Our internal e-mail lists have us discussing all kinds of stuff: Asian American identity, representation in the media, the experiences of activism in an academia setting and its progression as we transition to the working, adult world. And sometimes, we talk about the East India Company, being revived. By an Indian.
Moye: Indian-born importer bought the intellectual rights to the East India Company to open up a high end tea shop in London and hopes to expand this into a new luxury empire. This kind of makes my brain explode.
Efren: WTF. Lovely — I’m sure all of us colonized folks will rush over there.
Ernie: So because I’m a skimmer and I was a Computer Science Engineering major — why is this important and this caused Moye’s head to explode? (Seriously. I feel kinda ign’ant. Does this have to do with that Wes Anderson movie or anything?) Continue Reading »
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Asian Americans may not be seen in the movies or on primetime television, but a recent article from Yahoo! on the earnings of top YouTube celebrities such as Ryan Higa reveals that while they’re not getting multi-million dollar contracts and gossip segments on The Insider, they don’t have to worry about getting summer jobs either. Yahoo! estimates that Ryan Higa — the #1 most subscribed videoblogger on YouTube — made no less than $150,000 this past year, a conservative calculation taken from Google AdSense clicks and video views. Australian video blogger Natalie Tran is estimated to make a little more than $100,000 a year; clearly, us Asian bloggers need to stop typing, sit in front of a video camera and start being hilarious.
Shopping With GASP!
With a phrase like ”With every laptop, you get a geek,” I knew I was going to see an Asian American in the commercial and was going to brace myself as to how that particular Asian American geek was going to look like. And the first geek was an Asian American. But I was pleasantly surprised: the Geek Squad geek turned out to be a pretty good looking Asian American man. There was also a handsome white man, along with a professional African American geek to choose from. But like the kid in the commercial, I’d choose the hot red headed babe.
An interesting new study by Sheena S. Iyengar, a professor at the Columbia Business School and author of The Art of Choosing found that a culture’s views on choice affect task performance, decision-making, and happiness. Specifically Asian-American children perform best in mom-chosen tasks, Anglo-American children perform best when they choose their own tasks. She discusses her research in a recent TED talk. I found this study fascinating because I often wonder why my own daughter, when asked to perform a chore or a task, chooses inevitably not to listen to me, but instead will generally do what she wants regardless of any possible discipline.
Iyengar’s talk and book describe an actual test in Japantown, San Francisco, with 7 to 9 year olds, half of whom had immigrant parents from Asia, where the kids spoke the parents’ native language in the home. The other groups’ families were generally long-term citizens and native English speakers, speaking English in the home.
The experiment broke the kids into three groups. The first one did a little art project by their own, the second did the same art project as directed by an authority figure, and the third did the same art project after being told that their mothers had chosen it for them. The result was that the children of Asian immigrants performed best at their task when told their mother had chosen the task, and those children of families where English (essentially Caucasian) was spoken at home did best when left on their own.
My own daughter is mixed race and comes from a mixed race home, where she has no mother, so it’s rather hard to map the results of this to my own child, but clearly she seems to excel when she’s working on tasks of her own choosing, reflecting the English speaking, American background she’s been raised in. While Iyengar’s study doesn’t disaggregate the Asians into sub-cultures, it’s interesting to see as a whole that the Asian culture seems to value more the parent’s decisions and opinions when a person makes their own choices.
Do you see the same phenomenon in your own children based on the culture you’re raising your child in?
The costume competition of the 2010 Miss Universe pageant is awesome for multiple reasons, the biggest of which is that this year it’s less “costume” and more, I don’t know, “drag queen cosplay festival.” I am okay with this, and I’m especially okay with the outfit of the 2010 Miss Japan competitor, Maiko Itai. Not to play up my gay card too much, but it’s hella fierce, and unlike the 2009 costume, she doesn’t look like she’s trying out for The Pussycat Dolls, if you know what I’m saying.
Seriously, can I just say that there should be a Final Fantasy X-3: Miss Universe National Costumes edition? I would totally be down to control a party with Miss Japan as a Dark Mage. Throw in Miss Great Britain as the tank role and Miss Canada as the healer, tackle some evil bosses (Miss Kazakhstan, Miss Angola) while we’re guided by some mystical faith (Miss EVERYONE ELSE WHO I DIDN’T JUST NAME, except for maybe Miss India, who has a very nice dress but it’s kinda plain.)
