EMW Borderlands

11/02/2017

Community announcement: There is a hearing this Thursday (2/16) in the Cambridge City Hall regarding the possible demolition of the Abbott Building (in Harvard Sq, home to 24 small businesses such as Tealuxe, Curious George store, etc) to build a luxury shopping center in its place. Check the flyer for more info!

04/02/2017

“All people of color experience racism differently in this country, and what Asian Americans experience is perhaps we are constantly interrogated. Like, we’re constantly inauthentic. So this is called ‘Knock-Off.’” - Bao Phi

Watch Bao Phi’s final poem as the feature of the EMW Bookstore 11th anniversary open mic. Brace yourself for sharp jabs of reality delivered with shock and fury. This poem would be almost scandalous if it didn’t speak the bone-cutting truth about racialization in America.

Bao Phi is a Vietnamese American spoken word artist, writer and community activist living in Minnesota. A two-time Minnesota Grand Slam champion and a National Poetry Slam finalist, Bao Phi has appeared on HBO Presents Russell Simmons All Def Poetry, featured in the live performances and taping of the blockbuster diasporic Vietnamese variety show Thuy Nga - Paris By Night 114: Tôi Là Người Việt Nam, and a poem of his appeared in the 2006 The Best American Poetry anthology. A short story of his, Revolution Shuffle, appeared in the landmark anthology Octavia's Brood: Science Fiction Stories from Social Justice Movements Justice Movements, AK Press, 2015.

Watch Bao Phi’s performance on the Borderlands website: http://www.emwbookstore.com/brdl-words-1/2016/12/knock-off-bao-phi

If you believe in amplifying the voices of marginalized artists and thinkers, ‘Like’ EMW Borderlands on Facebook to be the first to hear about new posts.

Bao Phi is a Vietnamese American spoken word artist, writer and community activist living in Minnesota. A two-time Minnesota Grand Slam champion and a National Poetry Slam finalist, Bao Phi has appeared on HBO Presents Russell Simmons Def Poetry, featured in the live performances and taping of the b...

04/02/2017

In the wake of the executive orders on immigration bans and the construction of a border wall, Jess X Snow's painting “I Will Never Stop Reaching for You” feels even more relevant and timely in the way it illuminates the resilience of border-crossing migrants. To grow in true critical consciousness it is not enough to grieve the world; we must fall in love with it too, with the the resilience of the millions of mothers, fathers, and children who risk everything to “form constellations in the night despite the borders, detainments, and abuse of the US," whose bodies are “preserved with the light of a million stars.”

Jess X Snow is a q***r Asian-American artist, filmmaker and poet. Her work exposes narratives of time travel, diaspora, intimacy and collective protest by connecting the q***r & colored body with the body of the Earth. Through film, mural-making, poetry and youth art education, she is working toward a future where migrant and indigenous youth of color see themselves whole and heroic, on the big screen and the city walls & then grow up to create their own. Check out her work at http://www.jessxchen.com.

Growing out of the EMW Bookstore community, Borderlands seeks to amplify the voices and visions of all artists, storytellers, and thinkers who challenge conceptual borders within ourselves and in the world.

Check out more from Borderlands at http://www.emwbookstore.com/borderlands.

31/01/2017

“All people of color experience racism differently in this country, and what Asian Americans experience is perhaps we are constantly interrogated. Like, we’re constantly inauthentic. So this is called ‘Knock-Off.’”

Watch Bao Phi’s final poem as the feature of the EMW Bookstore 11th anniversary open mic. Brace yourself for sharp jabs of reality delivered with shock and fury. This poem would be almost scandalous if it didn’t speak the bone-cutting truth about racialization in America.

Bao Phi is a Vietnamese American spoken word artist, writer and community activist living in Minnesota. A two-time Minnesota Grand Slam champion and a National Poetry Slam finalist, Bao Phi has appeared on HBO Presents Russell Simmons All Def Poetry, featured in the live performances and taping of the blockbuster diasporic Vietnamese variety show Thuy Nga - Paris By Night 114: Tôi Là Người Việt Nam, and a poem of his appeared in the 2006 The Best American Poetry anthology. His poems and essays are widely published in numerous publications including Screaming Monkeys: Critiques of Asian American Images and Spoken Word Revolution Redux. He has also released several CDs of his poetry, such as the recently sold-out Refugeography to his newest CD, The Nguyens EP. A short story of his, Revolution Shuffle, appeared in the landmark anthology Octavia's Brood: Science Fiction Stories from Social Justice Movements Justice Movements, AK Press, 2015.

