What is not to love about Ryan? Check out that hair! And the boy is one of 14 finalists on "So You Think You Can Dance" -the dancer's version of "American Idol."
Not only is Ryan Asian American, he's one of just a few b-boys who have made it through the first eliminations. Of course, I have only watched it once so I don't know how he's been doing lately, but he's hung in there with the formally trained dancers in a competition that heavily favors those with studio time over street time.
I do know that Allan Frias, known as "Big Poppa" on the show is a hip hop teacher in San Francisco -and some Hyphen staffers take his class! And I took a salsa class (probably the most suggestive combination I've ever done) from Alex da Silva, one of the judges.
The next eliminations will be determined by audience vote --and wouldn't it be great to see an Asian up there? And luckily, you have not one but two to choose from! Another Filipina: Melody Lacayanga.
Melody is awesome. She doesn't have a signature hairdo like Ryan, but she's got awesome technique, she can shake it in hip-hop class, and she can hang out in arabesque like she's sipping coffee at Peets.
If you don't give a cracked nut about dance I'm not going to change your mind -but tune in at the end to vote! I want to keep seeing my peeps being represented on the tube.
Posted by jennifer at 5:46 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
What is not to love about Ryan? Check out that hair! And the boy is one of 14 finalists on "So You Think You Can Dance" -the dancer's version of "American Idol."
Not only is Ryan Asian American, he's one of just a few b-boys who have made it through the first eliminations. Of course, I have only watched it once so I don't know how he's been doing lately, but he's hung in there with the formally trained dancers in a competition that heavily favors those with studio time over street time.
I do know that Allan Frias, known as "Big Poppa" on the show is a hip hop teacher in San Francisco -and some Hyphen staffers take his class! And I took a salsa class (probably the most suggestive combination I've ever done) from Alex da Silva, one of the judges.
The next eliminations will be determined by audience vote --and wouldn't it be great to see an Asian up there? And luckily, you have not one but two to choose from! Another Filipina: Melody Lacayanga.
Melody is awesome. She doesn't have a signature hairdo like Ryan, but she's got awesome technique, she can shake it in hip-hop class, and she can hang out in arabesque like she's sipping coffee at Peets.
If you don't give a cracked nut about dance I'm not going to change your mind -but tune in at the end to vote! I want to keep seeing my peeps being represented on the tube.
Posted by jennifer at 5:46 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
What is not to love about Ryan? Check out that hair! And the boy is one of 14 finalists on "So You Think You Can Dance" -the dancer's version of "American Idol."
Not only is Ryan Asian American, he's one of just a few b-boys who have made it through the first eliminations. Of course, I have only watched it once so I don't know how he's been doing lately, but he's hung in there with the formally trained dancers in a competition that heavily favors those with studio time over street time.
I do know that Allan Frias, known as "Big Poppa" on the show is a hip hop teacher in San Francisco -and some Hyphen staffers take his class! And I took a salsa class (probably the most suggestive combination I've ever done) from Alex da Silva, one of the judges.
The next eliminations will be determined by audience vote --and wouldn't it be great to see an Asian up there? And luckily, you have not one but two to choose from! Another Filipina: Melody Lacayanga.
Melody is awesome. She doesn't have a signature hairdo like Ryan, but she's got awesome technique, she can shake it in hip-hop class, and she can hang out in arabesque like she's sipping coffee at Peets.
If you don't give a cracked nut about dance I'm not going to change your mind -but tune in at the end to vote! I want to keep seeing my peeps being represented on the tube.
Posted by jennifer at 5:46 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
This post, from DC craigslist, will give you great instructions for getting revenge on those ignorant, racist mofos who are scared of brown people since 9/11. Yee haw!
Posted by claire at 9:41 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
This post, from DC craigslist, will give you great instructions for getting revenge on those ignorant, racist mofos who are scared of brown people since 9/11. Yee haw!
Posted by claire at 9:41 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
This post, from DC craigslist, will give you great instructions for getting revenge on those ignorant, racist mofos who are scared of brown people since 9/11. Yee haw!
Posted by claire at 9:41 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Asian American wimmin rule!
This Vietnamese American New York subway rider was masturbated at so she pulled out her camera phone and took a pic of the perp. Then she took it to the cops and posted it on the web! Love it!
He hasn't been caught yet, but as of Friday, 45,000 people had looked at the picture, so it's prolly just a matter of time. This is the first time I've been glad of camera phones. Bring on the good news, people.
Posted by claire at 6:50 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Asian American wimmin rule!
This Vietnamese American New York subway rider was masturbated at so she pulled out her camera phone and took a pic of the perp. Then she took it to the cops and posted it on the web! Love it!
He hasn't been caught yet, but as of Friday, 45,000 people had looked at the picture, so it's prolly just a matter of time. This is the first time I've been glad of camera phones. Bring on the good news, people.
Posted by claire at 6:50 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Asian American wimmin rule!
This Vietnamese American New York subway rider was masturbated at so she pulled out her camera phone and took a pic of the perp. Then she took it to the cops and posted it on the web! Love it!
He hasn't been caught yet, but as of Friday, 45,000 people had looked at the picture, so it's prolly just a matter of time. This is the first time I've been glad of camera phones. Bring on the good news, people.
Posted by claire at 6:50 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
The I-Hotel reopened yesterday, 26 years after elderly Asian American immigrants were literally dragged from their apartments and the building was demolished. All for the rising properly values in the Financial District. Lawsuits ensued, protestors and senators got involved, and now a 15-story building is opening in the old Manilatown. It not only has low-cost senior housing, but a community center and a rooftop garden. Sounds really nice. Has anyone checked it out yet?
Read about the I-Hotel here in today's SF Chronicle.
The East Bay Express has some coverage on two Asian American music acts this week. First, a story on Golda Supernova, in all her superb divaness. The story also goes a bit into the Pinoy arts scene, the efforts of Bindlestiff to become a bonafide nonprofit, and why some people (Golda included) would rather it not.
The same writer also has a story on Bento, a local alternative rock band that apparently has a devoted following of swooning girls. If the name sounds familiar to you, maybe it's because we reviewed them in issue 6. You can swoon over them yourself Sunday when they play at the Oakland Chinatown Street Fest.
Posted by Melissa at 11:50 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
The I-Hotel reopened yesterday, 26 years after elderly Asian American immigrants were literally dragged from their apartments and the building was demolished. All for the rising properly values in the Financial District. Lawsuits ensued, protestors and senators got involved, and now a 15-story building is opening in the old Manilatown. It not only has low-cost senior housing, but a community center and a rooftop garden. Sounds really nice. Has anyone checked it out yet?
Read about the I-Hotel here in today's SF Chronicle.
The East Bay Express has some coverage on two Asian American music acts this week. First, a story on Golda Supernova, in all her superb divaness. The story also goes a bit into the Pinoy arts scene, the efforts of Bindlestiff to become a bonafide nonprofit, and why some people (Golda included) would rather it not.
The same writer also has a story on Bento, a local alternative rock band that apparently has a devoted following of swooning girls. If the name sounds familiar to you, maybe it's because we reviewed them in issue 6. You can swoon over them yourself Sunday when they play at the Oakland Chinatown Street Fest.
Posted by Melissa at 11:50 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
The I-Hotel reopened yesterday, 26 years after elderly Asian American immigrants were literally dragged from their apartments and the building was demolished. All for the rising properly values in the Financial District. Lawsuits ensued, protestors and senators got involved, and now a 15-story building is opening in the old Manilatown. It not only has low-cost senior housing, but a community center and a rooftop garden. Sounds really nice. Has anyone checked it out yet?
Read about the I-Hotel here in today's SF Chronicle.
The East Bay Express has some coverage on two Asian American music acts this week. First, a story on Golda Supernova, in all her superb divaness. The story also goes a bit into the Pinoy arts scene, the efforts of Bindlestiff to become a bonafide nonprofit, and why some people (Golda included) would rather it not.
The same writer also has a story on Bento, a local alternative rock band that apparently has a devoted following of swooning girls. If the name sounds familiar to you, maybe it's because we reviewed them in issue 6. You can swoon over them yourself Sunday when they play at the Oakland Chinatown Street Fest.
Posted by Melissa at 11:50 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
As I venture through the city I notice an increasing amount of stencil work upon the walls and sidewalks. I've had the chance to talk to some of the people who align themselves with this fad and asked them what they term their activity. Some of them call it graffiti, while others call it art. Some straddle the line and consider it both. Rare are those who are honest about it and call it what it is; stenciling. So I post this question to the dedicated readers of this blog forum...
What do you consider it?
I think by calling it graffiti art, they discredit and insult both the graffiti subculture as well as those who consider themselves artists. Are they artists, really, or merely glorified tracers who "cleverly" speak in bumper sticker catch-phrases in an attempt to make some sort of witty social commentary? I think they need to stop fooling themselves. If we call stencilers artists, in my opinion, we might as well start considering someone who uses a copy machine to be Michelangelo incarnate.
However, I must admit there are some exceptions to this. There are some innovators, such as Robert Banks, who effectively use stencils to enhance their art and to communicate messages to the populace. Unfortunately individuals such as he are just that; exceptions. The bulk seem to be imitators or...duplicators? *Gasp*
I suppose it was merely a matter of time before the cut and paste mentality that is imbued in many art and design courses permeated society at large. Maybe what they do is art after all...just really bad art...
Posted by at 4:43 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
As I venture through the city I notice an increasing amount of stencil work upon the walls and sidewalks. I've had the chance to talk to some of the people who align themselves with this fad and asked them what they term their activity. Some of them call it graffiti, while others call it art. Some straddle the line and consider it both. Rare are those who are honest about it and call it what it is; stenciling. So I post this question to the dedicated readers of this blog forum...
What do you consider it?
I think by calling it graffiti art, they discredit and insult both the graffiti subculture as well as those who consider themselves artists. Are they artists, really, or merely glorified tracers who "cleverly" speak in bumper sticker catch-phrases in an attempt to make some sort of witty social commentary? I think they need to stop fooling themselves. If we call stencilers artists, in my opinion, we might as well start considering someone who uses a copy machine to be Michelangelo incarnate.
However, I must admit there are some exceptions to this. There are some innovators, such as Robert Banks, who effectively use stencils to enhance their art and to communicate messages to the populace. Unfortunately individuals such as he are just that; exceptions. The bulk seem to be imitators or...duplicators? *Gasp*
I suppose it was merely a matter of time before the cut and paste mentality that is imbued in many art and design courses permeated society at large. Maybe what they do is art after all...just really bad art...
