I'm leaving tomorrow evening for Reno. I'll only be there 24 hours, just long enough to hit a jackpot on a slot machine, win a suspiciously large amount at the blackjack tables (i can't count cards in my head but I do have a palm pilot), or play out an even bigger gamble: getting voters to the polls.
Continue reading "Herrrroooooo, Nevada!"
Posted by claire at 2:51 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
In which a librarian does not get it.
Posted by melissa at 7:17 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
Last week I was in San Diego for SDAFF's fifth annual film festival. Being a San Franciscan (or more accurately, a "Bay Area-n"), I didn't pack for the sunshine and suffered in my sweater and Triple 5 Soul hoody. (How can I be Filipina when I hate the beach and the sunshine?)
Although my cousins and I missed the sold out screenings of Arahan, A Tale of Two Sisters and Steamboy, I wouldn't say that my Film Festival Mission was a bust. All the free copies I had of Hyphen were gone one hour after setting up my table on the second day of the festival, and my cousins sold subscriptions to their friends!
Continue reading "Who You Callin' a "Gook," Gook!?"
Posted by Audrey at 12:52 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack (0)
Not to make this blog too San Francisco-centric (San Francentric?), but I’ve been walking past the hotel workers picketing at the Holiday Inn two blocks from my house in SoMa each night for the past month, feeling pissed that they were still there, night after night, locked out of their jobs. But as Jennifer mentioned yesterday, SF mayor Gavin Newsom threatened to—and actually did—join the picket line today! Maybe mayoral pressure will mean that one day soon I’ll walk past the hotel and not see the strikers, because they will have been able to return to their jobs.
Hearing that neighborhood news was a lot sweeter than reading about the Asian sex slavery that occurred just another few blocks away. A recent raid on a downtown massage parlor found 17 young Asian women hidden in the basement who had been trafficked into the country for forced sex slavery. This topic hit pretty close to home in more ways than one, because I’ve been researching it all week for a documentary that the company I work at is funding, and the statistics are horrifying: of the more than one million women and girls who are sold, transported and forced into sexual slavery each year, 50,000 are in the United States. It makes me wonder about the “Oriental massage parlor” with the blackened windows up the street from my house that I walk past at least twice a day.
Posted by Lisa at 4:10 PM | Comments (0)
When I sleep, my body actually melts and I cease to exist in this physical realm. I become a mist, floating between continents and dimensions.
Every morning when I wake up, it takes a sheer strength of will to reassemble the molecules that make up my bone structure, the little air sacks of my lungs and the synapses in my grey matter. That's why it takes me so long to wake up in the morning, and when I do, I tend to be disoriented.
But this morning, the news on NPR made all of my cells instantly snap into place. I thought I might be confused still, perhaps I misheard:
Ariel Sharon wants to pull all settlements out of the Gaza Strip.
Gavin Newsom threatened to walk the picket line of hotel workers.
Continue reading "Two Headlines, and a Third"
Posted by jennifer at 10:40 AM | Comments (1)
I'm the type whose hackles go up whenever someone--almost always a white someone, ya notice?--pooh-poohs political correctness. Yeah, folks, it's really fascist when Asian Americans demand to be called what we wanna be called rather than what ignorant you wanna call us. I tend to think that political correctness is a justice purely on the level of social revenge: if you get to remind me that I'm Asian American all day long, then I get to remind you that you're an ignorant fuck. Yeah, all day long, Hairdo. Me so angry.
Surprisingly enough, Frank Chin is nicer about this than I am.
Continue reading "Cultural Sensitivity, Schmultural Sensitivity"
Posted by claire at 12:37 PM | Comments (0)
Some good books came in the mail this week. One is Rivers’ Edge, a tell-all book about the rise of Weezer and the machinations of its musical genius/social misfit of a lead singer, Rivers Cuomo. Rumors of Rivers’ erratic Brian Wilson-like behavior have circulated for years and the book confirms some goodies and denies (or chooses to ignore) the more outrageous ones.
