Sung Ja Shin - The Layered Stories of This Place: Challenging My Ways of Knowing and Being

Sung Ja Shin is a Program Officer with the Minnesota Education Strategy with eight years of experience at the Humanities Center. She currently facilitates the design and implementation of the Center’s foundational knowledge workshop, Increase Engagement Through Absent Narratives and co-leads the Educators’ Institute. Sung Ja is an active member of the Korean Adoptee community, bringing her experiences as a woman of color to important dialogues shifting paradigms in the public arena.

I love the way the air feels in my lungs when it shifts from its muggy warmth to evening crispness; in that single breath, my entire being is reunited with the land surrounding my grandparents’ home. In times of transition in my life, this place was my constant—reuniting with loved ones from across the country during one sacred week every summer. The cold, spring-fed lake surrounded by birch trees and well-worn dirt paths welcomed our small bodies from morning to dark. This was my place.

In the past few years, I’ve been challenged to think about how stories are layered in place. I didn’t realize that I had learned to think of the layers in a pile—the one on top clearly superior and covering over the rest. I had never really allowed myself to consider the other beings that inhabited my place, or the stories of how I, a transnational adoptee, arrived here.

I am learning from indigenous friends: “Know who you are, where you are, and who you are with,” and “Know how you are connected or disconnected to this place.” These words, from Mona Smith of Allies: media/art and Emily Johnson of Catalyst Dance, have washed over me hundreds of times. Every time I hear them, I’m challenged—challenged by everything I was taught, challenged to continue acknowledging what I do not know. These words call me into a place of humility, fighting against a culture disconnects humanity through “othering” and its checkbox mentality, demanding a mastery over knowledge that renders stories like mine invisible. 

The Minnesota Humanities Center works with amazing partners who are teaching us how this concept of “place” can surface the stories and lived experiences of the people who consider this place we now call Minnesota “home.”

By using the concept of place to bring absented stories into public, we can productively address:

1. Stories of origin and arrival: How did I(we) get here?
2. Stories of inclusion: What makes this place home?
3. Stories of character: What makes my local community distinctive?
4. Stories that connect the past with the present: What is the history of this place?

(Martin Case, Allies: Research and Writing)

The 2016 Summer Educators’ Institute: Transforming Education Through Absent Narratives will focus on these concepts. Participants will start with the stories of the people who have the longest relationship to this place, learning from Dakota scholars and the bdote area—where “two waters come together”—in the Twin Cities. Through rich humanities content, participants will deepen their knowledge base and practice around ways of knowing and being, interrupt the dominant narrative, and identify strategies to retell and reimagine our stories. Participants will leave with a plan to use place-based strategies to incorporate absent narratives in their classrooms.

These days, I think a lot about place. And now, I think not only of my grandparents’ home, but also of the many people and beings who have lived and continue to live in that place. I think about how I ended up here, and how the acknowledgement and telling of these stories makes me whole, and allows me to add my story to the layers of stories that make up this special place.

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Prayers on the Prairie: Asian-Pacific Minnesotan Religious Practices

Minnesota is home to over 250,000 Asian-Pacific Americans, including the largest Tibetan, Karen, and urban Hmong communities in the United States, according to the 2010 US Census. In May 2009, the Minnesota State Legislature asked the Minnesota Humanities Center and the Council on Asian-Pacific Minnesotans (CAPM) to collaboratively create new programs that celebrate and preserve the artistic, historical, and cultural heritages of these Asian-Pacific communities. The Prayers on the Prairie: Asian-Pacific Minnesotan Religious Practices documentary grew out of this partnership.

The stories and histories of Asian-Pacific Minnesotans are woven into the story and history of Minnesota. Many Asian-Pacific Minnesotans utilize strong Christian traditions and worship as church communities; however, others practice different religious traditions that are not always understood by their fellow Minnesotans.

