Gil Asakawa's Nikkei View | asian american
2
archive,paged,category,category-asian-american-nikkeiview,category-2,paged-40,category-paged-40,qode-quick-links-1.0,ajax_fade,page_not_loaded,,qode-title-hidden,qode-theme-ver-11.0,qode-theme-bridge,wpb-js-composer js-comp-ver-5.1.1,vc_responsive
November 4, 2009

The poster for the documentary "Aoki" about Richard Aoki, the Japanese American who was a founding member of the Black Panthers.Here's another reason why we wish we lived on the West Coast: "Aoki," a new documentary about Richard Aoki, the third-generation Japanese American who was one of the founding members of the revolutionary African American Black Panther Party in the late 1960s, is premiering in Oakland (where the Black Panthers were formed) on Nov. 12. At "Here and Now," an event for Asian American non-profit organizations in San Francisco yesterday that Erin and I participated in, someone handed out cards promoting the premiere. And this morning, Angry Asian Man had more information about it. Like most Americans, and probably many Asian Americans, I wasn't aware of the role Aoki played in such a turbulent period of our history. It turns out (the documentary reveals for the fist time) that Aoki, a veteran by the mid-'60s, was the man who gave the Panthers their first guns, from his personal collection, and taught them how to use firearms. Although there were AAPI members of the Panthers, Aoki was the only one in a leadership poition, given the rank of Field Marshall. He went on to be one of the leaders of the emerging Asian American consciousness of the 1970s. He died just this year. It humbles me to learn how little I still know about the history of Asian America. I'm glad people like filmmakers Ben Wang and Mike Cheng are making documentaries like "Aoki." On the "Aoki" website you can read about see clips from the film.
November 3, 2009

Really? Unfortunately, yeah. Sure, maybe the guy was just describing Yi's nationality, like calling a player "the Russian," But you would never call the Russian player "the Russkie" (I'm pretty sure Russkie is still a pejorative in the post-Cold war era). If he wanted to describe the nationality of Yi Jianlian of the New Jersey Nets, a veteran of the...

November 1, 2009

Margaret Chin is poised to become the first Chinese American, never mind a Chinese American woman, to be elected to City Council to represent New York CityI love New York City's Chinatown. I spent many afternoons wandering its streets when I was an art school student in the 1970s in Brooklyn, and I spent nights wandering its streets when I worked for six months in Jersey City on the other side of Manhattan several years ago. There's no feeling like it -- crowded streets teeming with people, shops overflowing onto the sidewalks, amazing arrays of food and enticements everywhere, the sound of Cantonese and now, more often Mandarin, echoing everywhere. The streets are a tangle; they start out like a grid but then alleyways curve off and what looks like nooks hide more restaurants to try. San Francisco's Chinatown is more of a straight line, and though it's also great, it doesn't hold the same sense of discovery that New York's does. Chicago's is good. LA's is nice. Boston's is cool too. DC's is kinda pitiful. But New York -- THAT's Chinatown! Carved out as if it were its own country with Canal Street serving as the hard boundary between it and Little Italy just to the north, Chinatown rises above New York's energy with a spirit that's its own, and unique. So imagine my surprise when I found out recently that that bustling district of Manhattan, along with the Wall Street area south of Chinatown, has never had a Chinese American representing its citizens and businesses in New York's City Council. Until now, that is. Margaret Chin, a 56-year-old longtime community activist who was born in Hong Kong, is the front-runner to win that pioneering position this Tuesday. (Thanks to APA for Progress for turning me on to the CNN story about Chin.)
October 30, 2009

