AAPI Heritage, Pride Month, Storytelling on Grief, and Reaching 50k Streams: A Solo Reflection

0:01 Hi everyone, welcome to the Bunda Me Chronicles Podcast. This is your host, Randy Kim. So we are at the end of AANHPI Heritage Month, which is Asian American Native Hawaiian Pacific Islander Month. And this month has just flown by and so much has happened during this time and I want to be able to reflect on this with a solo episode which I really haven't done in quite some time and I've been wanting to do more of these monologue episodes where it's just me talking and being able to reflect back on what is currently going on in real time.

0:44 We're also now heading into Pride Month and I'm going to turn 43 This is Gemini season and I am turning that age on 6-7 and I will blame you fellow Millennials for birthing these Gen Alpha kids who are Ruining and appropriating my birthday but anyways but yeah what a time it's been it's crazy that we are halfway through this year and I want to like take some time to reflect on this past month and you know AAPI Heritage Month or AANHPI Heritage Month It's a time to celebrate, it's a time to honor our contributions, ourselves.

1:36 And also serve as a continual reminder of what is possible for our communities to thrive as a collective, as individuals, as ways to innovate, as ways to take care of one another, as ways to remember our history, to celebrate it, and to use it as a blueprint for the kind of future that we would want to create. And it's also a reminder that AAPI Heritage Month does not end at the end of May. It's a continuing everyday experience for us. And it's a reminder, especially in a time where DEI cuts have been happening since the Trump 2.0 administration has taken place, There's been a lot of erasures in terms of like centerships and AAPI history not being taught in many public schools across the nation and this is a reminder that there's so much work that needs to be done to know about The history of our people and our vast, vast communities and also the history that hasn't been talked about in schools or in the history books or even in traditional media.

3:03 And also to be able to make sure that we have access to resources, you know, from whether it's through a podcast whether it's through through books documentaries and what have you and the many resources that it's very critical for us to make sure that we are aware of our history and what is the blueprint for our community in order to survive and eventually thrive. So I hope that for those who are in this AAPI or NHPI world, I hope that this is an opportunity to learn about your history, to think of ways to celebrate yourself and the people around you and to tap into your curiosity and AAPI Heritage Month and I'm sorry I'm gonna be saying AAPI or AANHPI because it's kind of like a mouthful here but it's been a very fruitful experience I was able to perform a live storytelling piece for the Asian American Arts Festival through Asian American Arts Chicago

4:33 And many thanks to Mia Park who is the founder and the producer of that festival and it was at the Looking Glass Theater and I gotta say this was a great experience. I had not done a live storytelling event in quite a while but I also have not gone off book even longer and so I decided to do a story about my recent mental health and a grief journey I know this for those who have been familiar I have Talked very candidly about the loss of my brother Andy a year and a half ago and I also talk about my own challenges with mental health during around that period of time and I decided to like tie it up with some of the grief because the idea that you know grief is very intergenerational it's something that We tend to inherit, especially when there's trauma that's been involved.

5:41 For my parents, they have been survivors of genocide and other forms of violence. It's something that has been carrying over not just from my parents but also from my family members who experienced a lot of harm along the way and how that tends to manifest in the way that they raise their children including myself in this case I also wanted to say that grief can be such a son of a bitch it's a real pain in the ass but I've also learned that It's also necessary to understand the kind of love you have and the love you have for the person that you've lost and also as a reminder of how we try to honor those who are not here with us and I wanted to do a storytelling that really speaks to that experience and I gotta say, this was a very scary experience for me to do because when I had applied to it at the end of last year, I was like, oh, you know, I'm gonna just go for it.

7:00 And I had it in my dreams that I really wanted to do this one-man show, you know, this one-person show about about this storytelling piece and I decided well I'm gonna see if I could do this as like a 20-minute monologue and see how I'm gonna work with it and when I got accepted around February I was just starting to write my piece and I was workshopping that to a group of fellow readers fellow writers and And I literally wrote it I think I had finished it the day before I was ready to just share privately and I think it was like close to 30 minutes long and I Kept sobbing like every five minutes and it was a very emotionally draining story to read and and So much so that like the next month and a half I wasn't really rehearsing I wasn't really putting a lot of time to practice it and as the weeks kept going I was like thinking okay I'm gonna put this off and I'm gonna do this again like next week and I think part of the issue that I was having is It's having to relive that trauma in certain ways and having to

8:34 be reminded of that pain which was clearly very fresh in my head and if I'm having a very good day or the weather's nice outside I'm like thinking why do I want to practice this you know why do I want to be sad and so it took a lot of battling I actually talked to some close friends of mine and One friend, her friend, my friend, Annie was basically saying, well, maybe there's certain parts that you don't really need to share in that moment. You know, you tell when you are ready to share and share what you feel most comfortable, what makes sense to you in that moment.