Prayers on the Prairie is an attempt at bridging this gap in knowledge and understanding. This project, created in partnership with the Humanities Center and CAPM, features an educational documentary video, informational booklet, and educator resources that examine five distinct religious traditions—Hinduism, Theravada Buddhism, Chinese Ancestral Worship, Hmong Shamanism, and Islam—that are thriving among Minnesota’s Asian American communities. The documentary introduces and draws on the experience of practitioners and scholars who describe how differing religious communities are able to thrive, practice, and live out their religious tenets in the land of blue skies, prairie lands, and 10,000 lakes.

For more information about Prayers on the Prairie visit the Minnesota Humanities Center's Absent Narrative Resource Collection.

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Sia Her - Hearing the Stories Behind the Story

Sia Her is the executive director of the Council on Asian Pacific Minnesotans, a state agency that advises the Governor and the Legislature on issues of importance to the Asian Pacific community in Minnesota. She holds a master’s degree in public policy from the Hubert H. Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs and a bachelor’s degree in political science from Macalester College.

Last year, I had the opportunity to meet with a group of Hmong American students, when I was invited to speak about my experiences as a Hmong American woman in a leadership position. These were young women, ages 15-18, struggling at home with cultural and gender-specific expectations, having difficulties in the classroom, and wanting more than anything to be seen, understood, and valued by their parents and others. They strive for recognition as more than just their failings which define them as simply either a worthless Hmong daughter or, in the alternative, as someone who is the ‘model’ minority.

I shared with the group that for as long as I could remember, I spent all my time reading and dreaming about the day when I would be strong enough to determine my own fate. To the best of my ability, I avoided acquiring the traits and skills of the dutiful daughter my Hmong mother dreamt of. For her part, my mother dedicated much energy and time to trying to change me, pointing out that all of my friends could sew perfectly and were married by age 14. As a response, I made a list of what I would take with me in my backpack should I decide to run away: my favorite Nancy Drew books and Benjamin Franklin’s Almanac.

The participants laughed with cautious relief throughout my talk. After, they shared that their parents often tell them they are burdens and likely to dishonor the family, too, because they stay out with their friends, speak their mind, and wear "objectionable" clothing. Inside their ethnic community, they are not good enough Hmong daughters; inside the schools, they are not academically successful enough. As neither the “good Hmong daughter” nor the “model minority,” these young women feel they belong nowhere.

“Is there really no place?” they cautiously asked, “for daughters who are Hmong but do not always come home directly after school to cook and clean; daughters who are seen and heard (in English mostly)?” Is there no place for daughters who spend time wondering how it is possible to feel so lonely in the midst of so many? How does one survive this journey?

These young women reaffirmed what many of us believe:  our understanding of our Southeast Asian Minnesotan youth is not nuanced enough to enable us to meaningfully support them so that they thrive without meeting all of our expectations. We have yet to succeed in helping them to navigate the complex, rigid, and incompatible paradigms established by linguistically and culturally diverse communities.

It is tempting to view them as just a group of American youth of color about to fail, while who they really are is a mix of their immigrant/refugee parents and a whole lot more of America. In our time together, their choice of words, body language, and what they chose to share reveal that they desire their ethnic community’s approval, strive to succeed despite their circumstances, and also just want to have fun. The tears threatening to fall from several participants’ eyes indicate their determination to not buckle under the weight of the challenges they face and to make good use of the opportunities they have as Hmong Americans.

I concluded my talk on the note that it was only when I was much older that I understood—my  parents’ hurtful words and expectations/demands were their fears, hopes, and dreams for me bundled into one package and wrapped in a language the American in me had not learned to decode. In the end, I emphasized, “successful” people are not born successful. They fall before they rise, build and rebuild themselves, and seek to help others and themselves to become increasingly “culturally competent” in each other’s stories so that one’s calls for help are heard and understood by another.

A year after our meeting, I continue to hear that several of the young women still talk about how our time together empowered them to find comfort in belonging to no one paradigm, believing that this may very well be the answer to their question of “belonging” as American children of, as Ronald Takaki puts it, “strangers from a different shore.” Their questions and comments then and today emphasize how critical it is for us to create safe and secure spaces for the intentional sharing of how our interactions impact the trajectory of one another’s lives. To hear these young women tell stories from their point of view is akin to putting flesh on the skeleton that is often the preferred starting and ending point of the national Asian American narrative.

