A.C.E.
July 17, 2017
THE ASIAN REPORTER n Page 13
Marginalized communities gain voice with ’zines
ANNUAL SYMPOSIUM. Members of the Asian
Leaders for the Liberation of Youth (ALLY), the youth
organizing arm of the Asian Pacific American Network
of Oregon, attend a recent ’zine workshop held by
A’misa Chiu. On July 22 and 23 from noon to 6:00pm,
the annual Portland Zine Symposium will take place at
the Jade/APANO Multicultural Space, located at 8114
S.E. Division Street in Portland. (Photo courtesy of
Asian Leaders for the Liberation of Youth)
By Ryan Nakano
The Asian Reporter
S
hortly after the May 26 murders on
the Metropolitan Area Express
(MAX) light rail near the Hollywood
Station, “TBH … I’M AFRAID” was
printed on the 10th page of a small
publication written by a group of Portland
youth working with Asian Leaders for the
Liberation of Youth (ALLY), the youth
organizing arm of the Asian Pacific
American Network of Oregon (APANO).
Front to back, the stapled-and-bound
collection of black-and-white photocopied
pages of text and illustrations tells a story
of safety, oppression, transportation, and
solidarity.
When the publication is printed, maybe
about 100 copies are made. The publica-
tion is an outlet for the Asian-American
youth who built it; it is an outlet for their
community.
Thus the ALLY ’zine is born just in time
for the end of the world, or at least the
Portland Zine Symposium (PZS).
On Saturday, July 22, ’zinesters and
’zine enthusiasts will fill the space
between the white walls of the old furni-
ture store near the corner of S.E. 82nd
Avenue and Division Street, now known as
the Jade/APANO Multicultural Space.
For two days starting at noon, the free
all-ages event will offer workshops, panels,
and tabling exhibitors. It will feature
special ’zinester guests Marya Errin Jones
and Tonya Jones.
Already flyers have been posted around
the streets of Portland — in coffee shops,
on community boards, outside a college
library — of a printed image of a giant dark
blue wave washing over Portland and its
bridges which sit at eye level with the
words Portland Zine Symposium flagged
in grey and black.
This is the work of Vietnamese artist
Anna Vo.
“They wanted me to do something
post-apocalyptic, but I didn’t want to do
something that was going to continue the
narrative that this is the first time we have
faced this crisis,” Vo explained. “I wanted
to highlight the generational history of
Portland being a white space and a place
with a history of white supremacy.”
So Vo illustrated a wave, an allusion to
the 1948 flooding of what was once the
second largest city in Oregon — a large
percentage of which were African
American.
The city of Vanport was never rebuilt.
Vo also illustrated gentrification,
burying the phrase tabula rasa beneath
the crest of an impending natural disaster,
depicting the white-washed nature of the
city and the manmade disaster that is
historical oppression.
Through her work as an activist and
creativity as an artist, the New Zealand-
born ’zinester successfully illustrates a
pre-, present-, and post-apocalyptic
landscape for the upcoming ’zine fest.
What started as one of the first major
’zine symposiums in the country in 2001,
PZS has continued to grow into a space
where people from all kinds of
backgrounds and genders — including
queer, trans, people of color, indigenous,
and others — can feel safe and heard.
In 2015, the symposium underwent a
change of organizers; in the process, it
gained several women of color interested
in continuing to make PZS as inclusive as
possible, including A’misa Chiu.
“I was looking at ’zine culture asking
what does it need and I knew it needed
more communities of color to be invested. I
was tired of critiquing it and thought
maybe if I get involved, I can get those
people in,” Chiu recalled. “You have to
keep doing it over and over again to make
it feel inclusive, to flip the script.”
Chiu, a PZS organizer and long-time
’zinester, was first introduced to the art
form 10 years ago when she found the first
issue of Giant Robot, a small, handmade
bi-monthly publication featuring Asian
pop culture and Asian-American alterna-
tive culture.
“I was a dabbling artist at the time and I
was like, ‘I can do this,’” Chiu said. “I
gathered up stories from friends and
collected art for around five months and
put out my first issue. As cheesy as it
sounds, I felt like I had found my art
thing.”
Since then, Chiu has written personal
’zines as well as ’zines of flash fiction, food,
family, and her Japanese-American
childhood. And ’zines were what landed
Chiu with a job and a future career as a
librarian.
Chiu, who now works at the Warner
Pacific College library, found her calling at
the Asian American Studies Center at the
University of California, Los Angeles,
after asking the librarian at the time to
carry her ’zine. On the spot, the librarian
offered her a job as a researcher.
If people understand that they can
change “from being a consumer to a creator
at a young age, the potential is really big
for them to start realizing they can affect
change by writing down their thoughts or
issues through art,” Chiu said. “This is a
space where you can share your story, your
perspective, and if you don’t feel like you’re
listened to or have a voice, this is a space
where you can do just that.”
PZS recently received a grant from the
Regional Arts & Culture Council (RACC)
to lead workshops for marginalized
underrepresented youth through groups
such as SMYRC, Brown Girls Rise, and
APANO’s ALLY.
Shortly after the May 26 murders on the
MAX light rail, “I’M AFRAID BUT I
WANT TO BE STRONG” was printed on
the ninth page of a small publication
produced by a group of Asian-American
youth living in Portland.
“The revolution may not be televised,”
Chiu said. “But maybe it will be found in
’zines.”
