‘Foghorns’ by Kyle Shin ’20: A Spoken Word Visual Takes a Stand Against Anti-Asian Hate and Violence

Written by Kyle Shin ’20

My name is Kyle Shin and I graduated from Wes in 2020 as a CEAS major. Wes open mics and cultural shows gave me the love and confidence to pursue Son of Paper Music as my career!

In the last week, the increased violence against Asian-American people was really weighing on me and my loved ones. And so as artists do, I processed them by creating — and miraculously, my favorite director and producer were able to pull off Foghorns (A Spoken Word Visual) in four days, start to finish.

Foghorns is dedicated to all Asian-American families that have experienced violence and hate speech as recent as 2021. While these injustices are not new nor unique to Asian-am people, enough is enough. Raise your voice and defend those who can’t defend themselves.

From my artist bio:

Son of Paper chose his artist name thoughtfully. Son of Paper is a great grandson of a Paper Daughter, a term that describes the phenomena of ethnic Chinese that illegally immigrated to the U.S. during Chinese Exclusion (1882-1965). The one loophole to get around Chinese Exclusion and racial quotas was to purchase birth certificates of a U.S. citizen and claim the familial right to immigrate. Son of Paper chose this name to honor his maternal side’s painful and remarkable journey into the States.