we have a show at virginia tech on wednesday.

i've been writing a lot about the incident at vtech last monday but it has been difficult, to say the least. even now, the words are coming out very slowly. i pretty much didn't know what had happened until pretty late on monday, since i was on the road most of the day and didn't have my cell phone, and when i finally got to it i was greeted by a number of text messages and voicemails directing my attention to the tragedy. the main two points of concern came from those who knew that we had been planning a virginia tech show for months, and those who felt it necessary to bring to my attention the connection that the perpetrator was asian...like how i'm asian. it's extremely interesting but not surprising how we draw our sympathy for situations through the relevance we can find for it in our own lives.

being who i am, doing what i do, i have a tendency to racialize shit. pretty much everything. i even have issues with grocery stores calling small oranges "mandarins." but in the wake of the virginia tech massacre, i really, really, really didn't want to dwell on the issue of race. last monday, as i read headline after headline about how the gunman was a chinese national, just gotten his visa last august, not a student at tech, the ex-boyfriend of one of his first victims, i tried to ignore every itch to ask why race needed to be such an issue, or why articles needed to include that "no terrorist association has yet been established." chinese....like how i'm chinese. but like i said, i really didn't want to racialize this.

but it's difficult not to racialize a situation when the situation is introduced with race on every headline. so oops, the next day they cleared up the mistake that he was actually not a "chinese national non-vtech student who had gotten his visa in august as the ex-boyfriend of his first victim," and was in fact a "south korean vtech student who moved to the states when he was 8 and who never went out with his first victim." common mistake. the conspiracy theorist in me found it very interesting that the media mistook the perpetrator's ethnicity from one asian-superpower-that-is-a-threat-to-america for another. conveniently, on tuesday when i searched for articles depicting the gunman as chinese, they were all gone. wikipedia had been corrected, the sun-times articles were redirected, and the only residue of this "mix-up" of ethnicity may lie in the balled fists of those who, on monday, insisted in countless blog posts that the chinese who come here and "steal valuable university seats" are threats. when korean diplomats need to come to the united states to apologize for the actions of a korean american, you know things are tense.

i'm not completely sure what to expect from this trip. i don't look at the situation like we're coming in like some peacecorp type entity to bring "light to those in need." at the same time, this past week i've been increasingly able to grasp the gravity of being an asian american speaker, coming to a campus where the asian american community is validly in a state of disillusionment. there is so much fear, frustration, sadness in me to even try to fathom what it must be like to be yellowbrown in virginia right now. the fact that terrorism is even in question, or that asians across the world are fearing violent backlash. an organizer from the university of virginia told me that reporters are just stopping random asian folk on the street asking them if they "knew him." speaking with folks at tech, it has been communicated that continuing with our show is vital for the student body's recovery process. in light of all the negative slant that asians have been getting in the media, especially locally in virginia, it would be nice to see something to counteract that. there's so much that i feel that i want to do, but it's also the first time i'm really recognizing that there are instances where i need to step back.

admittedly, this is a huge paradox in being a spoken word artist, or any socially conscious artist for that matter. for the most part, we get to hide behind our microphones. we get to talk about the war without actually being in the war. or do pieces about police brutality where they police officers in the audience will (though sometimes with a grain of salt) give us props afterwards. after many talks among the crew we overcame our anxiety about entering the state of virginia and being greeted by angry villagers in overalls and straw hats chasing us with pitchforks. even still, it has been a tireless journey figuring out the exact set, workshop, ways of interacting with the people of vtech. but really, when it comes down to it, why do i even do what i do, if not to bring a positive contribution to situations like this? we're all very excited about wednesday's show. it's going to be a good show. the positive energy surrounding it is undeniable.

this is where it gets real.