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KQED's Forum

SF Poet Laureate Genny Lim and the Del Sol Quartet’s New Performance Celebrates Asian American Diaspora

KQED's Forum

KQED

News, Politics, News Commentary

4.2726 Ratings

🗓️ 17 October 2025

⏱️ 54 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Why do we leave our homelands? That is the central question which animates the newest work of San Francisco poet laureate Genny Lim and the Bay Area-based Del Sol Quartet. Together, Lim and the musicians explore the implications of migration and the search for a new home in their work, “Facing the Moon: Songs of the Diaspora.” They join us live in the studio for a performance and conversation. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0

Support for KQED Podcasts comes from San Francisco International Airport. SFO invites you to celebrate Dia

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De Los Mertos in the terminals with live performances and immersive installations by local artists.

0:14.6

Learn more at flysfo.com slash celebrates. Support for KQED podcast comes from Genentech, the original biotech pioneer forging

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life-altering scientific breakthroughs to help improve the lives of all patients. Learn more about

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Genentech's commitment to patients and society at gene.com slash our promise.

0:39.4

From KQED.

0:42.0

Welcome to Forum. I'm Alexis Madrigal. It's Friday, and we've got a gorgeous

0:47.1

lyrical and musical program for you this morning. We're going to be hearing some parts

0:51.0

of a new multimedia work from San Francisco poet Laureate, Jenny Lim, and

0:55.5

the del Sol Quartet. The new piece is called Facing the Moon songs of the diaspora, and everyone

1:00.8

joins us here in the studio. Welcome y'all. Jenny Lynn, let's start with you. Just tell me about the

1:07.3

newest work. Facing the moon is about the diaspora.

1:13.4

And I think the grounding theme is that we are all immigrants.

1:20.3

I mean, years ago, I mean, like over 20 years ago, I was part of this National Geographic Genome Project, which traced, I really wanted to

1:29.0

find out about my father because he was adopted as a boy. But I didn't have the right chromosomes.

1:37.1

I only have the XX chromosomes, so I could only trace my mom. As it turned out, the study starts

1:43.2

in the Rift Valley in Africa, and it shows the diaspora from, you know, this is way back over 50,000 years ago.

1:51.2

And apparently my mother's group was going toward the Artegarian, landed through the Siberian Peninsula and over the Bering Strait.

2:03.7

I found out that she was Chukchi, reindeer people.

2:06.8

And she had, they went all the way down the coast from North America down to South America.

2:15.4

So I actually had the DNA, the same DNA as Navajo and Mayan and Chinese.

2:21.3

There were only 10% of Chinese that had that. So that's my grouping. And so it really flew,

...

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