March 29, 2022 • 49 mins
Check out this episode from the HER archives from the Before Times, where I talk with musician, filmmaker, and emerging theologian SueAnn Shiah. SueAnn shares the journey of making her documentary HuanDao about her return to her parent’s home country Taiwan for a biking pilgrimage. Listen in as we discuss the power of indigenous music and how returning to a familial home can help us to find what has been lost. To check out and support SueAnn’s work and her documentary visit https://www.sueannshiah.com/.
To get transcripts, links, and details from each episode, check out the show notes. To continue your support of the podcast and my work, become a member of my Patreon community where you can get access to archived episodes, bonus episodes, and behind the scenes content. Follow me on Instagram and Twitter, for podcast clips, poetry quotes and random quips. For information on how to book me to speak or perform at an event, visit amenabrown.com. Thanks for listening and thanks for your support!
Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:30):
Hey everybody, welcome back. We took a bit of a hiatus,
but thank you for your patients. We are back this week.
Check out this episode from the Her archives from the
Before Times, where I talked with musician, filmmaker and emerging
theologian sue An shaw So and shares the journey of
making her documentary wand Out about her return to her
(00:51):
parents home country Taiwan for a biking pilgrimage. Listen in
as we discussed the power of indigenous music and how
returning to a familial home can help us to find
what's been lost. Check it out. Hey, everybody, Welcome back
to Her with Amina Brown and I am in my feelings.
(01:12):
I think that if you have been listening to this podcast,
you know that I have a habit of that. But
in particular I have reasons to be deeply in my
feelings today because our guest is Taiwanese American musician, filmmaker
emerging theologian specializing in identity formation, racial justice, gender and sexuality.
(01:33):
Her first feature link documentary Kwandao, which I just watched,
Okay and feelings. I've okay feelings. Also her debut solo
album of Reclaimed Him a Liturgy for the Perseverance of
the Saints, just released June of Welcome Suanne Shah to
the podcast. Thank you so much for having me a mina.
(01:55):
Oh my gosh, Suanne, I just y'all for real, Like
we have schedule the time we're supposed to do this,
and I was late because I'm watching this documentary. I
was watching it like, then what happened? Where did they
bike to next? Oh? My gosh, Like I just feel
the feeling. So we are going to talk about the documentary,
but I have to talk about how you and I met, Suan.
(02:16):
We actually met at a woman's retreat and I don't
remember if we were just sitting next to each other
or what made us start chit chatting. Oh, I went
up and talked to you. Oh all right, because you performed,
and then I was like I had to talk to her. Also,
I think I posted about you and our mutual friend
Emily Joy was like, Amina's so awesome, She's amazing, and
(02:39):
I was like I should go talk to her. Yes, yes, okay, okay,
So you're you're giving me like the backstory right there,
because my remembrance of it is you, Like, is you
walking up and somehow we started talking about like what
you do when you were talking about your work and
music production and sound, and I remember that conversation very
thoroughly myself. I was just like, I mean, I love
(03:01):
that kind of stuff anyway, but I love like hearing
a woman talk about it and hearing a woman that
works in that field and industry, because I know only
a few women who do. And so I was just
immediately like, this woman is brilliant, Like I'm yes, yes,
I'm here for everything. Did you know the statistic is
actually ninety five percent of audio engineers and producers are men. Wow. No, yeah,
(03:26):
it's pretty bad. Oh my gosh. That's why I like
every time I hear a woman talking about it. Like
I have a sister who we didn't grow up in
the same house, but um, she grew up in California
and she is also uh into uh song production and
composition and audio production as well, and so just like
whenever I meet another woman doing that, I'm just like, yes, girl, yes,
(03:50):
we need you, Like really, but now I know about
the statistics, I'm like, no, really, Like yeah, there's the
Women's Audio Mission, which is an organization out of San Francisco.
They do a lot of stuff to promote women and
audio and stuff. So they they've got the statistics, they've
got the receipts. Oh my gosh. So I basically have
(04:11):
been very excited about knowing you since then to and
every now and then we run into each other out
in of it. But I started following you after that
day and have just been like, oh my gosh, she's
brilliant all the time. Oh my gosh. So I need
to talk about this documentary just because I have a
lot of feelings about it. So we need to discuss it.
So I let's have a little live therapy. Let's see. Yeah,
(04:34):
let's just get in there, because I was just like,
I just feel like I'm brimming over with emotion, and like,
I'm curious to know if you were feeling those emotions
in the moments of like experiencing what was filmed and
then feeling those emotions like after having to go through
the editing process and seeing how the documentary formed itself.
But for people who are just showing up to the
(04:56):
scene here that are like, what's this documentary? I need
to watch? Link be in the show notes, Please tell
the people describe to the people this documentary, the Journey.
Just give me a little background information. Yeah, so the
documentary follows my two week bike trip around the like
I guess it's called like a circumnavigation, but the perimeter
(05:20):
of the island of Taiwan. And so, um, it's about
over around five hundred miles of biking. We took like
a train at certain points that we're a little bit
more dangerous, but um, you know, we talked to locals,
we eat food, we see the sites, and um, you know,
it's a travel film, but there's also interwoven in all
(05:41):
of these deeper themes about bicultural identity and belonging in home,
um like liminal experiences, especially as like an Asian American.
So that's ah, that's kind of my little synopsis. Okay.
I like to ask every guest in origin story question.
And one of the things that I have loved about
just following you and also that I see in this
(06:04):
in this documentary is your ability to tell a story.
And I think I think it takes being a good
storyteller to not only make a great film, but also
to make great music. You know, even if whether the
music has I would argue to be a theologian same, same,
Like it's the same, like you need the skill right there,
(06:27):
like the skill the want to to tell a good story,
to tell the important stories. So did you grow up
being a person that was interested in storytelling? Did you
grow up in a family or in your community where
you were hearing storytelling all the time. Do you feel
like when you were younger that there was this interest
(06:48):
in you about wanting to tell or share a good story.
I think so. Some of my earliest memories are of
my dad putting me to bed at night and just
like telling me stories, like like not reading from a book.
So my dad was born in Burma, these Chinese. His
parents escaped China when the Communists took over after World
(07:10):
War two, and so he I used to always get
him to tell me. We call them jade stories because
there's a lot of jade in Burma. For people who
don't know, it's almost like uh, strike at rich gold,
Like you know, you just like in a field digging
and then you find like a giant jade and you
know you strike it rich. It's it's kind of your
like little rags to riches stories. So I used to
(07:33):
always and my dad tell me jade stories from Burma
or China, I guess, and then we just were voracious readers,
like books everywhere constantly. As soon as I could start
reading chapter books on my own, my face was always
buried in a book. And they were like a couple
of years where I literally carried like at least a
book or two around with me everywhere, and I would
(07:55):
like read while I brushed my teeth. I would read
at the dinner table, to the shagrin of my parents,
and um, I've just always loved the story. And I think, like, so,
I didn't grow up in a Christian home, and sometimes
I reflect back on the time, my like growing up
time before I became a Christian at thirteen, and I
think that my love of stories really just laid the
(08:19):
spiritual groundwork for me to become a Christian in a
lot of ways, because you know, there was always a
sense that there was a writer. You know, there's someone
who's telling the story, and there's good and there's evil,
and there's like destiny, right, and there's kind of like
this arc. There's just a sense that you're living in
a story yourself, and and I wanted to be one
(08:40):
of the good guys, right, So of course that naturally
gravitated towards God. And even though my parents aren't Christians,
my mom raised us or the really strong sense of
moral like right and wrong. And so I think that
that combined with this being inclined being someone drawn to art,
whether that's music or film or literature, poetry, and those
(09:02):
are the things that I've always just captured my attention
and my development as an artist as a young artist
happened at the same time that I was becoming a Christian.
So I think I see those things as intertwined and
separable in a lot of ways. And when I got
to college, I made friends with um this writer, poet, musician.
(09:23):
Her name is Katie Bowser. She's part of our local
like music Hymns Bilmont are u F World, And she
introduced the phrase to me meta narrative, and I started
to use that to talk about the Bible, the meta
narrative of the Bible. I think so in terms of
the film itself, like it was really hard to tell
a cohesive story arc because you have all these days,
(09:47):
like all these individual days set up, and you have
to tell these mini stories while then also telling a
larger story for the whole film, and the balance between
that was really difficult because there were so many interesting
old story arcs that happened throughout the days, but I
had to kind of edit to figure out what was
going to make it so it was ultimately cohesive as
(10:08):
a whole film and not just kind of like fourteen
episodes of different days. Right. So that is like the
interaction of the concept of the meta narrative, which is
what the Bible is too, is a bunch of smaller
stories that then tell a bigger story, and like how
do you sift through that and how do you find
the themes that link all of these little things together.
(10:30):
So I'm just still like in my feelings about it
because I think I'm really glad you introduced me now
to the phrase meta narrative, because I think watching your documentary,
I just felt like I was welling up with all
these feelings. And I think I really identified with this
(10:51):
theme of home and how we define home, and home
is with our people, is in our ethnicity, it's in
our homeland even when we were not born in sort
of what what would have been the home land of
our people, um, and all of that journey of return,
(11:13):
you know, and these there's one scene that I was like,
if I don't stop watching this, I'm going to be
ugly crying. And that's not great for a podcast recording,
because I don't know that anyone enjoys listening to someone
ugly cry. But there was a scene where you were
on the bike ry with your friend Rachel, Right, I
didn't make that up name. Okay, So you and Rachel
(11:36):
are riding by and there's a family like out in
front of their home and they invite you to eat
with them. Yeah. Man, And you stop and eat with them,
and they're sharing with you what it's like for them
being Aboriginal people in Taiwan. You're telling them your journey
in America, You're telling them the background of your parents,
(11:59):
and just the interplay of that conversation and them welcoming
you home, them saying to you, you're always home here,
You're home here any time with us, and I just
could have cried my eyes out. I mean, what, I'm
watching it, you know, on a screen here having a
(12:20):
very emotional experience. What was that like for you? Just deciding, Hey,
we're gonna make this stop right here, which you know,
to me is not like a super American thing to do.
