Alphabet Reading Garden, Introduction
Welcome to City of Asylum. In this tour of City of Asylum’s Sampsonia Way House Publications, you'll be introduced to a unique community of writers, artists, and neighbors on Pittsburgh's North Side.City of Asylum is a refuge for writers from around the world who are in exile, in danger, or otherwise persecuted for their work. It is part of a larger group called the International Cities of Refuge Network, or ICORN. Founded in 1993 as a response to the growing frequency of attacks on writers, ICORN has grown to include over 80 cities across Europe, the United States and Latin America. The Indian novelist Salman Rushdie was one of the movement's founding members, and when the International Cities of Refuge Network formed, Rushdie himself was in hiding due to a death threat by the supreme leader of Iran, the Ayatollah Khomeini."If you look at any society in which a dictatorship arrives, whether it's a military dictatorship or a religious dictatorship or a political dictatorship, doesn't matter. One of the first things that happens is they lock up the writers." - Salman RushdieSalman Rushdie became an advocate for writers facing persecution, and he travelled the world giving talks on what governments and communities could do to protect creative free expression around the world. In 1997, he made a surprise visit to give a talk at the University of Pittsburgh, where North Side residents Henry Reese, a businessman and Diane Samuels, a visual artist, were in the audience.During his talk, Salman Rushdie mentioned Cities of Asylum and talked about how important a network of safe places had been to him while he was in hiding. Our founders felt that there was something deeply important about this, and they had to start it in Pittsburgh.The next day, Henry Reese wrote a letter to the network’s main office in Paris to learn how we could start a City of Asylum here in Pittsburgh, but received no response. He continued to email them every few months, but got no reply until 2003, when ge was put in touch with the American writer Russell Banks. Banks was charged with the task of building the network in the United States.Soon after that, they met with Russell Banks and the novelist Richard Wiley, and were more convinced than ever that the program was deeply important and right for our neighborhood. They proposed to start City of Asylum as a grassroots organization funded by individuals.Every City of Asylum in Europe was, and still is, government funded. The only other Cities of Asylum in the United States at the time, in Ithaca and Las Vegas, were part of university programs. In setting out to sustain itself on grant money and donations alone, City of Asylum Pittsburgh would be trying something new, and by operating outside of a governing institution, City of Asylum Pittsburgh had more freedom to let the artists stay on Sampsonia Way as long as they needed to while rebuilding their lives in a new country. The new format would be a challenge, but If you’re listening to this tour, it’s still working.The goal at City of Asylum is to help an exiled writer achieve a stable, independent life without sacrificing their writing. We underwrite translations, help find publishers, provide opportunities for language classes, whatever it takes for each writer to continue to write. We engage lawyers to help the writers secure permanent residency status. We provide a stipend and health care for the first two years that they are with us. We work with family members to find school scholarships and jobs, and we commit to providing a rent free residence for as long as it's necessary, while the writer and family are transitioning to stability. When an exiled writer is able to continue to write and is not silenced, it shows what a difference we as individuals right here in Pittsburgh can make.Since opening its doors to a first artist in 2004, City of Asylum has supported over a dozen exiled writers, poets, and novelists who have come to City of Asylum from over a dozen countries. From all over the world, writers have come to Sampsonia Way as a refuge and workspace, starting new chapters of their lives from the townhomes you're about to see.Each House Poem has a description like this one, as well as video clips, photos, stories, and guides to the artwork on each house, so take your time and follow your curiosity.