Watch Bao Phi’s performance on the Borderlands website: http://www.emwbookstore.com/brdl-words-1/2016/12/knock-off-bao-phi

If you believe in amplifying the voices of marginalized artists and thinkers, ‘Like’ EMW Borderlands on Facebook to be the first to hear about new posts.

Bao Phi is a Vietnamese American spoken word artist, writer and community activist living in Minnesota. A two-time Minnesota Grand Slam champion and a National Poetry Slam finalist, Bao Phi has appeared on HBO Presents Russell Simmons Def Poetry, featured in the live performances and taping of the b...

17/01/2017

This one's for the books! Watch jaeL's legendary performance "about moms and colleges" on his mother's birthday at EMW Bookstore's monthly open mic. For many immigrant families, parental sacrifice is the name of the game. But what do you do when your own dreams clash with your parents' ideas of success?

Spoiler alert: Adorable intergenerational magic at the end of the video y'all. Ma is here in the crowd. /// "But mama please hear me out before we both start to shout / 'cause now I'm tired of feelin' like I'm all alone / like I'm on my own / tired of yellin' at you on the phone / tired of sayin' I ain't coming home / but no matter how I fake it I can't make it on my own, no I can't make it on my own." ///

A rapper from Brooklyn, jaeL writes:

"That was me. Model Minority x Slacker. That kid in class, who cut, slept, or played Gameboy Advance every day and still managed to graduate without ever studying. To the streets, I was a nerd and goody-two shoes but to the school, I was a hooligan and a rebel. To America, I was too Chinese but to China, I was too American. These dualities were labeled onto me; I just walk with them.

MODEL MINORITY. SLACKER. NERD. HOOLIGAN. REBEL. NAH.

I’M JUST A MC."

http://www.emwbookstore.com/brdl-words-1/2016/12/illusions-just-an-everyday-life

Jackson Li, of Just An Everyday Life, performs "Illusions" (self-described as "a rap about moms and college") for his mother's birthday at EMW bookstore's monthly open mic. That was me. Model Minority x Slacker. That kid in class, who cut, slept, or played Gameboy Advance every day and still managed...

29/12/2016

EMW Borderlands contributing writer Huiying Chan is on a fellowship year studying Chinatowns and the Chinese diaspora around the globe. In this vignette, Huiying recounts a conversation with a woman at an unnamed Chinese restaurant in El Barrio Chino, Perú. The woman is from Hoiping -- the same place Huiying's father is from. What emerges through this sketch is a portrait of the daily challenges and dynamics of running a Chinese restaurant in a tourist area, and the tenuous strings of home that wind their way across cultures and continents.

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"She carried the two bowls back to the side where I was sitting. I looked at her, "They didn't want it?"

"They said the soup went bad." Before I knew what to say, she continued, "It's like that. It's because my father puts in chicken bones to cook it." She listed other ingredients I love in my soup. "Sometimes they love it and others think that it's rotten. There's nothing you can do about what they say they taste."

Her son was playing with Spanish flash cards on the floor. Throughout our conversation, she kept scolding that he was causing them to lose business because he was playing in the front. We both watched as Peruvians would stop at the entrance to look at the large menu with pictures, peek inside, and continue walking.

http://www.emwbookstore.com/brdl-words-1/2016/12/a-restaurant-with-no-name

16/12/2016

At the 10th Boston Palestine Film Festival this October, various films contemplated, mourned, and celebrated Palestine's history, struggle, and potential future. Borderlands writer Evyn Lê Espiritu dives deep into three shorts that probe the question of Palestine from multiple perspectives:

"From documentaries on Gaza, to dramas depicting refugee displacement, to sci-fi portrayals of Palestinian futurity, these shorts probe the question of Palestine from a variety of angles, affecting the viewer on multiple registers: ethical, political, intellectual, emotional, philosophical, artistic. The films make claims to a shared humanity, inviting its New England-based audience to empathize with the Palestinian and/or refugee figure, as well as highlight irreducible difference, cautioning against universalizing identifications. In the words of the refugee protagonist of “The Way Home” to the well-meaning yet ultimately unhelpful Swedish immigration lawyer: “You don’t know me! You can’t know what I’ve been through!” These shorts challenge their viewers to watch and listen with deference and respect to a diversity of Palestinian visions and voices."