Posted by at 4:43 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
As I venture through the city I notice an increasing amount of stencil work upon the walls and sidewalks. I've had the chance to talk to some of the people who align themselves with this fad and asked them what they term their activity. Some of them call it graffiti, while others call it art. Some straddle the line and consider it both. Rare are those who are honest about it and call it what it is; stenciling. So I post this question to the dedicated readers of this blog forum...
What do you consider it?
I think by calling it graffiti art, they discredit and insult both the graffiti subculture as well as those who consider themselves artists. Are they artists, really, or merely glorified tracers who "cleverly" speak in bumper sticker catch-phrases in an attempt to make some sort of witty social commentary? I think they need to stop fooling themselves. If we call stencilers artists, in my opinion, we might as well start considering someone who uses a copy machine to be Michelangelo incarnate.
However, I must admit there are some exceptions to this. There are some innovators, such as Robert Banks, who effectively use stencils to enhance their art and to communicate messages to the populace. Unfortunately individuals such as he are just that; exceptions. The bulk seem to be imitators or...duplicators? *Gasp*
I suppose it was merely a matter of time before the cut and paste mentality that is imbued in many art and design courses permeated society at large. Maybe what they do is art after all...just really bad art...
Posted by at 4:43 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
Yesterday I received a surprise gift. (That's the best kind, the surprise kind.) It was green totebag with two badminton rackets. It says "badminton" in a curly script, just so no one gets confused about what's going on here and mistakes it for some other racket sport. Now, I don't have any special affinity for the sport. I think I tried to play a game once some 15 years ago. Basically I know nada, so I thought I'd do a little reading up in case anyone asked me "why badminton?" (Why not?!)
Turns outs that Asians rock this sport. Two Asian Americans, Tony Gunawan and Howard Bach just won the World Badminton Championship in men's doubles. Bach is a SF local too and grew up in the Tenderloin. The US team beat out the Indonesian team to grab the title. (Gunawan is originally from Indonesia and is a celebrity there.) The list of winners is a list of Asian names. Indonesia's Olympic champion Taufik Hidayat won the men's singles and China's Xie Xingfang won the women's singles.
Now, on to another kind of rocking. Has anyone been following Rock Star, that show where contestants vy to become the new singer of INXS? Still in the running is MiG, a Filipino Austrailian now living in London. His real name is Miguel Alfonso Ramon Legarda Ayesa (try saying that 3 times in a row).
Dude is proud of his heritage too. (Right on!) Here's a quote from him about choosing what song to sing. "The neat thing I did was to choose the song 'Lola.' It wasn’t even my top five choices, but if it meant that next week I will be able to choose ANY song, then I am happy for the trade. 'Lola' is a classic, but I’ve worked out a new arrangement with the House band. 'Lola' also means grandmother in Tagalog, so this song is dedicated to my Gigi, who was my lola and to celebrate my Filipino connection. I just need to make it work, show spontaneity and survive this coming week's elimination show."
Read a bunch of stories about him here, including one penned by his cousin.
Some serious news: Jack Herzig, who helped Japanese Americans get redress for the internment died earlier this week.
And speaking of the internment, Michelle Malkin's book In Defense of Internment is on sale at the Manzanar National Historic Site. Um, huh? Crazy Lady can write whatever she wants, but why does Manzanar choose to carry such an inflammatory book? I mean, lots of the people visiting, presumably, have family members that were imprisoned in the camps (if they weren't themselves). The story broke here on the Daily Kos.
Posted by Melissa at 10:34 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Yesterday I received a surprise gift. (That's the best kind, the surprise kind.) It was green totebag with two badminton rackets. It says "badminton" in a curly script, just so no one gets confused about what's going on here and mistakes it for some other racket sport. Now, I don't have any special affinity for the sport. I think I tried to play a game once some 15 years ago. Basically I know nada, so I thought I'd do a little reading up in case anyone asked me "why badminton?" (Why not?!)
Turns outs that Asians rock this sport. Two Asian Americans, Tony Gunawan and Howard Bach just won the World Badminton Championship in men's doubles. Bach is a SF local too and grew up in the Tenderloin. The US team beat out the Indonesian team to grab the title. (Gunawan is originally from Indonesia and is a celebrity there.) The list of winners is a list of Asian names. Indonesia's Olympic champion Taufik Hidayat won the men's singles and China's Xie Xingfang won the women's singles.
Now, on to another kind of rocking. Has anyone been following Rock Star, that show where contestants vy to become the new singer of INXS? Still in the running is MiG, a Filipino Austrailian now living in London. His real name is Miguel Alfonso Ramon Legarda Ayesa (try saying that 3 times in a row).
Dude is proud of his heritage too. (Right on!) Here's a quote from him about choosing what song to sing. "The neat thing I did was to choose the song 'Lola.' It wasn’t even my top five choices, but if it meant that next week I will be able to choose ANY song, then I am happy for the trade. 'Lola' is a classic, but I’ve worked out a new arrangement with the House band. 'Lola' also means grandmother in Tagalog, so this song is dedicated to my Gigi, who was my lola and to celebrate my Filipino connection. I just need to make it work, show spontaneity and survive this coming week's elimination show."
Read a bunch of stories about him here, including one penned by his cousin.
Some serious news: Jack Herzig, who helped Japanese Americans get redress for the internment died earlier this week.
And speaking of the internment, Michelle Malkin's book In Defense of Internment is on sale at the Manzanar National Historic Site. Um, huh? Crazy Lady can write whatever she wants, but why does Manzanar choose to carry such an inflammatory book? I mean, lots of the people visiting, presumably, have family members that were imprisoned in the camps (if they weren't themselves). The story broke here on the Daily Kos.
Posted by Melissa at 10:34 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Yesterday I received a surprise gift. (That's the best kind, the surprise kind.) It was green totebag with two badminton rackets. It says "badminton" in a curly script, just so no one gets confused about what's going on here and mistakes it for some other racket sport. Now, I don't have any special affinity for the sport. I think I tried to play a game once some 15 years ago. Basically I know nada, so I thought I'd do a little reading up in case anyone asked me "why badminton?" (Why not?!)
Turns outs that Asians rock this sport. Two Asian Americans, Tony Gunawan and Howard Bach just won the World Badminton Championship in men's doubles. Bach is a SF local too and grew up in the Tenderloin. The US team beat out the Indonesian team to grab the title. (Gunawan is originally from Indonesia and is a celebrity there.) The list of winners is a list of Asian names. Indonesia's Olympic champion Taufik Hidayat won the men's singles and China's Xie Xingfang won the women's singles.
Now, on to another kind of rocking. Has anyone been following Rock Star, that show where contestants vy to become the new singer of INXS? Still in the running is MiG, a Filipino Austrailian now living in London. His real name is Miguel Alfonso Ramon Legarda Ayesa (try saying that 3 times in a row).
Dude is proud of his heritage too. (Right on!) Here's a quote from him about choosing what song to sing. "The neat thing I did was to choose the song 'Lola.' It wasn’t even my top five choices, but if it meant that next week I will be able to choose ANY song, then I am happy for the trade. 'Lola' is a classic, but I’ve worked out a new arrangement with the House band. 'Lola' also means grandmother in Tagalog, so this song is dedicated to my Gigi, who was my lola and to celebrate my Filipino connection. I just need to make it work, show spontaneity and survive this coming week's elimination show."
Read a bunch of stories about him here, including one penned by his cousin.
Some serious news: Jack Herzig, who helped Japanese Americans get redress for the internment died earlier this week.
And speaking of the internment, Michelle Malkin's book In Defense of Internment is on sale at the Manzanar National Historic Site. Um, huh? Crazy Lady can write whatever she wants, but why does Manzanar choose to carry such an inflammatory book? I mean, lots of the people visiting, presumably, have family members that were imprisoned in the camps (if they weren't themselves). The story broke here on the Daily Kos.
Posted by Melissa at 10:34 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Hey Bay Area folks, piNoisepop the Asian American underground music fest starts today at Bindlestiff Studios. Three days of music coming your way. Kris Racer of Chicago, whom we reviewed a couple issues ago, will be playing tonight. Tomorrow night at SomArts Cultural Center another band we wrote about, Say Bok Gwai (that's Canto for "Damn white guy"), takes the stage with local luminary Golda Supernova. From Monument to Masses and The Skyflakes play Saturday.
Read about piNoisepop here in the San Jose Mercury (You have to sign in. Boo!)
Here's the full lineup:
Tonight, 8/25
Bindlestiff Studio
505 Natoma corner 6th St. (between Howard and Mission)
San Francisco, CA 94103
All Ages, $7.00, doors 8:00pm, show 8:30pm
The Stars Misplaced
David Wong(Corona, CA)
Brian Miu
Kris Racer(Chicago, IL)
XYZR_KX (Chicago, IL)
Face On Straight
Drive Til Morning (NYC)
Friday, 8/26
SomArts Cultural Center (Main Gallery)
934 Brannan St San Francisco, CA 94103
All Ages, $10.00, doors 7:30pm, show 8:00pm
Tensegrity Nine
Die Rockers Die (Cerritos, CA)
Say Bok Gwai
JRM
Astral
Golda Supernova
Mailbot(LA)
Marisma
plus "live" painting by Dizzy Peering Inc.
Saturday, 8/27
SomArts Cultural Center (Main Gallery)
934 Brannan St. San Francisco, CA 94103
All Ages, $10.00, doors 6:00pm, show 6:30pm
The Immediates (LA)
Broken Winter
Power Struggle
Blacksonny (NYC)
Sanawon (Chicago)
Ninja Academy (LA)
The Skyflakes
The Degrees (Seattle, WA)
A Grand Social Club
Le Meu Le Purr (Ventura, CA)
From Monument To Masses
Posted by Melissa at 10:58 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Hey Bay Area folks, piNoisepop the Asian American underground music fest starts today at Bindlestiff Studios. Three days of music coming your way. Kris Racer of Chicago, whom we reviewed a couple issues ago, will be playing tonight. Tomorrow night at SomArts Cultural Center another band we wrote about, Say Bok Gwai (that's Canto for "Damn white guy"), takes the stage with local luminary Golda Supernova. From Monument to Masses and The Skyflakes play Saturday.
Read about piNoisepop here in the San Jose Mercury (You have to sign in. Boo!)
