{"id":1784,"date":"2010-05-21T19:06:48","date_gmt":"2010-05-22T00:06:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lanternreview.com\/blog\/?p=1784"},"modified":"2010-05-21T19:33:55","modified_gmt":"2010-05-22T00:33:55","slug":"poetry-in-history-writing-about-the-i-hotel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lanternreview.com\/blog\/2010\/05\/21\/poetry-in-history-writing-about-the-i-hotel\/","title":{"rendered":"Poetry In History: Writing About the I-Hotel"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>
Scene from the 1977 I-Hotel Eviction (Credit: SF Chronicle)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

In celebration of APIA Heritage Month, we\u2019ll be running a special Poetry in History series once a week in lieu of our Friday prompts.\u00a0 For each post in the series, we\u2019ll highlight an important period in Asian American history and \u00a0conclude with an idea that we hope will provoke you to respond. Today’s post is about the fraught history of the International Hotel in San Francisco’s Manilatown.
\n<\/em><\/p>\n

<\/em>In 1977, San Francisco’s Manilatown community suffered a huge blow with the final eviction of the mostly Filipino American residents from the International Hotel (or I-Hotel).\u00a0 This followed\u00a0 almost a decade’s worth of protest and community struggle in the hopes that the building, which had housed many Filipino immigrants throughout the years, would not become yet another victim of the city’s gentrification projects.\u00a0\u00a0 For years after the final residents were removed, the building — and later, the site — stood empty, the hole a yawning reminder of what had been lost.\u00a0 One of the major voices speaking out against the fall of Hotel belonged to the poet, musician, and activist Al Robles. The I-Hotel was a recurring theme that wove throughout his work and took on breath, shape, and life through his poetry.\u00a0 Robles’ nephew wrote the following on the recent anniversary of his death:<\/p>\n

“In the I-Hotel he [Robles] traveled up the stairs and the doors opened to those small rooms; the smell of rice and adobo and fish was there; the face of the manong was there\u2014he knew the face\u2014it was the face of his father and mother and ninong and ninang. He sat across from the manongs and in their faces he saw the motherland, in their hearts and minds he journeyed and tasted what he described the \u201cthick adobo tales of their lives\u201d. Those elderly men were alive and in Uncle Al\u2019s poetry they became young again.” (Tony Robles, “Still Hanging onto the Carabao’s Tail”<\/a>)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The I-Hotel was eventually rebuilt into a community center.\u00a0 The new building, opened in 2005, houses the Manilatown Heritage Foundation and is a hub for political and arts events.\u00a0 Al Robles passed away in 2009, but his legacy continues to be celebrated.\u00a0 Other poets have since followed in Robles’ footsteps, writing about their relationship to the city of San Francisco, and to the “ground zero” that was the I-Hotel site.\u00a0 One such poet is Barbara Jane Reyes, whose poem dedicated to Robles is forthcoming in the first issue of Lantern Review<\/em>. In her book Poeta en San Francisco<\/em><\/a>, Reyes touches on the shape of this wound, invoking the evicted bodies whose physical rootlessness signifies a history fraught with forced erasures and displacements.\u00a0 In her poem “calle de secci\u00f3n ocho, casas de abuelos y de abuelas,” her speaker invites us to enter the hole in the ground where the hotel once stood<\/p>\n

“the unused hole in the ground located at the corner of kearney and
\njackson across from celluloid god’s patina caf\u00e9 may one day contain
\nsupportive tenant services and artifacts of blue men’s billy clubs in the
\nmeantime just gawk at it and take polaroids don’t hold your breath
\nfew descend into the hole it’s been 30 years”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Manilatown itself becomes a ghost with a cavity in place of the organ that was the I-Hotel, which by the end of the poem is revealed to be a type of inverted sanctuary, inhabited by “ghosts and discarded things,” made remarkable for its absence — its existence etched out in the negativity of its space, the way that it tunnels into the earth rather than rises up from it.<\/p>\n

Vince Gotera has also written of the I-Hotel. In his poem “Madarika,”<\/a> (which is written in the voice of a resident of the Hotel), he writes:<\/p>\n

