WHOSE MUSE? BAO PHI, WRITER/ SPOKEN WORD ARTIST/ COMMUNITY ORGANIZER
Photo: Anna Min
Welcome to the latest installment of “Whose Muse?”, a series of interviews about creativity with its practitioners. The goal is to learn about strategies and approaches from folks in a variety of disciplines— including those in fields we don’t ordinarily associate with creativity.
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Bao Phi's poetry collection "Thousand Star Hotel" was called one of NPR's Best Books of 2017, and was named Best Poetry Book of 2017 by San Francisco State’s Poetry Center. His first children’s book, "A Different Pond", earned a Caldecott Honor, the Ezra Jack Keats New Writer and New Illustrator Honors, the Asian/ Pacific American Award for Literature, Booklist Editor’s Choice, was chosen as a Hornbook Fanfare book, and was named among the best books of the year by Kirkus, Washington Post, Huffington Post, The Boston Globe, School Library Journal, Kirkus Reviews, Publishers Weekly, and many others.
Also renowned as a spoken word artist, Phi is a two-time Minnesota Grand Slam champion and a National Poetry Slam finalist. He's appeared on HBO Presents Russell Simmons Def Poetry, has been featured in the live performances and taping of the blockbuster diasporic Vietnamese variety show Paris By Night 114: Tôi Là Người Việt Nam.
Phi was nominated for a Facing Race Ambassador award in recognition for his community work, and has published essays in topics from Asians in hip hop to Asian representation in video games. He has been a guest speaker at numerous events and for various entities, such as Giant Steps and Bushconnect. Currently he continues to perform across the country, and remains active as an Asian American community organizer.
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What’s your origin story as a creative practitioner?
I can think of several touchstones from when I was super young. We came as refugees from Vietnam, and back then you needed a family sponsor to help you integrate into society, for lack of a better term. Basically, families like mine were pretty much promised by the US government that they’d be taken care of if the other side won, but when things really went down, the government pretty much pushed the responsibility on to the non-profit sector. And so what ended up happening was that a lot of families like mine needed sponsors, and those sponsors tended to be from religious non profits or groups.
That’s a very long-winded way of saying we had a Lutheran family sponsor. And I remember this very kind Lutheran white grandma who made these really great brownies, and she was in the community. She wasn’t in our sponsor family, but she was part of the church. And I remember I think I was like five when we went to her house, and I fell in love with this picture book about dinosaurs. And ever since then I have been hooked on books, visuals, art, all of that type of stuff. So that’s one touchpoint, is I remember that very clearly being an early hook, right?
And then if you fast forward even more, I grew up in Phillips– the shorthand is that in the 80s especially it was a tough area, where male-identified kids were expected to be tough in a very specific way. And I was not, you know? Let alone my race, since as a Vietnamese refugee, that already set me up for a lot of bullying. But I was also not a tough kid.
And I was also from a poor family, so there was the Franklin Avenue Library that my dad taught me to walk to and from. And I wanted an Atari like everyone else, I wanted GI Joes and Transformers and stuff like that, and once in a while I would get one, but it wasn’t like my friends who had all these toys and games. But books at the library were free, you know? And it was like six, eight blocks from my house, and I could ride my bike or walk there and back, and I would avoid bullies, so it became a safe, free haven for me. But also, in a library, that’s when whole worlds are opened to you, right? And so I got hooked into Greek mythology and King Arthur, legends like that. Books with illustrated bestiaries. With all these beautiful fantastic creatures painted in these pages, I wanted to read about them, I wanted to read more, and that’s how I got into a lot of stuff that now we would call fantasy, and eventually science fiction. And that’s really where my love affair with books and the power of imagination comes from.
Right around fourth or fifth grade I started writing these funny stories to entertain my classmates, and I was like “Wow, I can just make stuff up on a page.” I was just writing these dumb satirical stories, but it was so powerful, like “Wow.” And fast forwarding even more, going through my childhood, being involved in theater, loving books, and simultaneously loving stuff in pop culture like Star Wars and comic books, Marvel comics, again, combinations of visuals and writing.
I also started to get really curious about this social justice and community thing. And I’m Vietnamese, so what does that mean? I was learning about Black folks, I was learning about Native American folks, and to a lesser extent, Latinx folks, which was great– I wanted to learn about all that– but what about Asian people? I’m this Asian body, coming from a war, and in this poor neighborhood. What does that mean? And to tell you the truth, I had no idea. I knew what it meant to be Vietnamese to a certain degree, and the resistance to being Vietnamese, but I didn’t understand how we fit into these ideas of race.