Here's the full lineup:
Tonight, 8/25
Bindlestiff Studio
505 Natoma corner 6th St. (between Howard and Mission)
San Francisco, CA 94103
All Ages, $7.00, doors 8:00pm, show 8:30pm
The Stars Misplaced
David Wong(Corona, CA)
Brian Miu
Kris Racer(Chicago, IL)
XYZR_KX (Chicago, IL)
Face On Straight
Drive Til Morning (NYC)
Friday, 8/26
SomArts Cultural Center (Main Gallery)
934 Brannan St San Francisco, CA 94103
All Ages, $10.00, doors 7:30pm, show 8:00pm
Tensegrity Nine
Die Rockers Die (Cerritos, CA)
Say Bok Gwai
JRM
Astral
Golda Supernova
Mailbot(LA)
Marisma
plus "live" painting by Dizzy Peering Inc.
Saturday, 8/27
SomArts Cultural Center (Main Gallery)
934 Brannan St. San Francisco, CA 94103
All Ages, $10.00, doors 6:00pm, show 6:30pm
The Immediates (LA)
Broken Winter
Power Struggle
Blacksonny (NYC)
Sanawon (Chicago)
Ninja Academy (LA)
The Skyflakes
The Degrees (Seattle, WA)
A Grand Social Club
Le Meu Le Purr (Ventura, CA)
From Monument To Masses
Posted by Melissa at 10:58 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Hey Bay Area folks, piNoisepop the Asian American underground music fest starts today at Bindlestiff Studios. Three days of music coming your way. Kris Racer of Chicago, whom we reviewed a couple issues ago, will be playing tonight. Tomorrow night at SomArts Cultural Center another band we wrote about, Say Bok Gwai (that's Canto for "Damn white guy"), takes the stage with local luminary Golda Supernova. From Monument to Masses and The Skyflakes play Saturday.
Read about piNoisepop here in the San Jose Mercury (You have to sign in. Boo!)
Here's the full lineup:
Tonight, 8/25
Bindlestiff Studio
505 Natoma corner 6th St. (between Howard and Mission)
San Francisco, CA 94103
All Ages, $7.00, doors 8:00pm, show 8:30pm
The Stars Misplaced
David Wong(Corona, CA)
Brian Miu
Kris Racer(Chicago, IL)
XYZR_KX (Chicago, IL)
Face On Straight
Drive Til Morning (NYC)
Friday, 8/26
SomArts Cultural Center (Main Gallery)
934 Brannan St San Francisco, CA 94103
All Ages, $10.00, doors 7:30pm, show 8:00pm
Tensegrity Nine
Die Rockers Die (Cerritos, CA)
Say Bok Gwai
JRM
Astral
Golda Supernova
Mailbot(LA)
Marisma
plus "live" painting by Dizzy Peering Inc.
Saturday, 8/27
SomArts Cultural Center (Main Gallery)
934 Brannan St. San Francisco, CA 94103
All Ages, $10.00, doors 6:00pm, show 6:30pm
The Immediates (LA)
Broken Winter
Power Struggle
Blacksonny (NYC)
Sanawon (Chicago)
Ninja Academy (LA)
The Skyflakes
The Degrees (Seattle, WA)
A Grand Social Club
Le Meu Le Purr (Ventura, CA)
From Monument To Masses
Posted by Melissa at 10:58 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Most of you probably know by now that Hyphen is an all-volunteer effort. Yup, all the writers, editors, photographers, business staff, the folks who mail your subscriptions -- they all have day jobs (if they aren't in school or in between jobs.) But some of us have better day jobs than others. Take our contributing music editor, Todd Inoue, who works by day at the San Jose Metro. OK, I know that it's not every week that an alternative newsweekly can afford to send Todd to review a bunch of spas. But still, how can we not be totally jealous?
Posted by Melissa at 10:50 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
Most of you probably know by now that Hyphen is an all-volunteer effort. Yup, all the writers, editors, photographers, business staff, the folks who mail your subscriptions -- they all have day jobs (if they aren't in school or in between jobs.) But some of us have better day jobs than others. Take our contributing music editor, Todd Inoue, who works by day at the San Jose Metro. OK, I know that it's not every week that an alternative newsweekly can afford to send Todd to review a bunch of spas. But still, how can we not be totally jealous?
Posted by Melissa at 10:50 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
Most of you probably know by now that Hyphen is an all-volunteer effort. Yup, all the writers, editors, photographers, business staff, the folks who mail your subscriptions -- they all have day jobs (if they aren't in school or in between jobs.) But some of us have better day jobs than others. Take our contributing music editor, Todd Inoue, who works by day at the San Jose Metro. OK, I know that it's not every week that an alternative newsweekly can afford to send Todd to review a bunch of spas. But still, how can we not be totally jealous?
Posted by Melissa at 10:50 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
Have you ever noticed that you notice more than white people?
No, neither have I. However, according to this article in Wired (brought to my attention through boingboing), hard studies show that Asian Asians are significantly more observant than European Americans.
In one study they tracked the eye movements of Chinese students compared to European American students when looking at a photograph, and in another, Japanese and Americans were asked what they observed in an underwater scene. In the first study, the Euro Ams looked more at foreground objects and the Chinese looked at the whole scene and background, as well as foreground. In the second study, the Japanese gave 60% more information on background and twice as much information on the relationships between background and foreground objects as the Euro Ams.
And as to what we all want to know, how did Asian Americans do:
"Reinforcing the belief that the differences are cultural ... when Asians raised in North America were studied, they were intermediate between native Asians and European-Americans, and sometimes closer to Americans in the way they viewed scenes."
Intermediate? Damn, maybe Asian American studies got it wrong!
Posted by claire at 11:47 AM | Comments (3) | TrackBack
Have you ever noticed that you notice more than white people?
No, neither have I. However, according to this article in Wired (brought to my attention through boingboing), hard studies show that Asian Asians are significantly more observant than European Americans.
In one study they tracked the eye movements of Chinese students compared to European American students when looking at a photograph, and in another, Japanese and Americans were asked what they observed in an underwater scene. In the first study, the Euro Ams looked more at foreground objects and the Chinese looked at the whole scene and background, as well as foreground. In the second study, the Japanese gave 60% more information on background and twice as much information on the relationships between background and foreground objects as the Euro Ams.
And as to what we all want to know, how did Asian Americans do:
"Reinforcing the belief that the differences are cultural ... when Asians raised in North America were studied, they were intermediate between native Asians and European-Americans, and sometimes closer to Americans in the way they viewed scenes."
Intermediate? Damn, maybe Asian American studies got it wrong!
Posted by claire at 11:47 AM | Comments (3) | TrackBack
Have you ever noticed that you notice more than white people?
No, neither have I. However, according to this article in Wired (brought to my attention through boingboing), hard studies show that Asian Asians are significantly more observant than European Americans.
In one study they tracked the eye movements of Chinese students compared to European American students when looking at a photograph, and in another, Japanese and Americans were asked what they observed in an underwater scene. In the first study, the Euro Ams looked more at foreground objects and the Chinese looked at the whole scene and background, as well as foreground. In the second study, the Japanese gave 60% more information on background and twice as much information on the relationships between background and foreground objects as the Euro Ams.
And as to what we all want to know, how did Asian Americans do:
"Reinforcing the belief that the differences are cultural ... when Asians raised in North America were studied, they were intermediate between native Asians and European-Americans, and sometimes closer to Americans in the way they viewed scenes."
Intermediate? Damn, maybe Asian American studies got it wrong!
Posted by claire at 11:47 AM | Comments (3) | TrackBack
Do you have any idea how excited I am about Issue Seven?
Well, neither do I. After seven issues, I'm actually kinda used to being excited about a new issue right after proofreading. Proofreading, down Hyphen way, is where we buy some beer (well, I buy some beer) and make or buy some vaguely Asian-y food, and gather at Stef's house (Stef is our creative director and it's really an apartment) to pore over printouts of the issue at hand and ask each other things like "Do we hyphenate 'proofread'?" or "Do we say 'Hispanic' or 'Latino'?" We all (well not all) gave up this past Friday night to get it done and I must say that Cielo makes a mean pita-bread-ham-broccoli-cheese-thingy.
This is the first the editors and biz staff get to see of what the finished mag will look like, so it's a very cool moment when you encounter that story you bounced back to your writer three times until it was perfect, all laid out 'n' illustrated 'n' pretty -- all lookin' like a real magazine article. It's the moment the magic of design becomes reality for me; where black words on a white space are transformed into a visual, intellectual, imaginative and even tactile experience. This is not to say that edit and design do not tug of war; I especially get prickly around too-creatively designed poems. But while editorial gives the food its protein, carbs and vitamins, design plates the food and gives it sauce -- and hires the hottie wait staff and buys the furniture and the flowers, and DJs the right music, and makes sure there's toilet paper in the bathrooms, and puts the little mints on the check trays, and smiles and says "Thank you! Come again!" To torture a metaphor: without the design team, you'd just be cookin' for yourself at home.
Seven things I'm excited about in Issue Seven:
1. It's the BODY ISSUE ferchrissake! How cool is that?
2. Astronaut Leroy Chiao wrote a how-to on taking care of your body in space ... and the illustrations are waaaay cool.
3. I got to be really mean in the titles to the Letters to the Editor.
4. I got to alliterate publicly in the photo feature on Asian American athletes (who are hot, by the way.)
5. There's a nekkid hottie on the cover, nekkid under his edamame, that is.
6. We have two stories on transsexuals! That's a record for an Asian American magazine!
7. Two words: SEX SURVEY!!!
Actually, I'm excited about a lot more than this, but you'll have to buy the issue, which comes out in a few weeks, to find out the rest. For news and updates, sign up on our mailing list on our website. Better yet, subscribe to Hyphen and help us keep churning this crap out.
Yay body issues!
Posted by claire at 11:36 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
Do you have any idea how excited I am about Issue Seven?
Well, neither do I. After seven issues, I'm actually kinda used to being excited about a new issue right after proofreading. Proofreading, down Hyphen way, is where we buy some beer (well, I buy some beer) and make or buy some vaguely Asian-y food, and gather at Stef's house (Stef is our creative director and it's really an apartment) to pore over printouts of the issue at hand and ask each other things like "Do we hyphenate 'proofread'?" or "Do we say 'Hispanic' or 'Latino'?" We all (well not all) gave up this past Friday night to get it done and I must say that Cielo makes a mean pita-bread-ham-broccoli-cheese-thingy.