9:19 And I think that mindset kind of helped. I had like about a week to go and, you know, people, my friends were asking me, Are you nervous about it? Are you really excited about performing? And I'm like well strangely enough I wasn't feeling nervous at all but I felt woefully underprepared and I was like I mean I really haven't been putting a lot of serious practice into it but I think I think somewhere along the way I kind of felt like I could really tell the story and so I decided to just jot down a couple notes on my note card as like references and and figuring out okay the first five minutes it's gonna be about this the next five minutes could be devoted to this the next two or three minutes should be about this these are certain lines that I would like to remember as reference points and Gotta say I think that was a very helpful way of doing this and I practiced it like maybe for two days and I was outside you know at a park and just practicing and you know there were tears during that time but I also felt pretty good because I felt like even though I wasn't really practicing consistently The story that I was telling is something that very much lives

10:51 with me and I live with it like every single day. So I think that it has allowed me to be more reflective and to be in a better place to finally tell that story. When I was arriving to the venue, I was walking from Union Station to the Looking Glass Theater, which is in Michigan Avenue, the Magnificent Mile. It was a good 30-minute walk, but it was a beautiful day. And I... Just walked and I chose not to listen to any of my music or any any playlist or a podcast or I just went in just feeling very calm and feeling very good and you know my friends were there to Bánh Bánh Bánh Bánh Bánh Bánh Bánh Bánh Bánh Bánh Bánh This motivation to honor my brother but also to honor my own story and to give it the love that it deserves and I felt that in a way it was very healing for me and I felt very empowered and I felt like I really made my brother

12:23 proud and you know actually the day before I you know visited the tree that we planted and we and I you know said a few things to him and I told him that I hope I'm gonna make you proud and And then after I was done you know I talked with friends and you know there were friends I hadn't seen in a while and it was really good to reunite with some folks and to meet with other new people that I haven't met and it was a really good experience and When I came back home, I went to my brother's tree and thanked him. I just felt like I was doing this to really honor his memory because that grief still lives with me.

13:11 Anyways... So there was that and yeah I hope to be able to expand more on that story because there's so much to tell and there's so much that I want to share and also I think there's some very funny moments too along the way which I really want to showcase that yes there is humor in grief as well you know and that it's also part of this whole healing process which is pretty much an everyday practice um So aside from that, I was also speaking virtually to a group of university students at the University of California in Merced.

13:57 Professor Mai Lin Hong and Ma Vang invited me to speak with their students and the students there was comprised mostly of Asian American and Latinx folks and This was for an AAPI Cultural Studies class and I was there to talk about the podcasting journey but also the importance of documenting our own stories from the AAPI context and what that really looked like and I gotta say that you know This was a wonderful experience like I really enjoy talking to universities, especially, you know, with students and faculty and and to really gauge what they're thinking of and what their process is, because it's been like.

14:50 Almost 20 years since I graduated from undergrad and you know it's it's very interesting to kind of see where their thought process is and what they are dealing with and trying to navigate as young adults trying to figure out what this world is gonna look like for them you know and it was a wonderful experience being in this group you know like the students asked amazing questions about you know the thought process of starting this podcast they were asking questions about my my way of dealing with vicarious trauma when recording very difficult episodes and how to gain the trust of your guests and yeah they were very great questions I think this was like really one of my favorite groups and Mai Lin is a person that I connected with I'd say about a year ago and you know definitely been a supporter of my work and I also shout out to her upcoming poetry book it's called Continental Drift I believe it's and yeah please check her out and yeah I also have been releasing a lot of wonderful episodes as of late I actually have a couple stories to share I interviewed Cameron McLeod from Cure for Paranoia and Cure for Paranoia is this emerging hip-hop group based out of Dallas and they've been NPR

16:25 Tiny Desk finalists for the last few years and so originally I was supposed to interview him about a month before a month before that but you know on the day of recording his manager accidentally double booked him and so I had to wait for another reschedule And so when I started recording with him, I think five minutes into the episode, and you can listen to it right now, five minutes into the episode, Cameron gets a call, or actually gets a text message, I should say, from the NPR producers saying that, well, we need to meet with you the next day. And I gotta tell you, Cameron's face was just like in shock.

