Phoebe Eng visits Madison
And so, I think it’s really interesting for an Asian woman to figure out the balance between discovering who she is and what the power is and
what her life is about specifically and also to be responsible and answerable to not only her family, her children, but all the generations
before. …And not get completely overwhelmed.”
“A Magazine”
When I asked her about A Magazine, Phoebe smiled and recalled the circumstances under which she got involved with it. “It was a long
time ago, in early 1990,” she began. “I was practicing as a mergers and acquisitions attorney, which meant that I was in corporate law, and it
wasn’t me. Corporate law is contracts; you’re behind the desk; you’re working with the minutiae of contractual language which are not that
interesting. They are big corporations that don’t have a face behind them.”
It was her desire for face-to-face interaction, of meeting communities and understanding people’s lives and the day-to-day things that they
go through, or that makes life special that made Phoebe leave her legal practice to go into publishing. “A Magazine was something that
opened a door in a way,” she explained. “There was this wonderful brilliant group of young people who just graduated out of college and had
this school project that was A Magazine. They had started it together with a number of friends. I was a few years older than them and I was
trying to figure out how to use my law degree and all these wonderful abilities to be able to put together contracts and financing and things
like that, and so I wanted to put it to good use. It was a partnership that was wonderful. This group of people already had a magazine that was
in development, and we just made it a little more official by bringing it out on a regular basis, by giving it a look and a feel and a voice that
people could rely on. By getting other people involved from the corporate world, both as potential advertisers as well as investors, we started to
expand the audience for it.”
Phoebe likewise admitted the difficulty of starting A Magazine as a business. “It was very difficult because a lot of people didn’t understand
why you need an Asian magazine in the United States,” she said. “Because there was no voice for us. Sure, we’re Americans; but that doesn’t
mean that we don’t have a unique set of perspectives that deserve to be noticed. There’s a hunger for this voice. Our young people need to
know how to be proud of where they come from and that they can have a way of looking at things, a way of reading books and taking in the
media and having a political voice that is very unique. And so, that’s what America is about.”
A Magazine folded in the late 1990s, years after Phoebe had left and moved to other undertakings, but she had hoped it would grow and
still be around. “It would have been great if it still existed today,” she lamented. “I think that it went through a lot of the growing pains that
many magazines and media go through. It takes so much work and there’s a high level of burnout, and media — especially magazines — are
very expensive to run, very expensive to print, very expensive to put together, very expensive to distribute because it’s heavy, it’s paper. But
people love to be able to feel and touch it. It’s not quite the same as a website, you know. So I’m so happy that it exists in various different
ways such as your magazine. A Magazine was inspired by magazines that came before it, and each generation of magazines that comes … ‘I
can do this in a different way, or I can do this with the particular emphasis that is uniquely mine.’ And I think that is just beautiful that we can
learn from each other, we can pass the knowledge forward, even to the extent that current publishers and current media owners can ask
people at A Magazine and other magazines questions so that we’re sharing the knowledge.”
“Warrior Lessons”
“I wrote this (book) in the late ‘90s. It’s called ‘Warrior Lessons: an Asian American Woman’s Journey Into Power,’” Phoebe said. “I used that
word ‘power’ — and I knew a lot of people wouldn’t like it because they would think that I was very stuck up or very presumptuous. I used it
because I think that women in general and typical Asian American women have a problem with that word, and I wanted us to get comfortable
with that word.”
She wanted to redefine “power” to make it a positive word and not something to avoid. “If we can redefine power so that it doesn’t mean
exploitation, it doesn’t mean something bad, bossing people around for no reason, but it means you have something inside you that deserves
to be out in the world, and if we can think about power in that way, then each of us deserves to develop that power,” Phoebe explained. “We
have to ask that of each other. Whenever you see it in a young or in an older Asian woman, you just have to throw it out, to make sure she
understands that she is a teacher as she has something to share and something worthy of viewing.”
“Warrior Lessons” is an account of Phoebe’s interviews with Asian American women all over the country. “I got as many people as I possibly
could, I looked at any research that existed, and I also told my own story,” she said. “I put it all together and broke it up into four chapters.