Because you'd be like, we don't know these people, you know,
like we don't know what they're doing whatever. But I
noticed more when I'm traveling outside of America that I
(12:41):
am more inclined to do things like that just to
be like, oh, they've invited us here, Let's pull these
bikes over just so over here and eat a meal
and hang out for a while. Like what was that
experience like living it? And then what was it like
when you went back to kind of what you're referring
to the editing process there that you knew that was
a moment that needed to make the film that day,
(13:05):
and that like that scene is literally one of my
favorites in the entire documentary, and it was one of
those things that like you can hope will happen, but
you can't plan will happen. And like the I spend
probably three maybe four hours hanging out with them, so
like you're seeing like a ten minute edited down of
like there were so many conversations we had and so
(13:27):
many other things we talked about, and they were all
such a gift, and I really had to like pare
it down for the film because you know, literally just
like I could probably just edit those conversations with them
and put that out as an entire like interview series.
But it was interesting. It was such a tense day because,
like every day on the road, you just didn't know
(13:48):
what was going to happen. There's so much uncertainty and tension.
So it's interesting because I had wanted to bike to
that the time along village because I wanted to make
sure that the narratives of original Taiwanese people were included
in our documentary because a lot of Taiwanese Chinese people,
people of like Han like Chinese descent, they don't usually
(14:10):
talk about that when they talk about what it means
to be Taiwanese, And I think, um, it's similar to
the way that like when white Americans talk about what
it means to be American, they don't really talk about
indigenous native people. So I just I didn't want to
like perpetuate this false narrative that like we as Chinese
people have a claim to this land when there were
(14:31):
indigenous people there before. So my director of photography, she
and I were like making the schedule, and she was
kind of like, what are you gonna do? You're just
gonna show up, like and talk to random people. Like
she just felt very skeptical of like the way I
wanted to structure our shooting in our time. Um, and
she grew up in New York born and raised, so
(14:53):
even more so I think she has like a released
cynical view of the world and of people. And I
was like, yeah, because that's what you do, Like you
just talk to random strangers and you make friends, Like
don't you do that? And you know, she kind of
looked at me like I was crazy, But um, I
think like even living and I've lived in Nashville for
(15:14):
like the last eight years, and it really is just
like that in Nashville too. You just like start conversations
with the randomest people and get to know each other.
And and I'm kind of glad that that's where I
grew up as an like and as an adult becoming
into my own because it I think it gave me
an outlook on like how people do you want to
share their stories if you give them the chance. But yeah,
(15:37):
I just like mostly when I think back to that time,
I just think of like how fun it was. We
just sat around and talked and like I was starving. Um,
we had biked, you know, probably like thirty five miles
that day, But like I didn't feel the hunger because
I was just so excited that like we were getting
to have this moment, this very like organic and raw
(15:59):
and honest moment with one another, and that we the
conversation was flowing so easily. I think in my life
there's times when I don't know if you have this
where you feel like you are almost outside of your
body and you're looking at the scene that you're living in.
It's almost like the meta narrative concept of like you're
so aware of the story that you're living in, like
(16:19):
I like to call the television show of your life. Um.
But as I've gotten older, you know, like I had
that really increased awareness, especially when I was younger, when
I first started writing and whether it's poetry or music
or stories. But as I've gotten older, I've realized how
important it is to be present and to put yourself
back into the body and to actually experience it um
(16:41):
instead of always kind of like having the third person
camera view of your life. So when I think of
that moment, I just or those like hours I spent,
like they didn't feel like hours, right, We just talked
and then the time went away, and of course, like
my director of photography and my parents were both like,
where are you, Like you just you're not a ring
your phone, Like I just I totally shut like my
(17:02):
phone off when we were recording that conversation, and Rachel
like like because I wasn't answering any of the text.
Rachel was like, you're, like, your mom just called. She
wants to know where you are because you're not answering
your phone. So I think, like I just felt so present,
like they're just like so in my body, so alive, so,
(17:24):
you know, just with the people, and I don't know,
I haven't really found the words to explain what that's like.
But when you kind of forget everything else in the
world kind of melts away and you're just in a
moment completely, that's how it felt. It's like so fully alive,
so fully present, so fully human. It really comes across
to Anne, like it really, it really comes across. You
can feel, you can feel the soul of this film
(17:48):
watching it, and that is just a huge kudos to
you and your team because you know you can you
can watch many things about people traveling, you know this
that the third place you know but to be able
to capture on film not only traveling to a place,
but the different nuances of what that means. I mean,
(18:11):
it's just it's so beautiful. And I was watching for
a while and then realized, like there's one scene where
you and Rachel and your dad are sitting like eating
food together in Taiwan, and then I realized, oh, her
parents are with her. It's like this is like, I mean, wow,
you know, like just you know, it was just you
(18:31):
and Rachel biking. That's still a great story the train,
but your parents even being present there while you and
Rachel are doing the biking. What when you were coming
up with, you know, the idea that you knew like, Okay,
I'm taking this trip. Did you go to your parents
(18:52):
and say to them this is what I'm doing and
they were wanting to go? Or how did it come
about that they also decided to tag along on my
great adventure. So totally my plan was never to have
them there. Um, I was just gonna do it. Also
because like I didn't expect my parents to like train
on like on a bike for four months and then go,
you know, do all of that. But they were so
(19:14):
intrigued by the idea, and they were kind of like
that sounds really fun, Like we kind of want to
come like do stuff. So, you know, they didn't do
the biking. They took the train and they would meet
us at you know, certain locations where were we when
I ended up sleeping that night. Usually. Um, they also
didn't come for the whole thing. They did go back
to Taipei for a lot of stretches of it. Especially
you can see like, oh, you haven't seen because you
(19:34):
haven't gotten to the end, especially for the latter end
of the of the documentary. They're not there. So it
really was just like I gave him a schedule and
they're like, well, we want to do this stuff and
this stuff, so like and we can take the train,
so we'll just meet you there. We'll do this with
you here there. They were really supportive. Um of the film.
I think I tell people sometimes, um, my life in Nashville,
(19:56):
my my music industry life, my Belmont world, my Nashville existence.
It doesn't really make sense to my immigrant parents. They
don't really understand what I do, the industry, the art,
the world that I live in. But this is the
first time I created a piece of art that made
sense to them right that that they could understand, and
(20:17):
they were extremely supportive throughout the whole process, especially UM
and helping reach out to their own network of Taiwanese
community to get the money raised on Kickstarter. And that's
something for me too, is is thinking about what is
Asian American art going to be. We're still kind of
building this canon because there isn't a lot of work
and what are the themes that we should and need
(20:38):
to address? And and some of it is a tension
between a first and second generation. I intuitively sense that
a lot of my parents generation, they so deeply want
to be understood by their children, but because of this
immigration process, because of raising us in America and wanting
to give us different economic and social opportunities, they haven't
really thought about the cost of what they lost in
(21:00):
the immigration process, of of a generational gap between us
and them. So much of the healing process for myself
and and doing my racial awareness identity stuff has been
UM trying to heal some of those those chasms with
my parents. It's very difficult. It's like I'm not going
to pretend that like it's like I haven't a flawless
(21:23):
relationship with my parents, I certainly don't. But when I
talked to my other Asian American friends about the things
I talked to my parents about there, like what like
you can talk to your parents about politics and about
you know, philosophy, and about identity and sociology. And they're
also like, wait, you have all those conversations in Chinese,
(21:43):
like because most of us don't have great um language skills,
right because English is our primary language. But yeah, I
think there's a lot of healing to be done generationally
and and so be the change you want to see
in the world. So um, I just knew that for
me and men, invest sing in language skills and investing
in understanding our heritage and culture because like, as long
(22:05):
as my parents have lived in America, their their hearts
are Chinese and they're never going to be able to
understand American culture the way that I do. But I
do have kind of the tools to learn Chinese and
Taiwanese culture. It's about putting in the work to learn
how to use those tools. I love hearing, you know,
(22:38):
just thinking about the almost like the conversation between generations there,
but that those of us who are in the in
the generation of children that it also requires something of us,
requires a commitment of us to want to be able
to speak back to our parents, to be in conversation
with a generation that's very different from ours UM and
(23:00):
has some different narratives to UM, and had different nuances
and layers of that experience. I think I also felt
a very visceral response to watching just the beginnings of
this story unfold UM. I didn't want to be like
super late for our podcast interview, y'all. That's why I
was like, Oh, Amina, come on now. I would have
(23:21):
been like four hours later. I'm like ugly cries through
the entire episode, but just the parts with your parents
and you know, your dad talking through some of that
history with you. There's a scene where you are sitting
on a couch with your mom and you're hearing her
talk to you about just what her upbringing was like
(23:43):
and some of what it was like for her to
be back there now. And I think I had a
really visceral response to that because I've been like digging
around into my family tree in the last couple of years,
and on my mom's side, up to four generations of
my family all have lived in North Carolina, including our
ancestors who were enslaved and so and really within a
(24:05):
very small mile radius from my grandmother's hometown, and I
had the opportunity to return to that town with my
grandmother and like go back to some of the buildings
that she remembered, and there's just some very visceral response
I had to being in this place that, even though
I didn't grow up there, it is home, it is roots,
(24:26):
you know, for me. And there was this one moment
that I think was why I was like a welt
an ugly cry like watching this film. Because my great
grandfather on my dad's side, he was a bishop in
their church denomination, but he also had a business where
he made pulpits, he made church furniture, him and his sons.
