erin Khue Ninh is a former blog editor and onetime publisher of Hyphen, who won't seem to go away. She now teaches literature in the Department of Asian American Studies at UC Santa Barbara. Aside from Hyphen, erin believes in recycling, Planned Parenthood, and Type A first-borns.
Introducing the Asian American Literary Review's special issue, commemorating the 10th anniversary of September 11.
What Yang misses in calling these the values and behaviors of Asian people -- is how very American they are. In the sense that they are behaviors an Asian person may ‘select for,’ in an American context that encourages and rewards them (to a point).
Hyphen was at Barack's former stomping grounds last Saturday, yes indeed. I met with an impressive group of student leaders over lunch: They know their social history, their coalition politics, and they have big plans for their APIA classmates.
Long after we have tired of responding to Chua's piece, it will still find its way to Asian parents like my own. Whatever we may believe of Chua now, the damage is done.
Which of the following is a good reason to donate:
Crazy, but true: That there question has no wrong answer!
We thought you might want to know that two of this year's acclaimed film festival features are available to view online, for free, for a limited time. See below for reviews from our writers earlier this year. And click on their titles to see the films.
9500 Liberty will be available until election day, Nov 2.
UPDATE AUGUST 10: Made the third cut of 5 finalists! Now let's get them the WIN!
For years now, whenever non-Asian people have attempted to bond by announcing to me that their spouses are some flavor of Asian, I've made a mental W sign and probably rolled my eyes. Usually they're implying that they're cultural insiders because of these spouses, a notion I've found to be just so much baloney.
But I probably can't afford to be quite so dismissive going forward because, I dunno, am I doing something similar?
Starting this week, folks, we're supercharging our political coverage with the help of our friends at the Asian American Action Fund. Their team of bloggers includes lawyers, at least one judge, and some major policy wonks -- so we're psyched to borrow their X-ray vision on the parties, the leaders, the legislation that Asian Americans should know about.
And in return we're excited to lend them our favorite hoodies and vintage shades. Can't infiltrate the arts and culture scenes like we do without the right get-up.
Actually, we're talking about Asian Americans online: the bloggers, the journalists, the YouTube celebs, and you -- the readers and viewers of above fare. And here's the kind of stuff we'll be dishing:
With newspapers and magazines folding like dominoes around us, what's a journalist to do? Much less one who thinks this niche called Asian America needs covering?
If bloggers (and KevJumba) are the rising voices of Asian American media, then does great responsibility come with great power?
"i love filling out forms as group. reminds me of standarized tests in elementary school." -Ianna, Hyphen Marketing nerd
We filled out our census forms. It was fun. See?
Mail in yours asap -- it's due by April 1.
Sometimes a girl just can't find a usable blog image in the public domain, dammit. So henceforth, whenever I come up with zero, you'll be treated to Southpark me. Call it branding.
Always we carp about not being represented. Where are all the Asian Americans on primetime TV? Why so few in the higher corporate executive tiers? Where are all the positions for us in government?
Well? The lines are being drawn. Where are we?
California voters passed a proposition a few years ago demanding a say in how voting districts are drawn, because the demographic and party distribution across districts can make it possible for minority voters to make an impact on statewide elections -- or dilute their ballots into statistical insignificance.
She founds magazines. She makes stop-motion videos. She eats lots of cheese. And she runs an Asian American film festival in Houston!
Our Melissa is amazing. But she can't keep doing that last thing, without you.
You know the story: budgets slashed, arts organizations flailing. Slant: Bold Asian American Images turns 10 in 2010! But it won't happen this year if she can't raise the money to fund it. She doesn't need much (an incredibly modest $1,500 for a festival! resourceful, this one), so do help, where even a little will do an awful lot.
www.slantfestival.org
(And a note to filmmakers: the deadline to submit work to Slant is January 30.)
Multiple-choice questions you can't get wrong? Maybe filling in bubbles or blanks brings back fond memories of acing standardized tests. Or maybe this is finally your chance to make that parental dream a reality! Either way, take the Hyphen reader survey: all your answers are aces with us.
Hyphen loves your input all year 'round, but only for a brief window each winter do we offer this nifty form, to make telling us about yourself so easy. Window closes January 20th, though, so nab your 5 minutes of nostalgia now. And you may just win an iPod nano from us. Like you'd need anything else to brag about.
