Category: Blog

For APAHM, Remember Our Stake in Immigration Justice

Helen Mun

May is an important month for Asian America: the Asian Pacific American Heritage Month is a time when our voices and narratives are centered and celebrated on social media, in museums, in schools. May is also an important month for Asian American history: in 1843, the first Japanese immigrant arrived in the United States. In 1869, Chinese immigrants completed the first Transcontinental Railroad. That is why George W. H. Bush signed APAHM into existence. And while the important contributions of Asians and Asian Americans to the fabric of the United…

Journey to Nepal

Melech Maglasang

This past semester I was awarded a grant by Davidson College and the Freeman Foundation to allow me to get an internship in East Asia.  My parents insisted that I should go to the Philippines because it was familiar territory and I would know how to navigate the culture.  Securing an internship was not even that much of a problem since my family knew some people within the information technology industry and I was almost guaranteed a position in this communication company, but I chose not to go to the…

A_____ A_________

Tommy Chaisuesomboon

A____ A______ written by Tommy Chaisuesomboon   ______ Welcome, one and all, to the first meeting of AA. Let’s go around the room and introduce ourselves. I’ll start. My name is Tommy Chaisuesomboon and I’m an Asian American. See, my problem began when I was born because Buddha decided to create me in his image:  Asian. He didn’t take into account, though, that I wouldn’t actually be in Asia, but instead, put me in the womb of some woman who for some reason, saw America as a land of opportunity.…

Mapping Asian Americans in the South

Melissa McKinney

For my last blog post, I’m sharing my semester project in which I used Neatline, a plugin in Omeka, to create a digital map. This project made me think about discussions of the Asian American experience in the South. Having grown up in Georgia and then attending college in North Carolina, I’ve spent a lot of my time wondering what happened to Asians 嘉盛外汇 during racial segregation. Did we count as white, black, colored, or were we simply ignored? This map only touches on the beginnings of the myriad of…

Can I Have a Spring Roll and Chicken Fried Rice?

Adrianne Cheung

Today, my friends and I went to an Asian fusion restaurant. It serves curries, pad thai, chow fun, lo mien, Singapore noodles, sushi, hibachi and Chinese American food as well, like the “General Tso’s chicken” and “Sesame Chicken”. These types of restaurants are quite normal in America and the food is usually fine, but the food is usually not very authentic. It’s just not what you would get at home. As a Chinese American, growing up I would get so offended when they said that Chinese-American restaurant food was Chinese…

#BeingAsian

Adrianne Cheung

In the mighty world of Twitter, there lives a hashtag, “#BeingAsian”. It is an interesting mix of people complaining about the racism they’ve faced, poking fun of Asian stereotypes, and celebrating Asian/Asian American culture. Ultimately, it is about Asians being Asian, living their lives, sharing frustrations and sharing their happy events. Some of the posts are included below. They point to the extent to which our ethnicity permeates everything we do and go through. The encounters of racism on the train might be few but they wouldn’t happen at all if we were…

Tiger Woods is also Asian?

Melissa McKinney

I love ABC’s Fresh Off the Boat, and every week I eagerly wait to see what the writers have in store for us. In last week’s episode “The Masters” (3×20), Emery, the middle brother struggled to share the excitement of Tiger Woods’ win in the golf tournament, the Masters, as a triumph of a Asian and African American athlete with his peers. Everyone he spoke to only saw Woods as a African American athlete, 搬瓦工 citing Woods’ African American father as evidence of his racial heritage. Much to the frustration of…

Crazy Rich Asians

Melissa McKinney

The other day I saw an article about to a  on Facebook. The person who shared the link was enraged to say the least about Chung’s reaction. Chung later clarified her comments about the casting of a half-Asian star in the film when they refused to cast anyone not ethnically Chinese, but her reaction points to an interesting issue about Asian media representation. Of course, being half Asian doesn’t make someone less Asian. In fact, if anything, it’s better to have the multiple examples of Asian identity in media. Having read…

Dating as an Asian Male

Melech Maglasang

With the Sex Positivity fair coming up at Davidson College, a random factoid came up about Asian women being one of the most desired by most people, while Asian males were seen as less desirable.  I did a little digging to see if there were any peer reviewed articles on the subject. I didn’t look too hard but, there were none. If you do a quick google right now you’ll see a bunch of unofficial articles discussing the subject with some form of “data” but there really was no concrete literature…

“You must be smart.”

Adrianne Cheung

Google: “You’re Asian. You must be smart.” and behold the many articles and blogs about the being the model minority. I am not for writing on the same topic so many other people have talked about but maybe if enough people complain about the same exact thing, it will get noticed; so I’ll add my 2 cents to the fray. Now, on the surface, the assumption that Asians = smart people seems like a good thing, but look closer, and think about what that statement is really saying. Because we…