ArtsXCommunity
A collection of the work I've done working with various international communities through art.
Hibakusha PoetryXNuclear Education
Translating hibakusha testimony to English-speaking audiences
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Looking at the national myths America perpetuates when it comes to nuclear weapons
The Story
September 2022
I was the youngest person selected for the 2022 Hiroshima ICAN Academy on Nuclear Weapons and Global Security. I went into it deeply curious about nuclear weapons because, while applying, I learned of what exactly happened to the people in Hiroshima in the immediate aftermath of the bombing. I was disturbed, not by the stories, but by the fact that I had never heard of things like black rain in my schooling in America. In fact, I didn't know anything at all about what happened in Hiroshima after the bombing. In America, I was given a death count in Hiroshima and Nagasaki and told that America needed to drop the bomb to end the war. I was never told of the suffering, of the environmental degradation. I was given the national myth and I lived wholly unaware of the reality until the academy.
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Academy+Identity Crisis
September-October 2022
The Academy was the first place where I really learned about the complex financial, academic, and media network that keeps nuclear weapons alive. I was also disturbed to realize that my own university, Purdue University, perpetuates this work. Purdue is one of many schools that has significant technology contracts with the military. The campus has a nuclear engineering program, a nuclear reactor, and educated Deng Jiaxin (邓稼先) the father of China's nuclear bomb. More recently, Purdue bid for the opportunity to manage Los Alamos Labs, the labs that tested the first nuclear weapon. I have many classmates who work for the industrial military complex.
Hiroshima
November 2023
In Hiroshima, I met with hibakusha, survivors of the nuclear bomb. In particular, I spent a significant amount of time speaking with Yoshiko Kajimoto. I asked her if I could write poetry based on her experiences and she said yes. I also received a pencil handmade by hibakusha, Soh Horie.
I met up with other disarmament leaders in the academy at Hiroshima and toured different sites around the city including the Peace Memorial Museum. What struck me was the hope I saw in this city. The streets are named after peace. Paper cranes folded by schoolchildren all over the world sway near memorials. The activists' eyes were brimming with hope.
The Poem
December 2022
I came back to America energized to change things. So I started writing what would eventually become Seeds of Peace, a work largely inspired by Yoshiko Kajimoto's experience as well as those of other hibakusha I met including Soh Horie and Koko Kondo.
I performed and published it on a local news station.
Poem (2nd poem in news article): https://www.wthr.com/article/news/local/indiana/inspiring-indiana/west-lafayette-indiana-teen-finalist-for-national-youth-poet-laureate-title/531-dfb1fbb8-2efa-4571-947b-96ee3545c590
Further Reflection
January 2023
I look at the academy as one of those moments that changed my life. Over the next few weeks, I wrote over 30 poems related to the experience. I ended up assembling a collection of works which won the 2023 Undergraduate Award in the Fitzgerald Literary Contest.
Portfolio: https://www.thefitzgeraldmuseum.org/charlotte-yeung
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Research
April
As a New Voices on Nuclear Weapons Fellow, I am focused on researching how Americans and Japanese teach about nuclear weapons in their communities. As a Hongkongese American, I came from Hiroshima awed by the forgiveness of the hibakusha. Coming back to America, I realized how skewed other Americans' education must be if I knew nothing about hibakusha before the academy.
Along with the Federation of American Scientists research team, I will be working with Lovely Umayam, a poet and nuclear policy researcher.
The areas we are focusing on are:
Space-how are spaces related to nuclear weapons treated in these countries?
Text-what do high school textbooks in America and Japan say about nuclear weapons? What is missing?
Culture-What are the formal and informal cultural responses to nuclear weapons in these two countries? This will look at artistic movements like a bomb poetry, scientific one worldism, and others.
Aesthetics-what are the aeshetics associated with nuclear culture in America and Japan? How does this relate to historical understanding/preservation/tourism?
State-what are culturally influential state policies in both concerning Utah downwinders/hibakusha, the military industrial complex in both, etc.
The work will also be augmented by interviews with nuclear disarmament activists in Japan.
Next Steps
Future
I am going to Japan for the entirety of my junior year to learn Japanese and to hopefully better understand nuclear disarmament, hibakusha history, and the firebombing of Tokyo.
(the photo on the left is a pencil I received from a hibakusha).
Finding One's Voice
Poetry by Women and Girls in Afghanistan
The Story
August-September 2022
I decided to create a poetry workshop for women and girls in Afghanistan after watching an Afghan female friend of mine lose her rights to an education. I founded and led a poetry workshop for several months with the help of Pax Populi, an educational nonprofit.
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Creating the Exhibit
April 2023
I worked with Dr. Peter Moore from Purdue Honors College to print my students' final poems by hand.
The Exhibit
April 2023
The poems are displayed at the Kurt Vonnegut Museum in Indianapolis, Indiana.
Online Anthology
January 2023
Along with the in-person exhibit, there is an online anthology of their work.
Shorter Experiences
Between the Lines:
Peace and Writing Experience
July-August 2021
I wrote poetry with youth from over 30 different countries in an online creative writing exchange. I still speak with many of the participants today about poetry and prose and what it means to be an artist.
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Kurt Vonnegut Board of Directors
January 2023-January 2026
I help oversee the Kurt Vonnegut Museum's $800,000 budget and sit on the anti-censorship committee. We often discuss how to combat the rampant book bans in America.
Youth Poet Laureate
January 2022-May 2024
I often reflect on my family's own experiences. My grandparents on one side faced persecution and violence as teachers during the Cultural Revolution. My grandparents on the other side were victims of human trafficking. The history of my family is unknown and so I have tried my best to record what's happened in my art in the hope that what's happened isn't forgotten.
IHRAF Youth Fellow
June 2022
I was the editor for a global youth anthology on human rights.
Can be seen here: https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5f91fef8b0d4490021b637f5/t/62d86a7c5f5288703eeddb43/1658350206489/C.YeungIHRAF+Anthology.pdf