PZS takes place July 22 and 23 from
noon to 6:00pm at the Jade/APANO Multi-
cultural Space, located at 8114 S.E. Divi-
sion Street in Portland. To learn more, call
(971) 340-4861, or visit <www.portland
zinesymposium.org> or <www.apano.
org>.
Political prisoner, Nobel laureate Liu Xiaobo dies at age 61
Continued from page 5
some students to leave the square rather
than face down the army. The military
crackdown killed hundreds, possibly
thousands, of people and heralded a more
repressive era.
Liu became one of hundreds of Chinese
imprisoned for crimes linked to the
demonstrations. It was only the first of
four imprisonments.
His final prison sentence was for
co-authoring “Charter 08,” a document
circulated in 2008 that called for more
freedom of expression, human rights, and
an independent judiciary.
“What I demanded of myself was this:
Whether as a person or as a writer, I would
lead a life of honesty, responsibility, and
dignity,” Liu wrote in “I Have No Enemies:
My Final Statement,” which he was pre-
vented from reading aloud at his sen-
tencing in 2009. He was sent to prison for
11 years on charges of inciting subversion
by advocating sweeping political reforms
and greater human rights in his country.
A year later, he was awarded the Nobel
Prize. The Norwegian committee lauded
Liu’s “long and non-violent struggle for
fundamental human rights in China.”
The award enraged China’s govern-
ment, which condemned it as a political
farce. Within days, Liu’s wife, the artist
and poet Liu Xia, was put under house
arrest, despite not being convicted of any
crime. China also punished Norway, even
though its government has no say over the
independent Nobel panel’s decisions.
China suspended a bilateral trade deal
and restricted imports of Norwegian
salmon; relations only resumed in 2017.
Dozens of Liu’s supporters were
prevented from leaving the country to
accept the award on his behalf. Instead,
Liu’s absence at the prize-giving ceremony
in Oslo, Norway, was marked by an empty
chair. Another empty chair was for Liu
Xia.
In recent days, supporters and foreign
governments urged China to allow him to
be treated for cancer abroad, but Chinese
authorities insisted he was receiving the
best care possible.
The Nobel Committee said Beijing bore
a heavy responsibility for Liu’s death. But
it also levelled harsh criticism at the “free
world” for its “hesitant, belated reactions”
to his serious illness and imprisonment.
“It is a sad and disturbing fact that the
representatives of the free world, who
themselves hold democracy and human
rights in high regard, are less willing to
stand up for those rights for the benefit of
others,” said the organization’s chair-
woman, Berit Reiss-Andersen.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel said
Liu Xiaobo was a “courageous fighter for
civil rights and freedom of opinion.”
Former President George W. Bush saluted
Liu as a man who “dared to dream of a
China that respected human rights.” U.S.
Secretary of State Rex Tillerson,
meanwhile, urged Beijing to release Liu’s
wife from house arrest and allow her to
leave the country if she wishes.
Liu was born on December 28, 1955, in
the northeastern city of Changchun, the
son of a language and literature professor
who was a committed party member. The
middle child in a family of five boys, he was
among the first to attend Jilin University
when college entrance examinations
resumed after the chaotic 1966-1976
Cultural Revolution.
After spending nearly two years in
detention following the Tiananmen
crackdown, Liu was detained for the
second time in 1995 after drafting a plea
for political reform. Later that year, he was
detained a third time after co-drafting
“Opinion on Some Major Issues Con-
cerning our Country Today.” That resulted
in a three-year sentence to a labor camp,
during which time he married Liu Xia.
The couple’s friends and supporters
described
the
dissident
and
his
soft-spoken wife as being deeply in love. In
the same statement Liu had prepared for
his trial, he addressed his wife.
“Your love is the sunlight that leaps over
high walls and penetrates the iron bars of
my prison window, stroking every inch of
my skin, warming every cell of my body,
allowing me to always keep peace,
openness, and brightness in my heart, and
filling every minute of my time in prison
with meaning,” he said.
“But my love is solid and sharp, capable
of piercing through any obstacle. Even if I
were crushed into powder, I would still use
my ashes to embrace you.”
Yu Jie, a longtime friend and a
biographer, said Liu frequently gathered a
small group of friends for frequent dinners
at his favorite local Sichuan hot-pot
restaurant, where he regaled younger
intellectuals on literature and philosophy
before returning home to write until dawn,
as was his habit.
“No one was as active as he was, and no
one had so much social interaction with
the young people,” Yu said. “He was a
bridge for generations of thinkers.”
Liu was only the second Nobel Peace
Prize winner to die in prison, a fact pointed
to by human-rights groups as an
indication of the Chinese Communist
Party’s increasingly hard line against its
critics. The first, Carl von Ossietzky, died
from tuberculosis in Germany in 1938
while serving a sentence for opposing
Adolf Hitler’s Nazi regime.
“Hitler was wild and strong and thought
he was right — but history proved he was
wrong in imprisoning a Nobel Peace Prize
winner,” said Mo Shaoping, an old friend
and Liu’s former lawyer. “The authorities
consider Liu Xiaobo guilty, but history will
prove he is not.”
Bodeen and Wong reported from Beijing.
Associated Press researcher Fu Ting and reporter
Gerry Shih contributed to this report from Beijing.
Go paperless!
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Check out The Asian Reporter’s Community and A.C.E. Calendar sections, on pages 10 and 12.