History
LA County Supervisor To Announce Repeal Of 1942 Resolution On Japanese American Internment
This article was originally posted on Blogging.la and has been republished here with permission. By Chris Sure, Angelenos are no strangers to the concept of a makeover. But when it comes to an egregious error on the part of elected officials—decades in the past—is it possible to get a do-over? County Supervisor Mark Ridley-Thomas thinks that it might be possible, at least, for the LA County Board of Supervisors to try to facilitate some healing [...] Continue »
Arizona’s Immigration Law, Lewd Chinese Women, and API History
On August 24, 1874, California’s commissioner of immigration Rudolph Piotrowski found 22 women aboard the American Steamer Japan who looked suspicious because they were traveling without families. He called them lewd, ordered a payment of $500 dollars for each woman to disembark (keep in mind a horse was around $20 back then). When the payment demand was refused, he detained the women and ordered for them to be shipped back to China. A lawyer was [...] Continue »
100 Years Of Asian American Immigration Documents To Be Publicly Available
I have always envied white Americans who talked about researching their genealogy as what little of my family’s written records were lost in WWII, but soon, some other Asian Americans will not have that envy. Immigration records for Asian Americans, some dating back more than 100 years, are being made available to the public. “Just the other day, I had a woman see a photo of her father. She burst into tears in our research [...] Continue »
Top 5 Japanese Americans You Don’t Want to Mess With
One Asian American stereotype is that we’re all meek and quiet. I’ve never been that guy. I’m loud and not afraid to say what’s on my mind. And I’m not the only one. There have been loud and proud Asian Americans since we got here. Here are my Top 5 Japanese Americans who will once and for all put the whole timid Asian stereotype to death. In fact, they will blow it out of the [...] Continue »
The Media Portrayals Of LA Riots, 20 Years Later
April 29, 2012, marked twenty years after the LA riots. It’s been said that the media coverage at that time played a part in worsening the violence. In an interview about his documentary, Clash of Colors: The LA Riots of 1992, David Kim describes that the media’s focus on the tension between the Korean American and African American community exacerbated the conflict. Twenty years later, most of mainstream media is still choosing to remember only the [...] Continue »
The Past, Present, And Future Of Asian American Basketball
With a knee injury ending Linsanity for the 2012 regular season, one might wonder about the future of Asian American basketball. Is all of the current enthusiasm over basketball just a temporary craze that will fizzle out? Will another Jeremy Lin emerge? To answer those questions, it’s helpful to look at the past history of Asian American basketball to see where it is going in the future.
Did Bruce Lee Have An Undescended Testicle?
Before I begin, I want to make it clear that I LOVE Bruce Lee. When I was a kid he made me feel like Asian American boys could be more than the awkward guy lusting after the girl (which was pretty much the only representation of Asian American men on television/film at the time). For once, the badass kinda looked like me. But when one of the 8Asians editors brought to my attention that Bruce [...] Continue »
Top 10 Iconic Japanese American Photos
Walt Disney once said, “Of all of our inventions for mass communication, pictures still speak the most universally understood language.” Pictures tell a story that even the best writer’s words could never fully describe. That’s saying a lot coming from a writer. I wanted to “tell” the story of Japanese Americans. Here are my top 10 iconic pictures that tell my story.
The Taiwanese Who Wasn’t: Discovering The Origins Of My Language
My life was multilingual the minute I was born. During my infant years in Taiwan, I was surrounded by Taiwanese, Japanese, Hakkanese, and Mandarin Chinese. One of my first spoken sentences was “My butt is cold” which each word in the sentence in a different language. When I came to the US, English and Spanish were heavily added to that mix. So, as you can imagine, I sometimes confused one language for the other, and [...] Continue »
April 29, 2012 Marks 20th Anniversary Of 1992 LA Riots
This April will be the 20th anniversary of the 1992 LA Riots. Obviously, I can’t possibly summarize the event in a short blog post, let alone convey how much of an impact it had on the racial politics in LA and in the country. So instead, we’ll read and listen to the perspectives of some of those who lived through it.
Racism On The Playground
With April being National Poetry Month, spring is poetry season, and this spring, while reading through Childhood’s Favorites and Fairy Stories, an anthology collected back 1927 in New York, I found this little poem, “Foreign Children” by Scottish novelist Robert Louis Stevenson (of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde fame): FOREIGN CHILDREN Little Indian, Sioux or Crow, Little frosty Eskimo, Little Turk or Japanee, O! don’t you wish that you were me? You have seen the [...] Continue »
How The Japanese Interment Led To Victory Gardens
Did you know that the government’s Victory Gardens from World War II, where families were urged to grow their own food, was spurred by the interment of Japanese Americans? From The OC Register: “…[T]he San Francisco Museum…says Japanese truck farmers in California were responsible for a $40 million a year industry in fruits and vegetables. By March, 200,000 acres had been confiscated, sold off or given away to “non-Japanese” farmers mostly from Dust Bowl regions. [...] Continue »
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Recent Posts
- Rolling Stone Releases List Of 10 Kpop Groups Most Likely To Break In The US
- Watch Yul Kwon’s “America Revealed” PBS Series Online
- LA County Supervisor To Announce Repeal Of 1942 Resolution On Japanese American Internment
- Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg Gets A New Asian Wife!
- Koji’s Top 10 Favorite 8Asians Comments
- Nguyen Girls’ Yearbook Prank: No, We’re Not Related
- Long Delayed K-Town Reality Show To Be Released On YouTube In July
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- : i'm not surprised they removed peter le from the cast – Long Delayed K-Town Reality Show To Be Released On YouTube In July
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APA Events
Oct 14: (Seattle, WA) From Fields to Family: Asian Pacific Americans and Food
Mar 1: (Atlanta, GA) The Art of Gaman: Arts and Crafts from the Japanese American Internment Camps, 1942-1946
Apr 26: (New York, NY) June 4, 1989: Media and Mobilization Beyond Tiananmen Square
Apr 26: (New York, NY) America through a Chinese Lens
Apr 27: (Seattle, WA) SEX IN SEATTLE 20: HAPPILY EVER AFTER. . . (the series finale!)
May 24: (San Jose, CA) Sake San Jose
May 24: (New York, NY) A Conversation with artists Arthur Ou, Hai Zhang, and Julie Quon in Conjunction with America through a Chinese Lens
May 24: (San Francisco, CA) Literasians 2012: Writers Converge on the APIA Literary Continuum
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