Ep. 221 Ten Thousand Words: Exploring Creativity and Connection with Shin Yu Pai
Saadia Khan 0:03
Hi, listeners. It's Sandia and welcome back to Immigrantly. A podcast centered around storytelling and the immigrant experience. Good news. We've made it to the month of May. The weather in New York has been warm lately. Although occasionally there's a weird couple of cold cloudy days that bring the mood down. Like seriously where is the sunshine New York? Hopefully May brings you plenty of picnics, long walks, bikes around the town, and whatever else you like to do when the weather warms up.
Saadia 0:36
Now, I've been going on a hike for the last two weekends, and I kid you not. It's such a refreshing rewarding experience. Every time I complete a loop, I pat myself on the back, I feel so proud and so happy. And to be honest, sometimes I just want to get out of that gym routine, it gets boring, stressful, and I don't enjoy it as much. Anyways, now those of you who are familiar with Immigrantly know that we do talk about climate change. And we're hoping that warm weather or sunshine doesn't get too hot. Because to be honest, the winter in New York was very mild, we got one or two snow falls, which is not usual. So I am a bit concerned. And as most of you who come back every week, listen to us know that we've addressed climate change before on the podcast and the many ways it affects us. Now you should definitely check our conversation with Saket Soni from a few weeks ago to hear about the intersection between climate and immigrant labor, for example. But I guess climate has been on my mind again, because of the approval of the Willow Project.
[BBC News - "Alaska Willow Oil Project Passed by US President Joe Biden"] 1:58
President Biden has approved a major oil and gas drilling project in Alaska that faced strong opposition from environmental activists,
[Associated Press - "The Biden Administration Approved Three Drilling Sites for the Willow Project."]
It could produce up to 180,000 barrels of oil a day about one and a half percent of total US oil production. Environmentalists say it conflicts with Biden's campaign promise to end new oil and gas drilling on federal land.
[National Park Diaries - "The Willow Project, Explained."]
And although there are already lawsuits challenging this approval, it's looking more likely than not that the Willow Project will move forward.
Saadia 2:27
Now I am no expert. But it sounds like this will kick us down a path of further climate change. Millions of people here in the States have already petitioned against it. So I definitely encourage all of you to do some research on that front. And if you already know about the project, write to me your thoughts. I would love to share what you're thinking. How do you think it will impact you in your communities? You can always reach me at saadia@immigrantlypod.com. But you know what today's episode is not about climate change. No, today I'm speaking with chin up an award-winning writer Shin Yu Pai joining me from the West Coast, Seattle, to be specific. Now her poetry has definitely left its mark. She's the author of a number of poetry collections. But her writing which includes her nonfiction work as well has also been featured in journals and magazines like the New York Times, Seattle Met Magazine, and Atlas Obscura to name a few. It's no wonder she's currently Civic Poet of Seattle, an amazing honor that mirrors her previous role as a poet laureate for Redmond, Washington from 2015 to 2017. But honestly, poetry is only one of her many pursuits. Shin has taught creative writing, but she's also a photographer, and recently she has been producing and hosting her own podcast, which I hope to chat more about with her today. Don't worry, you'll hear more about it soon enough from Shin herself. So let's get started.
Saadia 4:35
Shin Yu, thank you so much for coming on Immigrantly. I'm really excited about our conversation today. So how are you doing?
Shin Yu Pai 4:43
I'm good. I'm good. It's great to be here.
Saadia 4:45
Great to have you here. By the way, I was looking at your profile and you are a lot of things. You are a poet, a writer, a podcaster, a photographer, and so many of the things. You're also a mom. And I am a mom, right? And sometimes I feel like people don't check on us as often. So I will rephrase my question and say, How are you doing as a mom?
Shin 5:16
As a mom, it always feels like there's too many things to do. And a lot to stay on top of in terms of not just the well-being of my son, but the well-being of my family and my own well-being, which often kind of takes a backseat. I think in a lot of ways. We're heading into like these last, you know, days of the school year and into summer. So there's a lot going on.