The Banana conference of Asian American bloggers will be held Nov. 21, 2009 in Los Angeles. When I first started the Nikkei View as a weekly column in 1998 that ran in a Denver Japanese community newspaper (now gone), I posted the columns on my nikkeiview.com website. I wrote as a way of telling the world how I saw pop culture and politics through my Japanese American experience. In the decade since then, I've become involved in the larger Asian American Pacific Islander community, and converted the old website to this here blog. At the time, I don't think there were a lot of Asian Americans writing stuff on the web like I was. There may have been, but I didn't reach out to find them. There were columnists who'd paved the way in traditional media (newspapers), like the late Bill Hosokawa, whose footsteps I followed early on, and Emil Guillermo of AsianWeek. The cool magazine Giant Robot launched back in 1994. The terrific Pacific Citizen newspaper had been publishing for decades, but didn't have a website until a few years ago. But there weren't a lot of columns being posted online back in the day. Now, the blogosphere allows for many voices from the AAPI community -- the long list in my blogroll on the right of this page is always growing as I find new blogs to add -- and a couple of them have risen to national prominence. So Erin and I are planning to participate in a first-ever gathering of Asian American Pacific Islander bloggers called BANANA, Nov. 21 at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles (it's a link to a Facebook page). It's being organized by Lac Su, the author of the terrific memoir "I Love Yous Are for White People," who ironically is not a blogger. (We'll be interviewing Lac Su on Nov. 17 for visualizAsian.com.) BANANA will hopefully establish once and for all that there's an emerging chorus of voices that's distinctly Asian American, that's rooted in many Asian ethnic heritages, but is all tied together by shared experiences and values from living in, being born in and growing up in, these United States of America. Not all of the bloggers I mention below will be at the BANANA event (see Joz's comment below), but a couple of these voices have even developed a national audience outside the AAPI population:
October 28, 2009

The Austin Asian American Film Festival. Alas, there is no Asian film festival in Denver. There used to be -- the Aurora Asian Film Festival was held in Denver's eastern suburb (people in Aurora hate for their city to be called a suburb). It was sponsored by the Denver Film Society, the folks who bring the annual Deniver International Film Festival to town. But it folded after a few years because the local AAPI community didn't support it (Japanese only went to Japanese films, Chinese went to Chinese films, Filipinos... well you get it. And, many of the communities tried to have too much of a say in what movie should or should not screen. If it was racy, or showed a negative side of the community, the Film Society would get push back to switch the film, or have to fight to show it. So ultimately, it was too much hassle for the trouble. As the Japanese would say, it was mendokusai (a pain in the ass). So I read with envy as the months go by about the San Diego Asian Film Festival, the San Francisco Asian Film Festival, and others. Because I can't go, I usually don't write about them. I tend to write about things that affect readers here in Debver, whether it's a national issue that affects all Asian Americans, or about a Denver Asian community event. But I want to say a few words about the Austin Asian American Film Festival, because 1) it's in one of my all-time favorite towns and 2) I beat up on Austin a little bit a couple of months ago when I wrote about an Asian festival down there that used the "wonton" font, which bugged me, and 3) because Eugenia Beh is doing the publicity for the festival and she's cool and works tirelessly for AAPI causes including Asian Americans for Obama. I traveled to Austin for many years during my music critic days, to spend a blissful week at the South By Southwest Music & Media Conference, and most of the time was spent enjoying Austin and the great food and the great people... and oh yeah, listening to a lot of music. I wish I could go to the AAAFF -- it sounds wonderful.
October 27, 2009

