A blue go well with, a report assortment, a well-worn Chinese language/English dictionary, and one thing much less tangible however simply as treasured — one’s identify.
Poet Shin Yu Pai is the host and creator of “Ten Thousand Issues,” a Nationwide Public Radio podcast that examines on a regular basis issues that contact individuals’s lives and “the unusual folks that transforms them into one thing exceptional.”
“We take into account our emotional kinship with on a regular basis objects to mirror collectively on what we personal, what we inherit and what we cherish,” she stated. “From on a regular basis objects owned by Asian Individuals, we will study private and cultural values and inform tales which are deeply humanizing. We’re related.”
Pai (her full identify is pronounced Shin Yee Pie) first titled the podcast “The Blue Go well with,” a nod to the go well with worn by Congressman Andy Kim on Jan. 6, when he was photographed amassing trash following america Capitol rebellion. The go well with has since grow to be a part of the Smithsonian’s assortment, a discovered object so as to add to Asian American historical past.
Renamed for this new season, “Ten Thousand Issues” debuted on Might 1. New episodes launch weekly on Mondays on NPR One, Apple Podcasts, Spotify and different platforms.
The brand new identify refers to many Chinese language sayings, the place “ten thousand” is utilized in a poetic sense to convey one thing infinite, huge and unfathomable. For Pai, the story of Asians in America is simply that.
From a search to switch “PooPoo,” a beloved childhood stuffed toy, to the dictionary an ancestor used to acclimate to a brand new nation, the podcast celebrates and highlights Asian American tales and challenges listeners to re-imagine attitudes about their very own experiences.
This season’s first episode featured transgender and non-binary poet and educator Ebo Barton, speaking in regards to the energy names. Different company this season embody Alice Wong, host of the “Incapacity Visibility Undertaking” podcast; and Eason Yang, founding father of Not Completely Lifeless, which helps younger most cancers survivors discover work.
Pai was born in Decatur, Ailing. within the Nineteen Seventies, however her Taiwanese mother and father moved the household first to Los Angeles, then to Riverside County.
“I grew up in Highgrove, an unincorporated city between Riverside and San Bernardino counties with zero Asians,” she stated. “Nevertheless, my mother and father have been considerably intentional about staying related to the Taiwanese American neighborhood within the larger L.A. space and Rosemead. So one in every of my very first freelance writing gigs within the late Nineteen Nineties was for a Taiwanese-American newspaper out of Rosemead.”
Pai went East for faculty, incomes her bachelor’s diploma in English from Boston College, earlier than attending the Jack Kerouac Faculty of Disembodied Poetics at Naropa College in Colorado. Pai later obtained a grasp’s diploma from the Faculty of the Artwork Institute of Chicago and a grasp’s in museology from the College of Washington, the place she specialised in oral historical past.
She has written 11 books and is the Civic Poet of Seattle for 2023-2024. She’s written for Atlas Obscura and the New York Instances, and her visible work has been exhibited on the McKinney Avenue Modern, the Paterson Museum, the American Jazz Museum, amongst different establishments.
Pai has additionally created video poems and taught inventive writing on the College of Texas at Dallas, Southern Methodist College and Dalla Museum of Artwork.
The pandemic prompted her to ask what individuals cherish and what they go away behind. One in all her personal cherished objects is a white silk scarf she retains in a Buddhist shrine at house. It was given to her by her instructor, a Buddhist priest, on the day she took her vows of refuge.
“It’s a concrete object commemorating making the selection to decide on this non secular path stuffed with wakeful prospects,” Pai stated.
Different episodes will deal with new objects but additionally extra intangible ideas.
“This collection is about experiences of diasporic Asians and the way they proceed to hold their values themselves,” Pai stated.
Anissa V. Rivera, columnist, “Mother’s the Phrase,” Pasadena Star-Information, San Gabriel Valley Tribune, Whittier Every day Information, Azusa Herald, Glendora Press and West Covina Highlander, San Dimas/La Verne Highlander. Southern California Information Group, 181 W. Huntington Drive, Suite 209 Monrovia, CA 91016. 626-497-4869.