Category Archives: scissors

Week 6′s rock v. scissors.

So, earlier today on Tumblr I stumbled across some gifs of Japan’s Yuzuru Hanyu reacting to finding out he won gold for the men’s short in Sochi Olympics. And because I wrote about Asian Americans in this years’s olympics I figured I would add an update since last week. (And I know that Hanyu isn’t a Japanese American but from what Tumblr tells me, he has quite the following in America and should be celebrated, none-the-less!!) So that video can be found here and it’s pretty heart-warming.

In other news, there was a webpost on “7 Real AAPI Men to Watch”, done by asianfortunenews.com. From the beginning of the post,

Asian American men have traditionally been emasculated and stereotyped in mainstream media. As Justin Chan writes in his PolicyMic article: ‘Despite iconic masculine Asian role models likeBruce Lee, Asian men are often portrayed as scrawny males who spend more time studying than lifting weights in the gym, appearing in popular culture as soft-spoken, reserved types who rarely take part in activities that people qualify as “masculine” like professional football or construction work, as characters playedfor laughs.’

The name-dropping of Lee seemed like it was meant to be and because the list was posted on valentine’s day it includes relationship advice! That can be found here.

And then, bringing it finally back to tumblr, I found notyourmodelminority.tumblr.com. It’s a collection of blog posts that introduce you to Asian Americans who are politicians, activists, and artists but unfortunately seems to have been abandoned three years ago. Despite this, the blog posts still work and most of them are new to me! And then to finish off this post I want to link y’all to a post I found about a month ago that I have wanted to share but keeps slipping my mind. It seems as though I am unable to link to the original poster, but was able to find it reblogged on someone else’s here. This post also links to a vimeo video entitiled yellow apparel: when the coolie becomes cool [sic].

here comes the new kings

APIs in the news &
From Kung Fu to Hip Hop pg. 71 – 112

Truthfully, I had some difficulty finding what I thought might have been the most relevant thing to this class about Asian Pacific Islanders in the news when I went digging. API stands for more than just Asian Pacific Islander, and more than one search attempt resulted in a few links to sites about Catholic masses. The sort of links that, after clicking them and attempting ctrl+f, you can no longer find the term you search for on the page as google told you it was. Then, after skimming a few articles, I found one of particular interest on kitsapsun.com.

Though dated to 2013 (with the article claiming to have been posted in October), it talked about how the Asian-American and Pacific Islander groups in a place called Kitsap county had come together for a summit meeting. The meeting dealt with education, health benefits, crime… a number of things, with their ideal being to come together and help immigrants.

The article was very much about good intentions. It was about a community coming together to try to help the people that otherwise weren’t being helped – it also said that at least seven different ethnic groups came together for it, despite it being mostly informal.

The thing that struck me as odd is that I have never heard of something like this happening. I’m from a primarily white area in a very white state, so that may be part of the issue, but is this different elsewhere? It’s sad to think that it might be normal that this doesn’t happen, that it might be abnormal that these people came together to try to make a difference for strangers who had it worse than they did.

It’s a pretty short article, but anyone interested can find it over here.

“Foundation of Subversion in the Making of Global Commodities.” (Kato, pg. 102)

Ghosts are a means of fighting back, and a way of honoring memories. Kato talks about how ghosts are a way of losing great amounts of work hours, of how people will refuse to work regardless of what it means for themselves if someone else has said that they have seen a ghost. The lengths to which people will go for the memories of someone else they barely know is amazing, but it also holds a deep, awful implication.

If there was a ghost, then there was a death. If there was a death, it was the death of someone that worked there once upon a time. It was someone that died under the same conditions that they did, and there is a very good reason that they’re haunting the place they’re in. I think that’s why the idea of ghosts is so frightening at times, especially to people who are treated horrifically.

“How I Learned to Feel Undesirable” – Noah Cho

“I look mostly Asian, and like so many other heterosexual Asian males before me, I have internalized a lifetime of believing that my features … make me unattractive and undesirable.” – Noah Cho

This week I read this article on NPR about a Korean American man, Noah Cho, who finds himself undesirable due to his mixed heritage. The article, written by Cho, is about how he feels that his appearance, as a mixture of his Korean father’s and American mother’s, isn’t appealing to any prospective partners. He voices his confusion over how White women could find Asian men attractive. He recalls how when he was younger he tried to alter and hide his Asian side by dying his hair and wearing green contacts.

He admits that he can’t believe whenever his partner, a Japanese Chinese American woman, tells him he is attractive. He just can’t see himself in that way.

He ends the article by saying that he eagerly awaits the day that he can look himself in the mirror and not be disappointed by the face looking back at him.

As a teenager, I completely felt like he did. Looking too white to be Asian, and too Asian to be white. Can’t look like one or the other, so how are you supposed to appeal to someone? It’s frustrating, but since there is so little to do about it, all you can really do is accept it and learn how to best accentuate the features you like best.

Non-Traditional

I come from a non-traditional family. It started out simple enough. A mom, a dad, an older brother and an older sister. I’m the baby. As Lilo from Lilo and Stitch would say though, we got kind of broken along the way. My parents divorced when I was six and my brother died when I was eight. My dad has since been remarried and my mom has been with the same woman for the past seven years. So now I have a mom, a dad, two step moms and all together, three step brothers. I come from a non-traditional family.

