Today we’d like to introduce you to Bao Phi.
Hi Bao, thanks for joining us today. We’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
My family came to Minnesota as refugees from Vietnam in the mid-70s, and I was raised in the Phillips neighborhood, where my parents still live. There wasn’t a whole lot of money, but there was a whole lot of racism and discrimination. People who looked like us were blamed for a very painful war. Libraries, where reading and borrowing books was free, were my refuge. They were both educational, and an escape.
As I grew into a teenager, I became more aware and more curious about our community, and our world. The first Persian Gulf war, police brutality, crack cocaine, the huge gulf between rich and poor. And here I was, a Vietnamese refugee. How did I fit, if at all? I was already writing and acting in school theater by then, but that was when I really started practicing the art called spoken word.
Fast forward even more: as a father to an Asian American child, I wanted my kid to read and learn about all different people – Black, American Indian, Latinx. Pacific Islander, Queer, Arab, Asian, Women, People with Disabilities, all intersections of those, and more. We had difficulty finding American picture books that concerned working-class Southeast Asian refugees living in America, and so that’s when I wrote my first picture book.
Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
Oh, no. Not smooth at all. Institutional racism and classism are probably what led to the biggest obstacles. For a long time, I was told spoken word poets like me weren’t really poets, we were more performers, unfit for publication, let alone awards that could possibly help sustain a life or career. There were people who said that no one in America would really want to read anything from the perspective of an Asian American man, especially not outside the narrow box of what an Asian artist could be in this culture – there was no market for us. And whatever success I’ve been able to achieve, there are many who assume my accomplishments are solely due to my race, not to artistic merit.
Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
I’m a spoken word artist, a published poet, and a children’s book author. Others much smarter than me have noted that primarily, the art and politics that are accepted from Asians in this culture are the ones that concern overbearing parents or other familial problems, commentary on rigid Asian cultural norms, and issues regarding overseas politics rather than domestic. All of those things are real and important to comment and create art about. But also, that’s the box, and what I do tends to veer a bit more outside the box: Asian American community, history, struggle, and entanglements with institutional racism and imperialism, for example.
I don’t want to play into an idea of exceptionalism so let me be clear in saying, I don’t believe I am unique. There are other Asian American artists who do this. We might consider that our support/audience/reception is smaller, and ask what that tells us.
Where we are in life is often partly because of others. Who/what else deserves credit for how your story turned out?
Absolutely. My friends, my family, many of my teachers and professors. I had so many great teachers during my time in the Minneapolis Public Schools that they far overshadow the bad ones. I got a full scholarship to Macalester College, and had some tremendous professors there who not only helped me grow as a writer, but as a human being, and a world citizen.
In the spoken word community, a lot of support and love there as well, especially from the national APIA spoken word community.
And just a terrific community of writers here in Minnesota, of all races, really, from all the different aesthetics. I don’t want to name anyone because I don’t want to leave anyone out. I think generally Minnesota writers are very community-forward, and that has had a tremendous influence on me.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.baophi.com
- Facebook: Bao Phi
Image Credits
Group photo taken by Min Enterprises LLC
