Podcast appearances and mentions of Vincent Chin

In this powerful episode of Everyday Conversations on Race, host Simma the Inclusionist sits down with Emmy award-winning journalist and author Dion Lim to confront a question too many are avoiding: "Why has the conversation about anti-Asian hate gone silent"? Dion takes us behind the headline-making DM that changed her career — an anonymous video of an elderly Asian man being brutally beaten in San Francisco — and reveals what it took to bring stories like his to light when her own newsroom resisted.  From the murder of Vincent Chin to COVID-era scapegoating, she traces the deep historical roots of anti-Asian racism in America. She explains why the silence after the peak of BLM and Stop AAPI Hate is not just disappointing — it's dangerous. Topics in This Episode: Why anti-Asian hate is "as old as the Gold Rush" — and why we're erasing that history The cultural shame that keeps Asian American victims from speaking out The death threats and hit pieces Dion faced for reporting the truth How DEI rollbacks are affecting communities right now What Black-Asian solidarity actually looks like on the ground The role food, music, and pop culture play in bridging racial divides Dion's new book Amplify: My Fight for Asian America (foreword by Olivia Munn) You'll hear: The anonymous 12-second DM that changed everything — a video of an elderly Asian man being attacked while collecting cans in San Francisco's Bayview neighborhood Why Asian American victims often don't come forward: cultural conditioning, family shame, distrust of media, and generational silence Anti-Asian hate isn't new — from the Gold Rush to Vincent Chin to Yik Oi Huang and Vishal Ratanapakdee How COVID gave people permission to blame Asians — and how "kung flu" and "China virus" language fueled violenc The backlash Dion faced: a Washington Post hit piece orchestrated by a former DA's team, death threats from people who denied anti-Asian hate was real Why the Asian American community isn't monolithic — income inequality, cultural differences, and the "model minority" myth The connection between Black and Asian communities — shared history, manufactured division, and what solidarity actually looks like on the ground Grassroots response: patrol groups, the Blue Angels in Oakland, and the role of everyday people showing up for each other Simma's own history with the original Rainbow Coalition — The Young Patriots, the Black Panthers, the Young Lords, and Asian groups working together in the late '60s and '70s The immigrant parent dynamic: silence as survival, pride as a long time coming, and what it meant when Dion's father finally expressed pride after her 20/20 appearance What Dion wants for the next generation: be loud, find your community, take care of your mental health, and don't be afraid to take up space TV recommendation: Warrior — the series about the rise of the Tongs and how Chinese workers were treated in California The ask: get Amplify on the New York Times bestseller list — and why it matters beyond sales Key Learnings: Silence is not safety. When institutions stop talking about race, hate doesn't disappear — it goes underground and grows. The rollback of DEI programs and race coverage in newsrooms makes communities more vulnerable, not more comfortable. Anti-Asian hate has deep American roots. This isn't a COVID story. It goes back to the Gold Rush, the Chinese Exclusion Act, and the murder of Vincent Chin. Understanding that history is the first step to not repeating it. Cultural conditioning keeps people quiet. Many Asian Americans are raised to not cause a fuss, not draw attention, not inconvenience others. That silence protects no one — it protects the people doing harm. Division between communities is often manufactured. The tension between Black and Asian communities didn't come from nowhere. It was seeded deliberately, and it dissolves quickly when people actually get to know each other. You don't have to share someone's experience to show up for them. The people who moved Dion most weren't Asian — they were people from every background who said "I didn't know, and now I do." Timestamps: 1:08 – Who is Dion Lim and why she's fighting for Asian America 2:51 – "It feels like crickets" — DEI rollbacks and the dangerous silence 4:05 – The 12-second video that changed Dion's career forever 5:50 – Anti-Asian hate didn't start with COVID — it goes back to the Gold Rush 8:43 – From fluff pieces to death threats: how Dion's journalism transformed 10:15 – The shameful cultural silence keeping Asian victims from speaking out 13:58 – The Washington Post hit piece, orchestrated by a DA's team 16:15 – Why people deny anti-Asian hate even exists 21:25 – "It was okay to blame Asians for COVID" — how a pandemic became a weapon 24:14 – Dion's own mother told her to stop reporting. Here's why. 27:42 – Are newsrooms giving up on covering race? 31:00 – The "model minority" myth that erases Asian poverty 39:22 – What real Black-Asian solidarity actually looks like 46:01 – The history America buried: forced labor, exclusion laws & the show Warrior 51:01 – Dion's call to action + her book Amplify Guest Bio: Dion is a beloved Emmy Award-winning journalist, two-time author, and international keynote speaker. For over 20 years, she has transformed complex, high-stakes issues into clear, compelling stories that resonate with millions. A trusted expert in media presence, Dion now helps executives and changemakers communicate with the same clarity, confidence, and impact. Her work amplifying underrepresented voices has built bridges across diverse communities and sparked lasting change. Connect with Dion Lim: Website: dionlim.com Instagram & Facebook: @dionlimtv LinkedIn: Dion Lim Get the book: Amplify: My Fight for Asian America — available now! If this episode moved you, share it with someone who needs to hear it. Subscribe, leave a review, and help us get these conversations heard across the globe. Click here to DONATE and support our podcast All donations are tax deductible through Fractured Atlas. Simma Lieberman, The Inclusionist, helps leaders create inclusive cultures. She is a consultant, speaker, and facilitator. Simma is the creator and host of the podcast, Everyday Conversations on Race. Contact Simma@SimmaLieberman.com to get more information, book her as a speaker for your next event, help you become a more inclusive leader, or facilitate dialogues across differences. Go to www.simmalieberman.com and www.raceconvo.com for more information Simma is a member of and inspired by the global organization IAC (Inclusion Allies Coalition)  Connect with me: Instagram Facebook YouTube Twitter LinkedIn Tiktok Website Previous Episodes Frank Carbajal on Latino Leadership: From Migrant Farmworker Son to Silicon Valley Voice Dr. Gina Paige on African Ancestry: How DNA Reconnects Black Americans to Their African Roots From Black Panther to Corporate America: Elmer Dixon on Race, Revolution, and Why DEI Is Not Dead Loved this episode?  Leave us a review and rating

This probing account shines a new light on the problem of anti-Asian violence and inspires us to build lasting solidarity. During the COVID-19 pandemic, racist demagoguery fomented a campaign of terror against Asian Americans. But these attacks were part of a much longer pattern that made anti-Asian racism integral to the outbreak of white supremacist, misogynist, and colonial violence across 175 years of U.S. history. Written in the radical spirit of Howard Zinn, American Peril: The Violent History of Anti-Asian Racism (U California Press, 2026) represents the culmination of thirty-five years of study and activism by award-winning scholar Scott Kurashige. From the lynching of Asian immigrants during the exclusion era to the ongoing slaughter of Asian civilians by the U.S. military, the book connects domestic and global events that have been erased from the official record. Going beyond victimhood, Kurashige traces the rise of Asian American community protest and activism in response to the 1982 murder of Vincent Chin and other overlooked tragedies. While many have worked to legislate and prosecute hate crimes, Kurashige argues that hope lies in grassroots activism for multiracial solidarity. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network

This probing account shines a new light on the problem of anti-Asian violence and inspires us to build lasting solidarity. During the COVID-19 pandemic, racist demagoguery fomented a campaign of terror against Asian Americans. But these attacks were part of a much longer pattern that made anti-Asian racism integral to the outbreak of white supremacist, misogynist, and colonial violence across 175 years of U.S. history. Written in the radical spirit of Howard Zinn, American Peril: The Violent History of Anti-Asian Racism (U California Press, 2026) represents the culmination of thirty-five years of study and activism by award-winning scholar Scott Kurashige. From the lynching of Asian immigrants during the exclusion era to the ongoing slaughter of Asian civilians by the U.S. military, the book connects domestic and global events that have been erased from the official record. Going beyond victimhood, Kurashige traces the rise of Asian American community protest and activism in response to the 1982 murder of Vincent Chin and other overlooked tragedies. While many have worked to legislate and prosecute hate crimes, Kurashige argues that hope lies in grassroots activism for multiracial solidarity. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/history

This probing account shines a new light on the problem of anti-Asian violence and inspires us to build lasting solidarity. During the COVID-19 pandemic, racist demagoguery fomented a campaign of terror against Asian Americans. But these attacks were part of a much longer pattern that made anti-Asian racism integral to the outbreak of white supremacist, misogynist, and colonial violence across 175 years of U.S. history. Written in the radical spirit of Howard Zinn, American Peril: The Violent History of Anti-Asian Racism (U California Press, 2026) represents the culmination of thirty-five years of study and activism by award-winning scholar Scott Kurashige. From the lynching of Asian immigrants during the exclusion era to the ongoing slaughter of Asian civilians by the U.S. military, the book connects domestic and global events that have been erased from the official record. Going beyond victimhood, Kurashige traces the rise of Asian American community protest and activism in response to the 1982 murder of Vincent Chin and other overlooked tragedies. While many have worked to legislate and prosecute hate crimes, Kurashige argues that hope lies in grassroots activism for multiracial solidarity. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/asian-american-studies

This probing account shines a new light on the problem of anti-Asian violence and inspires us to build lasting solidarity. During the COVID-19 pandemic, racist demagoguery fomented a campaign of terror against Asian Americans. But these attacks were part of a much longer pattern that made anti-Asian racism integral to the outbreak of white supremacist, misogynist, and colonial violence across 175 years of U.S. history. Written in the radical spirit of Howard Zinn, American Peril: The Violent History of Anti-Asian Racism (U California Press, 2026) represents the culmination of thirty-five years of study and activism by award-winning scholar Scott Kurashige. From the lynching of Asian immigrants during the exclusion era to the ongoing slaughter of Asian civilians by the U.S. military, the book connects domestic and global events that have been erased from the official record. Going beyond victimhood, Kurashige traces the rise of Asian American community protest and activism in response to the 1982 murder of Vincent Chin and other overlooked tragedies. While many have worked to legislate and prosecute hate crimes, Kurashige argues that hope lies in grassroots activism for multiracial solidarity. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/american-studies

This probing account shines a new light on the problem of anti-Asian violence and inspires us to build lasting solidarity. During the COVID-19 pandemic, racist demagoguery fomented a campaign of terror against Asian Americans. But these attacks were part of a much longer pattern that made anti-Asian racism integral to the outbreak of white supremacist, misogynist, and colonial violence across 175 years of U.S. history. Written in the radical spirit of Howard Zinn, American Peril: The Violent History of Anti-Asian Racism (U California Press, 2026) represents the culmination of thirty-five years of study and activism by award-winning scholar Scott Kurashige. From the lynching of Asian immigrants during the exclusion era to the ongoing slaughter of Asian civilians by the U.S. military, the book connects domestic and global events that have been erased from the official record. Going beyond victimhood, Kurashige traces the rise of Asian American community protest and activism in response to the 1982 murder of Vincent Chin and other overlooked tragedies. While many have worked to legislate and prosecute hate crimes, Kurashige argues that hope lies in grassroots activism for multiracial solidarity. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