This is the first the editors and biz staff get to see of what the finished mag will look like, so it's a very cool moment when you encounter that story you bounced back to your writer three times until it was perfect, all laid out 'n' illustrated 'n' pretty -- all lookin' like a real magazine article. It's the moment the magic of design becomes reality for me; where black words on a white space are transformed into a visual, intellectual, imaginative and even tactile experience. This is not to say that edit and design do not tug of war; I especially get prickly around too-creatively designed poems. But while editorial gives the food its protein, carbs and vitamins, design plates the food and gives it sauce -- and hires the hottie wait staff and buys the furniture and the flowers, and DJs the right music, and makes sure there's toilet paper in the bathrooms, and puts the little mints on the check trays, and smiles and says "Thank you! Come again!" To torture a metaphor: without the design team, you'd just be cookin' for yourself at home.
Seven things I'm excited about in Issue Seven:
1. It's the BODY ISSUE ferchrissake! How cool is that?
2. Astronaut Leroy Chiao wrote a how-to on taking care of your body in space ... and the illustrations are waaaay cool.
3. I got to be really mean in the titles to the Letters to the Editor.
4. I got to alliterate publicly in the photo feature on Asian American athletes (who are hot, by the way.)
5. There's a nekkid hottie on the cover, nekkid under his edamame, that is.
6. We have two stories on transsexuals! That's a record for an Asian American magazine!
7. Two words: SEX SURVEY!!!
Actually, I'm excited about a lot more than this, but you'll have to buy the issue, which comes out in a few weeks, to find out the rest. For news and updates, sign up on our mailing list on our website. Better yet, subscribe to Hyphen and help us keep churning this crap out.
Yay body issues!
Posted by claire at 11:36 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
Do you have any idea how excited I am about Issue Seven?
Well, neither do I. After seven issues, I'm actually kinda used to being excited about a new issue right after proofreading. Proofreading, down Hyphen way, is where we buy some beer (well, I buy some beer) and make or buy some vaguely Asian-y food, and gather at Stef's house (Stef is our creative director and it's really an apartment) to pore over printouts of the issue at hand and ask each other things like "Do we hyphenate 'proofread'?" or "Do we say 'Hispanic' or 'Latino'?" We all (well not all) gave up this past Friday night to get it done and I must say that Cielo makes a mean pita-bread-ham-broccoli-cheese-thingy.
This is the first the editors and biz staff get to see of what the finished mag will look like, so it's a very cool moment when you encounter that story you bounced back to your writer three times until it was perfect, all laid out 'n' illustrated 'n' pretty -- all lookin' like a real magazine article. It's the moment the magic of design becomes reality for me; where black words on a white space are transformed into a visual, intellectual, imaginative and even tactile experience. This is not to say that edit and design do not tug of war; I especially get prickly around too-creatively designed poems. But while editorial gives the food its protein, carbs and vitamins, design plates the food and gives it sauce -- and hires the hottie wait staff and buys the furniture and the flowers, and DJs the right music, and makes sure there's toilet paper in the bathrooms, and puts the little mints on the check trays, and smiles and says "Thank you! Come again!" To torture a metaphor: without the design team, you'd just be cookin' for yourself at home.
Seven things I'm excited about in Issue Seven:
1. It's the BODY ISSUE ferchrissake! How cool is that?
2. Astronaut Leroy Chiao wrote a how-to on taking care of your body in space ... and the illustrations are waaaay cool.
3. I got to be really mean in the titles to the Letters to the Editor.
4. I got to alliterate publicly in the photo feature on Asian American athletes (who are hot, by the way.)
5. There's a nekkid hottie on the cover, nekkid under his edamame, that is.
6. We have two stories on transsexuals! That's a record for an Asian American magazine!
7. Two words: SEX SURVEY!!!
Actually, I'm excited about a lot more than this, but you'll have to buy the issue, which comes out in a few weeks, to find out the rest. For news and updates, sign up on our mailing list on our website. Better yet, subscribe to Hyphen and help us keep churning this crap out.
Yay body issues!
Posted by claire at 11:36 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
So, I was home sick from work yesterday and ended up watching The Fabulous Life of Celebrity Weddings on VH1. I attended FOUR weddings this summer and am now well-versed in the intensity and craziness that is an Indian wedding. The term BLING was created for Indian nuptials. My boyfriend and I were joking about how these Hollywood types don’t have shit on Indians and how the real show would feature fabulous Indian weddings, complete with horses and elephants and a bride worth her weight in gold. And then – it happened! This show featuring Christina Aguilera’s engagement ring and Donald Trump’s wife’s $200,000 wedding dress, featured an Indian wedding held at Versailles this June – which was apparently the most expensive wedding ever. This wedding was held by Indian steel magnate Lakshmi Mittal, whose net worth is somewhere in the ballpark of $54 billion, for his 23-year-old daughter Vanisha. Apparently, the wedding of the universe was all over the British and Indian media. As excited as I get to see South Asian culture getting props on MTV and VHI, I have to admit that this opulence makes me feel pretty disgusted.
Posted by neela at 1:46 PM | Comments (7) | TrackBack
So, I was home sick from work yesterday and ended up watching The Fabulous Life of Celebrity Weddings on VH1. I attended FOUR weddings this summer and am now well-versed in the intensity and craziness that is an Indian wedding. The term BLING was created for Indian nuptials. My boyfriend and I were joking about how these Hollywood types don’t have shit on Indians and how the real show would feature fabulous Indian weddings, complete with horses and elephants and a bride worth her weight in gold. And then – it happened! This show featuring Christina Aguilera’s engagement ring and Donald Trump’s wife’s $200,000 wedding dress, featured an Indian wedding held at Versailles this June – which was apparently the most expensive wedding ever. This wedding was held by Indian steel magnate Lakshmi Mittal, whose net worth is somewhere in the ballpark of $54 billion, for his 23-year-old daughter Vanisha. Apparently, the wedding of the universe was all over the British and Indian media. As excited as I get to see South Asian culture getting props on MTV and VHI, I have to admit that this opulence makes me feel pretty disgusted.
Posted by neela at 1:46 PM | Comments (7) | TrackBack
So, I was home sick from work yesterday and ended up watching The Fabulous Life of Celebrity Weddings on VH1. I attended FOUR weddings this summer and am now well-versed in the intensity and craziness that is an Indian wedding. The term BLING was created for Indian nuptials. My boyfriend and I were joking about how these Hollywood types don’t have shit on Indians and how the real show would feature fabulous Indian weddings, complete with horses and elephants and a bride worth her weight in gold. And then – it happened! This show featuring Christina Aguilera’s engagement ring and Donald Trump’s wife’s $200,000 wedding dress, featured an Indian wedding held at Versailles this June – which was apparently the most expensive wedding ever. This wedding was held by Indian steel magnate Lakshmi Mittal, whose net worth is somewhere in the ballpark of $54 billion, for his 23-year-old daughter Vanisha. Apparently, the wedding of the universe was all over the British and Indian media. As excited as I get to see South Asian culture getting props on MTV and VHI, I have to admit that this opulence makes me feel pretty disgusted.
Posted by neela at 1:46 PM | Comments (7) | TrackBack
Esther Wong, the 'Godmother of Punk, died on Sunday at age 88. She showcased acts like Oingo Boingo, the Police, X, the Ramones, the Motels, 20/20, the Knack, the Know, the Textones, the Go-Gos, the Plimsouls, the Nu-Kats, the Bus Boys, Plane English, the Naughty Sweeties and others at her club, Madame Wong's. Obituary here in the L.A. Times
Posted by Melissa at 10:21 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Esther Wong, the 'Godmother of Punk, died on Sunday at age 88. She showcased acts like Oingo Boingo, the Police, X, the Ramones, the Motels, 20/20, the Knack, the Know, the Textones, the Go-Gos, the Plimsouls, the Nu-Kats, the Bus Boys, Plane English, the Naughty Sweeties and others at her club, Madame Wong's. Obituary here in the L.A. Times
Posted by Melissa at 10:21 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Esther Wong, the 'Godmother of Punk, died on Sunday at age 88. She showcased acts like Oingo Boingo, the Police, X, the Ramones, the Motels, 20/20, the Knack, the Know, the Textones, the Go-Gos, the Plimsouls, the Nu-Kats, the Bus Boys, Plane English, the Naughty Sweeties and others at her club, Madame Wong's. Obituary here in the L.A. Times
Posted by Melissa at 10:21 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
I never quite understood exactly how it works between the native Americans and our government --casinos, reservations, census data? But at any rate, some Native Hawaiians are fighting to get similar status. Listen the the NPR story here.
The argument is that Hawaii was a sovereign nation, until the U.S. government came and took it over --just like they did the rest of the country. Some people think Akaka's bill doesn't go far enough, and Hawaii should be totally free from US rule. I doubt that will happen --check out all military people in Honolulu --but I wonder if having a sovereign governing body will be a boon to the Hawaiians. Or if it just means they'll get to have casinos.
Posted by jennifer at 5:17 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
I never quite understood exactly how it works between the native Americans and our government --casinos, reservations, census data? But at any rate, some Native Hawaiians are fighting to get similar status. Listen the the NPR story here.
The argument is that Hawaii was a sovereign nation, until the U.S. government came and took it over --just like they did the rest of the country. Some people think Akaka's bill doesn't go far enough, and Hawaii should be totally free from US rule. I doubt that will happen --check out all military people in Honolulu --but I wonder if having a sovereign governing body will be a boon to the Hawaiians. Or if it just means they'll get to have casinos.
Posted by jennifer at 5:17 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
I never quite understood exactly how it works between the native Americans and our government --casinos, reservations, census data? But at any rate, some Native Hawaiians are fighting to get similar status. Listen the the NPR story here.
The argument is that Hawaii was a sovereign nation, until the U.S. government came and took it over --just like they did the rest of the country. Some people think Akaka's bill doesn't go far enough, and Hawaii should be totally free from US rule. I doubt that will happen --check out all military people in Honolulu --but I wonder if having a sovereign governing body will be a boon to the Hawaiians. Or if it just means they'll get to have casinos.
Posted by jennifer at 5:17 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
Thanks to everyone who stopped by our booth this weekend at the Nihonmachi Street Fair in J-town, especially those of you who supported us by buying an issue or subscription. It was not as sunny as we would have liked. In fact, it was kind of cold and foggy -- not great conditions for tabling outdoors. But we still had a good time talking to folks about Hyphen. We even sold one of our famous duct-tape wallets. Yes, I'm sad to announce that the "Heiress" wallet, featuring many windows & compartments, is no longer available and was snatched up by a passerby. But many other duct-tape wallets, lovingly made by Hyphen staff, remain. You can check them out at any of our events. Maybe we will get around to putting them up on the website one day soon.
