences Asian Pacific Islander. It’s time to get on board. The Apex Express. Good evening. You’re tuned in to Apex Express.

[00:00:18] Jalena Keane-Lee: We’re bringing you an Asian American Pacific Islander view from the Bay and around the world. We are your hosts, Miko Lee and Jalena Keane-lee the powerlee girls, a mother daughter team, Happy Asian-American native Hawaiian Pacific Islander heritage month. And welcome to another special episode of apex express. This is the power league girls. I’m Jalena Keane-Lee, and I’m Miko Lee. We’re a mother-daughter duo talking today about Asian American native Hawaiian Pacific Islander heritage month, and all of the amazing events that you can experience and some really great shows and movies that you can watch too.

Once again, we meet with artists and activists who are telling stories about R a N H P I experience in different ways. Today we speak about the annual United States of Asian-America festival with artists you queue. When about the multidisciplinary art exhibition, Jade wave rising portraits of power and Marissa Macayan from kapwa gardens. Who’s hosting yum yams. The Uber meets matcha festival. This Saturday. Yum. And we chat with each other about a N H P I heritage month and what it means to us.

So every year, the Asian Pacific Islander cultural center hosts, this big event called the United States of Asian America. And it’s basically a month long festival where all these different arts groups get to perform and there’s food and there’s museums and there’s dance and there’s theater. And we interviewed a couple of the folks.

What did you learn about it?

I think, you know, as we mentioned in Part one of our, a. And HPI history month, special it’s such a special year because it’s the first year that so many of these events are happening in person. Again. since pre 2020 since pre COVID. So I think, you know, our community.

Is really needing to come together for joy and celebration. And it’s a really exciting time to do that. there’s so many really cool events and of course we’ll have them linked in our show notes. But one thing that caught my eye is king Lotus boys performing. Who’s a AAPI drag king, shout out to our queer and trans a N H P eyes. And so that should be a really fun performance. And I believe that king Lotus boy is also doing some different workshops this month, too.

That’s right. And then F no tech that we interviewed and Donia dance and the south Asian history, walking tour, also all part of this festival. And like you were saying, this is the first time since the start of the pandemic, that a lot of these events are happening in person. And that’s why the theme this year is so resonant. It’s re-imagining horizons. So they’re really talking about how do we reimagine the future? How do we question, how do we make changes so that we can rediscover and reconstruct our future selves? So I think that’s actually a great, huge topic. It’s such a big topic and thinking also about.

How. Shaping and determining what we want for our collective and generative future is a content negotiation of the past and present. And I think it’s so wonderful to get to explore that through art, through dance, through all these different, , you know, celebrations and means of being, and also so intergenerationally, like we spoke.

, with different artists that are from all different generations and same with, this event, there are some bay area artists who have been in the game for 40 50 years. And some that are really new that are young people that are just kinda starting out on their, you know, artistic journey and.

Reshaping reclaiming or re-imagining their identity. And I also really like that this year, they’re really thinking about solidarity with our BIPOC communities, because part of re-imagining, our future has to be how we work together. And I love that it’s centering artists because artists are built with this ability to imagine and think differently about the world.

And that’s something we really need right now. So encouraging folks to show up to the United States of Asian America events happening all throughout this month. And. Any type of art form you’re interested in, you can get involved and you can check it out. , and next we’re going to hear an interview with actually one of the kickoffs of the festival. It actually already opened last week. And that is the show jade waves rising which is a multimedia production which will be fun to be able to see so check that One out

Next up Mika chats with Marissa McKeon from CAPA gardens about the upcoming Uber meets Mascia festival.

[00:04:46] Marissa Macayan: Hi. Thank you Miko. This is so fun.

[00:04:48] Miko Lee: So you are a dancer and also the manager at Kawa Gardens. Can you talk to us about Cultivate Labs and Kapa Gardens?

[00:04:57] Marissa Macayan: Yes, absolutely. Cultivate Labs. We’re a nonprofit organization and we are focused on economic development, and we’re also an arts organization, so we’re reviving our cultural districts and preserving har our heritages and really uplifting and trying to create a thriving commercial corridor for historically overlooked communities.

Right now our focus is on Soma Filipinos, our historical Filipino cultural district in San Francisco. I’m so happy to join you. I am joined by my two-year-old Mayri so you may hear her pop in.

[00:05:32] Miko Lee: We love having young people on the show because we’re also talking about family events where people could bring their young folks, so that seems appropriate.

[00:05:41] Marissa Macayan: Absolutely. And honestly, co gardens is a space where we do encourage everyone in the community to really come by and enjoy. Bring your families, bring your aunties, bring your grandparents and really come and enjoy the space.

Kale Gardens is a physical space. We’re a community garden. We’re located on Mission Street in the heart of Selma, and we host a lot of community events, community marketplace events and. We also host private events, but we are a temporary project. So we were our former parking lot turned into a beautiful outside garden oasis.

We opened when we were still pretty just beginning the recovery from Covid in San Francisco. , we opened in April of 2021, so we were still very. Restricted in the number of attendees we could have in the garden. And since then it’s just been a really powerful place for the community to gather, to do different culturally focused programs and to continue to provide placemaking for our entrepreneurs, for our artists, for our partner community groups to be able to gather safely.

For many reasons, being outdoor, being safer for covid reasons and also it being a beautiful space. I do encourage everybody to check this out online and come through to in person to one of our events. But also we are still very much dealing with Asian hate. In the community. And so again, just being a place of healing and being a place that our community can gather and feel safe doing

[00:07:19] Miko Lee: so. As you mentioned, Kawa Gardens is located on Mission Street, an old parking lot that’s turned into an art space that has a stage and has beautiful murals all around. I’ve been lucky enough to go there for multiple events and I think in before you’ve hosted the United States of Asian America, and you’re also hosting an upcoming event called Yum Yams. Can you tell us about it?

[00:07:43] Marissa Macayan: Yes. Yum. Yams, this is our fourth. Iteration of this event. And we learned at our very first yum yams event that we really had something going on. This is an UBE festival, an all things UBE festival. So we’ve done it three times and each time it’s just gotten a little bigger and bigger.

And this year we are partnering with our friends at Coho which is another arts focus group from Japan Town. And we’re joining forces and it’ll be yum. Yams, UBE meets matcha. So it’ll be a really fun event. It’s coming up May 13th and may is also a a p i Heritage month. or

[00:08:25] Miko Lee: Tell us what a person will find when they like uba. They like maa. What happens when they walk into KAA Gardens? What will they see at this Yum Yams?

[00:08:36] Marissa Macayan: Yum Yams is going to feature both a mix of MAA vendors and UBA vendors. We have retail vendors from both Filipino entrepreneurs, Japanese. And Japanese American entrepreneurs and other Asian identifying entrepreneurs. It’s going to be a super fun vibrant, delicious. I can’t wait to just smell yum yams because I think it’s gonna be full of a ton of delicious treats and full of a lot of Asian vendors and just amazing Asian flavors for the day. So that’s why you can come and see and experience and taste and smell at Kale Gardens on May 13th.

[00:09:21] Miko Lee: UBE Festival, yum yas, that’s happening. What else is happening at Couple Gardens for a p I Heritage month?