A weekly magazine-style radio show featuring the voices and stories of Asians and Pacific Islanders from all corners of our community. The show is produced by a collective of media makers, deejays, and activists. Tonight on APEX Express, Host Miko Lee focuses on Asian American Men, Bruce Lee and the mano-sphere. She chats with renowned author and thinker Jeff Chang about his new book: Bruce Lee & the making of Asian America, Water Mirror Echo. Then she talks with Rachel Koelzer the Communications Director for Nakasec about their new study of Asian American men and the manosphere. How are images of Asian American male identify being shaped and formed in our current society and what does Bruce Lee have to do with this? Listen in. More in tonight's show Jeff Chang's book: Water, Mirror, Echo Nakasec ReportAsian American Men and Mano-sphere CAAMFest 2026, running May 7-10, 2026, San Francisco's AMC Kabuki Theatre Show Transcripts [00:00:00] Opening: Apex Express Asian Pacific expression. Community and cultural coverage, music and calendar, new visions and voices, coming to you with an Asian Pacific Islander point of view. It's time to get on board the Apex Express.   [00:00:40] Miko Lee: Welcome to Apex Express. I'm your host, Mika Lee, and tonight we are focusing on Asian American men, Bruce Lee and the Manosphere. I chat with renowned author and thinker Jeff Chang about his new book, Bruce Lee and the Making of Asian America Water Mirror Echo. Then I speak with Rachel Koelzer, the communications director for NAKASEC, about their new study of Asian American men and the Manosphere. So how are images of Asian American male identity being shaped and formed in our current society, and what does Bruce Lee have to do with all this? First, listen to my conversation with author Jeff Chang. Welcome Jeff Chang to Apex Express.    [00:01:24] Jeff Chang: Ah, it's so great to be here. Miko. So happy.    [00:01:27] Miko Lee: I'm so happy to talk with you about your latest book. You're such a prolific writer, and here you have written a big Bruce Lee and the Making of Asian America Water Mirror Echo. Such a mighty title. I wanna start first just a question that I ask all of my guests, which is, who are your people and what legacy do you carry with you?   [00:01:49] Jeff Chang: Oh my gosh. What a great question to start with. You know, my family, my communities, they all kind of blend together, the blood family, the kin family, and the chosen family, for me. I guess I'm always [laughs], I'm first born Chinese Kanaka, you know, I'm always aware that I am, representing, I guess, So I, you know, I carry that family with me wherever I go.   [00:02:16] Miko Lee: I, I think I know what that means. But for our audience that might not know what a firstborn Chinese kanaka means, can you break that down a little bit? What does that mean to you when you say that?    [00:02:25] Jeff Chang: Yeah, I mean, you know, it's just the, i, it it's just a thing of, you know, you're gonna go out and represent the family and, you're thrust into Taking on responsibilities and stuff for your folks, your siblings, your, younger cousins, those kinds of things. I was always very aware of that within the family. My dad's from a really big family, had six siblings and, my mom's from a large extended, family. so that's, That's such a fantastic question Miko. Bruce was the second child, which, you know, birth order and all that kind of stuff. It also squares, I think with, a Chinese family. He felt like he was always in the shadow of his older brother.   [00:03:10] Miko Lee: Okay. Hold on. Let's get to Bruce in a second. I wanna finish with you as an author, creator person.    [00:03:16] Jeff Chang: Okay.    [00:03:16] Miko Lee: Wait, so you are the number one son.    [00:03:18] Jeff Chang: I'm the number one son. Yeah.    [00:03:19] Miko Lee: Ooh, okay. I get it. Yeah. And then what is the legacy that you carry with you?    [00:03:24] Jeff Chang: The legacy. I just have to represent, in a point, a kind of a way, in a proper kind of a way. You know, the family , and those kinds of things. I was also very rebellious. I came back after my freshman year as the Berkeley Radical. My Uncle Fungi was like, oh, here comes the Berkeley radical. Okay. Then of course, you gotta sit down and drink beer and tell 'em , all the stories and that kind of thing. So, you know, just being able to, carry on, a legacy of being upright and being, just, right. And sort of being appropriate in all that you do. just aware of that. Grew up aware of that. Yeah.    [00:04:02] Miko Lee: And then what was your first memory of Bruce Lee?   [00:04:06] Jeff Chang: Ah, I don't have a first memory. He was just part of the ether, you know what I mean? He was part of the   [00:04:10] Miko Lee: Ah, yeah.   [00:04:11] Jeff Chang: Yeah. He was part of the air. I think I came of age, after the generation, like my older cousins who were able to see Bruce in the theaters. We came up the next generation, we saw Bruce on tv. Return of the Dragon would come on and everybody would stop everything and just watch that. During the commercial breaks we're jumping around and kicking each other and stuff like that. I mean that, that kind of thing, right?    [00:04:34] Miko Lee: Yeah, totally. When I was growing up, people would always ask me if I was related to Bruce Lee, because Lee, because that was like, right, yeah, Lee. Yeah. Yeah. There's not a billion Lees' in the world.    [00:04:44] Jeff Chang: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Totally.    [00:04:45] Miko Lee: Yeah. So I get it and I try to explain to my daughters, and our kids are around the same age, the cultural phenomenon that he was, and it's hard to explain it to this generation because there wasn't really other Asian American representation than Bruce Lee when we were growing up.   [00:05:03] Jeff Chang: Yeah. Yeah. And now they have Alysa Liu, you know, they have eileen Gu, they have all of these different folks. So if you don't like Alysa, you could like Eileen. Or if you don't like, if you like Eileen, you don't have to like Alysa. Right. Or you can like 'em both. They have choices.   [00:05:14] Miko Lee: You could like Chloe.    [00:05:16] Jeff Chang: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. They like Chloe, right? There's choices. Yeah. Like Chloe's on the Olympic stand with two other Asians. It's just wild. It's a beautiful thing. and it's not like the kind of reality that we grew up in. It's true.    [00:05:29] Miko Lee: Yeah. So what made you decide to write this book? you've written many books about pop culture and around theory and around Americana, and what made you decide to write a book about Bruce Lee?    [00:05:41] Jeff Chang: So the book came to me actually, it was an Asian American editor back during a time, not so long ago, but a while ago, when there weren't a lot of Asian American editors in the business. And he came to me and that was amazing in and of itself. And he said basically, Hey man, you did this book on hip hop. This is back in, the latter part of the two thousands. I wanna imagine I haven't gone back and looked at the date. 'cause it, it actually hurts me to think about it. But he saw you did this book like. Do you think you could do a book on Bruce Lee? And I was like, yeah, I could do that. I was hyped to do that. Please. Because Yeah. 'cause Bruce was our hero. Yeah. Just like we were talking about. The most famous Asian American who's ever lived. It took me a long time to get going and I gotta admit I lost the plot at some point. I just was like, what am I doing? There were books that came out, about Bruce in the interim. there was one other biography that had come out, in the late 2010s,    [00:06:37] Miko Lee: and I think I told you about one of the books. I think it's that book that I read written by a white guy and I wrote about it in good reads because I read a lot and that's how I keep track of the books I read. I don't think about anybody else reading those reviews that I write? It's like writing in a journal or something. Now I use story graph ‘ it's amazing. Not commercial, but at the time I used Goodreads and the author wrote back to me, I think I told you this story.    [00:07:04] Jeff Chang: Yeah, yeah. Tell me. Tell, so what did you write and what did the author write back to you?   [00:07:08] Miko Lee: I wrote that I thought that this author did not understand what an icon Bruce was to the Asian American community, and it was written in a way that didn't, grasp the whole complexity of what he meant to us. He wrote this really, mean note back to me about how he had Shannon, Bruce's daughter's support and he was the one that could tell the story. And I thought, whoa, I was just shocked. That was the first time. Since then, I've had many different authors write back to me, but that was like the first one and wrote back in a mean way. So anyways.    [00:07:39] Jeff Chang: Was it public or this was a private, A private email back to you.    [00:07:43] Miko Lee: I think it's public. I don't know. Have to go look. I was shook at the time. Like what?    [00:07:49] Jeff Chang: Wow. Okay.    [00:07:50] Miko Lee: Anyway, so when I heard you were writing a book, I said, okay, finally, finally. Yay.    [00:07:55] Jeff Chang: Hmm. Yeah. You know, and I'll be honest, I, I had this sort of crisis of confidence. I was sort of like, you know, this is, okay, we'll put it out there. 'cause you already went there. It's Matthew Polly's book, Bruce Lee Life. I read it, he had done amazing research. He had spoken to a lot of people. I thought I was supposed to do this kind of a book. Now there's a particular kind of genre, that folks who are maybe in the industry recognize and, it's called I'm putting scare quotes around this, like the definitive biography,    [00:08:27] Miko Lee: right.    [00:08:28] Jeff Chang: In this particular case, the definitive biography, because he's a movie star s. Sort of coincides or converges with this other genre, which is the celebrity biography. I'm putting scare quotes around that too. So, the mission of a celebrity biographer is really to tell a story of, this celebrity. Is not as cool as you think they are. Like, their crap stinks. They cheated on their spouses. They like didn't file their taxes, they kicked their dog, they said mean things to different people. That's a celebrity biography. It's basically to tarnish the star. and if not, then it's sort of a hagiography, which is sort of a whole other kind of thing. And we don't wanna do that as writers. We wanna approach the truth. But there's sort of a certain kind of thing that comes into play, with Bruce. There's a sort of genre of the take down of Bruce where it's usually men that are writing this, and the men are usually like, well, Bruce was my hero when I was a kid, but now I've gotta take him down. You know what I mean? It's, and so you see it over and over again and, you know, there's a sort of a weird thing going on, especially I think with, white males who have loved Bruce Lee in the past feeling like they need to take him down.So let's say    [00:09:50] Miko Lee: Quinton Tarantino.    [00:09:52] Jeff Chang: Okay, you said it. I didn't, but I was gonna say like Albert Goldman, who was a journalist who famously wrote a take down of Elvis Presley.    [00:10:00] Miko Lee: Right.   [00:10:01] Jeff Chang: and did one of Bruce that was unbelievably racist. Now, I'm not saying that Matthew was trying to do this at all. I think that his scholarship and his work was really, really good. But I, I felt crowded out a little bit. You know, I felt like, gosh, I don't know what there is to say? I was very aware that there were a lot of books that had been written about Bruce and that I was writing into or out of, or in opposition to a tradition.   [00:10:30] Miko Lee: Mm-hmm.    [00:10:31] Jeff Chang: These are the Bruce. Lee Stories. and so at that particular point, in the late 2000 tens, I just said, what am I gonna do? And Lourdes, my partner, walked me up to the park and just tore into me like, what, you're gonna give up now? You can't give up now. You gotta do this, you have to. Who else is gonna do this? And I'm just feeling all that, Chinese Kanaka, firstborn, guilt, responsibility. she's about the only person that I can take a tongue lashing like that from. We walk back the mile to the house and my head was between my legs and I was like, all right, I'll do it. I'll do it. But I didn't know what I was gonna do to be completely real. I didn't know what I was gonna do. So the other thing that was kind of happening at this particular point was I was noticing, and you and I both have, children who are now adults, but at that time they were younger. They were like coming into their own, they're in their teens and that kind of thing, and that particular generation was coming up in some ways. Like we talked about, like they had all of these folks that they could look to.    [00:11:34] Miko Lee: Mm-hmm.    [00:11:34] Jeff Chang: Right. you know, our kids have opportunities in media that we never had.   [00:11:39] Miko Lee: Mm-hmm.    [00:11:39] Jeff Chang: We've had to break through in a lot of ways. And there was also, in a weird way, this sort of entropy around this notion of Asian America. Like young people who call themselves Asian American would also sit around and be like, what even is an Asian American? How do I relate to these other types of folks who are also classed as Asian Americans, or who describe themselves as Asian Americans as well. Like politically, culturally, the kind of food we eat, the way we dress, who we hang out with. Like all of the diversity that we've celebrated for so many years felt like entropy, I think, to them like this is, there's no center to this anymore. Then the pandemic happened and the violence, Was one way of saying this is it's the ice cube moment. This is what they think of you. You know what I mean? Yeah. And, and I think that was what galvanized, especially a lot of young people to find a new sense of purpose, a new sense of activism, a new sense of, how to be in the world And    [00:12:43] Miko Lee: for maybe some young folks who had never felt that they had experienced direct racism before, to suddenly see it really blatant in the community.    [00:12:52] Jeff Chang: Right. And, it was personal. It touched all of us. I know everyone has stories about how we were treated during the pandemic, and especially the women and especially, the queer folks. In a lot of ways it was paradigm shifting and it was paradigm shifting for me too, you know, so I'm writing about this guy who considers himself a martial artist.    [00:13:13] Miko Lee: Mm-hmm.    [00:13:14] Jeff Chang: And he's teaching people about self-defense.    [00:13:18] Miko Lee: Mm-hmm.    [00:13:19] Jeff Chang: And in his career being accused of fomenting violence, like a lot of. Folks in hip hop have been over the years.    [00:13:27] Miko Lee: Mm-hmm.    [00:13:28] Jeff Chang: I'm suddenly like looking at this in a completely different light. What does it mean to think about self-defense and violence and training to be a warrior, right? I have a lot of folks who are in the military. My mom worked for the police department, like what does that mean? For somebody like me who's, essentially anti militarist, who has critiques of the police, as we all should. who's a deep supporter of Black Lives Matter, like how do we think about what it means to, to be a warrior, and also to understand like the dignity, right in wanting to be a protector.    [00:14:04] Miko Lee: Right.    [00:14:05] Jeff Chang: Right. And to, uplift what that means, but to kind of think about all of these existential questions and then at the same time to see Bruce popping back up on our walls and murals and popping up on our feeds as a symbol, right. Of pride. Especially during this particular period, near us in the bay, like in San Francisco, Chinatown or Oakland Chinatown, young people bringing back the image of Bruce as a symbol of pride and also this sort of cry for like, can you see us? This sort of underlying desire to find solidarity. All of this mixed up with this like identity crisis that is now taking a different type of turn. So it was a lot to think about and suddenly I was just like, oh, oh, oh, wait a minute. Maybe that's what I'm supposed to write about. So the book became, about Bruce, but also about Bruce as an Asian American and about him kind of traveling parallel to the rise of the Asian American movement.    [00:15:04] Miko Lee: Yeah, I think it's so powerful that way, that it does tell this whole Asian American history for folks that might not know from, the very beginning of our, coming from the exclusion act to I hotel, to Vincent Chin and not just like politically, but then also cinematically because he crossed over so many barriers for us. So we're also getting Asian American cinema history with Anna May Wong and Sessue Hayakawa, and even the Hong Kong industry. So I love how you combined all these different elements. It's such a wonderful way to look at that. And I'm wondering what made you decide to organize the book into these three categories of water, mirror, echo.   [00:15:44] Jeff Chang: The line came first, Bruce's famous. Epigraph is, be water my friend, and, me being the nerd that I am, I wanted to trace the origins of that and found it pretty quickly, in a sort of, Daoist type of text. called the leads and the full, Section that, had influenced Bruce so much was moving be like water, still be like a mirror, respond like an echo. This is a line that actually resonates through Zen Buddhism as well. It was one of those things where when I first read it in Bruce's Dao Jeet Kun Do, I fell outta my chair. It was amazing. It blew me away. We'd all heard “be water.” We'd heard athletes say it. we'd heard, business leaders, say, we saw the activists in Hong Kong, using it, in the streets. and. Yet to see all of this together was even deeper. That was a window into wow. We think of Bruce as the great popularizer of martial arts. Bruce, he's not recognized as the great popularizer of Asian philosophy, in a lot of ways. It happened during this particular period during the sixties where, views of Asians and Asian Americans were beginning to shift dramatically, opening up in a lot of ways. So we had this phrase, my editor, Akia Clark, and I. She was like, all right, “how are you gonna organize this Jeff?” I was like, I don't know, help me. And she's like, all right, there's a water, there's a mirror, there's an echo here. And it actually tracks to his life and the arc of his story and I was like, “oh, wow. Yeah.” So I can't take any credit. I have to give it to my editor, who is,    [00:17:24] Miko Lee: that's a good editor.    [00:17:25] Jeff Chang: Amazing. Yo, she was amazing. Rekia was like, I signed you because, I grew up and the only Asian I knew was Bruce Lee. She grew up in largely black communities. She was like, I need to know more. , I really want to hear your take on this. And, and So it was a, an incredible collaboration in that way because it was the type of here's where we meet. She was literally giving me free reign to be able to tell me a story. Tell me why we're meeting here. Right. Why were we meeting through Bruce? That ended up giving me so much confidence and focus after I'd had, all of these years of being in the woods and, uh, what am I gonna do? And then, Lourdes is trying to shake me up That's kind of how it,    [00:18:09] Miko Lee: it took that time, that time to simmer, and your creative juices to be able to come up with this.    [00:18:15] Jeff Chang: Yeah. Yeah. It didn't feel. Like it at the time, but looking back now, I'm not the fastest, ho nu in the water.    [00:18:22] Miko Lee: Because you talked a little bit about confidence and how much Bruce shared about, Asian philosophy, which I think is really true. I wonder if you could speak a little bit more about his sense of confidence, both in himself, and then a sense of destiny, like the mark that he was gonna leave on the planet.    [00:18:38] Jeff Chang: It's very interesting to me because I think that this has been kind of, a part of the Bruce Lee legend. It was like he was born for a purpose. I was going through his papers and talking to, his, surviving family members and friends, like it was all improv.    [00:18:55] Miko Lee: Really him saying all those things was improv. What was all improv?    [00:18:59] Jeff Chang: Yeah. I think part of it, I think, well, maybe it wasn't an all improv, certainly he was driven.   [00:19:04] Miko Lee: Mm-hmm.    [00:19:04] Jeff Chang: He was incredibly ambitious and he was incredibly driven and he knew where he wanted to go. Absolutely 2000%, I think he entered this journey, like all of us in our journeys, you know, like we're maybe packed for the journey, but we might find along the way that we don't have what we need. I was attuned to the points where that narrative would break down. To all of the vulnerabilities that he was feeling in different moments. and especially because I got to talk to folks, who knew him, who maybe hadn't necessarily been interviewed in like, the years. His very close Asian American friends, the folks who knew him, off the martial arts training floor. the folks who thought he was weird and kind of corny, folks at UW. All of these folks knew him at the University of Washington. And the, the common thing was, this guy's goofy. He's just had a one track mind. Like, he just wants to like show us like. Like Gung fu things all the time. Like who does that?    [00:20:08] Miko Lee: Like Bruce stop already. We heard that.    [00:20:10] Jeff Chang: right, right. Like punch me like, you want me to punch you? That was funny. You know, I was just, and that was sort of also a mind shift, you know, like    [00:20:19] Miko Lee: Yeah.   [00:20:19] Jeff Chang: It was like, oh, so there was a time before    [00:20:21] Miko Lee: he was revered,    [00:20:22] Jeff Chang: the cool guy. Yeah, before he was the cool guy. Then before he was the guy that was like super suave and like all the, whatever all the ladies wanted and all the guys wanted to be like, that's been the Bruce narrative. So I was attuned to those parts and what strikes me is how much at the end he stuck to his guns. Like folks will read this in the last section of the book, and I don't want to give it away, but this is when Destiny kicks in and Bruce rises to the top and he makes another dragon. He becomes this global star and it was meant to happen. And I was like, no. He was actually fighting every step of the way. Like every day of his life. He felt like this thing was gonna fall apart. At one time, he boycotted his own movie because they weren't giving him what he wanted. Some of his closest friends say the real thing that killed him. People talk about the coroner's report conspiracy, like evil spirits that, but what he really did was like sacrifice himself in a way. That's how a lot of his friends talk about it, you know? From a sense of this deep personal loss of somebody whom they loved so much and who was like there one day and suddenly gone the next, And so, you know, to deal too with that, question of the melancholia that comes with what we experience when we're the survivors of someone we love, who suffers a premature death. In that regard, like I feel like the last part of the book too was deeply informed by. All of the stuff that's come before, with the Black Lives Matter movement. You know, and understanding, that these came from deep sources of grief and mourning and loss. Thinking about what it's meant for Asian Americans to have to look at two generations before we get to the things that Bruce was fighting for representationally    [00:22:14] Miko Lee: Yeah.    [00:22:14] Jeff Chang: You know, before we can get to everything everywhere, all at once. And Michelle Yeoh, receiving the Oscar for that. Like it took two generations. It took Brandon passing away one generation after his father, and then it took a whole bunch of other work that, a lot of folks needed to do in order for us to be able to. Get the kinds of representations that we hoped that we might see after, another dragon. and that, something that, has produced a melancholia in us, you know?    [00:22:48] Miko Lee: Yeah. Yeah.    [00:22:49] Jeff Chang: So.    [00:22:50] Miko Lee: You are talking a little bit about the people that you interviewed and there's so many clearly that you did, and when I was reading it, the backstory of Taki, that was when I thought, oh, this is an Asian American author. I mean, I know you, but it like, including that whole backstory I thought was so powerful and actually helped to build out the story of who he is, who his friends were and how he worked with them. I'm wondering if there's an interview that you didn't get.    [00:23:14] Jeff Chang: So many. So many.    [00:23:16] Miko Lee: Oh really?    [00:23:17] Jeff Chang: Yeah. I mean, I haven't gone back to look at the original contract and the date because so many people passed away. I got started on this, I had three other books that I had to complete from my, publisher at the time this book was signed out of, those contracts. I had had a full-time job then, and then when the, pandemic and BLM sort of reached that inflection point, it was a much more than full-time job. I didn't have time to be able to actually devote the book that I really needed to. I did research over a very long course of time. I did interviews over a very long course of time, but I started the interviews too late, so I couldn't interview Taki.    [00:23:54] Miko Lee: oh wow. Okay.    [00:23:55] Jeff Chang: I couldn't, yeah. Taki, was, alive. He lived to a very old age, but Alzheimer's. Um,    [00:24:01] Miko Lee: oh wow.    [00:24:02] Jeff Chang: Took him, you know? By the time I started reaching out, it was a little bit like too late. I spoke to his son instead at great length. and a lot of other folks around, him. There wasn't just one, there were a million interviews. I didn't get. Taki, I didn't interview Jesse Glover. I would've loved to have interviewed some of his friends From Hong Kong, but we couldn't access them because of the pandemic. I had an amazing researcher on the ground, Winnie Fu who, did a lot of amazing work there and was able to source a lot of stuff for us. There was so many people, and even now, like I was just up in Seattle for the unveiling of the Bruce Lee postage stamp, and I got to meet a friend of his from high school, and so I'm gonna sit down. I've been talking with Shannon's, cousin, Bruce's niece who has been keeping the genealogies of the family. We've been talking a lot. I'm gonna go back and interview her, and so hopefully maybe by the time the paperback edition comes around, I might be able to have some new information that I might be able to throw in in that edition.    [00:25:03] Miko Lee: Yeah. What surprised you most about the research?    [00:25:06] Jeff Chang: I think that Bruce was vulnerable. He felt very lonely a lot of the time. he had set himself out like this huge impossible dream in some ways. he knew his destination. He had no idea how he was gonna get there. That's where I talk about it was all improv. and at different points he despaired. I don't know if these folks are really seeing me, I don't think they really understand me. After the Green Hornet, he couldn't get a job. That he felt was befitting him, you know? So he's taking whatever work he can get. He's working as a fight choreographer for Nancy Kwan. And, just doing what he can and he's relying upon people to put him on. He's doing Gung FU training of a lot of the Hollywood top brass. So he can reach out to them, but even they don't believe in him. They don't believe in him like that. That's why he decides he has to leave. But it takes him literally four years to realize, oh, they don't see me as a main character. They don't see me the way I see myself. Yeah. So I gotta go. Even then he's still trying to get on the TV show, Kung fu. When that door slams and they cast David Carradine yellow face, he's like, oh, that, and that's when the ice cube moment really sets in for him. Like, that's how they see me. That's how they really understand me. After that, he's fighting this battle to try to get back to Hollywood. That's, one of the things he feels like he really wants to do. his thought is that I need to build up as much capital as I possibly can in order to be able to negotiate from a point of, strength. It's just very hip hop. It's very wutang clan. He's able to kind of get there. But he's still gotta fight these battles at the end. They just wanted him to shut up and kick. They gave him a black CoStar and a white CoStar because they were afraid that an Asian lead wouldn't make it. They wanted to name the movie Hans Island. Not Enter the Dragon because, Oriental villains were easier to understand than an Asian American male lead. So    [00:27:00] Miko Lee: that's such a horrible title too.    [00:27:02] Jeff Chang: Oh my God. How can you imagine we would not be talking about Hans Island.    [00:27:07] Miko Lee: I don't know how they thought that was a good idea.    [00:27:10] Jeff Chang: Yeah, it's true.    [00:27:11] Miko Lee: Is there anything else that you would like your audiences that to understand about Bruce Lee?    [00:27:16] Jeff Chang: What I tried to do is portray him in the context that he actually lived in, We've got the legend of Bruce, we've got the stories, of Bruce that have kind of burnished the legend. What I tried to do was to try to put him back as a human being, as a young person walking through Hong Kong streets and the streets of China, you know, down Grant and then, down King Street in Seattle. making it up to the studios, in Hollywood. and what that meant, for him to, actually accomplish all this kind of stuff. Because when we take away the legend, and this is one of the things I was worried about too, back in the late 2000 tens when I was like, I don't know what I'm gonna write. When you take away the legend. I was worried that people were gonna be like, oh, you just want to drag down this guy? And you're like the guy that's just throwing water on our hero. But what I'm, really understanding now is. when you look back at what he went through and what he overcame, he actually becomes even more heroic, to all of us. He wasn't a perfect person. but I think he remains a hero like more than a half century after his passing because of the things that he did.    [00:28:28] Miko Lee: I think that's right and I think you do an amazing job in the book of incorporating this powerful Asian American history and putting, his experience in a time and place that helps the broader world understand what an icon he is and remains. And I really appreciate you for writing this book and taking this time and the amount of energy it took to Percolate really pays off.    [00:28:52] Jeff Chang: Thanks so much. I so appreciate you.   [00:28:55] Miko Lee: So I'm gonna be interviewing NAKASEC on their new study on Asian American Men in the Manosphere. Are you familiar about this?   [00:29:02] Jeff Chang: Oh, I can't wait to read this. I cannot wait to read this. It's so,    [00:29:06] Miko Lee: do you know about this? No. To this report.    [00:29:08] Jeff Chang: I didn't know about it. I didn't know about it. I'm, I'm glad somebody's doing it.    [00:29:11] Miko Lee: Yeah. So they did a whole survey and they found that there is a lot of Asian American men that are part of the manosphere. Mm-hmm. And I'm wondering for you, who's written about Asian American male identity, if you have thoughts about this?    [00:29:26] Jeff Chang: So many thoughts. I was very much thinking about the Asian American manosphere as I was writing this book, because these are my cousins, these are my friends, these are, folks who I've sparred with.   [00:29:39] Miko Lee: Right.   [00:29:40] Jeff Chang: These are conversations I'm having with folks, at the bar over a meal. I'm really interested in seeing how we're able to understand what the appeal of the far right has been around questions, of masculinity in this moment and to win these folks back. I've also seen on the flip side, shifts and changes, around, how Asian American masculinity is displayed sea on social media in this era of a crackdown in immigration.    [00:30:19] Miko Lee: Yeah.    [00:30:20] Jeff Chang: We really do need solidarity. We really do identify with, what Latinos, are going through. What I worry about is that, the Asian American left, our first in instinct would be just to be like, ah, I can't talk to them. it's Gonna like upset me too much. I can't deal with this. Somebody has to,, because that, those are our folks and we've lost them over the last, five years or so and we've gotta get 'em back.   [00:30:45] Miko Lee: And are there folks that you know of that are working specifically on ways to pull this community back?    [00:30:50] Jeff Chang: I imagine that there's a lot of work on the ground that's happening. because this is the, world that I'm in, I look to the folks who are, doing podcasts or doing social media work and, who are, often, men who. Are, you know, kind of like me, like troubled by this development and trying to find a way to speak to their folks as well. I'm monitoring that. I'm not, deep within it, but, like I said, I wrote this book, understanding that, that particular subset of our community. those are the folks that, are the Bruce Lee fans.    [00:31:22] Miko Lee: Yeah.    [00:31:23] Jeff Chang: and are the folks who are, involved in, mixed martial arts and, involved in, athletics and, all these other kinds of things. And, and they're not too far away.    [00:31:33] Miko Lee: Yeah. It feels like there's a disconnect between that kind of loving of Bruce Lee and that world, and interaction with politics, interaction with the current events and how that's impacting them and their families.    [00:31:48] Jeff Chang: Well, I think it's. Yeah. I put that down to the fragmentation of the way that we receive media.    [00:31:54] Miko Lee: Mm-hmm.    [00:31:55] Jeff Chang: You know, and also, of course, the ways in which social media is geared towards the extremes. The way it's geared towards the extremes and towards lifting up the. Loudest crudest voices sometimes. Mm-hmm. That's exactly where the manosphere originates from. Right? That's where it    [00:32:15] Miko Lee: lives.    [00:32:15] Jeff Chang: Yeah. That's where it lives, is inside that pocket. It's about again, trying to get inside of that and what's causing that. What's the melancholia that's behind that? What is generating this rage, this fury, and being able to channel that, fury, that anger into, ways that will actually help not just all of us, but specifically them.    [00:32:39] Miko Lee: Yeah.    [00:32:40] Jeff Chang: That's an organizing problem that we have to take up.   [00:32:43] Miko Lee: Thank you for sharing. I'm gonna send you the research, the report so you can read it and,    [00:32:48] Jeff Chang: uh, I can't wait to break this open. Oh,    [00:32:52] Miko Lee: okay. I appreciate you. Thanks so much.   [00:32:54] Jeff Chang: Thank you.   [00:32:55] Miko Lee: Next up I speak with Rachel Kelzer, the communications director for NAKASEC, about their new study of Asian American men and the manosphere.Welcome Rachel Koelzer, communications Director for NAKASEC. Welcome to Apex Express.    [00:33:12] Rachel Koelzer: Hi. Thank you so much for having me today.    [00:33:15] Miko Lee: Can you first explain for our audience, your organization that you work with NAKASEC    [00:33:19] Rachel Koelzer: So NAKASEC is short for the National Korean American Service and Education Consortium. We are a national network of five affiliated organizations in six states.   [00:33:32] Miko Lee: Thank you. I wanna start with the question I ask all of my guests, which is, who are your people and what legacy do you carry with you?   [00:33:41] Rachel Koelzer: This is a great question. My people are the dreamers. They are the community rooted, change makers who believe that we are accountable and responsible to each other. For our collective wellbeing, our collective liberation, and our collective joy and care for each other. My people are also Korean adoptees, part of the Asian diaspora, and people who have survived challenges of life and still seek joy and to thrive.   [00:34:23] Miko Lee: Thank you so much for sharing. Through your work at NAKASEC, you recently released this report with a big old title, Asian Men, the Manosphere and Social Media, an Inflection Point for Asian American Advocacy and American Democracy. Wow. Can you first talk about what inspired this study?   [00:34:43] Rachel Koelzer: I became aware that there was this ongoing trend and challenge that we were having of not reaching young Asian men. Our followers were predominantly non men. Based on gender and significantly more women following us. Something like 70 30, 80 20. I talked with other organizations who also do advocacy and community based work who also faced similar challenges. I just wondered why. What is it that is preventing us from effectively reaching this large portion of our community that we serve? So from there we went and partnered with Dr. Tom Wong, and really started to dive into exploring the reasons behind it.    [00:35:34] Miko Lee: So let's back up for a second. Can you explain for our audience what the manosphere is?    [00:35:40] Rachel Koelzer: The manosphere in kind of simplified terms, it's a loosely connected network, of online communities, influencers and content creators who focus on men's issues, masculinity, dating, health and fitness, financial wealth, and gender dynamics. It includes this wide spectrum of content, that range from like the more everyday fitness self-help. To more controversial topics, like anti-feminism, traditional gender roles and critiques of modern women in society. The common thread across these, loosely connected, communities and spaces is this underlying thread of traditional gender norms and expectations.    [00:36:30] Miko Lee: So is the manosphere inherently misogynistic?    [00:36:34] Rachel Koelzer: Yes.    [00:36:35] Miko Lee: Well that was a really quick response. Yes. No question.    [00:36:38] Rachel Koelzer: [Laughter] I being real here, you know? Yeah. It is.    [00:36:46] Miko Lee: Okay.    [00:36:46] Rachel Koelzer: So within the broader manosphere, there's also men's rights activists. Some more like toxic masculine type views. There is a little bit of a range, but yes, inherently, there's deep rooted misogyny.   [00:36:58] Miko Lee: So how did you find people for your Study were they self-described people that participated in the manosphere?   [00:37:06] Rachel Koelzer: We partnered with Dr. Tom Wong, who is at the University of California, San Diego to conduct this survey. He used the voter file. They are self-identified Asian men and we set the parameters to be between the ages of 18 to 45. They identified across political ideology, across political party, and started with more general questions around their social media use. What platforms were they on? What, were the reasons that they were on social media. Who did they follow? To get a baseline understanding of where and what they're consuming. We know that they're online. There were questions about engagement with the manosphere.   [00:37:52] Miko Lee: What did this study reveal? What was surprising to you?    [00:37:57] Rachel Koelzer: What was really shocking is that one in five young Asian men are regularly engaging with manosphere content. That's 20% one in five.   [00:38:07] Miko Lee: That's a huge number.    [00:38:08] Rachel Koelzer: It's a huge number. Yeah. They're engaging with this content that is, starting off pretty innocuous like, you want to look better, you want to feel better, you want to have better relationships. What's being embedded in that to varying degrees of, subtlety are these values of more traditional expectations and roles. It's alarming that this that this many young Asian men are regularly engaging with it. We defined engaging, as, commenting, following, sharing. There were questions about how often they're seeing it across their feed, whether or not they're looking for it or not. We found that 35% of young Asian men are encountering manosphere content on their social media feeds several times a week.   [00:39:00] Miko Lee: Are they identifying it as manosphere content?    [00:39:04] Rachel Koelzer: They identified it, yes. In the survey we did provide a definition. Beforehand of what the manosphere was, and so anything within that would have to fall under this category.   [00:39:17] Miko Lee: Are most of those influencers and content creators, Asian American men also?    [00:39:23] Rachel Koelzer: That's a really good question. When both Dr. Wong and our team, NAKASEC team, were doing some research there, we didn't actually come across when we were looking at like the bigger names, right? Tens of thousands, upwards of millions followers. We didn't really come across many of those large followers that are Asian men. The men that are perpetuating it, regardless of their race or ethnic background. I think what that points to, you mentioned white supremacy earlier, but there's this idea and value that's perpetuated of colorblindness. And so in this space, the gender kind of supersedes the race. What was really curious is, later on in the study we also asked, about early childhood experiences and lessons, from the adults in their lives around masculine values, around showing and expressing emotions, and around representation of asian men in the media. A large portion agreed that the overall representation of Asian men is harmful. We know for those of us who have been interrogating our experiences in the world for a while. We know that Asians and Asian men in particular, we're stereotyped, we're troped in a lot of ways, right, of these feminine, unattractive, nerdy, geeky, or you've got the other side, you've got the Bruce Lees, you've got the Jackie Chans, right? There's a flattening that happens and . I think that is where the manosphere is dangerous and potentially even more appealing to communities who feel that they've been overlooked and undervalued, because it offers answers and those answers are really harmful to other communities, but they're still providing answers.   [00:41:28] Miko Lee: Can we speak a little bit more about the perceptions of Asian Americans in the media There's the stereotypes around women being either the dragon woman or the sexual exotic kind of play toy. Asian men, as you were pointing out, it's either the kung fu guy or the nerdy guy or the effeminate guy. Right. There's like not that much distinction. Is that your perception as well?    [00:41:57] Rachel Koelzer: Yes. I think there's been, even from when I was a child and growing up, over the past 30 years, there's been, improvements. But I think overall yes.   [00:42:08] Miko Lee: When I grew up, the only images were movies and television, and there just was not that much. So we did have those stereotype visions, but it was so limited in scope and content. There just was not as much content. Now it's everywhere. There's content in your phone, there's all these different social media apps, there's all these different channels you can watch. I'm wondering how that has impacted Asian Americans men's perspectives on how they see themselves and if that. Just looking at social media and the manosphere and how that impacted, the reason why you did the study and the outcomes of the study.   [00:42:46] Rachel Koelzer: The study showed that 26.7% of the men who were surveyed feel that Asian men are portrayed favorably in social media. That's actually still a very low percentage. 71.6% agree that Asian men are often underrepresented or stereotyped in media and popular culture. Even though yes, there's still greater representation, that there's still the portrayals and the quality and caliber or what that representation actually is, or how it's developed is still significantly lacking. What the manosphere offers, one, it offers answers as to how you might get away from, from those, right? You might be able to get out of that, which is to be this hyper quote unquote, masculine, dominating, character. It points the blame directly away from systems like patriarchy and white supremacy. It doesn't really interrogate what internalized misogyny, internalized racism, looks like and is doing. It's saying. You know what the problem is actually that women are becoming too independent. The problem is that, men are becoming too effeminate, and so there's this combination of race blindness and naming another villain in a way that punches down.   [00:44:32] It's a combination of looking for genuine insight and information to better understand their experiences and they're finding answers, but the quality of those answers and the ways that they're getting pushed to those are very problematic, very concerning. Not just for what that means for women in queer rights and immigrant rights and marginalized communities rights. These kinds of values that are being espoused and normalized. But what that means for, , how someone starts to view themselves and, their role in the world and the impact that that has on the systems, and structures of our society.    [00:45:13] Miko Lee: There's so many interesting things that you said. I heard you say the men are finding a sense of belonging in the manosphere, and they're getting answers and the answers being right wing propaganda, which is being fed to them. Is that right?   [00:45:26] Rachel Koelzer: Yeah, I think that's right. The problem is the quality of the answers that they're receiving. The values that are embedded within that, whether or not they're being explicitly named, it's not. There are, again, if you go further, deeper, there are folks that are very proud to be part of the manosphere. That is a known and a shared identity as far as like we are part of the manosphere.Then there are those, I think Joe Rogan himself is like, I'm not part of that, but if you listen to his content and his messages, right? There's a lot of those traditional right wing, very violent and misogynistic roots that are coming out in there.   [00:46:13] It starts off very innocuously looking for answers, looking to better understand your life, your experiences, and what you can do about it. That's innocuous enough. Right. And there's even, like, there's a lot to be said about that kind of,, what's the word I'm trying to think of,, initiative, right? To better understand and seek resources and things. But unfortunately through a combination of the algorithm. Through investments into these kinds of content creators, , and spaces we're seeing that those proliferating a lot more. And so whether or not young Asian men are intentionally seeking this type of content, they're being fed it regularly.   [00:46:54] Miko Lee: I also heard you this comment about race blindness. I get that it because it's like men, men, men we're men and we're bounding together. But race blindness feels like a rube, if you will, for, white supremacy and misogyny. It's this way of saying we are all one, but very much targeting, specific folks that are not in positions of power and control.   [00:47:21] Rachel Koelzer: Yeah, absolutely. It flattens and erases the experiences of people who have been marginalized through, our laws, our policies, and it stops the need. It stops the self-reflection and interrogation too that is asked of us otherwise, which is to reflect on what power do I hold and what is my responsibility with that power, whether it's, having more privilege because I'm a citizen. Having privilege because you are a man. Even if you are also, historically and presently marginalized because of your race as an Asian person, it reduces that depth and again, that responsibility for self-reflection and interrogation.   [00:48:22] Miko Lee: So given all that, your report says this is a warning sign, which clearly it is and an opportunity. I wonder if you could talk a bit more about what is the opportunity here as we're in this time of great change. Great revolution, the year of the fire horse. Talk about how we can actively disrupt that pipeline to radical extremism.    [00:48:46] Rachel Koelzer: It's an important question and it's an important conversation that we need to have. There needs to be an awareness and an understanding of what it is that, is threatening the health and wellbeing of our community and of our country. What this study showed is we're at an inflection point. The percentages, the numbers, we're not so far down the rabbit hole, but we're like right on the edge. We're like at this tipping point, and so intervention is necessary now. This is a great opportunity for organizations, for community leaders to be having these conversations. To be engaging in political education with their community members to be, educating and informing and connecting with members of their community, particularly young Asian men. And it's an opportunity for these in-person spaces and these digital spaces to be countering the manosphere with our own answers.   [00:49:51] I think that's one of the biggest things, especially when we're talking about a digital space, to be investing in content creators, to be investing in artists, to be investing in doing the work of putting out our own answers and solutions. Explanations and analysis of what is happening. It's a call to action and an opportunity for funders, donors for people who have the ability, to put money behind these kinds of spaces online. There's just this significant disparate investment. It's an opportunity to be really investing in community, really investing in recreating spaces, building out spaces, I'm thinking particularly again, community-based organizations who can be understanding what the risks and threats are and understanding their communities where they are, and not necessarily adding to, but, with this threat in mind, how does that inform the spaces that you're creating or the strategies that you are engaging?Whether it's online or in person.   [00:51:13] Miko Lee: We need to gather up our brothers, our nephews, our uncles, gather 'em all up, talk about our real, Asian American history of resistance, our power, our ability to move forward, connect with that in person, pull them outta the manosphere, connect all together so that we could move forward as a community in solidarity with each other.   [00:51:37] Rachel Koelzer: Absolutely. There's opportunities across the board regardless, of where your particular position is. Even if you're not a part of a community organization or you're a teacher, a parent. One of the things that also came up in this study was that across ideologies, across the political spectrum and across age groups, there was a significant number. It was like close to 70 or over 70% had shared experiences, of being discouraged from showing emotions, from being, from seeing, modeled from the men in their lives, examples of stoicism. Of, more traditional masculinity, more traditional gender norms. And so there is this also aspect of, yeah, bringing in folks, bringing in our nephews, our brothers, our cousins, our friends, our uncles, and a reflection upon what can we do to be, raising our next generations, our current and our next generations, to value themselves and those around them who are different. To be able to express emotions, be able to have deep, reciprocal relationships, , and to have respect and understand what it means to reflect on one's privilege that comes as a result of, an identity in this very hierarchical world, whether it's, as a man under patriarchy or white, under white supremacy. These are skills that can be taught and can be learned. I think that this is also an opportunity to be reflecting on how we as a society understanding these    [00:53:33] Miko Lee: Well, Rachel Koelzer, thank you so much for joining me and sharing about your report. How can people find out more about your work?   [00:53:42] Rachel Koelzer: Thank you so much for having me. You can follow NAKASEC on most social media platforms. Visit our website. We've got tons of resources and information there and check out our local affiliates. You can find out more about them on our website and on our socials. If you are, you know, in the area, would love to see you.    [00:54:01] Miko Lee: Thank you so much.    [00:54:03] Rachel Koelzer: Thank you.   [00:54:04] Miko Lee: Thank you so much for joining us. Just a note that Apex Express will be off air for fundrive until May 28th, but we wanna acknowledge that May is Asian American, native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander Heritage Month, and there are film festivals and cultural events happening all around the country that celebrate our diverse experiences. One Bay Area one to note is CAAMFEST. It's back! The center of Asian American media returns for its 44th year and its festival from May 7th through the 10th is at the Kabuki Theater, a MC in San Francisco with an amazing program of impressive filmmakers. Check it out, maybe I'll see you there and happy AANHPI month. Please check out our website, kpfa.org/program/apexexpress to find out more about our show and our guests tonight. We thank all of you listeners out there. Keep resisting, keep organizing, keep creating, and sharing your visions with the world because your voices are important. Apex Express is produced by Ayame Keane-Lee, Anuj Vaidya, Cheryl Truong, Isabel Li, Jalena Keane-Lee, Miko Lee, Miata Tan, Preti Mangala-Shekar and Swati Rayasam. Tonight's show was produced by me Miko Lee, and edited by Ayame Keane-Lee. Have a great night..    The post APEX Express – 4.30.26 – Bruce Lee and the Manosphere appeared first on KPFA.