17:08 And I think he was really getting psyched and getting very, you know, I think he got it. in the Chicago Bulls could not get past the Detroit bad boy Pistons like three consecutive years and you know the Pistons were like beating them up and psychologically torturing them and you know Michael Jordan you know was frustrated each year and each year in and year out and by the time the fourth year hit in 1991 the team finally overcame that they swept the Pistons and then would go on to play the Lakers and win in five games to win their first NBA championship and I told that I used that analogy to Cameron and Cameron was like yeah I'm gonna remember this and so fast forward to a few weeks later I was ready to put this episode for the next day like I had it scheduled and Cameron sends me a text and he was like sending me a gift of Michael Jordan crying when he had his first trophy and I was like I think he won and and uh Cameron didn't really want

18:44 to confirm nor deny and I was like yeah you won it you know and so the next morning I literally was dropping this episode and then I see um Cameron and the band on this Zoom call with the NPR producers and they announced that he was the winner and it was just amazing to watch. I'm so happy for Cameron and his group because their music is wonderful, it's innovative, it's fresh and he's a black queer hip hop artist and I feel like there needs to be more folks especially with different intersecting identities to Bánh mì to be shown a lot of the light that tends to be ignored in traditional media outlets and I think that his exposure being a final contestant in the last few years have really raised the group's profile and this has been so well deserved so congratulations Cameron on your well deserved win and I cannot wait to see that performance I think it's going to be Mind Blowing and um yeah I hope that y'all get to follow Cure for Paranoia I also

20:15 got to you know do some fun episodes I interviewed my good friend Jung about the Lilith Fair um because you know Jung's a huge Lilith Fair fan if you don't know what Lilith Fair is um check out that episode we go into this deep dive about like 90s women in music and how Lilith Fair which was like a women's uh Festival which was the first of its own kind and we kind of went into weeds about the political nature of it could it exist in today's world and and I had so much fun with it like I was already doing like this my top 25 songs of the 2000s with Anjali and you know like I'm like a big fan of like doing millennial pop culture deep dives and I created the Chill Out Chronicles segment for my podcast because it is very separate from what I do with the Bunmi Chronicles where it's very focused on the AAPI voices and now with the BIPOC voices and including the LGBTQIA voices as well but also because a lot of my episodes tend to be very serious it tends to you know there's trauma that's involved I've done a lot of emergency episodes especially regarding the ICE raids that were happening and I think one of the more important reminders is I want to make sure that While these stories of what's going on with our communities are still vital still

21:46 very important and still something that I'm going to commit to doing I also feel that in order for folks to not tune out completely I have to add some enjoyable content you know and and some form of escapism and also it's also for my own sanity in some ways because because it is very hard sometimes when I as much as I really feel I feel very empowered doing the emergency episodes because in a way it gives me a little bit of hope interviewing the people who are doing the hard work and fighting for our communities and and being a part of trying to intercept harmful narratives It can also be very taxing, you know?

22:38 I mean, there are times when I would get on the mic and I would get very angry, very irritable, irritated most times, and I'm like, okay, you know, I kind of need to be in a place where I have to do some enjoyable episodes where I can laugh, where I can, you know, really be like my 13-year-old self, like, sharing, like, Trivia like facts about my favorite artists or certain pop culture dives that people don't talk about. So I feel like that was a way for me to To try to also not only show the things that I do like to talk about on my free time but also as a way to remind us that yes we should experience joy we should have abundance because that's the energy that's going to fuel us to not only survive but also to be able to innovate to be able to create a better world around us and to protect our communities so I hope that you keep this in mind that yes you can still have joy you know but But also as a way to fuel the kind of fight, the kind of resistance that you need to fight against the tools of oppression and the people who are creating the chaos And I think this is a very important reminder

24:08 of that So, with that said, I know that we're also going to be into Pride Month, and while it is a celebration of our queer identity, especially me as a queer man, a queer Vietnamese Cambodian person, I also think it's very important to remember that there is an active erasure that's been going on in the LGBTQIA communities and especially with trans rights and with trans people and we've been seeing a continual reversal on LGBTQ history and censorship and also on rights and specifically with trans people like it's been ongoing and there's a lot of harm that's being done a lot of surveillance and It is a very dangerous time and while Pride Month is a celebration, it is also an important reminder to also think about the history but also the current community issues that are affecting them.

25:14 Whether it's with housing, food scarcity, whether it's with ICE, whether it's with Other personal civil liberties and so forth and I hope that this is a month where we are reminded about the power of community and And that this is a continuation of the work that still needs to be done And how do we, you know, continue to honor our ancestors And honor the people who have laid the foundation And how do we continue to build upon that?

25:56 So Also, I'd say for AAPI Heritage Month, I've been doing a lot of self-care activities You know, the weather is getting warmer in the Midwest I've been doing a lot of nature trails. I'm trying to keep my blood pressure under control here. I've been doing some case spas, doing some friend hangouts. I actually did a somatic session the other day. I actually did a sound bath session, which if you haven't tried it, You gotta try it It's a really good experience And my friend invited me to it It was a really great experience And really enjoyed, you know Being able to ground myself And I feel like each day, you know When I'm doing my nature walks And, you know, doing my little forest bathing Where I'm just like Just, you know, allowing myself To just walk quietly And, you know, walk at my own pace And, you know, just be surrounded by nature And, and Sometimes even when I have my music on, I've also made a habit where sometimes I don't even listen to my music or podcasts.

