Joe Wong, molecular biologist by day and comedian by night, is on a roll. I had the honor of seeing Joe perform live in San Francisco back in October. This past December, The Boston Globe included Joe as one of “Bostonians of the Year.” In March, Joe will be performing at the 2010 Radio and Television Correspondents Dinner where he’s expected to perform in front of President Obama. In this local Boston PBS station’s program, Greater Boston, Joe is interviewed about his background and how he got into comedy.
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In October 2009, thirteen-year old Alex Ko made his debut as the star in Broadway’s Billy Elliot, the first Asian-American Billy on Broadway. I had the good fortune to speak to him about his new exciting role.
Could you start out by telling us how a half-Chinese-American boy from Iowa ends up on Broadway?
My dance teacher invited me to go to NY. While I was taking classes at Steps on Broadway, Ray Hesselink saw me taking ballet classes during the week and asked me to audition for Billy Elliot.What do you think you bring to the role of Billy Elliot that makes your portrayal unique compared to the other four actors playing the part?
Well, we all portray the role differently. So, each one of us brings something different to each performance. For me, I’m the only Billy who really has lost a parent, so I think the letter scene feels a little different for me than for them acting the part.How do you want to inspire boys (girls and adults too) in the audience, of all ethnicities, when you are on stage?
I really want people to know that no matter what their dream is, they should go for it. Don’t ever let anyone tell you a dream is stupid or you can’t reach it. If you can imagine it will happen, it can, with a lot of hard work.Do you think there will be more Asians in dance/Broadway/ballet in the future?
I definitely think so. Just look at Lea Salonga! (edited to add: Salonga is also known as the singing voices of Jasmine in Aladdin & Mulan) She is amazing and my favorite Broadway actress.Is there anything else you’d like to share?
I’m so proud to represent the Asian-Americans and be a Broadway Billy. I’m so glad the directors had the vision to cast the boy and not just ethnicity. It’s a great model.
Best of luck on Broadway, Alex!
Shopping With GASP!
This Martin Luther King Holiday weekend, it is important for APIs to think about what kind of country we would be living in today had this great man not lived. On days like this, I like to visit the racial slur database (http://www.rsdb.org/search?q=asian). Seeing the sheer number of racist, sexist and ignorant names APIs have been called throughout our history, reminds me how far we’ve come and how far we still have to go.
How many of these racist epithets have you been called? In my 32 years, thankfully, I’ve been only called four of the names. I’m not sure if that’s a lot or a little.
The 8Asians tumblr highlights Asians [& uber talented non-Asians] who draw, dance, build, film, sing, write, invent, paint, teleport, and of course, tumble. It’s curated by Jun, Moye and Ernie.
I find today’s tech news about about Google’s decision to refuse to censor Chinese results to be rather fascinating. There’s talk about how Google is threatening to pull out of China and open up their searches without the filters after they concluded that there were recent security breaches by parties that were under the direction of the Chinese government.
But in what is a great public relations play, Google is maneuvering this into how they’re supporting anti-censorship efforts, when it’s really a business strategy gamble. The threat of Google moving out of China really doesn’t scare the Chinese government at all, and I doubt that it was anything but to incite more loyalty in other parts of the world where Google reigns king; after all, no one comes close to unseating the current Chinese search giant, Baidu, which owns anywhere between 62% and 75% of the Chinese search market share. But it puts Google out in the open on how they’re very annoyed with the fact that their property was violated and instead of keeping quiet about it, they went ahead and spoke out against it.
The Chinese government, on the other hand, is in a position of strength when it comes to the negotiations; there’s not a good reason to back down from a business perspective since they don’t win out anywhere. Chances are that each side will go their separate ways and it’ll allow for the status quo to remain while each side claims victory. In the end, the anti-censorship searches will be short-lived and Google will then be freed from the dog-and-pony show while the rest of the market scrambles to divide up its search shares.
| The Daily Show With Jon Stewart | Mon – Thurs 11p / 10c | |||
| Daily Show: Exclusive – John Yoo Extended Interview Pt. 1 | ||||
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When I first saw that John Yoo was going to be on The Daily Show, I had the instinctive reaction that I was going to immediately hate him. If you don’t happen to know who John Yoo is, he’s currently a law professor at UC Berkeley, most notoriously for being the Deputy Assistant Attorney under President George W. Bush, helping to justify the use of torture (more euphemistically known as “enhanced interrogation techniques”) through a series of legal briefs. John Yoo was plugging his latest book, “Crisis and Command: : A History of Executive Power from George Washington to George W. Bush.”
