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Changing lives since 1901

Creative voices from Yale-China’s AAPI community

May 2021

Piano wellness series, podcasts, stories, AAPI mental health, theater, interviews, parents workshop

Between juggling pandemic living and jobs, Yale-China’s artists and innovators are finding ways to touch the lives of people through creative mediums. In this AAPI Heritage Month newsletter, we offer a specially curated array of ways to learn more about the art, the stories, and the perspectives that Asians and Asian Americans contribute through creative means.

Yale-China recognizes the unique challenges that Asian Americans, Pacific Islanders, and Asians in the United States experience every day and especially in the past year as acts of violence and discrimination continue to rise. We stand with the AAPI community. Read our anti-hate statement.

 
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Creative wellness through musical moments

Steinway Artist Hsing-ay Hsu (Yale School of Music ‘01) leads 10-minute musical moments every Thursday from June 10 through July 29. In our present day of medical, social, economic, and racial distress, creativity in music offers us a path forward. Music offers a general gentle approach to the topic of multi-dimensional awareness, which provides a crucial foundational step towards empathy.

Practice your resilience with videos from this wellness series on demand.

Creating dialogue about mental health through theater

Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference.

迷失的旅行者 The Lost Traveller

Run time: 90 min

This July 2021 viewing of 迷失的旅行者 The Lost Traveller (from the producers of The Echo in Labyrinth) was made possible by the Yale Community for New Haven Fund.

Onnie Chan (Yale-China’s 2017 HKETONY Arts Fellow) reports out on her theatre company’s latest production telling Hong Kong stories around mental health challenges. Learn more about Onnie’s company called Banana Effect in English or in Chinese.

Dialogue: Mental Health through Story + Art

Echo in Labyrinth panel featuring Onnie Chan, Dr. Eunice Yuen, and Mary Lou Aleskie

This panel explores how stories and theater are an essential tool in improving the mental health of people, especially those who may identify with Chinese and other Asian cultures.

Onnie Chan is a theater artist and the director of Banana Effect, the producer of 迷失的旅行者 The Lost Traveller. Onnie was one of Yale-China’s 2017 HKETONY Arts Fellows. Full bio ->

Dr. Eunice Yuen is a clinical fellow at the Yale Child Study Center and the founder of CHATogether, an organization that uses drama vignettes to promote emotional wellness in Asian-American children, young adults, and parents. Full bio ->

Mary Lou Aleskie is the director of Hopkins Center for the Arts, where she advances arts and creativity through interdisciplinary projects that link the arts with humanities and STEM initiatives across Dartmouth College campus. Mary Lou Aleskie previously served as the executive director of the International Festival of Arts & Ideas. Full bio ->

[Left to right] Photos courtesy of Michelle Averitt, Dr. Eunice Yuen, and Samantha Shannon.

 Workshop for parents and educators

Educating people about the history of Asians in America

Yale Law School alumni Kathy Lu and Julia Wang developed the Immigrant History Initiative guide with lessons plans and a brief history for parents, guardians, caretakers, and educators. Join this special workshop designed for Connecticut-based parents but open to all. Visit the Immigrant History Initiative lesson plans, guides, and multimedia content at bit.ly/aapiparents.

Community healing through expression

Diary Disk Project with the New Haven Symphony Orchestra and Yale-China Association

Can’t make it or don’t live in New Haven? Leave a digital memory here.

Ming Thompson (Yale College ‘04, YUNA “Old Biscuit,” Yali ‘04-’06, Yale-China Trustee) and the Design Brigade from the Yale Center for Collaborative Arts and Media to create the Diary Disk Project.

Diary Disks are community art installations across New Haven. At the heart of the series is a vital sense of belonging to a community. Throughout the pandemic, lives unravel alone in the absence of both physical and social experience. Yet, when the mental space is shared together, it becomes a place where feelings, memories, and well-being are ultimately amplified. The Disks provide a place for New Haven to come together, reflect, and heal collectively as the city perseveres through the pandemic.

In partnership with the City of New Haven and International Festival of Arts & Ideas, Diary Disks will be co-created by various community partners at their own events. People write and draw their responses to a unique prompt on the Disk, observing their experience among many.

