The Short Film

Guest post by L.S. Kim


YOMYOMF's "Interpretations 2.0"
I love short films. The short film is a unique art form that allows for the unexpected -- from the film itself, and from its viewer, too. Like a short story, there is an invitation into a world that may be new or unknown, and a willingness to enter, afterall, the commitment seems brief. But this is exactly how a short film can be effective in sharing a point of view that otherwise might be eschewed.

Often when approaching a short film, one's guard is down and mind is more open. There is less formality than, say, experiencing a dedicated screening of a feature-length piece, with attendant expectations about the kind of pleasure one wants to get out of it; the engagement with a short film engenders breath (excitement about the unfamiliar), and breadth (flexibility in our viewing practices), because we don't quite know what to expect but we're giving our attention nevertheless.

Korean American Parents Stand Up for Their LGBTQ Children

Guest post by Clara Yoon, A Mom from Korean American Rainbow Parents (KARP)


As I help plan the first-ever Korean American LGBTQ Seminar for family members, allies and the broader immigrant community, I cannot help but wonder: which moment was it that enabled me to become the loud and proud mother of a bisexual, transgender son that I am today?

Was it when my child, at the tender age of fourteen, declared in an angry burst that he was a boy? In that moment, my husband and I felt confused, afraid and angry.

Was it when I started frantically searching for words to describe LGBTQ terminology in Korean so that I could talk to extended family about my son's new name and gender pronouns? I remember feeling frustrated and depressed about the lack of resources available.

Was it when I discovered the Dari Project's bilingual anthology of LGBTQ stories, giving me a glimpse of the barriers that Korean American LGBTQ people face in their everyday lives?

Was it when I felt heartbroken to hear of LGBTQ youths in Korea who run away from their abusive homes and schools, and of the struggles to build safe spaces to house and protect them?

Was it when I met Joanne Lee, a Korean American mom from Madison who lost her 16-year-old transgender son to depression? After her son Skylar's death, Joanne started touring U.S. cities to share his story and speak about the importance of family acceptance.

Was it when I started sobbing uncontrollably on the bus back home from Philadelphia, where I had spent a beautiful weekend with my son attending the Trans Health Conference? I had just read his Facebook post on the Orlando tragedy. He spoke of how, for the first time in his life, he felt afraid. Even so, he vowed to fight back as part of the queer community. I felt helpless as a parent, because I fully realized in that moment that I couldn't always protect my son, and that this world is still not safe for him and others in the LGBTQ community.

Why "Asian" Breast Cancer?

Guest Post by Stephen Christopher Liu.



Twenty-five years ago, when Susan Shinagawa was 34, she found a prominent and painful lump in her breast. Yet, the surgical oncologist denied her biopsy request, and informed her: "Susan, you’re too young to have breast cancer. You have no family history of cancer. Besides, Asian women don’t get breast cancer." But she wasn't deterred. Susan sought out a second opinion, and after undergoing a surgical biopsy, she was diagnosed with infiltrating breast cancer. Susan is a three-time breast cancer survivor, and today, she is the leading activist in advocating breast cancer awareness for Asian women.

Deportations of Southeast Asian Americans: A Glaring Human Rights Issue in an Unjust Immigration System

Guest Post by Mia-lia Boua Kiernan and Chanida Phaengdara Potter


Organizers in Tacoma. (Photo by Sahra Vang Nguyen)
Last week, war veterans, mothers, fathers, family, friends, and children held signs of pleas to stop deportations of their loved ones. Organized by family members of those detained, and supported by a coalition of API advocacy organizations, people lined the streets of Minneapolis outside Senator Amy Klobuchar's office to demand justice after almost a dozen Cambodian Minnesotans were detained for deportation. This isn't solely in the Cambodian community. Just last year, the story of Lao American DJ Teace aka Thisaphone Sothiphakhak was in the Minneapolis City Pages. "That's the most frustrating feeling. I went through the court system, and literally something 18 years ago came back and made me feel like I was less than human."

What is American Music?

