Twin Cities Daily Planet (https://www.tcdailyplanet.net/author/bryan-thao-worra/page/6/)
A Laotian American writer, Bryan Thao Worra works actively to support Laotian, Hmong and Southeast Asian American artists and writers across the US. His books include On The Other Side Of The Eye, Touching Detonations, Winter Ink, Barrow and The Tuk Tuk Diaries: My Dinner With Cluster Bombs. He is the first Laotian American to receive a Fellowship in Literature from the United States government's National Endowment for the Arts. He has also received the Asian Pacific Leadership Award from the State Council on Asian Pacific Minnesotans for Leadership in the Arts. In 2012 he was selected to be a Cultural Olympian serving as the delegate for Laos during the London Summer Games.
May is Asian Pacific American Heritage Month. Before we go wild and cheer, to keep it in perspective, it’s also National Moving Month, celebrating the busiest month people are picking up and going somewhere else. Which may sound silly, but consider April as National Poetry Month shares the same bill with National Grilled Cheese Sandwich Month. Go figure.
We’re hearing more about immigration reform again, always a heated topic, but one voice with big stakes in this is often excluded from the discussions: Laotian refugees.
Many of us arrived in the US as refugees from the war in our homeland 35 years ago.
Lao American visual artist Mali Kouanchao will be featured as the subject of a new children’s book Mali Under the Night Sky, written and illustrated by acclaimed writer Youme Landowne. Due out in bookstores in July 2010, it is being released by the award-winning Texas-based Cinco Punto Press – with a mission to publish great books that make a difference in the way people see the world.
According to the publisher: “Mali Under the Night Sky is the true story of Laotian-American artist Malichansouk Kouanchao, whose family was forced by civil war to flee Laos when she was five. Before the war began, Mali lived an idyllic life in a community where she felt safe and was much loved. She loved to sit in front of her house and ask everyone who passed by, “Where are you going?” She herself went everywhere too – climbing on the flowering trees, catching tiny fish in a rice field, looking for pale bamboo shoots in the dark forest. She loved the time she spent with her family, napping in the hot afternoons, making feasts and coming together on special days to celebrate. Continue Reading
Michelle Myers is a writer and activist and a founding member of the spoken word group, Yellow Rage (www.yellowrage.com). Yellow Rage has been featured on HBO’s Def Poetry Jam and toured across the country and y released an album “Black Hair, Brown Eyes, Yellow Rage, Vol. 1″. She is becoming a frequent visitor to Minnesota. As a solo artist, Michelle is dedicated to raising awareness about social injustices and building positive relationships across communities.Myers solo performance credits include the 2002 Vincent Chin Remembrance events in Detroit, MI; the 2005 APIA Spoken Word and Poetry Summit in Boston, MA; the 2009 TruJustice Protest and Rally outside the Capitol Building in Austin, TX; and the 2009 Up in Arms benefit concert for Fong Lee’s family and to protest police brutality in Minneapolis, MN. She holds a Ph.D. in English from Temple University and currently teaches as an Assistant Professor and Reading/Writing Faculty Specialist in the Central Learning Lab at Community College of Philadelphia, and as the faculty advisor for the Spoken Word Poetry Club. She is also a featured artist in Jessica Chen Drammeh’s documentary film Anomaly, a film exploring the mixed race experience. Continue Reading
Growing up in the Midwest, I always heard “You break it, you bought it.” Thirty-five years after the secret war for Laos, when America was the proverbial bull in the china shop, we’ve still got a lot of pieces to pick up. Technically, 78 million dangerous pieces called UXO, a catchy shorthand term for unexploded ordnance. This year, 104 nations agreed to the Convention on Cluster Munitions, effective August 1st. America was not one of them. Continue Reading