Beyond Turbulence: Reflecting on the Monsoon Years
From 1992-1996 I was part of a coalition of student groups who fought for Asian American Studies and a Cultural House at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Today is the 5 year anniversary celebration of the university’s Asian American Cultural Center. I contributed the following statement to the accompanying alumni art show, to which i donated many pieces from the archives of MONSOON, our literary magazine.
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Beyond Turbulence: Reflecting on the Monsoon Years
From 1992-1996, my time at UIUC proved to be my formative years. It was a time that had everything to do with my work and passion for Monsoon and the activism with the Asian American Artists Collective. The Collective saved my life at a time when I was filled with self-doubt, tackling complicated identity issues, and struggling with my worth as a budding artist. My friends in the Collective were a rag-tag bunch of vagabonds seeking alternatives to the campus’ mainstream social life and searching for a way to voice our concerns beyond what was being offered by other Asian cultural groups. We knew we were more than just artists and art enthusiasts. We knew that being an Asian person on the UIUC campus was inextricably linked to larger issues of self-determination, survival, and resistance as people of color. We knew that we would be more powerful as a collective. At the time, we had only the intuition to go with our guts and use art as a way to effect a change and ultimately strive towards visibility. We had no idea that our little collective would be instrumental in bringing about social justice for Asian Americans at UIUC. This is the legacy that I am proud to leave behind for future generations.
In my four years, I witnessed so many changes inside and outside of our group. We grew up together and became politicized in the process but not without an incredible amount of help and support from inside and outside of the APA community. We had outstanding allies which including Reverend Charlie Sweitzer with McKinley Foundation, Professor Joe Miller and the students of the anti-chief movement, Buxville Theater Company and the handful of ally artists who submitted in solidarity to our issues. As we grew to understand the needs of the Asian American student population, we also grew to understand that our group could not bring about changes alone. Coalition building amongst the leaders of the other APA groups would serve to be an essential means of expanding our readership, artist submissions, and audience. Many thanks to Oliver Ong, Vida Gosrisirikul, Reshma Saujani, Snehal Patel, Rex Lai, Divina Battung, Jeremy Bautista, Ho Chie Tsai, the women of Shakti and many others who I may have forgotten on this list.
It was an incredible amount of work publishing each Monsoon and organizing the political and artistic events of the Collective. It often took time away from our academic schoolwork, but it was always done with passion, dedication, fun and a ton of coffee (thank you Espresso Royale, Treno’s and Merry Ann’s Diner)! I am grateful for all the lessons and skills I learned with The Collective. Thank you to all my cohorts for saving my soul and instilling in me a sense of self-confidence, voice, and the unapologetic ability to kick ass!
In gratitude,
Anida Yoeu Ali
performer/writer/global agitator
www.atomicshogun.com
www.1700percent.org
MAASU 1996 Conference @ Univ of Michigan Ann Arbor