(24:48):
And I was going around trying to find this church
where he pastored, and the church had gone to a
different church community, so it was no longer the church
that you know, my great grandfather either had pastored, but
the building itself was still there, and we go in.
Of course, this is the summer shortly after the Charleston
(25:09):
nine were murdered, So even walking into that church building
and trying to explain to them why we wanted to
go into the sanctuary, and you know, my husband being
a white man, and all of us feeling their moment
of caution, in that moment of you know, is this
going to be okay? Do we let you in? And
I told them the names of my grandparents, all these things.
(25:30):
They led us into the sanctuary Suan and the original
furniture was still there, this like hand carved, hand etched
furniture that this man that you know, I met when
I was a very young child, but don't have a
lot of memories of him, that this is furniture he
made with his hands, so in this way to be
(25:52):
present in his space, you know, as an adult. And
I think there was something so reflective of that for
me in this journey where you are there in this
place that your parents know UM or that some things
that they knew, but also they are removed from it
in these certain ways, from having gone to America. I mean,
there were just so many nuances to the story that
(26:13):
had tensions and beauty and so much combined together. One
of the reasons why I wanted to interview was because
this season on the podcast UM is Lost and Found,
and I chose that because it's reflective of my life
right now, and you know, just like the feelings of
like they're being some things that I have lost, and
(26:37):
even in the losses, I have found maybe some parts
of myself or some parts of my identity that the
losing and the finding go together in these interesting ways.
And I liked that in your in your story, in
the art that you make, there is always this theme
of identity and home and where we find that and
(27:01):
how we discover that. How do the words identity and home,
those themes, how do they play out in the art
that you make? Is that a true statement for you?
Would you say that those themes tend to come up
in the arts that you make? Yeah, Yeah, I definitely
I think they do. Um, I think they come up
(27:22):
again and again. And maybe this is because of my
own background and experience, but um, I see them consistently
and constantly in my faith, Like when I look at
the Bible, when I think about what it means to
me to be a Christian with the Good News, is
what is the Gospel? Like? I think it resonated with
me because I always had a sense that I didn't
(27:44):
know where I belonged and I didn't know where my
home was um, you know, as an Asian American, It's like,
even though I was born here in the United States,
my passport says, you know, American citizen socially and even
like in certain ways system radically, like I'm constantly being
told that I don't belong here. And that was something
I internalized as a kid. And and you go back
(28:07):
to where your parents immigrated from, and then they tell
you know, you're not You're not Taiwanese, You're American. Then
you come to America and they say you're Taiwanese, You're
not American. And so you just kind of feel like, well,
is there a place where I could belong? Is there
a place that I could call home? And when I
became a Christian, and I learned that like that there
was a place that I could call fully home, that
(28:28):
that there was this I had citizenship in the Kingdom
of God, that no matter what happens on earth, no
matter how corrupt a government, no matter what countries and
governments get like destroyed or created. Um. You know, my
this part didn't make it into the film, but um
my Dad. I did a long interview with my father
(28:48):
um about his experience growing up in Burma. It just
didn't really fit into like the ark. But something he
told me that I didn't know was that growing up,
because his parents had fled China in settled in Burma,
they were countryless people because there was a turnover of government.
So there was the Republic of China UM, which is
like the current government of Taiwan that was in power.
(29:12):
UM that was like the democratic you know, like elected
community that came up after the fall of the Chinese Empire.
But a little bit after World War two ended the
Guming Dong, the nationalists and the communists fought in the
communist one. So that's the government that is in power
in China now. Their government is called the People's Republic
(29:33):
of China. And so like citizenship to the Republic of
China is a totally different passport than citizenship to the
People's you know, like they're just they're different. And so
my my grandparents when they fled China, they basically forfeited
whatever you know, existence they had in China and they
went to Burma. But then Burma wasn't going to give
them citizenship. So my dad said, they had papers that
(29:55):
just said no country, no land, literally like where you
belong and in the seventies, I believe Taiwan offered citizenship
to any displaced Chinese nationals because there were Chinese people
all over the world that didn't have citizenship that they
were displaced because of like the cycles of war and
the overturning of governments. So anyone of Chinese heritage, ethnic
(30:18):
heritage could come and they could get a citizenship in Taiwan.
And that's how my my dad's side ended up in Taiwan. Um.
And so yeah, I think about what it feels like,
like my dad literally not having papers to any like
papers that say you don't belong anywhere, and and growing
up here in the States. But yeah, like no matter
(30:38):
what government's topple or are erected, and like I have
citizenship in christ and that's my home and I can
take that with me wherever I go, and nothing on earth,
no power on earth, can threaten that. Like I guess
that's my way of also saying, like my album, the
music that I made, those are the themes of home
that are there is. I've been thinking a lot about um,
(31:00):
which is the feast of booths. They're sometimes just called
the feast of tabernacles. Um which is celebrated the the
Hebrew children are called to celebrate in the Old Testament.
It's a celebration time of remembrance of their wandering in
the desert. And so what they do is they erect
these tents or booths and then they like sleep and
eating them during the time of this feast, and everything
(31:23):
in the cuckle is just to be holy or blessed
or you know, there's prayers you say over I think everything,
and it's like wait, like this is just this is
like holy camping, right, you know, like, well, that's what
the children of Israel did for forty years and and
you can see that as exile, but you can also
see as a time when God was teaching them things
and providing for them, and that those are things to
(31:44):
be remembered and celebrated. So I feel like I've lived
my life in a lot of ways in a tent wandering.
But the glorious thing about that is knowing that it's temporary,
that the promised land is real, that God is leading
us too and preparing our hearts for and that God
is providing for us during this time. Like when else
(32:06):
do you get to see like a cloud the cloud
by day and the fire by night, like literally having
a visual like confirmation of presence of the Kingdom of God.
I think of all this wilderness time a lot of
us who are without churches now or faith communities because
of issues of racism and homophobia, or or misogyny and
sexism and all that stuff. And the thing that I've
(32:27):
learned in the wilderness is that God is real. They're
they're trade offs, but all of it is good, and
all of it is preparing us to go home to
a final home. So I told you not to make
me cross man, and I feel like throughout this conversation
you are testing me. You are testing me on my
tears right now. I think a lot of my black
(32:49):
friends feel the same way, because it's like Africa, you
can't really like you can't go back to, but like
the places of trauma that your family has been for
generation are on indigenous people's lands, and it's like where
do you like you got to find a way to
find home and to make home even as you travel
(33:11):
and a tent and you're wandering and you know that
there's nothing on earth that will ever be able to
give you the satisfaction that you long for and That's
why I think that my heart is always turned to
anchord in and like the home that God is making
for me, because that's something nobody and no one can
ever take away from me. Yeah, I love that. To me,
(33:32):
that sounds like you. You live in in your present life,
but you are also rooted in eternity. You are rooted
also in a life that is beyond the life we
see right now. And there is such grounded nous in
that you worded that so beautifully. So I now know
that you are returning to Taiwan for your master's at
(33:54):
National Taiwan University. That's right, I mean, I feel I
was about to say so, that's but I feel like
when you say you're going to sip the tea, it's
like tell me some forbidden thing you weren't going to
tell anyone. So I don't know if it's it's out
in public everywhere, so it's not like made some announcements.
I want you to tell me more about this, and like,
what is it feeling like right now to think about
(34:17):
returning to Taiwan and now in this case, you'll be
returning there for a longer period of time? Like how
did that come about? And how are you processing this
new part of your journey. Well, the funny thing is
that it does go back to the same weekend that
we met each other, because I was in l A
for the c c d A Conference and the Women
(34:38):
of Color Retreat, and it was such an important life
changing week for me that time in l A. My
church helped me to pay for my plane ticket. You know,
my girl's a Kia got me a free past to
the conference, and you know, I one of my friends
offered me to place to stay. It was just kind
of one of those amazing everything odd provided and it
(35:00):
fell together moments I got to go to l A.
And I was so excited that there were so many
Asians because my life is pretty Asian lists and essentially
in Nashville, and to be surrounded by so many other
justice loving Asian Christians was a gift. And I literally
didn't go to any other workshops. I just was like,
(35:21):
I'm just gonna go only to the Asian ones. And
in talking to people who were asking some of the
questions that I was and think, you know, thinking about
justice and theology and the Asian American experience, and it
was amazing at a lot of people from Fuller during
that time too, and UM heard about the Asian American
Center there and I was like, that sounds like something
(35:41):
I want to do, and and thinking about where my
gifts and my calling was. You know, I'd been in
Nashville for six years, and I thought that I was
going to live there for the rest of my life
and build a recording studio and be a produce just
be a producer and do whatever other fun stuff I
wanted to do. But I in that weekend realized is
that I had a calling to go and write Asian
(36:02):
American theology. And as I thought through what that was
going to look like, what the preparation I needed to
do in order to do that job, well, you know,
like I want to go to seminary, and but I
had also always had this longing to go back to Taiwan.
