Category: Asian Diaspora

  • How the Hawaiian word ‘hapa’ came to be used by people of mixed heritage Public Radio International (PRI) 2015-09-15 Nina Porzucki, Producer Recently, an old friend of mine, Julie Jimenez had a language question she wanted me to investigate: Where does the word “hapa” come from? Julie considers herself hapa. Her father is from Chile,…

  • Illicit Labor: MacArthur’s Mistress and Imperial Intimacies Radical History Review Volume 2015, Number 123 (October 2015) pages 87-114 DOI: 10.1215/01636545-3088168 Vernadette Vicuña Gonzalez, Associate Professor of American Studies University of Hawaii, Mānoa This essay examines a brief affair between General Douglas MacArthur and a mixed-race Filipina vaudeville actress named Isabel Rosario Cooper. It focuses on…

  • The Fabulous World of Harumi Klossowska de Rola The New York Times Magazine 2015-09-22 Hilary Moss “Benoît, my partner, took this photo in 2013 in front of the Grand Chalet, which was a hotel until my father bought it. It is still loaded with thousands of books and even old skis from English clients. My…

  • Zun Lee’s Polaroid Archive Preserves African-American Self-Representation Photo District News 2015-08-26 Holly Hughes Photographer Zun Lee is dedicated to countering stereotypical, often negative views of the African-American family. While he was working on Father Figure, his book about African-American fathers, he stumbled on some old Polaroids that appeared to have fallen from a family photo…

  • “Traveling Texts and the Work of Afro-Japanese Cultural Production” analyzes the complex conversations taking place in texts of all sorts traveling between Africans, African Diasporas, and Japanese across disciplinary, geographic, racial, ethnic, linguistic, and cultural borders.

  • Transpacific Antiracism: Afro-Asian Solidarity in 20th-Century Black America, Japan, and Okinawa New York University Press July 2013 254 pages 4 halftones Hardcover ISBN: 9780814762646 Paper ISBN: 9781479897322 Yuichiro Onishi, Assistant Professor of African American & African Studies and Asian American Studies University of Minnesota, Twin Cities Transpacific Antiracism introduces the dynamic process out of which…

  • My Music Is My Soul, My Language Is My Armor Psychology Today 2014-12-02 Stephen Murphy-Shigematsu, Ed.D. Stanford University Byron’s story of identity, healing, and empowerment “One night at a pub I heard the sound of traditional Okinawan folk music, and it was like being hit in the head with a hammer. The impact was like…

  • They Pretend To Be Us While Pretending We Don’t Exist BuzzFeed 2015-09-11 Jenny Zhang, BuzzFeed Contributor Will Varner / BuzzFeed White poet Michael Derrick Hudson’s use of the Chinese pen name Yi-Fen Chou was an act of yellowface that is part of a long tradition of white voices drowning out those of color in the…

  • Hapa-palooza 2015: Celebrate mixed heritage and own your identity Vancouver Observer Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada 2015-09-06 Jordan Yerman Mixed-race, outsider, or ‘half-breed’: you’re not alone at Hapa-palooza. Get in on Canada’s largest celebration of mixed heritage. Tôi là người lai mỹ means “I’m an American half-breed”. Author and publisher Brandy Liên Worrall wrote it in…

  • Grits and Sushi: Mitzi Uehara Carter muses on being black and Okinawan Metropolis Magazine 2015-09-06 Baye Mcneil Mitzi Uehara Carter Though Mitzi Uehara Carter was born on the opposite side of the Pacific, she’s kept herself anything but distant from her hereditary home. This Texas-native daughter of an African-American father and an Okinawan mother is…