I have never seen John Yoo speak or being interviewed, let alone read any extended interviews with him; I only knew of his role in the Bush administration. I obviously don’t agree with everything that John Yoo stated; that said, I thought he did an excellent job of explaining and defending his position with Jon Stewart. He came across as rational, intelligent and even funny at times.
Also, Jon Stewart continues to amaze me – that he is a comedian and not a reporter, which I think is a sad statement on journalism today. I’m also impressed that with the Internet today, sincewe can watch all 25+ minutes of the interview online! (Part 2 here, and Part 3 here.) One of the most educational and informative interviews in a long-time – and to think – on Comedy Central.
Nielsen recently released a study showing that Asian Americans are much more likely to use online banking than other ethnic groups. 75.3% of Asians bank online versus 67.4% for everyone else. In addition, the younger and more affluent tend to bank online more as well, regardless of whether they are Asian (84% of under 35 with incomes over $100k regardless of ethnicity). But the less affluent Asians and older Asians tended to bank online more than their counterparts in any other ethnicity. Part of this is attributed to the fact that Asians keep more assets in bank accounts and keep up high deposit levels. The results of this study are no surprise; as even my mom who was pretty computer illiterate, insisted I check her bank account out online on a regular basis to verify deposits, clearing of checks, etc. She couldn’t use email, but she did know her daily online balance.
You’ve probably noticed it yourself. We’re all over Yelp and we’re all over the food blogosphere. So why do Asians dominate when it comes to blogging about food?
Kevin of Kevin Eats fame (or as I call him, “the guy I’d never want to eat dinner with because he takes so many pictures of every single dish that I’d go blind from the camera flash before dessert”) poses the question on his popular blog, from his socio-economic-cultural theories on why food and the Internet is so popular among Asian Americans to even breaking down the race of well-known food bloggers.
And it’s true. At least, it’s true in the Kevin Eats world of Southern California. As someone who clearly enjoys eating and trying various cuisines around Los Angeles, I’ve also noticed that A LOT of food bloggers are Asian–or at least, those people you find taking discreet photos of their food almost always happen to be Asian. So why is this?
Kevin argues that the importance of food in Asian culture, our higher educational status, higher income, better access to technology and flair for conspicuous consumption all lead to one hobby: food blogging.
Half of me agrees: it’s probably the same reason so many of us Yelp. Many of our families place a huge importance on food. Some of us don’t consider ourselves as disadvantaged minorities. And if there’s any racial group inclined to blog online (hello, Xanga), then it’s probably going to be a bunch of Asians with high end digital cameras.
The other half of me disagrees: it’s clear that Kevin is basing his idea on a small, select social group in a small, select area of the United States. What about food bloggers in New York, where all big name chefs begin? What about blogs and sites with a bigger web presence than individual food bloggers, like Serious Eats or Eater–or even bloggers that Kevin doesn’t even know? Do these also show the same large presence of Asian Americans? Maybe we Asians just like to hop on the same bandwagon?
I also find it hard to believe that Asian culture is unique in its focus on food. Food plays a significant role in almost every culture. I don’t know any one country or ethnic group that disregards food and eating (but feel free to correct me if I’m wrong). Even in America, with its ongoing struggle with cultural identity, considers mealtime to be an important tool in communication, relationships and socializing (as Roger Ebert so eloquently wrote).
I don’t know the answers to these questions, but Kevin was brave to have posed a racially charged question that many (like me) have always pondered. So what do you think? Why are there so many Asian bloggers? Is this a question worth asking?