But I give author John D. Luerssen credit for putting out there what many people thought for years: that Cuomo harbors a raging Asian fetish.
Continue reading "Half Japanese Girls, Unite"
Posted by claire at 4:34 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack (0)
If you haven't picked up Issue 5 of Hyphen, there's a great must-read for hip-hop lovers: Bay Area writer Jeff Chang discusses his involvement with Solesides (the record label which spawned DJ Shadow, Latyrx and Blackalicious), to working at Russell Simmons' (now defunct) 360hiphop as the politics editor, to writing his own book about hip-hop. As an undergrad I interned at Quannum Projects (the present day reincarnation of Solesides) for a semester, so needless to say, I'm excited for Chang's book (Can't Stop, Won't Stop: A History of the Hip-hop Generation) to come out.
Continue reading "Can't Stop, Won't Stop"
Posted by Audrey at 1:22 AM | Comments (8)
And now, for the goody two-shoes public service announcement of the day: A coalition of civil rights group called Election Proctection 2004 is asking for volunteers to help monitor voting in polling places & distribute info about voters' rights. Got legal expertise? Even better. You're needed to help staff a hotline where people can report voting problems. What kind of problems? Besides the obvious (hello uncounted votes), lots can happen, like polling places closing when there are still people waiting in line, poll workers harassing voters, and the failure of some polling places to provide translated materials.
The coalition includes many vernerable organizations including the NAACP, National Asian Pacifica American Legal Consortium, the Asian Law Caucus right here in the Bay, Asian Pacific American Legal Center in So Cal, and AALDEF in NYC.
Click here to volunteer.
Posted by melissa at 2:27 PM | Comments (0)
When I was in high school, a blonde sophomore in my English class said, "I don't have regrets. Because every mistake you make is a learning experience."
Even then, I found the statement smug and presumptuous.
Even then, I had piles of regrets.
I've been thinking about this again lately, after saying some extremely unkind things to my boyfriend. Things that surprised me on their way out of my mouth. We were arguing, I was bone-tired, and I felt a round satisfaction as I heard the words. Followed by that sick feeling in my stomach, knowing that I'd gone too far.
I apologized, he says he forgives me. But I'm all too aware that I've introduced a tension, like a blob of black in perfectly white paint, that will always color our relationship. A regret.
What's the shelf life of transgressions? Do our iniquities reflect our innate make-up, or can they be forgive and forgotten as temporary lapses in judgement by an otherwise decent human being?
The question seems like philosophical mumbo-jumbo, perhaps. But it's a real issue in the upcoming election. I'm not even talking about Bush's drug use and conversion, or whether Kerry bled enough for his medals.
I'm talking about attempted rape.
Continue reading "Statute of Limitations"
Posted by jennifer at 5:49 PM | Comments (2)
I've been so busy at my day job today that I didn't remember it was my turn to blog until I was walking home from work.
We spent last Thursday night stuffing Issue 5 into envelopes and slapping labels on, so keep an eye out for your mailbox. We had two distinct piles: one with renewal letters (if you started with issue 1 or 2, your subscription has expired!) and one with just the mag that we ended up calling the "naked" pile. Special thanks to Andy, who made our labels; Ann Ninh, our new Bulk Mailing Mistress; My, who lugged the things to the post office, and Audrey--for the pizza and beer!