In other Hyphen news, we are now carried in Minneapolis! Stop by Arise Bookstore. Many thanks to Amanda over there. You can see where else Hyphen is carried by clicking here for a list of stores. If you haven't gotten a copy of Issue 6 yet, please visit one of these stores. In a month's time, the new issue will be out and you won't be able to get #6 anymore.
For those of you who only read the blog, you're really missing out. There are a lot of things you can only find in the print mag -- most of our stories (we only post execerpts from a couple stories), more substantive writing, beautiful photos and art. It's just not the same on the computer. Besides, you can't bring your computer to the toilet. (Well, you might be able to, but that doesn't seem like a good idea.) The best way to support Hyphen, and ensure that the mag and the blog exist, is to subscribe straight from us. Small indie magazines like us depend on readers, not advertisers, to survive. So don't be cheap and just read the blog.
OK, commerical over. Now on to news in other places...
Cristeta Comerford was selected as the new White House executive chef by Laura Bush. Comerford, a Filipina American, is the first woman and person of color to hold this post. Comerford replaces Walter Scheib, who was fired by Mrs. Bush in February and had originally been hired by Hillary Clinton in 1995. Read about her in the Washington Post. There's a comment by someone hoping there will be more lumpia in the White House.
And if you love following the world of air guitar, um, as much as we do, then you may have noticed that Asian Americans dominate! Back in Issue 5 (I think) World Air Guitar Champion Sonyk-Rok, a Korean American, taught us how to properly puruse this artform in a story. Sonyk-Rok had beat her mentor, C. Diddy, a fellow Asian American actor and the 2003 World Champion, to win the 2004 crown. Now, another Asian American is rising up the ranks! Fatima "Rockness Monster" Hoang recently became the 2005 US Air Guitar Champ and will represent our country at the World Championships where Sonyk-Rok will defend her title! See the Rockness Monster here at the US Air Guitar Championships website.
Posted by Melissa at 12:26 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
Thanks to everyone who stopped by our booth this weekend at the Nihonmachi Street Fair in J-town, especially those of you who supported us by buying an issue or subscription. It was not as sunny as we would have liked. In fact, it was kind of cold and foggy -- not great conditions for tabling outdoors. But we still had a good time talking to folks about Hyphen. We even sold one of our famous duct-tape wallets. Yes, I'm sad to announce that the "Heiress" wallet, featuring many windows & compartments, is no longer available and was snatched up by a passerby. But many other duct-tape wallets, lovingly made by Hyphen staff, remain. You can check them out at any of our events. Maybe we will get around to putting them up on the website one day soon.
In other Hyphen news, we are now carried in Minneapolis! Stop by Arise Bookstore. Many thanks to Amanda over there. You can see where else Hyphen is carried by clicking here for a list of stores. If you haven't gotten a copy of Issue 6 yet, please visit one of these stores. In a month's time, the new issue will be out and you won't be able to get #6 anymore.
For those of you who only read the blog, you're really missing out. There are a lot of things you can only find in the print mag -- most of our stories (we only post execerpts from a couple stories), more substantive writing, beautiful photos and art. It's just not the same on the computer. Besides, you can't bring your computer to the toilet. (Well, you might be able to, but that doesn't seem like a good idea.) The best way to support Hyphen, and ensure that the mag and the blog exist, is to subscribe straight from us. Small indie magazines like us depend on readers, not advertisers, to survive. So don't be cheap and just read the blog.
OK, commerical over. Now on to news in other places...
Cristeta Comerford was selected as the new White House executive chef by Laura Bush. Comerford, a Filipina American, is the first woman and person of color to hold this post. Comerford replaces Walter Scheib, who was fired by Mrs. Bush in February and had originally been hired by Hillary Clinton in 1995. Read about her in the Washington Post. There's a comment by someone hoping there will be more lumpia in the White House.
And if you love following the world of air guitar, um, as much as we do, then you may have noticed that Asian Americans dominate! Back in Issue 5 (I think) World Air Guitar Champion Sonyk-Rok, a Korean American, taught us how to properly puruse this artform in a story. Sonyk-Rok had beat her mentor, C. Diddy, a fellow Asian American actor and the 2003 World Champion, to win the 2004 crown. Now, another Asian American is rising up the ranks! Fatima "Rockness Monster" Hoang recently became the 2005 US Air Guitar Champ and will represent our country at the World Championships where Sonyk-Rok will defend her title! See the Rockness Monster here at the US Air Guitar Championships website.
Posted by Melissa at 12:26 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
Thanks to everyone who stopped by our booth this weekend at the Nihonmachi Street Fair in J-town, especially those of you who supported us by buying an issue or subscription. It was not as sunny as we would have liked. In fact, it was kind of cold and foggy -- not great conditions for tabling outdoors. But we still had a good time talking to folks about Hyphen. We even sold one of our famous duct-tape wallets. Yes, I'm sad to announce that the "Heiress" wallet, featuring many windows & compartments, is no longer available and was snatched up by a passerby. But many other duct-tape wallets, lovingly made by Hyphen staff, remain. You can check them out at any of our events. Maybe we will get around to putting them up on the website one day soon.
In other Hyphen news, we are now carried in Minneapolis! Stop by Arise Bookstore. Many thanks to Amanda over there. You can see where else Hyphen is carried by clicking here for a list of stores. If you haven't gotten a copy of Issue 6 yet, please visit one of these stores. In a month's time, the new issue will be out and you won't be able to get #6 anymore.
For those of you who only read the blog, you're really missing out. There are a lot of things you can only find in the print mag -- most of our stories (we only post execerpts from a couple stories), more substantive writing, beautiful photos and art. It's just not the same on the computer. Besides, you can't bring your computer to the toilet. (Well, you might be able to, but that doesn't seem like a good idea.) The best way to support Hyphen, and ensure that the mag and the blog exist, is to subscribe straight from us. Small indie magazines like us depend on readers, not advertisers, to survive. So don't be cheap and just read the blog.
OK, commerical over. Now on to news in other places...
Cristeta Comerford was selected as the new White House executive chef by Laura Bush. Comerford, a Filipina American, is the first woman and person of color to hold this post. Comerford replaces Walter Scheib, who was fired by Mrs. Bush in February and had originally been hired by Hillary Clinton in 1995. Read about her in the Washington Post. There's a comment by someone hoping there will be more lumpia in the White House.
And if you love following the world of air guitar, um, as much as we do, then you may have noticed that Asian Americans dominate! Back in Issue 5 (I think) World Air Guitar Champion Sonyk-Rok, a Korean American, taught us how to properly puruse this artform in a story. Sonyk-Rok had beat her mentor, C. Diddy, a fellow Asian American actor and the 2003 World Champion, to win the 2004 crown. Now, another Asian American is rising up the ranks! Fatima "Rockness Monster" Hoang recently became the 2005 US Air Guitar Champ and will represent our country at the World Championships where Sonyk-Rok will defend her title! See the Rockness Monster here at the US Air Guitar Championships website.
Posted by Melissa at 12:26 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
Get used to it, Americans who weren't born in the US. (Come to think of it, that includes me.) This naturalized Indian American found out what "security" means in terms of getting his damn driver license renewed. Good for him for speaking up!
Posted by claire at 7:08 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Get used to it, Americans who weren't born in the US. (Come to think of it, that includes me.) This naturalized Indian American found out what "security" means in terms of getting his damn driver license renewed. Good for him for speaking up!
Posted by claire at 7:08 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Get used to it, Americans who weren't born in the US. (Come to think of it, that includes me.) This naturalized Indian American found out what "security" means in terms of getting his damn driver license renewed. Good for him for speaking up!
Posted by claire at 7:08 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Within a month Hyphen's Body Issue (Issue #7) will be out and you'll be able to read about new research on a variety of diseases affecting Asian Americans, especially those associated with poor diet: cardiovascular disease and diabetes. Although all Asian Americans continue to be neglected by the medical research establishment, this article suggests that South Asian Americans may be disproportionately affected by the physical consequences of assimilation.
Indian-friendly legislators have called for increased funding for research into the rising incidence of heart disease and diabetes among Indian Americans.
To quote from the article:
"According to preliminary research conducted by the American Association of Physicians of Indian Origin (AAPI), cardiovascular disease and diabetes have had a severe and disproportionate impact on the Indian American community.
The organisation says that the number of incidents occurring in Indian Americans may be among the highest in the world for both men and women, and are possibly two to three times higher than the general US population."
Posted by claire at 11:16 AM | Comments (5) | TrackBack
Within a month Hyphen's Body Issue (Issue #7) will be out and you'll be able to read about new research on a variety of diseases affecting Asian Americans, especially those associated with poor diet: cardiovascular disease and diabetes. Although all Asian Americans continue to be neglected by the medical research establishment, this article suggests that South Asian Americans may be disproportionately affected by the physical consequences of assimilation.
Indian-friendly legislators have called for increased funding for research into the rising incidence of heart disease and diabetes among Indian Americans.
To quote from the article:
"According to preliminary research conducted by the American Association of Physicians of Indian Origin (AAPI), cardiovascular disease and diabetes have had a severe and disproportionate impact on the Indian American community.
The organisation says that the number of incidents occurring in Indian Americans may be among the highest in the world for both men and women, and are possibly two to three times higher than the general US population."
Posted by claire at 11:16 AM | Comments (5) | TrackBack
Within a month Hyphen's Body Issue (Issue #7) will be out and you'll be able to read about new research on a variety of diseases affecting Asian Americans, especially those associated with poor diet: cardiovascular disease and diabetes. Although all Asian Americans continue to be neglected by the medical research establishment, this article suggests that South Asian Americans may be disproportionately affected by the physical consequences of assimilation.
Indian-friendly legislators have called for increased funding for research into the rising incidence of heart disease and diabetes among Indian Americans.
To quote from the article:
"According to preliminary research conducted by the American Association of Physicians of Indian Origin (AAPI), cardiovascular disease and diabetes have had a severe and disproportionate impact on the Indian American community.
The organisation says that the number of incidents occurring in Indian Americans may be among the highest in the world for both men and women, and are possibly two to three times higher than the general US population."