Every Sunday, The New York Times has a column where it interviews an executive about the challenges of leading and managing, and this past Sunday the Times interviewed Harvard educated Taiwanese American Tony Hsieh, CEO of Zappos.com (now a wholly owned subsidiary of Amazon.com.) Zappos is an online retailer of shoes, something I thought would never take off, but did, with an estimated annual revenue close to $1 billion when it was acquired last year. Hsieh was already a successful entrepreneur prior to Zappos — he had sold LinkExchange to Microsoft for $265 million — but his biggest regret was that he was unable to maintain the corporate culture as the company grew. One behavioral question Tony likes to ask is: “… On a scale of 1 to 10, how weird are you?” He explains his reasoning:
“If you’re a 1, you’re probably a little bit too strait-laced for us. If you’re a 10, you might be too psychotic for us. It’s not so much the number; it’s more seeing how candidates react to a question. Because our whole belief is that everyone is a little weird somehow, so it’s really more just a fun way of saying that we really recognize and celebrate each person’s individuality, and we want their true personalities to shine in the workplace environment, whether it’s with co-workers or when talking with customers.”
So when Tony joined Zappos, he vowed to define and maintain the culture. One of Zappos’s values is, “Create fun and a little weirdness.” – thus the question above. Another Zappos’s value is focused on excellent customer service. So it’s no surprise that Tony sold the company to Jeff Bezos, who equally has a passion for excellent customer service. When you get a chance, I recommend you reading the interview with Tony, especially if you are an entrepreneur and have an interest in maintaining a corporate culture while growing your business.
Five-and-half year old cutie Kylie Kim, the Microsoft and Sony television commercial veteran with no less than five commercials under her belt, recently appeared on The Ellen DeGeneres Show, and she’s just as adorable in real life as she is on the commercials. Kylie is a big fan of Ellen because she was the voice of Dora in the movie Finding Nemo.
By Mandy
Throughout college, particularly as an anthropology major at a liberal arts school, “privilege” was a term that arose in just about every discursive situation. We read about it in analytical texts, fought about its applicability to ethics and agency, and lived it by attending the “highly selective” college that we were all in. Again and again, I would listen to my mostly white classmates bemoan their inherent economic and social privilege and how they were probably bound to these ideologies for life.
In these discussions, I usually felt excluded – in a good way, for once. Being a full-blooded Korean raised in the suburbs of New Jersey, I had always equated privilege with whiteness; to me, “privilege” was just shorthand for “WHITE privilege.” With the socioeconomic disadvantages that repeatedly burden people of color, an astounding tolerance for “funny” racism in mainstream mass media, and a litany of academic scholarship to back me up, America – despite being the proverbial melting pot of the world – is, at its core, a White man’s land. Thus, being an Asian in America, how could I be implicated in something that I could never fully be a part of?
This idea remained in the back of my mind when, five months ago, I moved to Japan to teach English. My quiet disdain for non-Asian foreigner teachers in Asia stewed when I heard the second and third year teachers talk about how they had attained immediate celebrity-status within their respective communities – a fact I mostly attributed to their complexion. However, while race was of course a contributing factor, I found out for myself that privilege can assume forms that are far more complicated than skin color.
When I first arrived in my rural town, I was interviewed by the local TV station. After it aired, people from all over excitedly recognized me – “Ah, the new English teacher!” – and students who I had not even met bowed to me as I biked by. Although I look just like everyone else I, like the other English teachers, had become known in my area. Initially, I was embarrassed when a Japanese person would discover that I am a foreigner. But after quickly realizing that my foreignness not only appealed to people but could be used to my advantage, I more actively employed it. Now, I approach people I normally would never talk to, an act that often yields in-store discounts and invites to home-cooked meals; and sometimes do things – like buying a cheaper but incorrect train ticket – knowing that, if I get caught, I can play the sorry-I’m-a-foreigner card and come out unscathed.
On a broader level, being a foreign English teacher in Japan has given me a unique social position in this society. The unsaid rules of Japanese etiquette do not (completely) apply to me. I use the wrong verb endings, never seem to bow enough, and sometimes ask inappropriate questions – but that’s OK because I’m The Foreigner. And not just any foreigner but a sensei, an honored title that was bestowed to me basically because I have a college degree and speak English. Still, it’s rather ornamental. I’m respected, but I hold no real authority; I’m an exception, but I’m dependent on those around me to explain what is going on and help me live my life.