Even when businesses are growing, hiring isn’t always keeping up. In today’s uncertain global environment, shaped by geopolitical tensions, cost pressures and rapid advances in AI, companies are becoming more cautious about how they expand. Hiring is more targeted, investment is more disciplined, and productivity is taking priority over headcount. On Industry Insight, Lynlee Foo speaks with Vincent Chin, Global Vice Chair, Public Sector Practice, at Boston Consulting Group, on what he’s seeing across industries in Singapore and Southeast Asia. Vincent shares how companies are navigating uncertainty, why hiring is becoming more selective, where demand for jobs still exists, and how AI and automation are reshaping the way businesses grow.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In his new book "American Peril: The Violent History of Anti-Asian Racism", author Scott Kurashige reveals a 175 year cycle of scapegoating, from 19th Century lynching's, to the 1982 murder of Vincent Chin, and argues that true safety lies in multiracial solidarity, not just hate crime legislation. All this and more on News Radio KKOB See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

“We can use the same skills we learned organizing on the block to organize inside the halls of power.” That's how Senator Stephanie Chang frames her journey—from a young volunteer knocking doors with Detroit activists to becoming one of the most grounded and community-rooted legislators in Michigan. In this Detroit Is Different conversation, Chang reflects on learning politics at the true street level, honoring water warriors like Mama Lila Cabbil (RIP) and Monica Lewis-Patrick, and carrying forward the multiracial advocacy traditions that shaped Detroit—from Vincent Chin to Black Bottom. “The issues I'm fighting now,” she says, “are the same ones I cared about before I ever thought about running.” With stories of living at the Boggs Center, lessons from Grace Lee Boggs' organizing tree, and reflections on raising Black and Asian children in today's Detroit, Chang unpacks how identity, justice, and policy collide. This episode is a bridge—connecting Detroit's radical past to its rapidly shifting political future—and shines light on why grassroots leadership still matters in a city where water, land, affordability, and dignity remain at the center of the struggle. It's an inspiring reminder that movements make leaders, and leaders must stay accountable to the movement. Detroit is Different is a podcast hosted by Khary Frazier covering people adding to the culture of an American Classic city. Visit www.detroitisdifferent.com to hear, see and experience more of what makes Detroit different. Follow, like, share, and subscribe to the Podcast on iTunes, Google Play, and Sticher. Comment, suggest and connect with the podcast by emailing info@detroitisdifferent.com

As one of the world's great technology companies, Siemens needs no introduction, but is notable for not only a holistic approach to sustainability but, in particular, for the way sustainability has been integrated into the heart of the business model. But how do they drive the sustainability agenda with more than 300,000 people? How do they innovate at such a scale? How do they bring technology and sustainability together in practice? And how are their efforts received by their customers, employees, and investors?We are delighted to be joined by Dr. Eva Riesenhuber, the Global Head of Sustainability at Siemens, to help share insights into these questions and more. Eva started her career as a lawyer, with a doctorate in international public law and more than a decade of experience as a finance lawyer in New York. From there, Eva has worked as an SVP in the Siemens M&A department, as CFO of Next47, the Siemens-owned venture capital firm, and as the Head of Investor Relations at Siemens. She became Global Head of Sustainability in October 2022 and is a member of the supervisory board of Siemens Mobility GmbH.Building on her strong foundations in law and value creation, Eva speaks with Vincent Chin, Managing Director & Senior Partner at BCG and Asia Pacific Regional Leader of the BCG Henderson Institute, about the role of innovation, the people agenda, and the shareholder perspective in Siemens' sustainability efforts. They cover decarbonizing in conjunction with customers, building new approaches to product design, ensuring that efforts are globally inclusive, and the role of AI. Eva's unique viewpoints make this essential listening for those looking to activate large organizations to deliver a competitive advantage through sustainability.

A weekly magazine-style radio show featuring the voices and stories of Asians and Pacific Islanders from all corners of our community. The show is produced by a collective of media makers, deejays, and activists. Tonight's show is June 19th. We are all connected. We are talking with Asian and Asian American Children's book authors. PowerLeeGirls host Miko Lee talks with Chi Thai and Livia Blackburne about the power of storytelling, maternal heritage, generational trauma, and much more. Title:  We Are All Connected Show Transcripts Opening: [00:00:00] Apex Express Asian Pacific expression. Community and cultural coverage, music and calendar, new visions and voices, coming to you with an Asian Pacific Islander point of view. It's time to get on board the Apex Express.   Ayame Keane-Lee: [00:01:17] Welcome to Apex Express. Tonight's show is June 19th. We are all connected. We are talking with Asian and Asian American Children's book authors. PowerLeeGirls host Miko Lee talks with Chi Thai and Livia Blackburne about the power of storytelling, maternal heritage, generational trauma, and much more. First, we want to start by wishing everyone a happy Juneteenth, Juneteenth commemorates, an end to slavery and the emancipation of Black Americans after the Civil War. In 1865, 2 years after the Emancipation Proclamation, enslaved people in Galveston, Texas finally learned of their freedom. Juneteenth marks the day the last enslaved people learned of their freedom. Though outright slavery became illegal, the systematic oppression of African Americans continues to this day. We see that show up in almost every aspect of American culture, from the high rate of infant mortality to the over punishing of Black children in schools, to police brutality, to incarceration. We must continue to recognize the importance of championing Black lives and lifting up Black voices. We are all connected. June 19th is also an important day in Asian American history. In 1982 in Detroit, Vincent Chin was at a bar celebrating his bachelor party prior to his wedding the next day. Ronald Ebens, a white auto worker, and his stepson Michael Nitz taunted Vincent with racial epithets. They thought he was Japanese and were angry about the Japanese rise in the auto industry. When Vincent left the bar later, the two men attacked and killed Vincent with a baseball bat. He was 27 years old. Ronald Ebens never did time for this murder. Ronald Ebens is 85 years old now. Ebens not only skirted prosecution, he has used bankruptcy and homesteading laws in Nevada to avoid a wrongful death civil suit settlement. Ordered by the court in 1987 to pay $1.5 million to Chin's family, the Chin estate has received nothing. Lily Chin, Vincent's mom could have stayed silent about the racist attack on her son. Instead she spoke out. She took a courageous stance to highlight this most painful moment in her life. In doing so, she helped ignite a new generation of Asian American activists working for civil rights and social justice. We find ourselves in a new wave of activism as our communities band together to work against the injustices of the current regime. And what does this have to do with children's books? It is all connected. We highlight children's books by Asian and Asian American authors because we want our next generation of children to know and appreciate their own heritage. We want them to proudly represent who they are so that they can work in solidarity with other peoples. Our struggle is interwoven. As Grace Lee Boggs said, “History is a story not only of the past, but of the future.” Thank you for joining us on apex express. Enjoy the show.   Miko Lee: [00:04:24] First off. Let's take a listen to one of Byron Au Young's compositions called “Know Your Rights” This is part of the trilogy of the Activist Songbook. This multi-lingual rap, give steps to know what to do when ICE officers come to your door.    MUSIC   That was “Know Your Rights” performed by Jason Chu with lyrics by Aaron Jeffries and composed by Byron Au Yong Welcome, Chi Thai to Apex Express.    Chi Thai: [00:07:13] Hello. I'm really happy to be joining you, Miko.  Miko Lee: [00:07:16] I'm really happy to meet you and learn about you as an artist, as a filmmaker, as a children's book author. And I wanna first start with a personal question, which is, who are your people and what legacy do you carry with you? Chi Thai: [00:07:30] Ooh, what a great question. You know what? I love being asked stuff that hasn't been asked kind of before. I mean, there's a kinda really kinda natural answer to that, which is, you know, family are my people. Of course. 100%. And certainly, you know, the reason why I'm talking to you today, you know, in regard to the, to the book, you know, it's about my family's journey. But I found, and I don't know if this is. Somewhat to do with, you know, being a child of two cultures and you know, being a child of the diaspora that you really have to kind of find your own family too. 'cause I suppose I grew up feeling, I didn't quite relate to maybe my parents in a way that, you know, you normally would if you weren't part of the diaspora. And I felt estranged from my birth country and I didn't really feel like British either a lot of the time. So in terms of like, who are my people? I've gathered those people as I've kind of grown up and it's, it's a kind of strange feeling too. I feel like it's taken me a really long to grow up and to figure out who I am. And I suppose that's why, you know, the people that I have a really, a lot of people that have come, kinda later in my life, I actually have no friends in my childhood as an example of that. I've had to kind of find these people as I've grown up, but it's taken me a long time to grow up because growing up in the UK there wasn't any literature to read about what it was like to be Asian. And British, to be a refugee and things like that. So it just took me longer and I then, as a result, it just took me longer to find my tribe. but I have it now, but it's still work in progress. That was a very convoluted answer. I'm very sorry Miko.    Miko Lee: [00:09:15] No, it wasn't. No worries. It's fine. And what legacy do you carry with you?   Chi Thai: [00:09:19] Kind of an extension to that answer, I think when you're an artist, practicing your voice, figuring out your voice, can take a while. And I think I've only really started maybe the last like five to 10 years at the most really figured out what I want my legacy to be. The things I wanna talk about are really about s tories from the diaspora, certainly, and about community and healing. These are the things I think that are really important to me, especially when we talk about maybe coming from struggle. I don't feel it's enough to be an artist today and just talk about struggle. I want to talk about justice as well. And justice really is about healing, you know?    Miko Lee: [00:10:00] Oh, that's beautiful. Can you talk a little bit more about that healing and what that means to you and how that shows up in your work?    Chi Thai: [00:10:07] A couple years ago, no, not even that long ago, I produced a, a feature film. This is probably the best example for it, but I produced a feature film called Raging Grace, which we called it Horror with a small H and it. Basically took the story of what it was like to be, undocumented Filipina in the uk who was also a mother. And I think if that film had been made 10 years ago, it would just shown how hard her life was, and unrelentingly. So, and I think the reason why Raising Grace is so special is it goes beyond the trauma, it takes us to a place of justice, of being able to speak out for someone who has felt invisible, to be visible for someone who's not. Had a voice, to have a voice and to begin that kind of healing process of sticking up for herself, making a change transforming herself from maybe the good immigrant to the bad immigrant and things like that. I think that's a really great example and I think I read a really wonderful thing. It might have been in a Guardian article where we, so a lot of my work is around, inclusion representation of like diasporic stories. And I think when you have, when you exist in the poverty of like representation, I. the solution to that is plentitude. I think that Viet Thanh Nguyen probably said that, so I don't wanna take credit for it. He comes up with so many wonderful things, and that's a wonderful thing to be able to move from poverty, like to plentitude and that be the solution, is kinda really wonderful. So I enjoy being really prolific. I enjoy supporting artists to be able to do their work. So as a community, we can also be prolific and I wanna support, narratives that. Take us beyond a place of struggle and trauma to a place of like healing and justice and so forth.    Miko Lee: [00:11:57] Your work crosses so many genres. You were just mentioning how that film was kind of a horror film and, and then you've done these kind of dreamy animation pieces and then now this children's book. Do you select the genre and the format and the medium, or does it select you?   Chi Thai: [00:12:16] Oh, I think the story chooses it. I like 100% believe that. I just actually was thinking about this 'cause I was doing an interview on something else, people, often ask about the creative process and I, can only speak for my own. But usually when I get an idea for a story, the general shape of it comes almost like really well formed. There's a sense of a lready kinda what genre it'll be. There's a sense of the character, there's a sense of the journey and all these things. I felt the same about, writing The Endless Sea I knew it would be from the voice of a child. This probably sounds like my creative process is terrible, but it was just. This is how it was going to be. That kind of part was writing itself, or at least I feel that it'd been writing itself like that in my subconscious for many, many years before it kind of surfacing and writing. Like the writing bit is just the tip of the iceberg at the end of the day. there wasn't like a kind of decision about that. the story in that sense was quite intact. So I often feel like the story is demanding something about kind genre and for, for Raging Grace 'cause I've talked about this a lot, not just in listen to me, but other things. But we always said like if you are an an undocumented person, every breath you take is taken in a hostile environment. It's so natural for it to be a horror. So there's not a sense that you kinda decide that it's like that is the very reality of someone who's going, you know, that's their lived experience. And if you're going to represent that truthfully, it will be through the prism of horror. And I suppose that's how I think about genre. the story is kind of telling you what it needs to tell its emotional truth. and I felt that way, with The Endless Sea same thing with the Raging Grace, with Lullaby. And I think you talked about The Promise, I suppose I, with The Promise, which is an adaptation I had less choice about that because that was a book and it was a adapted into an animation. I've heard Nicola, who's the author of the book, talk about that and she talks about like the story coming to her in a dream and tiptoeing down her arm coming onto the page, she like describes it really beautifully. so maybe our processes are the same. It feels that way. there's not long deliberations. I mean, that's not to say the writing process isn't difficult. It is. But that, I've never found the, [genre] the difficulty or the bit that's required a lot of, I don't know soul searching with it.    Miko Lee: [00:14:28] So with that being said, how did Endless Sea your latest children's book? How did that tiptoe into your imagination?    Chi Thai: [00:14:36] This is a strange one because this is probably the closest thing to like, almost autobiographical work. What I can say is like, it's the true story o f how I and my family, which would've been at the time my mom and dad, my older sister, me, how we fled Vietnam after the fall of an Saigon. we actually left quite late we left in 1979 w hen things were tr were getting truly, truly, truly, quite terrible. And, this was very much a last resort. I think my parents would try to make things work, but realized that they couldn't. This journey that we took on these, boats that were made badly, made poorly, that many of which sank has become almost like the genesis story of our family. It's like it's a big, it has a long shadow, right? Ever since you know I, it is like the first story that I can remember. It's one of the few stories my mom would tell me again and again when we, when they see their old friends, it's something they talk about. So it's something that has happened to it to us, but it's such a big thing that it's just, echoed In my life growing up, as I've you know, got older and older, and the wonderful thing about having a story kinda live with you eventually it's in your blood and in your bones, but also if it's a thing that's kinda shared with you again and again, you actually build up this, there's something about the repetition of it, and then every time you hear it told from an uncle or a family friend or from your mom, a new little detail is embroidered that someone adds. So I've kinda lived with this story for 40 plus years and I've been collecting all these little things about it all this time and all that time it was, I think, kind of just writing itself, you know? You know, it was doing all that work before I actually put like pen to paper. Um, yeah.    Miko Lee: [00:16:31] Was there a catalyst or something that made you actually put the pen to paper?   Chi Thai: [00:16:36] That's really interesting. You know, I probably don't mind it is probably something really banal like. I think I probably wrote it during Covid and I had more time. Um, I think there are probably be some bigger forces in place. And you know what, I can tell you what it is actually if I'm, I'm forcing myself to think and examine a bit closer so when this is totally true. So I remember hearing the news about Viet Thanh Nguyen win winning the Pulitzer for The Sympathizer. And it made such a mark on me and I kind of felt, wow, someone from our community has achieved this incredible thing. And I thought, why? Why now? Like, and I was like, well, you know what? It's probably taken our community certain amount of time to come of age, to develop not just the abilities to write, to create, to make art, but also to have possibly the relationships or networks in place to be able to then make the art and get it out into the world. And I kind of felt when he was able to do that and came of age, I kind of felt there was going to be like other people from the kind of diasporic Vietnamese community that would also start to flourish. And that made me feel really good. About probably being a bit older than the average kind of artist, like making their, kinda like their pieces and everything and saying, you know what? My time can be now. It's okay. And I just find it just really inspiring that, you know our community was kind of growing, growing up, coming of age and being able to do these, these things And I kind of felt like it had given me the permission, I suppose the, the confidence to go, “Oh this story that I've been carrying my whole life, which I don't really see a version of out there I can write that and now I can write it and I'm the right person to write it.” And I had just done The Promise so I had a relationship with Walker. I was like, I have a, you know, a relationship with the publisher. I feel my writing is matured. Like I can do this. And so it was like a culmination and, you know, convergence of those things. And, but I do remember having that thought thinking, “This is a good time to be alive in our community 'cause we're actually able to make our art and get it out there now.” I, I felt it was like a real watershed moment really.   Miko Lee: [00:19:11] What made you decide to do it in this format as a Little Kid's Children's Illustrated book? We were talking earlier about how to, to me, this is the first more realistic version of a boat people experience in a very little kid's voice. What made you decide to do it in this style?    Chi Thai: [00:19:33] So interesting. At the same time, I was writing The Endless Sea. I was writing also the script for a short film, which is called Lullaby, which is takes an incident that happened on my boat but expresses it as a film, as a little kinda horror kinda drama, but a kid cannot watch that. It's like too terrifying. Um, and I wrote, you know, The Endless Sea at the same time. And again, I can't, it's really hard for me to articulate. I just knew it was gonna be a kid's book, like, and I knew it'd be written from the voice of a kid, and I didn't actually, can I say I didn't even ascribe a particular kind of value to that. It wasn't until I had started conversations with the publisher they're like, you know, we see like there's a really high, like this is really great that it's written in the voice of the kid. It somehow gives it something else. Something more is something kind of special. I didn't set out to like, overthink, like what was the most effective way to tell this story? I, I think I just told the story as honestly as I could, you know, with the words that I felt that, you know, I had in me to de, you know, to describe it. In the most authentic way to, to me. And like I say, at the same time, I knew, like I knew that was a kid's book. There was another part of that I wanted to express that was really important to me and that was survivor's guilt. But that I felt was like, that was a horror, so that was really not gonna be suitable for kids. So I was definitely thinking about lots of things to do with the same subject of the same time, but they were definitely being expressed in different ways. And again, Lullaby came to me very kind of quickly, almost fully formed. And I knew, you know, it would be a ghost story. I knew it would be the story of a mother and things like that. And I often maybe, you know, I should, I, I should interrogate more, but I kinda, I take these kinda. These ideas, which are quite well shaped and, and then I just like lean into them more and more and more. But they, the way they arrive it, I've kinda, I, I can see a lot of what is already about to unfold.   Miko Lee: [00:21:43] And do you still dream about that experience of being on the boat as a kid?    Chi Thai: [00:21:52] It's, it's a really difficult thing to explain because you know that that happened now so long ago, and I've probably heard the story thousands of times. I've watched all the terrible Hollywood movies, I've seen all the news clippings, I've watched all the archive. I've listened to, you know, people talk, and I have my own memories and I look at photographs and I have memories of looking at photographs. I feel like, you know, my memory is really unreliable, but what it is instead is it's this, this kind of, kind of tapestry of, you know, of the story of memories, of, you know, images as I grow up of hearing the story, like all coming together. One of the things I did when I wrote, I wrote The Endless Sea, is I then went back to my mom and I did a recorded interview with her 'cause I was really worried about how unreliable my memory might be. And I interviewed her and I asked a lot of questions and I said, and I, it was like, you know, in the way I would've just like listened to the story quite passively before this time I interviewed her and I asked a lot of questions about details and all sorts of things. 'cause I really wanted to be able to represent things, you know, as factually as I could. And that was kinda one of my kinda kind of fact checking kinda exercises I did 'cause I was, I was much quite worried about how unreliable my memory was about it all. And you know, what is, what is a memory of a memory of memory, like, you know, especially when it comes to thinking about that time on the boat and the feelings I had. Yeah. So, you know,    Miko Lee: [00:23:34] and you were so young also to    Chi Thai: [00:23:37] Totally 100%. And sometimes, I don't know, you know, is it a memory of a memory? Is it a dream of a dream?   Miko Lee: [00:23:44] Mm-hmm.    Chi Thai: [00:23:44] Or just some, yeah.   Miko Lee: [00:23:46] Was there anything that your mom said that surprised you?    Chi Thai: [00:23:50] Yeah. Um, she didn't realize how bad it was gonna be and she was like, “God, if it, I'd known how terrifying it was I dunno if I, we could have done it.” I think there's a certain amount of naivety involved and I suppose that surprised me. You know? 'cause we know already now how bad it was. Um, so things like that surprised me.    Miko Lee: [00:24:15] and your mom, the dedication of the book is to your mom. What does she think when she first read it?    Chi Thai: [00:24:22] I've got a funny story. My parents, you know, they, we left, they were in their early twenties and I think it was, you know, the escape was hard for them, but settling in new country was really hard for them. That's. That's been kind of their struggle. They had to work so hard, so many hours to kind of, you know, give us a great life. And, I think a lot of that meant they weren't people that could go out, enjoy, enjoy movies, look at art, read lots of literature and things like that. They're very, very simple, very working class. Simple life or working class kinda life. Very much all about, uh, the work. Um, and I remember when I had a, the publisher had made like a mockup of the book and I gave it to my mum to read 'cause I wanted her to be happy about it too, and she's probably been my toughest critic. I think everything I've done, she hasn't really liked, to be honest. Um, and when I gave her the mockup to read. She went, “Yeah,” but she said it in such a way I knew what she meant was Yeah, that's right. You know, that's the truth. That's the, you know, the book isn't the testimony, but it felt like she was saying yeah. It was like the simple kind of approval. It wasn't like a lot    Miko Lee: [00:25:50] That is the most Asian mom's approval ever.    Chi Thai: [00:25:54] It's so funny, like people say to me, oh Chi, it's such a beautiful book. Oh, the writing so lit, like lyrical. It's stripped back, it's elegant. Like, you know, Viet Thanh Nguyen , like God bless his like consults, gave me a comment to put in the book, said these wonderful things, and my mom goes, “yeah.”. You know, it made me laugh at the time, but I knew what it meant. And I also was old enough, I was mature enough, you know, God, if she'd given me that, if I'd been 20 written that I might have cried and my heart might have broken. Right. But I, I knew I had, I've so much compassion, you know, for my parents. Mm-hmm. And people like my parents, what they've been through and, you know, but    Miko Lee: [00:26:38] That was incredibly high praise for her.    Chi Thai: [00:26:40] It was, I couldn't have asked more.   Miko Lee: [00:26:47] Oh, I totally get that. I think that's such an Asian thing. That is so funny.    Chi Thai: [00:26:53] It is, it is. I didn't feel bad. I, I remember showing her Lullaby, um, and she didn't like it at all.    Miko Lee: [00:27:02] What did she say? What is her not like voice? What did she say to that?    Chi Thai: [00:27:05] Oh, she. Well, firstly, she, well, the, the film is almost silent because basically it tells a story. It's inspired by a mother that was on our boat who lost her baby on the border crossing, and I was very much ever, for as long as I knew about this woman's story, I was like, I was very much haunted by it, and I was haunted by, you know, the fact that that's how she felt and her guilt. Over losing her baby on this journey. And I knew, I knew I wanted to tell her story. 'cause one of the things I feel very strongly about is when you are on the losing side. So I'm from South Vietnam, like that's not the, you know, that's not the story that's told, the story is told of who triumphs at the end of the day. And I was just like all those people that we lost at sea, this mother, her baby. The stories kind of aren't told. So I kind of felt really strongly that this was somehow a very creative way to put down like a, an historical record like this happened. And actually I found out after making the film that five babies were lost in our boat, not just one.   Miko Lee: [00:28:24] Wow. So what did she say, your mom say?   Chi Thai: [00:28:28] Yes. So I made this film, which was for the most part, a silent film. This is a woman that's shut down. She barely speaks anymore. She is living with the guilt ever. You know, when she was on the boat before her baby died, she sang a lullaby, and ever since then, she hasn't been able to speak again. And then we find out that she has been haunted by the ghost of her child that she lost. And then a bit too, you know, to kind of free herself from that. She, she actually sings, you know, the, the film culminates in her singing the Luby one last time. S saying Goodbye finally being able to move beyond her Gild and I Griffin, saying goodbye and hoping she's able to, you know, progress. So I made a film about that was largely silence except for this lullaby, and my mum watched it. She went, next time you make a film, you know you need more words. I was just like, oh, I think my heart probably did crumple off a bit a bit at that point.    Miko Lee: [00:29:30] Aw.    Chi Thai: [00:29:31] You know? Um, but yeah. But yeah, it's okay. It's okay because you know what? My mom doesn't get to see stuff like that very often. So sometimes she doesn't have the wider, and this is why, I mean, like, the life that she's had, you know, hasn't been one where she's been able to surround herself with, oh, I'm so lucky. You know, my life has been so different, but it's been different. Different because of, you know what she's, what she's done for us, so it's okay. I can take it on the chin when she says my film doesn't have enough dialogue in it.    Miko Lee: [00:30:04] I love that. For you, have you had conversations with your mom about your life as an artist, and what are her thoughts on that?   Chi Thai: [00:30:16] Well say. So I, so my mom, I don't really like, you know, she's probably not that into it. I'll be honest about being an artist. I can understand why she wants you to have a good life. And I would say for the most part, being an artist is, is a, is a tough life because it's hard to make, you know, the, the pennies work, right?   Miko Lee: [00:30:44] She wants stability for you, right?    Chi Thai: [00:30:45] Yeah, exactly. But she's made a peace with it. And basically what happened, I think all the best story is gonna be about my mom, right? Is that she basically, I, I, um, I have a partner, we've been together for 15 years. Um, he's a really nice guy and he has a reliable job and we have two kids together and i,    Miko Lee: [00:31:08] So that makes it okay.   Chi Thai: [00:31:10] So yeah, this is what I was saying. So she said to me like. It doesn't really matter what you do now. 'cause she, you are already peaked. You're somebody's wife. We're not married. But she told everyone in Vietnam we were married 'cause she couldn't cope with this not being like having kids out of wedlock. In her head. She's rewritten that we are married. Right. She's like, you are married, you're somebody's wife and you mother, it doesn't get better than that. So if you are an artist or if you're a filmmaker, whatever, it doesn't matter. 'cause nothing can be better than that. Right. So she's accepted on the basis that I've already fulfilled, kind of my promise.   Miko Lee: [00:31:46] Wow. Interesting.    Chi Thai: [00:31:50] And she means that in the nicest possible way.    Miko Lee: [00:31:52] Yeah.    Chi Thai: [00:31:52] That she feels like you have a home, you have stability, you have someone who loves you, you know, you have a, a purpose in life, but really her value, you know, the way, I think, the way she measures my value is like, that's how she looks at it. The, the art is something else.    Miko Lee: [00:32:10] Well, I really appreciate you sharing your art with us in the world and your various, um, genres and styles. And I'm wondering how our audience can find out more about your work. Clearly we'll put links to where people can buy the book and let's see, but how do they find out more about your films?   Chi Thai: [00:32:28] Um, so that like, because it is the 50th anniversary of the end of the Vietnam War in 2025. Actually the very anniversary of that is the tomorrow, the 30th, April, right? Um, you can watch Lullaby on Altar, which is a YouTube channel. Um, and I can give you the link for it. Rating Grace is on Paramount Plus if you want to, if you've got Paramount Plus, but you can also buy it from all the usual kind of places too. Um, and you know, and we'll see us from all great book stockists, I imagine in, in the us.   Miko Lee: [00:33:07] Thank you so much. Um, I'd love to get, I'd love for you to send me the link so I could put 'em in the show notes. I really appreciate chatting with you today. Um, is there anything else you'd like to share?    Chi Thai: [00:33:19] Um, no, I think, I think that's good. Your, your questions are so good. Mika, I'm already like, kinda like processing them all. Uh, yes.    Miko Lee: [00:33:30] Well, it was a delight to chat with you and to learn more about your artistic vision, and my wishes are that you continue to grow and feel blessed no matter what your mama says, because deep down, she's still proud of you. Even if she doesn't say it out loud.    Chi Thai: [00:33:47] I believe it. I totally believe it.    Miko Lee: [00:33:50] Yay. Thank you so much for spending time with us on Apex Express.Next up, listen to stay, go from dark heart, a concert narrative by singer and songwriter Golda Sargento.   MUSIC   That was the voice of Golda Sargento from the new Filipino futurism punk rock sci-fi dark heart. Welcome, Livia Blackburne Children's book, author of Nainai's Mountain. Welcome to Apex Express.    Livia Blackburne: [00:38:56] Thank you so much for having me.    Miko Lee: [00:38:58] I wanna start with a personal question, which is, who are your people and what legacy do you carry with you?    Livia Blackburne: [00:39:05] I am Chinese American, and so I carry the stories of my grandparents who fled China to Taiwan, fled that war. And I also carry the stories of my parents and myself who immigrated. To America, and I am, I grew up in New Mexico, so I have fond memories of green chili and new Mexican food. I went to college, Harvard and MIT on the east coast. So I've got a bit of that kind of ivory tower. And now I'm in LA and, you know, my people are, my family and my community, the writing community here. So I, I'm a big mix. Yes.    Miko Lee: [00:39:44] What legacy do you carry with you?    Livia Blackburne: [00:39:47] I mentioned a bit of my grandparents and my parents. What they went through in the war in China, and then my parents and me coming here. the experience of being here in two worlds, coming from Taiwan having that cultural background and also, growing up in the United States. The culture I've been surrounded with here as well.    Miko Lee: [00:40:06] Thank you so much for sharing. Can you tell us about your new illustrated children's book? Nainai's Mountain. What inspired this work?    Livia Blackburne: [00:40:14] The story of this book actually started with another book that is coming out in a couple years that actually I can't share too much about. My grandparents fled the war in China and then my. Parents grew up in Taiwan and I wanted to preserve that family story. My parents are getting older. So I started doing oral interviews with my parents about their childhood, what it was like, growing up. I wouldn't say they weren't refugees in Taiwan. It's a very complicated political situation, but they were transplants to Taiwan, and what it was like growing up there, their daily life. What kind of things they did when they were a child, their pastimes, I wanted to preserve their stories and I got a lot of great material., A lot of that is going into a novel that I'm currently working on. But also as I worked on it, there were so many great details that I thought would be really good in a picture book as well. Also, I'm a mother now. I have an 8-year-old daughter, and she is half Caucasian, half Asian. She has never gone to Taiwan before and I. As I'm writing this, I'm thinking, it would be really great to, I do want to share Taiwan and, my own childhood, home with her at some point. And so I start imagining what would it be like to bring her back to Taiwan and show her everything. And that became the seed for Nainai's Mountain, which is a. Story of a girl visiting Taiwan for the first time with her grandmother. And her grandmother shows her around and tells her stories about her childhood, and the girl through her grandmother's eyes, sees Taiwan, you know, for the beautiful place that it is.    Miko Lee: [00:41:56] You also wrote the book I Dream of Popo. How are these companions to each other and also for audiences that might not speak Chinese. One is a grandmother on the mother's side, and the other is the grandmother on the father's side. Can you talk about how I dream of Popo is linked to Nainai's Mountain?   Livia Blackburne: [00:42:15] Thank you for pointing that out. Yes. So Popo is maternal grandmother, and Nainai is a paternal grandmother. And that is a fantastic question. So I dream of popo is kind of my story. So it's about a little girl who moves from Taiwan , to the United States and it's about her relationship with her grandmother who stays in Taiwan. And it talks about, how a close relationship, navigating long geographical distances about the language barrier that comes up. And that was very much me, Nainai's Mountain. It's kind of like Popo in reverse, you know, it's now it's someone going back to Taiwan and kind of getting in touch with those roots. That, as I mentioned, that's inspired by my daughter. And you'll see in Nainai's Mountain, I specified that the child should be, half Asian, half Caucasian. Because, I wanted more of that representation in the children's literature.    Miko Lee: [00:43:07] Thank you. I, I wonder if you could talk a little bit about the artistic style. So you are the author, but you had different illustrators for both of the books and the style is really different. The in, when I look at Nainai's Mountain, which I'm holding here, it's sort of collage and really vibrant colors. Where I Dream of Popo has a different, more. I'm almost realistic, kind of look to it. And I'm wondering what your process was like in collaborating with illustrators.    Livia Blackburne: [00:43:37] That's one of the best things about being a picture book author, is that you get to collaborate with so many illustrators and they all have such different styles, such different visions. Most of the time it's the publisher who chooses the illustrator, although they. Consult me usually. My editor for I Dream of Popo picked Julia Kuo. And she sent me samples and I loved it. And, it was great. I'm friends with Julia now and that book did really well. It was very well known, especially in kind of Taiwanese American, Asian American circles. And so when I did, Nainai's mountain, that was with a different publishing house and my editor. He very consciously said, you know, because it's also a book about Taiwan and a grandmother. We don't want to get it confused with I dream of Popo. So, we made a conscious decision to pick an artist with a very different style and Joey Chou is fantastic. He's very well known for his Disney art. You can see his art in a lot of the hotels and cruise ships. And, he, very bright, vibrant, and I, he's also from Taiwan. I think he did a fantastic job.   Miko Lee: [00:44:41] And have the artistic work ever surprised you as being really different from your imagination while you were writing?    Livia Blackburne: [00:44:48] That's a great question. I don't think they've ever surprised me. By being different. They surprised me in the specifics that they've chosen. For example, I dream of Popo. Julia, spent a lot of time in Taiwan and she put in these great, Taiwan details that, you know, if you're from Taiwan, you would know for sure. There's like a specific brand of rice cooker called the rice cooker, and she has one there and like the giant bag of rice in the corner, and the calendar on the wall.   Miko Lee: [00:45:16] Even the specificities of the food and the trays and everything is quite lovely.    Livia Blackburne: [00:45:20] Yeah, yeah. You know, every time I read that, I look at that spread, I get hungry. So surprise there. And, with Joey, I, I love how he does the different, there's kind of flashback pictures and there's, pictures now and. The thing about him, his color, I just love the color that he put in from the greens, of Taiwan to kind of the bright fluorescent lights, neon lights of Taipei, and then there's kind of the slight sepia tones of the past and he just, you know, brings it so to life so well.   Miko Lee: [00:45:49] I didn't know he was a Disney animator, but it totally makes sense because it feels very layered. It does feel animated in a way and kind of alive. So I appreciate that.   Livia Blackburne: [00:45:59] I'm not sure. If he's an animator. He does a lot of art for the theme parks and like products and the cruise ships and stuff. I'm not sure.    Miko Lee: [00:46:07] Oh, interesting.   Livia Blackburne: [00:46:07] He does like movies and  stuff.    Miko Lee: [00:46:08] Interesting. It looks like animation though. Your book.    Livia Blackburne: [00:46:13] It does look very, yeah. Lively. Mm-hmm.    Miko Lee: [00:46:16] That I'm looking forward to that series. That would be so cute. The grandmother series as a whole little mini series traveling to different places. can you tell us about your new book, Dreams to Ashes? Has that been released yet?   Livia Blackburne: [00:46:29] Dreams to Ashes? That has been released that, released about a month before Nainai's Mountain. Yeah, that one's quite a bit different. So that one is a nonfiction book and it's a picture book, and it's about the Los Angeles massacre of 1871. Whenever people, I tell people about that, they're like, wait, you wrote a picture book about a massacre? Which is slightly counterintuitive. So I never knew about the Los Angeles massacre growing up. And, and, given that I am a Chinese person in Los Angeles, that is kind of weird. Basically, it was a race massacre that occurred. One of the biggest mass lynchings in history, uh, where there was a between two rival Chinese organizations and a white bystander was killed. And because of that, , a mob formed and they rounded the Chinese population up basically. And. Blame them for that death. In the end, 18 Chinese men were killed and only one of them were involved in the original gunfight. It was a horrible tragedy. And unfortunately, as often happened with these kind of historical tragedies in our country, nobody was really punished for it. A few men were indicted and convicted, but their convictions were overturned and it just kind of disappeared into history. And it really struck me that, you know, nobody knew about this. I wanted to kind of bring this to light and unfortunately when I was writing it, it was also, during the Covid pandemic and, I was seeing a lot of anti-Asian rhetoric, anti-Asian hate crimes were going up. And I saw so many parallels between what happened. Back then, because, you know, Chinese people specifically were being vilified , they were being called immoral, stealing people's jobs. And you can see in the years before the massacre the newspapers were saying horrible things and, you know, the hate was just becoming very strong and all that exploded one night into an unspeakable tragedy. Unfortunately as an author, you want your work to be relevant, but sometimes you don't want your work to be relevant in this way. Right. Nowadays I'm seeing so much rhetoric again against immigrants and not of many ethnicities. And in some ways I'm sad. That, this is happening now. And I also hope that this book will contribute to the conversation and show how the danger of racism and xenophobia and hate and what, what can happen because of that.   Miko Lee: [00:48:55] So this occurred in the late 1800s, right? Was it before the Chinese Exclusion Act?    Livia Blackburne: [00:49:03] Yes, it was before the Chinese Exclusion Act. So you'd hope that people kinda learn from these things. And it was just kind of one of the, one of the horrible things that happened on the way to the Chinese Exclusion Act and Chinese immigrants being excluded basically Chinese laborers at least.   Miko Lee: [00:49:23] Oh wow. Okay. I'm looking this up now. And 1882 we know was the Chinese Exclusion Act and this incident actually happened in 1871. Yes. A decade beforehand, Helen Zia always talks about these moments that are missing. MIH missing in history and this is clearly another one of, another time of just wiping out a population.I'm wondering if you could speak a little bit more about how Children's Books can make a difference in the world that we're currently living in, where our government is banning books and you know that there's a narratives that they want to align with a certain kind of conservative ideology. Can you talk about the power of being a Children's Book author in this time that we're living in right now? . I'm really thinking about dreams to Ashes and even I dream of Popo and even Nainai's Mountain, which you would think, oh, they're, you, they're visiting their grandparent, their grandmothers, that would not be controversial. But now when even words like inclusion and diversity are threatened and books are being banned, I'm just wondering if you could. Share a little bit more about your superpower as a children's book author?    Livia Blackburne: [00:50:31] Yeah, that's a fantastic question. We live in a time right now, there's, a lot of hate, a lot of intolerance, a lot of fear of different people groups. And a lot of that I think is because people are unfamiliar with people unlike themselves. They see. People who are different, look differently, act differently, speak differently, and it scares them. And I think the best way to get around that is to actually get to know people of other backgrounds, to see them as human. And I think that's where children's books come in. ‘Cause we don't, children are not born. With this hate of the other. They learn it. But, if they grow up being familiar with people of different backgrounds seeing their stories seeing them as, normal human beings, which, should be obvious, but sometimes it's hard, for adults to realize. Then, I'm hoping, as a children's book author that it will lead to a more empathetic world. And perhaps that's why the government sometimes in certain groups are wanting to, censor this and control the flow of children's books because, children are the most their minds are still open. They're still able to learn.    Miko Lee: [00:51:48] And Livia, tell us what you're working on next.   Livia Blackburne: [00:51:53] So right now I am. Working on a historical middle grade. We haven't quite announced it yet, so I can't say the title or too many details, but it is based on my family history of my parents and grandparents who moved from China to Taiwan after the civil War.   Miko Lee: [00:52:12] Please check out our website, kpfa.org. To find out more about our show tonight. We thank all of you listeners out there. Keep resisting, keep organizing, keep creating and sharing your visions with the world because your voices are important. Apex Express is created by Miko Lee, Jalena Keane-Lee, Preti Mangala-Shekar, Swati Rayasam, Aisa Villarosa, Estella Owoimaha-Church, Gabriel Tanglao, Cheryl Truong and Ayame Keane-Lee.   The post APEX Express – 6.19.25 We Are All Connected appeared first on KPFA.

