Brandon Baker:

Welcome to Penn Today's Understand This. I'm your host, Brandon Baker. The 2021, '22 academic year marks the Wolf Humanities Center's formal migration, spotlighting stories of migration and asking questions around the patterns and directions of migration through the lens of the human entities. Writes, the center, in its statement of intent for the forum, "The economic, political, and cultural formations of the modern world rest on the mass movement of people from one place to another.

Brandon Baker:

Migrants, forced and voluntary, documented and undocumented, domestic and international, permanent and temporary, have transformed the character of modern geopolitical boundaries, nation states, cities, and civilizations. Furthermore, our contemporary era is defined by unprecedented levels of global migration with more people than ever living outside their place of birth."

Brandon Baker:

With this in mind, we set out today to explore migration in the arts, that is immigrants relationship with art, its impact as a humanizing force, and how it gives people agency. Joining to discuss these themes and more, are Shelley Zhang, a Ph.D. Candidate in ethnomusicology and a Wolf Humanities graduate fellow, and Obed Arango, a lecturer in the School of Social Policy and Practice and founder and director of CCATE, a Norristown based nonprofit that empowers the Latinx community through a variety of programs related to the arts, languages, sports and wellness.

Brandon Baker:

All right. Welcome to you both, how are you doing this morning?

Obed Arango:

Very well. Happy to be here, brother.

Shelley Zhang:

Doing well. Thank you.

Brandon Baker:

Cool. So I want to start with some brief introductions. Obed, could you explain the work you do with CCATE? So going through what it is, how you got involved, and your personal connection to the work that you do.

Obed Arango:

Well, yes, I am the founder and executive director of the Centro de Cultura, Arte, Trabajo, y Educación, CCATE, or center for culture, art and education. And it's a space that the Latinx immigrant community in Norristown created to actually to flourish in every aspect of life, whether it's arts, environmental care, education, after school program, adult classes, so many type. And I can share more during the conversation.

Brandon Baker:

Yeah, sure. Shelley, could you also introduce yourself and what your work focuses on?

Shelley Zhang:

Yeah. First I want to say, Obed, I have so much respect for the work that you do. I am a Ph.D. student at Penn, and I'm in the music department in a program called Ethnomusicology. And I work on the generation of Chinese only children who have pursued elite music studies in classical music.

Shelley Zhang:

And so after the Cultural Revolution, thinking about the intergenerational effects of that, together with really broad changing policies and issues of migration and what it means to immigrate to North America as very young adults, or even as teenagers.

Brandon Baker:

So the two of you actually met already through Wolf Humanities, is that correct?

Shelley Zhang:

Yes.

Obed Arango:

Yes. I have to mention that I am also instructor here in SP2, in the School of Social Policy and Practice, and I teach social policy in the Latinx community and also qualitative research with the element of participatory action research. Therefore, talking about Ethnomusicology, I am very familiar as an anthropologist how this elements of ethnicity, participation as communities can actually be very transformative and it can carry many of the generations and traditions.

Shelley Zhang:

Yeah. I went to a round table that Obed was speaking on at Wolf. I'm one of the graduate fellows there this year, and it's been a really great experience, especially getting to hear people from different fields but who are doing such inspiring work. That was a nice early introduction.

Brandon Baker:

And you both have connections to Wolf Humanities, can you explain what those are?

Obed Arango:

Well, I was recently invited to present on the topic of immigration, and I share on this panel. It was about three weeks ago, and it was a wide panel where we address immigration in Philadelphia. Therefore, we address it from law, from counter narratives, saying that who we are not, the immigrants, and who we are. And I was say able to share from the Latinx perspective. Therefore, I was very grateful and I was very glad to share with the Wolf Humanities.