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Ka Vang - Humanities with Impact

Ka Vang is the Director for Impact and Community Engagement with American Public Media Group/ Minnesota Public Radio. She is a recipient of the Archibald Bush Artist Fellowship and several other artistic and leadership awards. Ka is the author of the children's book “Shoua and the Northern Lights Dragon,” a finalist for the 23rd Annual Midwest Book Awards in 2012, published by the Minnesota Humanities Center and Council on Asian Pacific Minnesotans.

Upon my family’s arrival in the United States from a dingy Thai refugee camp, my mother declared two things: First, she didn’t want us to eat at McDonalds. She found Ronald McDonald creepy. Second, she didn’t want us to lose our Hmong folktales. In retrospect, her dislike of McDonalds had more to do with her dislike for junk food than Ronald McDonald’s flaming red hair and nose. As for the folktales, she told me to tell vivid folktales so even the wind would stop to listen.

That was great advice and over the years I have developed an audience happy to hear Hmong folktales. Still, questions plagued me. When audiences listened, how did my folktales affect them, in what unique and meaningful ways? In other words, what was the impact of my folktales?

Gwen Westerman described the humanities in a previous blog as the thing that makes us “human”—languages, music, the arts, philosophy, history, literature, and religion. The humanities foster creativity, critical thinking, communication, collaboration, and reasoning. We are pushed to love and reject, to truly be human. But one of the things I do not see the humanities asking us to do--particularly for organizations whose mission it is to create and promote the humanities--is to measure the impact of our work on people. Historically, there are ‘vanity’ measures like collecting data on how many people attended an art show, visited a website, or even donated money to an organization, but we don’t go beyond that to really understand how and why the humanities matter to people and in what unique ways. Nor do we know with specificity how people really respond to the humanities.

It may not be the cool thing to say that we have to measure the humanities impact on people, but it is a conversation that needs to happen. That is why I am writing this blog to discuss the impact.

Accountability. Most organizations that support the humanities, both small and large, are mission-driven organizations. How do these organizations know with confidence and specificity that their work is making a difference in people’s lives unless they track and measure their goals? More importantly, how do these organizations know they are fulfilling their mission?

Funding. As humanities funders, e.g., foundations and major donors, move towards outcome-focused projects, humanities organizations are expected to prove that they achieved those outcomes. Additionally, funders expect mission-based organizations to use the money they give them in effective and meaningful ways.

The reality of the current humanities community is that it is essential for us to demonstrate we are having an impact. So how do we go about doing that?

Being Intentional. Before starting a humanities project, organizations should be intentional about setting impact goals. Ask critical questions about the difference you want to make with your project -- on individuals, on institutions, and on communities. This backwards design approach will help you set measures to track your impact.

Tracking Impact. Just do it. We need to show the value the humanities have in the community. The only way to do that is to put impact measures in place. There is no cookie cutter measure, no single set of ideal metrics, because your measure of success depends on your goals. The important thing to remember about tracking impact is goal-setting and putting measures in place before you start your project or initiative.

Tell Your Impact Story. Once we learn how and why our humanities project made a difference we have to let the public and funders know also. We have to celebrate it. Again, it was my mother who taught me to celebrate storytelling. We have to tell it to everyone even the wind!

I currently work as the Director for Impact and Community Engagement with American Public Media Group/ Minnesota Public Radio. APMG’s new standard for impact is everything I outlined above: intentional goal setting, measuring, and accountability process where content creators answer the questions: How will the content matter to our audience, and how will you know if it matters to them?

We define impact as ‘an intentional change in the status quo’ as a result of something APMG created for our audience. Examples of the ‘something we created’ can be music or news, digital or live events. We define impact change as something that can happen to an individual, group, organization, and/or system. This change can be a social or physical condition, and is revealed by what appears to be different as a result of our work.