So after I finished my documentary, you know, I answered
so many questions, I learned so many things, but it
(36:23):
kind of ended up giving me more questions than it answered,
and I realized that there was a limitation to what
I could learn and study on my own without literally
moving to Taiwan and doing more formal intentional study. So
I always wanted to go back. I always wanted to
prove my Chinese. I always wanted to deepen my understanding.
But once I realized I want to go to seminary,
(36:45):
I wanted to write and publish Asian American Theology. All
these little pieces that I have been floating around for
years like clicked into place, and I was like, I'm
going to go back to tai I wanted to do
grad school in Asian Studies, and then I'm going to
come back and I'm gonna go to seminary, and then
I'm going to write in Bush Theology. And like that's
kind of the bigger picture of like how I ended
up deciding I wanted to go back. I looked at
(37:08):
a couple of different programs, all kind of you know,
Taiwan History program, Asian Study, Asian Pacific, you know, Global Studies,
whatever they're you know a lot of programs like that.
You know, people often ask me like, oh, why go
all the way back to Taiwan to do this. I'm like, well,
I want to learn Asian studies from a non Western perspective,
and I want to learn Asian studies from Asian people.
(37:30):
I want to learn history and philosophy with just like
from the traditions to which they've been passed down, not
like translated, not you know, interpreted through a Western lens
and regurgitated. And I want to just learn from my
own people and in a big part of my like
decolonization process with my faith or with my life and
(37:50):
my worldview, I wanted to be specifically in that context
and not only like learned, you know, Chinese philosophy in
a career and seminary. I wanted to just learn Chinese
philosophy from people who study that and then do the
work of course on my own of of seeing how
that integrates and doesn't integrate with my faith as a Christian.
(38:11):
So I like I wanted to do all of those things,
and and going back to school in Taiwan made sense musicology.
It's the reason I decided to do this musicology program.
UM National Taiwan University is the is the number one
university in Taiwan, and I wanted to go there. It's
where I studied before when I studied abroad in college.
That's where my dad did his undergrad UM. But they
(38:33):
don't have an Asian studies program, and so I was
looking for other programs kind of in the cultural studies,
you know, history, literature, philosophy, language, that it would give
me the freedom to kind of do an interdisciplinary approach.
And their musicology program looked amazing. And you know, music
is my primary medium, even though I do a lot
(38:54):
of work in a lot of different mediums, and a
lot of my philosophical theological work, my critical media like analysis,
stuff like, is rooted in my understanding influency in music
and music history. So um, the musicology program just made
a lot of sense that I actually just registered for
(39:14):
my classes like two nights ago, and I was looking
through the course list and I felt very good about
my decision because I was like, this is so dope,
Like look at this music and Gender class, because this
like mind, body, Spirituality and Music course, and like look
look at like pre like recordings in East Asia, Like
this is just so Like I was like, these are
the classes I get to take, Like this is my
(39:35):
primary curriculum, and you know, these are professors who have
been addressing what is colonialism? How has it affected culture
and art and music in particular specifically. So one other
thing that I think I just want to note is
that in Asia we have a lot of history of colonialism,
whether it was the Chinese colonizing Taiwan, or the Japanese
colonizing the Chinese who are colonizing Taiwan, or Japanese colonizing Korea,
(39:59):
or like all of these different instances, And I'm fascinated
to examine what that process and indoctrination looks like when
race isn't the issue, when it's intra race right into
racial Like we have just a really American view of
colonization of race, of all these kind of claims to land,
claims to culture, cultural like genocide, whether you know what
(40:23):
does that look like. So I was really excited to
be able to examine. I feel like in order to
do Asian American theology or Asian American studies at all,
like you both have to understand the context of what
it needs to be Asian and America, but also the
histories of trauma that our communities bring with us from
our home countries. And it's often a barrier within Asian
(40:45):
American organizing is that, like everybody's family was all killed
by the Japanese during World War Two, so like everyone
kind of hates the Japanese, but in America, because we're
all racialized in a similar way, we end up making
friends with the same kind of people that, like our
parents all kind of like hate, right, Like, so those
(41:05):
are often barriers to organizing, and it's like, how do
we even reconcile those that stuff when there's no context
for understanding it in America because they all think we
look the same. This is so powerful, Suan, just to
hear you articulating the layers of this, and it's super
exciting to think about what you're going to get to study.
(41:28):
I'm just like, oh my gosh, just thinking like when
you were naming the classes just now, I'm like, like,
I don't even know music that well, you know. I
mean I love it as a fan, you know, but
like the technical parts of it and the theory and
those things, I don't know those parts. But just thinking
about getting to dive into that deeply and getting to
(41:50):
dive into it in your homeland, and wow, music education
in the States is so eurocentric, you know. And I
feel like if you take any sort of like, you know,
world music class, it's like you're expected to learn everything
about the rest of the world's music, but like everything
is always eu eccentric and and so just reading through
(42:11):
the syllabus, like the syllabi that I was scanning through,
I was just like there's so many real like so
many texts and so many concepts, Like we're going to,
of course address some Western ideas, but largely it seems
like they're very rooted and like this is one of
the core competencies of this department is wanting a uniquely
asianum approach to musicology, right, and not just trying to
(42:35):
like one up whatever. The Western world's a way of
doing things like uniquely Asian way. And and I told
them in my interviews, like that's why I want to
go here, because that's what I want and that's what
I can't get in the States. Wow, For listeners who
may be sitting at the intersection of a lot of
(42:56):
different identities, you know, whether that is cultural or gender
or just all these different layers, we have, what's the
advice or the words of care that you would say
to someone who's sitting at sort of this intersection of
all these identities, trying to make sense of that, trying
(43:17):
to embrace parts of it, uh, like you said, also
trying to desenter some parts of it. What would be
the words you would say, for the person that maybe
feeling lost right now in trying to grapple through all
of however that looks for them in their life. So
my freshman year at Belmont, we also we have this
(43:38):
program called the First Year. Some in our programs, everyone
takes you know, this class and you read this book
and then they bring in a speaker who talks to everyone.
So the great gift I had was the speaker was
ma Kota Fujimura, and I was actually already familiar with
his work in like kind of Christian art world, so
it was like I was totally king out. And you know,
(44:01):
his entire presentation was on the concept of liminality and
talking about his own experiences of the Japanese American artist
and and how the ostracization, the marginalization you experience as
a liminal person, but also your ability to synthesize, your
ability to see from multiple perspectives. And so you know,
I think that for everybody who, for instance, doesn't know
(44:24):
where to call home, you know something about how to
make home wherever you are. And for somebody who feels
different and marginalized wherever they go, you have the ability
to find what you have in common with other people,
even when you don't have everything in common. I think
that all of our greatest strengths are also our greatest weaknesses.
(44:44):
And as I was going through my racial identity, you
process my alright, we call it a racial awakening, right,
or my like queer awakening, I was realizing, like all
the God uses the weak things of the world to
shame the strong, and the foolish thing is to shame
the wise, And so all the things the world tells
me about myself or that marginalizes me for our are
(45:07):
also like things that our gifts. I just have to
learn how to use them, right, But nobody's going to
teach me how to do that because the world isn't
designed to teach me how to thrive like that. I'm
going to have to like invest in myself and look
for art and look for writers and like women of
color and queer women of color and Christian queer theology,
(45:29):
like all of this stuff. I'm going to have to
I'm gonna have to make a lot of it myself.
But I'm also gonna have to go find it because
no one is going to find it for me. So
I think that like that's when that's how you change
your your identity from being a victim right to being
someone who is like a survivor right. And I'm using
(45:49):
that phrasing because I actually had the privilege of getting
to hear Taranna Burke speak in Detroit in June. She
was speaking at the Allied Media Conference and I was
presenting a workshop And so for the who don't know,
Trana Burke is the founder of the me too hashtag
and movement, and she talked about that concept people are like,
you know, survivor versus victim and and she said, like
(46:10):
she doesn't really like the idea that people use survivors
like a thing you arrive at. Rather it's your surviving
and you're learning to do that. And but I do
think there's a lot of redemption to be had, there's
a lot of reclamation to be had, and like mourn,
I definitely think we need a moren and lament but
also know that like what you can get out of
(46:32):
your life in the world is not only what the
world is promising you, which is not very much. And
I think that all of us, whether you are like
a straight white cis hetero sexual like man, or you're
like a queer trans woman of color like they're so
like we all have aultiple intersecting identities and they all
(46:52):
interact with each other in unique ways. It's just that
when you're intersecting identities are marginalized. It's when you realize
that they exist, like we we don't operate out of
the assumption that you know, people have quote, intersectional identities
are the marginalized. You know, the people in power have
them too, And the only thing is like they aren't
forced to confront them because their experiences are centered and normalized.
(47:17):
So that's the other thing too, is like you're not
like weird or different, you just live in a world
that is structured to make you feel that way. Everybody
has a lot of stuff they have to deal with.
Everybody's life is complex. It's just that like privileges written
in invisible ink, and it's until you turn up the
heat like that you can start to see it on
(47:38):
the paper. Goes to write poem about these quotes that
Sue Anne is saying, have you ever done that with
the lemon juice? Like invisible ink the lemon juice thing? No,
I don't know, I need the education. I'm just being
a super nerd. Like so you can write messages with
(47:59):
lemon juice and then once you like you can like
take a blow dryer, you can use an iron and
then once so you can send it to somebody and
it looks like a blank page, but then they put
heat on it and then the words will appear on
it because the juice will oxidize or something, you'll turn brown.
So that was like what I was trying to say
about privileges written in invisible ink is like you'll get
(48:19):
this piece of paper. It looks blank, but once you
turn up the heat on it, then you'll start to
see all the stuff that's written there. Suan speak a word,
speak a word today. I've spoken so many words. It
is a word like I'm like, like tries to write
(48:40):
poem about lemon juice an invisible ink? Okay? Yes? Or what?