Shelley Zhang:

Yeah. And as I mentioned, I'm a graduate fellow there this year. And what that is, is a really interesting interdisciplinary space where the graduate fellows, they're two of us, and we're the most junior. And then they're the postdocs and the professors of different ranks. And we all share work each week and we get to have these conversations, get perspectives from different disciplines. And for me, finishing up my Ph.D., it's been such a great space to learn, to have a weekly thing to bring me into community while I just dissertate mostly on my own.

Shelley Zhang:

And the Wolf Humanities Center is also a co-sponsorship of an event that I'm putting on in a couple weeks on April 2nd, and that is called Li Delun in Philadelphia, Ethnography, Archives, and Music Across the Pacific. It's a public symposium, a recital and a pop-up exhibit that grew out of my dissertational work and was a creative dream that took life, and a lot of people came to co-sponsor it.

Shelley Zhang:

So I can talk more about that afterwards, but the Wolf thing dissert is on migration. A lot of my work is really connected to that. And also personally, I'm an immigrant from China who immigrated to Canada, and I'm now doing my Ph.D. studies in United States.

Brandon Baker:

Yeah. So you mentioned that the Wolf humanity Center's theme this year's migration. And I was thinking about this and it occurred to me that a lot of us probably have a different relationship with that word. So I guess, I was curious to hear from you two as maybe an icebreaker question, what you think of whenever you hear that word, migration, or what comes to mind.

Obed Arango:

Existence. One of the things that I have been working on through the years as an anthropologist is on the team of [foreign language 00:06:36] or immigrant village, which I define as a group of people that is changing the place of living. It can be a country or it can be to cities today, and inhabits in a physical space but in the space of non-existence.

Obed Arango:

Most of the immigrants, especially from Latin America to the United States, we are here, we work, but we don't exist for the system. And that cry, that shout for me is loud, but still for the system is not listened. Therefore, for me, when I hear about the word migration, it comes to me the word existence. We want to exist, then we create the spaces to exist.

Shelley Zhang:

Yeah. That really resonates with my thoughts as well. I think, oftentimes when we think first about migration, you can think that's a very exciting thing, a very beautiful thing, a group of people, a flock of birds, and that once you migrate and arrive somewhere, that's the end of the story, you've reached your goal.

Shelley Zhang:

But I think we see now with the Ukrainian crisis, our friends from there who are now... some of whom are in migration now, it's not just getting somewhere. There's so much friction that comes in precarity and trying to find a life once you are there. And so, in my work and the things that I'm interested in, I think it's really trying to humanize, understand what the human experiences of migration are. Not just the movement, but once you're there to still be moving and to be creating a life. It's really difficult.

Shelley Zhang:

And there are beautiful in a sense moments to that, where you make new connections and it can be a good thing to have new horizons in a sense. So not to be too Debbie Downer about it on a podcast, but the reality is it's also extremely difficult. And I think people often forget about the people who arrive and what happens after the arrival in a sense, that's usually not the end of a sentence.

Brandon Baker:

Yeah. The migration, I mean, it's not something with a closed loop, it keeps going too. I mean, even for you, it sounds like you... So you migrated to Canada and then to here, so it keeps going.

Shelley Zhang:

Keeps going.

Brandon Baker:

So what was that like for you?

Shelley Zhang:

Well, I grew up in Toronto and I arrived there when I was... just before I was two. And so, really most of my memories are living there and I had a very... I felt strong that I was a Torontonian and I knew the city very well. And in a way, coming to Philadelphia, it was such a different city, a very warm and gritty city, friendly, but gritty.

Shelley Zhang:

And in a sense, I didn't quite expect to spend as my time here as I did, but I think things are always moving and changing in migration, new things happen. COVID happened, politics have changed greatly in both countries. And so, I think I'm not completely sure how much more I will be migrating, especially finishing up a Ph.D. program.

Shelley Zhang:

But I think for myself, I've come to embrace that more. And through my program, I've been able to also spend a year living in Beijing, China, and to do a lot of research there, to make new friends there and see a lot of my family who still live there. And so, migration has been a strong part of my life and a lot of the friends and people in my life. So I think it definitely opens up different perspectives and there are pros and cons to it, I suppose.

