The quality of a picture book depends on the compatibility of two major elements: the words and the images. How well do the images communicate with the text? Are the images competing with the text, or is there an ideal symbiotic relationship between the two? In “We Who Produce Pearls: An Anthem for Asian America,” the written reflections of Joanna Ho find a perfect balance with the vivid and colorful wall-mural style men, women, children, and beasts from Amanda Phingbodhipakkiya’s paintbrush.
Through approximately 20 prompts that are spread across two open pages, each one beginning with “We Who…” and followed by a verb, the spectrum of human existence is conveyed. Ho makes sure that we’re always part of the experience. She’s assured enough to speak for all the people who dream, cultivate, persist, sacrifice, and so much more. Dreamers are followed by evening sea explorers, the sky a shimmering blue and the nighttime stars leading the way. In one particularly evocative spread, four immigrants are together. There’s a woman holding her child. The woman’s hair is covered by a lime green scarf and the child is not facing us. We see a man, wearing an orange turban, only the right side of his face visible and his child covered by a thick black beard. On the right is a woman with short hair, green and blue earrings, facing us but looking away. Ho writes:
“We who survive/arrive on shores/greeted with a whiplash/of narratives,
contradictions/that weaponize us against ourselves/to keep us silent,/invisible
erased./We hold injustice in our mouths,/but we are not our pain.”
In another panel, a woman is bracing herself against the wind and a bearded man is to her left (our right), yelling. The two of them are tangled in blue barbed wire, close enough to be a problem but not suffocating — at least not yet. Ho writes:
“We who sacrifice/go for broke/when bullets scream/in an endless stream…We hold
injustice in our mouths, encircle it with tenacity and audacity, and roll it around on our
tongues.”
The people we see in these pages, enhanced and enveloped by the profundity of Joanna Ho’s words, cannot and will not go away quietly. “We Who Produce Pearls: An Anthem for Asian America” is as comfortable in darkness as in light, the graceful flow and enormous spectrum of Asian culture, and the seemingly mundane but in actuality profound little moments of wonder accessible to all of us. This is a wondrous book whose power and value in any thinking person’s library will prove immeasurable.
Sampan spoke with Joanna Ho and Amanda Phingbodhipakkiya about the genesis of this book, their collaborative process, and hopes for the future. What follows is an edited version of the email correspondence.
SAMPAN: Congratulations on this book. It’s a remarkable testament, both sublime and powerful, to the fluid nature of history. I wanted to ask about your choices in the “Invitation to Dig Deeper” section. We dream, seek, cultivate, survive, withstand, persist, sacrifice, resist, rise up, and shine. We also exist as the history of our land and steadfast servants of it. What decisions went into the order of these approximately twenty sections?
JH: I researched Asian American history for nearly a year, learning so many things I’d never been taught. I read, and sometimes re-read books, watched documentaries, visited significant sites, conducted interviews. As I processed all the stories and people and events, a few key take-aways stood out to me: Asian Americans are at once incredibly diverse, yet our histories and experiences are parallel in many ways, and despite the dominant narrative, Asians have always stood up, spoken out, and shaped our spaces. We have never been silent and we’ve always fought back against injustice. I wanted to find a way to really highlight these two points that was accessible to readers of all ages.
Before I began writing, I looked through all my research notes and re-organized them into buckets that I loosely named by categories like, “resistance” or “legal battles” or “building community.” The notes included chapters, people and events from multiple waves of Asian migration and across the Asian diaspora. From there I tried to capture the heart of what each of these stanzas would come to represent, with the idea that these stanzas could show the parallels and share experiences across our diverse communities, but in one unifying text. This is where words like “dream,” “seek,”“cultivate,” etc. came into the story. It was my way of showing our community how connected we really are.