Amina Brown is produced by Matt Owen for Silver Fiti
Productions as a part of the Seneca Women Podcast Network
(49:02):
in partnership with I Heart Radio. Thanks for listening and
don't forget to subscribe, rate, and review the podcast.
Hey everybody, welcome back. We took a bit of a hiatus,
but thank you for your patients. We are back this week.
Check out this episode from the Her archives from the
Before Times, where I talked with musician, filmmaker and emerging
theologian sue An shaw So and shares the journey of
making her documentary wand Out about her return to her
(00:51):
parents home country Taiwan for a biking pilgrimage. Listen in
as we discussed the power of indigenous music and how
returning to a familial home can help us to find
what's been lost. Check it out. Hey, everybody, Welcome back
to Her with Amina Brown and I am in my feelings.
(01:12):
I think that if you have been listening to this podcast,
you know that I have a habit of that. But
in particular I have reasons to be deeply in my
feelings today because our guest is Taiwanese American musician, filmmaker
emerging theologian specializing in identity formation, racial justice, gender and sexuality.
(01:33):
Her first feature link documentary Kwandao, which I just watched,
Okay and feelings. I've okay feelings. Also her debut solo
album of Reclaimed Him a Liturgy for the Perseverance of
the Saints, just released June of Welcome Suanne Shah to
the podcast. Thank you so much for having me a mina.
(01:55):
Oh my gosh, Suanne, I just y'all for real, Like
we have schedule the time we're supposed to do this,
and I was late because I'm watching this documentary. I
was watching it like, then what happened? Where did they
bike to next? Oh? My gosh, Like I just feel
the feeling. So we are going to talk about the documentary,
but I have to talk about how you and I met, Suan.
(02:16):
We actually met at a woman's retreat and I don't
remember if we were just sitting next to each other
or what made us start chit chatting. Oh, I went
up and talked to you. Oh all right, because you performed,
and then I was like I had to talk to her. Also,
I think I posted about you and our mutual friend
Emily Joy was like, Amina's so awesome, She's amazing, and
(02:39):
I was like I should go talk to her. Yes, yes, okay, okay,
So you're you're giving me like the backstory right there,
because my remembrance of it is you, Like, is you
walking up and somehow we started talking about like what
you do when you were talking about your work and
music production and sound, and I remember that conversation very
thoroughly myself. I was just like, I mean, I love
(03:01):
that kind of stuff anyway, but I love like hearing
a woman talk about it and hearing a woman that
works in that field and industry, because I know only
a few women who do. And so I was just
immediately like, this woman is brilliant, Like I'm yes, yes,
I'm here for everything. Did you know the statistic is
actually ninety five percent of audio engineers and producers are men. Wow. No, yeah,
(03:26):
it's pretty bad. Oh my gosh. That's why I like
every time I hear a woman talking about it. Like
I have a sister who we didn't grow up in
the same house, but um, she grew up in California
and she is also uh into uh song production and
composition and audio production as well, and so just like
whenever I meet another woman doing that, I'm just like, yes, girl, yes,
(03:50):
we need you, Like really, but now I know about
the statistics, I'm like, no, really, Like yeah, there's the
Women's Audio Mission, which is an organization out of San Francisco.
They do a lot of stuff to promote women and
audio and stuff. So they they've got the statistics, they've
got the receipts. Oh my gosh. So I basically have
(04:11):
been very excited about knowing you since then to and
every now and then we run into each other out
in of it. But I started following you after that
day and have just been like, oh my gosh, she's
brilliant all the time. Oh my gosh. So I need
to talk about this documentary just because I have a
lot of feelings about it. So we need to discuss it.
So I let's have a little live therapy. Let's see. Yeah,
(04:34):
let's just get in there, because I was just like,
I just feel like I'm brimming over with emotion, and like,
I'm curious to know if you were feeling those emotions
in the moments of like experiencing what was filmed and
then feeling those emotions like after having to go through
the editing process and seeing how the documentary formed itself.
But for people who are just showing up to the
(04:56):
scene here that are like, what's this documentary? I need
to watch? Link be in the show notes, Please tell
the people describe to the people this documentary, the Journey.
Just give me a little background information. Yeah, so the
documentary follows my two week bike trip around the like
I guess it's called like a circumnavigation, but the perimeter
(05:20):
of the island of Taiwan. And so, um, it's about
over around five hundred miles of biking. We took like
a train at certain points that we're a little bit
more dangerous, but um, you know, we talked to locals,
we eat food, we see the sites, and um, you know,
it's a travel film, but there's also interwoven in all
(05:41):
of these deeper themes about bicultural identity and belonging in home,
um like liminal experiences, especially as like an Asian American.
So that's ah, that's kind of my little synopsis. Okay.
I like to ask every guest in origin story question.
And one of the things that I have loved about
just following you and also that I see in this
(06:04):
in this documentary is your ability to tell a story.
And I think I think it takes being a good
storyteller to not only make a great film, but also
to make great music. You know, even if whether the
music has I would argue to be a theologian same, same,
Like it's the same, like you need the skill right there,
(06:27):
like the skill the want to to tell a good story,
to tell the important stories. So did you grow up
being a person that was interested in storytelling? Did you
grow up in a family or in your community where
you were hearing storytelling all the time. Do you feel
like when you were younger that there was this interest
(06:48):
in you about wanting to tell or share a good story.
I think so. Some of my earliest memories are of
my dad putting me to bed at night and just
like telling me stories, like like not reading from a book.
So my dad was born in Burma, these Chinese. His
parents escaped China when the Communists took over after World
(07:10):
War two, and so he I used to always get
him to tell me. We call them jade stories because
there's a lot of jade in Burma. For people who
don't know, it's almost like uh, strike at rich gold,
Like you know, you just like in a field digging
and then you find like a giant jade and you
know you strike it rich. It's it's kind of your
like little rags to riches stories. So I used to
(07:33):
always and my dad tell me jade stories from Burma
or China, I guess, and then we just were voracious readers,
like books everywhere constantly. As soon as I could start
reading chapter books on my own, my face was always
buried in a book. And they were like a couple
of years where I literally carried like at least a
book or two around with me everywhere, and I would
(07:55):
like read while I brushed my teeth. I would read
at the dinner table, to the shagrin of my parents,
and um, I've just always loved the story. And I think, like, so,
I didn't grow up in a Christian home, and sometimes
I reflect back on the time, my like growing up
time before I became a Christian at thirteen, and I
think that my love of stories really just laid the
(08:19):
spiritual groundwork for me to become a Christian in a
lot of ways, because you know, there was always a
sense that there was a writer. You know, there's someone
who's telling the story, and there's good and there's evil,
and there's like destiny, right, and there's kind of like
this arc. There's just a sense that you're living in
a story yourself, and and I wanted to be one
(08:40):
of the good guys, right, So of course that naturally
gravitated towards God. And even though my parents aren't Christians,
my mom raised us or the really strong sense of
moral like right and wrong. And so I think that
that combined with this being inclined being someone drawn to art,
whether that's music or film or literature, poetry, and those
(09:02):
are the things that I've always just captured my attention
and my development as an artist as a young artist
happened at the same time that I was becoming a Christian.
So I think I see those things as intertwined and
separable in a lot of ways. And when I got
to college, I made friends with um this writer, poet, musician.
(09:23):
Her name is Katie Bowser. She's part of our local
like music Hymns Bilmont are u F World, And she
introduced the phrase to me meta narrative, and I started
to use that to talk about the Bible, the meta
narrative of the Bible. I think so in terms of
the film itself, like it was really hard to tell
a cohesive story arc because you have all these days,
(09:47):
like all these individual days set up, and you have
to tell these mini stories while then also telling a
larger story for the whole film, and the balance between
that was really difficult because there were so many interesting
old story arcs that happened throughout the days, but I
had to kind of edit to figure out what was
going to make it so it was ultimately cohesive as
(10:08):
a whole film and not just kind of like fourteen
episodes of different days. Right. So that is like the
interaction of the concept of the meta narrative, which is
what the Bible is too, is a bunch of smaller
stories that then tell a bigger story, and like how
do you sift through that and how do you find
the themes that link all of these little things together.
(10:30):
So I'm just still like in my feelings about it
because I think I'm really glad you introduced me now
to the phrase meta narrative, because I think watching your documentary,
I just felt like I was welling up with all
these feelings. And I think I really identified with this
(10:51):
theme of home and how we define home, and home
is with our people, is in our ethnicity, it's in
our homeland even when we were not born in sort
of what what would have been the home land of
our people, um, and all of that journey of return,
(11:13):
you know, and these there's one scene that I was like,
if I don't stop watching this, I'm going to be
ugly crying. And that's not great for a podcast recording,
because I don't know that anyone enjoys listening to someone
ugly cry. But there was a scene where you were
on the bike ry with your friend Rachel, Right, I
didn't make that up name. Okay, So you and Rachel
(11:36):
are riding by and there's a family like out in
front of their home and they invite you to eat
with them. Yeah. Man, And you stop and eat with them,
and they're sharing with you what it's like for them
being Aboriginal people in Taiwan. You're telling them your journey
in America, You're telling them the background of your parents,
(11:59):
and just the interplay of that conversation and them welcoming
you home, them saying to you, you're always home here,
You're home here any time with us, and I just
could have cried my eyes out. I mean, what, I'm
watching it, you know, on a screen here having a
(12:20):
very emotional experience. What was that like for you? Just deciding, Hey,
we're gonna make this stop right here, which you know,
to me is not like a super American thing to do.