A couple statistics of note from Issue 5:
* 25 percent of APAs voted in the last presidential election compared to 55 percent of the census average
* 84 percent of APAs aged 18 to 24 didn't vote in the last presidential election
* 74 percent of APAs aged 25 to 44 didn't vote either
* Asian Americans are split among the parties. 40 percent claim to be Republicans, 36 percent Democrats, and 24 percent other
* Only 52 percent of Asian American who are U.S. citizens of voting age are registered to vote, compared to 70 percent of all citizens 18 and older
Posted by melissa at 6:04 PM | Comments (3)
Yesterday I spent fourteen hours in Asian America, or at least gazing at the two facets of Asian America that I know best: organizing and karaoke. That is to say, yesterday was our annual HYPHEN staff retreat! At my house, so of course no one told me the time had been moved up, and of course Jason showed up early, while I was still in my jammies, and of course Audrey came with a posse, bagels, and a paper jug (no joke!) of coffee to save the morning. Ernest Mark -- longtime community nonprofit consultant and all around good guy (yes! you can hire him! ) facilitated the retreat, so the drama and bitching and slamming things down on the table, screaming "fuck you!", and marching out the door (yes, I know that's just me) were kept to a minimum.
The result? We decided, 19 to nothing, that we really stood behind our modified collective staff structure -- with a few caveats -- and recommitted to busting our butts in five hour meetings with no pay. What's up next for us? Well, when we get the meeting notes in our inboxes, I'm sure we'll remember, but after the six hour home karaoke marathon, using Stef's extremely phallic Filipino-made magic mic , and after Stef's not-so-harmless ice-breaker drinking games, and Andy's toxic sea breezes, and a few ill-considered minutes alone with Yuki's voice mail ... well, all policy-making is a blur.
Continue reading "Time Served in Asian America"
Posted by claire at 1:22 PM | Comments (2)
So, I’m back in Ohio – yes, Swing State central – getting more and more disillusioned by the number of Bush/Cheney signs that I’m seeing everywhere.
The last 48 hours has consisted of a full day in airports and planes, gorging on the delights of my mother and aunt’s cooking, and trying – in my broken Bengali – to explain to my aunt (a retired Geography professor from Kolkata) about how ridiculously mythologized Thanksgiving and Columbus Day are. On a good note, I did just watch the collector’s edition DVD version of The Sixth Sense. The bonus materials include extensive interviews with M. Night, who talks a lot about being South Asian and how that influences his life and filmmaking -- plus a little outline of clues to follow through the movie. I know Night’s kinda silly and Hollywood, but I can’t help but really appreciate that man and his work.
Anyway, even though my flight back to Ohio the other day was relatively uneventful – except for me missing my flight because I was lying bed and listening to NPR at 6 a.m. – airline discrimination continues to be a major problem in this country. One, as a South Asian woman, I can’t seem to ignore. I remember feeling so stunned when writing this article about Ashraf Khan, a Pakistani American man who got ejected from a Delta flight right after Sept. 11. Now, three years later I am completely uncomfortable when in airports and on planes because of the level of insecurity and fear emanating from everyone.
Just this summer I sat in front of a couple of late 20-something white people on an Air Trans Air flight from Atlanta to Dayton, OH who began to discuss – in graphic detail – the Nick Berg “beheading” right after the seatbelt sign was turned on for our descent. Far from buying into the hoax theory, these people were out for blood. Their conversation went something like this:
Woman (with LOUD nasally voice): “Those people are such barbarians. I can’t believe people are against this war. We should turn [the Middle East] into a giant crater.”
Man (with somewhat of a Southern accent): “Wow, you seem really excited about this.”
Woman (laughing): “Oh, you have no idea. I get so pumped about this stuff. Go troops!”
The woman went on to say how rude Mexicans are for always speaking Spanish around people who can’t understand it; that black people are lazy, etc.etc.etc. At that point, I -- honestly -- was ready to find a parachute and jump out the window or actually make a serious complaint to a flight attendant because I felt really uncomfortable by their conversation. But the seatbelt sign was on and I was afraid I might get taken for being threatening. I wondered what would have happened if I had been having a really loud conversation about the Nick Berg beheading with the black man who was sitting next to me.
This -- combined with a flurry of other incidents that my friends and I have experinced lately -- made me look into what has been happening with all the lawsuits that the ACLU filed, back in 2002, against four major airlines for discrimination. Most airlines have settled by now, paying up to $2 million in damages. The ACLU filed another case just this year against the no-fly list that has been targeting South Asians and Arab Americans since 9.11. Here is the latest on that case.
