{"id":391882,"date":"2023-05-18T06:06:35","date_gmt":"2023-05-17T20:06:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/?p=391882"},"modified":"2023-05-18T06:06:35","modified_gmt":"2023-05-17T20:06:35","slug":"may-is-asian-pacific-american-heritage-month","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/may-is-asian-pacific-american-heritage-month\/","title":{"rendered":"May is Asian Pacific American Heritage Month"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Here are some extracts of poems from a book titled <em>Yobo: Korean American Writing in Hawaii<\/em>, published 2003. I have selected some short excerpts germane to life on islands in the Pacific in honor of Asian Pacific American Heritage Month. All the authors are of Korean heritage in Hawaii.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHere where salt gathers between shell and moss stones<\/p>\n<p>where birds rise off water like great winds in passing<\/p>\n<p>where the sea tosses brilliance of cold stars was I born\u201d<\/p>\n<p><strong><em>\u2014from <\/em><\/strong><strong>Makai First Light <em>by Willyce Kim<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>\u201cOver the years our beach has served as every possible body<\/p>\n<p>of water necessary to life \u2013 embryonic sac, birth canal, baptistry,<\/p>\n<p>bathtub, fishpond, septic tank, sensory deprivation tank.<\/p>\n<p>The ebb and flow of our lives fill its wading pools with unwept<\/p>\n<p>tears, tears that wash out to sea and return with every tide.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><strong><em>\u2014from <\/em><\/strong><strong>Family Plot <em>by Robert Pennybacker whose mother\u2019s grandparents came to Hawaii from Korea to work and live on the sugarcane and pineapple plantations around 1905<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt was another long walk through the sugarcane fields of Hawaii<\/p>\n<p>where he worked for eighteen years, cutting the sweet stalks with a<\/p>\n<p>machete. His right arm grew disproportionately large to the rest of<\/p>\n<p>his body. He could hold three grandchildren in that arm.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><strong><em>\u2014from <\/em><\/strong><strong>Easter:\u00a0Wahaiawa, 1959<em> by Cathy Song<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>\u201cUp through the crust, hot rock flows from the mantle \u2013<\/p>\n<p>we can\u2019t say exactly how. Cold rock sinks. In the Pacific, my home<\/p>\n<p>slides north over the hot spot, whose sister spots have birthed oil<\/p>\n<p>and diamonds. From sea life, oil. It takes a diamond to cut a diamond.\u00a0All life begins here.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><strong><em>\u2014from <\/em><\/strong><strong>Hot Rock Rising<em> by Debra Kang Dean<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Here are some extracts of poems from a book titled Yobo: Korean American Writing in&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":387597,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[62],"class_list":["post-391882","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-opinion","tag-korea"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/391882","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=391882"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/391882\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/387597"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=391882"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=391882"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=391882"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}