Posted by claire at 11:16 AM | Comments (5) | TrackBack
The cover story this week in the East Bay Express is about Eddy Zheng. Read it here. He recently got married and his new wife is petitioning for his residency and trying to keep him from being deported.
If you don't already know who Eddy is, read this blog entry from a couple months ago.
Posted by Melissa at 2:38 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
The cover story this week in the East Bay Express is about Eddy Zheng. Read it here. He recently got married and his new wife is petitioning for his residency and trying to keep him from being deported.
If you don't already know who Eddy is, read this blog entry from a couple months ago.
Posted by Melissa at 2:38 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
The cover story this week in the East Bay Express is about Eddy Zheng. Read it here. He recently got married and his new wife is petitioning for his residency and trying to keep him from being deported.
If you don't already know who Eddy is, read this blog entry from a couple months ago.
Posted by Melissa at 2:38 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Have you guys seen this article in the New York Times from two days ago? The Syrian-born naturalized Canadian citizen who was snatched in Kennedy airport and deported to Syria to be tortured because the US gov't decided he was a member of Al Qaeda is suing. The government is now arguing in court that "Foreign citizens who change planes at airports in the United States can legally be seized, detained without charges, deprived of access to a lawyer or the courts, and even denied basic necessities like food." For some reason, it's the last item that gets to me. Denied food? Why would you want to do that?
Posted by claire at 12:51 PM | Comments (7) | TrackBack
Have you guys seen this article in the New York Times from two days ago? The Syrian-born naturalized Canadian citizen who was snatched in Kennedy airport and deported to Syria to be tortured because the US gov't decided he was a member of Al Qaeda is suing. The government is now arguing in court that "Foreign citizens who change planes at airports in the United States can legally be seized, detained without charges, deprived of access to a lawyer or the courts, and even denied basic necessities like food." For some reason, it's the last item that gets to me. Denied food? Why would you want to do that?
Posted by claire at 12:51 PM | Comments (7) | TrackBack
Have you guys seen this article in the New York Times from two days ago? The Syrian-born naturalized Canadian citizen who was snatched in Kennedy airport and deported to Syria to be tortured because the US gov't decided he was a member of Al Qaeda is suing. The government is now arguing in court that "Foreign citizens who change planes at airports in the United States can legally be seized, detained without charges, deprived of access to a lawyer or the courts, and even denied basic necessities like food." For some reason, it's the last item that gets to me. Denied food? Why would you want to do that?
Posted by claire at 12:51 PM | Comments (7) | TrackBack
Back when I was an idealist, living in the boondocks of Japan, I wanted to share the world with my students. Most of them lived in very small towns; the nearest movie theater was 1-2 hours away. McDonalds had yet to arrive.
Life is surprisingly traditional there; gender roles are well-defined, formal rituals observed. Most housewives still get up at 5 am to make breakfast and box lunches (obento) for their family, and women are looked down upon if their obento lack sufficient artfulness, if they don't have the right balance of colors, don't have rice balls decorated like soccerballs and sausages fried into cute mini octopus shapes.
I wanted my students to get out and see the world --not that I didn't appreciate all that is great about Japan --but I wanted them to just know that there's a different way to think, act, feel. That their ideas of appropriate speech and behavior aren't universal. That women and men can interact in much different ways, and that's okay. That the nail sticking out doesn't always get hammered down.
Probably much of this desire was actually self-centered: I wanted them to understand American culture so that they would understand me. I was such a weirdo there: American but not white, Chinese but didn't speak Chinese, knew the proper greetings but not the right way to sit, could speak but not read, yadi yadi. Maybe if they understood the world, they'd realize how cool I am, (my unconscious logic said).
One of my students was especially good at English and ended up doing an informal exchange with my brother. Jon stayed at his house, went to his school, and Kosuke came here.
Kosuke would return again to the Bay Area as a college student for a few weeks, and has gone on to become a sophisticated, hip kid. He's lived in Paris, traveled around the world, and is stationed in Charleston for 5 months doing research on frog's eyes. He's become, essentially, everything I could have hoped for my students in Nagano.
But South Carolina has been a trial, of sorts. He returned there today, after a 2-day visit to San Francisco in which we ate Ethiopian food, shopped at thrift stores on the Haight, and he finally got to see Alcatraz.
"There's a lot of Asians here," he said on his first day. "It feels more comfortable."
A few weeks ago in a Charleston Walmart, a man passed Kosuke in the aisles and spit at him that familiar invective, "yellow monkey."
Kosuke's english is excellent. He understands hate speech just as much as you or I. And unfortunately, in his travels, in his increasing sophistication, he has experienced the ignorant bigotry that all of we non-whites face at some point in this country.
There is so much about America that I love. It's so easy for me to forget, in San Francisco Land of a Thousand Asians, that across much of the land there's prejudice, resentment, misunderstanding and hate just below the shiny happy freckled faces of wholesome family values.
I used to get beat up at school in Kansas because I was Asian. If Kosuke had responded in the WalMart at all, who knows what the man might have done? Luckily, Kosuke was wise enough to bite his tongue. But what a disappointing lesson to have to learn.
The research Kosuke is doing right now may one day lead to advances that will prevent that man from turning blind in his old age. When will he, and the bigots of America, learn their lesson? How many ways will he have to benefit from Asian science, technology, art, production, generosity and kindness before he sees an Asian face and thinks something other than "yellow monkey"? Is there any way to change a mind like that?
Sometimes I feel like we're spinning our wheels, like we're making no progress at all. Sometimes I despair that we haven't even begun the fight.
Posted by jennifer at 3:17 PM | Comments (4) | TrackBack
Back when I was an idealist, living in the boondocks of Japan, I wanted to share the world with my students. Most of them lived in very small towns; the nearest movie theater was 1-2 hours away. McDonalds had yet to arrive.
Life is surprisingly traditional there; gender roles are well-defined, formal rituals observed. Most housewives still get up at 5 am to make breakfast and box lunches (obento) for their family, and women are looked down upon if their obento lack sufficient artfulness, if they don't have the right balance of colors, don't have rice balls decorated like soccerballs and sausages fried into cute mini octopus shapes.
I wanted my students to get out and see the world --not that I didn't appreciate all that is great about Japan --but I wanted them to just know that there's a different way to think, act, feel. That their ideas of appropriate speech and behavior aren't universal. That women and men can interact in much different ways, and that's okay. That the nail sticking out doesn't always get hammered down.
Probably much of this desire was actually self-centered: I wanted them to understand American culture so that they would understand me. I was such a weirdo there: American but not white, Chinese but didn't speak Chinese, knew the proper greetings but not the right way to sit, could speak but not read, yadi yadi. Maybe if they understood the world, they'd realize how cool I am, (my unconscious logic said).
One of my students was especially good at English and ended up doing an informal exchange with my brother. Jon stayed at his house, went to his school, and Kosuke came here.
Kosuke would return again to the Bay Area as a college student for a few weeks, and has gone on to become a sophisticated, hip kid. He's lived in Paris, traveled around the world, and is stationed in Charleston for 5 months doing research on frog's eyes. He's become, essentially, everything I could have hoped for my students in Nagano.
But South Carolina has been a trial, of sorts. He returned there today, after a 2-day visit to San Francisco in which we ate Ethiopian food, shopped at thrift stores on the Haight, and he finally got to see Alcatraz.
"There's a lot of Asians here," he said on his first day. "It feels more comfortable."
A few weeks ago in a Charleston Walmart, a man passed Kosuke in the aisles and spit at him that familiar invective, "yellow monkey."
Kosuke's english is excellent. He understands hate speech just as much as you or I. And unfortunately, in his travels, in his increasing sophistication, he has experienced the ignorant bigotry that all of we non-whites face at some point in this country.
There is so much about America that I love. It's so easy for me to forget, in San Francisco Land of a Thousand Asians, that across much of the land there's prejudice, resentment, misunderstanding and hate just below the shiny happy freckled faces of wholesome family values.
I used to get beat up at school in Kansas because I was Asian. If Kosuke had responded in the WalMart at all, who knows what the man might have done? Luckily, Kosuke was wise enough to bite his tongue. But what a disappointing lesson to have to learn.
The research Kosuke is doing right now may one day lead to advances that will prevent that man from turning blind in his old age. When will he, and the bigots of America, learn their lesson? How many ways will he have to benefit from Asian science, technology, art, production, generosity and kindness before he sees an Asian face and thinks something other than "yellow monkey"? Is there any way to change a mind like that?
Sometimes I feel like we're spinning our wheels, like we're making no progress at all. Sometimes I despair that we haven't even begun the fight.
Posted by jennifer at 3:17 PM | Comments (4) | TrackBack
Back when I was an idealist, living in the boondocks of Japan, I wanted to share the world with my students. Most of them lived in very small towns; the nearest movie theater was 1-2 hours away. McDonalds had yet to arrive.
Life is surprisingly traditional there; gender roles are well-defined, formal rituals observed. Most housewives still get up at 5 am to make breakfast and box lunches (obento) for their family, and women are looked down upon if their obento lack sufficient artfulness, if they don't have the right balance of colors, don't have rice balls decorated like soccerballs and sausages fried into cute mini octopus shapes.
I wanted my students to get out and see the world --not that I didn't appreciate all that is great about Japan --but I wanted them to just know that there's a different way to think, act, feel. That their ideas of appropriate speech and behavior aren't universal. That women and men can interact in much different ways, and that's okay. That the nail sticking out doesn't always get hammered down.
Probably much of this desire was actually self-centered: I wanted them to understand American culture so that they would understand me. I was such a weirdo there: American but not white, Chinese but didn't speak Chinese, knew the proper greetings but not the right way to sit, could speak but not read, yadi yadi. Maybe if they understood the world, they'd realize how cool I am, (my unconscious logic said).
One of my students was especially good at English and ended up doing an informal exchange with my brother. Jon stayed at his house, went to his school, and Kosuke came here.
Kosuke would return again to the Bay Area as a college student for a few weeks, and has gone on to become a sophisticated, hip kid. He's lived in Paris, traveled around the world, and is stationed in Charleston for 5 months doing research on frog's eyes. He's become, essentially, everything I could have hoped for my students in Nagano.
But South Carolina has been a trial, of sorts. He returned there today, after a 2-day visit to San Francisco in which we ate Ethiopian food, shopped at thrift stores on the Haight, and he finally got to see Alcatraz.
"There's a lot of Asians here," he said on his first day. "It feels more comfortable."