House Poem
You're standing in front of Sampsonia Way 408, or “House Poem,” the first City of Asylum House Publication. Formerly a crumbling building, this building was purchased by City of Asylum co-founders Henry Reece and Diane Samuels, who refurbished it to become a home for City of Asylum Pittsburgh's first writer-resident, Chinese poet Huang Xiang.Huang Xiang arrived from China in 2004, fleeing the long aftermath of the Cultural Revolution. He had been persecuted by the Chinese government for being an advocate for free speech and expression, and as a result, spent a total of 12 years in prison and labor camps.When Huang Xiang and his wife, Zhang Ling, arrived at this house, they were incredibly grateful, both for the safe haven, and for the ability to continue their creative work without fearing for their lives. In celebration of his newfound freedom, Huang Xiang asked if he could carve his poetry into the side of Mt. Washington. Carving poetry into the sides of mountains is an ancient practice in Huang Xiang’s school of poetry. While Henry and Diane couldn’t offer him Mt. Washington, they did offer him the front of 408 Sampsonia Way.Diane Samuels: The style of calligraphy he used is known as the “grass style.” It's a very free, expressionistic style. The large characters indicate words to be given emphasis through gesture or volume. The very small characters are words that are recited very quietly, sometimes in a whisper. Damon: They erected scaffolding on the front of the house, and Huang Xiang would climb up with a paintbrush and an empty yogurt container filled with white paint. Check out the pictures in this section and you can see him at work!Henry Reese: When Huang Xiang was on a scaffold creating the calligraphy on the front of his house, some teens came down Sampsonia Way on their way home after school, and one of them asked me: “Who is he? What's he doing?” I answered, “He's a famous Chinese poet.” I then asked the girls if they would like the poet to read his house.Huang Xiang edged up to within an inch of the one teen, looked her in the eye, and gave a blood curdling scream. The poet then began to roll on the ground while reciting his poem “Wild Beast” in Chinese. Thirty seconds later, when he finished, I looked at the girls, whose jaws had literally dropped, and one of them quietly asked, “could he do another?”It was an epiphany. We saw how art could be a bridge of understanding, and it was the beginning of our effort to use literature and art to create a better community. Damon: Here’s Huang Xiang performing “Wild Beast”:Translation:I am a wild beast hunted down. I am a captured wild beast. I am a wild beast trampled by wild beasts. I am a wild beast trampling wild beasts. Damon: It was Huang Xiang’s enthusiastic street performances that led City of Asylum to begin its annual Jazz Poetry Concerts. Henry and Diane wanted the community to experience the energy and spirit of his poetry, even if they didn’t understand the words he was saying. They reached out to local musicians, thinking that pairing poetry with a spontaneous, expressive art form like jazz could help convey the poems with a meaning beyond language. Local saxophonist Oliver Lake answered that call, headlined several early Jazz Poetry concerts, and eventually designed his own House Publications on Sampsonia Way, so stay tuned for more on Mr. Lake.When Huang Xiang came to Pittsburgh, he had been silenced by imprisonment and exile, and he was not writing. Within six months of coming here, he was so prolific that his wife, Zhang Ling, joked that he was a human typewriter.City of Asylum commissioned an English translation of his poetry, which was published by the University of California. In the summer of 2007, three years after coming to Pittsburgh, Zhang Ling accepted a job in New York, and the couple moved on to the next of their new beginnings.House Poem continues to function as a residence for exiled writers, and Huang Xiang continues to write, publish, and collaborate with other artists.Far from being silenced, his voice is loud and clear.Three doors down to your right, you’ll find Sampsonia Way 402, or “Winged House,” where City of Asylum established its next writer sanctuary home.
