It’s NOVEMBER! (no duh!) This episode clocks in about 1:15 hr, so get ready to enjoy all the new music (and some old). Your requests, comments and questions answered. Plus a sneak preview of what to expect at the Toronto Reel Asian Film Festival starting tomorrow! Links mentioned in this podcast include:
Special thanks to Marcus who yelled at me to put up another podcast. Thanks, man!
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The Toronto International Reel Asian Film Festival rolls into town November 11 – 15th, 2009. Check out a short interview with the Director of the Canadian film The Ache, Keith Lock above and the second part of my mini reviews below.
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Shopping With GASP!
Last Friday, 30 October, 16-year old Melody Ross was shot while leaving Wilson High School’s Homecoming football game. She was an honors student, on the school’s track team, and college-bound: Student at Long Beach’s Wilson High fatally shot after homecoming game. At the time of the incident and a few days after, no perpetrator had been identified and Long Beach City Police even offered a $20,000 reward for concrete leads on the shooter. Friday, 6 November, two 16-year olds, Tom Vinson and Daivion Davis, were charged with first degree murder for the death of Melody Ross and attempted murder of two other men.
In reading several articles on this story, what stands out to me is the fact that Melody was the daughter of Khmer refugees, Chantha and Vanareth Ross. Her parents and other family members escaped Cambodia during the Khmer Rouge regime to Long Beach, California, home of the largest Khmer community in the West Coast.
During college, I took a course on the refugee policy in the context of the refugee flows out of mainland Southeast Asia in light of the Second Indochina War. One of the salient points my professor made regarded the ways trauma from the violence experienced in their homelands traveled with the migrants through refugee and transit camps to their eventual country of resettlement. For Melody’s family who escaped the Khmer Rouge genocide, how does her death as an innocent bystander speak into her family’s history? Living in a city with a high crime rate and gang activity, Melody’s parents had even moved their family to a safer neighborhood. Her uncle, Sam Che, commented to the press on his niece’s death, “It’s so senseless. We escaped the Killing Fields.”
In attempting to understand the Khmer refugee experience of displacement and resettlement, Melody’s death brings together both the trauma of her family’s flight from Cambodia and the pains of the immigrant’s life in the US. Both Vanareth and Chantha work 10-12 hour days, six days a week to provide a better life for their children. Vanareth, her father, expressed, “I have a little regret we didn’t have more time for her.”
For those of us who were not adopted, we can only begin to imagine what it would be like to be raised in a culture completely different from the one we were born into, but this may give us some insight: a new study by the Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute finds that among first-generation adopted South Koreans, 78% of respondents considered themselves white or wanted to be white when they were children. The study was based on the responses of 179 SK adoptees with two white parents.
South Koreans make up the largest group of transracial adoptees in the U.S., and they comprise an estimated 10% of the total South Korean population here. The first generations of adoptive parents were told to assimilate the children into American culture without regard for the children’s native culture; as a result, older South Korean adoptees tended to have the mindset of being white or wanting to be white.
Nowadays, adoptive parents are encouraged to maintain ties to their adopted children’s native background. They send their kids to “culture camps” to learn more about where they came from. They take the kids on a family trip to their native country. They enroll them in classes to learn their native language. The adoption mindset definitely shifted in the right direction by encouraging kids to learn more about where they came from — instead of avoiding it.
Why yes, this would be fellow 8Asians bloggers Joz and Jee, and here they are in a video promotion with Steve Nguyen to promote BANANA, the FIRST-EVER gathering and round-table discussion/panel of Asian American bloggers at the USC campus on November 21st. I’d go into more detail, but event creator Lac Su explains it all the more eloquently (he did write a book, after all):
BANANA, [is] where we will get into important discussions about the future of our voice, where it will lead to, and how we can come together to find common grounds and focused endeavors to voice our opinions about relevant issues affecting our community. Why? Because the time is a-changing. We rise.
Steve Nguyen, a television/film producer and head of the Los Angeles ChannelAPA.com division, will be there to co-host and capture the event on film to help promote our voices and to introduce the faces behind such blogs.
