Moon now joins the likes of Charlotte's Web and Beverly Cleary's Ramona books in the pantheon of round silver-stickered classics. That'll do, Moon. That'll do.
A transition. A filling of a void. An emergence of enthusiastic Asian Pacific Islander visionaries.
First spotted and coming out of nowhere is Actors at Play. They are a young collective who have been working for eight months on their project, Beware of Cupid.
They were frustrated. Like many of us, they didn't see their stories being told, not as artists, not as individuals, and not as Asian Pacific Islanders. They set on a mission to reinvent the rules of how art gets produced -- or the story of how art meets its public. And so they got together and chose the theme of love and Valentine's Day.
But hey, stop the "love" train! What's so innovative in that?
Why are the viral infant musical prodigies on YouTube always Asian? Here's the latest:
Which is less fun because the kid looks like he's having no fun at all. There's also this one I posted recently:
I'm having visions of stern Asian parents hanging their six-month-old infants' queues from a hook in the ceiling to keep them from falling asleep while they practice "Stairway to Heaven." But it's probably not abuse, per se. Because it's not that there are no non-Asian baby musical prodigies, it's just that the Asian ones are the most popular. Now why do you suppose that is? Can it be because having an Asian infant play pop music doubles the poodle walking on its hind legs effect? Is the child funnier or more incredible because he's Asian?
Just to show you that Hyphen is not just an undifferentiated mass of the like-minded, I have to tell you I disagree with Sylvie Kim's rebuttal of Popmatters' racial analysis of the TV show Glee.
Yes, all by myself, suckas! Well, mostly by myself, with a little bit of help from several hundred Cal students. And, as you can see above, I ATE it all myself too! ... with similar help.
What am I talking about? Well, Sunday at noon, on the UC Berkeley campus, I and several hundred of my closest little friends broke the Guinness World Record (not yet official) by rolling the world's longest California roll. That's right, it was 330 feet long, 30 feet longer than the previous world's record, set by those slackers in Hawaii!
In the terrible 1998 remake of the Japanese monster-flick Godzilla, the mayor of New York is an arrogant buffoon who nearly dooms the city. The rumor? The character -- Mayor Ebert -- is a stab at the movie critic Roger, who has blasted Emmerich in the past for an overreliance on special effects and spectacle, at the expense of character development and plot. Consider the opening paragraph from this, his review of Emmerich's 2004 film The Day After Tomorrow.
Anyway, I have a feeling that, upon watching the trailer for Emmerich's upcoming film 2012, Roger Ebert and I had the same reaction: not this shit again.
I came across this article today and thought I'd share. Partly to thank the author, and the other women of her generation who made keeping one's maiden name at marriage (straight marriage, anyway) a choice as legally simple as filling in the blank on a form. Partly, because it reminded me of a topic that's been bumping around in my head for a while: the potentially additional layers of implication for Asian American women when they decide to take, or not to take, their husbands' names.
In the '70s, when the shift toward keeping maiden names began in the US, only about 4 percent of women did so; by 2001, that percentage had risen to 20. Now speculation is, it's falling again. "Once you cease from being a man's property, you lose the need to assert it," explains historian Stephanie Coontz.
But I'm not sure how the mere keeping of one's name is still perceived as the "asserting" of something, whereas the never uncomplicated process of changing one's name (think SSN, bank accounts, professional relationships) to this day manages to retain the status of not doing, saying, or asserting anything in particular.
The Penny Arcade Expo (PAX) is one huge gamer celebration. Taking place every Labor Day weekend since 2005 in Bellevue, WA, PAX is the convention in the US representing
the gaming community. It's a fast growing community at that. Nearly 61,000 attended in 2009,
up from 55,000 last year, with an eyeball estimate of at least a quarter of attendees being Asian. Convention attendee and volunteer Albert Park from Berkeley, CA, sent in his event photos with some captions and commentary. It's a fascinating glimpse into a world of passionate people.
Octavia Butler Scholarship Benefit at Litquake Saturday!
Photo via Wikimedia Commons
Are you an aZn sci-fi geek? (If you let that modifier stand without complaint, I guarantee that you're not.) If so, and if you have any idea who Octavia Butler is, check this out! (I promise, there's an Asian connection in there.)
InterrogAsian Answers Your Asian American Culture Questions
Why are my Chinese neighbors so aloof and what's the deal with Korean tacos? InterrogAsian answers those questions in the latest issue of Hyphen, the Action Issue
If you haven't seen it in our print edition, InterrogAsian is Hyphen's sansei of Asian American culture. You might have heard of Ask A Mexican, so it's kind of like that, but with more soy sauce flavoring.
