This project was submitted by the Oakland Chinatown Mural Project. Listen to their podcast on their website here.

Oakland Chinatown Murals Podcast

This is the Oakland Chinatown murals podcast by Danielle Buch, Cleo Chow, Sammy Wu, Esther Huang, Mckenzie Diep, Soma Chu, Angela Wong, Tatum Hurley, and Karen Ha.

Our podcast, which was officially published on April 27, 2022, is a discussion about Asian and Black American solidarity: how historical context has informed the relationship between these racial communities, how contemporary political climates are affecting this relationship, and how artists, in particular, are responding to these issues. We discuss the complex relationship between art, activism, and Black-Asian solidarity by initiating dialogue between UC Berkeley students, muralists, and activists. We focused specifically on art in Oakland’s Chinatown by interviewing four muralists – Eugenia Ho, Kaitlyn Iglesias, Thitiwat Phromratanapongse, and Jen Nhan – to explore their experiences with art and activism in relation to the Black Lives Matter movement and anti-Asian sentiments of the pandemic. Through facilitating these conversations, we’ll investigate the vibrant history of Asian Americans and interrogate the relationship between AAPI and Black American communities, using artistic inquiry to inform our analysis. We will be parsing the complex historical ties between Asian and Black Americans and exploring how the murals in Oakland’s Chinatown have contributed to the perceptions of communities of color.

In our PSA section, we discuss the attempts by some parents of Washington Elementary school students to prevent the renaming of the school after Yuri Kochiyama. The renaming of Berkeley public schools is an attempt to halt the glorification of a racist history as many of the schools were named after slave owners. We explore the significance of this possible renaming to the Asian American community and how it would strengthen the inclusion of Asian Americans in the United States.