Winged House
Damon: Welcome to Winged House, at 402 Sampsonia Way. We’ll let City of Asylum co-founder Diane Samuels introduce us:Diane Samuels: We were inspired by our community's reaction to House Poem, which became an instant landmark. When people walk by, they stop and look at it, and it seems to elicit really remarkable, spontaneous, substantive conversations.We thought it would be interesting if each writer's residence at City of Asylum could also have a text based artwork on the façade. We call this process “House Publishing.” Our street, Sampsonia Way, is like a public library of House Publications, which people can read from the street.Damon: For Winged House, City of Asylum invited Nobel Prize-winning writer and free-expression activist Wole Soyinka to contribute a text to inspire this house’s artwork. He was the first African writer to win a Nobel Prize in Literature in 1986, and later became a founder of the International Cities of Refuge Network, or ICORN.The project was personal to Soyinka, who had been imprisoned, arrested, and threatened many times for his outspoken poems, plays, and novels. In the 1990s, he was forced into exile and sentenced to death in absentia.The text Soyinka selected for this house came from those experiences of persecution and imprisonment. In his memoir, The Man Died, Soyinka describes how he kept himself sane over two years of solitary confinement during the Nigerian Civil War.The following passage is inscribed on Wing House’s front door, and you’re about to hear it read by Wole Soyinka at Winged House’s 2006 dedication:Wole Soyinka: [The] squiggle, which you see there, I'm sorry, it's my handwriting, but actually it looks much better than it does on paper. I’ll read that passage out. It's from The Man Died, Prison Memoirs, pages 244 to 45:"I had TIME! Often I woke up in the morning to a problem and one minute later literally one minute later the guard was tapping on the door to signal lock-up hour. I DESTROYED time. Once I wrote out all the possible combinations of six digits. In the process I uncovered the only way that this could be done to ensure, at a glance, that there was neither duplication nor omission. The result was so obviously a plan for computed aesthetics that I ruled out squares on toilet paper and proceeded to repeat those combinations with colored squares. (Green from leaf juice, black from my ink — christened Soy-ink — and toilet paper white.) The cyclic continuum of the result next made an impression. I joined one end of the toilet paper to the other and asked, Now what have I got?"Thank you.[applause]Diane Samuels:Wole Soyinka didn't just send us a text, he sent us the passage written down in his own hand. We enlarged the handwriting and sandblasted it onto the storm door.Children in the Mattress Factory Summer Art Lab then worked with artists Laura Jean McLaughlin and Bob Ziller to create a glass mosaic that includes all 720 permutations of six colors. At night, with light behind it, it glows beautifully.Damon: City of Asylum then invited sculptor Thaddeus Mosley, who lives in the North Side neighborhood, to create a sculpture for the front of the house inspired by that same text.Here is Mr. Mosley:Thaddeus Mosley:When Diane and Henry asked me if I would be interested in doing a commission for them on the house, I drew about three lines on a piece of paper and said, “this is what I’ll do.”I wanted to do something to break up the idea of the square space, but the idea of cultural activity or creative activity, there is a moment when, as you say, uh, things become clear, you start to fly with the idea or take wing, and so I wanted the whole house to look like at least the thought it might be lift it up in a creative way.I try to do something that is solid and hopefully enduring.Damon: The first resident of Winged House was Horacio Castellanos Moya, a writer and journalist from El Salvador. Much of his writing was political, and one novel in particular, Revulsion, exposed the political crimes of El Salvador's ruling forces and enraged some Salvadorans. There were calls for a book ban, and some threw the book into bonfires. Castellanos Moya’s mother received anonymous death threats against her son until, in 1997, he fled the countryAs Huang Xiang helped start the City of Asylum tradition of concerts, Horacio Castellanos Moya helped to begin City of Asylum’s Reading Series with a focus on International Fiction, Freedom of Speech, Human Rights.Now, not only does City of Asylum host dozens of readings and humanities events every year, but it runs the Alphabet City Bookstore, specializing in translated literature.Diane Samuels: We learned that if a writer is going to continue to write in exile, the most important thing we can provide is time and a safe space.Most have stayed in their houses at least three years. Because we are a community based, grassroots organization independent of any other organization or government program, we can be flexible and tailor our program to each writer's needs.Damon: Horacio stayed here in Winged House from 2006 until 2011, meaning he was here long enough to see the creation, dedication, and first residents of the next City of Asylm House publication, which you’ll find two doors down at 324 Sampsonia Way.
