American Corner Darkhan

Back in September 2021, the U.S. Embassy in Mongolia opened American Corner Darkhan. American Corners are part of the U.S. State Department’s American Spaces program. I’d visited the one in Ulaanbaatar years ago to lead a writing workshop back when I was trying to get a writing group off the ground here. I thought then that Darkhan deserved one, so I was happy to hear the news that one was coming.

It's an investment in U.S. soft power that could be nefarious if it wanted to be, but they mostly focus on creating great spaces for education and youth development. I tend to look the other way when it comes to their potential to advance U.S. cultural imperialism.

The reality is that the U.S. represents economic and educational opportunities for young people here. I want to see the young people here achieve greatness the way I want my own daughter to – in whatever form that takes for her and them. Her American passport opens doors for her that her peers may never be able to conceive of cracking open. If I can invest my time and energy into changing that for other people, I will. Darkhan’s American Corner gives me an opportunity to do so in as neutral a setting (non-profit and secular) as possible.

I’ve started going to their English Speaking Club meetings to support the young people and adults who attend to improve their spoken language skills, and Terra loves going to Game Day to play games with kids close to her age that are also trying to improve their English. She’s made some friends there who sometimes come over to our house to play now.

I’ve also volunteered to give presentations when inspiration strikes. For Jazz Appreciation Month, I put together a playlist and some notes about some important musicians who shaped jazz from the 1920s through the 1940s. A few people came, and I roped them into listening to my favorite jazz genres. We talked about how the artists they had just listened to shaped other genres. For most of them, jazz meant the lounge music that’s been growing in popularity in UB. I get it, it’s a Gen Z vibe, but I wanted to show them how dynamic and electric jazz could be and, most importantly, who created it.

With the wild success of my first presentation, I followed up with another one for Asian American Heritage Month. I put the focus on Giant Robot and how it shaped my Asian American identity and that of so many others. I brought in some back issues, including the ones I had articles and blurbs in. I brought others that I considered to be canon. I also brought in some of my art books by friends of GR. In the same way I wanted to broaden people’s understanding of jazz, I wanted to shake up ideas about Asian Americans for whoever might show up for the presentation. Attendance was low, but the folks who did show up were invested, and it gave me the warm fuzzies to share something I was so proud to be a part of.

I want to do a creative writing workshop this summer and then an essay writing workshop in the fall. In the meantime, I’ll keep going to their weekly events and supporting the youth initiatives they host. As far away as I feel from my American identity sometimes, American Corner has been a nice way to tap back into the best parts of it.

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