8 Asians

The it’s ok Campaign is an effort to battle the stigma of depression and mental illness in Asian American communities.  This project run by the Corporate Asian American Employee Network (CAAEN) will center its efforts around their Facebook page, where they will provide articles and statistics about mental health along with links to mental health providers and community groups.  The message of it’s ok is that is okay to ask for help with mental health [...] Continue »

Asian Moms are awesome and it’s fun to both love them and mock them lovingly. Whether they’re “tigers,” “monsters,” or a mom from the Chinese zodiac, today is the day for us to say “thanks” to them all for being mothers. Need help? The folks behind 18 Million Rising have organized the #TYMom Project, where you can create and send your Asian mom– or anyone who has ever mothered you– a custom, multilingual thank you [...] Continue »

Life is hard enough as an Asian. Not all of us can get perfect SAT  scores, graduate from medical school, or trick out a Honda Civic. The pressure to embrace our culture remains, but sometimes, we just don’t want to. How To Be A Bad Asian is an ongoing series of personal essays  by the 8Asians writers about what sets us apart from the API community,  how we deal with the stereotypes that we put upon [...] Continue »

Being gay and Asian means hiding a part of yourself from many in your life, and this is especially true in Asian countries compared with those of us who are fortunate enough to live in the United States or Canada. Times have changed, and it’s probably easier now in the United States than it’s ever been before to be both gay and Asian (the way to be a truly bad Asian). But in countries like [...] Continue »

You aren’t authentically Chinese/Taiwanese unless your mother has at some point called you stupid, or as I’ve heard it in Mandarin, bèn (笨). Don’t misinterpret: my parents love me to pieces and today, 30-some odd years later, our relationship couldn’t be stronger. However, I most certainly grew up hearing that word to the point where I recall apologizing humbly to people, “Oh, I’m really not that smart.” If I couldn’t solve a differential equation in under 10 seconds, my mother [...] Continue »

My wife and I have been discussing whether we should give our 1-year-old son a bowl haircut. Okay, discuss is not really what happened. I asked her if we should give him a bowl haircut, and she said, “No.” I tried to explain to her that a bowl haircut is a rite of passage for Asian Americans. I had one (see the above picture). All of my Asian American friends had one. So shouldn’t my [...] Continue »

An award-winning production company and a top-rated national cable network is casting a new docu-series that will explore unique perspectives on parenting — styles like attachment parenting, authoritative parenting, green parenting… you name it, they’re interested in hearing about it. They’re especially seeking Asian American parents to be part of the series. Are you a parent interested in telling your story? Over the coming weeks, Punched in the Head will be conducting interviews with prospective [...] Continue »

Did you know that every member of a Chinese family is called something different depending on whether it’s from one’s mom’s side or dad’s side and their seniority? It gets quite confusing, so the folks at Off the Great Wall drew it out for us in a massive Chinese family tree.

This was originally published at LA Stage Times and has been republished at 8Asians with the author’s permission. Christmas in Hanoi is currently running at East West Players at David Henry Hwang Theater, 120 Judge John Aiso St., Los Angeles. Wed-Sat 8 pm, Sun 2 pm. Ends March 10. $26-$36. 213-625-7000. By Eddie Borey My parents never talked about the War. My mother was born in Vietnam. My father, Irish-Catholic from upstate New York, met [...] Continue »

Asian American women above the age of 65 have the highest suicide rate of any American ethnic group of women, according to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention.  Their suicide rate of 6.5 per 100,000 was followed by white women at 4.3 per 100,000.   Mental health experts say that even decades after arriving in the US, many Asian American immigrant women still feel isolated.  A study from Loyola Marymount University published in 2007 says [...] Continue »

It is a truth universally acknowledged that [those who assume] a man in good fortune must be in want of a wife. Bullshit, I say, as I try to purge my mind from the insidious exposure I have had to the online charlatan presenting herself as a paragon of women’s equality, Joy Chen. Her pedantic bi-lingual blog and book Do Not Marry Before Age 30, which has been available worldwide in Chinese, are both an [...] Continue »

This study conducted by neuroscientist Brian Gold finds that people who have been bilingual since childhood have faster brains and suggests that this kind of bilingualism can slow the mental decline in aging.  Both seniors and younger people’s bilingual brains were also found to be more efficient at performing certain mental activities involving switching between tasks.  I found this finding particularly ironic because some Asian Americans speak only English because it was thought that speaking [...] Continue »