What I liked most about the Wedding Banquet was how normal they made the ‘not normal’. They didn’t have this stereotypical gay couple where one was the man and one was the woman. Or even more annoying, where they were both ridiculously flamboyant and feminine. They were just two average guys, one wasn’t ‘the man’ in the relationship and if there was then I couldn’t easily tell who. They behaved like a normal couple. They fought together, the slept together, they kissed, they cooked. That’s what its like when I’m at my mom’s house with her girlfriend and my step brother. They fight like any other couple. My step brother can annoy me like a full brother would. We’re technically non-traditional but if you hung out with us for a day, you’d see just how traditional we are. I was excited at the end o the movie, when all three of them decided to raise the child. I wouldn’t trade my childhood for the world. I have stories and experiences that I wouldn’t have if I grew up ‘normally’. I have perspectives and I think I’m a pretty open person because of the way I was raised.

As I’ve mentioned in a different post and briefly in this one, my brother died when I was eight. He was twelve. In The Motel Sam’s character talks about how he would wish to die at twelve when he was eight years old. I felt my throat close up when he said that, it was such a coincidence. He was saying that nothing good happens after you’re twelve, that it’s all downhill from there. I’ve always felt the complete opposite. I often thing about all the things that my brother didn’t get the chance to do. He never graduated from middle, never went to high school, never got his driver’s license. He never got to graduate from high school and then go to college. Or not go to college, he never had that choice. He never got to fall in love and move out and explore the world on his own. There is so much that he didn’t get to do. It was strange to me that anyone would see life being pointless after twelve. All the best and the worst things happen then.

API’s in the news!

Jennifer Babu is of South Asian decent. She comes from Indonesia, but was brought up in the suburbs of Philadelphia. She struggled with her Indian heritage and she openly rejected it so that she would be perceived as nothing but American.

Babu says her rejection was a product of the underrepresentation and misrepresentation of South Asian-Americans in American mainstream media. So she’s vowed to change it.

In September 2013, Babu launched Videshi Magazine, an online entertainment magazine targeting South Asian-Americans in order to battle the lack of media outlets that represented her ethnicity and culture. Videshi, of Hindi origin, translates into English as “foreign; not made in India,” which Babu said she believes is appropriate for a magazine that is about South Asians out of where their culture is from.

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/

J.R. Celski

J.R. Celski is a half filipino, half polish man who was in the 2010 Winter Olympics for speed skating. He came home with a bronze medal. He was also raised in Federal Way Washington, which isn’t very far from us! He was recently interviewed by Merideth Vieira on February 5th on NBC’s special “How to raise an Olympian”.

Asian Fortune article

While scanning the web for API news I came across this article which I thought was extremely interesting since it discussed the issues of how Asian Americans and Asian Pacific Islander Men are often, “emasculated and stereotyped in popular in mainstream media.” However in this article they mentioned that instead of beating a dead horse by writing another article about the stereotypes that coincide with Asian American and Pacific Islander men they would instead highlight a few men who reside in the Washington DC area and shine light on their talents, hobbies, and successes. This I found interesting because a lot of times people try to continue discussing the same stereotypes that are placed upon the API men which as the article mentions would aid in “circulating,” these pre-conceived notions displayed through the media. I wonder if they have a point their? What do you all think? Here is a link to the article.

http://www.asianfortunenews.com/2014/02/7-real-aapi-asian-american-and-pacific-islander-men-to-watch/

Sochi Asian Americans!

I found a great article that highlights some of the Asian American athletes who are participating in the Sochi Winter Olympics.

I am particularly really excited for Julie Chu in the Ice Hockey category. The reason being that not only is she the first Asian American Woman to be playing on the U.S. Hockey team but also that she’s a lady! I hear so much about the masculinity of hockey and all of my super manly friends are all about the hockey fights and I just love that there’s a team of women who can bring there game on!

Here is the article:

http://www.asianfortunenews.com/2014/02/asian-american-athletes-at-winter-olympics-2014-in-sochi/

Unfortunately, there is not a large representation of Asian Americans in the Olympics but at least it’s a start…

Class Notes Feb 14,2014

Shaolin Gong Fu as pedagogy.

Jeet Kun Do-Stoppage Fist Away-Bruce Lee’s teachings of varying different styles of martial arts,more commonly known as “The Way of the Dragon”

WHO:

Bruce Lee

Jimi Hendrix

Prostitutes

Raymond Chow

The Shaw Brothers

Warner Brothers

Chief Seattle

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

Charlie Chaplin

George Lucas

David Carradine

Chuck Norris

Francis Ford Coppola

what:

Enter the Dragon

Gypsy Sunset/Rainbows

Woodstock

“The Battle in Seattle”

Black Power Movement

Vietnam War

Warner Bros.

The “Disneyland” Myth

Katana vs. Nunchaku

Golden Harvest

Fordist Labour system

Counter Culture

Post-Fordist

3rd World

Bushido

Malay Factory Workers Women’s Resistance Movement

Alcatraz

Student Non-Violent Coordianating Committee-SNCC

when:

1960′s

1999

1920′s-present

Vietnam War

ca 1900

where:

Seattle

Woodstock

Hong Kong

USA and Vietnam

San Francisco

Hollywood

unconsious(page 72)

Nanking

Silicon Valley