Each chapter is a theme that women I spoke to cared about a lot, so it went from things like ‘How do you say no?’ ‘How do you have
boundaries?’ to ‘How do you fight for what you believe in?’ ‘How do you not try to be a people-pleaser all the time?’ ‘How do you learn why you
love what you love?’ ‘How do you learn to get angry?’ They’re lessons; and they’re like lessons on how to be a warrior. The thing is, at the time I
wrote it and even now, I have so many more lessons to learn.”
Phoebe held at a copy of Asian Wisconzine and said, “The more I see faces on the cover of this magazine, the more I feel like ‘Yeah, I’m
empowered. I can say something too.’ Otherwise if you’re invisible, you feel that you don’t count. And I think that we just have to make sure
that we’re as visible everywhere as we possibly can be.”
Phoebe Eng’s latest project is called “1000 Voices,” a national archive in New York that will consist of 1000 voices of storytellers all over
the country who are going to share their stories about the values that mean the most to them and why they do the work they do. It’s three- to
seven-minute video shorts that are going to be on a website. I was one of the voices that Phoebe interviewed here in Madison, Wis. I will
keep you posted!
I can be reached at heidipascual@sbcglobal.net. Visit www.asianwisconzine.com for great Asian
American stories in Wisconsin.
what her life is about specifically and also to be responsible and answerable to not only her family, her children, but all the generations
before. …And not get completely overwhelmed.”
“A Magazine”
When I asked her about A Magazine, Phoebe smiled and recalled the circumstances under which she got involved with it. “It was a long
time ago, in early 1990,” she began. “I was practicing as a mergers and acquisitions attorney, which meant that I was in corporate law, and it
wasn’t me. Corporate law is contracts; you’re behind the desk; you’re working with the minutiae of contractual language which are not that
interesting. They are big corporations that don’t have a face behind them.”
It was her desire for face-to-face interaction, of meeting communities and understanding people’s lives and the day-to-day things that they
go through, or that makes life special that made Phoebe leave her legal practice to go into publishing. “A Magazine was something that
opened a door in a way,” she explained. “There was this wonderful brilliant group of young people who just graduated out of college and had
this school project that was A Magazine. They had started it together with a number of friends. I was a few years older than them and I was
trying to figure out how to use my law degree and all these wonderful abilities to be able to put together contracts and financing and things
like that, and so I wanted to put it to good use. It was a partnership that was wonderful. This group of people already had a magazine that was
in development, and we just made it a little more official by bringing it out on a regular basis, by giving it a look and a feel and a voice that
people could rely on. By getting other people involved from the corporate world, both as potential advertisers as well as investors, we started to
expand the audience for it.”
Phoebe likewise admitted the difficulty of starting A Magazine as a business. “It was very difficult because a lot of people didn’t understand
why you need an Asian magazine in the United States,” she said. “Because there was no voice for us. Sure, we’re Americans; but that doesn’t
mean that we don’t have a unique set of perspectives that deserve to be noticed. There’s a hunger for this voice. Our young people need to
know how to be proud of where they come from and that they can have a way of looking at things, a way of reading books and taking in the
media and having a political voice that is very unique. And so, that’s what America is about.”
A Magazine folded in the late 1990s, years after Phoebe had left and moved to other undertakings, but she had hoped it would grow and
still be around. “It would have been great if it still existed today,” she lamented. “I think that it went through a lot of the growing pains that
many magazines and media go through. It takes so much work and there’s a high level of burnout, and media — especially magazines — are
very expensive to run, very expensive to print, very expensive to put together, very expensive to distribute because it’s heavy, it’s paper. But
people love to be able to feel and touch it. It’s not quite the same as a website, you know. So I’m so happy that it exists in various different
ways such as your magazine. A Magazine was inspired by magazines that came before it, and each generation of magazines that comes … ‘I
can do this in a different way, or I can do this with the particular emphasis that is uniquely mine.’ And I think that is just beautiful that we can
learn from each other, we can pass the knowledge forward, even to the extent that current publishers and current media owners can ask
people at A Magazine and other magazines questions so that we’re sharing the knowledge.”