Unfortunately, Joz will be in Asia during the event, so attendees will have to put up with grumpy, cynical me traveling down from San Francisco to be one of three 8Asians representatives. Whether this event is an Asian love-fest or an all-out shouting match is anyone’s guess, and if you’re in the Los Angeles area, you’re more than welcome to attend and watch what happens.
Unless you were trapped under a rock, you would know that the much debated and controversial Health Care plan passed in the house with a margin of five votes, 220-215. Despite a huge number of Democrats in the House, the plan barely limped through strange objections and a close vote. And, it still has to push through the Senate. While 36 Democrats voted against the Health Care plan, the sole Republican from Louisiana’s second district voted for the plan — Ahn “Joseph” Cao, the first Vietnamese-American Representative to ever serve in the House.
Cao won his seat over troubled eight time incumbent William Jefferson, who still received 47% of the vote despite charges of bribery and corruption (Louisiana politics, do you expect any less?). Rep. Cao is very “moderate” for a Republican, as highlighted by his vote for the Health Care Plan; he has to be, if he wants to have any chance to be re-elected in a very blue district.
The Toronto International Reel Asian Film Festival rolls into town — mine! — November 11 – 15th, 2009. In honor of the film festival, this is the first of a three-part mini reviews post of the features being presented. Watch the trailer and if you like, check out the limited edition shirts over at NIWE Style Clothing.
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The biggest news this weekend from Arcadia, CA was Zenyatta coming from behind to clinch her 14th win at the Breeders’ Cup Classic at the Santa Anita Race Track. It was actually quite an amazing feat considering how far behind she was. But lost beneath the headlines was the opening of the race track’s new exhibit about the race track’s often forgotten association with Japanese Internment.
Signed in February 19th, 1942 by President F.D. Roosevelt, Executive Order 9066 granted military personnel the right to move en masse many Japanese Americans, of which the majority were American citizens, into internment camps for a good two years. The move forced many of these individuals to sacrifice much of their possessions, property, and even family. People like Star Trek star George Takei, Malcolm X’s confidant Yuri Kochiyama, civil activist Richard Aoki and about 120,000 others had their lives shaped by these internment camps. In short, Japanese Internment is seen as a black stain in American history, and is often considered a hypocritical blind move by the American government by many due to its various associations with the Nazi’s concentration camps, but I digress. The most well known of these internment camps is in Manzanar, CA but before much of the interned were forced into Manzanar, they first settled into temporary staging areas held at various stables and race tracks in places like Pomona, Fresno, Salinas, and so on; the most famous of them the Santa Anita Race Track. The exhibit hopes to bring much of the forgotten history of Japanese Internment back into the forefront of our view on World War II, which is generally viewed as the perennial battle in which the good of the Allies defeated the evil of the Axis.
I grew up around the area and often drove by without drawing any connections between the race track and its dark, hidden past. The race track sits right next to a modern mall and when I went to the mall in middle school, I always considered the track to be a relic of the past; mostly because I failed to understand the excitement of horse racing and failed to recognize the significance of the venue to the sport. I guess it would be as if I looked down upon the Rose Bowl simply because I didn’t watch football. I didn’t know of its purpose, let alone its role in 1942. Therefore, I’m excited to visit the exhibit not only because I hope to catch some great exhibits and read some excerpts from primary sources first hand, but also because it gives me a reason to step into a place so heralded by horse racing enthusiasts.
Kogi BBQ Truck chef Roy Choi was featured this week in the new annual CHOW 13 list of foodie innovators, entrepreneurs and trendsetters.
The chef did more than just steamroll Los Angeles’ use of food trucks; he and his team essentially redefined the mobile food industry (and the Los Angeles restaurant world) by using Twitter to reach out to hungry fans and successfully combining two ethnic cuisines into a single delicious taco.
Choi sees his responsibility as a chef beyond the confines of the kitchen (or truck):
“… I’ve learned that there’s nothing more important than seeing the expression on somebody’s face when you hand them food, directly. How great would it be if the best chefs in the world brought their food to the people? I don’t mean the people who can afford the food. I’m talking about…[k]ids in Queensbridge projects or South Central LA, who may never get the chance to eat great food from the hands of a master like an Eric Ripert or Daniel Boulud. Imagine if they brought that food down to the people? If we made that fundamental shift in the industry, it would change the framework of who we are as humans.”