Brandon Baker:

Yeah. And then you came from Mexico, so what was that experience like for you?

Obed Arango:

Well, yes. I am an immigrant from Mexico. And also in my family, I will say that I am the second experience of migration. My grandparents immigrated from Fukuoka, Japan, to Mexico. My full name is Obed Arango Hisijara. Therefore, my grandparents are actually Japanese and they migrated between the two world wars.

Obed Arango:

And I remember the stories of them saying arriving to Mexico, being one of the few Japanese families in Mexico during hard times. Therefore, I grew up in a house where migrant stories were always present. And then later in life, I became an immigrant from Mexico to United States. And as an anthropologist, it was for me, very interesting to see how the element of immigration, well, first it has always exist since humanity has exist.

Obed Arango:

Migration always happens, and many times can happen for many reasons. Sometimes it's disaster, sometimes it's famine, sometimes it's war, sometimes it's because dreams or because desire to change. However, today we're experiencing migration very much because operation and very much because there is a system that is mobilizing millions of people around the world.

Obed Arango:

According to the Humanity Index report of the United Nations, between the year 2000 and 2020, 221 million people changed countries. And that has been the time in history of more migration in all history of humanity. Therefore, we are present right now at this time, perhaps in the most difficult time for immigrants around the world, whether it's from Africa to Europe. Today, well, with Ukraine to other countries in Europe, from Latin America to North America, and happening in many places.

Obed Arango:

Therefore, one of the first things is that last year I had the opportunity to travel to Peru and to Colombia. And I listened a very similar discourses from Peruvians and Colombians about Venezuelan immigrants in a negative way, just as strong, many times criminalizing immigrants for Latin American in United States.

Obed Arango:

Therefore, it was for me, very interesting to see how the criminalization of the immigrant, it works as a scapegoat for a nation about the difficult times that they are passing and the scapegoat becomes the immigrant. Therefore, that dehumanizing image, that wrong narrative is something that is very concerning because affects millions of people.

Obed Arango:

Therefore, in my years here in the United States, I realized that to study, to research, it was not enough. For me, always knowledge needs to be emancipatory, for me knowledge needs to be something that we can do collectively in which everybody can learn, everybody can teach. And as immigrants, we have tremendous talents and tremendous cultural wealth to share.

Obed Arango:

Therefore, we can change our narratives. And that is when it came the time for me, with a group of friends to create this wonderful space that is CCATE, in which practically is a place where we can dream as immigrants and explore everything. That is why we say, all the knowledge of the world from everyone to everyone. And from there, we want to create a counter space that can create counter narratives, that way we can human ourselves. And I can go more in detail of the things that we do, but I don't want to take too much of the time because I want to also to listen about from the perspective of Ethnomusicology and the things, how you connect that with migration.

Shelley Zhang:

Well, I am also, I've received a lot of anthropology training at Penn, and I think what you were seeing really makes me think about how important it is to share stories from actual people. My family, my parents were able to immigrate after the Tiananmen Square massacre. They weren't at the demonstrations, but Canada opened up immigration to researchers at that time. And my father was a researcher.

Shelley Zhang:

And the aura in China at that time was if you can get out in the late '80s, early '90s, really early '90s, then you should go. So we took that chance. And I grew up surrounded by immigrants of all different places in Scarborough, Toronto on the east end and learning from people from other children, what their perspectives of Toronto were, or of each other.

Shelley Zhang:

When people immigrate, a lot of times what you think of your neighbors from where you came from, all those biases travel with you and then become part of the diaspora community. And so, there's so many different layers to growing up in migration. But I think growing up in that and then realizing, I know some of these stories and I know what it's like to hear a lot of incomplete sentences from people in the Chinese diaspora.