Saadia 5:41
Absolutely. And I'm curious to know, is there anything about motherhood that you thought you should have been told before you became a mother? Because when I look at my motherhood journey, I have so many different emotions, from feeling stressed, vulnerable, sad, weak, to empowered and happy and connected to my child, and my kids are teenagers, by the way, so I'm dealing with all the teenage emotions right now. What I'm just curious to know, because we're not given a manual or a handbook. Yes, there are many books out there. And people expect us to read all those books and consume them. But honestly, every experience is so unique. And the reason why I'm asking this is because I'm going to tie this to one of your podcast episodes, I was really impressed by the lengths that you went to to preserve something for your child that you could pass on to him. So tell me a how has that journey been like so far?
Shin 6:45
The motherhood journey has been one that I think has been challenging in a lot of different ways. I wasn't necessarily a person that was really convinced or confident that having a children, having family was necessarily going to be part of my journey as an artist. And I waited a very long time. I didn't start a family until my late 30s. But I have a partner who was really built in some ways I think for being a father. He is an acupuncturist and Chinese herbalist. And I think in this way, he was hardwired to care for others in a very deep way, which was not so intuitive for me, as the daughter of traumatized immigrants, to be honest. So I think it has been a real learning journey. For me, it's been very humbling experience. And you know, those parenting books that you talk about, I read a lot of them thinking that I'll see glimpses of my child in them, and every child is different. And those books are very generalized. And just as I think that I have figured out something about my son, then there's a developmental leap or evolution, which means that I completely have to adjust how I am relating to my son. And I think the biggest learning for me this past year has been learning that my son is an HSP, or a highly sensitive person, and realizing that the way that he exists in the world is actually really similar to how I was as a child and requires a certain kind of nurturing and gentleness to be protected from some of the hardships of the world.
Saadia 8:25
Shin Yu, I want to go back to what you said about traumatized immigrant parents. And as I was reading your articles, interviews, listening to your podcast, I got a feeling that you had a loving relationship with your mother, especially but a distant one. And as an immigrant mother, a lot of times, even if I don't want to, I start projecting a lot of that onto myself. And I started to look at my relationship with my daughters. And it was an introspective exercise just reading about you. Can you elaborate a little bit about your relationship with your parents, you calling them traumatized immigrants, and also your relationship specifically with your mom?
Shin 9:12
Sure. They are very distinct relationships that don't necessarily have a lot of overlap. But yeah, we can talk about that. So my mother, she came to this country in her late 20s, to marry my father who had come first to the United States. And she did not study English as part of her background. And so coming to this country, she didn't have English proficiency or ability to communicate with others. And they initially settled in the American Midwest, and so was a very, and I would dare to say, a lonely time for my mother, who then they started their family. So they had my older brother, you know, shortly, maybe a year or two after she had come, and that disrupted some of her own studies and just getting established in this country. And so then she was this new mother, in Kirksville, Missouri, where there were like no other Asians and there was nobody to talk to. And motherhood itself is a tremendously lonely time. That combined with being an immigrant without the language, I think those two things are kind of like really heavy, heavy karma. You know, my father would tell me stories about like, meeting randomly, like a Chinese-speaking person in his workplace. And he would befriend that individual and bring them home so that they could meet and talk to my mother. So that was kind of their existence in the Midwest person, Kirksville, Missouri. And then later in Decatur, Illinois, where I was born, eventually, they moved out to Southern California where I grew up, but also in a very mixed race, working-class area without Asian people.
Shin 10:51
And so I think the experience that really characterizes my mother's life, when I think about it, has been one of a kind of profound loneliness and separation and cultural loss in terms of not having the resources or the people or the language or the culture available to her to mirror back who she is. So I think for her coming into being a mother was probably very challenging not having other mothers with young children to relate to, in her language, being herself formidable visual artist who had gone to art school and had a very successful professional career in Taiwan, that loss of identity and needing to bring that back into who she is. And to integrate those parts of herself, I would imagine that that was a much longer journey for her than it has been for me, because I have certain privileges that she did not especially the language piece of things, for my father, my relationship to my father, that's a complex relationship. And I just actually came from seeing my parents a couple of weeks ago in California. And so a lot of this is kind of rattling around for me, as a lot of identity, you know, kind of issues flare up again, right?