27:00 I would just allow myself to just sit and walk in silence. And I also noticed how I often would close my eyes as a way to be very cerebral, to be very grounded, and to also... Remember to always pause and to have a better awareness of reading where my mind and my body is at in the moment. Yeah self care is very important and it's kind of like crazy that's already been a year since I have left my last job and since then I've been kind of floating around doing a lot of random work and uh it's been focusing a lot on the podcast on the content creation I have like more content uh that I would like to put out um on social media so yeah it's been keeping me very busy and yeah content creation is no joke it is a lot of work and I'm trying to get a good grasp on it um I'm still taking my Vietnamese language lessons and still meeting with my tutor virtually for the past year now and it's wild because you know at the beginning I couldn't read Vietnamese I couldn't read or couldn't put together consistent sentences and now I feel like I've gotten some level of basic

28:31 conversations going I can text questions and text to some of my friends in Vietnamese. Am I fluent at it? No. Does it matter? No. But I think just being on this journey for the past year, especially in my 40s, has been really a great way of reclaiming this This this this part of my life that I felt like was taken away you know and that that I felt also estranged from at the same time so it's been a great experience because I feel like I've been making more friends especially in the Vietnamese community and and actually my friend Tony Tran shout out to him and then with Habayo Cafe They've been setting up the Vietnamese language meetups monthly since beginning of March and it's been fun I mean I have been meeting a lot of people and meeting people that I've never met and just learning about all of our various backgrounds and where our language journey is There are fluent speakers, there are people that are just Hãy subscribe cho kênh Ghiền Mì Gõ Để không bỏ lỡ những video hấp dẫn

30:08 I know I've been going on for like about 30 minutes longer than I expected to but uh Yeah, I want to say I have reached 50,000 plus lessons on my podcast already. I have reached over 100,000 on my YouTube channel. So yeah, it's kind of wild, you know?

30:48 I don't know what to make of it I'll be honest with you there are times when I was kind of like debating whether or not I should have you know talked about my milestone because you know there and this is something that I try to tell people or this is about I try to tell myself to not compare yourself to others but you know in this space sometimes I feel like I do and you know like there are times I'm like oh gosh I hope people think that um that I thought to myself, you know what, 50,000 for 170 episodes, that's a lot of people.

31:37 A lot of different people Whether it's a person listening to just an episode or two Or a person that's been religiously listening to it I have come across so many different people From all kinds of backgrounds Some of them have become my friends Some have become my guests It's been a wild journey But it's been so fruitful A year ago Arthur Wyn Fun Kwe Mai who wrote Dust Child and The Mountain Sing basically said to me when she came to Chicago and we did this live talk live author talk and she was basically telling everyone in the audience like yeah Randy I think He has a podcast, AbundMe Chronicles You gotta check it out And at that time, I had not been doing a podcast for like a year and a half I had stayed away from it I didn't really want to have anything to do with it I thought I was kind of moving on from it I think my last season, I was just really tired of it And I was like, I need to move on I feel like I've done enough But, you know, she was telling everyone that And I gotta be honest with you, I was pretty embarrassed by it I was like, I...

33:00 wasn't thinking about coming back to it and uh but when I gave her a ride back to her hotel she basically said to me well Randy we need your voice you know your podcast really did wonders you know it's doing wonders and I hate to see you not continue and well I told her well I'm gonna think about it and around that time I was already starting to take my own personal leave and The entire summer I felt like I was just recalibring and having to process my own grief and when I got back from Oregon the curiosity the drive just reemerged and I was like man I think I'm ready to go back and yeah 50 episodes later you know it's been a great run and now I've been getting more people contacting me to be on my show and they're like from publicists and publishers and I'm like wow I'm actually being taken seriously now and it's kind of wild because I the last month I've interviewed an NPR tiny desk corner I have interviewed a person from the Rolling Stone magazine I have interviewed one of my favorite podcasters from the pop pantheon I have been able to interview a Latin Grammy Award winner who was given to me Yeah, it's kind of a wild journey And I'm looking forward to more I'm looking forward to a lot of amazing conversations And I'm ready to,

34:31 you know, see what comes next And I think this summer, I may slow down a little bit on the recordings Because, you know, it's summer, I don't really like to do a whole lot But at the same time, you know, stay tuned Because I'm sure I'll have things to do And I'm sure there'll be some videos of me dancing and being silly and on Instagram Reels and on YouTube Shorts so yeah but anyways I just want to say thank you so much for all your love and support thank you for you know really supporting my comeback to this work and reminding me how much I really miss it and how much I am enjoying it again so I will say happy Gemini season I know that a lot of People don't like Geminis but um but we're a pretty cool bunch you know we have some bad apples but we have some really amazing creative chaotic bunch here and uh I hope that the star of summer is gonna treat you all well so take good care hydrate look after one another and most importantly look after yourself see ya