love your mama

hello friends,

i must confess i have let deadlines creep, and can not spend as much time with you this thursday night as i would like to.

if i had my way, i would bust out the bubbly and cozy up to all of you. knock back a few until that awkward silence blanketed the room; our eyes would meet, our hands would touch, and then i would ugly-cry about how much i adore my dear young mother.

but alas, i'll have to get a raincheck and instead leave you with a surrogate: writer mary h k choi penned a fucking awesome piece about her foreign mother and succinctly expressed the pangs of growing up with a mom who packed stinky food in your school lunch when you were 12, followed by the longing you feel at the age of 20-something, wishing she would fill your silent second-floor studio, 1200 miles away, with those same familiar smells of home.

I then did what any normal kid would do and yelled and yelled about how embarrassing it was to have her at school with me during lunch of all times. She presented me with a sack of cheeseburgers that I could give out to my friends. I refused the damp bag and screeched about how it was so cheap that she didn’t spring for bright red boxes with toys for them as well. I made her take the burgers back with her. If I were an actress and had to think of something sad to make me cry in a scene, I would think about this moment. 

... She said that when I was four, I stole hundreds of dollars from her and bribed my bus driver to drop me off last and to make a pitstop at the deli so I could buy candy on my way home. I’d stuffed the change in my shallow pinafore pockets and when my mother frantically berated me for stealing the money and trying to get myself kidnapped, I told her I loved money more than I loved her. These days I don’t love money how I used to. My mom though, I’m crazy about.  

read it here and tell me what terrible things your mother did when you were a child, and what you wish she would still do for you now (laundry, hugs, take me to taco bell, brush my hair, and tell me not to go out past 8 pm because i'll get pregnant come to mind).

see you next thursday,
-m

p.s. the writer is from texas.

4 films you need to see now

folks in the bay area and beyond, i'd like to introduce you to CAAMFest––previously known as the San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival (whew that's a mouth full).

this is the first year they've rebranded the festival to include more than just film. the week-long festival featured cooking demos, musical performances, discussion panels, and more; perhaps inspiration was drawn from one SXSW festival?

the hunch isn't too far fetched considering CAAM's (Center for Asian American Media) Festival and Exhibitions Director was austin's own Executive Director for the sadly now-defunct Austin Asian American Film Festival (anyone interested in reprising it, btw? i have no idea what it will take, but i've got some blood, guts, and PLENTY of tears to give. hollaaa)

the film i'm most excited to share with y'all is taiwan's Go Grandriders, a documentary about a group of 80+ year olds who embark on a 730 mile epic journey on motorbikes. these grandpas and grandmas are spunky, endearing, lively, tough, introspective, enlightening, and fucking cute.

Tien-hao Hua, the documentary's director, did a fabulous job capturing tender moments and comedic gold. it made my bellyache from laughter and my eyes moist from begrudged tears––emotions are the devil, said melissa.

3 other notable films were Turn it Up to 11, Part 2 and Xmas Without China. Turn it Up follows korean punk band Galaxy Express as they tour around texas––playing SXSW and smaller shows in pizza parlors, basements, country bars, and dorm rooms. not only was it interesting to see how korean punk rockers were received in my hometown but also what they thought of the southern state. the film turned out to be a fun and heartfelt diary of folks in search of a good time in unsuspecting places.

and Xmas Without China followed a filmmaker––originally from china but who grew up in southern california––as he challenged an average white american family, aptly named the Jonses, to go the entire month of december without using or purchasing any products made in china. the Jonses' struggles, while realizing just how much comes from asia, was entertaining and downright funny at times, but the real engaging point was filmmaker Tom Xia's story and his family: reshaping american identity.

lastly, Debbie Lum's documentary Seeking Asian Female about a white man with an extreme asian fetish (and a hard drive full of mail order bride profiles) will both fascinate and alarm you. let me just say, i left the theater with a much different feeling than when i walked in -- and i'm not sure if i'm ok with that. the Q&A with Debbie and Phil Yu of Angry Asian Man filled up within 10 minutes of the doors opening and NPR's This American Life recently spotlighted the film. so it's getting plenty of buzz.

and i lied in my last entry to get you here -- i rubbed no one. allegedly.
-melissa

houstonian wins Masterchef

Season 3 Masterchef winner, Christine Ha

i'd be lying if i said i know what this show is about or any other cooking show on tv. i just eat. pan-seared or flash fried, all i care about is if it's tasty.

