Saif Ansari
Really, Abercrombie? Did you have to act a fool again? I get it: Hijabs don't exactly jive with the whole “mostly nude, mostly white, 20-something surfer dude/chick” look. But what I don't get is the suspension and subsequent firing of former Hollister employee (an A&F company) Hani Khan for wearing one.

— Excerpt from Abercrombie & Fitch Acts a Fool Once Again, July 1, 2011

Nicole Wong
Ali Wong: “Thu and I met at a Vietnamese panel, generally for Vietnamese creatives. I remember people were really into food and we talked about sandwiches for like 20 minutes.”
Thu Tran: “Yes, everyone had strong opinions about them.”  

— Excerpt from Hyphen Exclusive Interview: Thu Tran, Anisha Nagarajan and Ali Wong, March 18, 2011

Bernice Yeung
Ursula Liang: “Maybe a boycott is fundamentally childish. You’re pissed off and stomping away from a situation, and it only tangibly punishes the offender if an army of kids runs off. When I was a teenager, I joined in the boycott of Coca-Cola when the company was heavily invested in apartheid South Africa. The soda giant partially withdrew operations from South Africa to save face. But I stopped drinking soda for 15 years, and in depriving myself (we all know how perfectly paired Coke and Chinese food are), I found a certain kind of inner strength. If boycotts are ineffective at least they’re energizing. Asian Americans are so distracted these days that we need any type of fuel that we can find to bring our issues back into play.”

— Excerpt from Q&A with Ursula Liang and Jeff Yang: Did the Breakfast at Tiffany's Boycott Work?, August 11, 2011


Priyanka Mantha
The current of Islamophobia even amongst mainstream politicians is growing stronger, not slackening. … What is most frustrating is that in doing so they’re creating an underdog fable for themselves, as if their actions are boldly throwing aside political correctness to address an unpopular but dangerous reality.  

— Excerpt from Haven't We Seen This Before?, July 8, 2011

Dianne Choie
The lovely Michelle Krusiec guest-starred on this week's Community as Pierce's mysterious new fiancée. … She's Chinese, and she speaks with the stilted, accented, broken yet surprisingly well-vocabulary'd English that we've all come to expect from any foreign Asian character: She turns down Jeff's advances with, “Not ... interested. Please take ... weird haircut ... stupid grin ... and go sniff ... another dog's ass.” Not since Jin asked Jack, “Would you like some ... cereal?” on Lost have I felt such skepticism.

— Excerpt from Hyphen TV: Chinese Business Affairs on Community, April 19, 2011

erin Khue Ninh
There’s an awful lot of Asian male self-pity in Yang’s article: “‘Many guys just don’t realize how to project themselves.’ … Their mothers had kept them at home to study rather than let them date or socialize.” Think the girls had more freedom? Yang, please. Read page 111 of my book. On the house-arrest event, we win this Oppression Olympics hands down.

— Excerpt from Asian American Like Me: A Studies Response to Wesley Yang, May 24, 2011

Sylvie Kim
I didn’t know it then, and perhaps it would have been futile to try to explain it to my peers, but my Spam consumption was largely the result of American military and political expansion abroad. I grew to love a food that was championed as a symbol of American ingenuity despite being denigrated by Americans themselves. I eat Spam and am judged for eating Spam because of America. Both Asian Pacific Americans and Spam were the butt of a cruel joke: “Please value what we deem subpar and make us money in the process,” America said. It’s a terribly heavy load of symbolism to place on a pink block of meat.

— Excerpt from The End of Spam Shame: On Class, Colonialism and Canned Meat, June 3, 2011