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We’re excited to announce the launch of “Voices from the Hill” a podcast dedicated to showcasing the incredible talent right here in our literary backyard. As a proud member of this vibrant community, Telegraph Hill Arts & Literature believes our local authors deserve a platform to share not just their published works, but the stories behind them.
If you’re a Bay Area author interested in being on the show, we’d love to hear from you. Reach out to us at submissions@telhilit.org.
Welcome to Voices From the Hill, celebrating the vibrant literary voices of the San Francisco Bay Area. I'm your host, Jennifer Barone, along with Joseph Carboni, owner of Telegraph Hill Books. Each episode, we sit down with a local author to explore their creative process, inspirations, and the unique stories that shape our community. Today, I'm excited to be joined by Genny Lim, poet and author of Island, poetry and history of Chinese immigrants on Angel Island, which was a winner of the American Book Award, Paper Gods and Rebels, Child of War, and Playwright of Paper Angels. And not only that, she's San Francisco's current poet laureate.
Jennifer Barone:Today, we'll talk to her about her journey as a writer, her tenure as poetry poet laureate so far, and what inspires her to live and write in the Bay Area. So let's dive in. Genny Lim, welcome to Voices From the Hell, and congratulations on being named San Francisco's ninth poet laureate and our first Chinese American poet laureate. I have personally known you for so many years through actually lots of different circles, through poetry. We've practiced yoga together for many years, and I've even we've even played bocce ball together.
Jennifer Barone:And you are just when I heard that you were nominated or, like, you know, inaugurated as poet laureate, I got so excited because you are, to me, personally, like, one of the strongest local voices of poetry. Every time I hear you read, Like, my first inclination when I describe you is that Genny has such a powerful voice. And you're not afraid. You're sort of, like, fearless to write about just a gamut of really powerful subjects. But you can write from anything from the wars that are happening, you know, political experiences that are happening nature.
Jennifer Barone:And I have this like beautiful book from many years ago called Kra that I cherish. So I wanna ask you to kick us off with your powerful voice and read a poem that's really meaning for you meaningful for you and also give us a little background once you're finished of why you're feeling it's powerful for you at this moment.
Genny Lim:It's always an honor to be in your presence Jennifer and I have been so remiss on my yoga because of my busy schedule so I can only muster terrible downward dog now and then but to make up for that I will recite a poem that was read at my inaugural and I wanted to share with your audiences. It's called I am American. We live, love, work, dream in this Babylon of 48 hills perched on the graves of the Ramitush Ohlone. In a shifting map of immigrant odysseys summoned like wild geese to a fog born vision of gold and grit. A city hunkered on a fault line.
Genny Lim:A city reared on rock and roll and the summer of love, beat poetry, bebop, hip hop, rap and zen. Haight Ashbury, North beat Chinatown, iHotel, The Fillmore, The Castro, the Mission, the Richmond, Soma, Sun set, Bernal, Potrero, J Town, Bayview, Viz and Noe Valleys. Men, women, children, seeding our dreams to be born anew like hungry ghosts and driverless cars converging at an all you can eat buffet. We know we can do what AI can never do because they not like us. We improvise, we cool.
Genny Lim:We're greater than the sum of what we were. We bury our ancestral bones, our shadows, baggage, we cast our fate to far flung gods. Green horn grasshoppers leaping into the blue without a hail Mary net or rope. In story after story of win or lose. Blood, sweat, death and redemption destitute souls hitching rides with tricksters and traffickers clutching paper passports stamped alien to survive war, famine, poverty.
Genny Lim:Descendants of deportees, daughters of sewing women like me, second generation of a sanctuary city that wraps around itself like a rattlesnake at the hip of the golden gate. Many mouths have lost their tongues to feed their inner beast, waiting lonely hours, days, weeks for that one break, that second chance that could be as fleeting as a green card to cross the border state. Is this what it means to be American? Where are you from brother, sister? Pensacola, Sicily, Peru, Singapore, Kathmandu, to Gucci Galpa, Tunisian, Beirut, Palestine, Benin.