“Warrior Lessons”
“I wrote this (book) in the late ‘90s. It’s called ‘Warrior Lessons: an Asian American Woman’s Journey Into Power,’” Phoebe said. “I used that
word ‘power’ — and I knew a lot of people wouldn’t like it because they would think that I was very stuck up or very presumptuous. I used it
because I think that women in general and typical Asian American women have a problem with that word, and I wanted us to get comfortable
with that word.”
She wanted to redefine “power” to make it a positive word and not something to avoid. “If we can redefine power so that it doesn’t mean
exploitation, it doesn’t mean something bad, bossing people around for no reason, but it means you have something inside you that deserves
to be out in the world, and if we can think about power in that way, then each of us deserves to develop that power,” Phoebe explained. “We
have to ask that of each other. Whenever you see it in a young or in an older Asian woman, you just have to throw it out, to make sure she
understands that she is a teacher as she has something to share and something worthy of viewing.”
“Warrior Lessons” is an account of Phoebe’s interviews with Asian American women all over the country. “I got as many people as I possibly
could, I looked at any research that existed, and I also told my own story,” she said. “I put it all together and broke it up into four chapters.
Each chapter is a theme that women I spoke to cared about a lot, so it went from things like ‘How do you say no?’ ‘How do you have
boundaries?’ to ‘How do you fight for what you believe in?’ ‘How do you not try to be a people-pleaser all the time?’ ‘How do you learn why you
love what you love?’ ‘How do you learn to get angry?’ They’re lessons; and they’re like lessons on how to be a warrior. The thing is, at the time I
wrote it and even now, I have so many more lessons to learn.”
Phoebe held at a copy of Asian Wisconzine and said, “The more I see faces on the cover of this magazine, the more I feel like ‘Yeah, I’m
empowered. I can say something too.’ Otherwise if you’re invisible, you feel that you don’t count. And I think that we just have to make sure
that we’re as visible everywhere as we possibly can be.”
Phoebe Eng’s latest project is called “1000 Voices,” a national archive in New York that will consist of 1000 voices of storytellers all over
the country who are going to share their stories about the values that mean the most to them and why they do the work they do. It’s three- to
seven-minute video shorts that are going to be on a website. I was one of the voices that Phoebe interviewed here in Madison, Wis. I will
keep you posted!
I can be reached at heidipascual@sbcglobal.net. Visit www.asianwisconzine.com for great Asian
American stories in Wisconsin.
| Heidi M. Pascual* Publisher & Editor * 2006 Journalist of the Year for the State of Wisconsin (U.S.-SBA) |
| Woman power by Heidi M. Pascual |
Background:
Phoebe Eng is a national lecturer, strategy consultant, and author of “Warrior Lessons” (Simon &
Schuster, 1999), a memoir-based account of race, empowerment and leadership in a rapidly changing
world. She started her career as an attorney with a New York-based law firm, then left the legal profession to
become the publisher of A Magazine, an Asian American issues magazine, and chair of its holding
company. She moved to other undertakings in the mid-1990s, including several communications
campaigns nationally and globally to help companies and organizations understand the complexities and
challenges of providing access and opportunity in a multicultural society; and elevating the voices and
perspectives of women of color in local, state, and national public policy. She is an active national
speaker, addressing dozens of groups every year on race-related issues.
Waiting for Phoebe
Phoebe was scheduled to keynote the YWCA Racial Justice Community Summit on Tuesday, Oct. 30, at
the Monona Terrace Community and Convention Center, but that Monday before, she was in the company
of the Girl Neighborhood Power members and mentors at Kennedy Heights Community Neighborhood
Center on Madison’s northside.
Alyssa Kenney, executive director of Kennedy Heights Community Center, was very excited while we
waited for Phoebe. “We wanted to give her the opportunity to see more of Madison,” Alyssa said. “She’s also
going to the Overture Center to see the art exhibit that the girls have done. We want her to see some of the
work of community centers and the YWCA here in Madison; to see all of Madison, not just the downtown.”