Guest Post by Andrew Choi



A number of years ago I had a friend inform me that Asian people had no musical history in America, and as such there was nothing particularly Asian about American music culture. This was stated rather matter-of-factly to me, and actually, the sentiment is not uncommon. It gets bandied about in one form or another, either explicitly or by inference, when people talk about American music. American music genres are predominantly characterized by way of musical history, and that musical history is characterized by way of musical icons. Those American musical icons are then neatly segregated by race. Asians are not represented in American musical history by musical icons, ergo, Asians are not a part of distinctively American music culture. Of course, Asian people are welcome to make music in America, but it's not the same thing as being able to "authentically" draw on American historical cultural heritage in the way that others can (or so I am often told). And some version of this story is repeated in casual conversation, by both cultural conservatives and cultural progressives alike.

Of course this makes you wonder. In a society where even cultural progressives are willing to racially segregate musical culture and genres so readily, and where American music is casually defined by way of American history, what room could there be to write authentic American music as an Asian-American, or for that matter as any kind of person who has not yet "earned" their history in America?

An Homage to the Taiwanese Karaoke Songs of Yesteryear

Guest Post by Wendy Wang



Hi, my name is Wendy Wang. I have a music project called The Sweet Hurt. I grew up listening to a variety of music, but one genre that is as strong as a scent to me is Taiwanese pop and folk songs of the 50s and 60s.

The funny thing is, I didn't listen to the original versions, but the karaoke versions that my parents would sing along to. My song "Spooked" from my new album LP2 is an homage to that. I loved those songs and they still take me away whenever I hear them.

I thought it would be fun to do something special for the Angry Asian Man readers and record a Mandarin version of "Spooked." I'd like to thank my cousin, Vickie, and my mom for helping me with the translation.

We're Asian, Female, Kiwi, and Make Scripted Comedy. Shoulda Stayed in Med School.

Guest Post by Roseanne Liang



Here are the cold hard numbers from Middle Earth:

• Almost 12% of New Zealand's population is Asian.

• Over 25% of Auckland, NZ's most populous city where we live, is Asian.

• Only 1% of our TV producers, 2% of our TV directors and 4% of our TV writers identify as Asian.

• We make decent volumes of local film and TV, but we hardly ever see Asian actors on screen, and when we do, they're young female Asians.

If Alan Yang's Emmy wish comes true, and a couple Kiwi Asian parents hand their kids cameras instead of violins, do we really have to wait a generation to get our Fresh Off the Boat?

Team, We Have To Give Up On "Ninja"

Guest Post by Andrew Ti



Remember this bullshit?

For anyone who didn't see it, or doesn't feel like clicking, this is an insane video of a lady who was on The Apprentice (great pedigree), singing a bizarre racist song called "I want to be NEENJA." I don't recommend listening to this shit for very long, but thanks to Phil for finding this.

The song kicked off a train of thought for me, that ended at this stop. Asian folks: I think we've lost the word "ninja."

When Faced With Yellowface, FIGHT

Guest Post by Roger Tang



There's no doubt there's been a flood of whitewashing and yellowface on film, TV and stage recently. From a Tilda Swinton impersonating a Tibetan Ancient One to a theatre company performing The Mikado with all white casts, this inundation of cultural appropriation can be discouraging.

But don't let appearances fool you. The community can and does win victories against stereotyping. Slapping hashtags like @whitewashedOUT and #starringJohnCho on social media is only a beginning; activists are doing this and much more, making a definite difference against misrepresentation of Asians in the media.

Let's look at the stage. Everyone knows by now about the Seattle production of The Mikado by the Gilbert and Sullivan Society. An editorial by Seattle Times op-ed writer Sharon Chan kicked off this controversy, which saw daily picketing by grassroots protestors, pushback from the Gilbert and Sullivan Society, and a whole slew of feature articles and editorials, both pro- and against The Mikado.

What also happened, however, is that what followed was a forum involving the general Seattle theatre community. This forum discussed the balance of artistic expression versus responsibility to under-represented communities. Initial expectations were for a crowd of 30-50; instead, more than 300 people demanded to discuss the issue.

We're Dropping Hints that We Need an Asian American Studies Major

Guest Post by CRAASH

Instagram: @HunterCRAASH

No, but seriously.

Memes aside, the fight for Asian American Studies (AAS) has recently seen an enormous wave of momentum. In this year alone, we have witnessed the huge victory for an AAS major at Northwestern University, the establishment of an Asian and Pacific Islander American Studies Program at the College of William and Mary, the passing of a resolution for the creation of an AAS major through the Student Assembly at Cornell University, the ongoing work by the Task Force on Asian and Pacific American Studies at Harvard University, and more. We even had an awesome Google Hangout on the #Fight4AAS with student groups at Northwestern, Cornell, and Hunter College, 18 Million Rising, and Professor Vijay Prashad! We might even dare to say that we are smack dab in the middle of a new period of the student movement for Asian American Studies.

