Julie Feng standing at a microphone, wearing headphones.

Are We Asking the Right Questions to Our Stories? – Julie Feng

Julie Feng’s project for the 2022 Jack Straw Writers Program is a collection of poems in the framework of the Hakka hill song that layer themes of love, labor, and leisure with themes of deeper cultural contexts. In her conversation with curator Michael Schmeltzer, they delve into Hakka hill songs, centering people’s desires versus centering their traumas, and moving away from stories that reinforce violent constructions. “I want my poems to be like little protest songs in a lot of ways, little riots in some ways.”

Music by Ran Park, produced through the Jack Straw Artist Support Program.