Shin 12:07
But my father chose to come to the United States because his situation in Taiwan was kind of tenuous, he didn't feel safe. I don't want to disclose too many details. But both my parents were born during World War Two during the Japanese occupation and lived during the time of the Nationalist Chinese government coming into Taiwan, and then establishing martial law until 1987. And my parents left in the late 1960s. But they were really coming of age during this period that is known as the White Terror, which a lot of mess Westerners may not know about. But it really speaks to this time when the Nationalist government really asserted themselves in the Taiwanese government. And as a result of it, there were massacres of 10s of 1000s of people associated with something called the 228 event and people that were killed, including doctors and intellectuals and teachers and political activists, there was an island off shore where they would ship people for Labor called Green Island. And it was a time for a long period of time where people were disappeared, and there was a blacklist. And my father feared for his safety. And so he decided to get out, he decided to come to the United States. And so I think those experiences heavily colored his past and his relationship to Taiwan and how much he loved it while also feeling that he had to escape it that he had to leave it. And so when I say that they were traumatized, or that they have PTSD, I say this with as much compassion and love as I can, because I know that that informed their parenting style, or philosophy or lack of one, and that that very much shaped who they became in this country, you know, this need to kind of hold on to these pieces of their culture, even as their culture was extremely complicated.
Saadia 14:03
Shin Yu, talk to me about their parenting style, or lack thereof, how would you define it? What are some of the salient features that you saw as a child, and that basically manifested in your relationship with them or your dynamic with them?
Shin 14:23
I think that they grew up in that generation where, you know, both of them came from large families. And the thing that you did was you had a big family, you had a lot of kids. And in the case of my father, who came from a very impoverished background, he came from a family of eight siblings, a couple of whom didn't survive, so it was bigger at one point, but they were kind of like subsistence farmers. And it's like, this notion of childhood that my son gets to enjoy is kind of like an imaginary fantasy to me. Like it's completely constructed, right? Like for my father, there was no childhood that was helping in the family. Lily, you know, growing vegetables like trying to figure out how to survive, and from my mother who came from a much more privileged background, you know, she was like going to boarding school by the time she was like in junior high. And so I wouldn't say that either one of my parents necessarily received a lot of nurturing or parenting. It's like, it was a thing that people did, they started families. And I think for my father's family of origin, there was a strong focus on Confucianism, which privileges groups versus individuals, and it privileges men over women.
Saadia 15:32
I like how you describe it, something that I have talked about a lot on our podcast individualism versus collectivism, although I would say that collectivist societies are more community-oriented, and therefore, the family structure or family unit is closer than individual societies. And that's something that I have experienced. When I came to the US, I felt so isolated, despite knowing the language despite going to grad school here, I felt like I did not fit. And it changed in the last four or five years. And I don't know why maybe podcasting changed it because I became so unapologetically myself. And I was able to own bots off my identity that I had really, really hidden from everybody, because I was either embarrassed or shy or both. Yeah, in some weird way I can relate to your parents, although our journeys are probably very different. And I also want to go back to something that you said about your dad choosing to come to the US. And as I was listening to your story, I wonder if it wasn't even a choice for him because of what was going on in Taiwan.
Shin 16:47
I mean, his situation is hard to compare to say, like a refugee situation. But I think that had he stayed he would have lived in constant fear of repercussion and retaliation. And I think there would have been a constant nagging economic instability because of the economic lengths that he had to take in order to get himself out of trouble. So those sorts of things, I think, are very destabilizing to his sense of identity. And I think absolutely, that is one way to look at it, whether or not he would say that he chose to come or have a, you know, narrative about pursuing the American dream, or, you know, you know, giving the children a better life and all those things. They're many different stories at many different times, right?
