Students rehearse for the upcoming Theater Arts mainstage production of “The Amen Corner,” performed by UC Santa Cruz’s African American Theater Arts Troupe (AATAT). Photo by Jessica Tran.

James Baldwin’s classic play “The Amen Corner” is an investigation of poverty, religion and their effects on African American communities. It presents the story of Margaret Alexander, a church pastor in 1950s Harlem.

The African American Theater Arts Troupe (AATAT) is kicking off their twenty-first season with “The Amen Corner” this weekend at UC Santa Cruz’s Mainstage. The play deals with topics of racial prejudice, sexism and many other issues still prevalent in today’s culture, said assistant director and theater arts major Alana Duvernay.

“We watch the struggles that happen in the African American household, as well as the roles that the church plays in African American life,” Duvernay said. “The play deals with things like family and love and culture, and we watch as [the family] develops a complex relationship with these issues.”

The AATAT is a student-run organization that came together in 1991, under the guidance of Don Williams, the director of the Cultural Arts and Diversity Resource Center. According to its website, AATAT “was formed as a vehicle to create unity, higher visibility and understanding of the African American culture.” The organization is open to all students interested in this mission and it does not require any prerequisite knowledge or experience with acting or dramaturgy.

Williams, who is also the artistic director and producer of “The Amen Corner,” said the UCSC campus and community would benefit from seeing a realistic perspective of African American life. Through presenting this play, he hopes audiences will feel inspired to learn more about the spirit of gospel communities.

“Even if it’s not the faith that you believe in, it’s really about the connection, devotion and positivity that surrounds [gospel] communities,” Duvernay said. “[Don] Williams felt that it was perfect for … when we really just need to uplift each other and love each other and really make each other feel a part of the community.”

Williams helps bring a gospel-oriented play to campus every five years or so, attributing his interest in these plays to his experience working with students who have varying religious backgrounds.

Jessica Jones, AATAT president and member of three years, plays the character Sister Moore in “The Amen Corner.” Through creating and participating in a safe space where people feel comfortable, Jones wants everyone in the AATAT community to be themselves.

“I chose to become involved in this show because I wanted to reconvene with my AATAT family for another year and I wanted to continue to foster that sense of community that we’ve been sharing for 21 years now,” Jones said.

AATAT’s unique program has even been the driving force behind some students’ choice to attend UCSC.

“I’ve had a number of students who have chosen this school because it has an African American theater arts show, which is the only one of its kind in the whole UC system,” Williams said.

Members of AATAT also reach out to the broader Santa Cruz community by visiting high schools and afterschool programs to promote community outreach about their organization and to educate people about their many endeavors.

“I hope that students in the future take advantage of these opportunities and really get involved with productions like this,” Duvernay said. “Not only for their education as theater arts students, or students at this university, but also for the education that comes with being a part of this community. It has been a very beneficial process for all of us.”

The Amen Corner will be at UCSC’s Mainstage Feb. 22–24, the Stevenson Event Center March 1–2 and Seaside’s Oldemeyer Center March 9. UCSC students will receive one free ticket with a valid student ID.

Photo courtesy of The Institute for Humanities Research.

The UC Santa Cruz philosophy department hosted a multicultural conference last Saturday entitled “Free to Universalize or Bound by Culture? Philosophy in a Multicultural Context.”

The event addressed a philosophical inquiry into cultural practice, and was held in the Humanities I building from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.

The conference featured 14 Californian philosophers who gathered before an audience of both students and faculty to engage in collective discourse.

In an interdisciplinary venue like UCSC, assistant professor of philosophy Rasmus G. Winther said he hopes to see multiculturalism in action. Winther organized the event with the support of the philosophy department and the Institute for Humanities Research, and said California has a special role to play in globalized discourse.

“I like the ethics of creativity and I think that’s something that [philosophers] should export,” Winther said. “California can export, not necessarily the idea per se, but more a methodology of negotiating and being creative with ideas.”

Winther said he hoped the conference would serve as a temporary venue for critical interaction where researchers and thinkers from the Bay Area could address issues surrounding multiculturalism in philosophy.

“I’m very passionate about communication and miscommunication and forms of what one might call … cross-cultural violence — both verbally and physically — and how we as thinkers and intellectuals can negotiate a better understanding, and ultimately a peace,” Winther said.

The conference also addressed the question of how philosophers should be responsible in both communicating and justifying their discourse in varying cultural contexts. Carlos Montemayor, assistant professor of philosophy at San Francisco State University said academic philosophers must take questions a step further.

“Take sciences, the basic metaphysical picture, and assume it to be the ultimate reality without any real critical inquiry,” Montemayor said. “A full account of justification can’t just be spelling out norms about proper, good observations or good reasoning.”

