Harry Mok

Food and Asian Americans are irrevocably linked. Much of this is due to  chop suey imagery forged by the likes of  TV chef Martin Yan or the perceived exoticness of Asian food and the explosion of fusion cuisine.

Because of this, many of the stereotypes about Asian Americans come from food. It’s one of the reasons Founding Editor Melissa Hung proclaimed Hyphen would  never publish a recipe or cover food in a way that doesn’t uphold Hyphen’s ideals.

Well, we broke her rule about recipes a few issues back with our story about  sustainable seafood practices. And, we have another for Afro-Asian jung in the new Food section that debuts in The Inside/Out Issue of Hyphen, which will be out soon.  Subscribe or look for it at a newsstand near you.

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Interesting tidbit from a New York Times story about a study of interracial college roommates: Those who roomed with Asian Americans became more prejudiced.

The Times article focused mostly on black-white relationships but this paragraph caught my eye:

Several studies have shown that living with a roommate of a different race changes students’ attitudes. One, from the University of California at Los Angeles, generally found decreased prejudice among students with different-race roommates — but those who roomed with Asian-Americans, the group that scored the highest on measures of prejudice, became more prejudiced themselves

Read the full post and join the discussion on Hyphen magazine’s blog.