Saadia 17:35
Shin, I've been listening to your podcast. And I want to pivot to that now. Because as I was listening to it, and especially a couple of episodes that I did listen to, I feel like it's an extension of your experiences, right? It's an extension of your own journey of how you're navigating different worlds, what you're passing on to your kid, and you bring up such an important point about how you're nurturing your son and the environment that he's growing up in, versus how what kind of relationship you had with your parents which to me, I would call it more organic, because that's what I do with my kids. Again, having come from a culture where family unit is strong, but then there is not as much nurturing in the context of American idea of what nurturing is, for instance, my parents don't say I love you 10 times a day. Yeah, I don't think they ever say I love you, because it's given that they love me. And sometimes I feel I did pass on some of it to my kids. But now, I've also backtracked a little. And we've, you know, created this middle ground where I've picked up some of the nuances of American society and culture, so that my kids don't feel as alienated. Yeah. But again, these dynamics are so complex. So let's talk about them. 1000 things. That's your podcast, and it's ready to be released for season two, which is really exciting. You finished season one, it started in 2022. It's a beautiful podcast about, quote unquote, modern artifacts of Asian American Life. Talk to me a little bit about the concept. How did it come about? And why did you choose to focus on that particular aspect?
Shin Yu 19:26
The idea came to me in 2021, and I suppose it was at a particularly dark, personal time, right after the Atlantis Spa shootings. And as an artist as an Asian American woman, it became this time of deep fear and paralysis and pain and racial grief. And I had to take a break from doing the kind of writing that I was doing, which was rarely poetry at that time. And the public radio station came out with a public call saying they were interested in ideas for podcasts and I thought a lot about what a series of stories about Asian Americans could be. And there had been this story that had been sticking to my imagination for, you know, many months. And it was related to its congressman Andy Kim from New Jersey, who was photographed on the day of the January 6 insurrection, picking up garbage from the Capitol Rotunda. And it was this image that went viral, he was wearing this vibrant blue suit, which became a very famous blue suit, because the Smithsonian Museum asked him to donate it as an artifact that could tell part of the story of that infamous day. And as somebody who had trained in museum studies and spent a lot of time working in museums, working with archives and oral histories, I have a deep, deep love for objects. Also, I think that coming from my experiences with my mother, who's visual artist. So I know that you know, I have this deep belief in the power of objects to tell stories in a very indirect way.
And so part of the initial thinking around it being about objects versus people was almost a way to kind of protect her armor myself in a way before, I felt bold enough to say, I'm writing about Asian American stories. If you're not Asian American, I don't want to tell that story. These are Asian American stories. So the way that I went about doing it was like right to talk about objects, like a red or red herring, with the idea that I'd almost like sneak it into like the listeners kind of realm of listening and that at the end of eight episodes, suddenly they might realize, Wait, I just listened to eight stories about Asian Americans. This was a moment like before Michelle Yeoh won like an Oscar or before, like Turning Red came out with Pixar. And it was still this moment of like, really intense anti-Asian hate crimes happening. And so I think for me, there was just this feeling of like, Asian Americans are often viewed suspiciously as white-adjacent, and not necessarily worthy of having their own histories, complicated histories of immigration and experiences racism in this country. And there's also the feeling very legitimately so that shining the spotlight on Asian American stories can take the spotlight off of other causes, like Black Lives Matter. So there is a lot of having to navigate these landmines of social issues that are going around happening, right, like simultaneously to whatever's happening to our community. And so that was, I think, the decision to kind of put objects forward. And I remember having these early meetings with like my production team, when we would talk about how are we talking about this podcast? And I was like, I don't know how I feel about talking about Asian American stories, like, why do we have say, Asian American, and they were so patient and kind to me, I almost think about, like, this time when I was working with one of my poetry publishers, and he wanted to use like the color yellow in like the cover design motif. I was like, absolutely not.
Saadia 23:02
I love it.
Shin 23:04
But I have kind of come along, in terms of just feeling like, we are at a very different historic moment than we were when I started dreaming up this podcast, it was interesting to hear you talk about how you have come into like your own authentic voice and confidence and boldness through podcasting because I think something similar has happened with me in that in choosing to curate and tell stories that are very much about vulnerability and identity, that part of myself is also healing something in itself and giving space to come forward. Because it's not just myself being this host or writer or producer of the show. It's like I am also Asian American and a member of my community. But it's also, I think, a critical part of like, where I fit within that puzzle of the diasporic sort of experience.
Saadia 23:55
Shin, I want to go back to what you just said about you were reluctant to use the word Asian American. And I'm curious to know why.
Shin 24:03
I felt like the audience for this would be broader than just Asian American. And so what would it signify if that was the thing that was put forward the most? There was a concern about the backlash of the moments like I don't know if you remember the media story about Michelle Lee, the television broadcaster who started the very Asian foundation.