And just to help piss y’all off as much as me, here is what Ann Coulter had to say about these lawsuits in her column back in May. I try not to pay any attention to what she says, but her continual jabs at Norman Mineta for not racially profiling really make me want to punch her in the neck.
Anyway, stay tuned for more stories about airline woes. In the meantime, read this BBC article about whether “integration is a two-way process”. There is another blonde chick with some killer quotes.
Posted by neela at 10:03 PM | Comments (0)
I've been schlepping around Los Angeles this past week working on one thing or another and thought I'd drop a line before I head back up to the Bay Area today.
While I've been in town, a friend informed me of the Asian Hip Hop Summit going on this Saturday, October 16th. I'm bummed that I'm not going to be here for it, but if any of you are in the area, I'd say it'd be worth your five bucks to check out the billion performers they have listed. Granted, this is a Hip Hop Summit, so there's going to be rhyming and breaking aplenty. But if, like me, you aren't exactly what people would call a "hip hop head," fear not: one of the three areas of the Los Angeles Leadership Academy (where the Summit's taking place) will be dedicated to rock/pop, where the likes of Ken Oak and Putnam Hall are slated to perform. Proceeds from the event will benefit the Jeet Kune Flow Open Mic for Asians.
So check out the online flier, tell your friends, and haul ass to LA's K-town if you get the chance. As for myself...I must now scoot off to the Bay. Happy Friday!
Posted by claire at 8:41 AM | Comments (0)
It's been a flurry of Hyphen-related emails the past two days.
Amidst the Hyphen chaos, I was finally able to get to personal emails. One of my best friends who is in a graduate program at Columbia University, forwarded me the link to one of her Oberlin connections. I took a quick break and perused the welcomed diversion. I have a new bookmark to add to my daily reading.
Anyone know who Dante Woo is? That Russell Leong quote has piqued my curiosity.
Posted by Audrey at 3:24 PM | Comments (0)
I’m sure only I see the irony here, but before I sat down to blog, I had writer’s block. Then I opened up my (snail) mail and realized what day it is: Today makes it five months to the day since my mom passed away from breast cancer.
In the mail I received an invitation to Hatwalk 2004, a gala benefit presented by the Asian American Cancer Support Network (AACSN). What a great fundraiser! Hatwalk (according to AACSN) “celebrates the value and importance of hats in bringing comfort to cancer patients.” The second annual Hatwalk will be held at the Hyatt Regency in Burlingame, CA on Saturday, November 6. Models will “hatwalk” down a runway in hats designed by AACSN volunteers; there will not only be a three-course dinner, but a silent auction and taiko performance. (For more information, key up their website or email: hatwalk2004@aacsn.org)
According to the Asian American Network for Cancer Awareness, Research and Training, “Cancer is the #1 cause of death for Asian and Pacific Islander females.” I never bothered to think of cancer in terms of demographics (race or gender). It was (and still is) personal to me because my mom fought cancer for over five years and it was hard to not only watch, but live through with her…and now without her.
Since the day my mom was first diagnosed with cancer, I stupidly continued to smoke my cigarettes. (I started smoking when I found out she was sick; of course I hid the fact that I smoked. My excuse to justify the habit was that it was a “stress reliever.”) Today I vow to quit smoking. I never really stuck to that resolution before--I also never really put too much effort in trying to quit. To commemorate this promise to myself, I am writing a donation check (in an amount bigger than I normally would) to AACSN. I’ll consider it a fraction of the utang na puso (“debt of the heart” in Tagalog) long overdue to Mama.
You have permission to chastise me if you see me light up.
Posted by Audrey at 2:24 AM | Comments (4)
Perhaps you've already caught the link meme about How to Date a White Woman: A Practical Guide for Asian Men
by Adam Quan. Now Amazon.com has "bundled" Quan's book with the classic Ming Tan text How to Attract Asian Women, presumably written for non-Asian men. Although the books are meant for divergent readerships, one could purchase both today for a low price of $44.36.