Pittsburgh-Burma House
Damon: Welcome to Pittsburgh-Burma House, the third of City of Asylum’s House Publications, which was painted and named by a pair of artists in refuge from Burma, the writer Khet Mar and her husband, Than Htay Maung.In Burma, Khet Mar was sentenced to ten years in prison, tortured, and put on death row for her pro-democracy writing and support of pro-democracy political activists. At the time, she was still a student and only 22 years old. She was released after a year when a new government came into power, then forced to flee after that government tried to suppress her advocacy for environmental disaster victims.Khet Mar arrived in Pittsburgh in March of 2009 with her husband and two young boys after a grueling forty-three hour journey. She was the first writer to bring a family to Sampsonia Way.Diane Samuels: When we picked up Khet Mar and her family at the Pittsburgh airport after their excruciatingly long journey, the family got in the car. Khet Mar, was the only person in the family who spoke some English, but her husband, Than Htay, said one word to me and that was: “Warhol,” and her older son, said: “snow.”Damon: Now making a new home in a city across the world, but Burma and its people were never far from Khet Mar’s awareness, as she describes in her first Jazz Poetry festival only a few months after arriving in Pittsburgh: [Khet Mar reading in Burmese][other voice] Yes, indeed. Pittsburgh was greeting us with the signs of early spring. Khet Mar: Although anxious [unclear] I looked forward to a respite from fear and persecution.To add glory to glory, I have planted flowers in my garden. Horrible and evil to forget those still in danger and suffering.I also make an offering of cut flowers and [unclear]. [other voice] On the night that the flowers I planted began to bloom, I will never forget the intense blazing red of the flower salvia. I had a strange dream, all in white. In the bright lights of Pittsburgh, nothing was preventing me from experiencing the world unfiltered, uncensored. I felt freedom in Pittsburgh. Damon: After coming to Pittsburgh, Khet Mar had a dream in which her distant home in rural Burma and her new home in Pittsburgh began to merge. As Khet Mar described it, she floated in some blended nowhere, shapeless, unable to shake off a deep anxiety rooted in all the suffering still going on in Burma. Then she awoke to singing birds. She wrote the dream into a short story, and her husband, visual artist Than Htay Maung, interpreted her dream into a mural covering the front and side of 324 Sampsonia Way. See if you can find these different elements of the dream story:On the front façade is a sparkling vision of an almost ethereal Pittsburgh; on the side is a terrifying image of Burmese peasants working behind a landscape trapped inside prison walls, with birds of prey overhead. At the corner of the house, the Irrawaddy River of Burma meets the Allegheny River of Pittsburgh.The poetry in the mural, written in Burmese, the poem, “Life Takes Place Amid Blooming Flowers,” which you heard Khet Mar read earlier.Khet Mar and her family lived in Pittsburgh-Burma House for over three years before moving on to live in Washington, DC, where Khet Mar continues to work as a translator and writer. Thanks to the artwork they left behind, this family remains a treasured presence on Sampsonia Way.Next up, one lot to your right, you’ll find the fourth House Publication: Jazz House.
Jazz House
[30 seconds of jazz music plays]Damon:Welcome to Jazz House!You’ve just heard one of six jazz recordings that plays when you ring the doorbell, each recorded by artist Oliver Lake, who also painted Jazz House mural.Oliver Lake, an acclaimed saxophone player and composer, collaborated with Huang Xiang to create the first ever Jazz Poetry Concert, now an annual City of Asylum festival. After that first year, Lake returned again and again as a headliner, collaborating with both local and international poets to create unique, free public concerts.Co-Founder Henry Reece recalls:voice of Henry Reese:Oliver lives in the New York area, but he develops such a bond with City of Asylum Pittsburgh and our mission that he talks about Sampsonia Way as his second home. When we were planning our fourth writer residence, we thought, why not invite Oliver to translate this emotional home into a physical home?Damon:While best known as a jazz saxophonist and composer, Mr. Lake also is a well-respected poet and artist. Here’s City of Asylum co-founder and visual artist Diane Samuels voice of Diane Samuels:The mural that covers the building is based on Oliver’s sketches and paintings, which the Burmese visual artist Than Htay Maung then reproduced in large scale and executed on the exterior of the house.Than Htay also painted Pittsburgh-Burma House next door. On the west side of Jazz House, you can see a large safety pin and the phrase: “just be good.” Oliver tells a great story about that image. voice of Olive Lake:When I was a kid, there was a neighborhood guy who was very eccentric, and he walked around; in the summertime, it would be 90 - 100 degrees, but he would have on a full-length top coat and a hat, and his top coat was filled with very small safety pins, just completely filled with safety pins. And he had one very large safety pin that was his pin. But he went around the neighborhood and put- took