I Hate Big Phony

Guest Post by Milton Liu



Are you happy?

This was the final question I asked singer/songwriter Bobby Choy (aka Big Phony) in the documentary, I Hate Big Phony.

After an extended pregnant pause:

"Am I happy? No."

Do you think you'll ever be happy?

"Probably not. I think I'm OK with that though. Being just content. I just want to be content."

(BEAT)

"I'm not going to be great."

Growing Up the Child of Immigrants

Guest Post by Melissa Hung



1. You didn't have an allowance.

2. Your parents didn't understand that school was not only about making As on your report card. It was also about making friends.

3. The sandwiches (always made with shredded meats because your mother was suspicious of cold cuts) that you took to school for lunch belied the steamed whole fish and rice you ate at home -- that fish alive and swimming in a tank just a few hours ago, before your father pointed to it.

4. On rare family outings to McDonald's you were never allowed to order your own meal. Your mother calculated that the most efficient use of money was through a certain combination of value meals and individual sandwiches. Drinks and fries from the value meals were for sharing. Everything in the family was for sharing.

Trump channels Buddha in deeply felt letter to America

Guest Post by Vishavjit Singh



Dear America,

We live in a time of tremendous upheaval and tumult in this great nation of ours. Jobs are gone, illegal immigration is exhausting our resources, Islamic terrorism is blowing our minds away, Barack Hussein Obama has been in power for almost 8 years. I can go on and on.

At this time, I appeared on the scene not to divide America but to unite it.

The only way I know we can do this is to be in the moment. To be spontaneous. To be transparent. To be a mirror unto ourselves. To be honest with our own selves. To lay bare all our emotions. To strip off our masks.

Only then we can work towards bringing a Huuuuuuuge positive change. A quiet revolution.

Dr. Haing S. Ngor: An Angry Asian Man

Guest Post by Arthur Dong



Above is a clip of Dr. Haing S. Ngor recorded at the U.S. House of Representatives almost thirty years ago. It's intense, passionate, and angry. Take a look.

This one-minute clip, singled out from volumes and volumes of material we went through for my new documentary, The Killing Fields of Dr. Haing S. Ngor, continues to captivate me even after years of production work. It's partly because Dr. Ngor foreshadowed his own murder, which would happen eight years later from the time this video was recorded, but mostly it's because I was startled to see such pronounced rage from an Asian refugee in white America.

When Dr. Ngor was forced into slave labor in 1975 by the Khmer Rouge, little did he know he would escape four years of torture and be called upon to recreate his harrowing experiences in the feature film The Killing Fields. That first acting job earned him an Academy Award® for best supporting actor, and overnight he became the face of Cambodia to the world. He forsook the stereotypical quiet demeanor so often associated with Cambodian culture and took on the role of a human rights advocate with fervor, sometimes antagonizing those in his community who wished to remain silent or cower in fear of reprisals from Pol Pot's henchmen still at large. After all, entrenched Buddhist teachings led many Cambodians to believe that evildoers would eventually meet their fate anyway in the next life, so why cause any more animosity on earth.

On Chinese International Students (Or, Sorry if this comes off a little Yellow Peril)

Guest Post by erin Khuê Ninh



I have Chinese international students in my classes every quarter now, though I feel my courses do not serve them well. On the first day of class, I make noises about how this is an upper-division/college-level course in literary studies: We do reading in large quantity, in high difficulty, and then we subject the language to intense scrutiny. There is no time for problems in basic reading comprehension, or for the difference between plot summary and answering the question. Please, I want to say, would you take college-level physics without having passed algebra? All I can do is fail you.

But I deliver this spiel with less conviction lately, because they don't necessarily fail. Some do, and others turn in surprisingly polished essays, clearly tailored to the assignment, despite never having uttered a word in class. Perhaps that is proof of my internalized racism, my unjustly low opinion of the level of preparation common to international students. Or perhaps they have made use of the many 'proxy' services in test-taking and essay-writing that cater to Chinese international students on college campuses: pay someone else to write your paper and it will never show up on a search engine. I will never be able to prove it.