Kudos to Roy Choi on his success! Read the rest of the interview directly on CHOW.
We love it when Asians behave badly. It gives us something to gossip about and also, it makes us feel pretty badass. It’s true. It’s like a slap in the face to that annoying stereotype about being submissive model minorities. You want high SAT scores? How about a dumb lawsuit?
Of course, this doesn’t mean we condone any sort of bad behavior. No, you shouldn’t lie about getting job offers and you shouldn’t try to steal money from cute boys. Actually, what am I even saying? These people make us look bad. Maybe I shouldn’t write about this.
So I’ll just say that I’ve been enjoying the case of 19 year old Rachel Lee and her burglary “bling ring”. If you’ve ever needed proof that paparazzi sites like TMZ are bad for society, then here you go: thanks to the proliferation of Hollywood gossip blogs like TMZ (and probably Google Maps), Lee and her friends were able to track down and rob the homes of Paris Hilton, Rachel Bilson, Lindsay Lohan, Audrina Patridge and other famous people who probably deserved it.
(I mean, let’s be real. They didn’t even have to break in: these people never locked their doors. Plus, like Paris Hilton ever wears the same outfit twice? Rachel probably put good use to those diamond watches.)
Conclusion: Rachel needs a book deal so she can tell us what exactly is inside Lindsay Lohan’s house. Cocaine? Discarded hair extensions? What’s left of her career?
Rachel. You’re Asian. You should be smart enough to get yourself out of this mess. Make us look good!
I am devastated — still — about the results of the World Series. I make no secret of the fact that I loathe the Yankees. To put it simply, I loathe any team except for my beloved Dodgers; I am a die-hard, bleeding blue, Dodgers fan. And, as upset and heart-broken as I am about our (Dodgers’) loss, I have the consolation of knowing that Hideki Matsui was crowned World Series MVP. Matsui is the first Japanese-Born player to win this award and I could not be happier for him.
It pains me more than you can know to praise someone who wears anything but Dodger blue, but I need to give our fellow Asian brethren recognition when it’s due. To put it simply, he played exceptionally well – especially considering he plays with bad knees. Not only is he the first Japanese-born player to win this honor, he’s also the first player to win as a full-time DH (designated hitter) in the series. And although his future with the Yankees is unknown, the world knows that Matsui is an exceptional baseball player and has left them (Yankees) with a memorable game.
As someone who grew up in the U.S., I never really got the Disney bug as a child. Maybe it’s because I grew up in New York, far away from either Disneyland and Disneyworld. My first experience with Disneyland wasn’t until I was in college and visiting an aunt and uncle in Los Angeles. There also wasn’t much to pick from in animated Disney films as I was growing up. Fast forward, and today, thanks to having a 4 year old daughter, I’m in over my head in Disney paraphernalia. I can tell you the name of every Disney Princess, including the one who’s going to be introduced this December.
We’ve spoiled our daughter and taken her to Disneyland for her birthday each year, so we’ve gotten pretty familiar with the theme park. In addition my company has even held an event in EuroDisney, which I got to attend. What I didn’t realize until reading about the latest Disneyland planned for Shanghai, is that there’s already one in Hong Kong and Tokyo.
The park in Shanghai has been in planning for the last 20 years, and finally won approval this month. It’s estimated it will be completed in 5 to 6 years and be a little larger in size than the current Disneyland in Anaheim, CA. Disney hopes this theme park will create the kind of marketing engine that the other Disney parks have, encouraging families to buy into the paraphernalia the way my family has.
In part, the promotion of Disney within my own family has been largely my fault, as I was looking for role models for my daughter, and thought Mulan, with all its flawed images of Chinese culture, was at least a good independent Asian female role model, and not the helpless princesses of other Disney classics. Unfortunately, my daughter never took to Mulan and instead favors Snow White, who relies on others to save her. Disney to their credit did also produce an American Native Princess, Pocahontas, and East Indian Princess, Jasmine. And finally this Christmas season, the African American Princess, Tiana. My daughter can’t wait to go see this latest movie, so I think I’ll refrain from letting her know there’s another Disneyland she can visit until she’s a little older.
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