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Book Review: Shoal of Time

Native Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders occupy an awkward space in the Asian and Pacific Islander (API) coalition. Many groups call themselves API, but the PI is often absent. In some cases, it doesn’t appear that PIs were ever present to begin with. With this in mind, I undertook a project of reading everything I could get my hands on about Hawaii as a first step in building my knowledge of the PI in the API and toward grappling with my own history. This book, one that I first read many years ago, was the first in the series.

Shoal of … Read more “Book Review: Shoal of Time”

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Columns Reviews

Book Review: Aloha Betrayed

A must-read for those interested in Hawai’i. Much of the colonial history of the islands is built around the notion that the “bloodless revolution” was an indication of the passive consent of the Hawaiian people to the takeover of Hawai’i by white business interests. This book uses Hawaiian language resources to demonstrate that Hawaiians did in fact resist, and powerfully, and by so doing, puts a whole new spin on an often-told story that has served to justify the evil of colonization to Hawaii’s children for generations.

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Blog

Amy Schumer: America’s Answer to Dave Chappelle

I can be notoriously out of the loop. I’ve “discovered” life-changing songs and excitedly shared them with my friends who respond, “Um, isn’t that from like 4 years ago?” That said, have you all heard about Amy Schumer? Apparently she’s been hot sh*t for at least a year now. There’s an ad for her Comedy Central show Inside Amy Schumer with a pixelated boob hanging out of her dress all over the NYC subway system, so I thought I’d check it out. I watched two episodes shortly after reading Lesli-Ann Lewis’ excellent opinion piece on Dave Chappelle’s shrug-off of White … Read more “Amy Schumer: America’s Answer to Dave Chappelle”

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Race Beyond Black and White: Four Reasons to Move Beyond the Racial Binary

I was recently featured as a guest on the National Public Radio program Tell Me More in the week leading up to the 50th Anniversary March on Washington, The interview was a discussion of a piece I wrote called Three Things Asian Americans Owe to the Civil Rights Movement. Close on the heels of that broadcast was the release of a video interview I did with GritTV’s Laura Flanders about the unique place of Asian Americans in our national civil rights history.

Too often, the history of race and rights in this country is a story told only in … Read more “Race Beyond Black and White: Four Reasons to Move Beyond the Racial Binary”

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Blog Guest Bloggers

My Racial Trigger: Raising Brown Babies

I’ve twice had the most profound and awe-inspiring life experience: giving birth to a child. Now ages 3 and 5, my bizarre, amusing, remarkable daughters have spent their entire lives teaching me innumerable lessons on patience, love, deep breathing, and truth-telling. Their father and I do our best to speak honestly with our girls about life (in developmentally appropriate ways, of course), believing our task is not simply to nurture children but also to raise adults whose personal and social compasses will serve them well in the world.

More than a decade of anti-racism activism combined with a nearly 4 … Read more “My Racial Trigger: Raising Brown Babies”

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Columns Reviews

Book Review: The Glass Palace

At the risk of sounding cliche, Amitav Gosh’s The Glass Palace is an important book. It’s importance begins with the subject matter – a one-hundred year span of history that unfolds in India, Malaya (now Malaysia) and Burma (now Myanmar), all countries of which most Americans, myself included, know precious little. The book addresses the impact of colonialism in the region over these one-hundred years by telling the stories of three generations of families whose lives are bound together by political change.

The sweep of history is breathtaking, carrying the reader through two world wars, and the independence movement that … Read more “Book Review: The Glass Palace”

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After Miley, Remembering Hottentot Venus and Ah Fong Moy

Many excellent perspectives have emerged among the media pandemonium following Miley Cyrus’ performance at the VMAs this week. Before I get to the main point of this blog, I just want to say Robin Thicke is gross. In the world I want to live in, an artist 16 years Cyrus’ senior would have wanted to mentor her, not just attend rehearsals where she grinds on him (an apparent fetishizer of black women) and a foam finger in preparation for an international stage. I also find the “Is Miley racist or not?” debate ridiculous. Of course she is. Cyrus is descended … Read more “After Miley, Remembering Hottentot Venus and Ah Fong Moy”

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Asian America’s Overlooked Diversity: A Video Interview with Scot Nakagawa

[youtube_sc url=”http://youtu.be/r9TpomsIj50″]

The above interview was conducted by Laura Flanders of Grit TV and The Nation on the occasion of the release of the Pew Research Center’s report, The Rise of Asian Americans and my response, here, on Race Files.

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Real Rights Require Real Resources: An Interview with Scot Nakagawa on Grit TV

[youtube_sc url=”http://youtu.be/FLmldH6Y7no”]

Above is an excerpt of an interview with me conducted by Laura Flanders of The Nation and Grit TV about how Real Rights Require Real Resources. The complete interview can be found here. Transcript on Truth Out to follow.

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Columns Reviews

Book Review: Uncle Swami

A South Asian friend of mine once told me that 9/11 broke her heart; that after 9/11, she felt life for her as a South Asian woman would never be the same. How life changed for her is part of a richer story of what 9/11 meant for South Asians that is at the heart (or at least serves as the hook) of Uncle Swami: South Asians in America Today, by Vijay Prashad.

Uncle Swami took me just four or five hours to read, a real plus for a slow reader with a short attention span. It opens … Read more “Book Review: Uncle Swami”