Genny Lim:We are Ronins of fierce hope, avatars of the self made, phoenixes of struggle rising from the pandemic of history. Doers, warriors, wanderers, dream catchers, migrants with wounded wings toiling in great fields, monongs with calloused hands gripping hammers, anvils, saws, drills, mops, cogs in the factory wheel, janitors, nannies, fry cooks, dishwashers, laundry men, teachers, nurses, coders, waiters pushing and climbing, gambling on the luck of the draw and whatever it means to be American. This is what it takes to pick yourself up when beaten or disgraced. This is what it means to rise above when you're silenced or erased. This is what it takes to smash that window of despair to fly through the looking glass air with your wings spread wide proclaiming I am American.
Genny Lim:So I thought about what I would wanna read on my inaugural and I wanted to be inclusive and embrace the history of San Francisco, California, all the immigrants who made this state what it is today, and who are being kicked under the curb and deported. And I wanted us to join in our celebration of our histories, our proud identities, and never to succumb to all the stereotypes and the trashing that we've been receiving as immigrants and descendants of immigrants.
Jennifer Barone:Yes. As an Italian American myself, I feel like it is important to recognize the ancestors of this land, like, first when you're doing your own ancestral work through your work, like, through your writing of poetry. Can you speak a little bit to that? As a Chinese American here, writing here on this land, is there an aspect to that that affects your work?
Genny Lim:Absolutely. I did my DNA with, National Geographic about twenty five years ago and found out that my DNA ancestry through my mom was as Chukchi, Siberian reindeer people. And I never knew her history because once a Chinese woman is back in China, once they marry into a family, they kinda lose their maiden identity and they don't keep their last names and they're only identified through their husband's family and lineage. So when I found that out, I got pretty excited and and I have always believed that in that land bridge. Mean, people it's debatable, the Bering Strait and the steps that connected, you know, the Bering Siberian country to North America and that they came down.
Genny Lim:And when you look at the DNA, I have the same DNA as the Mayan Native Americans. So I acknowledge that and I and probably more people than they realize have connected ancestry through a lot of the land bridges that existed before, you know, the all the earthquakes and whatnot that pulled and all of the continents apart. I believe that there was a lot more travel and even now they're discovering a skull in China that predates many of the findings, archaeological specimens they've had before and then now they realizing that even here in North America that people were here maybe a 100,000 years ago.
Jennifer Barone:So China's history is absolutely incredible. Mean so many things that most people don't even realize were either originated in China, invented in China. I also found out that, like, the earliest form of the rose, like, the green rose came from China, and then it moved the rose also immigrated all over the world into various, like, colors and forms. But the earliest was from China, a green rose. So yeah.
Jennifer Barone:I mean, how do you go back and connect also to your own heritage as well as it sounds like a journey of constant discovery of our heritage, our earliest DNA through the ancestral.
Genny Lim:Yeah, I don't self identify actually as Native American because I grew up culturally in a Chinese family and so that's really how I self identify and although my consciousness is aware that there is a genetic memory that works through me and that comes through my poetry. So because I don't have the genealogical record of my family, my both sides of my grandparents are gone, completely evaporated. I don't even know their names and they're all you know, my parents are gone and most of my older relatives have passed on too. So I should have done that research when I was much younger, but now it's too late. So I have to do the excavation and the recovery process through my imagination and comes to me.
Genny Lim:And again, that's the muse of most writers is their subconscious and a lot of it comes in dreams and memories and fragments and that's all you have to go on. And I think identity is a very elusive thing, you know, and people are self identifying through their culture, know, whatever the the cultural norms are. And lo and behold, if you don't acknowledge what you don't know, you can be operating on assumptions that are will limit your potential of, you know, who you are and what you choose to embrace in your life. And I think that accounts for a lot of the problems and divisions right now is that people are just so quick to cut other people off based on their politics, their skin, their religion, all so on down the line, not realizing that in a way they are. It's a form of self hate, I think, what you know because there's always an aspect of somebody that you're trying to deny in yourself.
Genny Lim:So that you know per person is just so religious, know. I just cannot abide by that person. And maybe that's because you have you know ignored your own spirituality. Right? It doesn't have to be Catholicism but you know spirituality is of is nature for me, you know, and that's a form of religion.
Jennifer Barone:Yeah. I mean, even Catholicism is somewhat fluid taking from many different cultures.
Genny Lim:Reform. Yeah.
