Friday, July 18, 2008
8:00pm - 9:30pm

East Meets West Bookstore
934 Massachusetts Ave, Cambridge, MA

Boston Progress Arts Collective welcomes Ed Lin to the East Meets West Bookstore for a special reading. Ed will read from his latest novel, This Is a Bust.

Ed Lin is the author of Waylaid. Published by Kaya in 2002, Waylaid was universally praised in a broad range of publications including Booklist, Asianweek and Playboy. Waylaid was named to Booklist’s Editors Choice 2002 list and also won the Members’ Choice Award from the Asian American Writers Workshop in 2003. Waylaid was made into the movie “The Motel” (2005) by Michael Kang.

This Is a Bust, Lin’s second novel, was published by Kaya in December 2007 to a pre-publication starred review in Booklist. A few copies of both books will be available for purchase.

For more information about Ed Lin, check out his website: http://www.edlinforpresident.com.

Northeastern University’s Asian American Center is hosting a series of events this week, as part of its Asian American Heritage Week.

ARTiculate will be the concert portion of the week. The lineup for ARTiculate will be Conchita Campos, Kevin So and Blue Scholars.

This month was a month of first-timers - from our illustrious host Andy to some of the performers like Mishaft, who shared his own organic story, followed by Andre, bringing us back to the state of America a few years back. Andy (a different Andy), accompanied by BPAC’s own Dave, helped steer us to the exit. Andy and Dave were followed by another Dave, who was followed by Eric. Phew!

Eric shared his trials and tribulations about culinary school, complete with props and food (real food to eat!) at the end of the show. Let me just say that I’m already a vegetarian - so when Eric started showing us where on the human body the different cuts of meat come from, I squirmed, but just enough to reconfirm why I don’t eat animals. There was a sad bit in there about cooking lobsters (which I may now stop eating), and some funny stuff about what it’s like to be a bitchen kitch. I mean, a kitchen bitch.

The Good Asian Drivers were up next with an adorable, month appropriate song about love found on the internet, “Whenever I scroll…” Their video is up on youTube, so get clicking. (You might even catch a real live glimpse of the bookstore or even a quick shot of our very own Eugene!) I will say that I will remain optimistic about the possibilities of online dating, and online communities. People are so busy now, and umbilically attached to their laptops, iPhones, blackberries - doesn’t it seem natural that community also become more digitally attached? Witness the community forming here, right around BPR. But, I digress.

This month’s feature was Nikhil Rajpal, aka One Signata Nach. Each of the pieces he shared captured a different aspect of his experiences - whether in translating from Hindi to English, capturing the power of skin color or the love for a partner. Performing a capella, I appreciated his obvious passion for what he does, and what he believes in. All of his music is available for free download at his website and even the proceeds from the CDs he sold at the bookstore were going to charity.

As my own disclaimer, I apologize in advance if I confused anyone’s performances. Our regular recapper Long was out of town this weekend, and I was caught without pen and paper at the open mic. My memory sucks sometimes.

And lastly, I just have one piece of feedback - where were the voices of the women of Boston this month?

Come down and bless the mic, or catch Desi hip hop artist OSN perform. The East Meets Words Open Mic goes down every second Friday of the month.

One Signata Nach has no country: he simply calls himself Desi, a term for South Asians across the globe. He has no religion: just the oneness that he embodies at en anthemic level with his record label, Represent One Records. His name has no roots in the cultures of our world and can neither be misinterpreted, nor mispronounced. But his words are anything but enigmatic, his cause anything but trivial. Share an evening with this socially aware hip hop artist as he shares with you the plight of his people, from the hills of Kashmir, to the streets of New York and through the eyes of humankind. Download his music in free, high quality mp3 format.

For more info, check out onesignatanach.com.

Here’s a snippet from her profile on pbs’s “searching for america” program. You can see the whole thing here.

GROWING UP IN THE U.S.
I grew up in Whitestown, Queens–a small suburb of New York. When I was growing up, it was a predominately Italian neighborhood, and it was pretty difficult to live there as a Korean kid. My family was one of the few Asian American families living there at that time. It also made me aware of race politics early on in life, because the racism was so blatant. I ended up hanging out a lot outside of my neighborhood. My boyfriend lived in Bushwick, Brooklyn, which became the neighborhood that I grew up in. It is more Puerto Rican and black. So my childhood was very interesting.

SPOKEN WORD BEGINNINGS
I was invited to this reading called “Tongues Afire: Asian and African-American poetry.” A lot of people I admired were reading that night, such as Cheryl Boyce Taylor, Regie Cabico, and Roger Bonair-Agard. I read these two short literary poems. And then I read this one that was more like a rant, you know. And people were kind of going crazy over it. So that was my first taste of the whole performance poetry scene. Then I went to a couple local open mikes and I started to read.

Eventually, people asked me to do features and it kind of blossomed from there. The first year that I slammed was 2001. And then things went crazy. From 2001 to 2003, everything kind of happened. I competed in New York at Bar 13. I slammed and I won. I won the LoudPoet of the Year and Grand Slam Championship for that actual venue. Then a talent agent signed me and I went to nationals representing my team. So, it was kind of crazy like that. In terms of getting national visibility, I think it all happened within one year. It was pretty surprising.