Shelley Zhang:

Migration, it can be very traumatic and the way people sometimes talk about it is to not talk about it or to give half a sentence about it, or half a sentence of what led them to immigrate. And growing up and realizing, I want to know more about these stories about what happened in China, for not just my own family, but people in other provinces. And I want other people to understand, and I was a classically trained pianist and I was doing historical research. It's like, we're not in the history books, Chinese artists, Asian artists, Asians migrating to other places, such as Latin America, there's so little conversation about that, even though if you're living it, you know it.

Shelley Zhang:

And realizing in North America, in the Western way of knowledge and learning, print is so important. And if you're not in the books, people just forget about you or they think that you just weren't ever there.

Shelley Zhang:

And so thinking, "What can we do? What can I do in different ways through creative ways still to try to mediate that, or to at least write the things that I wish I got to read." Because I got to a point where I was like, "I can't find writing about why there's such a phenomenon of Asian musicians, or about what it's really like from the immigrant experience tied with artistic production." And so, finally I was like, "Well, if I can't find it, maybe I can try and write some of it and maybe some people will help me along the way."

Brandon Baker:

Yeah. So how was it that music ended up being your mode of study in a way?

Shelley Zhang:

Well, I think when I was choosing, I mean, I think at 17, when you have to choose what you want to do the rest of your life, that's so young. And I have so much sympathy now for teenagers making those choices themselves. I think at that point, piano was just something I wasn't ready to stop doing, music was not something I was ready to put on pause or to... It's like a sport, if you're not training regularly, if you're not practicing regularly, your skill really declines.

Shelley Zhang:

And so, I auditioned for the University of Toronto's Faculty of Music, which is one of the top music schools in Canada. They will say they are the top, and that was my perception going in. And I got to study with Boris Lysenko, who is this incredible pianist from Leningrad. He used to be the chair of piano at Leningrad and the vice president of Leningrad Conservatory.

Shelley Zhang:

And it was such a dream to study with him. He passed a few years ago, but I did not want to lose that opportunity to study with someone who immigrated himself during the time of the USSR's decline. And that's when Toronto and New York, the musical scene, the artistic scene really strengthened so much because so many musicians from Eastern Europe immigrated in the '80s, particularly.

Shelley Zhang:

And I started doing historical research on Central European music, studying the interwar period, musicians who had to migrate because of the Holocaust and what happened in the Second World War. And I really enjoyed that, I really developed my historical skills and it was such a privilege to read music, to play music, to compose music, have my everyday weekly life be consumed by music and to be around other people who are so talented.

Shelley Zhang:

But then, I was just thinking like, "I'm not in what I'm studying." And there are so many East Asians who are in conservatories who we're funding conservatories tuition wise, and we're in concert halls audiences. But the way people talk about us and the way that they read us and orientalize us, it's not usually flattering. And if there's a blurb somewhere in a textbook about us, I just really felt like I was not being represented the way that I felt was accurate or kind, or it wasn't given enough consideration.

Shelley Zhang:

And so, I took some time off. I went back to China, stayed with my family. I did research and I really shifted what I was studying and rebuilt some things. But it's been a great experience, especially being able to have conversations with people, with other musicians who are able to acknowledge a lot of similar things, have similar experiences. And also as performers, have similar thoughts, like we're not being talked about, reviewers are not writing about us in humanizing ways. But what can we do when the perception is, "You should just perform, you're lucky to be here. You're on the stage to play, not to talk."

Brandon Baker:

Yeah. Obed mentioned the dehumanization of immigrants. And I guess, I wonder what your perspective is on how the arts in particular and music in particular lends itself so well to doing the work of humanizing people who are otherwise not.

Shelley Zhang:

Yeah. I don't want to talk too much, but-

Obed Arango:

No, it's been interesting actually, what you're sharing because again, our presence is not recognized and the narrative is imposed. The way, how we are perceived, for example, the Latinx immigrants is not who we are. And then the [inaudible 00:21:55] that we have, at least in CCATE is, "No, we want to say who we are. We want to say who we want to be."

