Monthly Archives: February 2010

visualizAsian.com interview 3/16 with Eric Nakamura of Giant Robot magazine

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Giant Robot features the works of cutting-edge Asian and Asian American artistsHow cool is this? The March 16 visualizAsian.com show is going to be a conversation with Eric Nakamura, the owner, publisher and co-editor of Giant Robot magazine. Our call with Eric will be at 6 pm PT on Tuesday, March 16!

From movie stars, musicians, and skate-boarders to toys, technology, and history, Giant Robot magazine covers cool aspects of Asian and Asian-American pop culture. Paving the way for less knowledgeable media outlets, Eric put the spotlight on Chow Yun Fat, Jackie Chan, and Jet Li years before they were in mainstream America’s vocabulary.

Although Giant Robot has an Asian pop culture focus, it has earned a loyal readership of all colors. The readers are about half-Asian and half-not.

Under Eric’s leadership the magazine consistently has featured superior editorial content, innovative design, and a no-holds-barred attitude, garnering Giant Robot notoriety across a diverse crowd ranging from high schoolers to senior citizens. The magazine’s graphic sensibility has featured a slew of artists who have gone on to fame in the art world.

The magazine’s popularity even led to the opening of Giant Robot retail stores, selling the kinds of cool products that the magazine writes about. Continue reading →

CU Independent student news website launches “Speak Out Campaign,” organizes beats to cover racism, other “isms”

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CU Independent faculty advisor Amy Herdy has guided her students from its darkest days to a new campaign against racism and prejudice. The bus sign above her is part of the students

Three years ago this week, a student news website at the University of Colorado sparked a firestorm of protest. The website posted a column by a student, Max Karson, which ineptly tried to address racism on the CU campus by poking fun at Asian stereotypes. The column, “If It’s War the Asians Want, It’s War They’ll Get,” stirred the Denver area’s Asian and Asian American communities to organize and demand changes at the University. The timing was unfortunate, because it ran on Feb. 18, just a day before the 2008 Day of Remembrance, when Japanese Americans mark the signing of Executive Order 9066, which led to the internment of 120,000 people of Japanese descent in American concentration camps during World War II. The column joked about “locking up” all Asians.

The area’s Asian communities weren’t amused, and rallied quickly to protest. So did student organizations not just at CU, but at the states other universities. National Asian American and civil rights organizations sent letters of protest to the Campus Press, but to the CU administration.

In the two years since, there haven’t been a lot of concrete changes at CU in general over racial issues as far as many students can see, but there have been lots of changes at the Campus Press. Its faculty advisor, Amy Herdy, a former colleague of mine at The Denver Post, was an early target of protesters but it turned out the rules for the website prevented her from having editorial control. It’s a student-run website. But since then, Herdy and the students who run the website have been busy rebuilding the class’s reputation, upgrading its commitment to quality journalism, and have worked hard to avoid ever allowing something like the “War Against Asians” column from bubbling up again. Continue reading →

New visualizAsian.com interview: Meet Dan Kuramoto, founding member of Grammy-nominated group Hiroshima

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Dan Kuramoto, founding member of the Grammy-nominated fusion jazz group HiroshimaWe’ve taken several months off, but Erin and I are ready to resume our series of interviews with inspirational Asian Americans for 2010. We’re especially proud to be able to speak with Dan Kuramoto, one of the founding members of the fusion jazz group Hiroshima, because the group has been nominated twice for a Grammy award! We’ll be speaking with Dan on Tuesday, March 2 at 6 pm PT (9 pm ET). You can register now for the call and submit questions for Dan on our webcast page.

Only a few Asian Americans have been nominated for a Grammy Award over the years, and Hiroshima has managed the feat twice — once in 1980 for “Winds of Change,” a track off the groups second album, “Odori.” Hiroshima was nominated again for their latest album “Legacy,” a collection of re-recordings of songs from the band’s first ten years together. The band has been together for over 30 years, and have become an institution on the fusion jazz and R&B scene. Continue reading →

Lunar New Year isn’t just for Chinese

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2010 is the year of the Tiger in the Chinese zodiac.As a kid in Japan, we always celebrated New Year’s Day, or Oshougatsu, on January 1, just like in the United States, but with different traditions than in America. Japanese clean the house like crazy leading up to the day, and New Year’s Eve isn’t the big party that it is in the U.S. Instead, New Year’s Day is more important, with a family feast featuring special dishes that are made just for the day (called “osechi ryori“). For days everyone visit family and friends to start the year with a fresh slate.

We never celebrated “Chinese New Year.” Looking back, the January 1 New Year is another affectation of Japan’s fascination with the West: Until 1873, Japan celebrated the New Year at the start of the lunar calendar, along with most East Asian and Southeast Asian countries. But five years after the start of the “Meiji Restoration,” when the Japan opened up to the West and began embracing Western ways, the country changed the official date of its New Year to the Roman, or Grgeorian calendar.

In the U.S., most people call the Lunar New Year “Chinese” and it’s become a popular not-quite-holiday, a mid-winter blast of Chinese culture. But it’s not just a Chinese celebration. It may have spread through the influence of China, but the Lunar New Year is celebrated with different traditions in Korea (as Seollal), Vietnam (Tet), Tibet (Losar) and Mongolia (Tsagaan Sar). It’s also celebrated in countries with large ethnic Han Chinese populations, such as Taiwan, Singapore, Malaysia and Macau, and in Chinese communities throughout the world.

In 2010, the start of the Lunar New Year falls on Valentine’s Day — Feb. 14 — and heralds the Year of the Tiger in the Chinese Zodiac.

So, to ALL my Asian brothers and sisters everywhere, HAPPY NEW YEAR OF THE TIGER (and Valentine’s Day)!

Atlanta changes its “Yellow” train line to “Gold” after Asians complained

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Graphic from 8Asians.com that shows the original "Yellow Line" name for AtlantaChalk this up in the victory column. Sometimes, just pointing out something that’s offensive can make a difference. Earlier this week, Asian American bloggers like 8Asians (where I borrowed the great graphic) and Slant Eye for the Round Eye, among others, pointed out that the Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority, or MARTA, had named a train line that runs to Doraville, home to a large Asian community, as the “Yellow Line.”

Does anyone need to point out that “yellow” has been used as a racial epithet against Asians for centuries?

Asians and Asian Americans took offense and the decision became an Internet meme for a few days. Today, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported that MARTA has decided to change the rail line to the name that critics had suggested: The Gold Line.

MARTA CEO Beverly Scott, who made the decision said she’s still planning to meet today with members of Atlanta’s Asian community. Now, the meeting is sure to be much warmer than it would have been despite the winter weather crunching down on the region.

It’s nice to see that the voices of the Asian community can be heard when they’re organized and in unison. I bet some (non-Asian) folks are wondering what the big deal it, but you know what? There’s a rule about Intent and Impact that Erin teaches in her coaching and emotional intelligence trainings, which says it doesn’t matter if your intent was good, if someone takes away a negative impact from something you do, then you need to accept that it’s negative.

The management of MARTA did just that, and I applaud them for it.