Game prototypers, do it. DO IT NOW. (And give me credit for it.)
8Questions is a bi-monthly interview of Asian Pacific Islander (API) community leaders. It is a spotlight on individuals who have dedicated their careers to issues surrounding the API community with the goal of bringing much deserved recognition to their work and cause(s).
Chris Aihara is the Executive Director of the Japanese American Cultural & Community Center (JACCC), one of the largest ethnic cultural centers of its kind in the U.S. She was the former Chair of the Little Tokyo Community Council, a member of the Mayor’s Little Tokyo Community Advisory Committee, and member of the California Japanese American Community Leadership Council. She has written several publications on Japanese American culture and has served as a member of the City of Torrance Cultural Arts Commission for six years.
The JACCC is dedicated to the promotion and presentation of Japanese and Japanese American arts and culture to diverse audiences.
What is the mission statement of your life?
To not be afraid to live because I’m afraid to die.How did you end up doing what you’re doing?
I totally “ended up” doing what I’m doing. It has been a journey of self-discovery: who am I as a post-war Sansei woman growing up in the ‘50s, experiencing the ‘60s & ‘70s, and emerging through the rest of it. I landed in places that fed my interests and provided opportunities to learn and be challenged. For me, it’s always been very personal. I am of the ilk that was not career savvy. I never anticipated nor set a goal to run an organization. Timing is everything, and at this time in the JACCC’s history, I was the person to step forward.
“That’s SOOOO stupid!”
The Daughter was referring to the song we were listening to on the radio, in particular, the following lyrics of the song “Your Love” by Nicki Minaj:
When I was a Geisha he was a Samurai
Somehow I understood him when he spoke Thai
“Samurais don’t speak Thai,” she added. Well, I’m glad that The Daughter knew that – didn’t want to think that all of those years of school (and tuition payments) went to waste! The video and the song are exoticized mishmashes of different Asian cultures. I suppose I should be offended by how different Asian cultures are weirdly mixed together, but I figure it’s just an annoying song. Should I be offended? What do you all think?
Panel 1: A Federal Perspective
Congressman Mike Honda, Chairman, Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus
Daphne Kwok, Chair of President Obama’s Advisory Commission on Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders (invited) Gloria Chan, Executive Director, Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus
This past Friday, Congressman Mike Honda (D-CA, 15th District), held a community forum on Asian American and Pacific Islander Voices in Government focused at the federal, state and local level. The event was an Asian Americans who’s who in civic leadership at all levels. Besides Congressman Honda, California State Controller John Chiang was in attendance, as well as many former and current mayors and city council members. What I found most interesting was that Honda and others were already calling Chiang the future California governor in four years (assuming that if Jerry Brown wins, he’d serve only one term, or if Meg Whitman won, Chiang would run against her). I’m not sure if he will be California’s next governor in four years, but I wouldn’t be surprised if he was California’s first Asian American governor in eight or twelve years. It was terrific that newly appointed Daphne Kwok, Chair of President Obama’s Advisory Commission on Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders, was able to attend. Local mayor Evan Low of Campbell, California helped moderate all the sessions.
Watch the state and local perspectives panel, as well as Congressman Honda’s closing remarks after the jump.
by Lani Valapone Cox
The thing about being Asian in North America is no one thinks you’re subjected to any kind of racism. We’re not brown enough so no one is the wiser. I imagine some white people tiptoe around black folks in an effort not to offend or say anything that might be construed as racist. Well, I can assure you that white folks don’t make that kind of effort around us.
It’s almost as if they just know, a kind of assumption – an arrogance that makes no sense. There is little awareness of the words flying out of their mouths. I’d rather you tiptoe than boldly saunter. I’d rather you ask than assume. And I’d rather you not tell me you like Thai food when I tell you I’m part Thai.
For some fascinating reason people who find out that I’m part Thai respond by saying, “Oh, I love Thai food.” I never quite know how to respond. Would that be like meeting an Italian and saying, “I love pasta. My favorite dish is spaghetti.” Or meeting a black person “I love rap music.” Or a Jewish person “I cried during Schindler’s List.” If someone could please tell me a creative and clever way to respond to this, because I would love to know. I love sushi but I don’t tell my Japanese friends that I do or that I find the spicy tuna roll delish.
