Hear me roar Issue #26

Chicago-based arts program YAWP! helps Asian teens shout their stories from rooftops

By Beverly Mendoza
Published: December 1st, 2005 | 2:36pm

“I too am not a bit tamed, I too am untranslatable / I sound my barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world,” wrote Walt Whitman in his poem “Song Of Myself.”

Husband-and-wife team Marlon Esguerra and Anida Yoeu Esguerra, who are involved in the Asian American Arts Collective among other organizations, apply the same philosophy to their newest project. YAWP! (Young Asians With Power) is a school, a space, and a way of blending the Esguerras’ passions for activism, teaching, and art in a safe and inspiring environment.

The workshops meet during summer at the Cambodian Association of Illinois in Chicago. There, students between the ages of 13 and 19 integrate personal histories and the histories of their culture, pinpoint the stereotypes, the oppression, and the sources of their pain, and learn to express themselves through art. “What I want these students to take away from this experience is that everyone has a story to tell and they are the only ones that can tell their own stories,” Anida says. “If they are the artists in their family, they must tell [the family’s] stories as well.”

Marlon realized the need for a program like YAWP! after teaching at an alternative school and seeing a group of Filipino students get sent to a juvenile detention center. “I started researching the dropout rates for Asian kids — around 30% in city schools,” he says. “It was then when I knew there was this urgency.”

The turning point for Gates Millennium Scholarship recipient Rominna Villaseñor occurred at a YAWP! workshop. “We were asked to count how many Asians you can catch on TV and how we are represented,” she recalls. “That exercise was really powerful. It made me start to question what’s out there. It made me aware.”

This is only one of many testimonials for the igniting power of YAWP! To keep the program going, they have started the 100X100 Initiative with the goal of finding 100 people to donate $100 each. The Esguerras hope to eventually open a charter school. “In the long term,” Anida says, “I want YAWP! to sustain itself, to live longer than its founders.”

Visit thecollectivechicago.org/yawp for more information.