Momo Chang

Senior Contributing Editor

Momo Chang is the Content Manager at the Center for Asian American Media, and freelances for magazines, online publications, and weeklies. Her writings focus on Asian American communities, communities of color, and youth culture. She is a former staff writer at the Oakland Tribune. Her stories range from uncovering working conditions in nail salons, to stories about “invisible minorities” like Tongan youth and Iu Mien farmers. She has freelances The New York Times, WIRED, and East Bay Express, among other publications. She is a senior contributing editor and writer for Hyphen.

Furious Five

Hyphen gets elemental with hip-hop’s new school.

Momo Chang - October 1, 2006

Photographer Seng Chen

1. NATIVE GUNS. MCs that matter.

 Jonah Deocampo and Jack DeJesus prefer to aim straight for your head. With their lyrics, that is.

“When we speak, we try to get in there,” Deocampo, or MC Bambu, says, gesturing to his head with expressive hands.

Demons in the Dance

Imagine a bunch of sweaty, noisy teenaged boys violently dancing in your garage. This is the story of some youths' Rize to fame.

Momo Chang - May 1, 2006

It’s Christmas evening, and several teens are gathered at Leilani and Glenn Modina’s house in Long Beach, CA. It’s a mild 60 degrees outside, and the guys are decked in T-shirts, boots and baggy britches.

For the last five years, a group of 15 to 20 Filipino youngsters have gathered here to practice krumping, a fast-moving, body-jerking style of urban dance that got international hype through the film Rize, by David LaChapelle.

Here's Your MTV

Music video network launches ethnic channels targeting specific Asian groups

Momo Chang - May 1, 2006

Illustrator Junichi Tsuneoka

There’s a graveyard full of media companies that have tried to cash in on the lucrative but hard to crack Asian American market, a fragmented demographic group with numerous ethnicities, cultures, races and languages.

But in the last year, MTV has been trying something different, eschewing the shotgun pan-Asian approach and going for the niches within. The network launched two ethnic-specific channels: MTV Desi marketed to South Asians, and MTV Chi (like “tai chi”) targeting Chinese Americans.

[API Events April 10-16]

Momo Chang - April 9, 2006

Tuesday, April 11 – SF

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Kearny Street Workshop presents the third annual Intergenerational Writers Lab with Jaime Jacinto, Tsering Wangmo Dhompa, and Philip Kan Gotanda. unique opportunity to meet some of our leading local writers, publishers, and performers and learn first-hand what drives the Bay Area's local independent publishing community. KSW started its publishing imprint in 1982, and was one of the first outlets for the publication of Asian Pacific American literature. (7:30pm, Intersection for the Arts, 446 Valencia St., SF. www.kearnystreet.org, www.theintersection.org $5-10 sliding scale).

Sentenced Home, Punching at the Sun, Grassroots Rising...

Momo Chang - March 20, 2006

...Whose Children Are These? and Dastaar are films I've seen within a 48-hour span.

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So I have been watching a bunch of documentaries at the SFIAAFF. I'm not sure why I'm drawn towards documentaries, and Asian American documentaries at that. Perhaps I feel like it's my job, since Hyphen is an Asian American magazine.

Where Ya'll From?

Momo Chang - March 2, 2006

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There's a lot of Hyphen folks who are from the Midwest and South, it seems. Theories?

I'm taking an informal poll of where Asian Americans are from, or currently live. There are API folks across the country - in places where you'd least expect it - paving the way in many, well, ways.

I have always wondered what it would've been like to grow up in multicultural, urban hubs like NYC or SF. I lived in South Carolina for 10 years.

Eddy Zheng Update

Momo Chang - February 9, 2006

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"Another month has somehow slipped by. As my final deportation hearing is getting closer, I can't help but get excited. I look forward to the opportunity to express myself to the government and the people about why I deserve to stay in this country. I'll be speaking for my future. The month of February is full of hope and potential. I'm waiting for another miracle."

That's the most recent post on Eddy Zheng's blog.

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