Jennifer Barone:Yeah. If you look at the history of rituals and things that were used, it almost is like what your poem about being an American was so rich with imagery of all the different cultures that are here. But even spirituality for a lot of people in America takes on that melting pot sometimes And sometimes
Genny Lim:it could be used in a very hostile, antagonistic way to make difference rather than reuniting people. Well, I'm this and you're not that, so you're, you know, excluded. Mhmm. And and and I think the limitations are in the individual oftentimes, not in the basis and fundamentals and philosophy of that particular religion because I don't know of any religion that espouses hatred. Right?
Jennifer Barone:Right. It's mostly supposed to be love. Right.
Genny Lim:And and I think the practitioners have gotten so far away from that and I believe that they're based in that they're still stuck in the head that they probably don't really practice. Right. You know.
Jennifer Barone:How do we practice You
Genny Lim:know, that's a really good question. Right? By empathy, I think. Through empathy and that which is different. People acknowledge from sympathy.
Genny Lim:And that is feeling what someone else is feeling. And you you can do that, you know, by opening your heart. And people are so shut down, and I think a lot has to do with the social media and technology that you can be anew or to looking at, you know, a bombing, you you know, people lying, you know, in debris, and you can just look at it as an image and not even connect with, well, who is that child that's lying there? Does she have a family? Where are they?
Genny Lim:Are they all gone? That inability to be with someone, to sit and listen with someone is, I think it's something that has been lost to to a large degree, and we gotta find our way back to that. And I think our political climate is really antithetical to building a sense of worldwide community. Mhmm. And I think our poetry tries, you know, in spite of all the obstacles, in spite of, you know, films and everything else being much more popular than going to a poetry reading, We're always trying to build, you know, inclusion and a community.
Jennifer Barone:Yeah. I think that brings me to this question that I wanted to ask you. But how do you define poetry? Like, what do you think makes poetry impactful?
Genny Lim:And when did you know it was a path, essentially, to that you wanted to dedicate your life to? Well, for me, I see poetry as song, as spoken song, you know? And the two for me have know, when I write poetry, I hear language as a form of notes and music. And I that's why I love to collaborate with musicians because they always bring me back to the origins of poetry, which was song.
Jennifer Barone:Yeah. How so I know you also from the poetry and jazz scene. We had you feature at the word party.
Genny Lim:Where you were also featured.
Jennifer Barone:And which was amazing. You reading with a live jazz band. But then you also became poet laureate of SF Jazz. So you've been poet laureate in San Francisco twice, essentially. So what was that experience like being poet laureate of SF Jazz?
Jennifer Barone:And then also, you mentioned performing with some incredible jazz musicians. Can you talk about, like, how did you get into this genre of reading with jazz musicians?
Genny Lim:Well, you know, I lived in New York for six years, and that was kind of my everyday go to place. You know? I just hung out in the jazz clubs. There was slugs, vanguard, and, you know, which I there were after hours places and village gate, and I hung out and I was going with a jazz musician, a trumpet player with Art Blakey and the jazz messengers who played also with Mingus. So I actually toured to Japan with Art Blakey and the jazz messengers and with the trumpet player and hung out.
Genny Lim:His wife was Japanese and so she we bonded and so I got to tour with the group and the phenomenal response. The Japanese audiences really appreciate jazz and they treat them like mega superstars there. You know, they didn't get that kind of treatment here in The States. They were really truly embraced and almost worshiped. So I heard a lot of jazz and then I even tried to learn jazz piano.
Genny Lim:I played a little bit with Cedar Walton, a lovely man And he would have, you know, people parading into his apartment and Curtis, you know, Fuller and, you know, Billy Higgins, you know, trying to play some scales and he's having me play Coltrane and and I stopped because and he's chatting because, keep playing. And I'm like so nervous these guys. And so it was trial by fire and I didn't keep up the piano part and then I was, you know, thought maybe I'd like to sing and then I, you know, but all of that eventually translated into the poetry. I think that was really kind of where I was always headed because I'm pretty, I think, I see myself kind of introvert. And so, like, I, you know, I like to work quietly and I like solitude and and so the poetry comes to me more, yeah, naturally, I think.
Genny Lim:Mhmm. So I landed where I think I, you know, I was most comfortable. But it was because of all of that. I even was in a rock band back in the late sixties called Glass Mountain. I was the lead singer and that broke up and then I went into jazz.