Because you'd be like, we don't know these people, you know,
like we don't know what they're doing whatever. But I
noticed more when I'm traveling outside of America that I
(12:41):
am more inclined to do things like that just to
be like, oh, they've invited us here, Let's pull these
bikes over just so over here and eat a meal
and hang out for a while. Like what was that
experience like living it? And then what was it like
when you went back to kind of what you're referring
to the editing process there that you knew that was
a moment that needed to make the film that day,
(13:05):
and that like that scene is literally one of my
favorites in the entire documentary, and it was one of
those things that like you can hope will happen, but
you can't plan will happen. And like the I spend
probably three maybe four hours hanging out with them, so
like you're seeing like a ten minute edited down of
like there were so many conversations we had and so
(13:27):
many other things we talked about, and they were all
such a gift, and I really had to like pare
it down for the film because you know, literally just
like I could probably just edit those conversations with them
and put that out as an entire like interview series.
But it was interesting. It was such a tense day because,
like every day on the road, you just didn't know
(13:48):
what was going to happen. There's so much uncertainty and tension.
So it's interesting because I had wanted to bike to
that the time along village because I wanted to make
sure that the narratives of original Taiwanese people were included
in our documentary because a lot of Taiwanese Chinese people,
people of like Han like Chinese descent, they don't usually
(14:10):
talk about that when they talk about what it means
to be Taiwanese, And I think, um, it's similar to
the way that like when white Americans talk about what
it means to be American, they don't really talk about
indigenous native people. So I just I didn't want to
like perpetuate this false narrative that like we as Chinese
people have a claim to this land when there were
(14:31):
indigenous people there before. So my director of photography, she
and I were like making the schedule, and she was
kind of like, what are you gonna do? You're just
gonna show up, like and talk to random people. Like
she just felt very skeptical of like the way I
wanted to structure our shooting in our time. Um, and
she grew up in New York born and raised, so
(14:53):
even more so I think she has like a released
cynical view of the world and of people. And I
was like, yeah, because that's what you do, Like you
just talk to random strangers and you make friends, Like
don't you do that? And you know, she kind of
looked at me like I was crazy, But um, I
think like even living and I've lived in Nashville for
(15:14):
like the last eight years, and it really is just
like that in Nashville too. You just like start conversations
with the randomest people and get to know each other.
And and I'm kind of glad that that's where I
grew up as an like and as an adult becoming
into my own because it I think it gave me
an outlook on like how people do you want to
share their stories if you give them the chance. But yeah,
(15:37):
I just like mostly when I think back to that time,
I just think of like how fun it was. We
just sat around and talked and like I was starving. Um,
we had biked, you know, probably like thirty five miles
that day, But like I didn't feel the hunger because
I was just so excited that like we were getting
to have this moment, this very like organic and raw
(15:59):
and honest moment with one another, and that we the
conversation was flowing so easily. I think in my life
there's times when I don't know if you have this
where you feel like you are almost outside of your
body and you're looking at the scene that you're living in.
It's almost like the meta narrative concept of like you're
so aware of the story that you're living in, like
(16:19):
I like to call the television show of your life. Um.
But as I've gotten older, you know, like I had
that really increased awareness, especially when I was younger, when
I first started writing and whether it's poetry or music
or stories. But as I've gotten older, I've realized how
important it is to be present and to put yourself
back into the body and to actually experience it um
(16:41):
instead of always kind of like having the third person
camera view of your life. So when I think of
that moment, I just or those like hours I spent,
like they didn't feel like hours, right, We just talked
and then the time went away, and of course, like
my director of photography and my parents were both like,
where are you, Like you just you're not a ring
your phone, Like I just I totally shut like my
(17:02):
phone off when we were recording that conversation, and Rachel
like like because I wasn't answering any of the text.
Rachel was like, you're, like, your mom just called. She
wants to know where you are because you're not answering
your phone. So I think, like I just felt so present,
like they're just like so in my body, so alive, so,
(17:24):
you know, just with the people, and I don't know,
I haven't really found the words to explain what that's like.
But when you kind of forget everything else in the
world kind of melts away and you're just in a
moment completely, that's how it felt. It's like so fully alive,
so fully present, so fully human. It really comes across
to Anne, like it really, it really comes across. You
can feel, you can feel the soul of this film
(17:48):
watching it, and that is just a huge kudos to
you and your team because you know you can you
can watch many things about people traveling, you know this
that the third place you know but to be able
to capture on film not only traveling to a place,
but the different nuances of what that means. I mean,
(18:11):
it's just it's so beautiful. And I was watching for
a while and then realized, like there's one scene where
you and Rachel and your dad are sitting like eating
food together in Taiwan, and then I realized, oh, her
parents are with her. It's like this is like, I mean, wow,
you know, like just you know, it was just you
(18:31):
and Rachel biking. That's still a great story the train,
but your parents even being present there while you and
Rachel are doing the biking. What when you were coming
up with, you know, the idea that you knew like, Okay,
I'm taking this trip. Did you go to your parents
(18:52):
and say to them this is what I'm doing and
they were wanting to go? Or how did it come
about that they also decided to tag along on my
great adventure. So totally my plan was never to have
them there. Um, I was just gonna do it. Also
because like I didn't expect my parents to like train
on like on a bike for four months and then go,
you know, do all of that. But they were so
(19:14):
intrigued by the idea, and they were kind of like
that sounds really fun, Like we kind of want to
come like do stuff. So, you know, they didn't do
the biking. They took the train and they would meet
us at you know, certain locations where were we when
I ended up sleeping that night. Usually. Um, they also
didn't come for the whole thing. They did go back
to Taipei for a lot of stretches of it. Especially
you can see like, oh, you haven't seen because you
(19:34):
haven't gotten to the end, especially for the latter end
of the of the documentary. They're not there. So it
really was just like I gave him a schedule and
they're like, well, we want to do this stuff and
this stuff, so like and we can take the train,
so we'll just meet you there. We'll do this with
you here there. They were really supportive. Um of the film.
I think I tell people sometimes, um, my life in Nashville,
(19:56):
my my music industry life, my Belmont world, my Nashville existence.
It doesn't really make sense to my immigrant parents. They
don't really understand what I do, the industry, the art,
the world that I live in. But this is the
first time I created a piece of art that made
sense to them right that that they could understand, and
(20:17):
they were extremely supportive throughout the whole process, especially UM
and helping reach out to their own network of Taiwanese
community to get the money raised on Kickstarter. And that's
something for me too, is is thinking about what is
Asian American art going to be. We're still kind of
building this canon because there isn't a lot of work
and what are the themes that we should and need
(20:38):
to address? And and some of it is a tension
between a first and second generation. I intuitively sense that
a lot of my parents generation, they so deeply want
to be understood by their children, but because of this
immigration process, because of raising us in America and wanting
to give us different economic and social opportunities, they haven't
really thought about the cost of what they lost in
(21:00):
the immigration process, of of a generational gap between us
and them. So much of the healing process for myself
and and doing my racial awareness identity stuff has been
UM trying to heal some of those those chasms with
my parents. It's very difficult. It's like I'm not going
to pretend that like it's like I haven't a flawless
(21:23):
relationship with my parents, I certainly don't. But when I
talked to my other Asian American friends about the things
I talked to my parents about there, like what like
you can talk to your parents about politics and about
you know, philosophy, and about identity and sociology. And they're
also like, wait, you have all those conversations in Chinese,
(21:43):
like because most of us don't have great um language skills,
right because English is our primary language. But yeah, I
think there's a lot of healing to be done generationally
and and so be the change you want to see
in the world. So um, I just knew that for
me and men, invest sing in language skills and investing
in understanding our heritage and culture because like, as long
(22:05):
as my parents have lived in America, their their hearts
are Chinese and they're never going to be able to
understand American culture the way that I do. But I
do have kind of the tools to learn Chinese and
Taiwanese culture. It's about putting in the work to learn
how to use those tools. I love hearing, you know,
(22:38):
just thinking about the almost like the conversation between generations there,
but that those of us who are in the in
the generation of children that it also requires something of us,
requires a commitment of us to want to be able
to speak back to our parents, to be in conversation
with a generation that's very different from ours UM and
(23:00):
has some different narratives to UM, and had different nuances
and layers of that experience. I think I also felt
a very visceral response to watching just the beginnings of
this story unfold UM. I didn't want to be like
super late for our podcast interview, y'all. That's why I
was like, Oh, Amina, come on now. I would have
(23:21):
been like four hours later. I'm like ugly cries through
the entire episode, but just the parts with your parents
and you know, your dad talking through some of that
history with you. There's a scene where you are sitting
on a couch with your mom and you're hearing her
talk to you about just what her upbringing was like
(23:43):
and some of what it was like for her to
be back there now. And I think I had a
really visceral response to that because I've been like digging
around into my family tree in the last couple of years,
and on my mom's side, up to four generations of
my family all have lived in North Carolina, including our
ancestors who were enslaved and so and really within a
(24:05):
very small mile radius from my grandmother's hometown, and I
had the opportunity to return to that town with my
grandmother and like go back to some of the buildings
that she remembered, and there's just some very visceral response
I had to being in this place that, even though
I didn't grow up there, it is home, it is roots,
(24:26):
you know, for me. And there was this one moment
that I think was why I was like a welt
an ugly cry like watching this film. Because my great
grandfather on my dad's side, he was a bishop in
their church denomination, but he also had a business where
he made pulpits, he made church furniture, him and his sons.