A few weeks ago in a Charleston Walmart, a man passed Kosuke in the aisles and spit at him that familiar invective, "yellow monkey."
Kosuke's english is excellent. He understands hate speech just as much as you or I. And unfortunately, in his travels, in his increasing sophistication, he has experienced the ignorant bigotry that all of we non-whites face at some point in this country.
There is so much about America that I love. It's so easy for me to forget, in San Francisco Land of a Thousand Asians, that across much of the land there's prejudice, resentment, misunderstanding and hate just below the shiny happy freckled faces of wholesome family values.
I used to get beat up at school in Kansas because I was Asian. If Kosuke had responded in the WalMart at all, who knows what the man might have done? Luckily, Kosuke was wise enough to bite his tongue. But what a disappointing lesson to have to learn.
The research Kosuke is doing right now may one day lead to advances that will prevent that man from turning blind in his old age. When will he, and the bigots of America, learn their lesson? How many ways will he have to benefit from Asian science, technology, art, production, generosity and kindness before he sees an Asian face and thinks something other than "yellow monkey"? Is there any way to change a mind like that?
Sometimes I feel like we're spinning our wheels, like we're making no progress at all. Sometimes I despair that we haven't even begun the fight.
Posted by jennifer at 3:17 PM | Comments (4) | TrackBack
Chen Xianzhong is the owner of a Chinese restaurant in Baghdad, and, for some very compelling reasons, has recently made the decision to only offer takeout. After all, he can only afford so many bodyguards.
Posted by chris at 3:16 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Chen Xianzhong is the owner of a Chinese restaurant in Baghdad, and, for some very compelling reasons, has recently made the decision to only offer takeout. After all, he can only afford so many bodyguards.
Posted by chris at 3:16 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Chen Xianzhong is the owner of a Chinese restaurant in Baghdad, and, for some very compelling reasons, has recently made the decision to only offer takeout. After all, he can only afford so many bodyguards.
Posted by chris at 3:16 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Lucy Liu may be slated to play the lead in a revival/update of the Charlie Chan universe.
Don't know how I feel about this. Will have to wait and see the series to come up with a complete comment. Initial reaction, though: my god, let the character die already! It's not like we don't have enough Asian American-written characters to choose from. Why not film one of those, rather than returning to a character that originated in a racist stereotype? Leonard Chang writes mysteries. Why not film Over the Shoulder?
By the way, Charlie Chan was based on a real person, Chang Apana, a Hawaiian police detective who died in 1933.
Posted by claire at 6:38 PM | Comments (6) | TrackBack
Lucy Liu may be slated to play the lead in a revival/update of the Charlie Chan universe.
Don't know how I feel about this. Will have to wait and see the series to come up with a complete comment. Initial reaction, though: my god, let the character die already! It's not like we don't have enough Asian American-written characters to choose from. Why not film one of those, rather than returning to a character that originated in a racist stereotype? Leonard Chang writes mysteries. Why not film Over the Shoulder?
By the way, Charlie Chan was based on a real person, Chang Apana, a Hawaiian police detective who died in 1933.
Posted by claire at 6:38 PM | Comments (6) | TrackBack
Lucy Liu may be slated to play the lead in a revival/update of the Charlie Chan universe.
Don't know how I feel about this. Will have to wait and see the series to come up with a complete comment. Initial reaction, though: my god, let the character die already! It's not like we don't have enough Asian American-written characters to choose from. Why not film one of those, rather than returning to a character that originated in a racist stereotype? Leonard Chang writes mysteries. Why not film Over the Shoulder?
By the way, Charlie Chan was based on a real person, Chang Apana, a Hawaiian police detective who died in 1933.
Posted by claire at 6:38 PM | Comments (6) | TrackBack
I don't have much comment about this story, because it just makes me too angry and sad. These three Iranian brothers, one of whom came to the U.S. for his education and the other two who came over to escape the revolution, were caught in the triple bind created by our government's "war on terror", often actually a war of terror on our own residents. They've just recently been released after being detained for more than three years. Horrifyingly, their release was only secured by an investigation into the beating of one brother for standing up for an ailing fellow detainee. I love my country, but I am so ashamed of this government we allow to act in our name.
Appropriately, and not a moment too soon, an Iranian American "Know Your Rights" resolution H.Res.367, condemning discrimination and bigotry against Iranian Americans, was introduced into the House last week. This resolution is part of the new Iranian American Know Your Rights Campaign, spearheaded by the National Legal Sanctuary for Community Advancement (NLSCA) together with a coalition of community organizations.
To quote the Iranian American Political Action Committee: "The purpose of the campaign is to: (1) educate Iranian Americans of their civil rights and liberties under the Constitution and Bill of Rights; (2) offer legal protection where civil rights of the Iranian American community are being infringed upon; (3) Educate mainstream America on the Iranian American community; and (4) Create media outreach both within the Iranian American media and mainstream media sources."
For help with discrimination visit the National Iranian American Council's (NIAC) discrimination center. For more general information on your rights in general and how the PATRIOT ACT has changed them, check out an earlier blog entry on this subject.
Posted by claire at 1:07 PM | Comments (5) | TrackBack
I don't have much comment about this story, because it just makes me too angry and sad. These three Iranian brothers, one of whom came to the U.S. for his education and the other two who came over to escape the revolution, were caught in the triple bind created by our government's "war on terror", often actually a war of terror on our own residents. They've just recently been released after being detained for more than three years. Horrifyingly, their release was only secured by an investigation into the beating of one brother for standing up for an ailing fellow detainee. I love my country, but I am so ashamed of this government we allow to act in our name.
Appropriately, and not a moment too soon, an Iranian American "Know Your Rights" resolution H.Res.367, condemning discrimination and bigotry against Iranian Americans, was introduced into the House last week. This resolution is part of the new Iranian American Know Your Rights Campaign, spearheaded by the National Legal Sanctuary for Community Advancement (NLSCA) together with a coalition of community organizations.
To quote the Iranian American Political Action Committee: "The purpose of the campaign is to: (1) educate Iranian Americans of their civil rights and liberties under the Constitution and Bill of Rights; (2) offer legal protection where civil rights of the Iranian American community are being infringed upon; (3) Educate mainstream America on the Iranian American community; and (4) Create media outreach both within the Iranian American media and mainstream media sources."
For help with discrimination visit the National Iranian American Council's (NIAC) discrimination center. For more general information on your rights in general and how the PATRIOT ACT has changed them, check out an earlier blog entry on this subject.
Posted by claire at 1:07 PM | Comments (5) | TrackBack
I don't have much comment about this story, because it just makes me too angry and sad. These three Iranian brothers, one of whom came to the U.S. for his education and the other two who came over to escape the revolution, were caught in the triple bind created by our government's "war on terror", often actually a war of terror on our own residents. They've just recently been released after being detained for more than three years. Horrifyingly, their release was only secured by an investigation into the beating of one brother for standing up for an ailing fellow detainee. I love my country, but I am so ashamed of this government we allow to act in our name.
Appropriately, and not a moment too soon, an Iranian American "Know Your Rights" resolution H.Res.367, condemning discrimination and bigotry against Iranian Americans, was introduced into the House last week. This resolution is part of the new Iranian American Know Your Rights Campaign, spearheaded by the National Legal Sanctuary for Community Advancement (NLSCA) together with a coalition of community organizations.
To quote the Iranian American Political Action Committee: "The purpose of the campaign is to: (1) educate Iranian Americans of their civil rights and liberties under the Constitution and Bill of Rights; (2) offer legal protection where civil rights of the Iranian American community are being infringed upon; (3) Educate mainstream America on the Iranian American community; and (4) Create media outreach both within the Iranian American media and mainstream media sources."
For help with discrimination visit the National Iranian American Council's (NIAC) discrimination center. For more general information on your rights in general and how the PATRIOT ACT has changed them, check out an earlier blog entry on this subject.
Posted by claire at 1:07 PM | Comments (5) | TrackBack
The National Asian Pacific American Legal Consortium released a report today highlighting problems that Asian Americans faced when they went to the polls during the November elections.
They reviewed 466 polling stations and found that compliance with the Voting Rights Act, Section 203 (which requires polling places to provide language assistance) was uneven. Among the complaints:
* Poll workers were frequently reluctant to help, were unaware of how to help, or were suspicious of bilingual poll workers and LEP voters. In Los Angeles County,CA, a poll worker sent an Asian American voter to the back of the line for "causing too much trouble" due to the voter's limited English proficiency.
* About 46 percent of the polling sites monitored had multilingual materials but these were inaccessible to those who needed them. In 96 polling stations, there were no instructions in other languages on how to use the voting machines, the sample ballots or even directional signs.
* Many poll workers did not understand why multilingual materials were necessary. In Cook County, IL, one election judge who could not understand a voter said that the voter should learn to speak English.
* In many of the polling sites, there were no signs indicating the availability of interpreters and bilingual poll workers were not identified as such. About 50 percent of the poll workers in Chicago, Cook County, IL, and 62 percent of the bilingual poll workers in King County, WA, did not wear badges indicating their language ability.
It sounds like most places are making an effort to provide language assistance though. I was glad to read that in Harris County, TX (where I'm from), officials made efforts to provide information in Vietnamese to the sizable population there, and even located one of the polling places inside a known community spot.
Section 3 expires in 2007 and NAPALC wants to make sure it will be re-authorized by Congress.
What I found interesting, which is kind of glossed over quickly by the report, is who people voted for. NAPALC conducted their own exit polls and found that Asian Americans in Chicago overwhelmingly voted for Kerry, while those in San Diego mostly went for Bush. In Southern California more than 50% of Cambodians and Vietnamese voted for Bush. Twenty-two percent of Chinese Americans in the Chicago area who were surveyed were first time voters, and of those, 79% voted for Kerry.
Click here for a copy of the report.
Posted by Melissa at 2:17 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
The National Asian Pacific American Legal Consortium released a report today highlighting problems that Asian Americans faced when they went to the polls during the November elections.
They reviewed 466 polling stations and found that compliance with the Voting Rights Act, Section 203 (which requires polling places to provide language assistance) was uneven. Among the complaints:
* Poll workers were frequently reluctant to help, were unaware of how to help, or were suspicious of bilingual poll workers and LEP voters. In Los Angeles County,CA, a poll worker sent an Asian American voter to the back of the line for "causing too much trouble" due to the voter's limited English proficiency.