The “Dig Deeper” section follows the same sections as the stanzas in the text. There is just so much history and symbolism on every page, and even in every individual, intentionally chosen word. I realized that if I didn’t include some kind of back matter, people would not know or understand the layers within each page. After all, most of us have never learned any of this history in school; it has been erased almost entirely. I played with many different ways to share some of the history behind each page, initially thinking I would just highlight a few key ideas. But I didn’t want people to just look up a few people or events and stop learning there. The back matter I included doesn’t even cover a fraction of all the history that contributed to this book. So, the teacher in me wanted to write it as an invitation to continue learning, to make it clear that this was just the tip of a very large iceberg, to make the learning more accessible both for educators and parents and students alike.
I hope that the questions at the back help readers really think about the ideas captured on each page and throughout the book, that they’ll look through and dive into research, and eventually learn far more than what is captured in the back matter of this book. Hopefully this book reads like a call to action and also an invitation to continue learning.
SAMPAN: How would you describe your collaborative work process? Was the artwork produced simultaneously with the text? Was the text altered after seeing the images?
JH: One of the most special parts of the picture book creation process is that the author and illustrators usually don’t have any contact throughout. Illustrators have the freedom to interpret a text and add their own layers through the art. I wanted to make sure Amanda didn’t feel hamstrung by any ideas I had for the art, but I also wanted her to know the history behind every word and stanza in the text, so I sent my editor two copies of the words: a clean copy with very a few illustration notes, and another copy with paragraphs of notes for every line of the book. From there, Amanda took it and worked her brilliant magic, bringing all her own wisdom and experiences and critical consciousness of movements and resistance and power.
AP: As a transdisciplinary artist, I’ve worked across many mediums, from large scale installations, to murals, fiber sculpture, and public art campaigns — but never a picture book. I was familiar with Joanna’s previous works, but when I read her words for “We Who Produce Pearls,” I felt chills. Using Joanna’s notes as a well of inspiration, I was able to transpose the bold imagery of my public art campaigns that have reached millions into twenty or so spreads. I found great joy in creating expansive landscapes and bold portraits that matched the beautiful and defiant language of the text.
SAMPAN: Joanna, you reflect in your “Author’s Note” on a series of feelings that came over you while researching for this book. You were angry about the erasure of history, grieving over the suffering, and finally feeling proud. Did these feelings come one after the other, or was it like a Venn diagram allowing you to process the experience and serve the purpose of the book? In other words, was this project bigger than just the production of a beautiful teaching tool?
JH: The process of researching and writing this book has changed me profoundly. The more I write, the more I come back to this idea of understanding our history, both personal and group, as a deeply important step in knowing ourselves today and our possibilities for the future. The more I learned about the history of Asians in America, which includes the history of imperialism and colonization in our ancestral homelands, the more I came to feel the power in our community. We are not the docile, quiet people dominant narratives claim us to be. Knowing that we’ve always risen up and spoken out and worked to create a better space for ourselves and others shaped my vision for how we can work better and in greater solidarity today.
SAMPAN: Amanda, in your “Artist’s Note,” you emphasize what you’ve learned from your elders, that we are more than the stories others have told about us, more than labels and limitations. As Walt Whitman noted, “We contain multitudes.” How do you maintain hope amidst the fervent anti-Asian hatred of the past four years? You note that “our community has kept us from being swallowed by the ugliness.” How?
AP: This hope first came from cultivating more open and vulnerable relationships with my Asian American community — I’ve found that celebrating, venting, and crying with loved ones and new friends have given me the strength to endure when I feel discouraged and overwhelmed. Secondly, I’ve had a chance to partner with amazing Asian American and Pacific Islander organizations like Asian Women’s Shelter in San Francisco, the Asian American Arts Alliance, and Asian Women’s Giving Circle — led by incredibly powerful and inspirational AAPI women. Finally, seeing the organizing and activism work led by other leaders and organizations —Blasian March, Sakhi for South Asian Women, Soar Over Hate, ActivistNYC — whose work I cheer on and am deeply grateful for. I try to remind myself when I feel despair creep in: “there is always light, and we find it in each other”.