And right around the same time I started thinking about writing poetry, because there was this interest in Beat poets, The Last Poets, Gil Scott-Heron, Nikki Giovanni… There was a Chinese American poet named Alvin Eng out of New York… There were interesting things happening. As a teenager, I was super excited! You know, you watch Dead Poets Society– the idea of these young people hanging out doing this weird poetry that’s you know, in their body, and it’s fun, and it’s not dry, boring stuff, right? Super exciting to me. And I combined that with my curiosity about social justice when I started writing poetry, and combined it with performance when I was part of South High speech team.
And that’s the real down and dirty, quick quick quick origin story for me. Those touchstones are really important to who I eventually became as an artist.
Photo: Anrong Xu
Who’s been a mentor to you, either as a personal acquaintance, or someone whose wisdom you’ve perceived from afar, and how have they inspired or trained you?
Oh man, so many. I’ve had the benefit of a lot of mentors helping me with different phases of my life and my art. Generally, the teachers in the public school systems that I had in Minneapolis– too many to mention, but so many of them encouraged me to continue my love of books and writing in very different forms throughout being a student. And then when we get to college I have to mention Diane Glancy, who’s a Native American woman– I took her freshman seminar on Native American lit because by then I was interested in the literature of indigenous people and people of color, and I took her seminar, and I learned so much. And for the final project you could do anything you wanted, but you had to show what you learned. And so my final project was a very short poetry manuscript about race, and politics, and this type of thing. And after I presented it to her, she was like “You need to take a creative writing class.” Before then I was like “Oh, I write poems because I like it,” but I didn’t know that you could sit in a workshop, produce work, and have people comment on it, and make you a better writer. That was what visual artists do; I hadn't thought of a writer doing that. So that was instrumental, and she really supported me throughout my college career.
In terms of social justice stuff, Mahnaz Kousha, an Iranian woman, helped shape and sharpen my lenses when thinking about politics, social justice, and community. I was a minor in sociology, and she was my advisor. Very sadly she passed away from cancer.
In the community there’s of course David Mura– I think any Asian American artist in Minnesota of my generation or younger owes a huge debt to artists like David. Also Diego Vasquez, Jr., the recently departed Laurie Carlos, and Roy McBride: the Powderhorn poet laureate.
And then if we’re talking about children’s literature, there are two people who are really instrumental, and that’s Molly Beth Griffin, who’s a queer white children’s book writer, and Dr, Sarah Park Dahlen, who’s the Jedi of diversity in kid lit.
There are so many people I admire and who have been gracious to me, and I could go on and on, but that’s a good start I think.
What’s some inspirational creative advice that you’ve received?
Something David Mura told me: he talked about how when he was in his twenties, everyone he knew was an artist. And by the time he reached his forties, very few of those people stayed artists. And it wasn’t the most talented who were still doing it. The ones who were still doing it were the ones who found a way to keep doing it, who never gave up. Typically art is work, and you have to figure out some way to survive. Right? Some way to pay the bills. Sure, talent is important. But equally important is figuring out a way to continue. I go back to that a lot.
Can you provide some insight into your creative process, and why it’s important for you to proceed thusly?
I’ve been seriously writing poetry since I was a teenager, and it used to be that I could only write when I had a fire underneath me. But then once I had a kid, time and energy were at such a minimum, that I basically was like “If I don’t come up with a writing process, then I’m just gonna quit.” ‘Cause there’s just no time. My life had changed to a point where I was like “If I don’t come up with a disciplined approach to it, I’m gonna stop.” That was the phase where I explored writing as almost like going to the gym. Even when you don’t feel like doing it, you gotta keep doing it ‘cause you’re exercising your muscles, right? So I did that for a while. And now I’m kind of back to feast or famine, where now that I have a couple of books under my belt, I’ll work on projects for a while as long as I can be passionate about them. And then I have to take a break. I have to step back.
Another thing that was really inspiring to me: Creative writers, we kind of have this groupthink, where we have to edit all the time, we have to edit our heads off, until we hate ourselves, and it’s true, we are editing all the time. But I remember the great poet R. Zamora Linmark, we had coffee, and we were talking about the process, and he said “Yeah, but you don’t want to edit the duende out of it.” And that’s stuck with me. At what point have I polished this so much that it doesn’t have… you know what I mean? You want your art to have these rough edges to it, to a certain extent. That’s always something in the back of my mind: don’t edit the soul out of it. Sometimes I’m at a place now in my creative process where I’m like “Yes, I’m hard on it,” and when you get to the point where you start to resent it, and you just want to get this over with, you gotta step back from it, because you’re not doing service to yourself or the work. So that’s my process now.
Photo: Anna Min
What are some techniques or mindsets you recommend to facilitate creative practice?
