APA Book Festival

This past Saturday was the first Asian Pacific American book festival, and it was about time! Why? Maybe "awareness" is one good reason -- and just to point out that notable Asian American writers exist in our diverse ethnic weave of American culture and experience. Minority voices get lost, so they need places to be discovered. The festival slogan was "Celebrating Stories, Transforming Lives".



Carlos Bulosan, Mitsuye Yamada, Hisaye Yamamoto, and Wakako Yamauchi were four of the "pioneer" writers being honored. The free event was coordinated by the APA Legal Center of Southern California with the theme of this year's festival being "family". A complete list of the participants are on website located here.

I was working as a festival volunteer during the morning. It seemed like I was mostly saying "hi" to many community folks who I haven't seen in a while. It was nice, and I met some new people too.

Mommy and Hikaru joined me later for some poetry readings by Victoria Chang, Sung Yi, and Amy Uyematsu. And to our big surprise, (baby) Hikaru was quite focused in listening to the poetry, including some spoken words from Alison De La Cruz. We couldn't believe it -- especially if you know how restless 20-month-old babies can get. Maybe they all sounded like Dr. Seuss. (Just kidding.)

Too bad I missed some of the writer's workshops and discussions, though, but oh well... I guess there's always next year. After coming home, I felt a little inspired to pick up the so-called word processor again for a postponed (book) project. I shouldn't really use Hikaru (and the lack of sleep) as an excuse not to work on my poetry either. The beauty, the images, and the thoughts are staring me in the face. I just need to exercise some sweat in connecting them with words.