{"id":71529,"date":"2019-10-21T11:37:45","date_gmt":"2019-10-21T16:37:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/kjhk.org\/web\/?p=71529"},"modified":"2019-10-21T11:38:38","modified_gmt":"2019-10-21T16:38:38","slug":"kit-yan-uses-slam-poetry-to-navigate-intersectionality-the-lied-center","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kjhk.org\/web\/2019\/10\/21\/kit-yan-uses-slam-poetry-to-navigate-intersectionality-the-lied-center\/","title":{"rendered":"Kit Yan Uses Slam Poetry to Navigate Intersectionality @ The Lied Center"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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(Courtesy of the Artist<\/em>)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

In\nan hour-long show that captivated the audience from the very first moment, Kit\nYan, a slam poet from New York shared a part of their story spanning a decade\u2019s\nworth of emotions and experience. Titled as Queer Heartache<\/em>, Yan\u2019s poetry\ncollection was adapted into a one-person show, bringing forth important topics,\nlike gender identity and fluidity, masculinity and being trans, navigating the\nmedical community, and the language barrier between parent and child. Despite these\noften grave topics, Yan did not hesitate to crack jokes, even at their own\nexpense, easing the tension before bringing it back with greater intensity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The show felt like a whirl-wind of emotions for me. While I did not relate to every story that Yan performed, I couldn\u2019t help but feel as though as I was meant to be there. Even though Yan\u2019s stories were so personal, so ingrained with their specific life story, I felt as if it were all universal — that every queer and\/or trans individual, every Asian American could in some manner, relate to a part of Yan\u2019s story. I felt feelings that I had personally been pretending didn\u2019t exist. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I teared up at Yan\u2019s sadness for the language barrier between them and their mother, a story that closely echoed my own. Kit Yan just bared their soul to an audience of people they didn\u2019t know, to me, one of those unknown people. And in that process, I recognized things within them in myself. Later that night, I fell asleep knowing that I wasn\u2019t as alone in the world as I had thought.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is people like Yan who make a change in the world. While politicians may decide on the laws that dictate our actions, it is people like Yan, who share their story bravely, publicly, who make a change. By being an icon and public speaker, Yan brings awareness of the queer, trans, and Asian American community where every they go. They bring to the forefront these identities and their intersectionalities. But just as importantly, Yan\u2019s work helps other queer, trans and Asian American individuals feel validated for their identities. When one doesn\u2019t have a supportive community, or a community that accepts them for all their identities, the feelings of isolation can be overwhelming. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

For me especially, just knowing that there is someone out there who has gone through some of the same things that I have, has felt the same things as I do, makes the world seem a little bit less scary.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In an hour-long show that captivated the audience from the very first moment, Kit Yan, a slam poet from New York shared a part of their story spanning a decade\u2019s worth of emotions and experience. Titled as Queer Heartache, Yan\u2019s poetry collection was adapted into a one-person show, bringing forth important topics, like gender identity and fluidity, masculinity and being trans, navigating the medical community, and the language barrier between parent and child. Despite these often grave topics, Yan did […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":21910,"featured_media":71580,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,3226,15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-71529","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-culture","category-culture-articles","category-featured-on-kjhk"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/kjhk.org\/web\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/10\/Kit-Yan-2.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kjhk.org\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71529","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kjhk.org\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kjhk.org\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kjhk.org\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/21910"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kjhk.org\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=71529"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/kjhk.org\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71529\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kjhk.org\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/71580"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kjhk.org\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=71529"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kjhk.org\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=71529"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kjhk.org\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=71529"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}