Author Archives: Gina

My Name Is Khan

The song “We Shall Over Come” has represented the African American struggle for equality. We have seen and heard this song sung in the Gossip version but never in a different language (well at least me). I thought it was a powerful message that this movie showed. It brought two cultures together that has hard times feeling as they belong in the United States. It really made us remember the times of Hurricane Katrina and how our government wasn’t doing as much as they could when the hurricane damaged many areas of minority housing. I believe that having Shah Khan going back to Georgia was a “corny” moment in the movie but it brought a message. It showed the audience that it doesn’t matter who you are, what form you come in that we can all care for each other. We Shall Over Come isn’t only a song representing the struggle for equality for Blacks but for everyone that is oppressed. It brought a great message regardless of how corny the scene was.

Black, White, Muslim, Hindu, or disabled. This movie wasn’t only showing the hatred towards Muslims but it showed the hatred and uncomfortableness of people with disabilities. I believe that this movie could have been just as good with a man without disabilities but the fact that they made a man have absorbers syndrome was very moving. We were able to see how a man with disabilities is able to belong in a society where he makes a difference. Shah Khan felt bad that he wasn’t able to cry and to feel as others did but he was able to make a difference in how Muslims reacted to situations where people tried to blame them for being terrorist.

This movie had me at aww when the mother wasn’t welling to give up on her child. The mother told Shah that people are one of two ways and thats good and bad and everything else is a waste of time to look at. I loved when the mother drew him that picture and said whats different? I believe that we all need to be taught by her. My Name Is Khan was so emotional but had my attention from the first scene to the last.

South East Asian Stereotypes

Daily Princetonian wrote an article about stereotyping Asian American’s. South Asian Americans have been categorized as being many things but rarely been put in the category they belong in. Recently Indian American’s have been targeted to Islam for hate crimes. Many have put Indian Americans into the same groups as Native American’s. Some of the residents at Princeton University thought of “Asian American’s having long black hair with small eyes and pale skin.” They believe that Asian means to look a certain way. I have to admit in middle school maybe even in high school I thought that Indian Americans weren’t Asian American’s it wasn’t until I really paid attention in History class that I figured out that the two cultures related to each other.

http://dailyprincetonian.com/opinion/2014/02/asian-american-identity-the-princeton-perspective/

The Black Kung Fu Experience

The Black Kung Fu Experience. I enjoyed this movie. I liked how they were able to share their gifts of loving Kung Fu to younger kids. I loved how the man give his kids accomplishment bands when they got B’s in school. It taught the kids that learning Kung Fu wasn’t enough but learning and getting good grades was. I think sometimes as athletes we assume that doing that sport is good enough, that it will get you somewhere. Its really good that these men taught them that it wasn’t good enough to just be an athlete.

I enjoyed this movie because the man was able to talk about his experience as a black man in the army during the segregation. Hearing his story was so crazy. He was nearly beaten to death for not seating at the end of the bus and was left to die in Vietnam. We hear stories about black men going to the War overseas and in America (fighting for their rights) but never hear about how they got over the horrible things what happened when all the wars stopped. He was able to use Kung Fu as a stress reliever, or a coping mechanism. I think that is great. Telling the story and being able to teach others.

Do You Remember?

Do you remember Yao Ming? The Chinese basketball player who played on the Huston Rockets? The reason I ask is because he retired in 2011. Although he really isn’t in the news much today he was back then. Yao Ming was the tallest Chinese American to play in the NBA. An article from the Washington Times “with Ya Ming in retirement, China has lost a big asset” it explains how Yao Ming was the face for Chinese. For boys and girls to look up to as a basketball player, an athlete in America. “He was a tremendously effective diplomat, and he really put a human face on the whole idea of the story of the Chinese athlete – because he could speak English, [and] because he was funny,” said M. Nicole Nazzaro. I think its really good that people looked up to Yao Ming. For him to be as famous as he was, in a sport that you usually don’t see to many Asian Americans you have to give him props for being a man that made a country look good and to be able to take a lot of criticism.

