My Favorite Asian American Photographers

Guest Post by An Rong Xu


I'm on vacation! This week, I'm taking a much-needed break to recharge the batteries and get a change of scenery. To keep things going around here, I've enlisted the help of several friends of the blog to submit guest posts on various topics of their choosing. Here's one from photographer and filmmaker An Rong Xu.

Hi all, this is An Rong Xu, I'm a photographer, and film maker based in New York City. I'm a big believer in sharing, so I'm going to share with you, a few of my favorite Asian American Photographers, as well as why I love them.

Full disclosure: a few of them are good friends of mine. Also, these are my own views and opinions, so if you have any questions, comments, or want to tell me about the next great talent, holla at your boy.

Conversations with My Parents in <Chinese> & English

Guest Post by Connie Sun



I'm on vacation! This week, I'm taking a much-needed break to recharge the batteries and get a change of scenery. To keep things going around here, I've enlisted the help of several friends of the blog to submit guest posts on various topics of their choosing. Here's a comic strip from Connie Sun.

There is nothing more central to my Asian-American identity than trying to hold on to enough Chinese to communicate with my immigrant parents.

Is Glenn Rhee the Most Beloved Asian American Male in the U.S.?

Guest Post by Ken Fong


I'm on vacation! This week, I'm taking a much-needed break to recharge the batteries and get a change of scenery. To keep things going around here, I've enlisted the help of several friends of the blog to submit guest posts on various topics of their choosing. Here's one from Ken Fong.

Spoiler alert: If you haven't kept up with The Walking Dead, don't read any farther.

A little more than three weeks ago, multitudes of fans of this hit show on AMC exploded with a collective shriek of disbelief that no doubt attracted multitudes of unwanted zombies to wherever they were watching when actor Steven Yeun's character Glenn Rhee was killed by hordes of the now-infamous reanimated corpses.

For those of us who hadn't read the graphic novel before the show aired, we were de-lighted when, during Episode 1 of Season 1, it turned out that the voice on the radio that guided Sheriff Rick to safety from the "walkers" surrounding the tank belonged to an Asian American character, Glenn Rhee. Even though I was creeped out by the horrific hordes of undead, I was immediately hooked on one of the few current TV shows that featured an Asian American in a heroic-without-being-a-badass-martial-artist role.

The Folks Behind 'Off the Menu: Asian America' Share Their Favorite Food Stories

Guest Post by Momo Chang



I'm on vacation! This week, I'm taking a much-needed break to recharge the batteries and get a change of scenery. To keep things going around here, I've enlisted the help of several friends of the blog to submit guest posts on various topics of their choosing. Here's Momo Chang of the Center for Asian American Media.

Hello, my name is Momo Chang, and I’m the Content Manager at the Center for Asian American Media, and a freelance journalist. CAAM is a national nonprofit organization dedicated to bringing stories that convey the richness and diversity of Asian Americans by funding, producing, distributing and exhibiting works in film, TV and digital media. As part of my job, I’ve had the great fortune to work on a multimedia food project entitled Off the Menu: Asian America, a companion website of food stories, essays and recipes to support the film by the same name.

Off the Menu: Asian America is a PBS documentary directed by award-winning filmmaker Grace Lee, which premieres nationally on Monday, December 8, 2015 (check local listings). Co-produced by CAAM and KQED, Off the Menu is a road trip into the kitchens, factories, temples and farms of Asian Pacific America that explores how our relationship to food reflects our evolving community. To celebrate the release of the film, we’re also holding an #OfftheMenuAsianAmerica recipe contest.

I asked some of the filmmakers of Off the Menu: Asian America and some of the talented folks who contributed their personal essays, photos, artwork, recipes and articles to the website, about their favorite foods or food moments with the Angry Asian Man blog. Here’s what they said:

The Real Yi-Fen Chou: What a Fake Asian Poet Taught Us about Actual Asian Poets

Guest Post by Timothy Yu


I'm on vacation! This week, I'm taking a much-needed break to recharge the batteries and get a change of scenery. To keep things going around here, I've enlisted the help of several friends of the blog to submit guest posts on various topics of their choosing. Here's one from Professor Timothy Yu.