Interesting tidbit from this New York Times story about a study of interracial college roommates: Those who roomed with Asian Americans became more prejudiced.
Uh ... was anyone actually suggesting that Obama invade Iran? I mean, other than crazy mans on da streets?
Because (m)O('bettah)bama is the very opposite of a brutal regime dictator tyrant evil axis thingie. (m)O('bettah)bama is good. It is Ahmadinejad who is brutal 'n' evil. And Kim Il thingie. And, like, Angela Merkel, and Johnson & Johnson. And Metallica.
Actually, if you look around, the Brutal Regimes are everywhere. Everywhere. Wow. It's frightening.
A picture is worth a thousand words, but images wherein the subject expresses complex human emotions via maxillofacial/upper extremity juxtaposition is worth at least 2,500 words.
Hump Day comes and Hump Day goes, but the bridge into the weekend can feel seamless this time around with the help of the IndioBravo Filipino Film Festival.
Students Rise to the Top of 2009 International Contemporary Furniture Fair
Sometimes, living on a student's shoestring budget can reap big benefits, by teaching you how to think big by using less.
I had my Hyphen Takeout editor's cap firmly on while trolling New York's swank International Contemporary Furniture Fair (ICFF) last week for a good story. Specifically, I was looking for the kind of creative work we like to show off in our magazine -- the innovative, socially-conscious and often collaborative projects that can spark a conversation and add more value to a room than just sheer aesthetic wow.
Hyphen Lynx: Sriracha Sauce Origins, Asian Americans Hit Silicon Valley Glass Ceiling
Every so often when I'm in Southern California, we take the drive out
from Los Angeles proper to the eastern suburbs, and when the exit signs
for Rosemead pop up, I always think of Sriracha hot sauce and wished I was the guy who came up with that gold mine.
The Rosemead-based company's stuff is in restaurants everywhere, and it was christened with an article in the New York Times this week that's being linked to all over Facebook and the Web.
Back in the San Francisco Bay Area, a study released this week shows that Asian Americans are few and far between in the corporate board rooms and executive offices of Silicon Valley companies.
Asian Americans make up more
than a third of the work force at some of Silicon Valley's biggest tech
companies but only about 6 percent of board members
and about 10 percent of corporate officers of the Bay Area's 25 largest
companies, the report says.
You know the old saying: You don't learn to appreciate your parents until you become a parent yourself. I think that's somewhat true. In reflecting on/writing about raising a multilingual child, I've been thinking a lot about being raised bilingual. My parents never made it a big point to force us to speak Chinese; it just was what it was. We never really questioned it. Mandarin was my first language and it connected me to my immediate family members. We were very privileged because my sister and I got to spend a lot of time in Taiwan, where my grandparents lived. We spent summers there and thus gained a lot of fluency through immersion in a Chinese environment.
I wonder how my my parents and other first generation parents pondered over their children's language acquisition; how much they thought about issues of assimilation or retaining their cultural heritage. I also think for second and third generation Americans, it may be a more conscious decisions in most cases to raise their child knowing a language outside of English.
One of the drawbacks I didn't mention in being a bilingual child, where my first language was not English, is that when I started school, I became really quiet. At home, I would talk, but at school, I rarely said anything unless the teacher asked me something or unless another kid engaged me in a real way (not just talking at me). I'm sure a big part is my personality, but this silence thing reverberated throughout my schooling years. Even in college, I always felt like by the time I could formulate words to participate in a discussion, the discussion had already moved on.
After watching umpteen sickly-sweet videos like the one above, in which the Jon & Kate Plus 8 lead couple indicates that their meet-cute was just plain love at first sight, you gotta wonder what's been edited out.
See the title of the post? Very simple and to the point! If only raising a multilingual child were that simple and straightforward.
I've been thinking and reading a lot about this topic. I think about how I was raised bilingual and how empowering being bilingual has been for me. Sure, there have been some setbacks, such as feeling really behind in college literature classes and not really learning proper grammar until my 20s. And getting words mixed up and such, and accidentally speaking to an English speaker in Mandarin.
I've been reflecting on why being bilingual experience has been so positive and rewarding. I think first and foremost, I was able to and am still able to connect to a different generation. As a child, it was mostly my immediate family, like my grandparents. Nowadays, it's anyone who is first generation. I've used Mandarin to translate things for random strangers. I've used Mandarin, more than one would think, in my journalism work. Because I have had such a powerful experience, I want to pass this along to my own child.
But saying it (here, in the post) is a lot easier than actually practicing it.
The Joy Luck Hub Blog Carnival: Asian American Immigrant Stories!
It's May, peoples! It's Asian and Pacific Islander Heritage Month! This year is also the 20th Anniversary of the publication of Amy Tan's classic Asian American immigrant novel, The Joy Luck Club.