Obed Arango:

And the game of assimilation is so difficult actually and so painful, because the concept of the American dream and the concept of what it means to be Americans, it means many times to reject who you are and to become the expectation or the cartoon of Disney, in which, you can be Latino or you can be Asian, or you can be from your background, if you accommodate yourself in this idea of the middle upper class White America.

Shelley Zhang:

And can only be one, you're Latinx or you're Asian. But not thinking, what if people coming from multiple backgrounds? That blows people's minds.

Obed Arango:

Exactly. Like in my case, in which, I treasure deeply my heritage as a Japanese descendant and I treasure deeply my Mexican Latin American background. Therefore, those elements, that intersectionality, it challenge the idea of what it means to be in this country.

Obed Arango:

Therefore, that element of assimilation, people do not realize how oppressive is for the immigrant. One of the things that, if I can, I would like to share is about how immigrants actually shape life here in United States. Let me give you the example, one story. This is Mariana. Mariana is a immigrant from Mexico. Brilliant woman. In her life, she had only the opportunity to go to two years to school until second grade. She's a Campesina, a farmer, but at CCATE, she's maestra, she's a teacher.

Obed Arango:

She's so wise in the understanding of the land and agriculture that she can plant 150 different plants in her yard. She can even grow papaya during the winter inside home. Therefore, she's really an agronomist with deep understanding of the soil and the earth and the plants, that she's teaching at CCATE environmental justice. She's teaching at CCATE agriculture, she's teaching at CCATE gardening. And for us, she's our maestra.

Obed Arango:

Therefore, many times the idea that we have of immigrants is as, we are only here to work or to do what we had to supposed to do. As you mentioned, you are musicians, you are lucky to be here to perform. No, we have a life, we have talents, we have identities. We have the intersection of many identities and we have knowledge to share, and we have ways to transform social reality.

Obed Arango:

Therefore, the case of Mariana and I can use... And she is only one case, but at CCATE, maybe we have more than 300 cases like that. That's why at CCATE, we have 45 different workshops every year. And we have about 60 instructors from which 39 are parents or teenagers of CCATE from their own talents, teaching what they know, the knowledge that they have.

Obed Arango:

Therefore, that element to exist, to humanize our narratives only can happen when we have the space to be and to exist. And that is what we pursue in CCATE. CCATE is not a social service agency. We are a social transformation movement in which we want as immigrants to narrate our stories, to put our talents and to transform.

Obed Arango:

We're pursuing some legislative action changes, for example, on education. We're pursuing some changes on how we are perceived into the state and in the local authorities. We do participatory action research. We have a group of parents that do participatory action research on education. We have another group that do participatory action research on health. Understanding what are the most pressing needs on health, is community research in the community?

Obed Arango:

We have a participatory youth action research who are researching about school funding, and understanding how a school districts of people of color will minoritize communities live have less school funding. And just like that, this is the presence of immigrant communities, and that is what we are living every day at CCATE.

Brandon Baker:

And now a quote break. Wolf Humanity Center, guest speaker Viet Thanh Nguyen, in his Pulitzer Prize winning novel, The Sympathizer wrote of his nameless protagonist mother and her imparted words of wisdom that would carry with him in his journey as a migrant living with multiple ethnic identities. She said, "Remember, you're not half of anything, you're twice of everything."

Shelley Zhang:

CCATE is doing such incredible work. And I think what you said, it reminded me that, to Brandon's question, immigrants and those in the arts are expected to be grateful, are expected to be high achieving. And I think similar to the things brought up, that can be very oppressive.

Shelley Zhang:

The thought that maybe the work that we want to create, the artistic work that we want to create, the music we want to play, maybe it's not going to be appealing to some people, maybe it's not going to fit into normal standards of beauty. Do we get the freedom and the flexibility to do that? Do we get to create what we want?