Genny Lim:And so all of that checkered background led me to finally find where I needed to be.
Jennifer Barone:When you were in Japan, I noticed in Japan also, not only do they love jazz, they love poetry. I mean, poetry feels like it's integrated into daily life there. I get a bottle of iced tea, and there's a haiku on the bottom. I buy a bag of something, and there's a poem on it. It's just everywhere and also in the temples when you go, poetry is integrated into the rituals of various types of temples there.
Jennifer Barone:But did you read poetry when you were in Japan also with the jazz?
Genny Lim:No, no. That was pre my pre poetry life and that was the time when I was trying to learn jazz and learn piano, jazz piano and voice. So and I was very timid and very shy about it because of the giants surrounding me all the time. This, you know, I only played when I was alone.
Jennifer Barone:When did you first read with jazz?
Genny Lim:I first started reading, I think, with jazz when I moved back to San Francisco. And then I joined a writing collective through Kearny Street Workshop, which is still in existence. They're probably having their fiftieth anniversary or might have just had it. But we used to get together like every Friday night with a jug of wine and write poetry and then we would critique each other's poetry. And we are trying to discover what is the Asian American voice, you know, apart from, you know, everything that was around.
Genny Lim:Mhmm. There was you know, the black arts movement was very strong and we were very influenced that by that. But we wanted to also have our own identity and aesthetics. So we were trying to discover that. And in that process, we did readings around the community.
Genny Lim:We even did a reading in San Quentin with Jessica Hagedorn was part of that. I remember an Oscar Pinaranda, Al Robles, people like that, Jaime Jacinto. So we attracted a lot of the Bay Area. And and I think that was a very transitional, also transformative time, I think, in in creating the Asian American aesthetic or voice. Yeah.
Jennifer Barone:I wanna ask you about that because as I mentioned, you have, to me, just such a powerful and distinct voice when you perform your poetry. So how did you actually go about, like, finding and crafting your personal poetic voice?
Genny Lim:I think I had to kind of remove all of the other layers that I was trying to imitate. You know, I had so many writers that I loved. You know, I loved, you know, Sylvia Plath, all of the suicide poets, Anne Sexton. I read everything and, you know, and then I was reading all the beat poets, Diane DePrima, you know, and I was trying on different voices and, you know, listen to, you know, all of the musician Michael McClure because he he used to collaborate with music too, and I like that. And so a lot of seminal poets in in around the scene around that time, I really appreciated.
Genny Lim:Philip Lamantia. Yeah. Just, you know, lots of poets that were around. And and so I was writing a lot of bad poetry and then looking back at it, I said, there was always a kernel of something that was salvageable and I'm glad I didn't throw all of it away. But it it I I just show showed how I developed and matured as a writer and it took a lot of stripping away to acknowledge my own voice which was very influenced by my mother who never spoke English and a lot of her she was a very powerful person in her own right but she she kind of refused learn English and it was very frustrating because I said all the other my friends parents are taking me a cell and she was adamant if you want to speak to me you have to speak to me in my language.
Genny Lim:She was very adamant about making sure we didn't lose the language.
Jennifer Barone:I feel like that is so important, especially around what you mentioned earlier around identity and learning a language. And here we are in an Italian bookstore. I'm also constantly trying to learn Italian in a in a way to speak with my ancestors, like, in my heart Mhmm. Right, through my poetry, through dream work, as you mentioned. But can you talk a little bit about having access to various languages?
Jennifer Barone:Does that open doors or gateways for you in your writing and your work?
Genny Lim:I think a language I've always believed is the carrier of culture. Yes. And the closest connection to that is the mother. That's the verse first language we're exposed to as children. And my mother came from the village, southern villages, and it was a Taoist Confucian village animistic culture, all kind of synchronized together and synchronized.
Genny Lim:And so she had a lot of what I thought superstitions that I I felt was detrimental to my I didn't call it that, to my assimilation process. I really wanted to be very American and pretty much leave behind all of the trappings of what I thought to be kind of a feudal culture. And, you know, all that came with it, patriarchy, the way women are erased and dismissed in patriarchal Chinese culture, you know, like you didn't have a name. Your your wife is called Lum's wife, you know. Yeah.
