NOW Live from the Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center

Hello! My name is Camille Cabalo and I am 2010’s fall Sogi Fellow at the Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Program. I am currently a senior at the University of Hawai`i at Mānoa and I plan to graduate in May 2011 with a Bachelor of Arts and Sciences in Ethnic Studies.

Within Ethnic Studies, my work has focused on the Asian American experience. In the summer of 2009 through the Moore Undergraduate Research Apprentice Program (MURAP) and under the guidance of Dr. Jennifer Ho, I completed a research paper exploring the experimental initiative to import Chinese laborers onto the American southern plantations post-Emancipation and why it failed.

While at the Smithsonian, I have assumed multimedia duties until I depart in the middle of December. I am also currently working on a research project to explore identity construction amongst Asian American spoken word artists in the DC and surrounding East Coast area. I explore different concepts of cultural memory, stereotype resistance, memorialization, racial grievances, cultural visibility, imagined community, articulating Asian femininity, inter-generational conflict, diasporic communities, and cultural memory. I have been blessed to work and interact with SULU DC, Kollaboration DC, and artists Jenny C. Lares, Alexander Cena, Kelly Zen-Yie Tsai, Michelle Myers, and Marco Mercado. Their interviews and sharing of poetry and performance have shaped and redefined my research to extend toward scopes beyond those first proposed.

From the bottom of my heart I wish to thank Sarah and Francis Sogi, the Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Program, and UHAA-NCRC for both facilitating my stay here and creating for me, a home away from home in Washington D.C.