Asian Joy

An Oral History and Community-Driven Mural Project

Our Why

North Carolina (NC) has one of the fastest-growing Asian American (AA) populations in the United States, and AA have a rich and diverse history here. There’s a lack of recorded history and few spaces where AA can feel collective affirmation and belonging in NC.

We use oral histories and public art as avenues of storytelling to explore the convergence of Asianness, Southernness, and our relationships to joy, community, wellness, and belonging.

Our Process

Read project description here.

July–September 2023
We collect and share, through online public archiving, oral histories of AA of different ethnicities centered on their experiences with well-being and joy.
October 2023–January 2024
We create spaces for community members to connect with each other and share art. We engage narrators in workshops help further develop our mural design, celebrating their histories and stories.
May–June 2024
In collaboration with the City of Raleigh, we are currently installing our mural design in Downtown Raleigh.
July 2024
On July 21, 2024, we held a public celebration and unveiling event at Union Station in Raleigh. We presented an installation of our seven narrators’ oral histories, offered art engagement activities, and led viewings of the mural.

Oral Histories

We collected seven oral histories from AAs across NC, focusing on the Triangle region. Each narrator shared pieces of their stories and journeys, reflecting on connections to spirituality, ancestry, community organizing, and joy. These stories–along with our personal reflections–became the inspirations for the mural design.

You will find audio recordings, transcriptions (coming soon), quotes, and images of each narrator below. Oral histories will also be archived at Southern Mix, a collection of Asian and Asian American oral histories through the Southern Oral History Program at UNC Chapel Hill.

Grace Nichols

(they/them)

READ Grace’s story (coming soon)

“One specific suggestion I have had from another healer who is also from the Philippines and trans is like, if I'm ever feeling ungrounded, eat Filipino food—because it's like, in our DNA and it's a way to bring me back to where I'm most immediately from, in this lifetime.”

Lauren Bullock

(they/them)

READ Lauren’s story (coming soon)

"So my first poem—start at the very beginning—I wrote in kindergarten, and our teacher gave us an assignment: Talk about living in a painting. And I was like, Great! Extended metaphor! I got you. Which is also something that I still love today."

Darany Samountry

(she/her)

READ Darany’s story (coming soon)

“I would make up these strange, like, treasure hunts in the backyard and then creating an entire map for the kids that were younger than me, and then making a whole treasure chest for them with all my old McDonald's toys and putting it in there.”

Ravi Devarajan

(he/him)

READ Ravi’s story (coming soon)

“I got together a few of my friends and I said, let’s form a group that is promoting South Asian talent locally … our organization would be the ones that would produce these things and create a platform that is professional enough for local artists to excel.”

Fianteluz Kuinanialoha “Kui” Rivera

(she/her)

READ Kui’s story (coming soon)

"My adopted mother said, why don't I call my group 'Aloha' since I have so much Aloha in my heart. And 'Ka'naka' means people, since I love people. Name it Aloha Ka'naka. And so I came up with 'Aloha Ka'naka O Hula Halau.'"

N., Asian Joy Narrator

"I'm the one who introduced my parents and my family to brisket. Like, we absolutely love barbecue food, but they also don't like eating it regularly. My mom's like, it gives me heartburn, but I'm like, I want my mac and cheese and my brisket and my banana pudding."

“It’s that quality time together when we go over there or whenever [my parents] watch my kids, they, you know, they also garden. And so they do a lot of gardening together in their little garden. My dad likes to build things, and so he would show my son how to build random things.”

L., Asian Joy Narrator

Community Engagement

Part of our practice in celebrating community and joy has been to hold spaces for people to make and share art, and connect to each other. “Golden Hour” was a public event held at Feature Flora in Raleigh. Community members came to eat, rest, chat, and share ideas for the mural design.

Golden Hour

Storytelling–whether through visual arts, public art, oral histories–can be a powerful tool to advocate for community wellbeing. We’ve been able to engage youth in lectures, workshops, and painting days in partnership with North Carolina Asian Americans Together (NCAAT), Radical Summer Arts Program (RAD Arts), and North Carolina School of Science and Math (NCSSM).

Youth Engagement

Community-Driven Mural

This mural is a small visual snippet of seven Asian American, Pacific Islander, and Native Hawaiian narrators’ lives, and the reflections of the three core members of the ‘Asian Joy’ team. We reflect on art as a manifestation of joy, intergenerational connections to each other, spirituality & ancestry, grassroots activism, and Southernness being our queerness, Asianness, other identities.

The Ten of Cups tarot card symbolizes harmony, peace, and emotional fulfillment in our relationships. When reflecting on the ways that our seven narrators have engaged in their communities, fostered their art practices, and connected with their ancestry, the three of us felt an overwhelming sense of calmness, belonging, and joy.

Together, our ten cups are full.

Ten of Cups

art

〰️

joy & grief

〰️

spirituality & ancestry

〰️

activism

〰️

southerness

〰️

NC landscapes

〰️

food

〰️

art 〰️ joy & grief 〰️ spirituality & ancestry 〰️ activism 〰️ southerness 〰️ NC landscapes 〰️ food 〰️

On July 21, 2024, we held a public celebration and unveiling event at Union Station in Raleigh. We presented an installation of our seven narrators’ oral histories, offered art engagement activities, and led viewings of the mural.

Celebration

Isabel Lu

Isabel is a Chinese American visual artist and health equity researcher born and raised in North Carolina. Isabel studied Western nutritional science as an undergraduate student at Cornell University and then public health and dietetics as a graduate student at UNC Chapel Hill. They were one of the 2023 Emerging Artists-in-Residence at Artspace, where they are now a studio artist.
Ina Liu

Ina Liu, PharmD, MS is the 2022-23 UNC Asian American Center fellow and co-creator of “Plural of Me,” an art platform that uses music, visual art, and oral histories to tell narratives of Asian American women. She has experience in leveraging art for health equity and social justice movements, creating art campaigns for the World Health Organization, National Association of Asian American Professionals, and the National Viral Hepatitis Roundtable organization. She has completed and published research leveraging focus group methodologies, specifically in behavioral health, wellness, and mental health in minoritized communities. Her combined experience in behavioral health research, collecting oral histories, and visual art will support history documentation, community engagement, and art creation.
Sophie To

Sophie Tô, MPH is a field scholar with the Southern Oral History Program (SOHP) and a PhD candidate in Health Behavior at UNC. They study how media, arts, and storytelling can be used to advocate for health equity. Her PhD dissertation will focus on how Asian American comedians, especially in the South, have told stories about racialization/racism, identity, and health during COVID-19. In Sophie’s role at the SOHP, she works on the Southern Mix project, which collects oral histories of Asian Americans in the South. At UNC, Sophie has played active roles in the Minority Student Caucus, Asian American Center, and Carolina Asia Center. Sophie has also been writing news satire for over 10 years, has performed stand-up comedy, and has been a writer for several journalistic publications. Sophie’s experiences as both a storyteller and a researcher collaborating with storytellers will contribute a dual perspective to each phase of this project.