Saadia 24:23
I recently interviewed her yeah, yes.
Shin 24:46
So Asian Americans are often more stereotyped for being kind of quiet, diminutive, not taking up too much space, not rocking the boat, you know, being model minorities. And I think any presentation of being more bold, or forward in who we are, can have consequences. And so that was very much in my mind.
Saadia 24:50
But I would push back on that and say that unless we normalize that boldness and anabolics I think acceptance and pride, we will always have these issues. Yes. So in a way saying Asian American or immigrant or people of color are bipod communities, we are reasserting our identities and reorienting American society to a new social discourse.
Shin 25:20
Absolutely. It’s narrative change is how I think about it. I've also had some conversations with people who are activists and literary scholars. And there's also I think the fact that the term Asian American is kind of contested in terms of like, how inclusive it is, the concept of the Asian American really came up through literary history and the activism that took place in the Bay Area in the 1970s. Shan Huang, the novelist is one of my guests on the second season, and as part of our conversation that isn't part of the episode, we had a conversation about, what does this term mean? You know, why do you say Asian American literature? Who does that include? Who doesn't? And I'm also conscious that if a Southeast Asian Indian is listening to the show, or native Hawaiian people, how would they feel about whether or not they see themselves in this kind of collection of stories? For instance, one of the people that I was talking to about the show at one point, she was giving me feedback about it from the community, you know, she made this like, comment about like, they're not being like Vietnamese American objects, or, you know, stories is really what she was talking about, which wasn't entirely true. But I think that that term means so many different things to different people. And so it's tricky to deploy.
Saadia 26:43
You are I are both Asian Americans, right? I grew up in Pakistan. So yeah, you're absolutely right. Shin Yu, I want to talk a little bit about focus on objects. And as I was listening to your conversations, especially about your stuffed animal, which was so cute, I started thinking about artifacts in my life. And if I remember anything from childhood, or even now, and it's so sad, I couldn't remember anything, any artifact. And I kept thinking, and I kept going back. And it just made me sad. And I was like, the only thing I could think of our only thing I can think of are people and memories. Would you classify memories as artifacts?
Shin Yu 27:37
Absolutely. I mean, some of the quote unquote objects in my series are kind of squishy, or, you know, like, not totally tangible, right? Like, in this season, I, for instance, talk about the loss of a voice. I talked to Alice Wong, disability advocate, activist about the experience of losing your voice. But you know, in that first season, there's an episode that's about a vintage record player, but to my mind, it's really about a song. And a song isn't necessarily a tangible thing, but we carry it with us.
Saadia 28:10
Music is right. Nusic is not as tactile, but it's there. Yeah, the presence is there. Right?
Shin Yu 28:17
Yes. And we can pass it on to our loved ones and to our children. So the question, like, in a different way, the artifacts of your childhood, maybe it was a poem, or a book that somebody gave to you that stayed with you long after, even if you might not have the artifact of the book itself anymore, or a song, a lullaby, a dance, all these things, the experiences of the body, the somatic experiences, also expressed in some way as abstract objects to me.
Saadia 28:46
Let's talk about the artifact that you shared from your life: your stuffed animal. Talk to me about that episode. How did it come about? And were there any surprises along the way, because you talk to your mom during the episode, you talk to your son.
Shin Yu 29:02
You know, in that first season, I felt really aware that my production team was encouraging me to share more of myself as host. It's not really my MO like as a poet, we vary the narrative we hide behind really abstract language. And it's really easy to just kind of disappear behind the scenes. But if I was going to be the trusted guide for listeners, taking them through an entire eight-week season, it seems really important for me to reveal something of myself and I think I was open to that I admitted that you know, but I knew that it was going to be a kind of pretty deep exercise and vulnerability, you know, and kind of picking what that object might be.