Author Anne Soon Choi joins us to reveal the life of Dr. Thomas Noguchi, who was known as the "coroner to the stars" in Los Angeles who performed the autopsies of Robert F. Kennedy, Marilyn Monroe and Natalie Wood. The inspiration for the Jack Klugman TV series "Quincy, M.E.," Noguchi became famous for his big press conferences—which often created more controversy than offered solutions.  Join us to learn about Noguchi and never-before-revealed facts about his biggest cases, which took place against the backdrop of Hollywood's infamous celebrity culture and the heated racial politics of the 1960s and 1970s.  Anne Soon Choi, Ph.D., author of L.A. Coroner: Thomas Noguchi and Death in Hollywood (Third State Books), is a historian and professor of Asian American Studies and university administrator at California State University, Northridge. Her essay “The Japanese American Citizens League, Los Angeles Politics, and the Thomas Noguchi Case,” on which this book is based, won the 2021 prize for best essay from the Historical Society of Southern California. Choi has previously served on the faculty of Swarthmore College and the University of Kansas and is an Andrew Mellon Fellow and an American Council of Learned Societies Digital Ethnic Studies Fellow. She lives and writes in Los Angeles, California. Our moderator, Helen Zia, is a author, journalist and Fulbright Scholar. Her latest book, Last Boat Out of Shanghai: The Epic Story of the Chinese Who Fled Mao's Revolution, was an NPR best book and shortlisted for a national Pen America award, while her first book, Asian American Dreams: The Emergence of an American People, is a foundational textbook in schools across the country. The daughter of Chinese immigrants, Helen's role in organizing and leading the national Asian American civil rights movement to obtain justice for Vincent Chin and to counter anti-Asian racism is documented in the Academy-award nominated “Who Killed Vincent Chin?” and has been featured on the PBS series "The Asian Americans," "Amanpour & Co.," Lisa Ling's "This is Life," Soledad O'Brien, and other media.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Vincent Chin was a thriving business man living in the suburbs of Detroit, Michigan, USA. With the auto industry booming due to foreign parts and models being shipped in from overseas, some Americans felt that Asian companies were to blame. Vincent unfortunately was a victim due to this. Listen now to hear the tragic and unfortunate fate Vincent had, due to racism and economical turmoil.

Anti-Asian hate incidents rose dramatically during COVID, likely fueled by prominent statements about the “Chinese virus.”  VIewed through the wider lens of history, this was just the latest in a long experience of Anti-Asian hate, including the murder of Vincent Chin, the Chinese Exclusion Act, and the internment of Japanese Americans during WWII.  For those who think that anti-Asian hate has receded as the COVID has “ended,” just two days prior to recording this episode a Filipino woman was pushed to her death on BART in San Francisco. These incidents are broadcast widely, particularly in Asian News outlets. Today we talk about the impact of anti-Asian hate on the health and well being of older adults with Russell Jeung, sociologist, Professor of Asian Studies at San Francisco State, and co-founder of Stop AAPI-Hate, Lingsheng Li, geriatrician/palliative care doc and T32 fellow at UCSF, and Jessica Eng, medical director of On Lok, a PACE, and Associate Professor in the UCSF Division of Geriatrics.  We discuss: What is considered a hate incident, how is it tracked, what do we know about changes over time The wider impact of Anti-Asian hate on older Asians, who are afraid to go out, leading to anxiety, social isolation, loneliness, decreased exercise, missed appointments and medications. Lingsheng (and I) recently published studies on this in JAMA Internal Medicine, and JAGS. Ongoing reports from patients about anti-Asian hate experiences  Should clinicians screen for Anti-Asian hate? Why? Why not? Proposing the clinicians ask a simple follow up question to the usual “do you feel safe at home?” question used to screen for domestic violence.  Add to this, “do you feel safe outside the home?” This question, while providing an opportunity to talk about direct and indirect experiences, can be asked of all patients, and opens the door to conversations about anti-semitism, islamophobia, or anti-Black racism. See also guides for how to confront and discuss anti-Asian hate in these articles in the NEJM and JGIM. And to balance the somber subject, Lingsheng requested the BTS song Dynamite, which was the group's first English language song, and was released at the height of the COVID pandemic.  I had fun trying to make a danceable version with electronic drums for the audio-only podcast.  Maybe we'll get some BTS followers to subscribe to GeriPal?!?   -@AlexSmithMD  

This week, guest host Sharifah offers up some excellent backlist science fiction and fantasy recommendations, and Kelly chats with author Paula Yoo about YA nonfiction and more. Subscribe to the podcast via RSS, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify. To get even more YA news and recommendations, sign up for our What's Up in YA newsletter! Make this your most bookish summer yet with personalized reading recommendations from Tailored Book Recommendations! Our bibliologists (aka professional book nerds) are standing by to help you find your next favorite read. Get your recommendations via email, or opt to receive hardcovers or paperbacks delivered right to your door. And with quarterly or annual plans available, TBR has something for every budget. Get started today from just $18! Head to mytbr.co to subscribe. This content contains affiliate links. When you buy through these links, we may earn an affiliate commission. Books Discussed The Lost Dreamer by Lizz Huerta Iron Widow by Xiran Jay Zhao Children of Blood and Bone by Tomi Adeyemi A Wizard's Guide to Defensive Baking by T. Kingfisher Rising From The Ashes by Paula Yoo From a Whisper to a Rallying Cry: The Killing of Vincent Chin and the Trial That Galvanized the Asian American Movement  by Paula Yoo Shackled: A Tale of Wronged Kids, Rogue Judges, and a Town that Looked Away by Candy J. Cooper  Revolution in Our Time by Kekla Magoon Made in Asian America: A History for Young People by Erika Lee and Christina Soontornvat Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Dennis is joined via Zoom by author Curtis Chin to discuss his new memoir Everything I Learned, I Learned In A Chinese Restaurant, which is about his upbringing as one of six kids raised by parents who owned a Chinese restaurant in downtown Detroit called Chung's. Curtis talks about what a magical place Chung's was and what it was like to visit it recently when it was sealed up and abandoned. He also recalls how his parents encouraged him to talk to and befriend everyone who came to Chung's and how that openness has helped him in his life. He also talks about his deep love for his hometown of Detroit even though he knew five people who had been murdered by the time he was 18, including Vincent Chin, whose much-publicized case inspired Curtis to become a writer. Curtis also talks about realizing he was gay and enjoying himself with a stolen International Male catalog in the walk-in freezer of Chung's because that was the only place he could be alone. Other topics include: going to Boys State as a teen, being a young Republican like Alex P. Keaton on Family Ties, the movie star who came into Chung's and was a total jerk, why his mother was so pissed at Ronald Reagan, coming out to his parents in a Bob's Big Boy and the stories from readers he's heard on his extensive book tour that move him to tears. www.curtisfromdetroit.com

In this episode, Payton dives into the case of Vincent Chin, and how his death led to outrage when his killer gets away with it.  Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/murderwithmyhusband/ Listen on apple: https://apple.co/3sMXYum Listen on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6GaodpBsSpBuUMhmEXhjK2?si=67c9faf80cbf4fed More social links and AD DISCOUNT CODES: https://linktr.ee/murderwithmyhusband Case Source:  “From A Whisper to a Rallying Cry” by Paula Yoo The New Yorker - https://www.newyorker.com/news/essay/the-many-afterlives-of-vincent-chin AsiaSociety.org - https://asiasociety.org/blog/asia/35-years-after-vincent-chins-murder-how-has-america-changed CNN - https://www.cnn.com/2022/06/23/us/vincent-chin-death-40-anniversary-cec/index.html Zinn Education Project - https://www.zinnedproject.org/news/tdih/vincent-chin-hate-crime AllThatsInteresting.com - https://allthatsinteresting.com/vincent-chin History.com - https://www.history.com/news/vincent-chin-murder-asian-american-rights NPR - https://www.npr.org/2022/06/19/1106118117/vincent-chin-aapi-hate-incidents NY Times - https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/16/us/vincent-chin-anti-asian-attack-detroit.html Huffington Post - https://www.huffpost.com/entry/who-killed-vincent-chin-documentary-anti-asian-violence_n_6054aa02c5b6bd95117c9980 NBC News - https://www.nbcnews.com/news/asian-america/who-vincent-chin-history-relevance-1982-killing-n771291 PBS - https://www.pbs.org/newshour/classroom/daily-news-lessons/2022/06/this-june-marks-40-years-after-vincent-chins-murder Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

"Remember when you saw the stars of childhood, when you knelt alone and thought that they were there for you, lamps that something held to prove your beauty?" writes Joseph Fasano. Can we use these words as a gateway to finding a sense of belonging in the world, rather than being separate from it? And as we find our way to our own belonging - our receiving of life - what does it take for us to be ones around whom others get to belong? All of these seem like urgent questions to us in a world in which it is so easy for us to feel incomplete, desperate even, and in which it's possible and necessary for us to support one another in finding our place again. Hosted, as always, by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace. Join Our Weekly Mailing: www.turningtowards.life/subscribe Support Us: www.buymeacoffee.com/turningtowardslife Turning Towards Life, a week-by-week conversation inviting us deeply into our lives, is a live 30 minute conversation hosted by Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn of Thirdspace.  Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google, Amazon Music and Spotify. Here's our source for this week: Urgent Message to a Friend in Pain  I have to tell you a little thing about living (I know, I know, but hear me), a little thing I've carried in the dark: Remember when you saw the stars of childhood, when you knelt alone and thought that they were there for you, lamps that something held to prove your beauty? They are they are they are they are they are. Joseph Fasano Photo by Vincent Chin on Unsplash

This week, Karen and Georgia cover the murder of Vincent Chin and the mysterious 1990 Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum art heist.For our sources and show notes, visit www.myfavoritemurder.com/episodes.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