Genny Lim:You don't have a name. And the girls are kind of like relegated to, you know, they're gonna grow up to be wives, know. At best, they can become secretaries or bank tellers in Chinatown. Right? And you didn't travel, so I went against the grain.
Genny Lim:I traveled as soon as I could leave home. Lived in New York, know, and my parents had no idea what I was doing. And but at the same time, you know, as you go further away from the trajectory, you realize that you're always pulled back. The gravity of the homeland, the motherland, the language and the culture is so strong. So, you know, I hear her voice in me all the time.
Genny Lim:And but there were some beautiful things about her that I didn't appreciate with her connection with nature. She could touch anything. We didn't have a garden. We had a roof top. We lived in an alley called Winter Place and the roof top was her place, her her garden.
Genny Lim:She could make anything grow, you know, and in pots. And my job was every Saturday to water it and we didn't have, you know, hose. We had to carry it down. There are two flights of stairs and a big bucket and water it. That and dusting everything in the house.
Genny Lim:And so she had, like, spells that she, you know, chants that she would recite for growing things for when you had when I had nightmares, she had a chance to, you know, ward off the evil negative energies. If I had a rip on tear on my clothing and instead of taking the whole dress off, she would sew it, but but to prevent spirits from entering into the you through the cloth, she would have a chant for that. So those are the the you know, it was all very musical. I've always you know, the chants are all little songs and with a little melody and rhythm. So I find that in, you know, intruding into my poems all the time, but I think in a good way.
Jennifer Barone:Well, sounds so, like, full of depth, full of richness, and full of poetry. All of those actions that
Genny Lim:she took. Oral yeah. The oral tradition, oral poetry.
Jennifer Barone:And I think the first poems, right, were song, essentially. They were and the repetitive nature was a way and that appears in poetry too when we have rhythm and meter and things that repeat sometimes, but as a way of getting into your psyche and kind of becoming integrated into your daily life and your rituals.
Genny Lim:In the early Chinatown, there were a lot of women and, you know, they're regular working people. They work in restaurants, they're seamstresses, they, you know, and or they work in gardens or farms down in the, you know, valley. And they they had a tradition of singing wooden fish songs. And they would take a clapper that was a fish clapper and and sing and play the with a stick to a rhythm and they would sing these songs. And we had a wooden fish singing event at the Chinese Culture Center.
Genny Lim:This is about forty years ago.
Jennifer Barone:Let's bring it back.
Genny Lim:That I sounds couldn't believe it. All these women, they had the shopping bags, dropped, they put it down, they jumped on stage and they started reciting these songs extemporaneously and I was just blown away. I had no idea that it was such a pervasive common tradition and they're basically it sounds just like the blues, southern rural black blues. Yeah. And but it's all lost.
Genny Lim:Yeah.
Jennifer Barone:Well, we're maybe reclaiming that through your work, I think. Right?
Genny Lim:Maybe a tenth of it. Yeah. Yeah. At least the spirit of it, hopefully. Yeah.
Genny Lim:Thank you.
Jennifer Barone:I feel like also some of the what you were just talking about, your mother might also be here in this poem that I read yesterday, mother tongue. Right. Do you maybe wanna read a little maybe a portion of it? Oh, okay. That could be cool.
Genny Lim:Okay. Mother tongue is for my Chi Chi Chinese mother, Lin Sun Lim, who lived from nineteen o six to 02/2007. Koi, here. Neen, there. Language is the boat that delivers memory across the ocean of time.
Genny Lim:Time and seasons steady and strong like the hands that coax childbirth. Duck eggs preserved in mud with yolks, oranges, persimmon, village cures for night sweats, nightmares, fainting, and flatulence among a cabal of sewing women.
Jennifer Barone:Oh, so beautiful. Thank you. So beautiful. What about so you have the layer of being Chinese American on top of, you know, being trying to figure out what it even means to be American, which is what I was gathering from your first poem. But then you have a third layer of being a woman.
Jennifer Barone:Right. Right. Yeah. I mean, how does that and connecting to your mother in your How does that come through your work, come through your exploration of your identity, and play out in your life?
Genny Lim:Well, I I think I came from a kind of a matriarchal family because my mother was so powerful that she ruled the home. My father ruled everything in the outside world. But once he came home, she was his boss. So all the women in my family, like seven and only one brother, And so we have six of us girls, and they're all very strong. Mhmm.
