New organization promotes activism and expression
By Megha Garg
©2005 The Hurricane (University of Miami)
April 26, 2005
A quiet presence on campus has emerged over the past year and a half, slowly
raising its voice. It started with the three-day Screaming Monkeys symposium the
Fall 2003 semester and continued with a number of events for Asian Pacific
American Heritage (APAH) month. It became louder with the Tsunami Open Mic
Marathon in February, where the entire UM community came together to raise money
for the tragedy. Now, Screaming Monkeys is becoming an official organization on
campus to serve as a means for all cultures to express themselves.
"What we want is more than Asian-American involvement," Liz Dy,
president of Screaming Monkeys, said. "We want it to be a club for social
awareness, social activism and artistic expression."
The Screaming Monkeys moniker and movement was initiated in 1998 by an
article in Milwaukee Magazine.
An April 1998 food review referred to a Filipino-African American child as a
"rambunctious little monkey," which happens to be a racial slur dating
back to the Spanish-American War. When the editors of the magazine virtually
dismissed the error, it inadvertently sparked the Screaming Monkeys movement.
M. Evelina Galang, assistant professor in the Department of English, used
this event to compile an anthology of Asian images in America.
"The reason why things like that happen is we don't study a broad
history when we study American history," Galang said. "It's pretty
narrow."
She brought the Screaming Monkeys symposium to UM, with workshops,
discussions and notable figures from the Asian-American community.
"My mission was to introduce the ideas and topics to students at UM by
having the symposium and by bringing in artists and by utilizing spoken word as
a form of expression," Galang said. "Students wanted to learn how to
keep the spark burning and how to make it grow."
The organization intends to work closely with Multicultural Student Affairs (MSA)
and be a part of COISO's United Nations Day and International Week.
"We are trying to make it more organized and formalized," Dy said.
"I'm really excited to work with MSA because it will open more doors for
us."
Screaming Monkeys just wrapped up events for this year's APAH month. Among
them were a screening of Sanjeev Chatterjee's documentary on tsunami damages, a
lecture by Filipina activist Ninotchka Rosca and a forum discussion titled
"I always wanted to be a...", discussing cultural pressures and career
paths.
The final event was a two-day series of spoken-word workshops, "Speak
Out, Asia America," culminating in an open mic performance last Sunday.
Students sat in on various workshops about performance, poetry and expression.
"It gave me a perspective on poetry, something I've never really thought
about. It's not just about rhyming and words. It's a lot more than that,"
Phillip Tran, freshman, said.
Cyd Apellido, a graduate student who was a panelist for the forum and led a
workshop, hopes that the Screaming Monkeys mission extends beyond the
Asian-American community.
"I think it's nice that students of color get together to network with
each other, but that hopefully in the near future the larger UM community can
participate and become more aware," he said.