“Remember everything about this room: the smell
\nof old linoleum, the faded curtains,
\nthe bugs. And when your grandkids ask about
\nthe O.T.’s, the<\/em> original manongs,
\nyou tell them how we talked today. Tell them
\nFrancisco Velarde was here. Lolo Panchito was here.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Like Reyes, Gotera returns to the site of the hotel so that, by the end of the poem (excerpted above), we see that the building frames the speaker’s life.\u00a0\u00a0 Gotera, however, not only leads us to excavate the tricky space of memory, but inhabits it, taking on the persona of a manong.\u00a0 For Gotera’s speaker, the I-Hotel is not simply a building — its shape and height, the textures of its walls and furnishings, the things that gave it physical definition — define him <\/em>as well: “This room’s all the home \/ I got,” he says earlier in the poem, and “Look around you. This is all there is.”\u00a0 The act of remembrance, then, becomes almost sacred in light of this: in choosing to remember the building, its individual rooms, the reader or listener participates in the preservation of a community’s historical narratives, working against the vacuum created by the hotel’s destruction.<\/p>\n

For this week’s prompt, here are a couple of exercises inspired by the poetry that has been produced as part of the I-Hotel’s legacy:<\/p>\n

1. Write\u00a0 a poem that centers around the negative space of something that has been physically lost — an erasure, an absence, a black hole, a pit, a wound, or scar in a body.\u00a0 Investigate its textures, making use of the tools of craft (such as form and image).\u00a0 How might that space be envisioned as a kind of world?\u00a0 What new iterations of memory and narrative might entering into that space produce?
\n<\/strong><\/p>\n

2. Write a poem that enacts the preservation of an important voice or event by means of revisiting a geographical location or physical structure.\u00a0 Play with the slipperiness of time: how might that place, as it is remembered, differ from the nature of the place, in the present, and how might the memory of that place have, itself, evolved, over time?
\n<\/strong><\/p>\n

More Resources:<\/span><\/p>\n

Online<\/strong><\/p>\n

Philippine American Writers & Artists, Inc. (PAWA) Site<\/a><\/p>\n

Manilatown Heritage Foundation<\/a><\/p>\n

Manilatown Archival Project<\/a><\/p>\n

Manong Al Robles<\/a> [Tribute site run by the Robles Family]<\/p>\n

Documentary Film<\/strong><\/p>\n

Choy, Curtis.\u00a0 The Fall of the I-Hotel<\/em><\/a>.\u00a0 <\/span>1983 <\/span>(revised 1993 and 2005)<\/span>.
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

Poetry<\/strong><\/p>\n

Returning a Borrowed Tongue: An Anthology of Filipino and Filipino American Poetry<\/em>.\u00a0 Ed. Nick Carbo<\/a>.\u00a0 Coffee House Press, 1995.<\/p>\n

Reyes, Barbara Jane.\u00a0 Poeta en San Francisco<\/em><\/a>.\u00a0 Tinfish Press, 2006.<\/p>\n

Robles, Al. <\/a>Rappin’ With Ten Thousand Carabaos in the Dark: Poems.<\/a> <\/em>University of California, Los Angeles, 1996.<\/p>\n

Fiction<\/strong><\/p>\n

Yamashita, Karen Tei.\u00a0 I-Hotel.<\/em><\/a> Coffee House Press, 2010.<\/p>\n

Historical Print Resources<\/strong><\/p>\n

Habal, Estella. San Francisco’s International Hotel: Mobilizing the Filipino American Community in the Anti-Eviction Movement. <\/em><\/a>Temple University Press, 2008.<\/p>\n

Children’s Literature<\/strong><\/p>\n

Robles, Anthony D. (Ill. Carl Angel) Lakas and the Makibaka Hotel<\/em><\/a>.\u00a0 Children’s Book Press, 2006.<\/p>\n


\n<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In celebration of APIA Heritage Month, we\u2019ll be running a special Poetry in History series once a week in lieu of our Friday prompts.\u00a0 For each post in the series, we\u2019ll highlight an important period in Asian American history and \u00a0conclude with an idea that we hope will provoke you to respond. Today’s post is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0},"categories":[13,316],"tags":[330,311,328,329,44,331],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lanternreview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1784"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lanternreview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lanternreview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lanternreview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lanternreview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1784"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/www.lanternreview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1784\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1798,"href":"https:\/\/www.lanternreview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1784\/revisions\/1798"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lanternreview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1784"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lanternreview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1784"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lanternreview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1784"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}