The San Jose Mercury News has been driving the coverage of the ongoing controversy over the way San Jose police officers arrested Phuong Ho, a 20-year-old San Jose State math major who allegedly threatened his roommate with a steak knife. Another roommate shot cell phone video footage that appears to show Ho crying out as he's Tasered and beaten by one officer using a baton while another stands by with a relaxed stance. Ho was treated at a hospital for Taser burns and cuts, including to his head. The Merc (full disclosure: I work for MediaNews Group, the parent company of the San Jose Mercury News) published the video on its website over the weekend, and the footage has sparked a protest within San Jose's large Vietnamese community and within the Asian American blogosphere, claiming the police officers abused their power. Attorneys for the officer deny that excessive force was used, and said in an article today on the Merc's website, "Mr. Ho is responsible for his conduct, and he is responsible for not taking lawful directives from a police officer. He is being combative and non-compliant, and he raises the stakes of the game."
The Mercury News obtained a copy of the videotape last week from Ho's attorney, and showed it to six experts, four of whom expressed alarm at the force used by the officers as Ho can be heard on the ground, crying and moaning. Several of the experts expressed alarm at the last baton strike, appearing to occur after Ho has been handcuffed — which is how Ho recounts the incident. But attorneys (Terry) Bowman and Craig Brown ... both said Monday that Ho was struck only after he was resisting, and not after the handcuffs had been applied to both hands. Bowman said that the poor quality of the video has caused confusion over this point, adding: "Whatever people think they are hearing, it is not the sound of handcuffs before the last baton strike." Siegel is a 15-year veteran; Payne, a three year veteran of the force, is a combat veteran and son of a veteran officer. The Mercury News provided a copy of the tape recording to police officials last Thursday with the approval of Ho's attorney, and they promptly launched the investigation.
October 26, 2009

Prediction: Denver band Hello Kavita is bound for national glory. Should musicians be praised and have the spotlight shined on them simply because they're Asian American? Of course not. But if some of us AAPI bloggers didn't pay attention to the Asian American artists out there, they may go quietly under the radar and not get any attention at all. Not that we make such a difference -- success in the music biz is such a random, arbitrary brass ring no matter what you are or who you are. That's the conversation I found myself having with Joe Nguyen of asiaXpress.com, the Pho King of the World, Ultimate Expert on all Asian American performers criss-crossing the country, and the ones who hail right here from Colorado, the other night during the Release Party for Hello Kavita's very excellent "To a Loved One" CD at the Hi-Dive, a popular local music club. Actually, this conversation took place before Hello Kavita hit the stage, during the opening act, Houses, which had a keyboard player that we figured for a Hapa, either Japanese or Korean mixed race. The fact that we focused on the guy because of his ethnicity even though he wasn't the main player in Houses got me thinking that it's silly to write about Asian American performers just because they're Asian American. And yet, that's the reason I made my way late on a Saturday night to see Hello Kavita. After a long career as a music critic, I'm not big on going out to clubs to see bands anymore, but this one is special. Joe had been raving about them for a couple of years, and he has good taste. The band's led by Corey Teruya, who's Japanese American born in Hawai'i and raised in Boulder. The music's credited to the entire band, but I'm guessing he's the creative spark that runs the engine under the musical chassis. It's still so rare to find a rock band fronted by an Asian American -- with the exception of Big Head Todd and the Monsters, who paved that road from the Denver area 20 years ago -- that I wanted to make my way out to catch their live show.
October 25, 2009

Lori and Jackson are an Asian American couple from Long Beach, California who love Thailand and want your vote to win the Ultimate Thailand Explorers contest.Help out a brother and sister, everyone. Lori Fujikawa-Choy and Jackson Choy are newlyweds from Long Beach, California. She's Japanese American; he's Chinese American, and they both love Thailand. They first went to Thailand as "college sweethearts" (awww, aren't they cute!) to do some volunteer work there and fell in love with the country and its culture. They've traveled there several times since then, but now they need your help to go again... as guests of the Thai government. They've entered the Ultimate Thailand Explorers contest, which sounds a little like a reality TV show and in fact would probably make a pretty interesting one. The contest is sponsored by the Tourism Authority of Thailand, and it works like this: Couples from all over the world (not just spouses, but friends too) submitted applications and a video saying why they should win a trip to one of five destinations in Thailand. A panel of judges sifted through the applicants and chose five semifinalists for each destination. Our intrepid AAPI couple are semifinalists for Phuket, Thailand's largest island in the southern part of the country, and the site of terrible devastation from the 2004 tsunami. To get to the Finalist stage, Lori and Jackson need your help: the couples are judged this round by public votes on the contest website. As of this moment, the two Californians are third behind a French couple and a couple from Oshkosh. Take a look at their profile page (their video entry is above) and give Lori and Jackson your support and vote them to the next round.