Survey here.
Let me start by saying that, whatever the shortcomings of the day, the idea to bring so many Asian American bloggers into one room was foolproof. It was a pleasure to put faces to names, to compare people's embodied selves to their online personas.
Even the Pacquiao-Cotto fight couldn't stop Hyphen fans from turning out in droves this past Saturday to cheer for their favorite Asian American men at the fourth annual Mr. Hyphen contest. With a shot of talent, a shot of fashion and, in the words of one of the judges, "a lot of soul," there was something for everyone. At the end of the night, Pahole Sookkasikon took home the crown and $1,000 for his chosen nonprofits, the Thai-American Scholarship Fund and the Asian American Donor Program.
I came across this article today and thought I'd share.
You've got a little more time -- but just a little -- to grab the crown, the cash, the belt, and the bragging rights. We're taking Mr. Hyphen applications through this Sunday, October 11th.
See here for how. See below for why. Hyphen hearts you, Anthem.
* * *
What's the best part of being a Mr. Hyphen finalist? Real talk, it's difficult to choose between:
- Bringin' sexy back
- Meeting Miss San Francisco (2007 Mr. Hyphen judge)
- Drawing valuable attention to your community
- Connecting with the amazing human beings behind the coolest arts and culture magazine in America
- And have I mentioned, HAVING THE TIME OF YOUR LIFE???
I'll admit I was skeptical, to start.
Last July, Luis Ramirez, a Latino immigrant who worked in a factory, was brutally killed by a gang of drunken white teenagers motivated by their dislike of the growing Latino population in their small coal mining town of Shenandoah, Penn. Two of the young white men who killed Luis were recently acquitted by an all white jury of all serious charges including third-degree murder and ethnic intimidation.
The facts of this case sounded all too familiar to those of us lawyers who work on civil rights cases. They mirror the facts at the heart of the 1982 Vincent Chin hate crime case.
The above comes from an article by a lawyer at Asian Pacific American Legal Center (APALC) of Los Angeles. Do read it where it lives, and come back.
I've been thinking (and talking, and writing) about hate crimes quite a bit lately. Attended a conversation at the UCSB residence halls last night, where students were working through their views of the recent racially-motivated assault on campus. The conversation also came on the heels of a screening of the excellent new documentary on Vincent Chin, the night before.
The students opened by piecing together a definition of a hate crime. What kinds of acts fall under this legal category? Identity-based violence takes many forms, they recognized. Not all of it physical, not all of it criminally prosecutable.
In the eyes and on the books of civil rights law, I'm told, the racial, sexual, or say religious basis of a crime becomes an "enhancement" to the basic criminal charges, of assault and battery, say, or first-degree murder. And that's how/why we want them prosecuted: because the crime was "enhanced," i.e., made worse, by its hateful nature.
But I'm realizing there's an irony in this. In cases like Luis Ramirez and Vincent Chin, the judicial process has seen fit to treat the racial nature of the attacks not as enhancements, but as diminishments -- mitigants so powerful as to turn a murder into a beating, or a crime into nothing at all.
Word about the racially-motivated attack on two Asian American men at UC Santa Barbara last March has been traveling through the online social networks and cropping up in the blogosphere for some time. Mainstream media hasn't carried much on it, though, since things have been kept fairly quiet during the investigation, so for some of you, this may be the first you've heard.
Sweets
Moonpillows mochi truffles. Local secret available only to those of you in Southern California.
Chewy-soft mochi on the outside. Soft chocolate ganache -- with flavors like
maple-pecan or pumpkin spice, eggnog or chocolate mint (with candy
canes crushed into the filling!) -- on the inside. Everything scrumptiously hand-made. Find them at the Brentwood farmer's market on Sundays, or online (but with SoCal delivery only). Get some if you can...
Reads
For the artist or writer on your list, there's Lynda Barry's newest book What It Is, her remedy to writer's block. Through comics, drawings and worksheets, she shares her method of putting away self-defeating demons and conjuring up memories and images to kick start the creative process. She also teaches a class on this method, if you're lucky enough to be in a city she's visiting.