the small safety pins and put them on kids in the neighborhood, and he came to me and put one on me. He said, “now you're in the 17 club,” and I said, “what is the 17 club? What do I have to do to be in the 17 club?” He said, “just be good.” And that's kind of how that phrase came up. Damon:Israel Centeno was the first writer-resident of Jazz House. Here’s City of Asylum co-founder Henry Reese on bringing Centeno to Pittsburgh:voice of Henry Reese:We invited Israel to come to City of Asylum after his novel [unclear], The Conspiracy, got him into trouble with the Chavez regime, and he and his family were threatened. Israel joined us early in 2011 and his family came to join him in 2012.In addition to writing several more novels while he's been in residence here, The Conspiracy was published in English translation by Sampsonia Way (Magazine) in 2014. Damon:In just seven years, from 2004 to 2011, City of Asylum Pittsburgh grew from one to four sanctuary houses–now supporting a small community of artists in exile as former residents moved out and new refuge-seekers moved in–but it wasn’t done expanding. Continue on to the bright green building at 308 Sampsonia Way to learn about Comma House, the most recent House Publication
Comma House - City of Asylum
Damon:Welcome to the fifth, and most recent, House Publication on Sampsonia Way, Comma House, by Tuhin Das. When Comma House was dedicated in 2021, it had been a full decade since the last House Publication, Jazz House, was completed. Tuhin Das came to the United States in 2020, in the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic. He was escaping death threats in Bangladesh over his writing and work supporting secularism, freedom of religion, and the defense of religious minorities, and while City of Asylum could provide physical safety, the pandemic enforced its own isolation while Tuhin tried to settle in and start a new life. In 2019, after seeing drawings that he had made in manuscripts of his writing, City of Asylum co-founder Diane Samuels invited Tuhin to collaborate in designing a mural for the front of 308 Sampsonia Way.As Diane tells it:voice of Diane Samuels:I knew Tuhin was making drawings. These really beautiful, small drawings, and I was admiring them, He had one that was in the shape of a tree, one a comma. There were a number of them that were really, really interesting. I printed out sort of a line drawing of the house, a black-and-white of the house, and he started drawing on the house. Damon:For his project, Tuhin began to experiment with “concrete poetry,” writing poems in shapes related to the subject of the poem. The letters in the text and art on the house are made in aluminum and were cut locally by Hydro-Lazer from Tuhin’s design, then painted and installed by Tom Herman. The central poem on Tuhin’s House Publication” is written in the shape of a giant comma, which Tuhin read at Comma House’s dedication in 2021:Voice of Tuhin Das:Thank you for coming and welcome to my house. This House Publication, Comma house, is based on my writing and drawings created while in exile and living here on Sampsonia Way. The poem is called “Keeping You Waiting with a Comma,” the English translation by Arunava Sinha:A row of pine trees standing in a poem.Dangling dewdrops clutching the fingersof their winter nurse, and Decemberfrom last year is still flowing.Several rows of birdsmaking the world wait with a comma,the mouth of some distant cave is opening now.Damon:Tuhin chose the colors of the house, too, to hold symbolism from his far-away home. Red and green take up most of the space, with the green representing the fertile land of Bangladesh, and red representing the blood of the people killed in Bangladesh’s Liberation War against Pakistan in 1971. Purple represents the native Bangladeshi water lilies of Tuhin’s childhood.voice of Diane Samuels:Having a visual element for literary writers is a way to pull people in without saying, “you have to read this book or come to this reading,” and also other languages, the abstraction of other languages, it seemed like a nice bridge between the writers sitting and their home writing and a public component.voice of Tuhin Das:This entire mural represents my connection to Bangladesh and my belief in the importance of language, particularly the importance of keeping alive one’s mother tongue. Commas link or join words, phrases, thoughts, ideas, and here I celebrate the linking or joining of people through art on Sampsonia Way. Also, commas represent a pause or waiting, just like the writers of this sanctuary program.Damon:As Tuhin said in a 2022 interview with World Literature Today:“Though they are from different countries, the exiled writers and artists have experienced rejection and persecution by their home countries and societies, so living in close proximity provides a sense of protection and sanctuary from what they have escaped… Basically, the houses on Sampsonia Way become their base stations and safe spaces for creating new ideas… It can take a few years as they navigate the complexities of the US immigration system, and when they achieve their immigration goals, the artists and writers then depart from this alley and immerse themselves in the diverse American society, so that a new exiled writer can then take their place and move in.”voice of Tuhin Das:Now you know about this house enough.