(24:48):
And I was going around trying to find this church
where he pastored, and the church had gone to a
different church community, so it was no longer the church
that you know, my great grandfather either had pastored, but
the building itself was still there, and we go in.
Of course, this is the summer shortly after the Charleston
(25:09):
nine were murdered, So even walking into that church building
and trying to explain to them why we wanted to
go into the sanctuary, and you know, my husband being
a white man, and all of us feeling their moment
of caution, in that moment of you know, is this
going to be okay? Do we let you in? And
I told them the names of my grandparents, all these things.
(25:30):
They led us into the sanctuary Suan and the original
furniture was still there, this like hand carved, hand etched
furniture that this man that you know, I met when
I was a very young child, but don't have a
lot of memories of him, that this is furniture he
made with his hands, so in this way to be
(25:52):
present in his space, you know, as an adult. And
I think there was something so reflective of that for
me in this journey where you are there in this
place that your parents know UM or that some things
that they knew, but also they are removed from it
in these certain ways, from having gone to America. I mean,
there were just so many nuances to the story that
(26:13):
had tensions and beauty and so much combined together. One
of the reasons why I wanted to interview was because
this season on the podcast UM is Lost and Found,
and I chose that because it's reflective of my life
right now, and you know, just like the feelings of
like they're being some things that I have lost, and
(26:37):
even in the losses, I have found maybe some parts
of myself or some parts of my identity that the
losing and the finding go together in these interesting ways.
And I liked that in your in your story, in
the art that you make, there is always this theme
of identity and home and where we find that and
(27:01):
how we discover that. How do the words identity and home,
those themes, how do they play out in the art
that you make? Is that a true statement for you?
Would you say that those themes tend to come up
in the arts that you make? Yeah, Yeah, I definitely
I think they do. Um, I think they come up
(27:22):
again and again. And maybe this is because of my
own background and experience, but um, I see them consistently
and constantly in my faith, Like when I look at
the Bible, when I think about what it means to
me to be a Christian with the Good News, is
what is the Gospel? Like? I think it resonated with
me because I always had a sense that I didn't
(27:44):
know where I belonged and I didn't know where my
home was um, you know, as an Asian American, It's like,
even though I was born here in the United States,
my passport says, you know, American citizen socially and even
like in certain ways system radically, like I'm constantly being
told that I don't belong here. And that was something
I internalized as a kid. And and you go back
(28:07):
to where your parents immigrated from, and then they tell
you know, you're not You're not Taiwanese, You're American. Then
you come to America and they say you're Taiwanese, You're
not American. And so you just kind of feel like, well,
is there a place where I could belong? Is there
a place that I could call home? And when I
became a Christian, and I learned that like that there
was a place that I could call fully home, that
(28:28):
that there was this I had citizenship in the Kingdom
of God, that no matter what happens on earth, no
matter how corrupt a government, no matter what countries and
governments get like destroyed or created. Um. You know, my
this part didn't make it into the film, but um
my Dad. I did a long interview with my father
(28:48):
um about his experience growing up in Burma. It just
didn't really fit into like the ark. But something he
told me that I didn't know was that growing up,
because his parents had fled China in settled in Burma,
they were countryless people because there was a turnover of government.
So there was the Republic of China UM, which is
like the current government of Taiwan that was in power.
(29:12):
UM that was like the democratic you know, like elected
community that came up after the fall of the Chinese Empire.
But a little bit after World War two ended the
Guming Dong, the nationalists and the communists fought in the
communist one. So that's the government that is in power
in China now. Their government is called the People's Republic
(29:33):
of China. And so like citizenship to the Republic of
China is a totally different passport than citizenship to the
People's you know, like they're just they're different. And so
my my grandparents when they fled China, they basically forfeited
whatever you know, existence they had in China and they
went to Burma. But then Burma wasn't going to give
them citizenship. So my dad said, they had papers that
(29:55):
just said no country, no land, literally like where you
belong and in the seventies, I believe Taiwan offered citizenship
to any displaced Chinese nationals because there were Chinese people
all over the world that didn't have citizenship that they
were displaced because of like the cycles of war and
the overturning of governments. So anyone of Chinese heritage, ethnic
(30:18):
heritage could come and they could get a citizenship in Taiwan.
And that's how my my dad's side ended up in Taiwan. Um.
And so yeah, I think about what it feels like,
like my dad literally not having papers to any like
papers that say you don't belong anywhere, and and growing
up here in the States. But yeah, like no matter
(30:38):
what government's topple or are erected, and like I have
citizenship in christ and that's my home and I can
take that with me wherever I go, and nothing on earth,
no power on earth, can threaten that. Like I guess
that's my way of also saying, like my album, the
music that I made, those are the themes of home
that are there is. I've been thinking a lot about um,
(31:00):
which is the feast of booths. They're sometimes just called
the feast of tabernacles. Um which is celebrated the the
Hebrew children are called to celebrate in the Old Testament.
It's a celebration time of remembrance of their wandering in
the desert. And so what they do is they erect
these tents or booths and then they like sleep and
eating them during the time of this feast, and everything
(31:23):
in the cuckle is just to be holy or blessed
or you know, there's prayers you say over I think everything,
and it's like wait, like this is just this is
like holy camping, right, you know, like, well, that's what
the children of Israel did for forty years and and
you can see that as exile, but you can also
see as a time when God was teaching them things
and providing for them, and that those are things to
(31:44):
be remembered and celebrated. So I feel like I've lived
my life in a lot of ways in a tent wandering.
But the glorious thing about that is knowing that it's temporary,
that the promised land is real, that God is leading
us too and preparing our hearts for and that God
is providing for us during this time. Like when else
(32:06):
do you get to see like a cloud the cloud
by day and the fire by night, like literally having
a visual like confirmation of presence of the Kingdom of God.
I think of all this wilderness time a lot of
us who are without churches now or faith communities because
of issues of racism and homophobia, or or misogyny and
sexism and all that stuff. And the thing that I've
(32:27):
learned in the wilderness is that God is real. They're
they're trade offs, but all of it is good, and
all of it is preparing us to go home to
a final home. So I told you not to make
me cross man, and I feel like throughout this conversation
you are testing me. You are testing me on my
tears right now. I think a lot of my black
(32:49):
friends feel the same way, because it's like Africa, you
can't really like you can't go back to, but like
the places of trauma that your family has been for
generation are on indigenous people's lands, and it's like where
do you like you got to find a way to
find home and to make home even as you travel
(33:11):
and a tent and you're wandering and you know that
there's nothing on earth that will ever be able to
give you the satisfaction that you long for and That's
why I think that my heart is always turned to
anchord in and like the home that God is making
for me, because that's something nobody and no one can
ever take away from me. Yeah, I love that. To me,
(33:32):
that sounds like you. You live in in your present life,
but you are also rooted in eternity. You are rooted
also in a life that is beyond the life we
see right now. And there is such grounded nous in
that you worded that so beautifully. So I now know
that you are returning to Taiwan for your master's at
(33:54):
National Taiwan University. That's right, I mean, I feel I
was about to say so, that's but I feel like
when you say you're going to sip the tea, it's
like tell me some forbidden thing you weren't going to
tell anyone. So I don't know if it's it's out
in public everywhere, so it's not like made some announcements.
I want you to tell me more about this, and like,
what is it feeling like right now to think about
(34:17):
returning to Taiwan and now in this case, you'll be
returning there for a longer period of time? Like how
did that come about? And how are you processing this
new part of your journey. Well, the funny thing is
that it does go back to the same weekend that
we met each other, because I was in l A
for the c c d A Conference and the Women
(34:38):
of Color Retreat, and it was such an important life
changing week for me that time in l A. My
church helped me to pay for my plane ticket. You know,
my girl's a Kia got me a free past to
the conference, and you know, I one of my friends
offered me to place to stay. It was just kind
of one of those amazing everything odd provided and it
(35:00):
fell together moments I got to go to l A.
And I was so excited that there were so many
Asians because my life is pretty Asian lists and essentially
in Nashville, and to be surrounded by so many other
justice loving Asian Christians was a gift. And I literally
didn't go to any other workshops. I just was like,
(35:21):
I'm just gonna go only to the Asian ones. And
in talking to people who were asking some of the
questions that I was and think, you know, thinking about
justice and theology and the Asian American experience, and it
was amazing at a lot of people from Fuller during
that time too, and UM heard about the Asian American
Center there and I was like, that sounds like something
(35:41):
I want to do, and and thinking about where my
gifts and my calling was. You know, I'd been in
Nashville for six years, and I thought that I was
going to live there for the rest of my life
and build a recording studio and be a produce just
be a producer and do whatever other fun stuff I
wanted to do. But I in that weekend realized is
that I had a calling to go and write Asian
(36:02):
American theology. And as I thought through what that was
going to look like, what the preparation I needed to
do in order to do that job, well, you know,
like I want to go to seminary, and but I
had also always had this longing to go back to Taiwan.
So after I finished my documentary, you know, I answered
so many questions, I learned so many things, but it
(36:23):
kind of ended up giving me more questions than it answered,
and I realized that there was a limitation to what
I could learn and study on my own without literally
moving to Taiwan and doing more formal intentional study. So
I always wanted to go back. I always wanted to
prove my Chinese. I always wanted to deepen my understanding.