Here at Hyphen, we like to say that we find you the Asian American angle on things that are not immediately or obviously so. In that spirit, allow me to direct you to an example of awfully familiar motivational strategies:
From the comic strip In the Bleachers.
Bond with me, here.
Earlier, we mentioned Jeff Yang's musings that Obama might be categorically Asian American in a way that transcends biological race.
In interesting counterpoint to that is a conversation I recently had with a friend who speculated that Vijay Singh -- and not Tiger Woods -- may be professional golf's "colored person," if by that we mean a category that renders invisible, unwelcome, or second-class those who are tarred with it. Singh has been cast as an uppity and hypermasculine threat to a gentleman's game; he gets a fraction of the press he deserves, and seems to be the guy that the establishment would love to watch fall on his face. So, pointed out my friend Sameer, might it be said that Singh is categorically Black in a way that also transcends biological race?
See here for Sameer's recent, deftly measured article on Singh for SI's golf issue. And come back if you'd like to comment on the shifting meanings of race in a world that "postmodern" seems almost too quaint a term to describe anymore. It's not that race has disappeared or become null and void; but the categories are certainly more supple now, in ways that both give us a lot more freedom of movement, and make it incredibly hard for us to tell where the sand-traps ahead of us lie.
It's almost the weekend, but don't worry -- we have you covered for Saturday night.
Samantha Chanse hosts Mr. Hyphen '08, which means as far as cultural events go, this one will take the house by storm.
Check out some great anticipatory buzz from the East Bay Express, so you know what to expect and can, like, figure out what to wear.
See you there!
Marianne Villanueva: "Mayor of the Roses," issue 6
Sabrina Tom: "A Dead Letter Love Story," issue 7
Lara Stapleton: "what we can get away with," issue 8
Danny Thanh Nguyen: "Davydia," issue 9
Katinka Baltazar: "Vertigo," issue 10
Preeta Samarasan: "Our House Stands in a City of Flowers," issue 11 *winner 2007 contest*
Brian Leung: "Librarians on Ice," issue 12
Philip Huang: "Pineola Inn," issue 13
Diana Ip: "Drunken Chicken," issue 14
Sung J. Woo: "Translation," issue 15
___you and your story___, issue 16
Early on in this year's campaign, when there were still several Democratic hopefuls in the running, I remember more actively looking for "shout-outs" to the Asian Americans, and being disappointed when I didn't find them.
I was listening to NPR last night, as they had a chat about the Democratic National Convention with listeners and some in-studio luminaries.
I have a theory that if I went through a database of American males under the age of 40 and, looking only at their first names, sorted out the Gilberts and Godfreys, the Howards and Hamiltons, they'd all be Asian. Pretty much.
Pre-purchase tickets for Mr. Hyphen are available only through 7 p.m. today! (Click on Events above) Get 'em now or they'll be $20 at the door. And the show is tomorrow! Our contestants have met, and the shit-talking has begun.
For those of you who are always complaining (and you know you are) that Asian American men don't get enough love -- we hear you, and we're doing something about it. So come out and support your brothers and your cause at our first-ever Mr. Hyphen contest!
For those of you who came to the Opening night movie last night, here's your chance to give your opinions some air time. Again, no proper review from me. Is it that I'm just lazy? Maybe. Whatever it is, I'm jumping to the fun part: the So What'd You Think?
So film festival season is here again -- and Hyphen is definitely in the mix.
Asian American boookstores are priceless -- precarious and brave. What Advanced Searches on Barnes & Noble.com will never yield, what the shelves of Borders can't be counted on to carry much less surrender -- the Asian American bookstore will have gathered and displayed for you, rows upon rows of just the things you might not want to miss. It's like having a literary personal shopper.
A couple of us (Mike, Stef and I) went to a press screening of Annapolis yesterday. Yay for press screenings! But neither of them wants to blog, so I'm doing a composite commentary -- gleaned from our standing-around review after the movie.
Hullo. Hopefully some groggy, post-holiday blog readers snapped to attention on that one.
Sale. Yup, once a year (and once a year only!) Hyphen reduces our online subscription rates. From the standard $18 for 4 issues (which is already so cheap, we make no money off of it once you cover printing & postage), to $15 (which is actually less than our barest costs of production).
