Spoken Word Night

Wednesday, May 12, 2021 7:00 PM ET/4:00 PM PT/1:00 PM HT

In honor of Asian & Pacific Islander Heritage Month and Mental Health Awareness Month, APIA Scholars hosted a Spoken Word Night Event. This event elevated Scholar/Alumni performances in an effort to raise awareness around mental wellness within the APIA community and cultivate a sense of community through story-telling. By participating in this event, we hoped to empower Scholars, Alumni, and partners with the understanding that the journey towards mental wellness is best done together.

Meet Our Host

Carolann Carl perches on a plastic folding chair resting her hands on a weather-worn table.  Rays of sunlight comb through her hair, creating a halo of highlights and shadows as she speaks passionately about her homeland, Pohnpei Island in the Federated States of Micronesia.

Carolann has been an advocate at KKV for several months and has gradually transitioned to the grants department where she collects and documents stories for youth programming.

She’s a gifted poet and storyteller and attributes her inspiration to her culture, her family especially her grandfather.  “He would always try to get me to understand what Pohnpei was in my life and who I am in relevance to the island and everything that we did there,” she says.

Carolann grew up in Hawaiʻi, but would spend her summers in Pohnpei on her family’s land. Many stories were shared with her as a young child.  As she grew older, her family and mentors believed that she was “capable of holding that magic.” Carolann was entrusted to be the keeper of traditional origin stories, which she shares through her writings.

“The writing part and the poetry part came as a Western medium to do these things that we would never do in Pohnpei because you usually don’t write these things down, but because I wanted to incorporate that type of weaving both the past and the present and the future, I created a blog to share these stories because I knew our people were hungry for it.”

Carolann dreams of one day being able to return to Pohnpei.  She dreams of being able to reconnect with her community, to the land, and to the ocean.

In Pohnpeian culture, “You become an extension of that land.  You are connecting yourself not just to this island but to the ocean and to everything that lives in that ocean.  That’s how voyaging societies always envision themselves – as a global community because it’s the ocean that bridges everyone together.”

Meet the Scholar/Alumni Spoken Word Artists

Johnnie Yaj is currently a Ph.D. student at UCLA in the Higher Education and Organizational Change program. He works as a Graduate Student Researcher at the Higher Education Research Institute and focuses on the educational benefits of diversity/homogeneity. During his free time, he enjoys writing and performing spoken word poetry as a way to express censorless rage, but also to heal and better bridge new ways of thinking. Kaity L. Yang is a 33 year old writer from the Gates Millennium Scholars Class of 2006. After losing her father abruptly to cancer when she was six years old, then a lifetime of her verbally and emotionally abusive mother, she chose academia as a haven from her impoverished upbringing as the only child of her refugee parents. Yang reclaimed her life in working to help others heal from their hurt, triumph over their traumas, and find faith in choosing to fight for their lives. Yang works as a mental health advocate through her writing and in her community, serving as a beacon of hope. She devotes herself as a harbinger of change, particularly surrounding the stigma of women’s mental health after sexual assault and abuse. Cindy Le is a Vietnamese American scholar and activist from Camden, NJ, a city invincible that taught her the power of community. Her lived experiences as a first generation college student, a daughter of Vietnamese refugees, and a woman of color shaped her research interests. As a PhD student in the department of Community Health Sciences at UCLA Fielding School of Public Health, Cindy focuses on health equity, structural racism, mental health of communities of color, and multi-level interventions. Prior to the PhD, she studied Public Policy at Rutgers University and earned her MPH in Health Behavior and Health Education from the University of Michigan. Amit Paul was born in India and now reside in the Bay Area. He received the Gates Millennium Scholarship in 2014 and graduated with a Bachelor’s degree in Creative Writing in 2018 from Sierra Nevada University. He loves writing poetry and is excited to start a Master’s in Public Health program at Columbia University in Fall 2021. In his free time, Amit like to read and watch educational videos. He is a fitness and mindfulness enthusiast, and loves being in nature! A fun fact about Amit: his full name translates to the Infinite Wasp. Pyar Mo is a 3rd-year APIA Scholar studying at Rochester Institute for Technology. Pyar is from the Karenni ethnic group in Myanmar. For Pyar, APIA heritage month is a time when we all embrace who we really are and come together. It is a unity where we all come with our differences but share and learn from each other. Because she deeply believes our differences are what gives us strength and being able to share with each other and help one another is what makes us as a community even stronger. Because when we are sharing, it is a time when we learn and discover that we are never really alone in this journey and that we are all in this together. Bryant Phan has been writing, performing, and teaching poetry for over 15 years. He has won multiple poetry slam championships and awards, featured on television and news articles, and opened for artists including Chance the Rapper, Mos Def, Goapele, Talib Kweli, Beau Sia, Watsky, and Saul Williams. In his tenure, he has also coached multiple national poetry slam teams to a top 10 finish. Eloise Lopez is a junior at the Northern Marianas College currently majoring on her Bachelor of Science in Elementary Education degree and Associate of Arts degree in Natural Resource Management. She recently graduated with her first Associates of Arts in Education! She is an APIA/Walmart Foundation AANAPISI scholar. She is currently a teacher aide intern for Isla Montessori where she collaborates with students to practice independent lifestyles. She is also the Ocean Team Leader for the Project HOPE Program (Healthy Oceans and People Empowerment), where she helps teach students about Ocean Conservation and how it affects our community and our island. Uyen Ha is a GMS scholar (’09) and alumna of Agnes Scott College and University of Pennsylvania. Passionate about education and equity, Uyen has taught high school and led diversity and inclusion initiatives in nonprofit and higher education. She is currently a college access program director and an aspiring writer. https://apiascholars.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/Spoken-Word-Night-Banner-1.png