As a news, music radio, and digital media company, we want our audience to know we listen to them and we know them. Knowing our impact on audiences ensures that we will fulfill our mission and play our role in using the humanities to make a difference in our world.

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Elizabeth Fei - How do the Humanities define us as Americans?

Elizabeth Fei is a Program Associate and the resident #millennial at The Minnesota Humanities Center. Themes of her work right now include: Why Treaties Matter and Always Lost traveling exhibits, workshop content, and program evaluation. She also maintains her own blog at upandcomingquarterlifer.com.

Sometimes, when I hear a word, images and stories immediately come rushing into my head.

American.

Betsy Ross sewing stars and stripes. Laura Ingalls running across the prairie. Blonde-haired, blue-eyed kids watching fireworks. The Oregon Trail. Hands on hearts screeching out the Star-Spangled Banner. A picture of Uncle Sam.

“Hey, you!” Uncle Sam says.

I look around.

“You!” he barks. “I want you!”

“Me?” I ask nervously. “For what?”

His index finger points at me accusingly, even though in my culture pointing is a gesture for dogs. I imagine he’s calling me out, saying: “You don’t belong here.” I look into Sam’s eyes at his white hair and beard and creamy skin and realize he’s right. As a mixed race, Chinese-American woman, these stories of America, quite literally, don’t know the half of it.

Sure, I was told other stories too.

I did a project on Amy Tan once.

I read the book, Finding My Voice by Marie G. Lee, a story of a Korean girl in Minnesota, so many times that the binding broke and the pages fell out.

Sometimes there was a box of Crayola “Multicultural” crayons.

However, looking back, these seem like consolation prizes that punctuated my otherwise invisible representation in the narratives that surrounded me.

People often wax poetic about the squishy concept of the “humanities.” They say they’re “the answer to all our problems,” they are what is meant by “the pursuit of happiness,” they make “life worth living.”

Whose life?

There are stories I wasn't told.

That even though we often hear America is a “nation of immigrants,” there were indigenous people here long before--and newsflash-- they’re still here. That some immigrants did not come here by choice. That being the product of a biracial, bicultural union does not make me a totem for a utopian, post-racial society. That the label of “American” is wrought with complexity. And who uses the label, and when, and why are all questions that do not have definitive answers.

At the Humanities Center when we talk about the humanities we talk mostly about stories—things that illuminate our human connections with one another. Stories are powerful and, as evidenced by my own experience, create images that linger with us the rest of our lives. However, the humanities can only do their magic if they speak to all of our stories. Telling the same stories over and over again does the opposite: creates a limited narrative of what belongs and what is valuable, and conversely, what doesn’t and what isn’t. It’s what writer Chimamanda Adiche refers to as “The danger of a single story.”

There are stories I could have been told.

I could have been told stories of America’s history that aren’t a series of binary ones and zeroes—American Indians vs. Colonists, United States vs. England, North vs. South, Black vs. White, Haves vs. Have-nots, Truth vs. Lies, Good vs. Evil, Winners vs. Losers. Stories of the in-between. If I had been told these, might I have found room for my own intersectional identity within the American narrative in my head?

Because of their power, I think there is a sort of a protective feeling over stories. Like the time and space for sharing is finite and that for one story to have value, all others must be erased. This concept in itself, I think, is also the result of a powerful message that asserts that we don’t have time for these tough conversations and questions. That aiming for simplification should be valued over honoring complexity and nuance.

So, how do the humanities define me as an American?

For me, they haven’t, yet.

However, the beauty of the humanities is that they could.

Continuing to interrogate the stories we have been told to make the space for broadening existing narratives opens up that possibility. I, of course, have my own work to do: raising my own voice into these spaces; listening to others; hearing and accepting stories that might go against everything I know to be true.

And, always looking for what’s missing—the absent narrative—and then uncovering it, and having the conversation again makes work longer and more complex. Sometimes it gives us more questions than answers. It might require rescheduling that meeting, rewriting the book, missing a deadline, and, in my case, more than a few Diet Cokes.