So just know that when you tell me you love Thai food – on the outside I put on my pleasant face – blank, mildly surprised and sweet. On the inside I just scrunched up my face like you farted. You just let a social faux pas rip – it happens occasionally and I’ll just ignore it because laughing or admonishing you would be considered inappropriate and ineffective.
Continue Reading »
The Great Food Truck Race kicked off this past weekend on The Food Network, featuring seven of the top gourmet food trucks in a reality show competition that takes them across the country. Hosted by Tyler Florence, the series pits the trucks against each other in various challenges in different cities, where they must utilize their marketing, driving and culinary skills to generate the highest sales in 48 hours. The season premiere had the contestants drive down to San Diego for the weekend with a $500 budget to see who could make the most money, with the least profitable truck being cut from the race. Check out my impressions of the show — along with the Asian girls delivering banh mi — after the jump!
…Or the first American movie ever where an Asian male does ballet and falls in love with a beautiful Caucasian female.
Mao’s Last Dancer is a movie that is scheduled to appear in some theaters this Friday, August 20, based on an autobiography by Li Cunxin, a beautiful Chinese dancer (see his real photo to the right). Directed by Bruce Beresford (Driving Miss Daisy) and starring gorgeous British dancer Chi Cao from the Birmingham Royal Ballet and Amanda Schull, who was the female lead in the ballet movie Center Stage, tells the true life story of Cunxin, who was chosen at a young age by the Chinese government to be trained to be a professional ballet dancer in the last years of the Cultural Revolution. As one of the best dancers in China, Cunxin came to the U.S. to bring glory to China but unexpectedly falls in love with an American woman, played by Amanda Schull. The Chinese government wants him to return to China, fearing they will lose him forever, but Cunxin makes the choice to defect and dramatic ending ensues.
The dancing in this movie is going to be spectacular; Cunxin is played by Cao, who is a principal dancer at Birgmingham Royal Ballet. Schull used to dance in the San Francisco Ballet, and the younger version of Cunxin is portrayed by Chengwu Guo, from the Australian Ballet. Who knew there were such talented male Asian dancers out there?
This story reminds me slightly of my own ballet teacher, albeit without the defection. She was also chosen by the Chinese government at a young age, trained and was given a full scholarship to study in New York City. Given their similar backgrounds (my teacher is such a gorgeous dancer), I’m looking forward to seeing Chao and Guo’s performances on the big screen this weekend.
-Read the Wall Street Journal article for a profile on Li Cunxin, the movie and his current career as a stockbroker
“Every Dog (No Distinction of Color) Has His Day.” “Red Gentleman to Yellow Gentleman. ‘Pale face ‘friad you crowd him out, as he did me.’” Harper’s Weekly, February 8, 1879, page 101.
Improving Dreams, Equality, Access and Success (IDEAS) will be having a fund-raising reception on August 26, 2010 to support UCLA undocumented immigrant students. According to their flyer, “Since the University of California raised student fees by 32%, many of our UCLA students are being forced to drop out of college.”
Lots of API folks I speak to don’t think the undocumented plight/fight is pertinent to them, but they’re wrong. In this 2008 Asian Week article, they wrote that “40 to 44 percent of undocumented students in the UC system are Asian.”
However, I think this is a deeper issue in our community. Many have simply forgotten (or have chosen to forget) that we were once and sometimes still are the victims of these same anti-immigrant (re: racist) groups.
It wasn’t that long ago THEY were complaining that WE couldn’t speak English, that WE were stealing their jobs, and that WE were causing crimes. (I should note that many of THEM still think this!)
In order that we never forget, here are just a small sample of the lowlights of our own historical brush with anti-immigrant forces:
- Chinese Massacre of 1871
- Chinese Exclusion Act
- Seattle Riot of 1886
- Gentleman’s Agreement of 1907
- Paper Sons
- Immigration Act of 1924
The IDEAS fund-raising reception is Thursday, August 26, 2010 from 6:00 to 8:00 PM at the Western Justice Center, which is located at 55 South Grand Ave in Pasadena, CA 91105. To RSVP, call (626) 584-7494.
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