It think this is the coolest thing!

The state of California recently did a census and it showed that API population makes up about 14.5%..of California. Because of that census and the huge number of API that reside in L.A. County, “For the first time, Advancing Justice-L.A. received a grant from the United States Citizenship & Immigration Services (USCIS), to provide English as a Second Language (ESL) and Civics classes to the AAPI communities of L.A.”. The article continues to go on about how the funds will first be dispersed. “The first component of the grant will teach their clients, specifically in the Chinese and Korean communities, how to speak English and preparing them to apply for citizenship.”

The article is definitely a good read! Check it out!

http://www.cafwd.org/reporting/entry/new-grant-bolsters-asian-american-pacific-islander-community

This movie showed me a variety of culture mixing in addition to some traditional values that retain from one’s origins. The mixing of marriage traditions was cool to see It clearly had a huge importance to Wai’ Tung’s parents. The father was an influential man but with his health problems always put the film in a “Something very bad could happen at any second” category especially with the tension of the gay couple with a traditional Chinese parents living with them trying to hide their secret.

Tradition was a powerful theme throughout this film. From the traditional wedding ceremony/rituals to the wife cooking/carrying the luggage. How Wai changed immediately from holding the luggage for the one PHD opera lady to his “wife” being the physical laborer in the face of the parents. The final meeting of Simon and Wai Tung’s father was very impactful to me but I wonder if the father would of been so supportive if Wei Wei wasn’t bearing his grand child, though it seemed like the father was just happy his son was happy especially given how he himself was basically forced into a marriage.

Though I found a few scenes  that made me uncomfortable I enjoyed watching this movie. The father made me laugh too many times for me to count. His role was extremely entertaining while also being a traditional Chinese father.

So keeping up with looking at Racialicious for the scissors category. While there were no post about API’s necessarily in the news there was a post on comedy: Friday morning comedy videos: Akilah Hughes and Hari Kondabolu, which shows a clip from Hari Kondabolu upcoming album Waiting for 2042. If you don’t want to watch a funny three minute video, he basically talks about the “white minority” prediction in 2042 and how stupid everyone’s freak out is about it, by not only pointing out that 49%  of white is not a minority unless the other 51% is just “you people” but also how race is made up. I personally appreciated that part because Hari gave a great example of asking white people what their culture is and the rattle off these percentages of different European countries instead of say “White culture” in reference to Black and Asian cultures.

Model Minorities Can Cook

-Rachel Ray ‘diversity and ethnicity in NYC/ fusion cuisine is truly American “because it melds the immigrant palate to mainstream tastes.”‘

-fusion cuisine came into popularity in the 80s and 90s

-Ming Tsai and Padma Lakshmi are faces of fusion cuisine on TV

-”how the public performance of racialized gendered national identity maps onto the public performance of culinarity.” pg 74

-Fusion cuisine placed in same context of diversity, difference and assimilation in US

-myth that fusion cuisine can be separated from the political terrain on which consumers of fusion cuisine are located

-Ming Tsai Asian tastes mingling w/American palate

-”Eastern ingredients makes western food better” never ‘fusion’ rather than even

-Tsai on par with young, high income who usually partake in fusion

-selling his performance as model minority (Yale engineering grad, pro squash career)

-seen as attractive, not feminized or desexualized

-portrayed as assimilated model minority

-Ming’s Quest – him hunting, gathering for ingredients (masculine)

Padma Lakshmi

-exotically ethnic

-Cook book split into different countries (starting w/European)

-Seen as racially ambiguous

-turned into sexual object

-sexualized in the book and on show

-Lakshmi online groups more interested in her sex appeal than her cooking

-both seen as “exotic ethnic” and “assimilated model minority”

-Pg 83 “Lakshmi part of a group of emerging South Asian Americansfor whom ethnicity appears to be an optional adornment”

-pg 83 Fusion only deemed desirable and assimilate…

-knowledge of a range of dishes comes from being Asian

Since much of the world will be tuning into the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia for the next two weeks I thought I would look into some of the different nations who sent athletes to the games. It was interesting to see that some  Asian Pacific Island Nations were represented in this years winter Olympics, especially since cold weather and snow are usually not associated with this region of the world.

I found that the South Pacific Island Kingdom of Tonga has an athlete competing in this years Olympics. Fuahea Semi who changed his name to Bruno Banani after moving to Germany is competing in the luge.

Also male figure skater Michael Christian Martinez will be competing for the Philippines. He is the first athlete to represent the Philippines in 22 years.

Asia as a whole will be widely represented in this years games with more then a dozen nations being represented by athletes who have made it through Olympic trials and earned the opportunity of representing their nation. Also I found that South Korea has experienced the greatest amount of success in the winter games having won 45 medals in its history at the Winter Olympics This wide range of countries being represented in the Olympics is what makes the games so interesting and enjoyable to watch.

  http://blogs.wsj.com/scene/2014/02/06/sochi-olympians-violinists-bricklayers-and-underwear-makers/

I’m a little bit worried to talk about this topic, because this news was related with politics so I’m not sure I can post exactly what I want to say. However, I’m interested how you think about this news, so I decided to share this news.

I want you to check this page and watch the movie on the top of the page.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-25518137

Japanese Prime Minister; Abe went to Yasukuni Shrine which is dedicated to the spirits of dead by wars and also soldiers. It has been seven years since Japanese Prime Minister last came there. Every time the person who were related with government went there, Chinese and Korean criticized them because our history background. In this time, he might have expected that he would get criticisms from these countries. However, it was surprising that the American government also said that this Japanese act was disappointed on the website (http://japan.usembassy.gov/e/p/tp-20131226-01.html).

I think that criticizing by Chinese and Korea is one of the problem in Japan and we should talk more and have good relationships between them, but I know it is difficult to do because we have different thoughts from history. So, it would be everyday occurrence what Chinese and Korea said something against Japanese. However, this problem is not only around Asian but also around world American caused commenting about this news in America. From American view, problems between Asian countries like this looked like small matters. However, recently most of countries became international and have relationships all over the world. Today, we can’t live with closing countries. I don’t want you to think that this problem is not your business.

The notes that I take vary from week to week. I wrote something like this.

Talking about Tiger Woods and when he said when he was growing up that he called himself,” Cablinasian” and that right there I thought I was the only one that kind of combined my races together. Blactive that’s what I claim as. Black/African American and Native American so to intertwined. I love that it was in a book that we was reading for this class.

I also wrote about the music videos that we watched and I had no idea about the ABC and what it stood for. That was a surprise to me and the fact that there are abbreviations that I had no idea that were applied to Asian Americans.

Yoko I also wrote down as interesting just wanted to get better clarification on the word and its meaning as it relates to Asian Americans because I’ve heard that in a song and was wondering what it meant. Anyone???