However, if it means that more people like me hear: “You matter” and feel “you matter here”…

…well, that’s everything.

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David Mura - Why do the humanities matter in today's world?

David Mura recently published his fourth poetry collection, The Last Incantations. Mura's two memoirs are Turning Japanese: Memoirs of a Sansei, which won a 1991 Josephine Miles Book Award from the Oakland PEN and was listed in the New York Times Notable Books of Year, and Where the Body Meets Memory: An Odyssey of Race, Sexuality and Identity. He's also written a novel, Famous Suicides of the Japanese Empire, and three other books of poetry.

Years from now, this summer will be remembered as “The Summer of Ferguson.” Certainly, many will never forget the disturbing images of the past few weeks: The body of Michael Brown sprawled in the street; the video of Eric Garner being grappled and choked to death by police; the video of Kaijieme Powell being shot to death by St. Louis police. The police in combat gear with aimed M4 Carbines and riding MRAPs (Mine Resistant Ambush Protected Vehicles), lobbing LRADs and tear gas canisters into mostly black crowds.

Of course, the interpretation of these events depends upon the context in which one views them.

In a tiresome déjà vu, there has been the usual calls for further dialogue about race, so numerous that the Daily Show did a send-up montage of such mouthings. But this dialogue has been present from the time the Puritans arrived on this continent as Toni Morrison’s novel, A Mercy, and Langston’s Hughes’ poem, provide witness to:

I am the American heartbreak—
The rock on which Freedom
Stumped its toe—
The great mistake
That Jamestown made
Long ago.

Much of this dialogue, though, has always been one sided. And so, in 2014, we are still dealing with the problems of race because no true dialogue can take place if one side is not actually listening to the other side.

I’m a Sansei, a third generation Japanese American. My family came to this dialogue comparatively late, when my grandparents immigrated to this country around 1905. But with the yellow peril ideology that greeted their arrival, with the anti-Asian exclusion laws of 1924, and the imprisonment of my parents’ families during World War II, we too have been part of that history our nation is still trying to acknowledge and bear witness to. In my own portion, my parents, after being imprisoned for their race and ethnicity, tried both consciously and unconsciously to raise me to assimilate into white middle-class America. As a result I grew up hating both my ethnicity and my race. And when, in high school, my friends would say, “I think of you David like a white person,” I would think, “Yes, that’s what I want to be. That means I’m normal, accepted. I am not a foreigner; I really do belong here.”

It wasn’t until my late twenties that I realized the delusion of such thinking. I was not white. I was a third generation Japanese American. But what did that mean? What was my identity? Where did I fit in this dialogue of race that was such a part of our family history, a history my parents, bearing the shame and ignominy of the internment, never spoke to me about?

At the time, I’d spent five years in English graduate school. But I had read almost no works by black writers or writers of color. And so, I began to read black writers and thinkers, and I found in them both a language to speak about my own racial identity and history and a corollary to my own experiences of race and that of my family. Writers like Frantz Fanon, James Baldwin, Toni Morrison, Amiri Baraka, Ntozake Shange, Lucille Clifton; later scholars like Dubois, Henry Louis Gates, Jr., bell hooks and Cornell West, and more recently social scientists like Michelle Alexander—all of these helped me understand the other side of the dialogue that my twenty-one years of formal education had not provided me. Without that tradition of black and African American writers, I would never have become the writer I am today, nor would I have probably gone to Japan and wrote my memoir, Turning Japanese, about my own search for my cultural, racial and historical identity.

Why do we need the humanities? Because without the humanities, and without the specific tradition of African American writers and thinkers, it is nearly impossible for most Americans, particularly white Americans, to even begin to make sense of this summer of Ferguson, a summer which has called up images of Jim Crow, civil rights marches, and the “strange fruit” that Billie Holiday sang about many decades ago. As James Baldwin, far more relevant today than many of his white contemporaries, put it: “Not everything that is faced can be changed; but nothing can be changed until it is faced.”

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