A weekly magazine-style radio show featuring the voices and stories of Asians and Pacific Islanders from all corners of our community. The show is produced by a collective of media makers, deejays, and activists. Host Miko Lee is joined by Guest Host Aisa Villarosa for another episode focused on Filipinx American History Month. This episode is focused on artist, activist, I Hotel survivor and rebel rouser Jeanette Lazam. We also hear a poem from Emily Lawsin and music from Bay Area's Power Struggle. Learn more about and support collective resistance to militarization and genocide in Palestine: https://www.instagram.com/ucethnicstudiescouncil/  https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSe7SomsNyhrKIuR-FzwTKjPC5bM1lCi3i6GsXJLRXJvKK7JrA/viewform Jeanette Lazams life and artwork: https://convergencemag.com/articles/coming-home-jeanette-lazam-returns-to-the-i-hotel/ https://www.instagram.com/lazamjg/ Emily Lawsin Power Struggle https://www.powerstrugglemusic.com/ https://beatrockmusic.com/collections/power–struggle. No More Moments of Silence Show Transcript 11.2.23 [00:00:00] Aisa Villarosa: In this episode, we're providing a content warning. Our guest, Jeanette Lazum, discusses personal instances of racist threats, police violence, and utilizes a racial epithet. [00:00:47] Miko Lee: Good evening and welcome to Apex Express. This is Miko Lee and I am so thrilled to have a guest co host this night, the amazing and talented Aisa Villarosa. Aisa can you please introduce yourselves to our audience? Say who you are, where you come from, and a little bit about yourself. [00:01:09] Aisa Villarosa: Thank you so much, Miko, and it's a joy to be with you and the Apex Express family. My name is Aisa, my pronouns are she, her, and I'm a Michigan born gay Filipino artist, activist, attorney with roots in ethnic studies organizing and teaching Filipino studies, in the wonderful Pa'aralang Pilipino of Southfield, Michigan. If you ever find yourself at the intersection of Eight Mile and Greenfield near Detroit, stop on by. And the genesis of our talk today started with a conversation around Filipino American History Month, right? [00:01:54] Miko Lee: That's right. And that's what we're going to be talking about tonight. so Tonight Aisa and I are going to be talking about Filipino American History Month. We know that it's the month of October, so Filipino history, that's something that's deep and should be all year round, just like all of our histories should be something that we study. Tell us a little bit about who we're going to be speaking to tonight. [00:02:17] Aisa Villarosa: We have the honor of speaking with Jeanette Lazam, who is a many decades long living legacy, an artist, an activist. Jeanette has worked in spaces like the capital of California, but has also faced down state violence. Both at the hands of the U. S. government through the very violent eviction of elders, primarily Filipino and Chinese elders, at the International Hotel or the iHotel in San Francisco, what was then Manila Town and Jeanette also is a survivor of political violence at the hands of the Ferdinand Marcos regime in the Philippines and is a champion of Nonviolent people power and that is only just the tip of the iceberg. Jeanette is also a prolific artist . She is the only surviving Filipino Manang to return to the iHotel After being a young person who stood and locked arms with the seniors to fight the eviction decades and decades ago, and she'll be sharing some of her story with us. [00:03:34] Miko Lee: I love this. We get to hear firsthand from experiences of people who were engaged in a fight for equality and still continue to do so. I love elders just taking the reins and keeping on fighting out there. Because we're talking about issues that are deep and complicated, including Marcos' dictatorship in the Philippines, and what went down at the iHotel in San Francisco, we'll have some links in the show notes so that folks can delve deeper and find out more. But Aisa can you back us up a little bit? And for folks that might not know, give us a little quickie about the iHotel. I know we talk about it in the interview, but for folks that don't know, give a little bit of background about the importance of the iHotel within Asian American movement spaces. Why do people need to know about this? [00:04:23] Aisa Villarosa: Such a great question and a grounding question Miko. The iHotel is both a physical site, it is in San Francisco, and it is also in many ways A symbol of the struggle for collective liberation, for housing rights, for justice in the city of San Francisco and beyond. And that is why often in many ethnic studies courses, in many Asian American and Pacific Islander courses, students learn about the iHotel. But as Jeanette will share with us, there is really no text that can describe the violence of an eviction, 3 a. m. in the morning on August 4th, 1977, when Armed police officers on horses essentially rounded up the peacefully protesting tenants and supporters of the International Hotel. And This was part of a larger movement, a violent movement across the country that was under the guise of urban renewal, but was really about the continued criminalization of Black and brown and Indigenous and AAPI people. And Jeanette was a survivor of that. It is a story that is painful and yet one that we must not forget and that our generations must learn from in order to continue the fight for social justice. [00:05:55] Miko Lee: Thanks, Aisa, for the little Asian American history lesson. We appreciate it. Folks should find out more if this is the first you're hearing about this. It is a seminal moment. I also think one of the things we didn't actually talk to Jeanette about is how Intersectional, the folks that were protesting at the iHotel were. That there were Black Panthers there, that there are folks from the disability movement. , that's one of those things that really gets hidden under the rug is the different people that were engaged in that fight. [00:06:23] Aisa Villarosa: Absolutely, Miko. The fight for the survival of the International Hotel was intersectional. It really is a demonstration of what healthy movement building can be. It is never easy. It's often complicated. And yet, They answered the urgency of the moment and they did so together. [00:06:46] Miko Lee: There were thousands of people that were involved in that movement. There were hundreds that were there. And tonight you get to hear from one person's story, a little bit about the iHotel, and mostly just from an amazing activist, artist, and social justice champion. So we get to listen to the brilliant interview with Jeanette. [00:07:08] Aisa Villarosa: It's so meaningful to hear from Jeanette and as someone who is living currently in San Francisco's Chinatown is someone who is revered enough to be on murals in Chinatown and yet popular culture and history often forget that Manila Town and Chinatown Coexist, that these are two powerhouse cultures, identities, people who, in some ways, as Jeanette shared, were forced together due to redlining, due to discriminatory housing practices, and yet the activists in Chinatown today are trying to preserve the stories of elders like Jeanette and also telling new stories through art and through activism and protest. [00:08:00] Miko Lee: Aisa, please introduce me to your mentor, the amazing Jeanette. [00:08:05] Aisa Villarosa: Thanks, Miko. We are so honored to have with us today Jeanette Gandianko Lazam. Jeanette, hi, how are you doing today? [00:08:14] Jeanette Lazam: I think I'm doing okay, yeah. I like the warmth, so I'm glad we have sunny days here in San Francisco that are not windy nor cold. [00:08:26] Aisa Villarosa: Are you cuddled up with Samantha? And for the audience Samantha is Jeanette's adorable cat. [00:08:33] Jeanette Lazam: Samantha is cuddled up by herself. Oh, [00:08:37] Aisa Villarosa: that's all right. She can support us from afar. [00:08:39] Jeanette Lazam: Yes, she most definitely will. [00:08:43] Aisa Villarosa: And you know, in these, heavy times, sometimes okay is okay. So we are, we're so happy to have you with us. I'm happy to be here. Thank you. Um, Miko, do you want to kick us off? [00:08:57] Miko Lee: So we are here talking about Filipino History Month and the significance of that. Can you tell us what the significance of the History Month is to you, Jeanette? [00:09:08] Jeanette Lazam: I think it's a time where, you know, for many Filipino and Filipino American organizations, they come to the fore. And what I mean by that is they come and expose the culture, the languages, not just one language, but the languages and the food, the this, the that. And it really comes to the surface. And you can see how much pride people have, I was talking with somebody the other day about the colonization of the Philippines. And when you look at the history of the Philippines, you have to take it for what it is. You can't take something out just because you don't like it. So many people have decided that the colonization of the Philippines shouldn't be… demonstrated during Filipino American History Month. I disagree. And so do a lot of other people. You have to tell that history because that's over 300 years of history right there in terms of the Filipino community. In a nutshell, culture, language, food, dance, They all come to the fore during this particular month, Filipino American History Month, and I'm really happy about that. That's what it means to me. [00:10:46] Aisa Villarosa: Thank you so much, Jeannette. What you're naming is so important that to be Filipino American is to take stock of the good, the bad, the joyful, the challenging. And you mentioned colonization. So much of what colonization forced upon us was almost an incomplete. identity, right? That we had to ignore the pain, pretend it's not there. Or there's the concept of hiyap, right? Which is shame. And, And you know, this really more than me and Miko, but for the listeners, can you share In terms of Filipino history, and because we are currently seeing a second Marcos regime, you've lived through some of the toughest attacks on civil rights, both here in the United States and in the Philippines. Can you just share a couple stories for the listeners about that time? [00:11:53] Jeanette Lazam: We're talking, Bongbong Marcos, who is now the president of the Philippines, his father, Ferdinand Marcos was the president of the Philippines for 20 some odd years. He declared martial law in 1971 and it stayed for 20 years in the Philippines. I don't think I've ever experienced direct fascism, up in your face and very personal. Civil liberties that people had. We're totally stripped the press in the Philippines was shut down and only one press was allowed to function which was the mouthpiece for Marcos. You could not congregate on corners of more than three people, you would get arrested. Many got arrested because they were journalists, because they were activists, because they were civil libertarians. Thank Anyone and anything that posed a threat to the Marcos regime was either arrested, deported, or killed. And I was there during the imposition of martial law and it was really scary. I have never experienced that kind of fear in my lifetime. In the United States, I was traveling with a group of friends. When I was about, I don't know, maybe nine, 10 years old, we stopped in Macon County, Georgia, and it was the 1960s, late 50s, 1960s, and we were very thirsty, so we all jumped out of the car, and I did not notice there were two water fountains, and I went to the first one, and it turned out to be a white people's water fountain. And um, about a few seconds later, as I was leaning down and drinking from it, I felt a very cold piece of steel against my neck. And I thought, it's not a knife, so it's got to be a gun. And sure enough, it was. And I'm nine or ten years old, and this sheriff is standing over me with this gun pressed against my neck and said to me, you're not allowed to drink at a white person's water fountain. And he said, if I could kill you right now. There'd be one less, and this is exactly what he said to me, one less nigga. And no one would mind. That point on, from that point on, I knew where the color line was. I'm not black, but I'm not white. And I wasn't allowed to drink at a white person's water fountain. scared the living daylights out of me. And I backed up from that water fountain. All of us backed up and we got into the car and we left that example of the incredible racism in the United States. just steered into my brain. I was just like, totally taken. I was so scared. I'm a kid. I'm nine years old, 10 years old. I'm a kid. And to have a gun pointed straight directly onto your, neck ain't no laughing matter. [00:15:50] Miko Lee: That sounds so scary. I'm sorry that you had to go through that. I'm wondering there's such a vivid memory that you have from being a child. I'm wondering at what point was a turning point for you in becoming an activist. [00:16:04] Jeanette Lazam: Oh, was that right then and there I was a kid from New York, so I knew that there were stratas and class levels and where people of color fell in, but it never came that home to me. I was finally able to take the whole question of low income or working class people of color, and racism. It all intersected on that one day. And I thought to myself, no we can't go on this way. And it was that moment I decided I have to do something about the situation. Because I am not going to allow people to do this without a fight. Yeah, it was that day. And it continued all the way when I lived in the Philippines. And martial law was declared. I fought it there and I fought it when I came back to the United States. [00:17:09] Miko Lee: Is there a difference in being an activist in the Philippines versus being an activist in the United States? [00:17:15] Jeanette Lazam: Yes. First of all, in the Philippines, you're dealing with an island nation. And so with an island nation, there are all these islands that you have to You know, deal with dialect, with culture, with this, with that , it's a very difficult process undertaking to do to bring out democratic notions when people have been so oppressed and repressed for over 300 years because the Americans come in after, the Spaniards. So we. We never as a nation never really experienced our own homegrown democracy, and it's very hard to deal with that over here in the United States. It's much different. You're not dealing with an island you're dealing with, yes, many states, but they're all contiguous and there has been a history of revolutionary. Fervor and revolutionary sentiment throughout the history of the United States, and it exposes itself in the labor movement, the gay and lesbian, bisexual, transgender, queer movement, women's movement. It gets manifested in those movements. In the Philippines, very difficult to do. So the concentration for revolutionary organizations happens within the larger cities in the Philippines. And the, New People's Army is more in the rural areas outside of the major cities. you can't compare it. It's like apples and oranges. You can't do it. You have to look at the concrete conditions where people at and work from there. You can't go into a situation and wish that it could be this way. It takes hard work and long days, [00:19:41] Aisa Villarosa: so many long days and Jeanette always appreciate your nuance and the ethos of humility that you are challenging organizers and activists to have right that we in whatever space we're in cannot come in with assumptions. And yet. At the same time as you were sharing, one could see similarities between the oppression in the Philippines. In the States, and that oppression is around, how is your home stolen? How is your home and your sense of safety ripped from you? And you just talked to us about your experience as a nine year old, not being safe enough to go to the drinking fountain you wanted, right? And I know that at this moment, you're talking to us from the Senior Center, the iHotel can you share? about what the iHotel means to you, knowing that you've had possibly more history with the iHotel than maybe anyone alive at this moment. [00:20:55] Jeanette Lazam: The iHotel has to be situated Within the context of a Manila town. Generally, anytime you get a Chinatown, there's some sort of other town that kind of is adjacent to it. And you have it in Stockton, you have it in Sacramento, you have it in Seattle, you have it in Portland, you have it here, you have it in Los Angeles. Manila Towns are very is the hub or was the hub of the Filipino community starting from the 1920s on up. And so the International Hotel, as part of Manila Town, plays a very significant role in how Manila Towns functioned, what they offered. What they did and why they were established. It's not just because of the proximity to Chinatown, the Chinatowns and Manila towns of the United States get set up mainly because of racism. We are not allowed to move or to buy outside of those established boundaries. And who established those boundaries, the local governments, the state governments. Which were predominantly white people. It's like the history of Oregon. Oregon was a state that was supposed to be set up for white people only. And many people don't know that. But the iHotel is a very significant place. Historically significant, it welcomes in the first Manong generation. Now these are the people who came before me. The Manong generation, mainly elderly men. Some of them are married and their wives and their children are in the Philippines and some of them are single. And they come to the International Hotel and stay, and then they go away. Merchant Marines it's the first generation, the Manong generation, that started this all. It's the Larry Itliongs and the Philip Veracruz and Joe Dionysus, that all started the activism of the Manong generation. And it's important for people to understand who and what. And where this Manong generation stood for and where they went in terms of labor and how they stood up, how they stood up against the brutal, the incredibly brutal oppression of the contractors and the large agribusiness of California, Oregon, and Washington, and then the Alaskan canneries. To understand that history is so important because that's where we begin in many ways. We begin with that history of understanding the plight. Of the Manong generation who lived in Manila town and who lived and sometimes died at the International Hotel. My father was one of those guys. And when I found that out, I was even more curious, more thirsty to want to know what did they go through and how in the world they withstood the onslaught. Of worker oppression and racism and still kept on going I look at myself and, that's my inspiration. That's what's kept me going for the last 60 somewhat odd years is looking at that initial generation, the Manong generation, and what they brought to our community. [00:25:34] Aisa Villarosa: And Jeanette, I love you because you keep it real, and I know we've talked about the Manongs both as what you're describing as revolutionary in so many ways, right? These are labor activists and fathers, and yet they were also human. And flawed. And so I've appreciated the stories you've talked about where Manila Town, at that time, as you describe it, before the violence and the eviction surrounding the iHotel, it was bustling. It was loud. It sounded noisy. When you talk about it, I picture people like my dad who were walking around and Zoot suits, because Filipino men at the time, I've read, were trying to go to tailors and were outfitting themselves in the best suits they could just to really stand up to some of the hostility and the racism they were encountering. [00:26:38] Jeanette Lazam: That is so very true. it put everybody else to shame. They were so sharp with their double breasted, sometimes zoot suits, polished shoes. Fedora hats. They were genuine and incredibly good looking. And I've seen, I have pictures of my father he's standing on this little bridge in Central Park with his friends, with his army buddies, and they were all dressed up. And you'd think they were going to a fancy dancy, whatever place. No, they had swag. That's the only thing I could say. [00:27:19] Miko Lee: I love that, and I could picture it perfectly, and I like the way that you describe all these people strutting around, and the way you describe it is so visual, and I was saying to you when we first got on how honored I am that I have a piece of your art that's hanging in my house, from the amazing Aisa and Lauren, and I'm just wondering if you could talk to us a little bit about it about your artistic practice. What inspires you and how do you combine your work as an activist with your work as an artist? [00:27:51] Jeanette Lazam: I had always wanted to draw, but I never really did because my sister, my oldest sister she was a graphic designer. And so I was always like in her shadow. Years passed, so I'm sitting there doodling, and and in twenty, sixteen or seventeen, I moved to Taos, New Mexico. And my bedroom window faces Taos Mountain. Taos Mountain is a vortex, and you can feel the incredible energy. That vibrates from that mountain and I would get this every morning and it was telling me draw. This is your time to draw So I did. So I started drawing the Pueblo. And I started drawing scenes in and around Taos. And Taos is a very artistic community to begin with. So that also provided a lot of inspiration. And as the years went by, I started to draw more and more outside of Taos. When I finally moved I started doing owls. I suddenly realized that there's a whole level of animals and insects and so forth that are on the endangered list. So I started drawing bees and bumblebees and all sorts of bees. Then I started doing the American bison or the buffalo, how all of these creatures Were on the endangered list or practically at that point where they didn't exist anymore. And I knew that I had to do something about that in terms of my art. And so I stayed with that for several years. And then I turned myself to culture. I started looking at the Inca, the Maya and the Aztec and how rich and often bloody, but rich. history they had in building civilizations that somehow disappear from the face of this earth. And I started looking at their colors, their color schemes were incredible. So I did that for a while and I wanted people to get exposed to that. However, In between that, I found myself getting wrapped around Philippine mythology, and when I went to look at our gods, our deities so forth and so on, our supernatural forces, I found very little. There weren't pictures so if there was something written, there were no pictures. And so I finally found a book that gave me some sense of what they looked like. And I have to say, fi Philippine mythology, whomever interacted with it, had an incredible creative mind. We had the most blood thirsty, , mythological creatures that I could think of. Anywhere from the Aswang, which everyone knows about, to this creature called the Pugot, P U G O T, which is mainly from the Ilocos region. And it's a huge mouth with a body from the mouth that walks on its legs and hands and feeds on children. And when I found, I was like, Oh yeah. I was absolutely mortified. But you know, that's what Philippine mythology is. We do have the supreme bakala, who is the supreme god, and all the other deities, his daughters and his sons. But there are also these horrendous and wicked mythological creatures. And the reason why I was trying to bring it out was, I firmly believe, and I found this out, In my research and drawing that you cannot. Cannot understand the history of the Filipino people unless you take into account their mythology and their religions, whether you disagree with it or not. That's part of the history of our people. And that part is incredibly rich. So I learned a lot from it. [00:33:02] Aisa Villarosa: It is rich, and it is a mythology that has been threatened by colonization, when you mentioned that it was difficult to find writings that is all by design due to colonial oppression and the myth that Filipinos We're always Catholic or always followed Spanish culture and religion is completely false, right? So I always appreciated your deep diving, not only into Filipino mythology and culture, but connecting those dots, especially to other indigenous cultures. Jeanette, for our listeners, can you briefly share for folks who aren't familiar with the Aswang, and because even for me, I remember watching the Filipino channels as a kid, and they're usually depicted as cheesy vampires, but we'd love to hear your [00:34:10] Jeanette Lazam: your take on them. They are. They are. They are vampires. They are usually women. They have the body up to the stomach of a woman and the rest is a fish tail and then they have bat wings and they fly around at night and your parents tell you about them because they want you to go to sleep and it's scary enough. They are very, very scary. [00:34:46] Aisa Villarosa: Yeah, that's effective. It also reminds me of, there's a wonderful older book by Dr. Clarissa Estes called Women Who Run With the Wolves, and it unpacks mythology and also often, it was a culture's way of depicting women's power and I have to say, as someone who identifies as gay, so much of your art has spoken to me, particularly because there is real homophobia in Filipino culture. Part of that's due to colonization and religion, but your art really centers deities who go beyond a sexual binary. I suppose somewhat similar to two spirit indigenous depictions, and that's really special. [00:35:39] Jeanette Lazam: I'm hoping to do more research on the movement of gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, queer Filipinos here in the United States. As well as in the Philippines, and try to be able to capture that in art. So I think that's my next real challenge. [00:36:04] Aisa Villarosa: I would love to see that. [00:36:06] Miko Lee: You are tuned into apex express, a 94.1 KPFA and 89.3 KPF. Be in Berkeley and online@kpfa.org Next up, take a listen to Live It Up. By Bay Area's Power Struggle. [00:36:21] Aisa Villarosa: You were listening to Live It Up by the artist Power Struggle. Jeanette, in terms of thinking about the future, talk to us more about that. Talk to us about your hopes and dreams. [00:40:01] Jeanette Lazam: My hope is that, in particular to the Filipino community here in the United States I hope that they will be open and above board take whatever knowledge my generation can give that generation, that they appropriate the genera that, they appropriate the knowledge and the history that my generation is releasing. It's important for several reasons. One, it makes our, history of Filipino people alive, very alive in the faces of the ones that are coming up after that generation. It also provides the continuity in our history. If there's a break in continuity, it's very hard to kind of climb back because what happens then is that people die. And if my generation dies, and it will, it's important that your generation and the generation after yours appropriates whatever we're giving, you don't have to like it. You don't have to love it. You just have to take it and then sort it out for yourself and then transfer it to the next generation. So there's a level of continuity. That's my hope and in the broader, population. I want people to understand what it took to build the United States, what it took the level of sacrifice that the working class of this country had to make in order for this country to be built. California's agribusiness. Would not be where it's at today if not for the Filipinos, if not for the Mexicans, and a few other Asians like Japanese. That's also true for Hawaii. Who built this country? Who built this country? And people have to answer that question with fervor and knowledge. [00:42:38] Aisa Villarosa: And with honesty. [00:42:39] Jeanette Lazam: Yes, total honesty. [00:42:44] Aisa Villarosa: Jeanette, you end… Each of your emails with, when I dream, I dream of freedom. And what you're saying to us is that in order for us to realize this freedom, we must do so collectively. [00:42:59] Jeanette Lazam: Yep. And that's no easy task. Because at every twist and turn of the struggle for true democracy in the United States, true social justice, You're going to be making allies and you're going to be leaving other allies behind because you no longer agree with some of the things they do, but it's not to mean that they're enemies. And you're going to be meeting new people, and you're going to get involved with their lives and their struggles. And get to know them. So it's every step of the way for the larger struggle at mind is a very intense and deep personal struggle. Do you choose to say you're gay or lesbian or bisexual, transgender or queer? Do you choose to say that openly and above board to let people know? That this is who I am that happened to me when they had the first time they had district elections in San Francisco, I was at a open forum and somebody asked so how is this going to affect at that time the Castro and everybody knew this person was talking about how is the district elections going to affect the Castro. I didn't see anybody raising their hands and I just said as a lesbian, it will affect me greatly because we finally will have some level of and form of representation on the board of supervisors. Sometimes it's a split second decision. Sometimes it's something that's well thought out. And that's also true when you're walking where you're working with people. Sometimes it has to be. A split second decision, and other times, it's longer. When I say I dream, I dream for freedom. I dream for freedom for all people. Freedom from the shackles of sexism, racism, homophobia. That's what I dream of. A true, functioning, honest democracy. Where social justice is not a movement, it is, it simply is. [00:45:46] Aisa Villarosa: It simply is. Gosh, that brings to mind the image of an ocean and that saying that the ocean is so many tiny drops. And what you're challenging us to do is, in those moments where there is a sometimes split second decision, that we choose bravery. And we choose truthfulness in those moments. Jeanette, thank you so much for talking with us today. We've pictured Filipino deities. We've jumped from the Castro to the Philippines. And I am always in awe of your imagination and your artistry and your advocacy. Thank you. [00:46:33] Miko Lee: Thank you so much for sharing with us, Jeanette. It was an honor to spend a little bit of time just learning from you, hearing about your artistry, your activism, and your vision for the world. We really appreciate you. [00:46:47] Jeanette Lazam: Oh, I appreciate people like you because it's through you that we have a voice and that's important. That's important. One of the first tasks is always going to be On some type of journalism and media, and we have to protect that we have to protect the progressive and revolutionary sources of media. [00:47:15] Miko Lee: Thank you for sharing your wisdom with us. [00:47:18] Jeanette Lazam: Thank you. [00:47:20] Miko Lee: I really loved talking with your mentor, Jeanette. Tell me what's your walk away. What did you hear her saying? [00:47:27] Aisa Villarosa: It was such a rich conversation and. One of the many things I adore about Jeanette is she is a world builder in that she encourages anyone who is in her space to exercise their imagination. And as someone who's been a bit of a veteran of the nonprofit industrial complex for, almost three decades now, it is shocking how frequently our imaginations are shunned, how we are often sent to work in siloed areas. The solution to so many of our heartaches is intersectional, is creativity. So my big takeaway is hearing Jeanette talk about the trajectory of her life and how it essentially led her to really lean into becoming an artist. She has shared that she became an artist rather later in life. It's a great example that You're never too old or too young to start anything, to lean into your true self, and so many of Jeanette's art pieces are odes to her identity as a social justice leader. How about you, Miko? What's your takeaway? [00:48:42] Miko Lee: She's just a delight. She's funny. She's smart. She has so much wisdom. I really love interviewing OGs because it's just constant pearls of wisdom. So I appreciate that. But I have another question for you, which is how did she come to be your mentor? When did you first meet? [00:49:00] Aisa Villarosa: I first interviewed Jeanette during the Earlier parts of the COVID 19 pandemic, at the time, and this is a bit of my personal story, I was struggling with coming out to my family as a gay Filipino, and Jeanette shared with me her identity as someone who is LGBTQ, and it was such a moment of connection, even if we have many decades between us. The story she shares of being an artist, of being a Filipino, a gay person, a civil rights defender. It's just a reminder that we don't have to be only one thing. We are so much more alive if we can lean into our multiple identities, and Jeanette is a living example of that. [00:49:56] Miko Lee: Oh, thanks for that. That is so right. We are all multifaceted. We are all these kaleidoscopes of change given where we are in life and the experiences we have. And it's a delight to talk with your mentor and somebody I've heard about from a long time. So thanks so much for celebrating Filipino History Month by really talking with somebody that you admire so much and I can see why. [00:50:23] Aisa Villarosa: Last week for our part one of Filipino American History Month, we talked with Pinay scholar, poet, activist, and historian, Emily Lawson, about her poem, No More Moments of Silence. It is Ate Em's chronicling of the power, complexity, heartache, and love. Behind Filipino American identity, held together by centuries of struggle against colonial oppression and white supremacy, our Makibaka heritage, one shared by Black, Indigenous, and people of color grappling with settler colonialism and government extraction. Now, to close out Filipino American History Month, I'm honored to share with you an excerpt from No More Moments of Silence, taken from a 2011 Michigan State University performance by Emily Lawson. No more moments of silence in memory of Joseph Aletto and Chongberry Zhang by Emily Lawson. With respect and apologies to Emmanuel Ortiz and Doria Roberts and thanks to Reverend Edwin Rowe who taught us to pray out loud with our eyes open at Vincent Chin's grave. This is a scream, not a shout out, at all of those right wing Christian conservatives and wannabe left wing liberals. Who start all of their speeches with a moment of silence. Crossing themselves, genuflecting, lighting boat of candles and incense for every single damn lost soul on this earth, but their own. This is not an old Simon and Garfunkel song. This is a fighting song for you flag waving, war on terrorism, 9 11 memorial addicts. Clean out your ears and your skeleton closets, because I cannot take any more moments of silence. You hear me? I cannot take any more moments of silence. For silence is what buried one million of my ancestors in a hundred American wars. Silence is what drove the stakes through the backs of my people, whipped with chains of cane fires as low paid migrant workers burned out of their bunkhouses as they slept and white collar neighbors watched in silence. See, I cannot take any more moments of silence. Silence for silence is what robbed our Filipino people of our multiple tongues as the noose of colonialism wiped out 7, 000 islands of surnames and languages. Leaving us with a bastardized Hollywood identity of John Wayne Dust Bowl movies with Panoi Indios playing Indians in silence. I cannot waste any moments of silence because they add up to decades and years like the 10 plus that kept my cousin estranged from her brothers and sisters who refused to acknowledge how they all inherited. The brunt of the beatings brought on by their father, in the bedroom of their mother, even ten years after their deaths. The wounds still lie wide open in silence. I cannot waste any more moments, for our concept of time has been warped by the violence that pervades our homes and hearts. Like the self righteous, now terminated governor, who stood at the cold stone podium, singing the heroic praises of the North Valley Jewish Community Center's staff. While signing a historic anti gun bill into law, looking down and right over the entire family of Joseph Aleto, who had also been shot nine times by a white supremacist a month earlier while he delivered mail. And the bold faced governor, in his corporate suit and tie, looked right past the family and only into the TV news cameras. As Joseph's mother, Lillian, hung her head in silence in the front row, ashamed that the governor couldn't even offer his condolences, didn't even mention her son's name, Joseph Aletto, what more, his death or existence. Her surviving children's fury helped her stand up, and that is why she is not silent. That is why they are not silent. That is why we cannot be silent anymore. For silence is what allowed the Warren cops to storm in a Hmong American family's home, barge down the steps to their Michigan basement, shoot 18 year old Chong Berizhong 41 times, killing him with 27 bullets at close range, and say the force was… Justified? Silence is what prevents our Hmong teenagers from telling their story. Afraid that they will be the next casualty of police brutality. Afraid that they will be deported for being unpatriotic. Sent to a landlocked country they have never seen. Even though they obey all laws, pay taxes, go to poor schools, and work three jobs no other Americans dare want. See, we cannot waste any more moments of silence. And this ain't about just taking back the night, I'm talking about taking back the day to day, because I am done with the silence. Our feet can no longer be bound. Our eyes cannot be taped. Yell your prayers as poems. Scream the names of the dead out loud. For I cannot take any more moments of silence because silence has already taken too much from me. Emily Lawson. September 11th, 2003. Revised September 17th, 2007. Detroit, Michigan. Amidst protest for an immediate ceasefire and end to occupation in Gaza, may all who continue to resist against colonization and militarization root in Atta Emily's call, now and always, no more moments of silence. Visit our Apex Express website to learn more. [00:57:06] Miko Lee: Thank you so much for joining us. Please check out our website, kpfa.org backslash program, backslash apex express to find out more about the show tonight and to find out how you can take direct action. We thank all of you listeners out there. Keep resisting, keep organizing, keep creating and sharing your visions with the world. Your voices are important. [00:57:30] Miko Lee: Apex express is produced by me. Miko Lee. Along with Paige Chung, Jalena Keane-Lee, Preeti Mangala Shekar, Anuj Vaida. Kiki Rivera, Swati Rayasam, Nate Tan, Hieu Nguyen and Cheryl Truong tonight's show is produced by me Miko thank you so much to the team at kpfa for their support have a great night. The post APEX Express – 11.2.23- No More Moments of Silence: Filipinx Identity & Critical Resistance appeared first on KPFA.

Curtis Chin's family owned a very well-known on Detroit's map: Chung's Restaurant in Midtown. Curtis was an observant kid, with an eye for the array of Detroiters who stopped in for tangy spareribs, and the Almond Boneless Chicken. His new memoir “Everything I Learned, I Learned in a Chinese Restaurant" recalls his childhood tales, and details what it was like growing up in Detroit as a Chinese American after the murder of Vincent Chin.  GUEST: Curtis Chin, documentarian and writer ___ Looking for more conversations from Stateside? Right this way. If you like what you hear on the pod, consider supporting our work. Music from Blue Dot Sessions.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

"There is a saying that an injustice to one is an injustice to all. No one is truly equal and free until everyone is equal and free." - Helen Zia. Helen Zia is a second-generation Chinese American activist and journalist. She was named one of the most influential Asian Americans of the decade by A. Magazine. Award-winning writer and social justice activist, Helen Zia was a key spokesperson and organizer in the landmark civil rights movement for justice for Vincent Chin and is the Executor of the Lily and Vincent Chin Estate. Her role is documented in the Academy Award-nominated Who Killed Vincent Chin? Helen has written articles, essays, op-ed pieces, and analyses about Asian Americans. She has been outspoken in this current pandemic of anti-Asian violence, appearing in the PBS series The Asian Americans; New York Times; USA Today's 100 Women of the Century; Washington Post's Race in America series; and Lisa Ling/CNN's This is Life, among others. She also testified before the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights about media portrayals of Asian Americans. In 2010 she was a witness in the landmark case for marriage equality that was decided by the U.S. Supreme Court. She is a co-founder of American Citizens for Justice. In April 2023, Helen Zia launched the Vincent Chin Institute and release the Vincent Chin Legacy Guide to fight Hate in solidarity. Some of Helen's most famous works include her most recent book, Last Boat out of Shanghai: The Epic Story of the Chinese who Fled Mao's Revolution, was an NPR Best Book of 2019. Her most definitive work on Asian American is through her book Asian American Dreams: The Emergence of an American People. Published in 2000 the book was twice quoted by President Bill Clinton in his Rose Garden address and reprinted 22 times. --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/aauc/message