The message landed in my inbox late on a weekend night: Have you seen this? Attached was a link to a contributor's note to The Best American Poetry 2015, an anthology edited annually by a different well-known poet. The bio was for a poet named Yi-Fen Chou, one of 75 included in this year's anthology. But Yi-Fen Chou was not Yi-Fen Chou at all:

Trumping anchor babies and birth tourists

Guest Post by Vincent Pham



I'm on vacation! This week, I'm taking a much-needed break to recharge the batteries and get a change of scenery. To keep things going around here, I've enlisted the help of several friends of the blog to submit guest posts on various topics of their choosing. Here's one from Professor Vincent Pham.

In August 2013, Donald Trump jumped into the political scene, spouting China's destruction of the U.S. economy and his distrust of President Obama's claims to legitimate birthright citizenship. The general public and mainstream media counted him out as crazy, figuring such comments would make him a long shot at being a legitimate presidential candidate. Yet, in 2015, we have him hosting Saturday Night Live and near the top of the Republican polls. He's still bashing China and now he's talking about anchor babies and birth tourism.

Seriously, what is going on here? And why should us readers of Angry Asian Man care?

Our Time Now: An Asian American Actor's Journey to Broadway

Guest Post by Greg Watanabe

Greg Watanabe in 'Allegiance'
I'm on vacation! This week, I'm taking a much-needed break to recharge the batteries and get a change of scenery. To keep things going around here, I've enlisted the help of several friends of the blog to submit guest posts on various topics of their choosing. Here's one from actor Greg Watanabe.

As I type this, I'm sitting backstage at the Longacre Theatre on a break before tonight's preview of Allegiance. We open on the 8th, which may have passed by the time this is posted.

To get an idea of what being in this show means to me, you have to understand a little of my background.

Protect L.A.'s Koreatown

Guest Post by tk lê



I'm on vacation! This week, I'm taking a much-needed break to recharge the batteries and get a change of scenery. To keep things going around here, I've enlisted the help of several friends of the blog to submit guest posts on various topics of their choosing. Here's one from tk lê, Angry Asian Intern.

I love Koreatown. From Far East Movement to Parker (aka Dumbfoundead) to Roy Choi and the entire cast of Ktown -- as many before me have said and shown, the neighborhood is filled with small businesses to satiate practically any of my child-of-immigrant cravings, and at any time of the day. The local mail store that opens before the post office does, the bar down the street that lets me bring my own mixers, and the endless fried and spicy things to cure all that ails me... Yes, I love Ktown for all these things.

I also love the community here. As one of the densest populations in all of Los Angeles, Ktown is filled with people. Workers who catch the bus before sunrise, God-fearers who worship with megaphones, gardeners who harvest fresh vegetables between brick and concrete. People -- mostly working class people of color -- exist here, they live and they thrive and they struggle. They play and they work and they party.

Ktown is not, as a developer named Mike Hakim has said, a community full of "rapists" and "pedophiles." (This is on public record. Go to the 11-minute mark.)

1984: When death paid me a visit

Guest Post by Vishavjit Singh


I'm on vacation! This week, I'm taking a much-needed break to recharge the batteries and get a change of scenery. To keep things going around here, I've enlisted the help of several friends of the blog to submit guest posts on various topics of their choosing. Here's cartoonist Vishavjit Singh.

"To the living we owe respect, but to the dead we owe only the truth." - Voltaire

Death is one of the few constants in life. It waits for every one of us. We find ways to ignore it, battle it, make attempts to prolong its arrival but come it does. We grudgingly accept its inevitability but there are times that death makes it appearance in ways for us to hold its couriers in contempt. Times when a few of our species sink into the depths of darkness to orchestrate, execute plans of the most sinister kind to snatch innocent lives. This death haunts us with its memories long after its departure.

Death of this kind paid a visit thirty-one years ago in the first few days of November to my family home. I was far away from Washington DC, the city of my birth residing with my family in a two bedroom apartment in one of oldest capitals in the world, Delhi in India.

Angry Asian Vacation

Excuse me as I take a little break from the sweaty business of blogging.