How Hollywood Gatekeepers Block Out Asian American Content -- and Why an FCC Proposal Could Change That

Guest Post by Mark Tseng Putterman, 18 Million Rising



We know the drill too well. Hollywood announces another big budget film with a whitewashed cast. Or talking heads use racially-charged language on cable news networks. Cue our collective outrage — op-eds, Twitter hashtags, letters to industry gatekeepers. Maybe we get a half-hearted apology. Maybe not. And eventually, the outrage dissipates... until the next offense surfaces. Then we lather, rinse, and repeat.

Where does it end? How long will we wait for mainstream media to take our issues seriously?

Asian American YA Authors Roundtable

Guest Post by Wendy Xu



I work with stories both at my day job (publishing) and night job (comics), and conversations, thinkpieces, and articles around representation in media are prevalent almost every second of my waking life. We've heard many voices on how Hollywood stifles and whitewashes (Ghost in the Shell, The Great Wall, etc) and how progress in film and television is appallingly slow. It can be a real bummer, and definitely brings to light some glaring social issues that continuously need to be addressed and corrected and held accountable.

But I think that sometimes, we need some levity and inspiration in our lives to remind us to keep fighting when the battle seems tough. And in the war against whitewashing in media, one front that keeps churning out victory after victory: the outstanding, award-winning, NYT-bestselling Asian American authors in the young adult publishing industry.

For those unfamiliar, "Young Adult" (YA) is a marketing term for stories that cater to the (roughly) 13-18 crowd, and has become a huge portion of the children's lit world in the last few years, after the phenomenal success of books like Harry Potter. It spans all genres -- fantasy, sci-fi, slice of life, horror, you name it. I grew up reading a lot of young adult fantasy, and it was actually in those books that I discovered Asian representation for the first time. Authors like Tamora Pierce and JK Rowling, flawed as they are, paved the way for me to see girls like me having magical adventures.

Mini Photoblog: Nostalgic Hong Kong

Guest Post by Jane Lui



Prologue. I've been in Hong Kong for two weeks. It's currently 90 degree, pouring rain, and absolutely beautiful. The heat is definitely more stubborn than I remembered... but maybe I'm not remembering right. It's been a long time. I don't come back often and when I do, I feel a lot -- memories, changes, what ifs, the lot. So I usually ride heavily on nostalgia, visiting every haunt and old-timer cuisine I can find to negotiate with my roots.

Strangely, Hong Kong seems to be doing the same thing.

#allysfight

Guest Post by Andrew Kim



The Background: Bone Marrow Donation vs. Asians

Every day, thousands of East Asians need life-saving bone marrow transplants. In the UK, of the 617,000 registered marrow donors, only 0.5% are East Asian. The situation is similar in the U.S. registry; and worldwide, the numbers are no different. On average, 350 out of every 10,000 people in the US are registered donors compared to just 14 out of 10,000 in China. Why is this? What is holding back Asians from donating?

I think that Asians are generous. With money, with time -- there's never any question to help our families, our friends, our villages and communities. But our bodies...? When I told my mother that I had signed up to be an organ donor for instance, it was met with...

"You mean they'll take your eyes and heart? Can't you do something else instead?"

My mother has spent countless hours volunteering at schools, the inner city, on mission trips to other countries. But here, there was hesitation... Fear. There is something about our bodies, our sacred temples, and giving pieces away.

I am not trying to dismiss people's beliefs and ideals. But in bone marrow donation, the reality is that a small act, can have a tremendous affect. It can save a life. 90% of all bone marrow donation is just giving blood. Blood is taken from one arm, filtered in a machine to capture valuable marrow stem cells, and the rest is pumped back into the other arm. Getting tested is even easier. All you need to do is swab the inside of your mouth with a Q-tip and send it off to a lab.

To Nontraditional Asian American Families

Guest Post by Vanessa Teck & David To



This past June, we had the privilege of celebrating the beginning of our new adventures together - twice! Surrounded by adoring family and friends, we had the honor of tying the knot in a chapel in Las Vegas, Nevada (David’s hometown) and a Cambodian ceremony in Denver, Colorado (Vanessa’s hometown).

In the weeks preceding and following our wedding, we began to realize how constrained the traditional views on marriage are. From the invitation list, the procession order, the name changes, and incessant questions about kids, our happy union was being viewed through a lens of outdated practices. In Asian American families, weddings serve as a celebratory time for not just the couple, but also our communities. Oh and saving face.

But what happens when you come from a nontraditional Asian American family?