SAMPAN: How did you two strike the balance between some very striking images and text (the sacrifices, the battered bodies, the resisters) with those who cultivate and shine? The readers really are swept away through this thin but profound book, felled by the enormity of experience but in awe of those like yourselves who tell it so beautifully. What were your literary inspirations?
JH: I think it is an effort to capture the multitudes in our history and community and traditions. Initially, the text leaned too heavily into the stories of oppression and injustice in an effort to make the point about the pearls. This is where great editors come in. Our editor, Clarissa Wong, was able to hold our vision for the book and push us to capture greater nuance and light. She encouraged me to tweak the text to call more attention to our beauty and power without minimizing the struggles.
Similarly, the art went through processes of revision. For example, one of the spreads initially included images of bullets pointed at the people on the page. These were changed as the bullets felt too violent an image for a younger audience. Amanda was able to tweak the art so that it didn’t lose any of its emotion or meaning, but also became more accessible for all ages. Kwame Alexander and Kadir Nelson’s book, “The Undefeated,” was an inspiration for me as I wrote the text. I love how much history and meaning is conveyed through the lyrical and sparse text and striking images on the pages.
AP: Much of my artistic practice deals with difficult and often painful topics — from grief, trauma, scapegoating and more. But we don’t need to portray those hardships in a potentially retraumatizing way — we don’t need to be reminded of the ugliness, because it is a visceral lived experience for many of us. Instead we need to be reminded of our resilience and the fortitude of our community, so that our emotional stores can be replenished and our hearts can mend. For the spread that Joanna mentioned, I chose to change the bullets into petals because I agreed with the feedback that the original depiction was too literal. I wanted to show that the wounds and scars born of hateful words and deeds can be transformed by softness and beauty into burdens we can endure and heal from. That we can meet ugliness with softness and power.
SAMPAN: Are there larger versions of these images? It would be incredible to see them mural-sized.
AP: I appreciate you seeing that vision. Having painted murals all over the country and across the world, I definitely channeled the expansiveness and dynamism of my murals into these pages. Joanna and I actually first met while I was painting a 200-foot mural in the Bay Area, so it would be such a full circle moment to create one together based on the art in our book. We’d love it if someone would support the creation of a mural.
JH: Amanda and I would love to paint a mural of a spread from the book somewhere. Amanda is an experienced muralist and fine artist and you can see her work all over the world. I would be a helpful paint brush holder throughout the process.
SAMPAN: What’s next for the two of you and “We Who Produce Pearls: An Anthem for Asian America”? It seems this could seamlessly be translated as a stage piece, spoken word performance with the images emblazoned as background. You note: “May you be heard and healed.” Is this another link in your chains of testimony? Do you think the healing has begun? If so, what role would you like this book to play in that process?
JH: So much of the journey of any book is determined by the readers, educators, parents, community that embraces it. We hope that it truly does become what we title it: an anthem for Asian America. We hope that this book is shared and read as a reminder and call to action in households and conference rooms and stages throughout our vast and diverse community as a reminder of who we have always been and who we can strive to be today. At this point in time, it feels like many in the Asian community are just beginning to find and use our voices, and as in all movements, there are differences of opinion and understanding in how we need to move forward together and with others. In the end, we all need each other and we will only rise and carve out space and disrupt systems if we do it together.
We are also thinking about what’s next. Picture books take years to make, so while this book is being published this April, it was written over two years ago. We’ve grown and changed and our understanding of change and liberation has also shifted. I’d love to follow up this book with another one that explores the revolutionary power of light and joy. This feels like the next step in better understanding how I’d like to move in the world and with our communities.
AP: The fact that we are all still here means that the healing has begun, however hard-fought and however slow. We have to remember that healing is sometimes its own pain, and it’s a process that requires patience and steady commitment. In my practice I try to offer spaces of unburdening and care through monuments and rituals so that healing feels less daunting and we can, as a community, get to a place of more vulnerability and connection. From personal experience I know that healing can sometimes feel like an impossible task and we can all use a supportive hand. So I hope that this book is a portal to healing, that readers can find solace in these pages and discover things boundless and bright in themselves and their communities through it.