We have a love/hate relationship with that book. Love because it was our first foray into the mainstream of American fiction, a moment of broad self-acknowledgment many Asian Americans remember with fondness. Hate for many reasons: because it focused on women to the detriment of men (for a perspective, see Alvin's comments here); because it proposed an immigrant arc similar to that of Europeans, glossing over the continuing issues Asian immigrants have in this country; because it was so successful it coerced a generation of Asian American novelists to Joy Luck their way into a writing career.
So, to express our ambivalent Happy Birthday, here's a bouquet of tiny immigration tales. These are 300-word, true stories, from real Asian Americans, that complicate and argue with the story The Joy Luck Club tells. The complete awesomeness, vitality, and real diversity of these stories is exactly what my problem with the Joy Lucking of Asian American writing is about. We always knew these stories were out there; I just didn't know we could get so many great ones in such a short time.
(My only caveat is that we didn't get enough stories from men. Imagine how much broader the range would be if we had! Maybe next year ...)
It's been pissing me off lately that people are applying tired-ass stereotypes to explain why Asian Americans are winning dance competitions -- the same stereotypes they (used to) use to explain why Asian Americans can't dance. Now they say that the reason why we win is because of our discipline and attention to detail, instead of admitting that we may actually be, you know, good dancers.Â
In light of recent events, the white elephant in the room, the great scourge of postmodern society, can finally be addressed. Yes, I'm talking about Asian hipsters. What gives, man?
The Great Melting Pot: "Edging" Us out within Interracial Families
Earlier this week, Racialicious guest blogger Thea Lim deconstructed a controversial NYT blog post which details a white woman's experiences and concerns as she raises her mixed-race child. The author (and white woman in question), Nicole Sprinkle, very honestly describes her desire to incorporate her husband's Colombian heritage into her daughter's upbringing while prioritizing and carefully cultivating her white identity:
"Yes, she would learn Spanish and
English, but to emphasize her Latina side, I felt, was somehow a
disservice. Frankly, I didn't want her to lose any of the privileges of
being white. [...] I just wanted the eyelashes, and
cheekbones, and that lyrical Spanish when appropriate. I wanted the
good stuff, and from both sides."
...It gets worse. Read the whole article to get the full effect. Lim responds somewhat emotionally to Sprinkle's unabashed prejudice. As a mixed-race person myself, who was raised to value my (father's) whiteness above my (mother's) Filipina heritage, my initial reaction to the article left me too appalled to be articulate, so I asked another mixed-race friend of mine to break it down. She sent me the following thoughtful analysis:
That 'Single Asians' Video and Other Cultural Comedy
Likely you've already seen this gem from Mixed Company of Yale -- but in case you haven't: it's a racialized parody of Beyonce's "All the Single Ladies." Here it is for your viewing pleasure (lyrics after the jump):
I've been trying to make sense of how I feel about this video since it came out a couple of weeks ago...and am still torn between what little of it I find amusing and the rest of it, which I find tasteless and insulting (Seriously: Are there really any AsAms who think that "me love you long time" is anything other than an offensive, sexist, racist trope?).
The arguably racist/sexist overtones of the video are obvious and have been covered pretty widely by other blogs, so I won't go into that here. Besides, I'm less interested in dissecting why/how the piece is racist or sexist than I am in why the video is (meant to be) funny -- particularly to the women who created it. Are these women poking fun at racists/racism by performing every stereotype associated with Asian women, a la "hipster racism"? Or are they simply making fun of Asian women? And for whom are they ultimately performing?
Help us honor and argue with The Joy Luck Club on the 20th Anniversary of its publication AND celebrate API Heritage Month in May! Send us your immigrant story in 300 words or less!
Cheng was in an automobile accident in November, which might have killed him had three off-duty EMTs not happened to drive by with all their gear. I haven't been able to find any information about why Cheng's insurance carrier decided to drop him when he needed them the most, but if you have a moment, try shooting off an email to Obama or your local or state brass asking them to do something about healthcare in our country.
Aside from playing bass for the Deftones, the Buddhist Cheng is a poet and community activist for homeless youth and battered women. He also has a wife and child. Please consider donating; his condition continues to improve.
The Glitz. The Glamour. The terrible outfits of JC Chasez. America's Best Dance Crew, Season 3 is Quest Crew. Congrats, fellas. But after three iterations of the hit show, I think America's Best Dance Crew is a bit of a misnomer.
One thing we haven't talked about yet is the start of Women's History Month, which is March. It's a great time to highlight the accomplishments of women, and a lot of organizations are jumping on the bandwagon.