Do you remember when Shaquille O’neal and Yao would always go at it. The media would always compare the two.. Who would dominate the game? Who would score more? It would be like Lebron and Kobe of today. Shaquille was quoted saying, “Tell Yao Ming, ‘Ching-chong- yang-wah-ah-soh’,” Shaq had said – in jest – to an Asian reporter. I loved Shaq although his free-throws weren’t that great he was a good basketball player unfortunately he did talked a lot of crap. To be on the floor talking poorly is one thing to insult ones culture is another. It may look poorly on Shaq but it made Yao Ming look even better. Being able to take these unnecessary comments made him look like the better person. I never thought about how a Asian American would be looked at until I started looking closer at Yao Ming and Jeremy Lin.

Nursing home or not?

During our class we have talked about Asian American children and their responsibilities of staying at home with their elderly parents as they age. This week I found an article about an Asian American daughter and her mother that has Alzheimer’s. The daughter had to give up her job to take care of her mother. The family is only living off of her husbands income. The kids of these elderly parents feel bad as to do they keep making money to help their own kids or do they give up an income to help their parents out? They feel as if they are leaving their parents and that their parents will be alone. The parents of these families believe these nursing homes will worsen their health. Today the suicide rate for elderly Asian American and Pacific Islander has raisin. These families don’t want to go to nursing homes because many nursing homes don’t have ethnic foods and speak their native language. In Philadelphia there trying to open a nursing home that carters to different ethnic groups.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/15/us/as-asian-americans-age-their-children-face-cultural-hurdles.html?_r=0

The Power Of Music

“Where Is The Love” by The Black Eyed Peas is very powerful and moving song. This song also carries the word controversy by the question mark on the Bible. Before coming to Evergreen I would have only thought of one reason why the Bible could be controversial and that is by not everyone believing in God and people believing in God. After taking many programs dealing with race at Evergreen I understand now that the Bible can have more then one reason why it would have a question mark on it. Many used the Bible as a scapegoat of all the wrong that they have caused. People often use the Bible to feel good for the bad. The bible has empowered people to believing that owning slaves is fine because in the Bible slaves are mention and are apart of the books. The Bible has always been a controversial subject. The Black Eye Peas made it known by putting a question mark on the bible that it one sticky subject that we can’t ever get passed.

Different cultures are able to come together through music. I know when my family is happy and having a good time the Motown music is playing. The entire family is not only singing but dancing. Without even hesitating or thinking twice I can feel the love and the togetherness as my entire family is together. I can’t imagine a life without music. Its a main source of entertainment. In chapter two when the author mentions how Viet Nam’s government has a lot of power in controlling the music world. I think people in America would go crazy! Our source to getting music is through downloading rather thats getting it on iTunes or stealing it off the internet.

East Main Street and The Wedding Banquet- Deals with Language

In the movie the Wedding Banquet it was pretty awesome to witness that the father of Wai-Tung spoke English. Not only did his son not know that he spoke English but his own wife didn’t know that he spoke English. When Wai-Tung, his partner, Simon, and Wai-Tungs roommate/pretend wife/babies mother got into a fight the father was telling the mother “mind your own business, don’t bother.” Even though he was actually listening and understanding what they were talking about. He finally went to the Simon and told him that he was happy that he made his son happy. The movie made it seem as if the father would be the one that would be disappointed and upset but in reality he only wanted a grandchild. Not caring who his sons life partner was. The question that went unanswered was why would the father pretend not to speak English? Why would he not talk to his family English? Did he not want his son to know just so he can find out his secrets? Or was it because he didn’t pronounce English words the way Americans thought it should be pronounced?

In chapter 16 in East Main Street the writer talks about Apu from The Simpsons and how he talks in broken English. Apu is shown to be an Indian but voiced by a white man. It explained in the book how the produces thought this would cause a lot of problems but it didn’t because it was such a laughing matter that people didn’t care. I like how the author expressed how this is a problem. Which I believe it is. We are always quick to say its wrong for whites to act as black/brown face and to represent the stereotype of these people but we don’t think its wrong when someone does a voice over to gain a laugh? I honestly wouldn’t stop watching this show because of the voice but I do see how people that know the history and have thought it was wrong can be hypocrites in saying that it was wrong for whites to play black/brown face but when this history continues to relive to find humor they began to think its okay. Would it be that hard for The Simpsons casting crew to hire a South Asian to voice the character of Apu?

I think that even though that the book and the movie deal with language differently it still deals with the same matter of how we look at Asian’s in America. People believe that an Asian man visiting from Taiwan can’t speak english and when you become a citizen or live in America for awhile (Like Apu) you won’t be able to speak English like people that have been living here.