Hua Hsu is a staff writer for The New Yorker. His book Stay True won the 2023 Pulitzer Prize for memoir. “I've worked as a journalist … for quite a while. … But this [book] was the thing that was always in the back of my mind. Like, this was the thing that a lot of that was in service of. Just becoming better at describing a song or describing the look of someone's face—these were all things that I implicitly understood as skills I needed to acquire. ... It is sort of an origin story for why I got so obsessive about writing.” Show notes: @huahsu byhuahsu.com Hsu on Longform Hsu on Longform Podcast Hsu's New Yorker archive 03:00 A Floating Chinaman: Fantasy and Failure Across the Pacific (Harvard University Press • 2016) 30:00 "Randall Park Breaks Out of Character" (New Yorker • Feb 2023) 33:00 Shortcomings (Adrian Tomine • Drawn & Quarterly • 2007) 39:00 "What Conversation Can Do For Us" (New Yorker • Mar 2023) 39:00 "J. Crew and the Paradoxes of Prep" (New Yorker • Mar 2023) 39:00 "The Many Afterlives of Vincent Chin" (New Yorker • Jun 2022) 39:00 "How Wayne Wang Faces Failure" (New Yorker • Jun 2022) 39:00 "Maxine Hong Kingston's Genre-Defying Life and Work" (New Yorker • Jun 2020) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Powerleegirl hosts Miko Lee & Jalena Keane-Lee, a mother daughter duo Asian-American Native Hawaiian Pacific Islander heritage month with another special episode of APEX Express. To celebrate the month we're going to be hearing from some incredible activists that we featured in our, “We Are the Leaders” series. We are the leaders was inspired by the famous Grace Lee Boggs quote. “We are the leaders we've been looking for.” Today's show features the following artists, activists and thinkers including: Helen Zia, Anirvan Chatterjee, Sammie Ablaza Wills, Hawane Rios, Yuri Kochiyama, Julia Putnam, Gail Romasanta & Saru Jayaraman.   May 8th Show Transcripts [00:00:00] Opening: Asian Pacific expression. Unity and cultural coverage, music and calendar revisions influences Asian Pacific Islander. It's time to get on board. The Apex Express. Good evening. You're tuned in to Apex Express. [00:00:18] Jalena Keane-Lee: We're bringing you an Asian American Pacific Islander view from the Bay and around the world. We are your hosts, Miko Lee and Jalena Keane-lee the powerleegirls, a mother daughter team. Happy Asian-American Native Hawaiian Pacific Islander heritage month. And welcome to another special episode of apex express. This is the powerleegirls. I'm Jalena Keane-Lee, and I'm Miko Lee. We're a mother-daughter duo talking today about Asian American native Hawaiian Pacific Islander heritage month, To celebrate the month we're going to be hearing from some incredible activists that we featured in our, we are the leaders series. We are, the leaders was inspired by the famous Grace Lee Boggs quote. We are the leaders we've been looking for. First up we hear from a claimed activist and lawyer helen Zia. [00:01:12] Helen Zia: I call it M I H that we are at so often missing in history. And the only thing that's going to change, that is our voices. We have to restore that history. We have to reclaim that involvement and we have to know that we have nothing to be ashamed about We were not missing it You know we were there and It's just that other people don't know that And so that part we have to do We love this phrase missing in history from Helen Zia. And that's a big part of what we think this month is all about. It's rewriting us into the dominant narratives of history. And of course it's a big mission of our show to make sure that our voices and stories are heard. Not just things from the past from ancestors from movements in the past but also things that are happening in the present and the interconnectedness and connections between The two Next up Anirvan Chatterjee, storyteller, an activist and founder of the Berkeley south Asian radical history. Walking tour tells us about a little bit of history that has long been missing from history. As Helen Zia would say. He talks about interconnectedness between the south Asian and African-American communities. And the importance of knowing about this history and knowing about these solidarities and that this kind of solidarity has existed throughout Time [00:02:36] Anirvan: There's been a lot written about, Points of intersection between South Asian and African American movements for justice. I knew from my immigrant community, that Ghandi influenced Dr. King and through the ways that, Ghandi and nonviolence kind of spread. as part of the civil rights movement, but I think that was pretty much the end of it. those points of intersection kind of stopped and ended there. it wasn't until I started doing a lot more reading, that I realized how little I knew. one of my favorite stories of African American and South Asian solidarities is the story of Bayard Rustin, who a lot of us know as the black gay civil rights activist, who was the architect of the 1963 March on Washington. What I didn't know was, in the 1940's, he was a Quaker, he was a pacifist. He was actually in prison for awhile because he was a pacifist during world war two. while he was in prison, he was thinking and reading about, Solidarity with colonized India and the work of de-colonizing India. And he gets involved with a free India committee in the mid 1940s. he gets out of prison and, he gets involved with things like sit down, protest outside of the British embassy in Washington, D C. just the idea that this skinny black gay activist in the 1940s was part of the global movement for the liberation of my people. it's really different from the sense of what an Indian freedom fighter looks like. I love the idea of being able to claim Bayard Rustin as one of my Indian freedom fighters. On the flip side, in 1964 in, Jackson, Mississippi, Tougaloo college who a historically black college , there was a Pakistani professor named Hamid Kizilbashand an Indian professor Savitri Chattopadhyay. They're teaching on this black college during the height of the civil rights movement, they could use their kind of. Asian immigrant in between kind of a status really interesting ways. for example , they were able to, support their student's work to desegregate a movie theaters by going into the movie theater buying tickets. Cause they were allowed to buy movie tickets. And hand those tickets over to their black students. So when the black students show up, they're like, well, you know, we actually have these tickets and it's just like a small act of every day allyship or being co-conspirator, it's something that actually made a difference for the students. They're able to kind of use their position in ways that are, that are strategically helpful. Now, at one point in time, Hamid Kizilbashand actually gets physically attacked by white racists. he gets pulled out of his car. He's chased down. There was somebody with him who basically calls out to these white racists going, “hang on, hang on. He's international. He's, he's Brown. He's, he's not black.” And he's not beaten up nearly as badly as somebody who's black and his position might have been. for a lot of South Asians, we know we're racist. We know we have deep, complicated anti-blackness in our communities, but I don't think we necessarily know what it looks like to be anti-racist. the story of these two, faculty members at Tougaloo college in 1964, it's a really great story. of what it actually looks like to be anti-racist, we have these stories to also build on that. It's not enough to just critique, and call out, but to also do uplift, just to kind of celebrate more of what it is that we want to see. Jalena: Thanks for sharing that story. And, you know, there's so many Asian American stories, Asian American Pacific Islander stories that are left out of history and even more so queer Asian American Pacific Islander stories. And we really want to make sure that we're uplifting our queer stories and queer ancestors. Next up. We hear from Sammy Ablaza Wills who is a queer organizer and activists and death doula. They tell us about a local bay area story of queer activism that proceeded the Stonewall riots and is a lot less known. So we're so grateful that Sammy Cahn. Bring up this piece that is missing in history Sorry. [00:06:45] Sammie Ablaza Wills: One thing that I will talk about, cause there, there truly is so many examples. is the contents cafeteria rights in San Francisco? many people at least nowadays, familiar or have heard of the Stonewall riots in New York, which happened at the Stonewall Inn. And was a rebellion against police brutality led by Marsha P Johnson and Sylvia Rivera. A few years prior to the Stonewall riots was, the incident at the conference cafeteria in San Francisco's Tenderloin and conference was a place where many trans people drag Queens and sex workers hung out late night, got food and spent time with one another. And, all of the places where trans folks and drag Queens and sex workers hung out were places where police raids would regularly happen, arresting people for the crime of impersonating a woman or arresting people for the crime of prostitution or arresting people for whatever reason they could think of because they thought of all of these folks as sexual deviance, right. that history has almost been forgotten, but one day at Constance cafeteria, the police came to raid and the patrons of conference cafeteria got fed up and said, we're not going to allow for another raid to happen. And a rebellion broke out in the streets between the trans folks and the drag Queens and the sex workers and the police officers in the Tenderloin. it was from that day that trans folks, drag Queens and sex workers really started a movement for trans liberation and trans justice against police brutality in the city of San Francisco. one of the folks who was active in the Tenderloin at that time is Tamara Ching, a trans API elder who is still alive and living in San Francisco today. She's somewhat of a local legend in trans communities because of all of the work she did in the Tenderloin even though she wasn't immediately present at the moment of competence cafeteria, she continued the legacy of what was started that day for many, many decades for trans people and for sex workers, for people living in the Tenderloin for low income folks. But the work that she did is not seen in textbooks it's not seen in Asian American history courses. the thing that really feels important for me to just state out right, is that LGBTQ history is Asian American, Pacific Islander history and Asian American Pacific Islander history is LGBTQ history because there is no way that either of those movements would have happened without each other. And these movements have not even always agreed. But agreement is not the precipice of history. history shows. What agreements and disagreements have been made to create the present conditions that we're in. When I think the importance of understanding our history, this phrase always comes to my mind and, It's like a, I feel like pretty popular in ethnic studies, but it's, no history, no self. Right. And if we don't know where we were, it's really, really hard to determine where we're going to be going. When I think about all of the history that has existed, that allows me to be alive. I don't see one clear lineage. Right? I see many, many stories. People, people in the United States, people outside of the United States. I see trans people. I see CIS people. I see many people that have worked and had success and built relationships and also people that have made mistakes, like deep, deep mistakes that have set us back or put us in different directions. And. I'm thinking it is incredibly important to know all of that history so we can understand ourselves as part of a larger lineage and also so that we can make new mistakes. Our ancestors and our elders have made mistakes so that we don't have to anymore. We can make new ones. We can try new experiments. We contend continue the best things that worked out. And try new things that can fail in different ways. but we don't need to be recreating the same failures and same mistakes and same hurt every five years or so. I think it's incredibly important as people invested in justice to know our histories so that we can have a more clear idea of where we can go in the future. And then we can look back at our histories, right. Our present. And write our future into existence with all of that context in mind Jalena: Huge. Thank you to Sammy for sharing about tomorrow. Ching has such an incredible trans Asian American activists that we should really all know about and also pointing out the differences throughout history and queer history, Asian American, Pacific Islander history, and that. They are one in the same and both inform where we are today. And they're truly one thing. And I love what Sammy said about, you know, we look back at our histories, right? Our present. And that's what allows us to write our future into existence. And that's what the show, and I dare say this month is all about. Next up we hear from Havana Rios, who is a NATO, Hawaiian activist and protector of the sacred mountain Mona Kath. She talks about. Genealogy ancestral knowledge. And just really builds on this idea of deep sacred knowing and how important that is in our communities These. [00:12:31] Jalena Keane-Lee: do you have any advice for people that don't have you know that history recorded for them or have been cut off from in various ways from their own history and their own ancestral power [00:12:42] Hawane Rios: Somebody always remembered something. It's not that lost and you can remember inside of you. You in your DNA can unlock much wisdom from your own ancestors if you believe it. Call upon your own Kapuna. If you even know the names of your grandparents and your great-grandparents that's a start. Just know where you come from. Find that out. I ask the questions. As the eldest person in your ohana, “What do you remember?” Spend time, even if it's on zoom or facetime right now, because that's what it has to be. Use your time wisely. Talk to anyone in your family that remembers. And if they don't go to the lens you remember. You remember where you come from. Find out the name of your mountain, the mountain that raised you and your ancestors. If you were in living somewhere that is not your original homelands bind that mountain unless you were born on there It's because you were still a part of it that air has fed you that water has fed you know What to think of who the bank have gratitude every single day By learning something new everyday challenge yourself Learn the story of the land that you're on whether you're from there or not And then honor it because that's how we learn how to honor things It's a way bigger out for one second That we're not the center of everything That there's so much around us that gave us like every single day And so Know that your life force It's not for nothing I really hope that she find her way home So yourself it's your lens and see your people into your power You know someday we're going to be the ancestors people seven generations from now they're going to say look at what they did With what they had And then whatever they're going to have is going to probably be 10 times more efficient and amazing than what we had But hopefully we pass out enough For them to not Take advantage of the beauty and the sacredness of this clinic Hopefully we did enough to switch The tides And change the tie ins for the next seven generations to come because the way that we're going We're not going to have anything to leave behind And again we're not here just for ourselves Women especially we are the vessels of the next seven generations even if we don't Bring children into this world And even if we can't bring children into this world we still have the kuleana to do whatever we can to make sure that any person coming into this realm Have a safe place to land That's what we do Jalena: Thank you Havana. It's a great reminder. That history is something that is always in the making and also something that can always be reclaimed. If you have people that you can talk to that you can ask, do that. And if you don't, as Havana said, you can connect with the land. You can know about the waters and the mountains that raised you. And then from there, maybe you can trace back to your ancestral places as well, but there's always a place to start and it helps us think about what are we going to leave? For the next seven generations as she said too. In addition to being a water protector and protector of the sacred mountain Monica. Havana is also a recording artist and release the album together. We rise in 2019. Next up listen to one of her songs from her album together we rise called free the streams. Music Welcome back. You're tuned in to an apex express special for a N H P I heritage month on 94.1 KPFA and 89.3 KPF. Be in Berkeley 88.1. KFCF in Fresno and 97.5 K 2 4 8. BR in Santa Cruz. And online@kpfa.org. You just listened to free the streams by Havana Rios from her album. Together we rise Next up, we hear more from Helen Zia, legendary Asian American lawyer, and activists and women who coined the term missing in history. We hear from her about the importance of solidarity and intersectionality [00:18:50] Helen Zia: The Lowest part of the human experience can you know I get triggered by a crisis but actually crisis also brings people together and and history shows that people can overcome quite a lot when they are United When they see the importance of standing together and that you know we are all in this together There's no question We cannot overcome the covert crisis or the pandemic of racism unless we come together And so in the 1980s what happened was Vincent chin was killed We're looking Japanese He was a Chinese American And what made even that racist Attack and hate crime even worse was that his killers who were two white auto workers got off Scott free basically they got probation and fines And the judge said in a city of Detroit he said These are not the kind of men you sent to jail You fit the punishment to the criminal not to the crime In other words well these two white guys don't have to go to jail for beating somebody to death And then what does that mean about who should be punished in a in a city like Detroit which was even then you know about 70% African American So there was a large uproar throughout the city People were just just appalled you know all people of conscience you know said what do you mean You're going to let murderers killers off scott free you know And so so I think it's important to remember in these times when we are in a a very fractured time when you know it's almost like we get the message every day that people can't come together people are just to two divided Well in fact people do come together and we had had many historical periods where people of very different backgrounds came together and in the Vincent chin case you know it was not only Asian Americans and that came together and and remembering that time And then I actually knew the eighties Asian Americans were not together Vincent chin was a Chinese American Chinese community had to come together with the Japanese community which was being targeted and You know the the Southeast Asian and Filipino and South Asian communities I mean they were all separate So the Asian American community came together in a pan Asian movement And so did the allies all around us We knew that we were Too small a community to do this on our own And you know the the various African American civil rights organizations and churches know came out So all of that just like any organizing really took taking time To reach out to each other to sit down and talk and there would be leaders in different communities who would open that door for us And so it was a very very broad based multiracial multicultural United effort to try to do something that helped launch an Asian American civil rights movement And we need that today [00:22:13] Miko Lee: There have been times in our American history where we have fought back, the third world movement in this building of the ethnic studies programs at San Francisco state. And there's been so many others where people have come together. What do you think about like this time right now, of different people of color coming together and helping to reshape the American story, do you feel that's happening? Is that something you can kind of read in the, in the tea leaves based on your experience? [00:22:44] Helen Zia: I do. I believe not only can that happen, but it must happen everybody is under siege and it's very clear that , none of us can solve this alone, no group, whether that's political, racial, you know, sexual orientation. Gender, or political party, none of us can do it alone. It really is going to take everybody working together and to, to kind of, you know, tune out all of the noise, that are aimed to keep us divided. Looking at American society, people of color in California, for example, are already in the majority. if we could unite, we would be in the majority. And then you layer on that, that people of conscience from every color and walk of life are vastly and majority yet we haven't yet come together and this crisis has to be a wake up call for all of us. and you know, California is one of about a dozen States that have already crossed that milestone. within the next 10 years, the entire country is going to be majority people of color. And what does that mean? That means if we just. tune out the messages that keep saying, Oh, you're too divided. You know, the, anti-black views within the Asian community anti-Asian views within the black community, black and Brown versus yellow and white, and dividing, you know, having that narrative divide us continually is just. Serving that purpose to keep us divided. if we came together in what we have in common, we really are the majority and we could really make some change and we have to make change because people are getting sick and dying within our communities. That's the vision, we have to hold on to, I, I do think we'll get there. We have done it before many, many times in, in our history, so, that's, those are the lessons we need to draw from and seek out the unity that we really do have. I would love for the API younger activists today to know that we have such a rich history of activism that goes back to our first days on this continent. they should be proud of that. And to know that they're carrying on a very rich and strong legacy. Forward. when, Martin Luther King and the other civil rights activists were crossing the Pettus bridge, that famous March through Selma, Alabama, they were all wearing leis. I was very sad to see that the movie that just got made about that, show them without the leis. Where did the leis come from? They came from, activists in Hawaii who were supporting that March and many. People many Asian people were also there. That moment in all of our psyches is missing a historical piece, because any photograph of that time, you see , the involvement of Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders that were there. So we get erased. I want young activists today to know that yes, we have been marginalized erased. We've done a lot to, affect the lives of every American. That was true for the Vincent chin case. That was true after 9/11, the “me too” movement. Women who have survived, sexual harassment or sexual assault standing up at a trial, basing their accuser and saying, this is what that harm did, to me, part of that victim impact statement momentum for that also came from the Vincent Chin the fact that we can, be born in America and be citizens that's because. Of a Chinese American back in the 1800's who took that all the way to the Supreme court. Brown versus board of education, the legal justification for that came from, a Chinese American laundry who objected to be taxed as separate. so that was a Supreme court case to that then was the underpaid underpinnings for, Brown vs board of education. The great grape boycott that was initiated by Filipino American farm workers and then involved Cesar Chavez and the , Chicano farm workers that was initiated by Asian-Americans. We have so many things that we should, we can be proud of, but are MIH missing in history. The only people who are going to have to point that out is us because we've been systematically removed from, from this history. And that's part of the racism that we have to fight too. Asian American activists can be proud of the things that our forebears have done for us and for the whole country. I hope that all of our listeners out there can really take Helen Zia's. He has words to heart. Yes, we've been erased and yes, it's part of our job to write ourselves back into the history of this country and to take pride in the ancestral lineage that we come from and all that. Our ancestors have done to make this country a better place and to give us the freedoms and the protections that we do have today. And of course, there's so much more work to be done. And speaking of incredible ancestors and this lineage of activism that we inherit next up we hear from legendary activists URI coach Yama. [00:28:32] Yuri Kochiyama: That's the year that the us government launched a Chinese exclusion act this act or law rule that Chinese will not be allowed to come into this country again And yet this act went into effect just after the Chinese spent years building the railroad tracks from the police Pacific coast to the Midwest There was only one lone voice that oppose this order the Chinese Exclusion Act this courageous person was a black man The first black then became centered the Senator in Mississippi Senator blanche K Bruce Bruce felt an Exclusion act was an outright show racism There were no other exclusion acts before this was he felt there would surely be more people who would be excluded and send away from him I think the sensitivity to the Chinese was because he was himself black and had experienced many such situations He fought against the bill that himself of course the bill for years and years Chinese were not allowed to come in but we as Asians we must never forget those Trying to assist us in our journey as this lone black Senator did you will not find everything in school textbooks we must dig them and find them ourselves Asian Americans must be more vocal, visible, and take stands on crucial issues. Hopefully Asians will side with the most dispossessed, oppressed and marginalized, remembering our own history. We Asians need to reshape our image from the rather quiet, ambiguous, accommodating uncomplaining, palitable people to a more resolute, sensitive advocate for human worth, human rights and human dignity. Jalena: Thank you. Ancestor activist, Yuri Kochiyama. For those fiery words that are so important to really. Remember, especially this month, not only like we've been saying throughout this episode that we have these pieces of history that are so important that we need to dig up. And remember and talk about and bring to light, but also that we need to take a stand on these issues. We are faced with so many issues today and it's our responsibility to take a stand and to stand inside with those who are the most marginalized and oppressed. Yuri Kochiyama passed away June 1st, 2014, but she was such an incredible bay area. Figure that her whole life always showing up at events and being in community even well into her nineties. And of course she's famous for. Her political views and her close relationship With Malcolm. Some ex. Another incredibly fierce Asian American ancestor, activists who was showing up and extremely active in community well into her eighties. His Grace Lee Boggs. Grace Lee Boggs is a Chinese American activist, philosopher and author who among many other things believe fervently and the power of education and community Next up. We hear from Julia Putnam who studied under grace for a long time in Detroit. And currently runs the James and Grace Lee Boggs school. Where she puts many of james and Grace's activism principles into action in the classroom [00:32:34] Julia Putnam: I was 19 or so I was her intern for a summer. My role is I saw it was helping grace to organize her, study she would have these, cardboard folders that would contain articles that she read over the years or newspapers. And she would label topics and put these articles in newspapers, in those folders. And a lot of the newspapers were yellowing a lot. a lot of the papers were kind of just jammed in there. and I would say, you know, grace, you've written an article on this already, or the newspaper that exists here digitally, we should get rid of these or we can throw these away. And she was very resistant to that. and it was really frustrating because I thought, well, what am I supposed to be doing here? And I came to her one time, really troubled. And I said to her, you know, it feels like we're arguing a lot. And she grinned me and she said, “I know it's great, isn't it we're struggling.” And she said it was such joy. And it helped me understand that for her arguing conflict struggling was not a negative thing. she was saying, as we're learning from one another, we are frustrating one another, which is moving us toward forward. and it helped me to not be so afraid to be in conflict with people that I cared about to be in conflict with people that I trusted. I can have an opinion that is different from hers. And she sees that as okay. Because it means that we're struggling through something. that was really helpful and continues to help me in my work today. [00:34:13] Miko Lee: I love that story. Can you also talk about how she signed her letters? How she did her sign off? [00:34:20] Julia Putnam: She would sign off ” in love and struggle, grace,” that love doesn't come without struggle. and that when we communicate with one another, we are communicating out of love and we are also communicating out of the struggle we have with one another. What do I know There's so many things but what do you feel is the legacy that she leaves behind And obviously with her husband Jimmy too [00:34:42] Julia Putnam: I know that a legacy that she's left to our school Two very important things is when we asked for permission to name the school after her the James and Grace Lee Boggs school she said yes but with the challenge that we would have to as the school founders think beyond what we even believe is possible I am one of the cofounders along with Amanda Rossman and Marisol Teachworth and the three of us together As three women three women of different ethnicities very much love and struggle together and also take it very seriously This idea that we've been indoctrinated as to what school is and when things get hard we will deflect to what we know.as opposed to continue to imagine something different And so we often challenge ourselves with that and challenge our staff and we all challenge one another to are we thinking beyond what we believe it's possible What is the what is beyond the binary that we're being stuck in right now Wo that's the legacy that grace leaves to us that is very important And the other thing is that again the idea of her taking young people seriously and she saw young people as solutionaries she called them people who are able to problem solve to see a challenge and come up with solutions for it And she saw young people as especially creative in their ability to do that And so even on the school t-shirts that kids get there's the the Boggs school logo but on the back it says Solutionary and the kids really take on that identity They take it very seriously They take it very personally often when they come up with a solution to a problem they'll just kind of put their fingers up and just I'm a Solutionary you know I figured it out and and having that identity as young people is has been really important to our school for all of us And I'm wondering if there are thoughts that you feel grace would be teaching right now in this time [00:36:48] Julia Putnam: I think Grace would be highlighting that fact of the young people in the movement their leadership in this movement and their leadership in this time I think she would be encouraging us to listen to young people I think she would be listening to young people And I think that she would say I actually think she'd be very excited by this time heartbroken in the ways that we all are but also excited that we are being forced in this moment to realize that things need to be reimagined We are being forced to use our imaginations for how We stay connected in this time how we educate in this time how we organize in this time how we govern ourselves and how we think about governance in a completely different way than we've ever had to before And I think that's a lot of what she would be excited about that this is That this is the moment where not only do we have to reimagine but we also have to realize that we're the leaders that we're looking for She would often say when we were thinking about the school is that we don't have a lot of leadership around education and certainly not around the education We know that our communities need And so she would say Julia Amanda Mani you all have to imagine this differently yourself You are the leaders that you've been looking for No one's coming to figure this out for you And so we feel as the founders that we with our community of parents and students and community members are beginning to think about how to do this differently and to look to the leadership of young people Thank you so much, Julia, for sharing about how Grace Lee Boggs legacy lives on through the James and Grace Lee Boggs school. And also just about the importance of struggle about love and struggle being one in the same and how. Being able to struggle with love and, you know, to disagree and to have conflict without canceling someone or hating them, but still, you know, in a, in a relationship that is full of a lot of love and not being part of being in community. I think that's really beautiful and that's something that we can all learn from, from Grace Lee Boggs and from Julia and from how they implement that. At their school Jalena Next up, let's listen to another song from Havana. Rio says album together. We rise. This song is called USI and it's focused on the importance of healing. Next up you see by havana rios Song That was UC by native Hawaiian singer and songwriter Havana. Rios from her album together. We rise. Next up we speak with Gail Romasanta who is a Filipina organizer author and community activists This She wrote journey for justice the life of Larry which is a children's book that tells the story of labor activists, Larry Itliong. You could keep going. We have all this information. We have all this history and we need to learn from it. And this isn't the first time at the rodeo. This is not the first time that we've held a picket sign. This is not the first time that we fought for our lives, literally. And we can do it if undocumented. If all of these workers who are migrant workers that no one even thought of that farm workers were even supposed to create unions. And they were supposed to be absolutely expendable. When the Filipinos came here, they were told that the United States was absolutely modern, was the best country in the whole, in the world, just because they were at the time. During this time, the United States was the colony of the United States and when Larry was growing up and so all the instruction he got was English and all the teachers were saying that there's a wonderful country. He comes here. And he's living in these deplorable conditions when it's really hot. They're working outside from light to dark. When they're drinking water, they're all sharing a tin cup. Is that modern? Is that the best country in the world to them? They didn't see that. And for them to be. Seeing kind of the worst of the United States the worst of its conditions and for them to fight and say, I'm going to stay me United States because I love the United States. I love this country and there is hope within us as a community who have decided to stay here, that we can continue to fight and say that we met. That we that we need to our needs get to be met. We need to get, we need to have dignity. We need to have pride in our work. We need to be able to work without pesticides, killing us. We need to have bathroom breaks. We need to have medical insurance. And they asked for all of this and they asked for a raise on top of it. And. And, there's lots of photos. We actually have a photo in the second edition of a riot and you can see, Filipinos aren't getting hit. We don't show the whole picture, but there's some pictures of Filipinos getting hits, hit by the police by batons and things like that. So violence against us is. It's not, unfortunately not new policy is against us, unfortunately is not new. Us being seen as cheap labor and not treated as fully human is not new. And despite that these generations before us were able to find justice. Able to speak to the world. Now this was a global campaign. This was just not the United States. People from all over the world. For instance, during Christmas would give Christmas presents to the farm workers, children. If they were able to. To create this change on a global scale, which is what is happening now. And they can sign those documents for that level that living wage, they can sign those documents to get medical insurance they have, and they're able to. And negotiate for the pesticides that can be used, where they're working. If we can negotiate that if our history was able to negotiate in the face of all that violence and the policies and the judges and the police were on the side of the growers. In fact, when they went on strike, if you look at Marissa or Roy's. Documentary, you can see when the Filipinos went on strike, there's about 2000 Filipinos who went on strike. After they voted the following day, they went on strike. They walked off, they went to work and they walked out the fields. And guess who was waiting for them? Was the police. All the police and you can see the growers just waiting. And they S they try to do this peacefully at first. So they asked at meeting for the growers first, before, and they weren't doing it peaceably, when they were protesting to begin with. But of course the police were waiting for them when they protested. But before that, they invited the growers so that they could negotiate. Rationally and without having to protest and not having to pick it for so long. But the growers never showed up. And what we've been going through as a country has only lasted, we've been going through this a long time. Many people have been doing this have been activists for decades now, or for most of their lives. They know what we're seeing now is oh my God, this is to me. I want to cry. This is something that I could not have imagined. And But it's something that has years and years in history behind it. And for us not to just create from zero, but to continue the arc that has been laid before us of what, the, what the generations before did Specifically during these times. And if you look at all the different movements what can we, what look, what can we learn from them? And a lot of it is you've got to sustain, we've got to strategize and it can't be. It absolutely can be done. . Jalena: Thank you so much, Gail Romasanta for sharing all of that history and all of that knowledge with us. And as she says, we have the knowledge, we have the history, we can do this. It's not necessarily going to be easy, but it is something that we can do. And. It is really important for us to figure out ways to make activism sustainable for ourselves and for future generations to come.While we're on the topic of labor and labor activism. Next up we hear from Saru Jayaraman. Who is an attorney and author and an activist. And. The president of one fair wage and director of the food and labor research center at UC Berkeley. She speaks with us about the campaign she's working on to make sure that restaurant workers are paid a fair and living wage. And the things that keep her hopeful even in times of despair There. I have been organizing in the restaurants many years and prior to the pandemic we had been working for many years on the issue of the sub minimum wage for tipped workers which is a Legacy of slavery It is $2 and 13 cents at the federal level That is the wage for six or 7 million tipped workers in America 70% of whom are women 40% of whom are single mothers struggling to make ends meet to feed their children on mostly on tips Now Was there prior to the pandemic it was a real problem with the pandemic About 10 million restaurant workers have lost their jobs They are in large majority are unable to access unemployment insurance at 60% of them unable to access unemployment insurance because they're being told by state unemployment insurance offices that there are some minimum wage plus tips is too little to meet the minimum threshold to qualify For benefits which means they're being penalized for being paid too little and it's opening up both workers and consumers and even employers to the fact that if the state is telling you you earn too little to qualify for benefits that by the way you paid taxes to get Then probably they were paid too little prior to the pandemic period And so that is an example of how the moment has really revealed that these were untenable unsustainable systems of inequity structural systems of inequity that never should have existed And now are going to create a catastrophe in some ways I think greater than the scale of the great difference Workers are telling us I am terrified and I'm having to choose between my life and my livelihood because the way that unemployment insurance has set up if they have access to unemployment insurance is that you lose unemployment insurance If you don't Take the job You have to be willing to take whatever comes your way If you get offered a job you must take it Otherwise you lose your benefits And so workers are terrified because they're going back to situations where there is no protective equipment Obviously there's still no testing or there's there's no healthcare There's very little con there's no contract tracing I mean it's it's a mess and people are terrified Workers are saying even if my boss did provide me with PP the customers are not wearing it when they come in Certainly they're not wearing it when they're eating so workers are in a really tough situation right now having to choose between their life and their livelihood On the other hand I think it is becoming a lot more obvious to consumers that this is not a tenable situation It's not fair to the workers It's not safe It's not healthy for anybody And so there is a lot of opportunity for change because employers know how Precarious The situation is consumers are wary of employers who don't take care of their workers Suddenly all the things we'd been fighting for a fair livable wage being able to take care of yourself as a worker getting the time off If you need it if you get sick suddenly all of those things have come to the forefront and honestly changes that we never in a million years thought could happen or are happening in our industry because of the pandemic we can reimagine every aspect of our world from the restaurant industry and the way it pays and treats people to our planet and the way that we choose to travel or not travel and the amount of footprint that we each have on our planet. To took the criminal justice system and whether people ever really needed to be locked up in the first place to education. And now the various ways that education can happen. Everything is changing. And it must because both for those young people and for lots of other people, what was normal prior to the pandemic was never normal, never worked. And so rather than going back to normal, I think what I would say to young people right now is join us in. Re-imagining every aspect of our lives and how this pandemic could be the portal that our, that the Roy has said that it is this moment of opportunity to walk into an entirely new world, a re-imagined world in which everything that we've needed all along we can finally achieve. And what are the main things that you'd like to see come out of a new day? Yeah we definitely need our organization is called one fair wage for a reason. We need a livable minimum wage for everybody in the United States who works tipped workers. Who get us some minimum wage right now, incarcerated workers who don't have to be paid the minimum wage because of the exception to the 13th amendment that allows for slavery in the case of incarceration, youth who often don't get the full minimum wage people with disabilities, who often don't get the minimum wage. Fundamentally, no workers should be left behind. Everybody who works in this country deserves to be paid a full, livable, minimum wage by their employer with tips on top of that. Not instead of that that's one piece we obviously need universal health care. That is a given of the moment. We need benefits for workers like hazard pay and sick pay and paid time off. We need a society. Actually thinks of public safety, not in terms of locking people up, but in terms of providing good jobs and good schools for communities that have been long devastated by racial inequities. So those are just some of the things I can rattle off the top of my head that we need in a new deal, but really what we need is a new world. And I, what I really want, I, what I really hope young people can hear is that is totally possible right now. In this moment, there is that opportunity to make everything different and better. And re-imagined Jalena: Thank you so much Saru for sharing your brilliance and these words that are so powerful and impactful. And I hope we can all think about what we can do to make our world better for all of us. , we've had so much incredible activists, thought leaders, ancestors speaking on the show today. These are interviews taken from our series called we are the leaders from Grace Lee Boggs, famous quote. But let's end. Celebrating this month with a little bit of joy. Yes. We have a lot of important issues to tackle. Yes. There are a lot of big problems ahead of us. But we won't be able to do any of it unless we have fun and have some pleasure along the. the way. So lastly, let's talk about some of our, rapid-fire a NHPI question. Okay. What's your favorite food? I think today it is, , kimchi fried rice. Mine is chashu about and strawberry mochi. And favorite fruit. Mango mango. Yeah, no question mango. Whatever book. I, my favorite book of all time is actually not Asian American. , but it's a Mallory book and it's called the bone people. But then recently my favorite book that is by an Asian-American is crying and H Bart, what about you? Oh, crying and HR is really good. woman warrior is one of my favorites. Oh, gee book. Yeah, for sure. Musician. Mine is her or Ruby Abara. Ooh, I think those are mine too. I really love her and Ruby Obara and then also shout out to my friends, raise our Goza, who is a phenomenal musician who is native American and Japanese and Hollis long-wear who is Chinese American and white. Oh, And Rena Rena. Oh, Rena saw. Yama. Yes, Rena. So yeah, I really liked. She's amazing. Film or TV show minds, everything everywhere. All at once. I can't think of a TV show, but movie is definitely everything everywhere. All was. Mine changes day-to-day but I did really like Menotti and parasite. What about artist? , I recently went to now Shima island in Japan. So right now, favorite Asian artists I can think of is Yaya. Kusama. Oh, I do love her work. For me, my favorite, a N H P I artists changes every day and today it would be Ruth Asawa because I'm thinking a lot about weaving and how she weaved these beautiful baskets out of wire. And she really transformed how we think about sculpture. So I love her, the SOA. Who's your favorite ancestor activist. , this changes every day too, but I really feel like I always, always most often think of quotes from Grace Lee Boggs. I was thinking Gracely Boggs too, but I also one. But also Yuri Kochiyama, and just thinking about how radical she was up until the very end and how she would be in her nineties coming to all these community events and still being just as sharp and just as radical and refusing to take anything from anyone. And I really admire that. I feel like a gift that we have of doing this show is so many of the elder activists that we've been able to interview that are still out there making changes. , really utilizing their voice to invigorate the next generation. So I'm thankful that we get to talk to those people and learn from them constantly. Me too. And what a great time, what a great month to celebrate. So happy Asian American native Hawaiian, Pacific Islander month. And thank you so much for joining us. Please check out our website, kpfa.org to find out more about these events and our guests. We thank all you listeners out there. Keep resisting, keep organizing, keep creating and sharing your visions with the world. Your voices are important. Apex expresses a proud member of acre Asian Americans for civil rights and equality. A network of progressive AAPI groups. Find out more@aker.org. APEX express is produced by Miko Lee that's me, Paige Chung, Swati Rayasam, Preeti Mangala Shakar, Nate Tan, Hien Nguyen and Jalena Keane-Lee. Have a great day The post APEX Express – AAPI Special Programming – We Are the Leaders 5.8.23 appeared first on KPFA.