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Please help us welcome one of our newest members, Evyn Lê Espiritu! Evyn is a Rhetoric PhD candidate at UC Berkeley researching the Vietnamese refugee diaspora in Guam and Israel-Palestine. You will be seeing more of her work in time, so come check out her most recent curation here:

http://www.emwbookstore.com/brdl-salons-1/2016/11/visions-of-palestine-shorts-from-the-10th-boston-palestine-film-festival

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On October 29-30, the Boston Palestine Film Festival’s 10th Season wrapped up with three striking programs of shorts. From documentaries on Gaza, to dramas depicting refugee displacement, to sci-fi portrayals of Palestinian futurity, these shorts probe the question of Palestine from a variety of...

09/06/2016

This is it. Today is the day. Are you ready?

Our site is live.

To celebrate our LAUNCH, we present to you:
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NOTE: Please click this link if you are getting a privacy error:
http://emwbookstore.com/borderlands
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THE BORDERLANDS MANIFESTO

Our social imaginary is fraught with borders: east/west, white/colored, male/female, native/migrant, first/third world, nature/culture, and myriad configurations of self/other. These dichotomies divide humanity into convenient binaries, alienating us from the full textures of our lived experiences.

We recognize that such categories serve to lubricate levers of power—to sanction one race over another, one gender over another, one culture over another. The danger of categorization, as Toni Morrison writes, is that “definitions belong to the definers, not the defined.”

Borderlands seeks to re-seize the definitions placed upon us and take back the power these communities have in defining themselves. By uplifting lesser-told narratives, we exemplify the futility of trope and stereotype. By resisting stale categorizations of identity and genre, we embrace the human longing for knowledge and creation as it blooms in all of us.

Yet if "we all bleed red," why are some bodies bloodied routinely and systematically? The color of our skin, the body parts we have, and the accent of our speech ground us in a historical and material context. Categorizations of identity must be challenged as the allocating lines of political, economic and social capital. These borders are violently enforced and enacted without our consent.

Growing out of the EMW Bookstore community, Borderlands seeks to amplify the voices and visions of all artists, storytellers, and thinkers who challenge conceptual borders within ourselves and in the world. Fiercely speak your truth so as to radically reimagine a future that doesn't hurt so much. As Gloria Anzaldúa writes, "Wild tongues cannot be tamed. They can only be cut out."

We call on all wild-tongued artists, writers, musicians, filmmakers, designers, engineers and scientists to travel with us to the borderlands of identity, genre and thought. This is where everything we are meets everything that is infinite. We are the rabble-rousers, the dangerous thinkers, the unapologetic visionaries. Rather than the mere reproduction of “what is expected” as demarcated by societal boxes, dare to demand, “what is possible?”

Somewhere beyond category and definition, there is a field. We will meet you there.

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Check us out! You can click around at
http://emwbookstore.com/borderlands
Follow us on Instagram and Twitter .

08/06/2016

EMW family!

With launch coming up TOMORROW, we wanted to give you a viewpoint on Borderlands from one of our community curators. She was asked, "Why is Borderlands important to you?" and sent us a statement posted below.

"Borderlands reminds me of my high school years, searching online for someone speaking my truth but never finding someone who reflected my life through their emphatic gesticulations and articulations on society. I was inspired, yes, but not inspired to be myself. When I came to EMW events and programs this year, I found so many people who were able to artistically articulate internalized thoughts I’ve kept neatly tucked away. Having a space to do so is, I’ve come to realize, so very important.

The thing about EMW is that it’s not just about the art, it’s about the community. EMW’s community continues to surprise me in its inclusivity, its friendly and outward facing warmth. I want to help extend that reach to people who haven’t experienced that welcoming, truthy expression that I am blessed to be able to physically access as a Boston resident. Borderlands is an open door that allows EMW to virtually welcome online lurkers like myself searching for a space with voices to relate to, visions to hold onto."

- Julia Kim, Visions Community Curator

We launch tomorrow, June 8th! GET HYPED, IT'S GONNA BE BEAUTIFUL!!!

**background art "I Will Never Stop Reaching For You" by Jess X. Chen

07/06/2016

Hey EMW family! If you've heard the buzz around town, you're probably asking yourself the same question that's on everyone's mind: what IS Borderlands?

EMW Borderlands is an online multimedia publication that seeks to amplify the marginalized voices and visions of artists, storytellers, and unapologetic visionaries of our community. In Greater Boston, EMW Bookstore has been a cornerstone in cultivating community for the over a decade, and our dream is to expand our reach to anyone who challenges conceptual borders within themselves and across the world. And this is how Borderlands was born.

We launch on Wednesday, June 8th! IT'S GONNA BE LIT 💖💖💖💖💖💖💖