Aloha! I am out of here. I've packed my bags and skipped town for a much-needed vacation. Excuse me as I take a little break from the sweaty business of blogging. No computer-ing! I'll be sipping drinks by the pool, reading a book and/or watching the crap out of Aziz Ansari's Master of None on Netflix.

But don't worry! Things will keep going around here. There will still be updated content. I've enlisted the help of a bunch of smart friends who will be contributing guests posts on various topics while I'm away. I've got you covered. Enjoy their posts, be good to one another and I'll see you when I get back.

Stay Angry.

Read These Blogs

First Hmong family arrived in Minnesota 40 years ago on Nov. 5: Thursday marked the 40th anniversary of the first Hmong refugees to arrive in Minnesota. According to the Minnesota Historical Society, Dang Her, his pregnant wife, Shoua Moua, and their son, Touvi, were the first Hmong settlers in the United States from Southeast Asia.

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It's Time to Step The F*ck Up for Asian American Studies | #WeNeedAAPIStudies: "I learned to consider the Asian American, Native Hawaiian & Pacific Islander identity more broadly, beyond my own personal narrative as a heterosexual, cis-gendered, well-educated Chinese American woman." Jenn from Reappropriate talks about the impact of Asian American Studies courses in her life, and why we need to advocate for AAPI Studies now.

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Textbooks don't tell the history of minorities, students say. Teenagers want to change that: A very inspirational group called "API Leaders for the Leadership of Youth" is working to create ethnic studies classes at every Portland high school.

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Why Asian Americans don't vote Republican: "Our study suggests that the increasing salience of issues like immigration that implicitly or explicitly offend minority groups coupled with exclusionary rhetoric from prominent leaders of the Republican Party will continue to push Asian Americans to the Democratic Party."

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How Asian American women became the target of anti-abortion activism: Across the country, Asian women's reproductive rights are being challenged and their family-planning decisions are being policed.

This Week's Angriest Posts

Not necessarily the angriest, just the most viewed.



1. Man to plead guilty in beating death of adopted son
3-year-old Hyunsu O'Callaghan was "beaten to death from head to toe."

2. Your Halloween Costumes, Part Three
Part three of our annual gallery of reader-submitted Halloween costumes.

3. Your Halloween Costumes, Part Two
Part two of our annual gallery of reader-submitted Halloween costumes.

4. Steven Yeun missing from 'The Walking Dead' opening credits
SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER

5. Guess he didn't get the memo.
There sure were "a lot of Oriental fans" at the Charlotte Hornets home opener.

6. Another mistrial declared in Alabama police brutality case
Former cop Eric Parker is accused of using excessive force against Sureshbhai Patel.

7. Surprise, America. A lot of us really hate 'Sixteen Candles.'
This week's 'Fresh Off The Boat' went waaaay meta with the #‎RepSweats commentary.

8. Students file lawsuit alleging voter intimidation
Chinese American students accuse town supervisor of voter intimidation and group defamation.

9. Celebrating Bruce Lee: An Intimate Evening with Shannon Lee & Diana Lee Inosanto
Sunday, November 15 at the Japanese American National Museum

10. Suspect arrested in stabbing of Spencer Stone
28-year-old James Tran is charged with attempted murder.

Stay Angry, my friends.

Kollaboration Star 2015

Saturday, November 14 at the Aratani Theatre in Little Tokyo.



It all comes down to this. You are invited to Kollaboration Star 2015. The world famous Asian American talent show presents it annual finale showcase featuring an amazing lineup of up-and-coming Asian American artists from around the country, as well as guest performances from The Kinjaz and ARCHIS.

This year's show also features an epic collab medley featuring music from MC Jin, Travis Atreo, and members of OG Asian American pop groups Kai and One Vo1ce performing their classic hits. All hosted by Beau Sia. Whaaaat. It's happening Saturday, November 15 at the Aratani Theatre in Little Tokyo.

Here are some more details about the event:

8th Annual Philadelphia Asian American Film Festival

Showcasing 23 features and over 30 shorts from 17 countries, November 12-22



It's film festival season, you guys. And I am sucker for film festivals. Philadelphia, this one's for you. The 8th Annual Philadelphia Asian American Film Festival is going down next week, November 12-22, showcasing a slate 23 features and over 30 shorts from 17 countries. The festival promises to be the biggest one yet, kicking off with the Opening Night presentation of Benson Lee's teen comedy Seoul Searching.