Phoebe Eng is a national lecturer, strategy consultant, and author of “Warrior Lessons” (Simon &
Schuster, 1999), a memoir-based account of race, empowerment and leadership in a rapidly changing
world. She started her career as an attorney with a New York-based law firm, then left the legal profession to
become the publisher of A Magazine, an Asian American issues magazine, and chair of its holding
company. She moved to other undertakings in the mid-1990s, including several communications
campaigns nationally and globally to help companies and organizations understand the complexities and
challenges of providing access and opportunity in a multicultural society; and elevating the voices and
perspectives of women of color in local, state, and national public policy. She is an active national
speaker, addressing dozens of groups every year on race-related issues.
Waiting for Phoebe
Phoebe was scheduled to keynote the YWCA Racial Justice Community Summit on Tuesday, Oct. 30, at
the Monona Terrace Community and Convention Center, but that Monday before, she was in the company
of the Girl Neighborhood Power members and mentors at Kennedy Heights Community Neighborhood
Center on Madison’s northside.
Alyssa Kenney, executive director of Kennedy Heights Community Center, was very excited while we
waited for Phoebe. “We wanted to give her the opportunity to see more of Madison,” Alyssa said. “She’s also
going to the Overture Center to see the art exhibit that the girls have done. We want her to see some of the
work of community centers and the YWCA here in Madison; to see all of Madison, not just the downtown.”
Girl Neighborhood Power members and
young women converse with Phoebe Eng
about "girl issues"
young women converse with Phoebe Eng
about "girl issues"
Lisa Duchateau, the GNP leader of the center, was busy preparing the room where Phoebe would be
received. “The girls will give her a tour of the center so she can see where they come hang out
everyday,” Lisa informed me. “Then they’ll show Phoebe our scrapbooks, what Girl Neighborhood
Power is all about and what we have been doing this fall. Because we have a big Hmong community
here, this is inspiring for the girls for Phoebe to come here and meet them.”
When Phoebe entered the reception room with YWCA’s Meme Kintner, we all felt the magnet of her
presence. Tall, slim and beautiful, Phoebe instantly captured our full attention. Her warm smile and
her immediate “connectedness” with us readily removed any barrier from our thoughts in terms of her
being a “somebody.”
After introductions, some of the girls gave Phoebe a tour of the center while I took their photos.
Phoebe was very gracious, talking to everyone present, getting inspired by the girls’ work and inspiring
them in return. I felt that Phoebe was indeed inspired by the emerging power of girls and young
women in this part of Madison.
A conversation with Phoebe Eng
Phoebe and the “language of power”
My first question to her was ‘Why do you do the work that you do?’ “That is what I ask everyone else,
and nobody has ever asked me that question,” Phoebe said. “I am going to share the story tomorrow
and it’s a story that I tell to women mostly because I think it’s important. It’s about why I’m so interested
in making sure that women’s voices get out there in the world; that we have visibility; that we have
presence in the world and especially in decision making places like the media, like our elected
public offices.”
Phoebe related the influence of her mother on why she does the work that she does. “It really
started from when I was very young when my mother told me that I needed to become an attorney,”
Phoebe recalled. “I never knew why she thought that was so important. She had said ultimately …
received. “The girls will give her a tour of the center so she can see where they come hang out
everyday,” Lisa informed me. “Then they’ll show Phoebe our scrapbooks, what Girl Neighborhood
Power is all about and what we have been doing this fall. Because we have a big Hmong community
here, this is inspiring for the girls for Phoebe to come here and meet them.”
When Phoebe entered the reception room with YWCA’s Meme Kintner, we all felt the magnet of her
presence. Tall, slim and beautiful, Phoebe instantly captured our full attention. Her warm smile and
her immediate “connectedness” with us readily removed any barrier from our thoughts in terms of her
being a “somebody.”
After introductions, some of the girls gave Phoebe a tour of the center while I took their photos.
Phoebe was very gracious, talking to everyone present, getting inspired by the girls’ work and inspiring
them in return. I felt that Phoebe was indeed inspired by the emerging power of girls and young
women in this part of Madison.