Linsanity

Jeremy Lin has made headlines starting in 2011-2012. He had became a real over night sensation. In the 2011-2012 season Lin was deep on the bench, he was the 15th man.(If watch basketball for even a split second you see that 5 play at a time and might go 8 to 10 deep unless your losing or winning by a lot.) Lin got his break when the coaching strike happened in 2011. This gave the coaches time to really look at Lins work effort. “He was the first to arrive and the last to leave.” Lin has made a big difference for the Asian American basketball community by showing everyone that Asians can play basketball. He has shown people that there shouldn’t be stereotypes regarding basketball because as long as you have skill, color doesn’t matter. Lin has made a difference not only with having millions knowing his name but taking time to run basketball camps in China for children.

“When I was growing up, I was playing in the AAU [amateur] tournaments. We’d be playing games, and a couple times people would be like, ‘Yo, take your ass back to China,’ or like ‘You’re a Chinese import,’ or whatever. When I got to college, it just, like, got crazy. ‘You Chink, can you even open your eyes? Can you see the scoreboard?’ You know, just like crazy stuff.”

I think its sad that when we see an Asian man in the NBA we think its surprising yet when we see a black man or white man we think its completely natural. We think thats where they belong. I think its really inspiring that Jermey is a new(ish) face for basketball players because we see a lot of the Kobe’s, the Lebrons that didn’t go to college but are the face for African Americans trying to become the next superstar. As a basketball player its nice to see someone get a lot of hype for working hard despite all the nasty [(not that Kobe and Lebron didn’t work hard to get where they are).

Saving Face & Joy Luck Club

Saving Face: I had to think about what kind of crisis the charters have in this movie and really it wasn’t that had to find one. Will is struggling to tell her mother that she is a lesbian. She can’t come out to her own mother because she is afraid of how she is going to react. Even though her mother got disowned by her father because she got pregnant and wasn’t married. It was kind of funny to see how the mother would disown her own daughter when she knows how sad and hard it is to be disowned by her father. How can the mother disown her daughter when she is trying to be happy, the same reason why the mother got disowned by her father? Lucky, by the end of the movie the mother was able to see that the Will wanted the same thing that she did, to be happy and to be able to love.

The Joy Luck Club: Well in this movie you didn’t even have to pay attention to find the crisis. There were so many bad things that happened in this movie. I almost cried about four to five times while watching. From each character the stories just got more and more powerful. When you thought that something bad happened another bad thing happened that topped the last. I really enjoyed this movie because we didn’t see the typical love story. We see mothers and daughters coming together, finding that their lives aren’t as great as one expected.

Slaying The Dragon and The Slanted Screen

Julie Chen is an Chinese American television host on The Talk. She recently talked about how she got plastic surgery to make her eyes larger to look “more American.” Her bosses would tell her that she looked as if she were bored because her eyes were slanted. It was interesting to compare the difference in what Slaying The Dragon said about how producers wanted Asian actresses to look more exotic and how the lady that got the CNN job had to have her makeup a curtain way to make her look more Asian. With this being said I think its really sad that we can lose ourselves by what the media wants us to be.

The O.C T.V show has always been one of my favorites. When Slanted Screen talked about the O.C they told the viewers that The O.C didn’t have any minorities and when they tried to incorporate more minorities the writers rewrote it. I have watched the O.C over and over again and never saw any person of color unless they were showing people in Chino where it was supposed to be a poor poverty area which, would then show Latinos. After watching a show but not really seeing the problems it becomes more real to me how main stream television portrays people of color. We still have very few main stream actors in television that are people of color.

We hardly see movies that have interracial couples that aren’t Asian and White, or Black and White, or Latino and White if they are even showed at all. In Slanted Screen the film reminded us about Romeo Must Die and how main stream media doesn’t want to see an African American women with an Asian man. Although many people root for romantic endings many wouldn’t want to see Aaliyah and Jet Lee together. Although Romeo Must Die was supposed to me the new version of Romeo and Juliet.

Also with Asian men with their love interest in movies its crazy to see how many movies have Asian men get with a American women. I saw how in Rush Hour, Lee played by Jackie Chan never had a love interest even if Chris Tucker had many love interest in all three movies.

A-POP, Don't Stop

Winter 2014