First

ONE of the oldest Chinatowns in the United States has been flourishing in Oakland since the days following the California Gold Rush. Over the years the commercial district has gradually changed to reflect its shifting demographics, with Japanese, Korean, Filipino, and Southeast Asian residents and business owners transforming it into a dynamic pan-Asian community. The Pacific Renaissance Plaza on 9th Street sits in the heart of Chinatown, and its most prominent space holds the Oakland Asian Cultural Center (OACC). That’s where poet Monica Sok asks me to meet her.

On a cool Thursday evening the OACC is hosting a fundraiser for the Asian Prisoner Support Committee (APSC), an organization that aims “to provide direct support to Asian and Pacific Islander (API) prisoners and to raise awareness about the growing number of APIs being imprisoned, detained, and deported.” The event features testimonials by formerly incarcerated men and women as well as a ceremony to honor the Center for Empowering Refugees and Immigrants (CERI), whose mission is to improve the lives of Southeast Asians who have been affected by war, genocide, and other extreme traumas. On this particular evening, the OACC is highlighting CERI’s antideportation activism.

In the midst of the flurry of activity, including a white Chinese dragon following a young woman beating a drum, Sok appears, looking calm and elegant in formal wear. “I’m volunteering tonight,” she informs me. “I won’t really have time to talk much, but I’m glad you’re here.” Sok explains the work that the APSC and CERI are doing in support of the Khmer (Cambodian) people facing deportation and how it has shaped her as writer, so it is important for her to be fully present.

I had expected a much different scenario: perhaps a meeting at Stanford University, where Sok is completing her second year as a Stegner, published by Copper Canyon Press at the end of February. The book takes an unflinching look at the plight of Cambodia during and after the rule of Pol Pot, a leader of the Khmer Rouge communist movement responsible for the Cambodian genocide that killed approximately 2 million people between 1975 and 1979.