Since the 1880s, immigrants from all over the globe have arrived in the United States hoping to attain a better quality of life, the American Dream. Like so many immigrants before them, Lily and Ben Chin wanted their son Vincent to have more opportunities than he may have had in their native China. In the 1970s and 1980s, however, tensions were high between Japanese and American automobile manufacturers, and that discord extended beyond the auto manufacturing plants. It was at this time that 27-year-old Vincent Chin found himself in peril on the streets of Motor City. His story reminds us why this landmark case is still relevant more than 40 years later. Let's get social: Follow MURDERISH on Instagram & TikTok @MurderishPodcast. We're also on Facebook. Visit murderish.com to learn more about Jami and the podcast. You can also buy merch & sign up to become a MURDERISH | Behind the Mic Patreon member and get access to exclusive perks.  Listening to this podcast doesn't make you a murderer, it just means you're murder …ish. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Vincent Chin was a regular dude living his normal life. He was a son, fiancé, and regular American citizen. On the night of his bachelor party, Ronald Ebens and Michael Nitz beat Vincent in the head with a bat and ultimately killed Vincent. They served no jail time and there has been no justice for Vincent or the chin family.  It is claimed as a hate crime and a product of Asian hate. Time has shown that nothing has changed in this country, as this is still a common problem. Sources:https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killing_of_Vincent_Chin

In 1982, Vincent Chin was brutally killed in a racially motivated attack in Detroit, Michigan. The murder led to a new human rights movement, highlighting the dangers of anti-Asian sentiment in America. We talk about this issue with Dr. Lok Siu, Cultural Anthropologist and Professor of Ethnic Studies at UC Berkeley.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

A weekly magazine-style radio show featuring the voices and stories of Asians and Pacific Islanders from all corners of our community. The show is produced by a collective of media makers, deejays, and activists. Host Miko Lee talks about Theatre & Memory with Bay Area native artists: composer Byron Au Yong and playwright Lauren Yee. They provide behind the scenes news about their upcoming productions at ACT and Berkeley Rep. More info on our guests: Byron Au Yong, composer The Headlands, ACT   Lauren Yee, playwright Cambodian Rock Band, Berkeley Rep   Transcript: Theatre and Memory or Why Art Matters [00:00:00] Miko Lee: Good evening and welcome to APEX Express. I'm your host, Miko Lee, and tonight we're talking about theater and memory or why art matters. So many artists grapple with this concept of memory and how each of us has a different story to share. And tonight we get to hear from two bay area locals, a playwright, and a composer, each share a bit about their creative process and why art matters to them. I have the pleasure of speaking with composer, Byron Au Yong who had been creating music for the Headlands, which opens this weekend at act. And with playwright Lauren Yee who's musical Cambodian rock band comes back home to Berkeley rep at the end of the month. First off. Let's take a listen to one of Byron Al Yong's compositions called know your rights. This is part of the trilogy of the Activists Songbook. This multi-lingual rap, give steps to know what to do when ice officers come to your door. song That was know your rights performed by Jason Chu with lyrics by Aaron Jeffries and composed by my guest, Byron Au Yong. Welcome, Byron Au Yong to Apex Express. We're so happy to hear from you. [00:04:11] Byron Au Yong: Thanks, Miko. It's so great to be here. [00:04:13] Miko Lee: I wanna talk to you about a couple of things. First and foremost, you have the Headlands that is opening up at ACT really soon. Tell me about who your people are and where you come from. [00:04:27] Byron Au Yong: Sure. So my grandparents, both maternal and paternal, left China in the late thirties and they both immigrated to the Philippines. And so both my parents were born to Philippines in different areas. And so I come from a family of refugees who then settled into Philippines and my parents were not the first in their family. They were actually both the fourth and they left and immigrated to the United States when the United States opened up immigration in post 1965. So they were part of that wave. And then I was born in Pittsburgh. They, they were actually introduced here in Seattle. And I was born in Pittsburgh because my dad was in school there. And then they moved back to Seattle. So I'm from Seattle and in 2016 I moved to San Francisco. [00:05:17] Miko Lee: Thank you. So you are a composer. Have you always played music and have you always been attuned to audio? Tell me about how you got started as a composer. [00:05:28] Byron Au Yong: Sure. As a kid my parents divorced when I was age seven and I was an only child up until age 16. My mom worked. In the evenings. And my dad wasn't in the household and so I had a lot of time to myself and I would sing a lot to myself. And then my next door neighbor was a piano teacher, and so I started to play the piano at age nine, and then at age 11 I started to write stuff down. And yeah, so I've been doing music for a bit. [00:05:59] Miko Lee: So music has always been a part of your life, essentially. It's been your playmate since you were young. [00:06:04] Byron Au Yong: Yes, absolutely [00:06:05] Miko Lee: Love that. So tell us about the Headlands that's gonna be opening at ACT pretty soon. [00:06:11] Byron Au Yong: Yeah so The Headlands is a play by Christopher Chen, who you may know is playwright, who is born and raised and continues to live in San Francisco. And it's his love letter to San Francisco. It's a San Francisco noir play. It's a whodunit play. It's a play about a main character who's trying to figure out who he is after the death of his dad. Which causes him to wonder who he is and where he is from. I'm doing original music for the show, this is gonna be an American Conservatory Theater, and Pam McKinnon, who's the artistic director, will be stage directing this production as well. I actually met Chris Chen in 2013 when I had a show called Stuck Elevator that was at ACT. And I've been really fascinated with his work as a playwright for a while, and so I was thrilled when ACT invited me to join the creative team to work on music. Miko Lee: Oh, fun. Okay. I wanna talk to you about Stuck Elevator next, but first let's stick with the headlines.This is a play that's about memory and storytelling. I'm wondering if there is a story that has framed your creative process. Byron Au Yong: Yeah. Thinking about this show as a memory play, and, memory as something, we go back in our memories to try and figure stuff out, which is very much what this play is. And also to claim and to. figure out if something from our memory was recalled maybe in completely. And so the main character is, piecing together fragments of his memory to figure out who he is in the present. And considering this I actually went back to music. I composed when I was still a teenager. I actually dropped outta school and was working a lot. I think I realized early on that I was indeed, I wanted to dedicate myself to being an artist and was very concerned about how I would make a living as an artist in the United States. And so I thought I'll figure out how to make money away from the music. And so I had a lot of jobs and I was trying to write music, but, I was in a sad place, and so I never finished anything. I have a bunch of fragments from this time. But on Memorial Day I woke up and, it was sunny in Seattle and so I said, I'm gonna finish a piece of music today. And that became part of a project in mine where every Memorial Day I finish a piece of music and it's a solo piano piece that I finish. And so, going back in my personal history, I found one of these Memorial Day pieces and thought, oh, this actually works. Because it's a bit awkward and it doesn't resolve, and I remember who I was back then, but it's also me piecing together things and so I used that as the foundation for the music, for The Headlands, which is a different thing. If you didn't know that was my source material, that's in some ways irrelevant. But that's my personal connection in thinking about music for this. And of course I've also done a lot of research on film noir. A lot of noir films were set in San Francisco. And and the music is awesome, amazing of this genre. And, it's mysterious it is a certain urban Americana music. And so I include those elements as well. [00:09:36] Miko Lee: Thank you. That's so interesting that you have a Memorial Day ritual to create a piece of music. I'm wondering if, aside from the Headlands, have you used the Memorial Day Music in other pieces you've created? [00:09:48] Byron Au Yong: No this is the first time. [00:09:51] Miko Lee: Wow. Yeah. That's great. [00:09:53] Byron Au Yong: I think Miko is because, it's a private thing for me. I think the other thing too is as you mentioned, music was my friend growing up. The piano was. Definitely one of my best friends. And so solo piano pieces for me are, it's where you can have an audience of one. And one of the things that helped me, when I was not in school was. Playing through a lot of different other solo piano pieces. And so part of these Memorial Day pieces too are that they're meant to be simple enough that they could be sight read. And so if, if there's a musician who you know, is in a similar state of, oh, I'm not able to really do anything, but I want to be with music. I can sight read through, these different Memorial Day pieces. [00:10:38] Miko Lee: And do you have them set in a specific part of your house or where, how, where do you keep your Memorial Day projects and when do you open them up to look at them? [00:10:48] Byron Au Yong: Oh yeah. They're handwritten in a folder. None of the things so special. [00:10:54] Miko Lee: What was it that inspired you to go back and look at them for the headlands? [00:10:58] Byron Au Yong: Oh, you know what it is there are, be, because I know you, you also create stuff too in your memory of your catalog.I'm wondering if you have. If you have works that, that you remember that you made and then tho those works may remind you of a certain mood you were in or a certain room or and so I think they're musical things from certain or, things I was experimenting with for these Memorial Day. Said, I'm like, oh, I remember this. Let me go back to the folder where I collect this stuff every year and look through it. And I think that parallels actually the headlands and what the main character is doing because he recalls, and what's so cool about the production is we go into the same scene, but there's like a clue that's been revealed. And so we as an audience get to revisit the scene again. And there's a different interpretation of what was happening in the scene. And so what might have been like a scene between Henry's parents, Lena and George, which he thought, oh, this is how it was when I was a kid, when I was 10 years old. Thinking about it, remembering it, but now with this new information, this is how I'm gonna interpret the scene. And so I think similarly with, music from my past, these Memorial Day pieces, I'm like, oh, this is what I was interested in working on. But now as a older composer, I'm like, ah, and I can do this with this material. [00:12:26] Miko Lee: I love that. And I also really appreciate that this play about memory you pulled from your Memorial Day pieces, that it goes with this whole flow of just re-envisioning things with your own frame and based on where you're at in any given time. [00:12:42] Byron Au Yong: Totally. [00:12:43] Miko Lee: I know that the show was created 2020, is that right? Yes. Is that when, first? Yeah, Byron Au Yong: I think it's right before the pandemic. Miko Lee: Yeah. And you've had several different directors, and now in a way you both are coming home to San Francisco and artistic director, Pam McKinnon is directing it. I wonder if you have thoughts about some of the difference approaches that these directors have brought to the process. [00:13:06] Byron Au Yong: Oh, yeah. And, miko, this is the first time I'm working on the headlands. And so when it was at Lincoln Center, there was a different creative team. [00:13:12] Miko Lee: Oh, so the music, you're just creating the music for this version of the show. [00:13:16] Byron Au Yong: Yes, correct. Wow. And it is a new production because that Lincoln Center was in a stage called LCT 3, which is a smaller venue. Whereas this is gonna be in a Toni Rembe theater, which is, on Geary. It's a 1100 seat theater. And the set is quite fabulous and large . And what's also great is, aside from Johnny, all the cast is local. And like it will have the feel of a San Francisco production because many of us live here, have lived here and know these places that are referenced in the show. [00:13:51] Miko Lee: Thanks for that clarification. So that's really different to go from a small house at Lincoln Center to the big house at a c t Yes. With local folks with, your local music. That brings a very different approach to it. I'm excited to see it. That sounds really interesting. And now I wanna go back to talk about Stuck Elevator, which I was so delighted to learn about. Which was your first piece That was at ACT what, back in 2013? So tell our audience first about where Stuck Elevator came from and then tell what it's about. [00:14:23] Byron Au Yong: Sure. So stuck elevator. So I was living in New York in 2005 and there were some there were some images of like photos in the newspaper, initially it was local news because it was a Chinese delivery man who was missing. And most of the delivery people at the time, they carry cash, they won't go to the police. And there, there had been a string of muggings and then one was actually beaten to death. And so it was local news that this guy was missing. And then a few days later, and in New York Times, there was a big article because he was found in an elevator in the Bronx and he had been trapped in his elevator which had become stuck. And he was trapped for 81 hours, which that's like over three days. And so it made international news. And then when I read the article and learned more about him, there were many parallels like where he was from in China, which is Fujan Province, which is where my grandparents left that he was paying a debt to human smugglers to be in the United States. And different things that I thought, wow, if my grandparents hadn't left I wonder if, I would be the one who was, paying to be smuggled here rather than paying for grad school. And so I became quite fascinated with them. And then also, realized at the time, in 2005, this is like YouTube was just starting, and so all like the Asian American YouTube stars, they weren't as prominent in the news. And, BTS wasn't around then. So for me to see an Asian male. In the US media there was always this feeling of oh why is this Asian male in the news? And then realized, oh, it's actually part of a larger story about being trapped in America about family obligation, about labor, about fear of, in his specific case because he's an undocumented immigrant, fear of deportation. So there were many issues that, that I thought were broader than the specific story. And so I thought, this would be a great opera slash musical. So that's what it became at [00:16:23] Miko Lee: you, you basically read a story and said, whoa, what is this? I feel this is so wild. And then created it into an opera. Yes. Also, it just resonated with me so much as a person who has been trapped in elevators, in broken elevators six different times, . Oh my goodness. Yes. I'm like, wow. And his story, that many hours, that has to be like a record. Byron Au Yong: Right? Nobody else has been trapped that long. Yeah. It's a record. Miko Lee: So you created this piece, it premiered at ACT? Yes. Did you ever connect with the guy that was stuck in the elevator? [00:16:59] Byron Au Yong: No. So the New York Times did something which is actually not cool. They they revealed his immigration status and that at the time I'm not sure if it's still the case,but at the time, you're not allowed to reveal people's immigration status. Especially, in such a public way. And so what was cool was that the AALEDF, which is the Asian American Legal Education and Defense Fund, they the volunteer attorneys there step forward to represent Ming Kuang Chen and his case and ensure that he had legal representation so he would not be deported. The thing is, he was suffering from PTSD and there was also another case at the time it was a different un undocumented immigrant case that AALEDF was representing that had a bit more visibility and so he actually didn't want to be so much into public eye, and so he went back into hiding. And so while I didn't meet him specifically, I met his translator. I met other people at AALEDF met with other people who were related to the stories that he was a part of. So for example, used to be an organization, which I think they've changed their name, but they were the Fujanese Restaurant Workers Association. Most of the undocumented immigrants who worked in restaurants at the time are from Fujan Province. Also, Asian Pacific American Studies at New York University. Is a mix o f people who were working in restaurants as well as people, scholars who were studying this issue. [00:18:46] Miko Lee: Can you describe a little bit about Stuck Elevator for folks that haven't seen it? Sure. How did you conceive of this piece, that song? [00:18:53] Byron Au Yong: Yeah so it's a thru sung piece about a guy who's trapped in America. He's a Chinese food delivery man, and he's, delivering food in the Bronx. And what I think is You know what I didn't realize when I started it. And then I realized working on it was the thing about being stuck in the elevator is, especially for so long, is that you and I don't know if this is your case, Miko it's so fascinating to hear you've been trapped six different times. There's the initial shock and initial oh my gosh, I have to get out. And then there's this. Maybe not resignation but there's this, okay. Okay. I'm gonna be here so now what? Now what I'm going to do and the time actually, especially for someone who works so much delivering food and sending money back home to his wife and son in China and his family is that he actually is not working, right? And so he has time to consider what his life has been like in New York for the past, the two years he's been there. And to consider the choices he's made as well as to remember his family who are back in China. And part of this too is you're not awake the entire time. Sometimes you go to sleep, and so in his sleep he dreams. He has hallucinations. He has nightmares. And this is where the music theater opera really starts to confront and navigate through the various issues of being trapped in America. [00:20:22] Miko Lee: Any chance this will come into production, somewhere? [00:20:26] Byron Au Yong: Yeah, hopefully, we were just at Nashville Opera last week, two weeks ago. [00:20:30] Miko Lee: Oh, fun. [00:20:31] Byron Au Yong: so Nashville Opera. So the lead Julius Ahn who was in ACT's production is an opera singer. And and he had told the artistic director of Nashville Opera about this project years ago. And John Hoomes, who's the artistic director there had remembered it. Last year John Hoomes reached out to me and said, you know, I think it's the time for to be an operatic premiere of Stuck Elevator. And so we had an amazing run there. [00:20:58] Miko Lee: Great. Wow. I look forward to seeing that too somewhere soon. Yes. I also wanted to chat with you about this last week, a lot of things have been happening in our A P I community with these mass shootings that have been just so painful. Yes. And I know that you worked on a piece that was called The Activist Songbook. Are you, can you talk a little bit about that process and the Know Your Rights project? [00:21:23] Byron Au Yong: Yeah, absolutely. And I'm gonna back up because so Activist Song Book is actually the third in a trilogy of which Stuck Elevator is the first, and related to the recent tragedies that have happened in Half Moon Bay and also in Monterey Park. The second in the trilogy is it's called the Ones. It was originally called Trigger, and it also has the name Belonging. And I can go through why it has so many different names, but the first in the trilogy was Stuck Elevator, and it was prompted by me again, seeing an Asian male in the US media. So the second actually all three are from seeing Asian males in the US media. And the second one was an incident that happened in 2007 where a creative writing major shot 49 people killing 32, and then himself at Virginia Tech. And and when this happened I realized, oh shoot Stuck elevator's part of a trilogy. I have to figure out how to do this show called Trigger or what was called Trigger. And then realized of the different layers in a trilogy. Yes. There's this initial thing about Asian men in the US media, but then there's this other thing about ways out of oppression. And so with Stuck Elevator, the way out of oppression is through the main character's imagination, right? His dreams, his what ifs, right? The possibilities and the different choices he can make with the second one, what me and the creative team realized is that, the way out of oppression is that the creative writing major who you may remember was a Korean American he was so isolated at Virginia Tech and the tragedy of him being able to purchase firearms and then kill so many people, including himself in working on it, I was like, I need to understand, but it's not this story I necessarily want to put on stage. And so what it became is it became a story, and this is also the national conversation changed around mass violence in America. The conversation became less about the perpetrator and more about the victims. And so it became a choral work for community performers. So rather than a music theater opera, like Stuck Elevator, it's a music theater forum with local singers. And this was actually performed at Virginia Tech during the 10 year memorial of the tragedy. And this one I did eight site visits to Virginia Tech and met with people including the chief of police of Blacksburg. First responder to director of threat assessment to family members whose children were lost. A child of, teachers were also killed that day to counselors who were there to Nikki Giovanni, who was one of the faculty members. So yeah so many people. But this one, the second one, the way out of oppression is from isolation into community, into belonging. And Virginia Tech Administration said we could not call the work trigger. And so the work there was called (Be)longing with the be in parentheses. And now we've done a new revision called The Ones partially influenced by the writer, one of his teachers was June Jordan who was at UC Berkeley. And she has a phrase, we are the ones we've been waiting for. And so the ones which is a 2019 revision, the show, what it does is Act three youth takeover, right? It's about coming of age and an age of guns, and the youth have become activists because they have no choice because they are being shot in places of learning, and so Parkland in Chicago and other places have been influential in this work. And then the third in the trilogy is Activist Songbook. And for this one we went back to an earlier asian male who was in the US media, and that was Vincent Chin who you may know was murdered 40 years ago. And so activist song book is to counteract hate and energize movements. And it's a collection of different songs that is even further away from musical theater opera production in that the rally component of the songs can be taught within 10 minutes to a group of people outdoors to be used right away. And that one, the way out of repression is through organizing. [00:25:49] Miko Lee: Well, Byron Au Young, thank you so much for sharing with us about all the different projects you've been working on. We'll put a link in the show notes to the headlands that folks can see at a c t. Tell our audience how else they can find out more about you and your life as a composer and more about your work. [00:26:05] Byron Au Yong: Sure. I have a website. It's my name.com or b y r o n a u y o n g.com. [00:26:12] Miko Lee: Thank you so much for spending so much time with me. [00:26:14] Byron Au Yong: Of course. [00:26:15] Miko Lee: You are tuned into apex express on 94.1, KPFA an 89.3 K P F B in Berkeley and online@kpfa.org. We're going to hear one more piece by composer, Byron Al young called This is the Beginning, which was prompted by Lilly and Vincent chin and inspired by Helen Zia and other organizers. song That was, This is the Beginning by Byron Au Yong and Aaron Jeffrey's. Featuring Christine Toi Johnson on voice and Tobias Wong on voice and guitar. This is a beginning is prompted by organizing in response to the racially motivated murder of Vincent Chin in Detroit. This hate crime was a turning point for Asian American solidarity in the fight for federal civil rights. Lily chin Vincent's mom refused to let her son's death be invisible. Next up, I have the chance to speak with playwright Lauren Yee who's musical Cambodian rock band. Returns to Berkeley rep where it first got its workshop and it will be there from February 25th through April 2nd. And here's a teaser from Cambodian rock band by Lauren Yee. Take a listen to seek CLO. song Miko Lee: Welcome Lauren Yee to Apex express. [00:34:35] Lauren Yee: Thank you so much, Miko. [00:34:37] Miko Lee: We're so happy to have you a local Bay Area person. Award-winning playwright. Coming back to town at Berkeley Rep with your show, Cambodian Rock Band. Yay. Tell us about the show. [00:34:51] Lauren Yee: Yes so Cambodian Rock Band. Is actually a piece that has some of its like earliest development roots in the Bay Area and also like specifically at Berkeley Rep. Getting to bring the show to Berkeley rep really feels like some sort of poetic justice. In addition to the fact, that it's like my old stomping grounds. . Essentially Cambodian rock Band started in 2015, or at least the writing of it. It actually started, if I'm being honest much earlier than that. I think it was about 2010 2011. I was down in San Diego in grad school and one of my friends was just like dying to go see this band play at a music festival. She was like, I saw this band play. They're amazing. You should totally come. And I was like, sure. And I don't know if you've ever had this experience, but it's like, going somewhere, hearing a band, and even before you know anything about them or their story, you just fall in love. You fall like head over heels in love and you say, oh my God who are these people? And I wanna know everything about them. And that band was Dengue Fever. Which is amazing. You fell in love with the band first. Yep. Before the play. Yes. And it was the band Dengue Fever which is an LA band. And their front woman Choni Mall is Cambodian American and she leads this sound that I think started in covers of Cambodian oldies from that golden age of rock for them, and has over time morphed into Dengue Fever's own original sound. Like we're nowadays, they're coming out with an album soon, their own original songs. But I fell in love with Dengue Fever and I was like, oh, okay, who are these people inspired by? And I just went down that rabbit hole of learning about this whole musical history that I never knew about. My own background is Chinese American. I'm not Cambodian American. And so a lot of kids who grew up in the public school system, I did not get basically any education about Cambodian history and America's role in seeding the elements that led to the Khmer Rouge's takeover the country, and the ensuing genocide. [00:37:12] Miko Lee: So you first fell in love with the band and then you went down an artist rabbit hole. We love those artist rabbit holes. Yes. And then what was your inspiration for the play itself? The musical? [00:37:22] Lauren Yee: Yeah so I fell in love with the music and I was like, there is something here because you had all these musicians in Cambodia who like, when 1975 hit and the communists took over the country there was just a time when like the country was a hostile place for artists where artists were specifically targeted among other groups. And so much of Cambodia's musicians and its musical history, was snuffed out, and I was like, there is a story here, that I find deeply compelling. And for a long time I didn't know how to tell that story because there's just so much in it. And then came 2015 where two things happened. One was that I was commissioned by a theater in Orange County called South Coast Rep, and they invited me to come down to their theater and just do research in the community for two weeks on anything you want. So I was like, I wanna look at malls, I wanna look at the video game culture down there, all kinds of things. And one of the things that I was interested in and just bubbled to the surface was the Cambodian American community, which is not in Orange County proper, but in, situated largely in Long Beach, right next door. And it just so happened that while I was there, There were just a lot of Cambodian American music related events that were going on. So the second annual Cambodian Music Festival, the Cambodia Town Fundraiser, Dengue Fever, was playing a gig in Long Beach. Like all these things were happening, that intersected me, with the Kamai or Cambodian community in Long Beach. And the other thing that happened coming out of that trip is that I started beginning to write the seeds of the play. And I did a very early workshop of it up at Seattle Rap. And I'm the sort of playwright. probably like writes and brings in collaborators like actors and a director sooner than a lot of other people. Most people probably wait until they have a first draft that they're comfortable with, whereas I'm like, I have 20 pages and I think if I go up and get some collaborators, I think I can generate the rest of it. So I went up to Seattle with kind of my, 20 or 30 pages and we brought in some actors. And that workshop had an actor named Joe No in it, and I knew Joe from previous work I'd done in Seattle. But during our first rehearsal when we were just like chatting he said to me like, this is my story. And I was like, oh, it's a story that calls out to me too. Thank you. And he was like no. You don't understand. Like, So my parents were born in Battambang Cambodia. They were survivors of the Khmer Rouge. I feel deeply connected to this material. And that conversation sparked. a very long relationship, between me and Joe and this play. That I, I think of him as like the soul, of this play. He became just like an integral part. And in the South coast rep production and in subsequent productions he's kind of been like our lead. He is Chum, and it's a role that I think is like perfectly suited for who he is as a human being and what his like essence is. And also he plays electric guitar which I think influenced things a lot because initially it was a play about music, right? It wasn't a musical, it was just people like talking about a music scene that they loved. And as I went along and found like the perfect people for these roles it was like, Joe plays electric guitar. It would be crazy not to have him try to play a little electric guitar in the show. And that kind of began that, the evolution of this play into a piece where music is not only talked about, but is an integral part of the show. You know that it's become a show that has a live band. The actors play the instruments. They play about a dozen songs. And it's a mix of Dengue, half Dengue Fever songs, half mostly Cambodian oldies. It's kind of been an incredible journey and I could not have imagined what that journey would be, it's hard to replicate. [00:41:53] Miko Lee: I love that. So has Joe been in every production you've done of the show so far? [00:41:57] Lauren Yee: So he hasn't been able to be in everyone. There were two productions happening at the same time, and so he could only be in one place at one time. But I bet you he would've tried to be in two places at once. But he's basically been in almost every production. And the production that he's in currently running at the Alley Theater in Houston is is like the production, the original production directed by Chay Yew. [00:42:24] Miko Lee: Wow. And was it difficult to cast all actors that were also musicians? [00:42:30] Lauren Yee: In some ways there there's I think if you were starting from scratch and you like open your window and you're like, where could I find some actors? I think it would be tough. But I just kept running into kind of like crazy happenstance where I would find a person and I wasn't even thinking about them musically. And they'd be like, yeah, like I've played bass, for 15 years. and I could kind of do drums, right? That what was remarkable is that there were all these Asian American actors who were like known as actors. But then once you like, dig down into their biographies, you're like, Hey, I see like you've actually played drums for X number of years, or, Hey, I see that you play like guitar and bass. Miko Lee: Tell me more about that. Lauren Yee: So it's almost like finding all these stealth musicians and like helping them dust the instruments off and being like, Hey, come back here. Fun. And so it's just been, it's just been like a joy. [00:43:27] Miko Lee: Oh, that's so great. I know the play is about music and also about memory, and I'm wondering if there's a story that has framed your creative process that stands out to you. [00:43:39] Lauren Yee: I don't know if it's one specific memory, but I find that just a lot of my stories I think they deal with family. I think they deal with parents and their grown children trying to reconnect with each other, trying to overcome family secrets and generational struggles. I would say I have a great relationship with my father. But I think, in every parent and child relationship, one thing that I'm fascinated by are these attempts to get to know someone, like especially your own parent, even when you know them well, and especially when you know them well. That kind of is able to penetrate that barrier that sometimes you hit in generations, right? That there's a wall that your parents put up. Or that there's this impossibility of knowing who your parents were before you had them because they had a whole life. And you only know this like tiny bit of it. And I think I'm just like fascinated by that. I'm fascinated by the impact of time. I'm fascinated by extraordinary circumstances and the ordinary people who lived through those times. And I think for a large part, even though Cambodian rock band features a family whose lived experience is different from my own. I think there's a lot of my own relationship with my father that I put into that relationship. This desire to know your parent better, this desire to know them even as they're trying to protect you. So yeah. [00:45:06] Miko Lee: What do your parents think about your work? [00:45:10] Lauren Yee: I think my parents are incredibly supportive, but like different in the way that one might think because my parents aren't arts people they of course like enjoy a story or enjoy a show, but they're not people who are like, I have a subscription to this theater, or I'm gonna go to this museum opening. and so their intersection with the arts, I feel like has been out of a sense of like love for me. Their ways of supporting me early on when like I was interested in theater and trying to figure out a way to go about it, like in high school when I was trying to like, put on a show with my friends and they were like in the back folding the programs or like building, the door to the set. And hauling away, all the furniture, so we could bring it to the theater. So like my parents have been supportive, but in a very, like nuts and bolts kind of way. Miko Lee: That's so sweet and that's so important. When I was doing the theater, my mom would come to every single show. Lauren Yee: Just Oh, bless that is, bless her. [00:46:14] Miko Lee: Ridiculous commitment. Yeah. I don't that for my kids, like every show. I wanna back up a little bit cuz we're talking about family. Can you tell me who are your people and where do you come from? [00:46:27] Lauren Yee: Ooh. That's such a great question. I think there are like many ways of answering that. When I think of home, I think of San Francisco, I live in New York now. But my whole youth, I grew up in San Francisco. My parents were both born there. My grandmother was born and raised there, one of my grandfathers was, born more like up the Delta and the other side of my family, my grandparents came from Toisan China. So on one hand, my family's from like that Pearl River Delta part of China. And at various times, like made a break for the United States. I think starting in the 1870s and spanning into the early 20th century you know, so we've been here for a while. And another way of thinking about it is we're all very, I think, suffused in our family's history in San Francisco. It's hard for me to go to a Chinese restaurant with my family without somebody from our table knowing somebody else in the restaurant, like inevitable. And it's something that never happens to me. I don't think it's ever happened to me when living in New York. Yeah. And I think And that's fun. That's fun. I love that. Yeah. Yeah. And I think b eing able to be Chinese American. Growing up in San Francisco, it's different than other, Asian Americans living in other parts of the country. Like in a strange way, it allows you to like be more of whoever you wanna be, right? When you're like not the only one. That it allows you to like, potentially choose a different path and not have to worry about. I don't know, just like carrying that load. [00:48:01] Miko Lee: That is so interesting. Do you mean because there's safety, because you're around so many other Chinese Americans, Asian Americans, that you can bring forth a greater sense of your individuality? [00:48:13] Lauren Yee: Yeah, I think so, like I went to Lowell High School where, you know, two thirds of the class is Asian American. There's just such a wide range of what an Asian American student at Lowell looks like. And what we're interested in and how our weird obsessions manifest so I think I just felt more freedom in differentiating myself cuz I like theater and I like storytelling. [00:48:36] Miko Lee: That's really interesting. Thanks so much for sharing that. I'm wondering, because Cambodian rock band is partially about when the communists took over Cambodia. If, when you were growing up as a multi-generational Chinese American, did you hear very much about communism and the impact on China? [00:48:57] Lauren Yee: I did not. And possibly it was swirling around. And I was too young to really understand the impacts. But when I look back on it, a lot of my plays, Cambodian Rock Band included, have to do with the intersection of Communism and American culture. Like another play I have called The Great Leap which was at ACT in San Francisco, also dealt with American culture like basketball, intersecting in communist China in the 1970s and then the 1980s. And like, honestly, in retrospect, the effects of communism were all around me growing up in San Francisco in the nineties. That the kids that I went to school with, like in elementary school, came there in various waves, but a lot of them pushed from Asia because of the influences of communism that you had of a wave of kids who came over. In the wake of the fall of the Soviet Union, you had kids who came preempting, the Hong Kong handover back to China. You had kids, who came to San Francisco in the wake of the fall of the Vietnam War. So there were like all these, political movements the effects of war that were like shaping the people around me. And I didn't realize it until like very much later. [00:50:19] Miko Lee: Oh, that's so interesting. Thank you so much. By the way. I really loved the Great Leap. It was such an interesting thank you way of really talking about some deep issues, but through such an American sport like basketball I enjoyed that so much. So thank you so much for sharing about your San Francisco influence. I'm curious because you've been writing TV now limited series like Pachinko and also congrats on writing the musical for Wrinkle In Time. Amazing. Thank you. [00:50:49] Lauren Yee: That is a book that I loved and just shook me, I forget what grade I was in, but I was probably like, 10 or 11 or something. So I think the fact that I get to interface and get to dig into such an iconic work as Wrinkle in Time, blows my mind. [00:51:05] Miko Lee: That is going to be so exciting. I'm really looking forward to that. Yeah. Yeah. But my question was really about you working on Pachinko and these other series, how different is playwriting to screen versus TV writing? [00:51:17] Lauren Yee: Yeah. I think in a way like the work that I did on Pachinko, for instance, like I was on the writing staff, that's a role where you're like supporting the creator of the show, which in this instance is Sue Hugh, who is just an incredible mind. And she had like kind of this vision for what she wanted to do with the adaptation of Pachinko. And, you know, you, as a writer on staff you're really helping to support that. So I think your role is a little bit different when you're brought on staff for tv that you're helping to birth the thing along and contribute your part. Whereas when you're a playwright like the piece remains with you, and you just have I think a greater sense of control over what happens to it. [00:52:00] Miko Lee: What surprised you in your creative process while you were working on this play, this musical? [00:52:08] Lauren Yee: I think the thing that I realized when I was writing Cambodian Rock Band is that in order for the play to really click together is that joy has to be at the center of it. That Cambodian rock band is a piece about art and artists and family surviving really horrific events. And in order to tell that story, you need to fall in love with the music. You need to understand why these people might have risked their lives. For art, you need to understand why art matters. And I think a feature of my work is finding the light in dark places that there is a lot, in the play that is heavy. There are points where it is surprisingly and shockingly funny and that there are moments of just incredible heart in places like you probably won't be expecting. And I think that's been a big lesson of developing this piece. [00:53:14] Miko Lee: Lauren Yee thank you so much for talking with me and sharing about Cambodian Rock Band and your artistic process. I know it's gonna be running at Berkeley rep February 25th through April 2nd. Where else is it running for folks that might not live in the Bay? [00:53:30] Lauren Yee: Yeah, so if you live in the Bay Area, or if you want just see it again, which is totally fine. Lots of people see it again. This same production is going to travel to arena stage in DC over the summer in the fall it'll be at Fifth Avenue and Act Theater up in Seattle, and then at the very beginning of 2024 it will be at Center Theater Group. [00:53:54] Miko Lee: Thank you so much for chatting with me today. I really appreciate you and your work out there in the world. [00:54:00] Lauren Yee: Thank you, Miko. [00:54:02] Miko Lee: That was playwright Lauren Yee. And I'm going to play you out, hearing one song from Dengue Fever, which is in Cambodian rock band. This is Uku. song [00:56:55] Miko Lee: Thank you so much for joining us. Please check out our website, kpfa.org backslash program, backslash apex express to find out more about the show tonight and to find out how you can take direct action. We thank all of you listeners out there. Keep resisting, keep organizing, keep creating and sharing your visions with the world. Your voices are important. Apex express is produced by Miko Lee Jalena Keane-Lee and Paige Chung and special editing by Swati Rayasam. Thank you so much to the KPFA staff for their support have a great night. The post APEX Express – 2.9.23 Theatre & Memory or Why Art Matters appeared first on KPFA.

