Gil Asakawa's Nikkei View | aapi
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December 22, 2009

Secret Asian Man: The Daily Days by Tak Toyoshima Tak Toyoshima is a pioneer. He's been publishing "Secret Asian Man," a smart, funny Asian American comic strip, since 1999 in various Asian American and Japanese American newspapers and websites. He's a visual AAPI blogger, tackling issues of the day, racial stereotypes, friendships, the foibles of family life and of course, Asian American Pacific Islander identity. SAM is an autobiographical reflection of Toyoshima. In fact, the main character, Sam, is, according to the cast of characters rundown in the book,"an aspiring cartoonist who works as an art director at his local alternative newsweekly. He is an incurable dreamer who is fascinated by what makes us all tick." The Boston-based artist has been the art director of a alternative newspaper, the Weekly Dig, the whole time that he's been building a following for SAM. A couple of years ago, SAM was picked by by United Media, which syndicated the strip in mainstream newspapers across the country. That was great for Tak, because he was able to reach a much wider, mainstream audience with his witty, observant social jabs. Earlier this fall, though, Toyoshima parted ways with United Media to concentrate on promoting SAM once again through AAPI channels and with a new, full-color comic every Sunday on his own website. And now, he's collected every strip syndicated by United Media into his first book, "Secret Asian Man: The Daily Days," which is available now for pre-order from Amazon.com. I ordered my copy -- be the first one on your block to have a copy!
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 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 15, 2009

The Asian American blogosphere is all abuzz, and with good reason. The White House has more AAPIs in high places (the Cabinet) than ever in history. And yesterday, President Obama signed an executive order restoring the President's Advisory Commission and White House Initiative on Asian American and Pacific Islanders. Secretary of Commerce Gary Locke, who is Chinese American, and Education Secretary Arne Duncan will serve as co-chairs. The the commission was originally created during the Clinton administration, but it expired during George W. Bush's presidency and was not reauthorized. That alone says a lot about Bush's view of AAPIs as a force in this country, I think. It also says a lot about Obama's empathy for and understanding of AAPIs as a people who are woven throughout the fabric of American society. As part of the ceremony, Obama also paid tribute to the South Asian celebration of Diwali, the end of the harvest season in India and Nepal. The video of the ceremony is above; here's the full text of President Obama's speech:
October 14, 2009

Lane Nishikawa, writer, star and director of "Only the Brave," which comes out on DVD nationally on VeteranWow. Wow. Wow. It's a triple play. It's a hat trick. It's an Asian American trinity, sort of. Erin and I have booked three killer guests for our visualizAsian.com series of interviews in the AAPI Empowerment Series: Next Tuesday, Oct. 20 at 6 pm PT we'll speak to filmmaker Lane Nishikawa of "Only the Brave," an independent movie about the Japanese American soldiers who fought during World War II that will be released nationwide on Veteran's Day; On Tuesday, Nov. 10, we'll spend an hour getting to know Phil Yu, the man behind the must-read news site about Asian Americans, AngryAsianMan.com; And on Tuesday, Nov. 17, we'll meet Lac Su, the author of a powerful new memoir, "I Love Yous Are for White People."
June 19, 2009

Vincent Chin was murdered in 1982 by out-of-work auto workers in Detroit. His death marked the emergence of the pan-Asian community as a political force.Vincent Chin was beaten with a baseball bat 27 years ago today in a Detroit suburb, and died four days later. At the time, I was three years out of art school, managing a paint store, and was a budding young rock critic writing for Denver's alternative newspaper, Westword. I didn't follow any news coverage about the attack on Vincent Chin, and I was clueless about the importance of his tragic death. I was still a "banana" -- yellow on the outside, but white on the inside. Like the name of the 2008 documentary film about the impact of Chin's murder on the Asian American community, if you had asked me then about him, I would have said, "Vincent who?" Today, Vincent Chin is very much on my mind. I haven't seen director Tony Lam's "Vincent Who?" yet, but I definitely feel I'm a part of Chin's legacy. In the decades since, I've become aware and much more appreciative of my ethnic roots, culture and history as a Japanese American, which I used to take for granted. I've also become much more aware of my place in the much larger Asian American community.
June 10, 2009

Author and activist Phoebe EngErin Yoshimura and I started visualizAsian.com to interview Asian American Pacific Islander leaders and tell their stories to empower other AAPIs to follow in their footsteps. So far, it's been an absolute blast. The website launched with a conversation with former Secretary of Transportation Norm Mineta on May 21, and this week we spoke with Yul Kwon, the hunky winner of "Survivor: Cook Islands." Both men told powerful stories about the challenges they faced as Asian Americans, and the stereotypes that had to battle. The next guest on visualizAsian.com's AAPI Empowerment Series is social activist and author Phoebe Eng. The interview will be held Tuesday, June 23 at 6 pm PDT (9 pm EDT). I met Eng when that book came out, a decade ago, and she was in Denver for a book reading and signing. She was a great speaker, and as inspiring in person as she is in the prose of her book, which is in part an autobiography of her search for identity as an Asian American and as a woman, a double-whammy of identity-politics.
June 5, 2009

The Asakawa family circa 1960 in Hokkaido, Japan: (from left) George, Gary, Gil and Junko (stranger in front). I was born in Japan, so I can say this with a straight face: I'm becoming a born-again Japanese, and it's kinda fun. For years now, Erin and I have thought of ourselves as Asian American first, and Japanese American second. Mostly, it's because we're interested in and feel a kinship with other Asian Americans, whether their heritage is Chinese, Vietnamese, Korean, Thai, Hmong, Indian, Filipino, whatever. We certainly have immersed ourselves in the local Asian American Pacific Islander community, through being involved in events such as the Colorado Dragon Boat Festival, the AAPI Heritage Month Community celebration, the (now defunct) Aurora Asian Film Festival, Miss Asian American Colorado Leadership Program, Asian American Journalists Association and others. Erin spent six months last year serving as editor of the feisty little local pan-Asian magazine, Asian Avenue. It's wonderful to feel a part of a larger community within which we share lots of cultural values and appreciate the various cuisines. We've become friends with and learned about Asians across many borders, and generations from immigrant gens to very Americanized. It's also partly because the Japanese community in Denver is small, and insular, and tribal, and ... well, small. It's not like LA or San Francisco or Seattle or New York, where there are lots and lots of JAs to hang with, as well as tons more AAPIs in general. We just felt too constricted sometimes by the local community. But lately, I've found myself being among Japanese, and enjoying it.