A conversation with Phoebe Eng
Phoebe and the “language of power”
My first question to her was ‘Why do you do the work that you do?’ “That is what I ask everyone else,
and nobody has ever asked me that question,” Phoebe said. “I am going to share the story tomorrow
and it’s a story that I tell to women mostly because I think it’s important. It’s about why I’m so interested
in making sure that women’s voices get out there in the world; that we have visibility; that we have
presence in the world and especially in decision making places like the media, like our elected
public offices.”
Phoebe related the influence of her mother on why she does the work that she does. “It really
started from when I was very young when my mother told me that I needed to become an attorney,”
Phoebe recalled. “I never knew why she thought that was so important. She had said ultimately …
because she needed me to learn the language of power. I never understood until that
moment that she actually felt very powerless because she was the head of the household.
She bosses everyone around. She was always the one we look to for strength.”
Phoebe’s mother is from China, and she came to the U.S. when she was about 25 years
old as a nursing student. “She met my father here in the United States, in Philadelphia,
and they got married,” Phoebe said. “They speak two different dialects, so they never
spoke Chinese together, and so they taught my sister and I only English.” Phoebe wanted
to learn Chinese very badly, but it never happened in her home. “I learned how to speak
Chinese when I was already in college,” she said.
Phoebe spoke in-depth on her mother’s experience as an immigrant and elaborated on
her idea of the “language of power.” “I think that as an immigrant woman, she always felt
like she’s being taken advantage of,” Phoebe said. “She didn’t know exactly when and
where, but she definitely needed a second pair of eyes; she needed to know that there
was somebody in her family that will speak for her when she couldn’t speak for herself.
She knew that even though she was the boss of all of us in our house, as soon as she
crossed over the threshold and out to the outside world, that people saw her as a little
Chinese woman and would treat her that way, as if she had nothing important to say.”
Phoebe observed that a lot of Asian women in the United States feel the same way. “I
think that’s something they shoulder — even the young women here, even you and I,” she
said. “We understand how much weight that we hold, of having to answer for all the
generations past, and that is a lot of weight. In both kinds of spiritual terms, in terms of
holding it all on your own shoulders, but also in terms of our own ability to lead our own
lives, how much choice are we giving ourselves when we have so much weight to hold?
moment that she actually felt very powerless because she was the head of the household.
She bosses everyone around. She was always the one we look to for strength.”
Phoebe’s mother is from China, and she came to the U.S. when she was about 25 years
old as a nursing student. “She met my father here in the United States, in Philadelphia,
and they got married,” Phoebe said. “They speak two different dialects, so they never
spoke Chinese together, and so they taught my sister and I only English.” Phoebe wanted
to learn Chinese very badly, but it never happened in her home. “I learned how to speak
Chinese when I was already in college,” she said.
Phoebe spoke in-depth on her mother’s experience as an immigrant and elaborated on
her idea of the “language of power.” “I think that as an immigrant woman, she always felt
like she’s being taken advantage of,” Phoebe said. “She didn’t know exactly when and
where, but she definitely needed a second pair of eyes; she needed to know that there
was somebody in her family that will speak for her when she couldn’t speak for herself.
She knew that even though she was the boss of all of us in our house, as soon as she
crossed over the threshold and out to the outside world, that people saw her as a little
Chinese woman and would treat her that way, as if she had nothing important to say.”
Phoebe observed that a lot of Asian women in the United States feel the same way. “I
think that’s something they shoulder — even the young women here, even you and I,” she
said. “We understand how much weight that we hold, of having to answer for all the
generations past, and that is a lot of weight. In both kinds of spiritual terms, in terms of
holding it all on your own shoulders, but also in terms of our own ability to lead our own
lives, how much choice are we giving ourselves when we have so much weight to hold?
| YWCA's Meme Kintner (left, 1st row), L isa Duchateau (next to Meme), and Alyssa Kenney (right, 1st row) with Phoebe (back, right) and the girls of Kennedy Heights |
| Phoebe Eng |