We're sharing a Patreon EXCLUSIVE today. If you like this episode, we invite you to subscribe to our Patreon at any dollar amount (even $1 per month!) for a bonus episode every month. We let loose a little and share cases with NO theme (just ones that interest us). In today's shared Patreon episode: first, Caitlin tells us about the murder of Vincent Chin. Then, Sarah talks about the mysterious death of Amy Fuller Mullis.Listener discretion is advised. Full trigger warnings are made before each case begins.Instagram: @luminolpodTwitter: @luminolpodCheck out our website: www.luminolpod.comSend us a message luminolpod@gmail.comBe a beer sponsor!Support the show

Award-winning author Paula Yoo investigates the murder of Vincent Chin in Detroit in the 1980s and the outrage that was sparked over an unjust verdict. Written, researched, and hosted by Kate Winkler Dawson/producer Alexis Amorosi/mixer Ryo Baum/sound designer Andrew Eapen/composer Curtis Heath/web designer Ilsa Brink Buy my books: katewinklerdawson.com    If you have suggestions for historical crimes that could use some attention, email me: info@tenfoldmorewicked.com    Follow me on social: @tenfoldmore (Twitter) / @tenfoldmorewicked (Facebook and Instagram)    2022 All Rights ReservedSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Forty years later, the anniversary of Vincent Chin's death reminds us Anti-Asian hate crimes haven't gone away. Filmmaker Renee Tajima-Peña, who co-directed the documentary, “Who Killed Vincent Chin?” and activist Helen Zia talk with Ray Suarez about the ongoing fight to recognize diverse Asian-American histories, challenging stereotypes and what justice means today.    For more information, check out Renee Tajima-Pena's documentary, Who Killed Vincent Chin?, and Tajima-Pena's docuseries, Asian Americans.   Guests:   Renee Tajima-Peña, Academy Award-nominated filmmaker and Professor of Asian American Studies at UCLA   Helen Zia, activist, executor of the Vincent and Lily Chin estate, and author of books including Last Boat out of Shanghai and My Country vs. Me   Host:   Ray Suarez

On a summer night in 1982, a Chinese-American man named Vincent Chin was brutally murdered by two white men in a racially-motivated attack in Detroit. His death, and the failure of the courts to hold his killers accountable, sparked a civil rights outcry and marked a turning point for the Asian-American community.    We revisit an interview with filmmaker Renee Tajima-Peña about her documentary, “Who Killed Vincent Chin?” to learn about the movement sparked by Chin's story.   For more information, check out Renee Tajima-Pena's documentary, Who Killed Vincent Chin?, and Tajima-Pena's docuseries, Asian Americans.   Guests:   Renee Tajima-Peña, Academy Award-nominated filmmaker and Professor of Asian American Studies at UCLA   Host:   Ray Suarez

If you are despairing about the rise of racial hatred and the anti-democratic direction this country is embracing, consider what it takes to build a more just future. For marginalized communities, nonprofit organizations are essential to becoming visible, attaining legal rights, and exercising electoral clout. Asian Americans Advancing Justice Southern California exemplifies how organizational expertise, vision, and infrastructure make systemic change achievable. Led brilliantly by Connie Chung Joe, AAAJ SoCal was founded by civil rights titan Stewart Kwoh following the 1983 murder of Chinese American autoworker Vincent Chin by aggrieved white co-workers. Since then, it has evolved into the nation's largest legal aid and civil rights organization serving Asian Americans. A conversation with Connie Chung Joe is a masterclass in how to implement a multi-layered strategy. The agenda includes direct services to community members facing eviction, bystander intervention training in response to rising hate crimes, advocating to end transfers from prison to deportation by ICE and expanding accreditation of Asian American teachers. Connie grounds her leadership in a deep commitment to racial equity for all communities of color. In the majority minority state of California, she is fortifying a new playing field.   

We're joined by special guest, Christine Juang, Director of Community & Education from Hate Is A Virus to talk about the 1987 documentary, 'Who Killed Vincent Chin?' This important documentary recounts the events leading up to and after the killing of Chinese American Vincent Chin, who was brutally murdered in Detroit for being mistakenly as Japanese on June 19, 1982. The team dive into why Vincent Chin's murder was so important back then and why it's important today and the issues with the criminal justice system. Get 15% OFF a 12-pk of https://twrlmilktea.com/ (Twrl Milk Tea) today by using REEL15 code! Follow us!http://www.facebook.com/ReelAsianPodcast ( www.facebook.com/ReelAsianPodcast) |http://www.instagram.com/ReelAsianPodcast ( www.instagram.com/ReelAsianPodcast) |  Support this podcast!http://www.reelasianpodcast.com/support ( www.reelasianpodcast.com/support) Intro music is by Ryan Galvan | Show cover designed by Thy Nguyen For any inquiries, reach out tohttp://www.reelasianpodcast.com/contact ( www.reelasianpodcast.com/contact)   Special thanks to our supporters: http://www.experiencesbyk.com/ (www.experiencesbyk.com) http://www.anniestcakes.com/ (www.anniestcakes.com) https://twrlmilktea.com/ (https://twrlmilktea.com/)

Delia and Dawn reflect on the 40th anniversary of the murder of Vincent Chin and how learning about his murder impact their respective lives. If you don't know who Vincent Chin is, that's not surprising. They also consider who gets and doesn't get to learn about this significant moment for Asian Americans, even after 40 years have passed.  Credits: Podcast logo designed by Charisse Ann Celestial. Podcast theme created by QT. Shout out to Jeanne Tyan for coming up with our podcast name. 

On this episode, we discuss the murder of Vincent Chin.

Today marks 40 years since the death of Vincent Chin, a Chinese American draftsman who was fatally beaten with a baseball bat in a racially motivated crime on June 19, 1982. He died of his injuries in the hospital days later. To discuss the legacy of his death, we're joined by Christine Choy, a professor at New York University and co-director of the Oscar-nominated documentary "Who Killed Vincent Chin?" Also joining is David Shih, a professor of English at the University of Wisconsin - Eau Claire and author of the recent New York Times op-ed, "How I Became an Asian American."

In June 1982 a young Chinese-American engineer was murdered with a baseball bat by two white men in the US city of Detroit. The lenient sentences the perpetrators received sparked an Asian-American civil rights movement with protests across the US. At the time, America was going through an economic depression and many were blaming Japan which was perceived to be flooding the US with its cars. For Asian-Americans it was a time of fear. Farhana Haider has been speaking to Helen Zia, one of the activists leading the fight for justice. This programme was first broadcast in 2017. Photo: Helen Zia addressing a 10th anniversary commemoration event New York City, 1992. Credit: Helen Zia.

40 years ago this week, Vincent Chin, a Detroiter and a Chinese American, was killed by two white men. Author Paula Yoo hopes that her book, From a Whisper to a Rallying Cry: The Killing of Vincent Chin and the Trial that Galvanized the Asian American Movement, makes Chin's story more accessible to a younger audience.  GUESTS: Paula Yoo, author, TV writer/producer and feature screenwriter —— Looking for more conversations from Stateside? Right this way. If you like what you hear on the pod, consider supporting our work. Stateside's theme music is by 14KT. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

June marks 40 years since the brutal death of Vincent Chin. The 27-year-old was beaten to death with a baseball bat by two men, who were fined $3,000 and received no jail time. His death sparked calls for justice and a national movement among Asian Americans. Author Min Jin Lee, a writer-in-residence at Amherst College, joins Amna Nawaz for more on his death and Asian American identity today. PBS NewsHour is supported by - https://www.pbs.org/newshour/about/funders

On the 40th anniversary of the murder of Chinese American Vincent Chin, the AANHPI community is still fighting against racism and invisibilization as well as working towards more representation and empowerment. In March of 2020, when Covid-19 was raging across the U.S. and the world, an episode of “The May Lee Show” featuring Helen Zia, legendary journalist, author and activist, was released. Helen, who covered the Vincent Chin case in Detroit as a young journalist, shares her memories from 40 years ago and how it ignited a movement for change that's more important now than ever before. This latest episode is an edited re-release of that interview. 

It's 40 years since Vincent Chin's murder, with a depressingly resonant context of anti-Asian hatred and scapegoating, The post Helen Zia on Vincent Chin Murder, Alec Karakatsanis on Chesa Boudin Recall appeared first on FAIR.

On today's episode, Ashley covers the story of Vincent Chin.

Welcome everyone to lovely episode 69, our topics today, unfortunately, are not as fun as the episode number. Kat tells us about the hate crime committed against Vincent Chin in the 1980s, Kaleigh then gives us the life and times of Mata Hari, exotic dancer turned *spoilers* secret agent.Let's Talk!Twitter: @TINAHLpodcastEmail: thisisnotahistorylecture@gmail.comRemember to rate us wherever possible!

In this episode, we chat with Connie Chung Joe, CEO of Asian Americans Advancing Justice - Los Angeles, the nation's largest legal and civil rights organization for Asian Americans, Native Hawaiians, and Pacific Islanders (AANHPI). We learn about Connie's upbringing, her badass mom, and how she navigated different cultural dynamics as a student, professional, and parent. We then discuss the 30th anniversary of 1992's LA Uprisings/SAIGU, how she'd like to reframe conversations and perspectives, and where we are now. We conclude with a conversation about Vincent Chin and how his death led to the creation of her organization and its evolving legacy of activism in the AAPI community.For people in the greater Los Angeles area, Asian Americans Advancing Justice - LA is co-hosting an event, the LA Uprising / SAIGU Peace Gathering, on Friday, April 29th, from 4-7pm.   

Kristin starts us off with the story of a hate crime that galvanized Asian Americans.  On the night of his bachelor party, Vincent Chin was brutally attacked by Michael Nitz and his stepdad, Ronald Ebens. Vincent died four days after the attack. He'd never regained consciousness. It was a horrific crime, but people in power didn't see it that way. Michael and Ronald were sentenced to three years of probation and ordered to pay a little more than $3,000 in fines. The judge explained his decision, saying, “these weren't the kind of men you send to jail.” Then Brandi tells us a story from her very own Johnson County bubble.  Right off the bat, William Jennings' death looked suspicious. He was discovered in his home, beaten so badly that his veneers had come off. He'd been strangled with the bars of a decorative bird cage. A suicide note specifically mentioned that his longtime partner, David Stagg, was not to be blamed. Naturally, investigators wondered if he was.   And now for a note about our process. For each episode, Kristin reads a bunch of articles, then spits them back out in her very limited vocabulary. Brandi copies and pastes from the best sources on the web. And sometimes Wikipedia. (No shade, Wikipedia. We love you.) We owe a huge debt of gratitude to the real experts who covered these cases. In this episode, Kristin pulled from: The documentary, “Who Killed Vincent Chin?” The book, “Asian American Studies Now,” by Helen Zia “Vincent Chin's family never got the justice they wanted. But his case changed things for those who came after him,” by Harmeet Kaur for CNN “The Killing of Vincent Chin” trial reenactment by UC Hastings Law, on YouTube “The Killing of Vincent Chin” entry on Wikipedia In this episode, Brandi pulled from: “Former Westmar Professor Charged In Slaying” Associated Press, Sioux City Journal “Professor charged in killing reported a suicide” by Diane Carroll, The Kansas City Star “Murder suspect wins legal round” by Diane Carroll, The Kansas City Star “Defense asks judge to throw out murder charge against professor” Associated Press, Lawrence Journal-World “Trial begins for Missouri professor of music charged with killing lover” Associated Press, Lawrence Journal-World “Professor's trial ends in hung jury” Associated Press, The Manhattan Mercury “Mo. professor faces new murder trial” Associated Press, The Wichita Eagle “Prof on trial again in death of partner” Associated Press, The Manhattan Mercury “Source of DNA is disputed” by Diane Carroll, The Kansas City Star “Jurors unable to reach verdict in trial” Associated Press, Colby Free Press “Murder trial ends with 2nd hung jury” by Caroline Boyer, Shawnee Dispatch “No 3rd trial in 2004 Shawnee murder, judge rules” by Caroline Boyer, Shawnee Dispatch YOU'RE STILL READING? My, my, my, you skeezy scunch! You must be hungry for more! We'd offer you some sausage brunch, but that gets messy. So how about you head over to our Patreon instead? (patreon.com/lgtcpodcast). At the $5 level, you'll get 30+ full length bonus episodes, plus access to our 90's style chat room!  

This week on Hashtag History, we are discussing discussing Vincent Chin, a twenty-seven year old Chinese-American man that was beaten to death in Detroit, Michigan, on June 19, 1982. He was beaten by two white men that worked in the Detroit automobile industry. These men would beat Chin to death when they mistook him for Japanese and blamed him for their being out of work due to the recent influx in Japanese car imports. But the tragedy doesn't stop there. Because, when these two men were tried for murder, they would end up instead being convicted of manslaughter and would receive only a fine of $3,000…and no jail time. The judge in this case was quoted as saying, in reference to the light sentence he had given the men, “These aren't the kind of men you send to jail. You fit the punishment to the criminal, not the crime.” Follow Hashtag History on Instagram @hashtaghistory_podcast for all of the pictures mentioned in this episode. Citations for all sources can be located on our website at www.HashtagHistory-Pod.com. You can also check out our website for super cute merch! You can now sponsor a cocktail and get a shout-out on air! Just head to www.buymeacoffee.com/hashtaghistory or head to the Support tab on our website! Finally, you can locate us on www.Patreon.com/hashtaghistory where you can donate $1 a month to our Books and Booze Supply. All of your support goes a long ways and we are endlessly grateful! To show our gratitude, all Patreon Supporters receive an automatic 15% OFF all merchandise in our merchandise store, bonus Hashtag Hangouts episodes, a shoutout on social media, and stickers! THANKS FOR LISTENING! - Rachel and Leah

#28In this episode Vicky Wang joins me to address the effect of anti-Asian sentiment on Asian ( particularly Chinese) teachers in their schools and classroom.  Vicky Wang began an initiative, along with several colleagues, called Courageous Dialogues with Chinese Educators.  Vicky Wang is a Chinese Language and Culture Teacher in Maryland.  She helps us understand how anti-Asian language, actions and microaggressions have increased throughout the Covid Pandemic.  Vicky provides actionable suggestions for Asian (particularly Chinese) educators to confront these issues and for allies to support Asian colleagues and student.Vicky speaks specifically about:the inspiration to create a space for courageous dialoguesmicroaggressions and how are they damaging, particularly regarding Covid-19 and Chinese teacherssupport and resources are available through Courageous Dialogues With Chinese EducatorsVincent Jen Chin and why 1955 is included in the CDCE social media handleempowering Chinese educators, and essentially any teacher, that is marginalized or targeted by microaggressions or disrespectful languageConnect with Vicky Wang and Courageous Dialogues with Chinese EducatorsTwitter: @cdce1955, @VickyAndiWang"From a Whisper to a Rallying Cry: The Killing of Vincent Chin and the Trial that Galvanized the Asian American Movement"  by Paula Yoo.Connect with Joshua and the World Language Classroom CommunityWork with Joshua either in person or remotely.Sign up for Talking Points, my weekly newsletter with tips, tools and resources for language teachers.wlclassrom.comTwitter:  @wlclassroomInstagram:  @wlclassroomFacebook:  /wlclassroomWLClassroom Facebook Group

Welcome to Episode 34 of the Asian American History 101 podcast! Sometimes our episodes cover history that isn't well known, but this episode is on the Murder of Vincent Chin. It happened 39 years ago, and learning from this tragic event is even more important given the continued anti-Asian violence across the U.S. and the lack of universal willingness to stop it on the part of our lawmakers. We also share a quick history of the Detroit auto industry to provide context. Our closing segment is a return of “Say What?” Where we explore the origin and meaning of strange idioms and phrases that focus on the Asian American community. Thinking about using an ethnic slur? Check Eric Liu's guide to see if you might be racist. Want to learn more? Visit our site at https://asianamericanhistory101.libsyn.com or https://linktr.ee/AAHistory101 for social media. If you have any questions, comments or suggestions, email us at info@1882media.com. Segments 0:26 Intro 1:47 History of the Detroit Auto Industry 6:01 The Murder of Vincent Chin 18:55 Say What? Not a Chinaman's Chance