Bushwick Book Club artist Drea Marilyn

I’ve had a chance to get to know Drea Marilyn’s work now over a few years – from her punk rock songs written for guitar (she wrote an amazing song in response to Sasha La Pointe’s memoir!) to her piano compositions that are often jazz inspired, like what she wrote in response to Adamantine. I was very touched that Drea dedicated her performance to In Soo Chun, a Korean immigrant that I wrote about in my poem “Recquiescat. Drea went to school at the University of California of Riverside, which is in the very town where I grew up. Knowing that she’d experienced that strange and empty cultural landscape firsthand that was so devoid of Asian Americans when I was growing up, I more deeply felt the resonance of her words and song.