One of the coolest things I've seen so far is a Glamour photo spread showing female "American Icons," played by current celebrities. E.g.: Hayden Panettiere as Amelia Earhart and Lindsey Lohan as Madonna. It's a great idea, and highlights national treasures of sports and political action as well as entertainment.
Hyphen contributor Yumi Wilson says in her first-person essay that all her life she "had fought to be recognized as half-black and half-Japanese" and that her racial identity "was based on my experience as the daughter of a
Japanese-born mother and African American soldier. My love of Japanese
soba came from my mother's cooking. My choice of music came from my
father's taste for soul and R&B."
The Slumdog Millionaire phenomenon has been an interesting one. For me, the best part has been the 'Fuck You' to the Hollywood establishment that this film represented: no stars, no backing, etc. I'm not sure if it was my favorite Oscar winning movie -- or my favorite movie of the year for that matter [because, um, did you SEE The Wrestler? and I'm not really a feel-good kinda girl]. But it has also elicited some really interesting responses. Here's a quick wrap up of blog entries and pieces:
Sorry, but it's raining. I have no little sarcasm, and no made-up theme, for Hyphen Lynks this week. It's just the news, plus a few undigested opinions, from all over the place. Please feel free to insert your own sarcastic comments below. Or to suggest themes. Above, enjoy a vid of Our Tamlyn explaining why everyone needed to vote last November. Glad she did. Why Tamlyn? See below.
Are you a poet interested in working in an exclusively Asian American workshop? Kundiman is taking applications for its 2009 Retreat.
The following is directly quoted from Kundiman's announcement. Please don't ask us for more information; we don't have any! Just go to the links below and ask them.
Okay, at the risk of being called one of those whiny minorities for whom you can't ever do anything right, this new development in the Avatar casting issue is ... weird. And problematic.
... And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Whitewash
In honor of the ongoing Avatar controversy (in which a bunch of Asian and Inuit characters from a cartoon are going to be played by white actors in the live-action film) here's a brief and incomplete history of -- not merely yellowface (a blogger recently did this treatment of yellowface in general but I can't findand here's the post) -- but incidence of white actors taking strong Asian roles that an Asian actor might have actually wanted.
There is a place, a place where the policies of two decades ago bump up against the politics of next century, where a first lady's fashion choice is as important as the lives of 400 Palestinian children, where the Chinese are still Japanese in the popular imagination, where real bleeding heart lib'rals are preparing to get up and party at 7:30 of a Tuesday morn. This place is called ... Da Twilight Zone!
So, as a parent of a toddler, we spend some, er, quality time in front of the computer watching YouTube videos -- in moderation, of course. My son learned to say "video" very quickly (in what I think is a Mandarin accent). We try to find culturally appropriate ones that we enjoy watching too. Check 'em out:
Just to show you that Hyphen is not just an undifferentiated mass of the like-minded, I have to tell you I disagree with Sylvie Kim's rebuttal of Popmatters' racial analysis of the TV show Glee.
I came across this article today and thought I'd share. Partly to thank the author, and the other women of her generation who made keeping one's maiden name at marriage (straight marriage, anyway) a choice as legally simple as filling in the blank on a form. Partly, because it reminded me of a topic that's been bumping around in my head for a while: the potentially additional layers of implication for Asian American women when they decide to take, or not to take, their husbands' names.
Why are my Chinese neighbors so aloof and what's the deal with Korean tacos? InterrogAsian answers those questions in the latest issue of Hyphen, the Action Issue 
Sometimes, living on a student's shoestring budget can reap big benefits, by teaching you how to think big by using less.
In light of recent events, the white elephant in the room, the great scourge of postmodern society, can finally be addressed. Yes, I'm talking about Asian hipsters. What gives, man? 
Help us honor and argue with The Joy Luck Club on the 20th Anniversary of its publication AND celebrate API Heritage Month in May! Send us your immigrant story in 300 words or less!
Hyphen contributor Yumi Wilson says in her first-person essay that all her life she "had fought to be recognized as half-black and half-Japanese" and that her racial identity "was based on my experience as the daughter of a
Japanese-born mother and African American soldier. My love of Japanese
soba came from my mother's cooking. My choice of music came from my
father's taste for soul and R&B."
The Slumdog Millionaire phenomenon has been an interesting one. For me, the best part has been the 'Fuck You' to the Hollywood establishment that this film represented: no stars, no backing, etc. I'm not sure if it was my favorite Oscar winning movie -- or my favorite movie of the year for that matter [because, um, did you SEE The Wrestler? and I'm not really a feel-good kinda girl]. But it has also elicited some really interesting responses. Here's a quick wrap up of blog entries and pieces:
