This article is part of Mochi Magazine’s summer issue on Art — click here to read the rest of the issue.
Shin Yu Pai knows where to find stories, coaxing them out of obscurity. During the first season of her podcast “The Blue Suit,” she spoke with Asian American guests about the unexpected values and histories that transform commonplace objects into the remarkable. The podcast returned in April, renamed as “Ten Thousand Things,” on the heels of Pai being named Seattle’s latest — and first Asian American — civic poet. In all of Pai’s identities, storytelling shapes her vision and her work.
In the summer of 2021, KUOW-FM (Seattle’s National Public Radio station) invited listeners to pitch podcast ideas. This came after the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol and the Atlanta spa shootings. Pai couldn’t shake the viral image of Congressman Andy Kim from New Jersey cleaning up trash at the Capitol wearing a blue suit .
“I felt very motivated to see different kinds of stories about Asian Americans in the media,” Pai recalled. “Could I figure out a way to tell some of these stories about my [Asian American] community through objects?”
As an artist, Pai was already embedded in a community of artists, many of whom had incredible stories about their work and lives. She contemplated the framework for a broader range of stories about Asian Americans beyond the anti-Asian discrimination and violence that flooded mainstream media. She pitched her idea to KUOW and was among the ones to be piloted and later commissioned for a full season.
The outcome was the first season of “The Blue Suit,” named after Congressman Kim’s suit, which has been donated to the Smithsonian National Museum of American History. Each episode highlights a different guest who talks about a personal object or artifact and the memories around it. A Chinese-English dictionary is no longer an object of utility; it’s an emotional connection to a loved one who has passed…
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