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.
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. Read more…
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
Jackie Chan trains Jaden Smith in the remake of "The Karate Kid."
Aly Morita contacted me the other day about publicizing her call for a boycott of the remake of the Karate Kid, saying it’s another example of Hollywood perpetuating stereotypes about Asian Americans. Read more…
The death of Tian Sheng Yu after a senseless beating on an Oakland, CA, street has brought up the issue of racial tensions between Asian Americans and African Americans (the suspects in the attack are black).
Yu died Tuesday after he was knocked to the ground Friday and never regained consciousness. Read more…
Great news for all you Asian American studies scholars out there. The University of California, Riverside, is launching a Korean American studies center with the help of a $2.7 million endowment from the Overseas Koreans Foundation. Read more…
Deborah Gibson and Vic Chao make out in 'Mega Shark vs. Giant Octopus.'
“Mega Shark vs. Giant Octopus“: the title alone should have kept me away, but flipping through the channels to SyFy, my curiosity was piqued when I saw that it starred 80s teen sensation Debbie Gibson (who’s all grown up and goes by Deborah now). I started watching and lo and behold, before I knew it, her character and a fellow scientist played by Vic Chao were making eyes for each other and heading to the closet for some, shall we say, intense research. Read more…
A few drinks turns many Asians red. (Wikipedia)
That red-faced glow many Asians get when they have a few too many drinks is the result of a genetic mutation that research suggests occurred about the same time farmers began growing rice in China … about 10,000 years ago. Read more…
For those in urban centers who are insulated from the immigration debate, 9500 Liberty offers revealing view of the contentious battle going on elsewhere in the country. The documentary film, produced by Eric Byler and Annabel Park, chronicles what happened in Prince William County, VA, after a law was passed in 2007 requiring police officers to question anyone they believed had “probable cause” to be an undocumented immigrant. Read more…