Amir Najimi, a statistician and search ads engineer from Google, said that multiculturalism will not withstand the “compartmentalization implied by tolerance,” and in order to get comfortable with our cultural closeness, academia needs “philosophies of engagement.”

“There’s no ‘outside’ anymore,” Najimi said. “It seems people’s ideas, values and cultural artifacts from all over the world are fated to bump into each other, either physically or virtually. In such a society, treading softly around divergent values or keeping respectfully aloof is no longer possible.”

Like many of the philosophers present at the conference, UCSC philosophy professor Daniel Guevara addressed this concern through a method of analytic philosophy.

“Analytic philosophy conceives of philosophy primarily as a form of logic,” Guevara said. “Logic is the most universal thing.”

Helen Longino, the event’s keynote speaker and feminist philosopher at Stanford University, argued for philosophers to abandon the a priori approach — the theoretical deduction approach — and their own subjectivities.

Longino said there is not one correct analysis of knowledge, because there can be no impartial approach to engaging a culture in critical discourse.

“There may be no way to integrate the plurality of approaches … we don’t require that these accounts be consistent one with the other,” Longino said. “So, the pluralist stance that we’re advocating keeps in the forefront the idea that scientific inquiry represents some aspects of the world, but often at the cost of obscuring and even distorting others.”

Winther said academic philosophy is often criticized for inhabiting an “ivory tower,” one he hopes can be broken down to provoke collective, philosophic thought rather than shielding it from public participation.

“This is particularly true for the dominant analytical tradition, which seems to forget that it is, after all, people who are philosophizing,” Winther said. “People are embedded in a body and culture, and live in a confused and rich tangle of feelings, desires, and dreams. Multiculturalism reminds us that all of this needs to be taken into account in philosophizing about the human condition. We must get out of the ivory tower, and perhaps invite others up into it.”

As part of the African Student Union performance of ‘Africa, My Africa,’ members of the organization participate in a fashion show displaying a variety of styles of dress from Africa. Photo by Morgan Grana.

The spicy smell of stewed meat in curry sauce permeated the air. Red, green and yellow fabrics draped around the bodies of young women, contrasting beautifully with the all-white attire of young men. Rhythmic, pulsing, bass-heavy music played in the background.

The scene was set last Friday, when an audience comprised mostly of students almost filled Kresge Town Hall. The African Student Union (ASU) artfully shattered prevailing stereotypes and misconceptions of Africa, African-Americans and the African diaspora through its performance of “Africa, My Africa.”

ASU transformed Kresge Town Hall, bringing the bright colors, inviting tastes and drum-laden sounds of the multicultural African continent to UC Santa Cruz, proving that future ASU events will be a prime setting for cultural experiences you’d be hard-pressed to find anywhere else on campus.

Although the show was advertised to begin at 7 p.m., activities were not underway until about an hour later. The crowd didn’t seem to mind, however, as almost everyone immediately took a place in the long food line, clearly eager to sample the dishes whose smells were hanging enticingly in the air.

The warm smells and richly spiced tastes of curried lamb, sambusas (a staple dish in the Horn of Africa, somewhat akin to an East Indian samosa) and rice with bright green peas strewn over it kept the attendees happy as ASU members buzzed about in their bright and flowing clothes, preparing to give the audience the show they eagerly came to see.

After the audience was finally seated with their bellies full, the room darkened. The sudden pounding of a lone drum sounded off the first half of the performances, which were devoted to recognizing the diversity of life, identity and culture in multiple African nations — nations represented by the 17 ASU members.

The drummer addressed the audience: “Where did it all begin?” The audience members were then exposed to snippets of culture from across the African continent through live musical performances of renditions of songs from Mali and Sudan. The crowd erupted into cheers and ear-splitting clapping at the song’s final note, and a proud motherly voice shouted, “That’s my Shadin!” from the front row, causing the on-stage vocalist to crack a wide, proud grin.

The event continued with spoken word and poetry readings from different ASU members, evoking with their words issues like media portrayal of Africa, the meaning of specific and pan-ethnic African identities, the African diaspora, the struggles of immigrating to the United States, and other important topics that deserve conversation and attention. The speakers’ poetic and passionate words were received by quick, successive snaps from the audience — a common method of showing appreciation and respect to a spoken word poet.

The loudest cheers and sounds of encouragement, however, came during the fashion show. ASU members strutted across the stage in colorful and stunning attire that was representative of several African regions, including Nigeria, Sudan, Ethiopia and others. The models caused the audience to erupt in shouts, hoots, hollers and smiles of appreciation as they two-stepped and shimmied across the stage to the drum-heavy music that accompanied the show. The performers’ clear and emanating confidence reflected the fact that they had been working on the show for three to four months.