* About 46 percent of the polling sites monitored had multilingual materials but these were inaccessible to those who needed them. In 96 polling stations, there were no instructions in other languages on how to use the voting machines, the sample ballots or even directional signs.
* Many poll workers did not understand why multilingual materials were necessary. In Cook County, IL, one election judge who could not understand a voter said that the voter should learn to speak English.
* In many of the polling sites, there were no signs indicating the availability of interpreters and bilingual poll workers were not identified as such. About 50 percent of the poll workers in Chicago, Cook County, IL, and 62 percent of the bilingual poll workers in King County, WA, did not wear badges indicating their language ability.
It sounds like most places are making an effort to provide language assistance though. I was glad to read that in Harris County, TX (where I'm from), officials made efforts to provide information in Vietnamese to the sizable population there, and even located one of the polling places inside a known community spot.
Section 3 expires in 2007 and NAPALC wants to make sure it will be re-authorized by Congress.
What I found interesting, which is kind of glossed over quickly by the report, is who people voted for. NAPALC conducted their own exit polls and found that Asian Americans in Chicago overwhelmingly voted for Kerry, while those in San Diego mostly went for Bush. In Southern California more than 50% of Cambodians and Vietnamese voted for Bush. Twenty-two percent of Chinese Americans in the Chicago area who were surveyed were first time voters, and of those, 79% voted for Kerry.
Click here for a copy of the report.
Posted by Melissa at 2:17 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
The National Asian Pacific American Legal Consortium released a report today highlighting problems that Asian Americans faced when they went to the polls during the November elections.
They reviewed 466 polling stations and found that compliance with the Voting Rights Act, Section 203 (which requires polling places to provide language assistance) was uneven. Among the complaints:
* Poll workers were frequently reluctant to help, were unaware of how to help, or were suspicious of bilingual poll workers and LEP voters. In Los Angeles County,CA, a poll worker sent an Asian American voter to the back of the line for "causing too much trouble" due to the voter's limited English proficiency.
* About 46 percent of the polling sites monitored had multilingual materials but these were inaccessible to those who needed them. In 96 polling stations, there were no instructions in other languages on how to use the voting machines, the sample ballots or even directional signs.
* Many poll workers did not understand why multilingual materials were necessary. In Cook County, IL, one election judge who could not understand a voter said that the voter should learn to speak English.
* In many of the polling sites, there were no signs indicating the availability of interpreters and bilingual poll workers were not identified as such. About 50 percent of the poll workers in Chicago, Cook County, IL, and 62 percent of the bilingual poll workers in King County, WA, did not wear badges indicating their language ability.
It sounds like most places are making an effort to provide language assistance though. I was glad to read that in Harris County, TX (where I'm from), officials made efforts to provide information in Vietnamese to the sizable population there, and even located one of the polling places inside a known community spot.
Section 3 expires in 2007 and NAPALC wants to make sure it will be re-authorized by Congress.
What I found interesting, which is kind of glossed over quickly by the report, is who people voted for. NAPALC conducted their own exit polls and found that Asian Americans in Chicago overwhelmingly voted for Kerry, while those in San Diego mostly went for Bush. In Southern California more than 50% of Cambodians and Vietnamese voted for Bush. Twenty-two percent of Chinese Americans in the Chicago area who were surveyed were first time voters, and of those, 79% voted for Kerry.
Click here for a copy of the report.
Posted by Melissa at 2:17 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Back when I was in a Duncan dance company (Isadora, that is,) we needed to raise $$ to go to Hungary. We had a couple garage sales, we put on a few performances, we were thousands short of our goal.
Somehow our director was contacted by an independent film production company and before we knew it, we were "gypsy dancers" in a dream sequence of a film called --I can't remember. German title, South Asian American film. it didn't really matter, the important part was that we'd get 500 bucks to dance around like wackos/temptresses in a circle around the male lead.
It was fun. We gathered down on the abandoned docks of China Basin, a professional working our hair and makeup into a stylized gypsification that would have horrified any Roma activists out there in their stereotypical gaudy, bangly color. Also weird was the fact that one of the "gypsies" was Chinese and the another Japanese. but whatever.
So it's been years since that shoot, and I have yet to see the finished film. Every 6 months or so i check the website to see if there's any update (after thinking for a couple days to remember the name of the film... damn it, what was it?).
So that's why I'm a little worried about this film: Tie a Yellow Ribbon. True, Korean American adoptee Joy Dietrich has several short films under her belt, and if the photo above is any indication, a sensibility for arresting imagery. But she's still working on getting finishing funds.
I would hate to be wondering, three years from now, "what ever happened to that film...what was it called? The title was some song..."
Good or bad, I love having AA films hit the screen -gives us something to argue about-- so check out her site, read the article and hey, while you're at it, throw a few bucks her way. $50,000 or more buys you an executive producer credit!)
Posted by jennifer at 3:22 PM | Comments (5) | TrackBack
Back when I was in a Duncan dance company (Isadora, that is,) we needed to raise $$ to go to Hungary. We had a couple garage sales, we put on a few performances, we were thousands short of our goal.
Somehow our director was contacted by an independent film production company and before we knew it, we were "gypsy dancers" in a dream sequence of a film called --I can't remember. German title, South Asian American film. it didn't really matter, the important part was that we'd get 500 bucks to dance around like wackos/temptresses in a circle around the male lead.
It was fun. We gathered down on the abandoned docks of China Basin, a professional working our hair and makeup into a stylized gypsification that would have horrified any Roma activists out there in their stereotypical gaudy, bangly color. Also weird was the fact that one of the "gypsies" was Chinese and the another Japanese. but whatever.
So it's been years since that shoot, and I have yet to see the finished film. Every 6 months or so i check the website to see if there's any update (after thinking for a couple days to remember the name of the film... damn it, what was it?).
So that's why I'm a little worried about this film: Tie a Yellow Ribbon. True, Korean American adoptee Joy Dietrich has several short films under her belt, and if the photo above is any indication, a sensibility for arresting imagery. But she's still working on getting finishing funds.
I would hate to be wondering, three years from now, "what ever happened to that film...what was it called? The title was some song..."
Good or bad, I love having AA films hit the screen -gives us something to argue about-- so check out her site, read the article and hey, while you're at it, throw a few bucks her way. $50,000 or more buys you an executive producer credit!)
Posted by jennifer at 3:22 PM | Comments (5) | TrackBack
Back when I was in a Duncan dance company (Isadora, that is,) we needed to raise $$ to go to Hungary. We had a couple garage sales, we put on a few performances, we were thousands short of our goal.
Somehow our director was contacted by an independent film production company and before we knew it, we were "gypsy dancers" in a dream sequence of a film called --I can't remember. German title, South Asian American film. it didn't really matter, the important part was that we'd get 500 bucks to dance around like wackos/temptresses in a circle around the male lead.
It was fun. We gathered down on the abandoned docks of China Basin, a professional working our hair and makeup into a stylized gypsification that would have horrified any Roma activists out there in their stereotypical gaudy, bangly color. Also weird was the fact that one of the "gypsies" was Chinese and the another Japanese. but whatever.
So it's been years since that shoot, and I have yet to see the finished film. Every 6 months or so i check the website to see if there's any update (after thinking for a couple days to remember the name of the film... damn it, what was it?).
So that's why I'm a little worried about this film: Tie a Yellow Ribbon. True, Korean American adoptee Joy Dietrich has several short films under her belt, and if the photo above is any indication, a sensibility for arresting imagery. But she's still working on getting finishing funds.
I would hate to be wondering, three years from now, "what ever happened to that film...what was it called? The title was some song..."
Good or bad, I love having AA films hit the screen -gives us something to argue about-- so check out her site, read the article and hey, while you're at it, throw a few bucks her way. $50,000 or more buys you an executive producer credit!)
Posted by jennifer at 3:22 PM | Comments (5) | TrackBack
To follow on the ever-present discussion about white men-Asian women couples (last seen on our post about Bitter Asian Men) here's a controversy brewing in Oakland:
There's an art show up at the Asian Resource Gallery in Oakland called Not So Lang (pretty): Why Two Chinese-Cali Artists Don't Date White Boys. Haven't gotten down there to see the show myself, but apparently there is a T-shirt in the show with "I Don't Date White Guys" stenciled on it. This upset some people.
Read a description of the show at Manja.org. It includes quotes from the artists, Joy Liu and Tiffany Eng.
The gallery space is regularly curated by activist Greg Morozumi. Has anyone seen the show? It's up til the end of August at:
Asian Resource Gallery
310 Eighth St @ Harrison
Oakland Chinatown (in walking distance from Lake Merritt or Downtown 12th St. Oakland BART)
Posted by Melissa at 4:30 PM | Comments (18) | TrackBack
To follow on the ever-present discussion about white men-Asian women couples (last seen on our post about Bitter Asian Men) here's a controversy brewing in Oakland:
There's an art show up at the Asian Resource Gallery in Oakland called Not So Lang (pretty): Why Two Chinese-Cali Artists Don't Date White Boys. Haven't gotten down there to see the show myself, but apparently there is a T-shirt in the show with "I Don't Date White Guys" stenciled on it. This upset some people.
Read a description of the show at Manja.org. It includes quotes from the artists, Joy Liu and Tiffany Eng.
The gallery space is regularly curated by activist Greg Morozumi. Has anyone seen the show? It's up til the end of August at:
Asian Resource Gallery
310 Eighth St @ Harrison
Oakland Chinatown (in walking distance from Lake Merritt or Downtown 12th St. Oakland BART)
Posted by Melissa at 4:30 PM | Comments (18) | TrackBack
To follow on the ever-present discussion about white men-Asian women couples (last seen on our post about Bitter Asian Men) here's a controversy brewing in Oakland:
There's an art show up at the Asian Resource Gallery in Oakland called Not So Lang (pretty): Why Two Chinese-Cali Artists Don't Date White Boys. Haven't gotten down there to see the show myself, but apparently there is a T-shirt in the show with "I Don't Date White Guys" stenciled on it. This upset some people.
Read a description of the show at Manja.org. It includes quotes from the artists, Joy Liu and Tiffany Eng.
The gallery space is regularly curated by activist Greg Morozumi. Has anyone seen the show? It's up til the end of August at:
Asian Resource Gallery
310 Eighth St @ Harrison
Oakland Chinatown (in walking distance from Lake Merritt or Downtown 12th St. Oakland BART)
Posted by Melissa at 4:30 PM | Comments (18) | TrackBack
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