So wait, do people actually buy this crap? A few more clicks on Amazon.com revealed even more fascinating facts about consumer habits: Customers who bought How to Attract Asian Women also bought such titles as How to Get Laid Today! The System, Korean Bar Secrets II, "Hello My Big Big Honey!": Love Letters from Bangkok Bar Girls and Their Revealing Interviews, The Complete Asshole’s Guide to Handling Chicks and Don’t Be Afraid to Ask!! How to Date a Beautiful Woman, Third Revised Edition (both exclamation points included). Those who went for Quan also went for such titles as Worse Than He Says He Is: White Girls Don’t Bounce and, oh yes, Managing Herpes: How to Live and Love With a Chronic STD.
Quan, an "international business consultant," counts "dating women of many nationalities" as requisite knowledge in "providing the knowledge, framework and tools necessary for an Asian man to understand, to plan, and to put into action the steps to successfully date a white woman.” Tan is, sadly, a fellow Chinese American writer who grew up in New York City. She owns an online dating site that specifically hooks up non-Asian men with Asian women—or, in her words, "has helped numerous men understand and attract Asian women." All quease-inducing racial politics aside, the true lesson learned in my online superstore browsing might best be summed up by this Amazon list: "Why I will NEVER Get Married".
Posted by Lisa at 5:21 PM | Comments (34) | TrackBack (0)
So, has anybody seen the new, remastered Star Wars Trilogy on DVD? I admit, I'm a big nerd (an elegant, aloof big nerd, mind you) and the very first thing I watched after ripping the shrink wrap from my box set was "The Birth of the Lightsaber" mini-documentary. What can I say, I love special features.
So there I am, learning how they made the lightsaber hum, how the fighting developed over time, yadi yadi, when George Lucas blurted out, "Oriental sword fighting."
Continue reading "Mr. Lucas, Sigh, I Am Not a Carpet"
Posted by jennifer at 10:30 AM | Comments (0)
Issue 5, our politics issue, comes back from the printers tomorrow and I can hardly wait. There is nothing as satisfying as seeing the finished product, hot off the presses. This, however, is quickly followed by the back-breaking work of having to move the damn things, stuff and sort them for mailing, and drive them around for distribution at bookstores. By that point, you’ve noticed the few inevitable typos. And you are no longer in love. I think a lot of staffers have this love/hate relationship with Hyphen because we all volunteer a lot of our time and we do everything ourselves.
This Wednesday evening I’m speaking on a panel at San Francisco State University about new publications. I get asked quite a bit to speak on panels, often at Asian American or media events, probably because there are only so many Asian American publications. You tend to see the same panelists over and over again. It’s a small world. But apparently, according to this post by former Hyphen staffer Oliver Wang, even a small world can’t keep people from thinking all Asians look alike. Our very own Todd Inoue was mistaken for Oliver. If you know these two, then you know they don’t look anything alike. Classic.
Posted by melissa at 3:02 PM | Comments (0)
Oh Waily, Waily! Derrida is Dead! No more lectures! No more glosses! What we have is all that we'll ever get! Will everyone take advantage of the lapse and not bother to understand deconstruction now? Will we continue on our reactionary, creative-writing-workshop-Margaret-Mead-did-it-best-hagiography-as-trash-compacter-tainted way? Will Bush win the election? Will Jacques have failed?
Or will his passing bring him the mainstream prestige he never acquired (nor sought) in life? Will deconstruction become part of high school curricula? Will Asian American writers, en masse, suddenly stop writing first-person, thinly-veiled autobiography about their grandmothers, and talk excitedly over their cigarettes about L-A-N-G-U-A-G-E poets? Will Fil-Am community performers cease invoking Bulosan in favor of Myung-Mi Kim? Will we all finally just understand that everything is meaningless anyway so we might just as well read REPUBLIC OF FEAR over our soju of a Sunday evening as watch a re-run of "Alias"? Will John Kerry have an acid flashback to when he still had balls?