Genny Lim:Yeah. Each in her own right. And,
Jennifer Barone:you know, they each of them have bucked the system in their own ways. Yeah. You are not afraid, I think, also to, like, tackle things, like, in your poetry, like grief and war. Do you feel that there's a responsibility to write about some of these topics that are happening right now? And how do you maybe what's some advice that you would be giving to, like, younger poets that are coming on the scene as poet laureates who be Mhmm.
Jennifer Barone:Approach some of these really difficult and challenging topics through their work?
Genny Lim:I think growing up right now is a challenge for young people. Sure, they have the advantage of the technology that we don't have. They have access to social media, which we didn't have. Everything is sped up in their lives, and I think they find themselves kinda trapped in the culture that they didn't weren't weren't here to create, but yet they're having to navigate all of these challenges that they're living, particularly in urban areas, you know, dealing with so much crime and drugs, homelessness, and immigration deportations, many, many families. So they're living in terror and operating on that.
Genny Lim:And there's a lot of frustration, desperation, I think a lot of despair and the need for some kind of refuge and healing. And where do they go? A lot of them are not participating in faith, you know, traditions. They don't go to church. They go to the music.
Genny Lim:You know, they go to concerts. They go to clubs or, you know, what what and hang out at places. And, you know, there's the whole car culture and and that's, you know so I think giving them, like, this is the year that we're establishing the San Francisco Youth Poet Laureate Program for the same For the first time. And, you know, I think it's was high time that it happened because we have so many talented, dynamic voices in the city, in the Bay Area. And we've organized a cohort, 20 young people, and we're going to announce the main San Francisco Youth Poet Laureate and Vice Youth Poet Laureate in January.
Genny Lim:Oh, wonderful. So it's very exciting and my vision is to have the cohort spread out, fan out through the city and to do readings, workshops in the branch libraries. Wow. So I'm I'm in contact with the branch librarians and the cohort members and going to try to, you know, get them into the branch libraries and have open mics so that we could bring out, tease out the voices in the particular communities, especially those neighborhoods that have kind of been overlooked. There are some that are really vibrant and have full programs going in.
Genny Lim:There are others that don't have as many programs available for their communities. Trying to be provide some equity and diversity in the way we approach these cohort presentations.
Jennifer Barone:Well, it's about time we have a youth poet laureate. That's amazing. What what other programs and initiatives are you working on as poet laureate? And I would love to hear about Facing the Moon, Songs of the Diaspora as well.
Genny Lim:I think every poet laureate, you know, like the the laureateship is never, there's no blueprint or requirements, you know, that you kind of navigate and map your own destination and a lot of it is the personality and the approach of that particular individual. So each laureate has had their own pet projects and their own vision and because I was trying to find out when I was first appointed, you know, I'd asked the advice and was told, well, I did this, but you should do what you wanna do. I did a series and the mission is still going. I asked Alejandro Endoworz. She did a, you know, like an anthology and she worked on the anthology and so forth and and, of course, we all know Jack, you know, he had the World Poetry Festival right here in San Francisco and, you know, he was able to get that support from the friends of the San Francisco Public Library and bring in all these world poets from all over.
Genny Lim:And he had the North Beach. He did things just in North Beach. So every laureate is going to be a little different. In my case, I'm also very an activist. So I have been involved with the protests in the Civic Center against Project twenty twenty five.
Genny Lim:And a week ago, we me, I organized lot of the past and present laureates from around the Bay Area. From Alameda, have Kimi Sugiyoka. Oh, wonderful. Yeah. She's amazing.
Genny Lim:Yeah, right. And we had Alejandro and Devora and we had Kurt Lumpkin who was an environmentalist. So it was really rich, and we had the youth poet laureate, Salma. She with her head job and everything, and she was just phenomenal. And we had a letter that I had crafted and along with a lot of our poems, which we wanted to deliver to the offices of senators Alex Padilla and Adam Schiff, who we were very dismayed to find out that they didn't support the bill to block the bombs to send to Israel.
