#fongtran

Content Warning: Toxic Masculinity "A step in a longer process of accountability and healing." Original Poem by Fong Tran @fongtranpoetry Director/DP/Editor by Nathan Dang @dang.it.nathan Steadicam Operator, Nicholas Conklin Music by Slow Meadow Licensed from www.musicbed.com Special thanks to Vincent Lentine https://youtu.be/iN_0RK3ShYs

Let's “beard and handlebar mustache” face it you’re a hipster But by literal definition hipsters never called themselves hipsters you’re too urban outfitters cool for dat but come on now Everything about you hipster you dress hipster you go to hipster ass places You act like you’ve been thiftshopping and going to flee markets well before immigrants and poor people did wearing yo lumberjack flannel and skinny jeans with the holes right above the knee caps All hipsters know how to accessorize So you rock out with your yarn threaded friendship bracelet that you got volunteering in Ghana Matched with your fake gold plated arrowhead necklace from Forever 21 You must all your hipster superpowers from dem energy crystals you do to culture what you typically do with jewelry Try too much of it on Wear once or occasional dispose when out of fashionable trend You make it seem like culture Is a dream that you can catch So you get a forearm tattoo of it You must understand this horrid but fundamental truth your ancestors colonized mine so inescapably, you are accountable stop appropriating the riches of third world peoples allow the silk in our swag The majesty in our weave and braid The complexity in our patterned step Remain sacred to us You have the privilege to Dress up culturally for sense of fashion but never for a sense of identity Know we bear these threaded beads for survival Cause everything around us tell us to slaughter ourselves mare down and gouge out our ancestral roots Tells us that we are inadequate And please I don’t care how many times you traveled to Vietnam don’t ever tell me how to eat my pho The stab wounds of telling myself That I’m not Vietnamese enough Already burns deep without you squeezing your Trader joe's sriracha sauce on top of it You take time to afterschool tutor me Give me lessons on my own history Gentrify my language And tell me how my accent tones are not sharp enough You seem so sure of it Hip hop probably called something like that “Macklemore it” Our culture is not yours to possess Not for you to dictate authentic Authenticity lives in between the loud banter Of aunts from Hue and my mother from Saigon Arguing the proper herbs in canh chua and banh tranh There is no one way to do it But authenticity is knowing that it is ours to claim Whenever I go to a white own ethnic restaurant I always feel like I got the wrong order Me: “Hi, sorry but I asked for the spicy Pad See Ew” The waiter says,“Sir, there’s already spice in your pad see ew And I’m like “hmmm...What kind of spice? like Pumpkin Spice” US appropriation has properly conditioned Ethnic people To always ask is it hot or like white people hot as much as I want to pour that mircrobrewy beer down your head And slap you with organically grown kale I have to admit I’m just like you I mean, look at my thick frame glasses I’m basically asking someone to hand me a mason jar So if there’s anyone to give you advice its me your very very very distant cousin related to you by pure oak coffee tables and boats shoes As much as I’m annoyed by white hipsters I know the movement will need white allies But I need you to be better you are special by nature And not by whatever contrived counterculture design that you think you’re undermining stop acting like a unicorn I get it, you don’t wanna be mainstream But it's far more necessary to critical Then just to avoid conformity It is not coincidence that In these dark times of denying water and life and ugly orange hair presidents We are in the era of hipsters Young people that want be something different We are the reaction to what this world needs But there is a careful line that we tread A line that separates of what's hip to what's just basic to whats subculture To what's just appropriating it To what's just a selfie to what could be a political statement That line for me is to simply ask myself Is it just about me Or is it really about everyone else do you want to just be different Or do you want to make a difference -- White Hipsters by Fong Tran

Critical Empowerment through Spoken Word Poetry by Fong Tran #SAspeaks at NASPA Western Regional Conference in Oakland, CA

Shout out to my designer/ booking manager and overall life coordinator, Linda Nguyen for making this awesome Promotional kit. Check it out and share! We're booking shows/workshops/keynotes for the rest of May and June, please email us at [email protected] Click for the promo kit: https://drive.google.com/…/0B6szMeGJ0ZzVZFJrTFVJeGJNOTQ/view

Hosted a collective poem activity at a open mic and this is what happened: Then I snap chatted her smile & tears tourises used to be into sunglasses nowsdays they prefer using drones to kill the loesls . and the poor dog came in scared to death and pissed on my chair leg I feel into silence - my eyes watering of the beauty that filled this world "we are privilegeed to access" his love this love was free as teh winds breeze. His love demanded to be felt. But I was not there, not there in not there So I could only take my pen and let it drop with explicit gifts as the pen stops to write I die and then all these imotions filling up my cold body as I vanish in the darkness only to stay hidden in the vat of space in my mind I grab a nice 6 pack of Bud To settle my heart for tomorrows to - come Light must dance above & beyond darkness I pregnant with jazz jiggling echoes of blues You say "Yass...." I say "excellent," he says "solid!" You say "whazzup!" I say "howz it goin'?" He says "doin' all right?" Worms & Bones. The cross and The Chanice. The Stink of Death. The phoenix rises toward the Chinese mountain top

This poet just got his masters degree in community development from UC Davis! I am the first in my family to master degree so this accomplish so this achievement is far beyond my own individual effort but it is the byproduct of sacrifice and lots of community. This for my ancestors, for my Community, for my family, and for my Youth!

Dedicated to Jimmy le June 2, 1994 to October 20, 2010