Shelley Zhang:

Wolf recently had the incredible artist [inaudible 00:28:26], and she was presenting her work, which for me, when I first encountered it was so different, it was so visceral. It really explored images of the female body. And she was saying, she did what she wanted to do. And she knew she had her talent, she was so confident in that and letting people accept what she created, how she wanted to create it.

Shelley Zhang:

And for me, something as... It seems simple, but so powerful. And what I said before, about how if you can be of different ethnic backgrounds that might blow people's minds, that taps into all these demographics forms that we fill out and just the really silent ways that we're taught what to expect.

Shelley Zhang:

Sometimes you can only tick off one box. There have been times where I've been stuck on a form where it says, are you Asian American, or are you Chinese? Just even those simple things where I'm like, "Well, I am Asian Canadian, I'm also Chinese. And I don't think of those things as separate." And even that can be hard to reconcile, nevermind for someone who has different identities from further geographies or of different diversities.

Shelley Zhang:

I just watched the movie Turning Red, which was made by Domee Shi and she's from Toronto. It's a Pixar film. And it's exploring this teenage Chinese Canadian girl who is starting to crumble under having to be perfect all the time, having to get A pluses all the time.

Shelley Zhang:

And all this connects to these wonderful things going on at Wolf and at Penn recently where they have had the author, Viet Nguyen also come and speak. And he was saying like, "Can we be mediocre? Can we just exist be able to relax and not have to be high achieving, but to have the opportunity to fail and not have people get really angry about that?" Not just families, but society being like, "That's not how you're supposed to act."

Shelley Zhang:

And so a lot of the musicians that I talk to, interlocutors who I've been speaking with for years and I'm friends with now, a lot of times, well, almost all the time they want to be anonymized in part because they're sharing difficult stories about immigrating as teenagers. They are dependent on scholarships from schools. They don't want any schools or orchestras or performance venues to think that they are ungrateful, or to think less of them because they might have had a hard time.

Shelley Zhang:

And I think that speaks so much to how precarious it feels to be someone in what seems to be so elite, like classical music to be on stage. But you have to make sure that you don't upset the wrong people because you're worried that, what if they take away that opportunity for you, to not just do what you love, but to have income, to have employment for your visa and things like that?

Shelley Zhang:

And I think, particularly for performing on stage, that presents a whole other spectacle of what... There's expectations for you to be a spectacle. People go not really to hear you, but to see you. And sometimes when you read music reviews, they're commenting on what they see, not only the quality of performance, but...

Shelley Zhang:

The famous pianist Yuja Wang performed in Vancouver. I think it was in 2020 after she was really harassed by airport officials, Canadian officials at Vancouver International Airport. That was during the height of COVID when there was incredible anti Asians ethnophobia, anti-Chinese ethnophobia, and they detained her and they questioned her.

Shelley Zhang:

It seemed like it was implied it was because she's a Chinese national, even though she grew up in Canada and the US, and she went on stage wearing sunglasses because she had cried for hours after that and then still showed up to perform a full recital. And the reviews were like, "How dare she wear sunglasses, how dare she do that? She didn't smile at people, she was so rude." No comment about how she played. And the defenses were, "She did smile at people."

Shelley Zhang:

But why is the expectation and the focus on this pianist, this one of the world's best pianist, whether or not she smiled at someone? This Chinese Asian woman smiling at people, that's whether or not she gets accepted on the concert stage. And she wore sunglasses, unusual, but they could have said, "She's a rock star, she wore sunglasses and did a piano recital." And instead it was like, "She did not perform like she was supposed to, her manners were not right." So I think, thinking about music and arts, to immigrants, to people who are diverse or have minority get to be different, get to break molds or get to have that flexible to wear sunglasses if they were incredibly harassed prior to their recital.

Brandon Baker:

Right. Wolf Humanities also had Viet Thanh Nguyen this week.

Shelley Zhang:

Right. That was on Wednesday. Yeah.

Brandon Baker:

Yeah. And he spoke about some reviews of his novel, The Sympathizer and how there was a critique about out the authenticity of some of the characters. And his rebuttal was, "Well, who decides that?"