This is kind of a cliché, but it’s really true. What I advise a lot of, particularly to young writers, is: the best way to become a great writer is to read your ass off. Just read other people’s books. And I would add to that: go to spoken word performances. Go to readings. Become a student of the form. You can learn these techniques, you can take classes, and that’s all important. But when you read books, you absorb them. It’s almost like learning how to swim. And you read critically. You’re like “Oh, I really like how this writer did this.” Or “I wish they didn’t do that.” And then you start kind of turning that lens inward, at your own work: “If I make this choice, what is that going to do to a reader?”
My friend Douglas Kearney had a reading where he talked about how most readers think that when they read, they have no agency. But when you choose to read a book, you’re making choices constantly as a reader. So a lot of his work is about the agency, and the relationship between reader and writer. So my whole thing is: just read a ton.
What holds you back?
You know, low self esteem, the fact that we live in a capitalist society where we have to, you know, work to pay bills… And I also think… the writer Lesley Nneka Arimah said it best. She talked about how in her process, sometimes she knows what she wants to do, but she doesn’t know how to do it yet. You know what I mean? And I feel that way. Like when I read truly great writers, I’m just like, “How did you do that?” And it’s not necessarily stuff that’s super confusing, or intricate. I just don’t understand where they get this sixth gear that they seem to find. And sometimes I feel like I get stuck there. I want to reach that next level, and I don’t know if I’m capable of it. So… all of those things hold me back.
And how do you defeat these challenges?
Yeah, you just keep writing. [Laughs] It’s like that cliché from sports: You miss every shot that you don’t attempt. And I believe that. You just gotta try. And I think what’s great about being a writer is, it’s relatively inexpensive to experiment. I can write a whole book on my laptop, and if it’s terrible, it doesn’t have to see the light of day. I’ve only wasted my own time, really. Writers– we have the privilege of having a low-cost art form where you can kind of experiment and play and kind of throw things at the wall and see what sticks. And no one needs to be the wiser. So you just gotta do it. Like I write a zombie novel, you know? It’s terrible, but I did it. And I couldn’t get going, because I kept getting stuck on “Oh, it’s not going to be good.” And it’s probably not going to be good. But you gotta start somewhere.
Photo: Anna Min
What are some habits you can share that help you cultivate creativity?
I try to be nimble. I try to adapt. Many years ago, after college, when I was working in restaurants, I would write on napkins, I would write on tickets, I would write on the back of receipts, wherever and however I could. That was the process. And then, in the age of computers, I just keep folders with all the writing in there. I just try to be flexible. I try not to have a practice where it’s like “Oh, if I don’t do this…” If I don’t have coffee at five in the morning, wake up every day to write a chapter, or whatever, then everything falls apart… Maybe that comes from being a survivor of war, where you’ve just gotta be able to pick everything up and then go, and then roll with whatever life throws at you.
And then the other part of it is just like living life. You know? With my second children’s book, I knew I wanted to write a book addressing bullying, but I didn’t know what the story was. And then I’m with my kid, in the snow, and they’re wearing these moon boots and snow pants, and they start doing this thing to amuse themselves, they just start stomping and chanting “My footprints! My footprints!”, just for fun. I have no idea why that was fun to them, but it was. And then I thought to myself, “What if I wrote a book about a kid who makes footprints and imagines that they’re like these fantastic animals or creatures and that’s how they deal with these hurt feelings about bullying,. right? My kid didn’t do that to spur my imagination, and I don’t spend time with my child just so they inspire a book, but that’s just an example of when something will occur to me, and I’m like “That’s it.” And that’s both the beautiful and crazymaking thing about being a creator of art, is that you just kinda gotta live your life, and you don’t know what's gonna be art, you know?
What’s been inspiring to you lately as a creative person, and why? (Could be a film, book, or show you’re enjoying, a place you like to go, an activity that gives you life, a person out there in the world whose actions you admire, a pet, a friend, a family member, etc)
The easiest answer is “Everything Everywhere All At Once”. That film… I watched it, and I was like “How did they do that?” It was so crazy, and it had so many different moving parts– and yet it was moving, it had something to say, it was wacky, it was offensive, it was very much an auteur vision of two people. But instead of it being this cold “I’m too cool for you” type of avant garde art, It’s more like “No, come in, come in.” And it looked so good. The acting was great. The cinematography was great. The art design. The costumes. And they did it with very little money. I’m just like, “How can you possibly have done that?” I felt privileged to see it. You know what I mean? This happened in my lifetime. That’s how strongly I felt about it. And it really kind of raised the bar for me. It was not just one thing. But all of those things.
I want to create art like that, you know? That’s weird and original, but still has so much heart, and has something to say. Art that is obviously original and strange, but in a way that draws people in, rather than pushing them out. I saw it and I was like, “The game has changed.” I just felt like, “Everything is different now.”
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