The race to the Oscars started with a string of award shows, from the Globes to the SAGs, letting people know about a hot Asian American-themed film called “Everything Everywhere All At Once” (“EEAAO”). Who really knew it would be the big winner on Oscar night?
But it happened.
The film about laun...
“Bloody Sunday,” the day of the 1965 Selma march for voting rights and social justice and the violent response to it by white Southerners, was publicly commemorated over the weekend.
But March 7 falls on Tuesday this year. So we get to linger with the history into the week, giving us time to apprec...
When the Asian American stars of “Everything Everywhere All At Once” (EEAAO) were raking in their well-deserved Screen Actors Guild Awards Sunday night, I was off-Broadway doing my one man show at Frigid.NYC (get tickets here).
I tell my friends that for Lent, I’ve given up real life and become an ...
Presidents Day weekend is our weekend to ski down the hill of oppressive history. There’s a lot of it against Asian Americans.
“Emil Amok: Lost NPR Host…,” the one man show I’m doing at Under St. Marks Theater in New York City now (click here for tickets), wasn’t really intended as a history show. ...
I’m officially coming out of hiding. I’m in New York City doing my live one-man show, though considering the venue, maybe I’m still hiding. It’s the small and intimate Under St. Marks theater, Feb. 16-March 4. Click this link for tickets.
It’s actually under a tattoo parlor and not a church as I or...
If my father were alive, he’d be 118 today (Feb. 8). More on dad at the end of this piece. I just know that as a union restaurant worker all his life, he would have loved President Joe Biden’s State of the Union address.
If you thought you were invisible, left out, and unseen in America, Joe Biden ...
After this weekend there will be one civil rights story in America—the video of the beating of Tyre Nichols at the hands of five Memphis police officers, all of whom have been fired and charged this week with felonies, including second-degree murder and kidnapping.
Those who’ve seen the video say N...
I’m no oracle, but in yesterday’s column, I wrote about the urgent need to do something about AAPI gun violence. And that if we didn’t, we would see the likes of Monterey Park shooter Huu Can Tran again, as our community assimilates into the American gun narrative.
I just didn’t figure it would hap...
When I think of Monterey Park, Calif., I think of Monty Manibog, who was elected to the city council in 1976 and became the first Filipino American elected official in Southern California. It was considered a milestone in Asian American Filipino empowerment. Manibog served for 12 years, including a ...
This was not the Lunar New Year news we expected. The rabbit year portends peace and hope, not fear and dread.
And then came the mass shooting that left ten dead in Monterey Park.
“There is a male suspect that fled the scene, and remains outstanding,” said Los Angeles County Sheriff Robert G. Luna...
Take a good look at 56-year-old Billie R. Davis from Indiana. The piercing glance. The eyes. Because she’d probably look at you a little differently if you’re Asian American.
Davis has been charged with attempted murder, aggravated battery, and battery by means of a deadly weapon.
She stabbed an 1...
Robert Hur is the AAPI Person of the Hour. Maybe for the next couple of years. For Fox News Republicans drooling over any potential Biden misstep, Hur will be seen as their go-to guy as they seek to bury the president.
That’s what happens when Attorney General Merrick Garland appoints a special cou...
In this age of ugly politics, we must start this piece with a sense of hope.
It’s good news that Buffalo Bills football player Damar Hamlin–who actually died of cardiac arrest on a football field last week but was revived by defibrillation–is now walking and talking on his road to recovery.
As for...
What’s happening in Congress to Kevin McCarthy hasn’t happened since 1923,100 years ago. But it’s nothing like what’s happened to Asian Americans in that Congress.
Still, that’s not the history people will focus on today.
Instead, they’ll be talking about the history of January 6 and how in 2021, ...
As 2022 ended, a Pope emeritus (Benedict) and a woman broadcaster who kicked open the “white men only” doors for all (Barbara Walters) have died. Asian Americans were touched by both, and I was going to comment on their passing. I was also going to update you on what the new Purdue president, the Ho...
The racist slur of Chancellor Thomas Keon, the CEO of Purdue University Northwest, remains a cloud over Asian America, but it seems like many people want to pretend it doesn’t matter.
But it really does.
And the one person who can make it right, ironically, is Mung Chiang, an Asian American immigr...
Thomas Keon, Chancellor of Purdue University Northwest in Hammond, Indiana doesn’t speak Chinese, or any Asian language. He only speaks it for laughs. But he does not tell good jokes. Not for being the head of Purdue University’s regional campus south of Chicago. Despite his apology for not being fu...
Asian Americans should keep celebrating the passage and signing of the Respect for Marriage Act beyond the weekend.
You had a more important role than you realize in that historical Supreme Court case in 1967 that legalized racial intermarriages.
I know because I talked to the guy who argued the c...
Life is full of hard things and easy things. Let’s take the hard things first.
If you’re a science-type Asian you’ll appreciate why Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm used one of Pres. Joe Biden’s pet phrases to describe what was accomplished by American science today.
The phrase is “BFD.” And the...
The big takeaway from Georgia? People are noticing us. Asian American Pacific Islanders.
In Georgia, we’re there. At an estimated 133,000 voters, we’re relatively small in number, but we can help coalitions win big politically.
I noticed that when I visited my daughter in Albany, not CA, but GA, a...