Here are some things that Jacques could have affected if he had but died earlier (Waily!):
• Perhaps Dead Derrida could have convinced those responsible for subcontinental tensions that "Kashmir," "religious conflict" and related issues are really all just "text." Perhaps they'll yet learn to treat Indian American protest as mere "intertextuality."
• Dead Derrida could have helped (and could yet!) Vietnamese Americans to understand that all language is inexact, confusing, and full of contradictions; therefore "Bush" and "Kerry" are really the same word. Moreover, to vote for "Bush," one must actually cast one's vote for "Kerry," creating a seemingly opposite effect that would bring all right (or wrong) in the end. ... Only, once the meanings reversed themselves, wouldn't it start all over again with 71% voting for Bush and only 27% for Kerry? Now I'm confused. Waily!
• Dead Derrida would have rendered the conversion of a US military base into an Indian American-owned technology park a non-event because really, did anything there change except the words?
• Dead Derrida could spread yoga beyond the liberal three coasts by making it clear that body and movement are also text, and therefore meaningless, contradictory, layered, and ultimately an expression of family values and an incredibly effective gay-bashing technique. Rather than lobbying Congress, Christian conservatives could down-dog the *&$%@ out of those Godless perverts, setting up their sticky mats in front of Sen. Rick Santorum's office and rounding out each session with a rousing "Kumbaya," whose lyrics could also be interpreted to mean "anti-bunker nukes are worth your pocket change," "punish the homeless," or "rock me, Amadeus."
Posted by claire at 1:44 PM | Comments (2)
Yipee. Welcome to the Hyphen Blog. A wonderful world of Asian American quirk from the editors/staff of Hyphen.
I was in a bad-ass (or maybe ass-bad would be more accurate) mood on Friday. I was moping in my room watching The Gilmore Girls on DVD under my down comforter, trying to drown out the debate from the living room of my apartment. Isn't that sad? Even with Yoko Ono interrupting my regularly scheduled MTV programming to tell me that this is the most important election of my life, I still could not drag myself out of bed to watch two candidates who are barely any different battle it out on national television. Sigh. I know I'm just being a pessimist, but as a Green Party member and a proud Nader 2000 voter, Kerry just doesn't do it for me. In fact, voting for Kerry is going to make me feel downright dirty.
I went to see writer/anti-globalization leader Arundhati Roy speak in front of a crowd of adoring fans in Berkeley back in August -- and I'm not a huge fan of the charming Miss Roy myself, but that's a whole other entry -- but she did say some stuff about the election that really stuck with me. Writer Sandip Roy-Chowdhury (a Hyphen Advisory Board member) got her to talk about it when he interviewed her for India Currents and KALW's Up Front. In answer to a question about distinguishing between American people and the American government, Arundhati said:
"Look at the clash between Bush and Kerry. Kerry has said he supports the war, Kerry said he would support the war even if he knew WMDs were not to be found, Kerry just wants UN cover. Which means Indians and Pakistanis will go to Iraq and die instead. And French and Germans and Russians can share in the spoils of Iraq. This is a difficult question the anti-war movement has to ask itself. If it openly campaigns for Kerry, is it openly supporting soft-imperialism -- killing me softly?"
Something to think about. Nice one, Arundhati. Now, was it really that necessary to wear a snug-fitting, white tank top in the poster for your speech?
But anyway, whine whine whine, I guess that's not really the point about this upcoming election. Dirty or not, I still want to vote for Kerry and maybe I'll even go join South Asians for Kerry on Sunday in San Francisco for a phone banking for swing states event in order to feel better about myself. I do have to give props to South Asians for Kerry -- this organization is breaking down the boundaries between Indians and Pakistanis and forming a progressive coalition that's been making some serious waves. Plus they have cool t-shirts that say "Just Vote, yaar." Nice.
-N. Banerjee
Posted by neela at 5:31 PM | Comments (0)
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