The finale continued in a musical vein. Several ASU members, still clad in their cultural attire, performed a dance that they also performed at this year’s Multicultural Festival. The crowd was brought to their feet, clapping furiously as the performers took their final bow.

ASU’s first cultural show, which member Iman Barre hopes will become an annual event, left audience members perhaps a bit more aware about the African diaspora than when they first took their seats. Recently formed as an organization on campus in fall 2011, ASU hopes to thrive for many generations of students to come, and continue to create enlightening, fun and open spaces where diverse cultures can be explored and appreciated.

Illustration by Louise Leong

For me, home smells like garlic, sesame oil and briny vegetables — soups bubbling over stove-top flames and chive cakes crackling in frying pans. The early morning chill rolling in through cracked windows as life starts yawning and rumbling through hallways. Home, for me, has become synonymous with the glow of kitchen lights in the early morning, and the smells and sounds of my grandmother’s cooking: the thud of knives against wooden boards as she slices vegetables, the clang of metal pans and spoons as she concocts meals from memory — no measurements, no hesitation.

There are days when homesickness can only be cured by a bowl of kimchi jjigae. The spicy stew is my madeleine dipped in tea.

My grandmother, a native of South Korea, has been a consistent force in my life and I can’t imagine where I’d be without her. She came to America after marrying my grandfather, a member of the U.S. Air Force. Her first stop was a base in Kentucky — not the ideal location, and not exactly what she imagined when she boarded the plane.

I have tremendous respect and affection for my grandmother. She is resilient and — there is no other word for it — tough. But that doesn’t mean we’ve always seen eye to eye, and a couple of years ago, our relationship was tested. For a few months, we became estranged — something I had never anticipated ever happening, and it was difficult to wrap my mind around the consequences of separating myself from her. But in the end, it forced us to approach our relationship differently. I was no longer a child, and the generational gap was more apparent. I had to approach my grandmother as an adult, and she had to recognize that I was no longer a little girl.

And when things were mended and we were confronted with our now-altered relationship, Korean food became the bridge between us.

It served as a talking point: She’d make something, I’d ask what it was, we’d talk about the food in front of us, and eventually, while we were eating we’d talk about the little things going on in our lives. It segued into the bigger discussions we needed to have. But it also became a way for us to reconnect.

Over the last year, I’ve learned more about my grandmother and her culture and history over plates of noodles and pickled vegetables than I have over a decade of weekend visits. Sharing in food culture has become a way for my grandmother to share things she loves with me, things she thought I wouldn’t have had interest in before.

Even simple trips to grocery stores and Korean markets become a maze of ingredients, possible recipes unfolding in front of us. It becomes another way for my grandmother and I to connect. We can talk about what we like, what we don’t ever want to eat again, and what we should plan for dinner or lunch or breakfast or whatever in-between snack we want.

And there are so many things to explore in a culture’s food alone that it becomes an endless exploration of spices and flavors and textures and stories. Daikon? It can be sliced and served in soup or pickled and spiced and served as a side dish to a steaming bowl of rice. But more than that, it can be the beginning to a story of my grandmother’s memories of my father when he was eight years old.

But all of this — the cooking, the planning, the exploration — that’s not what this really boils down to. I had never realized how much I didn’t know about my grandmother — the little things that really mean so much that she just never wanted to talk about or never felt I’d be interested in, like her transition into life in the United States and the tiny discomforts that accumulate and alienate.

Recently, my grandmother told me about how when she had first come to the United States, she didn’t like American food and eventually, she craved kimchi — that national dish that has come to represent Koreanness — something impossible to find in the average grocery store when she first immigrated here.

Her solution? Try and make it from an assortment of ingredients that are not quite right, but related enough that she could throw together an imitation. In her words: “It was disgusting.”

And although it’s only a little story, an anecdote on the strange little transitions from one culture to another, it’s one she had never mentioned and one that offers me insight into her own experiences. It’s something she would have never mentioned if she hadn’t realized I am interested and I do care and I want to know as much about her and her experiences as I can before I no longer have the option to sit with her, have tea and just talk.

Food culture has become an avenue of communication, an antidote to the cold war that could have lasted between my grandmother and me. Korean food, specifically, has given us something in common and something to share with each other. While my grandmother teaches me recipes and traditions and I stumble through them — the taste usually off, and never quite right — I’m actively seeking out new things to talk about, reading food blogs and cookbooks and anything else that gives me a little insight into the culinary world my grandmother exists in.

When it’s time for us to sit and to eat, she will turn to me and ask, “What is it you want?” And the only right response? “Whatever you like. Something I’ve never had before.”