Genny Lim:The his cohorts, you know, in the Democratic Party supported the bill, but they didn't. And so we wanted to let them know that it was absolutely critical to end the genocide. If they didn't stop the flow of weapons and aid to Israel, the war will continue. And we just got the news today that Netanyahu and Trump had a meeting and they had this 20 peace plan, which is gonna shove into the Palestinian's throats because they said if you don't accept the plan, then it's green light. Israel will go in and raise the rest of what's left in Gaza and get evacuate the people by any means necessary, be it ethnic cleansing or mass exodus, which is happening now, and Trump would support him completely.
Genny Lim:And France is supporting the peace plan, And Hamas has not responded yet. But the thing is the the committee that will oversee the reconstruction and development of Gaza, which they said they're not gonna expel Gazans. They're welcome to stay, and Gaza will be still, you know, inhabited by Palestinians, but the committee will be the oversee all the reconstruction. And who's going to be the chairman of that committee? Trump himself.
Genny Lim:Trump and Blair. So there you have it. It just sounds like a a plan of deception, not a a real peace plan. It's called the peace plan, but it's all once again on Israel US's terms. And that's not, you know, negotiating in good faith.
Genny Lim:And so we have the flotilla, which I completely support with Greta Thornburg out there, is being protected by, yeah, Italy. Italy had a national Yeah. Strike. They shut down basically the whole country to demand the ceasefire and stop the genocide. So, you know, countries around the world are on board to stop the war in Gaza, but it's The US that's the holdout.
Genny Lim:And unfortunately, we have, you know, Democratic senators that accept money from APEC and as well as representatives. And, you know, they're they're really kind of the obstacles in it because we can't get the liberals, you know, to stop the genocide. You know, it's it's, you know, going to be and all of this is reflecting badly on our economy. It's making The US into a pariah along with Israel.
Jennifer Barone:What I love about hearing this though is the creative response to this, which I don't think most people think is even a possibility, is that, you know, typically when they hear about protesting or taking political action, they think about writing letters, making calls, showing up with a sign. But you can also be doing this in your art, right, using your voice, doing it creatively, which to me is super exciting.
Genny Lim:Right.
Jennifer Barone:And also brings you together with other people, brings you together other people globally. What was the experience when you brought your poetry, for instance, to Italy and you read up in La Garda and you write, I think, with Casa della Poesia, that group. Yeah. Tell me about bringing your voice over to other countries. And you've been, besides just Italy, to multiple other countries with
Genny Lim:your Venezuela. Venezuela. Yeah. Mhmm. Poetry festival there.
Genny Lim:This you know, the the the bonds that, you know, and the bridges that you create and fosters phenomenal. And and people around the world are really hungry to, you know, meet the real Americans, not the ones they read, you know, that are represented by, you know, our politicians that speak for us, but to see what real humans and the people Yeah. In this country feel about things. And when we find that, you know, commonality, it's like meeting long lost, you know, brothers and sisters. And we have embraced each other through our words.
Genny Lim:We listen carefully to what each other are saying. And we say, that, you know, they feel exactly the way we do. They're in their way, they're resisting the fascism, you know, in their leadership. They and their leadership doesn't represent the people. And the you know?
Genny Lim:And and here in this country, they don't hear our voices. They only hear it when we go there and tell them, you know, like, yeah.
Jennifer Barone:You know, we're dealing with censorship big time on our voices. Absolutely. Book burnings and people not being allowed to speak, media
Genny Lim:Journalists attacked.
Jennifer Barone:Journalists being attacked and media being ripped, taking their shows taken away from them. So there's a media war on the freedom of speech. Like, how do you feel about that as a poet?
Genny Lim:We're fighting a war. It's basically a war against what they call woke culture. And they, you know, like, created such, you know, a monster image of who we are, you know, and that they're able to garner and coalesce under people like Kirk, right, to amass, you know, a MAGA movement that is out there to basically crush democratic in democracy and consent. I mean, to create consent by coercion, by propaganda, by illegal use of judicial courts to silence people, by deportation. All of those are strategies and tactics to create a dictatorship.
Genny Lim:That's what we're we're facing right now is an authoritarian administration that is not playing by any kind of constitutional laws or rules. It's like, you know, the gloves are off. We're gonna get you, and we're gonna win by hook or crook. Whether we have to redistrict, you know, every, you know, every county, every state, every city, whether we have to use the supreme court, which we stacked to uphold, you know, all of these attacks on, you know, judges, you know, whether they're legal or not, you know, we're gonna get this person. I I put up a meme that was hilarious.