Connecting new research with lived experiences 

Hypersexualization of AAPI Women + more

Join the Asian Network at Yale, Working Women’s Network, Office of Diversity & Inclusion, and Yale-China for a lunch and learn panel discussion on the hypersexualization of Asian American women in America, racial injustice, inequities, and how to show up as an ally for the AAPI community. Our panelists are Professor Mary Lui, Yale Professor of American Studies and Head of Timothy Dwight College, and Sung Yeon Choimorrow, Executive Director of the National Asian Pacific American Women’s Forum (NAPAWF). The discussion will be moderated by Christine Kim, Yale alum and co-founder of aapiNHV.

Educating young audiences through story and art

Since the start of COVID-19, there has been an alarming uptick of hate crimes committed against Asians, Asian Americans, and Pacific Islanders across the United States. Yale-China’s work is accomplished by building community through transformative experiences that humanize and affirm each individual’s inherent value. We do this in the fields of health, education, and the arts. We continue to honor this commitment through developing intercultural empathy between individuals whose experiences, language, and insights are different from one another.

Join us for a conversation with educators and artists from the Brilliant Boba project about building intercultural empathy and social-emotional skills that amplify Asian and Asian American voices.

This initiative made possible by the International Association of New Haven, Yale Community for New Haven Fund, New Haven Public Schools, and the artwork and stories of individuals throughout Connecticut.

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Advancing public health education through comics and graphic art

Nealie Ngo (Yale College ’18 and Yale-China alum) is currently working on a graphic novel about intergenerational trauma in an Asian American family, and she is exploring the intersection between art and mental health.

Nealie is currently a third year medical student at the University of Toledo College of Medicine & Life Sciences. She is part of Yale Compassionate Home, Action Together (CHATogether), an AAPI mental health and wellness group at Yale School of Medicine. As a current artist and aspiring future psychiatrist, Nealie merges both of her interests by creating comics and graphic novels highlighting AAPI mental health. Her previous works include comics about depression and choosing a nontraditional college major, and she is currently working on a graphic novel about intergenerational trauma in an Asian American family. She will continue to explore the intersection between art and mental health as an incoming MPH student at Columbia’s Mailman School of Public Health this year. Follow @artbynealie on Instagram or visit her website for more information!

Nealie Ngo’s graphic story followed the lives of two people living in contrasting environmental conditions. See her comic in the February 2021 issue of the AMA Journal of Ethics here.

Inspiring empathy and community action through podcasts

Co-founded and co-hosted by Yale-China alum Paul Lee (Yale College ‘18, YUNA "Old Biscuit" and Student Coordinator), the Divided Families Podcast aims to provide a platform for connecting stories of family separation.

Its goal is to inspire empathy and community action by contextualizing experiences of family division in its many forms and serve as a unifying force to bridge narratives of family separation across borders, from Japanese internment camps to its most recent episode featuring writer Nicole Chung as part of its commemoration of AAPI Heritage Month. Follow the Divided Families Podcast on social media @dividedfamiliespodcast. 

Reaching generations of lifelong learners

When Carol Yu (Yale College ‘08, Yali Fellow '08-’10) had her first child, she was excited to read to him not just in English but in Chinese as well.

However. she found herself puzzled by the choices available on Amazon and beyond. The options were sparse, most were quite advanced, and while there were plenty of educational vocabulary books, there weren't simple, fun stories that could be read before nighttime. 小番茄 (Little Tomato) is her first foray in providing non-native caregivers in the U.S. a rhyming baby board book in Chinese and Pinyin, and tells the story of a young green tomato who can't wait to turn red. She's now working on the tales of a pineapple, and foolishly attempting to grow a few tomatoes on her apartment balcony these days. You can learn more about the project on www.thebundbooks.com (which also has free printables to help children practice their Chinese).

Leading the untold Asian American stories through theater

Eugenie Chan (Yale College ‘84 and New Asia College Fellow ‘84-’86) reports out on three exciting art projects in the works:

1. In Memoriam, a series of elegies for the Asian American dead, commissioned by Crowded Fire Theatre as part of CFT's Resilience & Development Lab 2020-21.

2. Heterotopia (working title), a sci-fi shadow puppet music theater piece, created in collaboration with composer Paul Dresher and shadow theater artist Larry Reed of Shadowlight Theater, that explores intersectional issues of migration, sustainability, and identity -- issues at the core of a space traveler's quest to survive after earth’s destruction at the hands of his own human culture.

3. The Truer History of the Chan Family, a digital vaudeville, created with composer Byron Au Yong and an ensemble of Asian American artists, about the impact of Exclusion and human trafficking on three generations of my family. 

Curated by Annie Lin, Associate Director of Arts Programs

Are we missing other creative projects and voices? Contact Annie.