Thanks to San Francisco Chronicle for the interview and article, featuring Two Languages/One Community project and ending with the last lines of my poem The Map:
In this time of reckoning and growth in the Bay Area, from the resurgence of the Black Lives Matter movement to the Stop Asian Hate rallying call, artists — particularly artists of color — rose up to meet the moment.
Among them are Michael Warr and Chun Yu, a pair of poets and artists in the Bay Area. The African American and Chinese poets, respectively, had known each other for many years after meeting at San Francisco Public Library poetry readings, and had established an intercultural creative relationship where Yu would translate Warr’s poetry into Chinese, which required her to deeply understand the Black American experiences Warr writes from.
When xenophobic rhetoric about the coronavirus began spreading, culminating in a wave of horrific anti-Asian attacks, particularly in the Bay Area, Yu and Warr saw a heightened need for relationships of solidarity like theirs. So they launched an organization, Two Languages / One Culture, presenting bilingual readings and workshops designed to bring their communities closer together.
“I knew from being translated (by Yu) how deep you have to get into the culture of the person they’re translating. We wanted to bring this kind of conversation to the African American and Chinese community,” said Warr.
Their pandemic project has taken off dramatically in the past months. They’ve hosted events at the Asian Art Museum and the Museum of the African Diaspora, even bringing Bay Area literary titans like Maxine Hong Kingston into the conversation. Soon, Yu and Warr envision publishing a book. They attribute their growth to an increased desire for connection and appreciation for poetry during the pandemic.
“People are looking for a sense of solidarity,” said Yu.
Her poetry practice remains rooted in the emotional experience of the pandemic. She wrote one poem, “The Map,” in Chinese for her mother, who was hospitalized in China at the start of the COVID-19 outbreak. She shared it in English during a Black Lives Matter solidarity event at the Chinese Cultural Center of San Francisco, after which it was published by the San Francisco Public Library as part of its “Poem of the Day” series.
The emotional response to “The Map” was strong from readers. Now Yu saves it as the last poem for every reading, because “it offers people love and it unites people.”
The poem about her mother echoes the way many artists felt during the pandemic — lost, but dedicated to their creative processes. Yu writes: “When we are at a loss / not knowing where to go / love is the map.”