So in this particular episode of 10,000 Things I talk about this beloved stuffed animal, this stuffed dog of mine called Poopoo. Poopoo was a stuffed animal that my parents gave me when I was a little girl and I kept her my entire life and she was always by my side and when I became a mother, I decided that I wanted to give my stuffed dog to my son. But he played with her a little bit too roughly at one point, I had to take the dog away. And then when he was a little older, like around six or seven, you know, I gave her back. And he was still playing really roughly with her. At the point where he had torn off her head, her stuffing was showing, and it was just going down this really dark road. So I realized this is not good, I need to prevent this from happening. And so I told my son a lie, I said, we're going to send Poopoo to a doll hospital, where she's going to get, you know, a nice wash and repairs and come back all fresh and fluffy. And he’ll see her in a few months, so I whisked her away. And then I spend about like, I don't know, it must have been eight months to a year trying to find a replacement for an object that was made in the 1970s by a toy company that no longer exists.
So in order to do that, I had to spend a lot of time on eBay on Etsy at all these kinds of like e-commerce vendors to try and figure out like, what was branded this dog, what year were they made? does she exist, there were a lot of dead ends. And eventually, I found this group on Facebook, where they basically help reunite people who have lost their beloved childhood stuffies with people who may have them and they match them up. And it's not like collectors selling to people who collect. It's just like nice people trying to help you find like the stuffy that you had when you were a kid. So after many, many months, I actually was able to get a replacement dog. And it was such an ordeal. And I think it proved to me in some ways, like how much I love my son in wanting to kind of maintain this fantasy or this protected childhood where, you know, the thing that we love can be repaired and made whole restored and returned to us that was very important to me. And I realized that that too was like this metaphor for my own kind of stuffed dog that had been, you know, very close to destruction. When I went to see my mother last year I had her sew up Poopoo’s head and my mother who doesn't have a lot of language, she said emergency surgery. I realized that in terms of like my own relationship with my mother, which is very conflicted. And it was for me this metaphor of her care that came through this continual repair of this animal that she repaired my entire life that she continues to repair. So it is very much a story about repair, and making things whole.
Saadia 32:32
You know, as I was listening to that episode, I realized that while you love your child, and you do want to pass your experience on to him, you were also trying to in some ways protect the animal that had so many memories, right? Because when you realized that the animal was just getting disintegrated, you just put it aside, hid it, which to me was such an interesting dichotomy. Can you talk a little bit about that?
Shin 33:05
It was this process of like, If this continues, this object that I actually love, that my son also loves will be destroyed. And I think then there is this kind of dis decoupling or this entanglement of like, the love that I have for my mother is separate from like the love that He has for this dog, which is his love for me. Therefore, he must have his own Poopoo he must have his own attachment animal where he can invest with all of his memories, and I gotta keep my shit separate.
Saadia 33:33
And you did indeed do that, which was so interesting. Shin Yu, are there any other more than artifacts from your life that you would like to share with us? Are there any that come to mind?
Shin 33:51
You know, in season two, there's another personal essay for me and I talk specifically about a Jizo Buddha, which is a guardian deity of lost children and mothers. And it is a story that I write and tell about the process of pregnancy loss and miscarriage. So that's a very personal story that will be coming up in this next season.
Saadia 34:14
So we will hear more personal stories in season two?
Shin 34:18
Well, that is the biggest episode that is like devoted just to an object of mine. But I talk throughout the season about some of the other objects that touched my lives, like the launch episode is about names and the process of changing names. And so I share with listeners the process of going from my American name to my Chinese name, my reasons for doing that, and my relationship to name.
Saadia 34:43
Can you talk a little bit about that because names are personal to me? And I've always tried to preserve our names and instilled in my kids to use their Pakistani names and there are so many complex layers to that sometimes I feel I'm being asked I'm fair to them to expect that from them and I keep reasserting it. So I'm curious to hear your story on that.
Shin 35:07
My parents when I was born, they gave me an American name. My dad really loved Hollywood movies. He really loved Doris Day he thought she was like virginal, and like multitalented and just amazing and all American. And so he gave me my namesake, which was Doris, I was originally Doris Pie. Simultaneously to that. But my third uncle, who is my father's third brother, a few weeks after I was born, he consulted this divinatory book and, you know, looked at the stars, and basically divined a unique name for me, almost like a Dharma name, a name that could really kind of bring forth my best characteristics. And that was a name that I was given Shin Yu, which I used at home until I was five years old. And then I went to kindergarten, where I was the only person that looked like me, children could not pronounce the name properly. And it became apparent to me that it distinguished me as being different.
