Hyphen's new print edition is on newsstands now.

After four  years as editor in chief of Hyphen magazine, I announced my retirement in the Editor’s Note of The Survival Issue, which just came out. You can read the Editor’s Note on Hyphen’s website.

It was a great run. Before becoming editor in chief, I was a staff editor for about four years. It never ceases to amaze me that the great work produced is all done by volunteers with virtually no budget. It’s definitely a labor of love for us. OK, I guess it’s not “us” any more. Hard to let go after eight years even though my stress level has dropped about 100 levels.

Really, though, it was a good stress being part of something special. I’ll miss it, but Hyphen’s in good shape, and maybe even better shape, without me. Thanks again to all the volunteers, and the readers, who’ve stuck with Hyphen.

Commerce Secretary Gary Locke announces the release of Census 2010 data in December.

Census 2010 data released for California shows that Asian Americans were the fastest growing ethnic or racial group, rising 31.5 percent since 2000 to makeup 12.8 percent of the state’s population. The Native Hawaiian and other Pacific Islanders group rose 23.4 percent.

Read the full post at Hyphen magazine’s blog.

“It’s never happened, as far as we know,” said Andrew Hong, communications associate for the Asian Pacific American Institute for Congressional Studies (APAICS), a nonprofit, nonpartisan group that tracks and promotes Asian Pacific American participation in politics.

Chiu, currently the president of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, joins city Assessor  Phil Ting and state Senator  Leland Yee as the three Asian Americans vying to succeed  Ed Lee , who was appointed in November as the city’s  first Asian American mayor but has said he will not run for a full term.

Read the full post at Hyphen magazine’s blog.

The Bay Citizen reposted a story from New America Media that is based on Hyphen magazine’s parkour story and video.

Parkour has its origins in France and involves jumping, climbing and vaulting around, over and through obstacles. It looks like a fun and vigorous sport. Traceurs, what practitioners of parkour are called, have to be pretty athletic and in good shape.

The video is great and produced by former Hyphen Director of Photography Seng Chen and the story Ken Shen Robinson can be read in its entirety right now in the print edition of Hyphen. Subscribe to see it.

Keni Styles stars in Bruce Lee XXX: A Porn Parody

I blogged at Hyphen magazine about  a Bruce Lee porn parody that’s being produced. And while the pop icon probably is turning in his grave over being immortalized in an adult movie, the prospect does raise issues of race, sex and stereotypes, particularly of Asian American men.

“Bruce Lee XXX: A Porn Parody” stars Keni Styles, the only Asian male working in straight porn produced by major studios. Styles’s uniqueness in porn is similar to the dearth of Asian Americans in mainstream movies and TV: they’re stereotyped as unattractive or lacking audience appeal.

A few years ago I wrote about similar themes when UC Davis Asian American studies professor Darrell Hamamoto made a porn movie featuring an Asian American couple as a way of reclaiming Asian masculinity and the sexuality between Asian males and females that he say has been lost to Western colonization and stereotyping.

Read more in my post at Hyphen.

The San Francisco Examiner put David Chiu and Ed Lee on its Jan. 9 front page.

The “Asian Power” headline from the  San Francisco Examiner encapsulates what’s happening in politics for Asian Americans, especially in San Francisco, where Ed Lee is about to become the first Asian American mayor.

Lee, the city administrator, is set to be named interim mayor Tuesday if the SF Board of Supervisors votes him in as expected after a week of  political maneuvering.

David Chiu was re-elected chair of the SF Board of Supervisors on Saturday after speculation that had him at various times being named interim mayor himself or the pick to  replace SF District Attorney Kamala Harris, another Asian American who took the oath as the newly elected California attorney general last week.

Read the full post at Hyphenmagazine.com

Far East Movement from the cover of Hyphen magazine's Throwback Issue. (Photo by Colin Brennan)

Hyphen magazine’s latest issue is published, and with Far East Movement on the cover, it looks great. We were fortunate to get the hip-hop group for the cover and get an interview with them.

To get an idea of what’s in the magazine, here’s my post on Hyphen’s blog about its release and my Editor’s Note from the issue. As always, the Hyphen staff and our contributors did a wonderful job. Take a look, let me know what you think.

• Seeking the Perfect Body, a First Person by Hyphen Publisher Lisa Lee recounting her time in a weight-loss spa as a young adult and how she faced down the pressure to be thin.
• Pilgrims (What Is Lost and You Cannot Regain), the winning entry in the Asian American Short Story Contest.

See outtakes from ukulele star Jake Shimabukuro’s cover photo shoot, and find out more about The New Legacy Issue here and in my Editor’s Note.

Jake Shimabukuro is on the cover of Hyphen's New Legacy Issue.

Hyphen is posting a series of Faces Behind Hyphen Q&As with the top editors and directors of the magazine on its blog over the next week or so. Here’s mine.

The others are:

Publisher Lisa Lee

Blog editor erin Khue Ninh

UPDATE

Here are some more Faces Behind Hyphen:

Web Director Sean Aquino

Managing Editor Lisa Wong Macabasco

Creative Director Erica Jennifer Loh Jones

“It is with great pride that we see Secretary Mineta’s remarkable story of leadership and service honored in the Portrait Gallery,” said Konrad Ng, director of the Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Program, in a press release. “He represents the key roles that Asian Pacific Americans have played in US culture, history and politics.”

He served in Congress from 1975-1995, co-founded the Congressional Asian Pacific Caucus and helped push through the Civil Liberties Act of 1988, which called for an official apology and redress for Japanese Americans interned during World War II. Mineta, along with his family, were interned during the war.

Mineta was also the first Asian American to hold a presidential cabinet post. He was named commerce secretary by Bill Clinton in 2000 and served as transportation secretary under George W. Bush until resigning in 2006.

It’s almost commonplace in many areas of the country to have Asian Americans in government, and it was Mineta and others of his generation who opened the doors. For that we owe them thanks.

This post is also on Hyphen magazine’s blog.