Here's the official festival trailer:

Ken gets responsibly drunk on 'Dr. Ken'

Episode 110: "Ken Teaches Molly a Lesson" airs Friday, November 6 at 8:30pm on ABC



This week on ABC's Dr. Ken, Ken gets druuuuuuunk... in the name of science and parenting. When Molly admits to taking a sip of beer at a party, Ken must teach her a lesson about alcohol's effects on the body.

Inspired by executive producer/star Ken Jeong's real life and career as a medical doctor, Dr. Ken follows Dr. Ken Park, a physician with bad bedside manner trying to juggle medicine and being a family man to his wife and kids -- and not quite succeeding on either front.

Dr. Ken also stars the awesome Suzy Nakamura as Ken's wife Allison, Krista Marie Yu as daughter Molly, and Albert Tsai as his son Dave. They're all great. The cast is rounded out by Tisha Campbell-Martin as Damona, Jonathan Slavin as Clark, Kate Simses as Julie and Dave Foley as Pat.

Here's a preview of this week's episode, "Ken Teaches Molly a Lesson":

First look video highlights from Broadway's 'Allegiance'

Watch Episode 7 of the behind-the-scenes documentary webseries 'Trek to Broadway.'



The new Broadway musical Allegiance, currently in previews at The Longacre Theatre, opens on November 8. Inspired by George Takei's true-life experience in an internment camp, Allegiance follows one Japanese American family's extraordinary journey through wrongful imprisonment during World War II.

Allegiance stars George Takei as Sam Kimura/Ojii San, Lea Salonga as Kei Kimura and Telly Leung as Sammy Kimura; with book by Marc Acito, Jay Kuo, and Lorenzo Thione and music and lyrics by Jay Kuo.

Here's a new first look video with musical highlights from Allegiance:

Guess he didn't get the memo.

There sure were "a lot of Oriental fans" at the Charlotte Hornets home opener.



Real quick. I point your attention to this opinion piece posted on NBA.com, recapping the Charlotte Hornets' home opener last Sunday. The author notes that there was a visible increase in Oriental fans in the crowd, no doubt attributable to what he calls "the Jeremy Lin impact." Hey wait, did you just say "Oriental"?

Another mistrial declared in Alabama police brutality case

Former cop Eric Parker is accused of using excessive force against Sureshbhai Patel.



This shit is unbelievable. The case of the Alabama police officer accused of using excessive force against a 58-year-old Indian grandfather, partially paralyzing him, has ended in a mistrial. Again.

Another Mistrial Declared For Alabama Cop Who Paralyzed Indian Grandfather

For the second time in two months, a jury has been unable to reach a verdict in the federal civil rights case against former Madison police officer Eric Park. After deliberating for three days, the jury of nine women and three men were unable to reach a unanimous verdict, and the judge declared a mistrial.

15th Annual San Diego Asian Film Festival

Presented by Pacific Arts Movement, November 5-14



Hey, San Diego film fans! It's time for one of the best events of the year! Pacific Arts Movement presents the 16th Annual San Diego Asian Film Festival -- the largest showcase of Asian cinema on the West Coast, with ten packed days of more than 130 films and program from 20 countries. The festival runs November 5-14, with things kicking off this Thursday with the Opening Night Presentation of Miss India America.

Take a look at the festival trailer:

Suspect arrested in stabbing of Spencer Stone

28-year-old James Tran is charged with attempted murder.



In Sacramento, police have arrested a suspect in connection with the stabbing of Spencer Stone, the U.S. Air Force Airman who was hailed as a hero for helping to thwart a terrorist attack on a train in France.

Sacramento PD arrest man in Spencer Stone's stabbing

28-year-old James Tran was arrested on suspicion of stabbing Stone multiple times outside a nightclub in midtown Sacramento last month. The fight, which was caught on a surveillance camera, was apparently sparked by some kind of dispute between Tran's and Stone's friends over a cell phone video.