Hyphen magazine - Asian American arts, culture, and politics

A white male Princeton grad student has confessed to cutting locks of hair from nine Asian American female students without their knowledge, as well as pouring his urine and semen into the drinks of Asian female students on more than 50 occassions. Real smooth.

Once again, our fabulous Art Director has pulled an all-nighter to get an issue of Hyphen to the printers. For the last week, I've been working the equivalent of two full times jobs. After my real job (you know, the one that pays), I head over to Stef's house and the two of us stay up all night making all sorts of adjustments and changes, trying to get everything just right. Sometimes we were joined by one of our designers, Andy. This is going to be the best looking issue yet. Full color inside and out. Big, beautiful photographs. Matte paper. We've got some good stories too -- a look at Korean adoptees returning to Korea, interviews with M.I.A and IQU, and a first person account by David Miyasato, who sued the Army for trying to get him to serve in Iraq via a backdoor draft. We're very excited!

Asian American civil rights pioneer Fred Korematsu, who challenged the detention of Japanese Americans during World War II, died Wednesday of respiratory failure. Korematsu's conviction for violating the presidential order that authorized the internment of Japanese Americans is a landmark case in constitutional law and Asian American history.

Ever wanted to be a superhero? Me too. ... Short of that (and aren't we all?) there are small things we can do to save people's lives and change the world. Really small things, like writing letters and making phone calls to our representatives. There's an opportunity in the next few weeks to save a few people who might otherwise--because of cynical government policies--be sent back to imprisonment, torture and death as political prisoners in their home countries, or to save a few of our law-abiding neighbors from being deported, or keeping undocumented immigrants on our legal radar--where they have a chance to become law-abiding neighbors.