Shelley Zhang:

Right. People telling him-

Brandon Baker:

If we keep recreating these models, then how does anybody ever break out of it, so it's then the boxes are just static.

Shelley Zhang:

Yes. And it was-

Brandon Baker:

So she needs to wear the sunglasses.

Shelley Zhang:

Usually, I think most artists would've canceled a performance if their eyes were red and swollen, right?

Brandon Baker:

Interesting.

Shelley Zhang:

But she didn't want to cancel on people who had bought tickets to see her, probably waited forever. Her tickets sell out like crazy. She's the hot, sorry, not to use a word that has sexual connotations that are often applied her as well. But she is one of the most famous pianist on the planet and often revered as the best living pianist, if that can be judged in a sense.

Shelley Zhang:

But going back to what Viet Nguyen said, I remember that comment where he was like, somebody had said that his characters weren't Vietnamese enough or something like that. They were proper Vietnamese characters in the book, and he was like, "Who gets to tell me that?" And he made a funny comparison, "Nobody said of Moby Dick that he wasn't enough of wherever he came from." Whereas the critique of his is like, "Well, you didn't fit into a box." And he's like, "How do you get to tell me what Vietnamese people should be like, and why is there only one box for that?"

Brandon Baker:

Right. And this idea of multitudes too, that he brought up and this idea of which you both touched on earlier about, you can be from Mexican heritage and also be from Japanese heritage and you shouldn't be forced to be like, "You need to be one," because you're all of these things together.

Obed Arango:

Exactly. One of the things that I would like to go deeper is about, how do we define things? At CCATE we live the art. Art has been, for us, it's not only an activity. For us, art has been the most important element to narrate, to change things, actually to challenge the systems. Therefore, when art is defined in one way or the statics of art is defined in one way. I will use two big words, one is epistemology and ontology.

Obed Arango:

We had a tendency to say this is knowledge, but this is not, or this is the identity, but this is not. At CCATE we say, "No, knowledge, it can come in many different ways and from many different information and backgrounds and people, and experiences." Therefore, what we do at CCATE is that epistemological challenge, and we do it through the expression of many arts.

Obed Arango:

You don't need to have the title, you don't need to have a certain degrees, but actually we recognize the many artists that we have in the community. And we have produced from that, we have produced murals, we have produced music. Right now, for example, we have a connection between a bio remediation of the soil, planting flax and then the flax become lemon, and then it's used also as a tool in their programs.

Obed Arango:

Therefore, right now actually we are connecting many different disciplines instead of setting water is H2O, or water is in poetry. No, we actually connect everything. Therefore, at CCATE, we are challenging only one way to see things, but we recognize the many ways how things can be seen, especially when immigrants we come from all these many experiences. Therefore, art has been, I will say in CCATE the most important action, activity, practice that we do every day.

Obed Arango:

The other thing that we have been doing also very strong, it has to do elements of filmmaking and the return to analog photography, for example. We want to have a pause, we want to have a time to reflect, to think, to observe, to capture. It's fantastic to see kids from nine years old to 16 years old developing the film, observing instead of going Instagram, Instagram, Instagram, but actually observing, thinking, developing, painting. And giving that pause to reflect on life, to reflect on the situation of the town, to reflect in their own lives, to reflect in the collectivity and in the life that we live as immigrants and in the challenges that we have.

Obed Arango:

We have done few murals, one for the University of Villanova, it was called Social Movement of Mexico. And right now with CLALS here at Penn Latin American studies, we are working on a new mural, designing a new mural for them. And therefore, just I wanted to mention that because yes, when it comes to Marisol music, many times is from certain dominant community defining what is it and then expecting that we have to perform in the ways how they expect. However, we have to open ourselves to understand if we want to make justice and to have a work that can free communities. We have to think in that openness of, in epistemological and ontological ways.

Brandon Baker:

Yeah.

Shelley Zhang:

Right.

Brandon Baker:

So in closing, I like to ask what gives you hope? And I realized not everyone has an optimistic lens and willingness to have hope, but I like to at least ask the question. So I guess, I would wonder what gives you hope in this moment about how we talk about immigration in this country?

Shelley Zhang:

That's a tough question. I'm not too sure how to answer that right now, because as someone who... I'm still on a visa. I just applied for a new one, as I'm getting ready to graduate. I'm not too sure for this country as I'm still getting to learn about it. But I hope that in considering art and immigration, art can be so powerful and so meaningful, and to also be able to let people engage in art separate from their identities.

Shelley Zhang:

So it's not just, "Oh, because she's Chinese, she's a musician or she's a classical musician." "Or that because they're Latinx immigrants, they're going to find artistic ways to express themselves because there aren't anything else." But to also acknowledge, "Maybe people do it because they just love it, and they want to do it and they get to have that want and they get to pursue that desire." And so to give people that agency separate from just being an immigrant, so that immigrant isn't the identity marker in a sense, but that the person gets to choose and to do what is really meaningful to them.

Obed Arango:

Is a very good question, Brandon. What gives me hope I will say is [foreign language 00:41:00], the community. At CCATE, we say [foreign language 00:41:06], long life to the community. I believe that this in that collectivity, in which we have created many paths in which we can exist the situation of the immigrant community, especially for Latin America in the United States, we are talking about 11 million undocumented that has not a document to protect them, driver license to drive, or to open a bank account or just simply to go to the doctor.

Obed Arango:

Therefore, the fragility of the immigrant communities there. However, in that difficult reality that can look hopeless and which that's why we are marching and working towards immigration reform. In the midst of that, we find hope in [foreign language 00:41:56]. Because what I have learned is, that community living in those conditions or disadvantage and oppression, it has found ways to actually extend themselves to open paths, to create spaces, to create solutions, to influence and to transform.

Obed Arango:

I see it every day, just every day in CCATE. I used to see it every day in CCATE. It brings me hope and it brings me strength, and it brings me an honor to be part of that community. I had the privilege to have documentation. I had the privilege to teach in an Ivy League school. But that privilege, it should not be for me to position it myself on the top, no, it should be for me to be with my brothers and sisters, walking with them, be humble there and to serve in the ways as they want me to serve, and that gives me hope.

Obed Arango:

The way how I live every day, the immigrant community is through the many lessons. They are my teachers, they are my maestras. The children, the parents, the grandmothers, all of them are my teachers, and that gives me hope. And I am just so blessed, so humble to be part of that community. And the best that I can do is to share who I am and what I have.

Shelley Zhang:

I will add. I do hope that there is immigration reform soon. It's so overdue and people who are immigrants or migrants like the thought that there is such movement, sometimes the right or the ability to move is taken away from them because of documentation issues. And thinking of how states or municipalities will claim a person for their art, for their gifts, claim them as American, as US based, based on their talents, but then to deny rights, the right to move how you want to, the right to earn money, how you want to be able to have a paycheck easily. So I do sincerely hope that there is immigration reform soon. I know it's in the conversation a lot and politics a lot and things like that, but I hope that translates to actual action and transformation.

Obed Arango:

And I would like, I don't know if this will be extemporary or not, according to when this will be transmitted. But May 1st, most immigrants of Philadelphia and surroundings we are organizing ourselves and CCATE is part of this group is called Elparo, May 1st at 11:00 AM in Independence Hall. We are gathering there to ask for immigration reform.

Obed Arango:

And from there, we'll March to Street Nine in South Philly to celebrate our presence as immigrants. Then is not only a rally asking immigration reform, but also celebrating our presence. Therefore, I want to invite everyone who is listening this to come with us on Independence Hall, May 1st at 11:00 AM.

Brandon Baker:

Thank you both for joining and for your insights and candidness, appreciate it.

Brandon Baker:

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