This is where my simplistic view of privilege as whiteness, or privilege being singularly definable, is disrupted. In Japan, it does not matter that I’m Asian: I still have a multifaceted cultural privilege as a foreigner, an Asian foreigner who can blend in or “be foreign” at will, and an American foreigner who is an English teacher in this country. Interestingly, my cultural privilege heavily relies on interactive exchanges with people who can challenge my (apparent) position of power. I feel empowered to talk to random people because I am a cultural novelty, and people will generally treat me quite well because of that. But at the same time, am I only a novelty, and a helpless one at that? (I can get away with buying the wrong train ticket not because I’m a special person but because it is assumed that I’m stupid and can’t read the kanji.) My interactions always feel genuine and enjoyable, but perhaps it is through the mutual intrigue, limited depth, and relatively transient nature of these relationships that they are as fruitful as they seem. Thus, on an individual person-to-person level, am I still this privileged person, am I actually at a disadvantage, or do we become equals through the art of friendly communication?
Condensing my social interactions into a rhetorical question is a heartless simplification of these past few amazing months. However, as I reflect upon my experiences, myself, and whether or not I should re-contract, it is worth considering how “privilege” still pervades my daily life; though, this time, I’m actually included.
ABOUT MANDY: Mandy is currently living in Japan. And yes, she’s tried natto; it’s all right.
(Flickr photo credit: Gloucester, A Bottled Spider)
For a while, I wondered if there was anything out there that could bring art/graphic design workshops to the poorer parts of the Philippines. It wasn’t until I came across the Kickstarter project of the Ferdinand Center for the Creative.Their mission: “to provide the finest graphic design education for young adults who can’t afford quality art education” in the Rural Phillipines.
But is the light that is being painted about impoverished young Filipino adults accurate? This is an excerpt from their Ferdinand Center for the Creative’s about us page:
Many join the sex industry. They might not agree with the job, it might feel wrong to them, but they have no choice. They do it not just so they can survive, but so their families may survive as well. If they live in a rural area, they might work in the rice fields, some of the most backbreaking labor imaginable, for only about $2 USD per day—and that’s only during the rice harvesting season. The rest of the year, they’re left to find other jobs, which may or may not exist for them. Things can look pretty bleak if you’re a Filipino artist living in poverty.
What? ALL rural Filipinos are rice workers and sex workers? Who the heck wrote this, and why does the perspective seemed so skewed? It turns out that the head of the board of directors is a young man named Lester Nelson:
Yes, the sex industry and working in rice fields ARE occupations young adults who live without much money turn to. But there is a middle ground between both occupations, and it’s certainly not recognized on the website. Maybe it’s left out due to the Philippines Nelson saw in photographs, or the experiences he’s had in person while living in the rural areas; maybe it’s to pull at the heart strings of potential donators. But it’s off-putting to someone like myself — who has cultural ties to the Philippines, with relatives who come from a fisherman’s background.
Being a daughter of Filipino immigrants and having had an opportunity to study Graphic Design in college was a life saver to say the least; it gave me a sense of direction, not to mention the balls to continue pursuing my creative endeavors. When one of my nephews in the Philippines couldn’t get the proper Art education due to lack of art workshops available to those without money and familial pressure to find a job, he decided to stop, and that breaks my heart.
But. It doesn’t feel authentic knowing that the board of directors doesn’t have one person of Filipino heritage on it (The advisory board has at least one Filipino.) Not to say that it’s necessarily worse that the school was not created by Filipinos for Filipinos; it’s great that something like this is being put together because there is a need for quality art education to be available to everyone, and this is a great start to something that will improve the lives of many people. But it does make me wonder though if there are other sides in the rural part of if it is really one-dimensional as how it was presented on the organization’s website.
Am stuck on semantics? Possibly. But these factors could hamper a potentially big opportunity for future graphic designers. What do you think?
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