Genny Lim:Was a Trump thing. This I he said something mean to me seventy years ago and we're going to arrest him.
Jennifer Barone:It's a wild,
Genny Lim:wild outburst. Right. Yeah. I mean, it's just it's it's an, you know, a government of vendetta.
Jennifer Barone:Yeah. Well, to end on this last note, Genny, because obviously, you are a revolutionary poet in so many different levels for me personally. Such an incredible voice. But if you have one thing that you wanna leave a legacy on with your poetry, especially on this city of San Francisco and for the next generation of writers that you're creating programs for, it sounds like. What would you like to leave, like, as your leg your poetic legacy for San
Genny Lim:Francisco? I think I'd like I haven't really thought about that, you know? Like, whatever I do, you know, if there's any kind of inspiration or influence it has on someone, I think it's a good thing. I would like people to say, well, she never held back on her beliefs and I will do the same. She was never afraid to speak truth to power regardless of the risks and the consequences and we will do the same.
Genny Lim:I will do the same for my community, for my family, for my children, for my country.
Jennifer Barone:What legacy.
Genny Lim:I would I don't say I'm gonna succeed.
Jennifer Barone:Well, you know what? Sometimes, you know, we're we are inspired just by watching somebody and how they move through the world. Sometimes it's not always what they say, but how they say it, how they move. And you're one of those people for me, genuinely. And
Genny Lim:you, my girl, you do you have to what I call soft power.
Jennifer Barone:Soft power. Power of love.
Genny Lim:Sometimes, yeah, works even better.
Jennifer Barone:Yes. Thank you so much, Genny Lim. What an honor to be with you. Oh my goodness.
Genny Lim:Thank you for that.
Jennifer Barone:Our ninth poet laureate, thank you for sharing your poetry. Thank you for sharing your voice. Thank you for inspiring the city and generations. Yeah. We're gonna mention this right now.
Jennifer Barone:So if you want to Genny Lim is obviously busy, and she's got a lot of initiatives. So you need to learn more about Genny Lim. Go to her website, gennylim.ddns.net, and go out and buy tickets at the presidiotheaterorg for this event. Do you wanna talk a little bit about this? Facing the moon, songs of the diaspora, which will be out Sunday, October 19 at the Presidio Theater.
Genny Lim:I'm really excited about my collaboration with the Del Sol Quartet. They are amazing musicians, and they are going to be playing the compositions by three women diaspora Asian composers, Vivian Feng, Melina Sui, and Teresa Wong, who have all created new works based on my words, on my poetry. And the theme is facing the moon, songs of the diaspora. One of the po the composers, Melina, grew up in Kazakhstan with her mother, was a single became a single mother. And there'll be interviews of each of the composers interwoven into the music and the poetry.
Genny Lim:And then Vivian Fang had her background was as a Cambodian Chinese. And so she talks about those challenges that she faced. So either both of them were immigrant families and Theresa Wong, she's from the East Coast and she has an amazing immigrant story that goes back to Taiwan and I'm here at San Francisco native. So all of our stories reflect, I think, the the plight of the immigrants today. And we're we have survived.
Genny Lim:That's the saga of immigration, and hopefully, it'll inspire those immigrants who are going through what our parents and ancestors went through, that they too will survive, and that this is everything and what they say in Buddhism is impermanent. So I think what is happening now is impermanent, and it's going to end.
Jennifer Barone:Excellent. Check out Facing the Moon's Songs of the Diaspora, Sunday, October 19 at Presidio Theater. Thank you, Genny Lim.
Genny Lim:Thank you. You're welcome, Jennifer.
Jennifer Barone:This podcast is brought to you by Telegraph Hill Arts and Literature. If you enjoyed today's episode, please follow, subscribe, and leave us a review. Visit tellhighlit.org to find out about our local events such as author talks, writing workshops, and more. Consider making a donation to support our public programs. If you are a Bay Area author interested in being on the show, we'd love to hear from you.
Jennifer Barone:Reach out to us at submissions@telhilit.org. Thanks again for tuning in. I'm Jennifer Barone along with Joseph Carboni at Telegraph Hill Arts and Literature. And this has been Voices from the Hill. Until next time, keep reading, keep writing, stay inspired, and come visit us at Telegraph Hill Books in North Beach, San Francisco.