But once I realized I want to go to seminary,
(36:45):
I wanted to write and publish Asian American Theology. All
these little pieces that I have been floating around for
years like clicked into place, and I was like, I'm
going to go back to tai I wanted to do
grad school in Asian Studies, and then I'm going to
come back and I'm gonna go to seminary, and then
I'm going to write in Bush Theology. And like that's
kind of the bigger picture of like how I ended
up deciding I wanted to go back. I looked at
(37:08):
a couple of different programs, all kind of you know,
Taiwan History program, Asian Study, Asian Pacific, you know, Global Studies,
whatever they're you know a lot of programs like that.
You know, people often ask me like, oh, why go
all the way back to Taiwan to do this. I'm like, well,
I want to learn Asian studies from a non Western perspective,
and I want to learn Asian studies from Asian people.
(37:30):
I want to learn history and philosophy with just like
from the traditions to which they've been passed down, not
like translated, not you know, interpreted through a Western lens
and regurgitated. And I want to just learn from my
own people and in a big part of my like
decolonization process with my faith or with my life and
(37:50):
my worldview, I wanted to be specifically in that context
and not only like learned, you know, Chinese philosophy in
a career and seminary. I wanted to just learn Chinese
philosophy from people who study that and then do the
work of course on my own of of seeing how
that integrates and doesn't integrate with my faith as a Christian.
(38:11):
So I like I wanted to do all of those things,
and and going back to school in Taiwan made sense musicology.
It's the reason I decided to do this musicology program.
UM National Taiwan University is the is the number one
university in Taiwan, and I wanted to go there. It's
where I studied before when I studied abroad in college.
That's where my dad did his undergrad UM. But they
(38:33):
don't have an Asian studies program, and so I was
looking for other programs kind of in the cultural studies,
you know, history, literature, philosophy, language, that it would give
me the freedom to kind of do an interdisciplinary approach.
And their musicology program looked amazing. And you know, music
is my primary medium, even though I do a lot
(38:54):
of work in a lot of different mediums, and a
lot of my philosophical theological work, my critical media like analysis,
stuff like, is rooted in my understanding influency in music
and music history. So um, the musicology program just made
a lot of sense that I actually just registered for
(39:14):
my classes like two nights ago, and I was looking
through the course list and I felt very good about
my decision because I was like, this is so dope,
Like look at this music and Gender class, because this
like mind, body, Spirituality and Music course, and like look
look at like pre like recordings in East Asia, Like
this is just so Like I was like, these are
the classes I get to take, Like this is my
(39:35):
primary curriculum, and you know, these are professors who have
been addressing what is colonialism? How has it affected culture
and art and music in particular specifically. So one other
thing that I think I just want to note is
that in Asia we have a lot of history of colonialism,
whether it was the Chinese colonizing Taiwan, or the Japanese
colonizing the Chinese who are colonizing Taiwan, or Japanese colonizing Korea,
(39:59):
or like all of these different instances, And I'm fascinated
to examine what that process and indoctrination looks like when
race isn't the issue, when it's intra race right into
racial Like we have just a really American view of
colonization of race, of all these kind of claims to land,
claims to culture, cultural like genocide, whether you know what
(40:23):
does that look like. So I was really excited to
be able to examine. I feel like in order to
do Asian American theology or Asian American studies at all,
like you both have to understand the context of what
it needs to be Asian and America, but also the
histories of trauma that our communities bring with us from
our home countries. And it's often a barrier within Asian
(40:45):
American organizing is that, like everybody's family was all killed
by the Japanese during World War Two, so like everyone
kind of hates the Japanese, but in America, because we're
all racialized in a similar way, we end up making
friends with the same kind of people that, like our
parents all kind of like hate, right, Like, so those
(41:05):
are often barriers to organizing, and it's like, how do
we even reconcile those that stuff when there's no context
for understanding it in America because they all think we
look the same. This is so powerful, Suan, just to
hear you articulating the layers of this, and it's super
exciting to think about what you're going to get to study.
(41:28):
I'm just like, oh my gosh, just thinking like when
you were naming the classes just now, I'm like, like,
I don't even know music that well, you know. I
mean I love it as a fan, you know, but
like the technical parts of it and the theory and
those things, I don't know those parts. But just thinking
about getting to dive into that deeply and getting to
(41:50):
dive into it in your homeland, and wow, music education
in the States is so eurocentric, you know. And I
feel like if you take any sort of like, you know,
world music class, it's like you're expected to learn everything
about the rest of the world's music, but like everything
is always eu eccentric and and so just reading through
(42:11):
the syllabus, like the syllabi that I was scanning through,
I was just like there's so many real like so
many texts and so many concepts, Like we're going to,
of course address some Western ideas, but largely it seems
like they're very rooted and like this is one of
the core competencies of this department is wanting a uniquely
asianum approach to musicology, right, and not just trying to
(42:35):
like one up whatever. The Western world's a way of
doing things like uniquely Asian way. And and I told
them in my interviews, like that's why I want to
go here, because that's what I want and that's what
I can't get in the States. Wow, For listeners who
may be sitting at the intersection of a lot of
(42:56):
different identities, you know, whether that is cultural or gender
or just all these different layers, we have, what's the
advice or the words of care that you would say
to someone who's sitting at sort of this intersection of
all these identities, trying to make sense of that, trying
(43:17):
to embrace parts of it, uh, like you said, also
trying to desenter some parts of it. What would be
the words you would say, for the person that maybe
feeling lost right now in trying to grapple through all
of however that looks for them in their life. So
my freshman year at Belmont, we also we have this
(43:38):
program called the First Year. Some in our programs, everyone
takes you know, this class and you read this book
and then they bring in a speaker who talks to everyone.
So the great gift I had was the speaker was
ma Kota Fujimura, and I was actually already familiar with
his work in like kind of Christian art world, so
it was like I was totally king out. And you know,
(44:01):
his entire presentation was on the concept of liminality and
talking about his own experiences of the Japanese American artist
and and how the ostracization, the marginalization you experience as
a liminal person, but also your ability to synthesize, your
ability to see from multiple perspectives. And so you know,
I think that for everybody who, for instance, doesn't know
(44:24):
where to call home, you know something about how to
make home wherever you are. And for somebody who feels
different and marginalized wherever they go, you have the ability
to find what you have in common with other people,
even when you don't have everything in common. I think
that all of our greatest strengths are also our greatest weaknesses.
(44:44):
And as I was going through my racial identity, you
process my alright, we call it a racial awakening, right,
or my like queer awakening, I was realizing, like all
the God uses the weak things of the world to
shame the strong, and the foolish thing is to shame
the wise, And so all the things the world tells
me about myself or that marginalizes me for our are
(45:07):
also like things that our gifts. I just have to
learn how to use them, right, But nobody's going to
teach me how to do that because the world isn't
designed to teach me how to thrive like that. I'm
going to have to like invest in myself and look
for art and look for writers and like women of
color and queer women of color and Christian queer theology,
(45:29):
like all of this stuff. I'm going to have to
I'm gonna have to make a lot of it myself.
But I'm also gonna have to go find it because
no one is going to find it for me. So
I think that like that's when that's how you change
your your identity from being a victim right to being
someone who is like a survivor right. And I'm using
(45:49):
that phrasing because I actually had the privilege of getting
to hear Taranna Burke speak in Detroit in June. She
was speaking at the Allied Media Conference and I was
presenting a workshop And so for the who don't know,
Trana Burke is the founder of the me too hashtag
and movement, and she talked about that concept people are like,
you know, survivor versus victim and and she said, like
(46:10):
she doesn't really like the idea that people use survivors
like a thing you arrive at. Rather it's your surviving
and you're learning to do that. And but I do
think there's a lot of redemption to be had, there's
a lot of reclamation to be had, and like mourn,
I definitely think we need a moren and lament but
also know that like what you can get out of
(46:32):
your life in the world is not only what the
world is promising you, which is not very much. And
I think that all of us, whether you are like
a straight white cis hetero sexual like man, or you're
like a queer trans woman of color like they're so
like we all have aultiple intersecting identities and they all
(46:52):
interact with each other in unique ways. It's just that
when you're intersecting identities are marginalized. It's when you realize
that they exist, like we we don't operate out of
the assumption that you know, people have quote, intersectional identities
are the marginalized. You know, the people in power have
them too, And the only thing is like they aren't
forced to confront them because their experiences are centered and normalized.
(47:17):
So that's the other thing too, is like you're not
like weird or different, you just live in a world
that is structured to make you feel that way. Everybody
has a lot of stuff they have to deal with.
Everybody's life is complex. It's just that like privileges written
in invisible ink, and it's until you turn up the
heat like that you can start to see it on
(47:38):
the paper. Goes to write poem about these quotes that
Sue Anne is saying, have you ever done that with
the lemon juice? Like invisible ink the lemon juice thing? No,
I don't know, I need the education. I'm just being
a super nerd. Like so you can write messages with
(47:59):
lemon juice and then once you like you can like
take a blow dryer, you can use an iron and
then once so you can send it to somebody and
it looks like a blank page, but then they put
heat on it and then the words will appear on
it because the juice will oxidize or something, you'll turn brown.
So that was like what I was trying to say
about privileges written in invisible ink is like you'll get
(48:19):
this piece of paper. It looks blank, but once you
turn up the heat on it, then you'll start to
see all the stuff that's written there. Suan speak a word,
speak a word today. I've spoken so many words. It
is a word like I'm like, like tries to write
(48:40):
poem about lemon juice an invisible ink? Okay? Yes? Or what?
Amina Brown is produced by Matt Owen for Silver Fiti
Productions as a part of the Seneca Women Podcast Network
(49:02):
in partnership with I Heart Radio. Thanks for listening and
don't forget to subscribe, rate, and review the podcast.
Popular Podcasts
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com