And because of that, I made the decision, it would just be better if I went with a name that was more pronounceable, and, you know, one that allowed me to fit in, basically. So from the years from about five until 21, from the time that I went to a Buddhist graduate school in Colorado, I went by this name that I absolutely felt no connection or relationship to. And in my 20s, I had the opportunity to go back to my parent’s native homelands for the first time on this crazy love boat researching tour. And when I came back, I had all these questions about, you know, my parent’s history and the history of their culture and their people and what had happened in the last century with like, all these different kinds of colonizations. And I felt like it was this moment when I really needed to reclaim that Chinese name that I had been given, because it meant more to me in a way that I would need many, many years to kind of figure out what that name would mean to me or become. And Shin Yu, it literally translates as happy treasure.
Saadia 37:10
Ah.
Shin 37:11
But the poetic name, I feel like it's more like an optimistic jewel, which is a good aspiration for me, because I tend to be very pessimistic.
Saadia 37:20
What was the most difficult part of reconnecting with your Chinese name?
Shin 37:26
I think it's about the feeling into the quality and living up to the characteristic. Like I also have this Buddhist name that was given to me by a teacher when I took vows of refuge. And that name is liberatress of the Buddha, is how it translates. So it's like this big lofty name that feels very, very far off or distant from maybe who I feel like from day to day, but it is also kind of like this wake-up call or this reminder like it has such a different invocation to hear that name and to be summoned or to summon forth those parts of me.
Saadia 38:00
Shin Yu, when is second season coming out?
Shin
It comes out on May 1, Monday.
But I
Oh, interesting. So it comes out a day before we release this episode. So listeners, once you finish listening to this, you should go back and listen to season two of 10,000 things and I promise you love it. So in the end, I'm going to ask you something that I asked all my guests, if you were to describe America, in a word or a sentence, a phrase or a paragraph, how would you do that?
Shin 38:35
Aspirational.
Saadia 38:37
I like that.
Shin 38:38
I think the American experience can be many things. And it is this place where people can accomplish certain dreams if the conditions are right. And in this way, it is very malleable. And a lot of possibility exists within that. But it is also not always its best self, therefore aspirational.
Saadia 39:01
I'd love it. Now, where can people find your podcast? Where can they find your poetry, your writings? All of that good stuff?
Shin 39:10
Yeah, they can find 10,000 things through NPR or all the major podcasting apps and I have a website. It's just my name, shinyupai.com. I write and publish books of poetry and I'll have two new books out this fall. And my books are available through bookstores, small press distribution, even Amazon, although I don't like people to buy on Amazon because it hurts small presses. But my work exists in the world and I hope you'll discover it.
Saadia 39:35
I love it. Thank you so much Shin Yu for coming on our show.
Shin
Thank you.
Saadia 39:40
Okay, so I have a lot of thoughts. As I mentioned during the interview and my conversation with Shin. I don't have any artifacts that I can think of that I would like to pass on to my kids. I just have memories, memories of people, of places and I wonder if all of you listening have any artifacts that you are very possessive about, or if you're like me, and don't have any or can't think of any, I would love to hear your thoughts.
Now also, I will mention our Patreon because listeners, if you come back every week, it means our conversations are resonating with you. You want us to come back to bring these incredible chats. So please help us to stay in the podcast, go to our Patreon and subscribe to us for as low as $5 a month, not a day, a month. Also, if you don't follow us on our socials, you can follow us on Twitter at @Immigrantly_pod and Instagram @Immigrantlypod we also have Tik Tok @Immigrantlypodcast so those listeners who are on TikTok don't forget to follow us there.
You can always write to me with your thoughts episode ideas, feedback, review, or talking about review. Don't forget to give us a good review on Apple podcasts or Spotify. This episode is produced by me, Saadia Khan, written by Michaela Strauther. The editorial review as always was done by Shei Yu and our incredible editor is Haziq Ahmed Farid and the music for our podcast is done by Simon Hutchinson. By the way, what do you think of music? I mean, I love it, but I want to get your thoughts. Anyways, come back next week when we have another incredible story. Until then, take care