but i have to give props to one Christine Ha, a blind chef hailing from my very own streets. in the finale, Ha's competitor whipped up "butter-poached lobster with sweet corn grits, rack of lamb with curry spice and spring vegetables and bacon pecan pie" which was no match to Christine's "Thai Papaya and Crab Salad, braised pork belly with kale and a fried egg, and coconut sorbet with a ginger tuile. "

cmon, it doesn't take a culinary aficionado to know pork belly trumps all. helloooo it's thicker-cut bacon. the only thing that can beat bacon is more bacon. obvi. plus, an egg on top? someone get me Ms. Ha's number. i've got a hunger that only pork belly and fried eggs can cure (it's like breakfast on steroids!).    

what's funny is this yahoo article states the show's host, Gordon Ramsey, was quoted saying Christine won by sticking to her Vietnamese roots---did i read wrong or was the winning dish she made Thai inspired? whatever right? asian is asian! it's all the same! yeah yeah, fuck you too.

to read more about the season 3 Masterchef winner, click here  or read about Christine Ha in the Hyphen Magazine weekly TV round up! 

-m

have you seen k-town?

frankly, these folks are crazy. 
i would be crazy, but it takes too much effort and i'm lazy. 

i was going to post about the texas primaries, but no one cares about that right?

instead, let's talk about the much-anticipated (i use 'much' lightly here) youtube show, k-town, which follows a group of young (again, used lightly) korean americans--though i think not all of the cast is korean--as they drink, smash, and smash-in faces all over los angeles' notorious korea town.

we've heard the buzz for this jersey shore-inspired show for the last 2 years, but it has just now debuted on the youtube channel: LOUD, after being passed up by different tv networks.

to be honest, it's rather boring to me. maybe because i know people like these 8 who go out and drink and drama, so there isn't that same "huh? really?" reaction like there is with snooki sayz jersey shore. but i don't hate the show, if anything i guess it breaks the stereotypes of asian americans as bookish, nerdy, asexual beings. these 8 are wild, sexual, and not the brightest crayons in the box, and i welcome anything that confuses the minds that try to hold us asian americans to flat, 2D caricatures.

the show just aired its 4th 15 minute episode and while the episodes have been filled with blasé backstory (she slept with him, he slept with her, she likes-hates-him-and-her...), next week's preview piqued my interest with the k-town social convention of booking. a friend told me it involves men paying for high-priced tables at clubs and a funneling of women: attractiveness and frequency depend on the price they paid. hm, that sounds like another social convention by the name of prostitution, but fuck, what do i know?

if curiosity (or boredom) is clawing at your back, here's the first episode of k-town:

but don't blame me if your eyes fall out of your head from heavy bouts of eye rolling, if you suddenly find that you've lost faith in humanity, or if you're just really fucking bored. you have been warned.

-melissa

(anddd just in case there is someone out there who was wondering about the texas primaries...)

Why Did I Choose "American Asian?"

By Diane Nguyen


I chose American Asian because it is symbolic of the two worlds I live in. Although I was born here in the United States and lived in Texas for years (yes, there are Asians in Texas by the way…except for the Panhandle area. Wait, sorry Dougie Fresh – poor soul), I still am connected to a rich culture that my parents have kept in this “home away from home.”

However, navigating these two worlds was and continues to be a challenge. I was constantly asking myself, “How can I fit in?” In middle school and high school, no matter how hard I tried, I was either an outcast from the Viet kids or from the popular clique. If I tried to fit in with the popular crowd, I was too “white-washed”; and if I tried to hang with my Asian folks, I was considered too “fobby” aka “fresh off the boat.”

Shit, I couldn’t do anything right!

But isn’t this the case for many people of color growing up? Just because of the color of our skin and physical characteristics, we’re forced to identify with a racial category and on the other spectrum, people place us in these narrowly, defined categories. With my fellow Asian Americans, one look our way and BOOM, we’re foreigners – where the hell did we come from? We don’t belong here. But all in all, American Asian captures the experience I had growing up as a second-generation Vietnamese American and the struggles my community, and many others like me, continue to face.

This blog is a meaningful and engaging way to encourage dialogue about Asian American issues. It’s an open, informal space to really discuss any topic but we also encourage you to question and analyze these different issues. Question everything, listen to others, educate yourself.

What is 'American Asian'?

I went back and forth with the title 'American Asians'. Whereas the conventional term, 'Asian American', describes an American of Asian decent, 'American Asian' can be taken as merely an Americanized Asian -- not really American, still foreign.

But, isn't that an issue Asian Americans face every day? When someone asks us: No, but where are you really from? Does that not make us feel foreign? Despite being born in Houston, Chicago, or New York City, isn't the underlying thinking behind that awful question that we're not truly American, that we must be from somewhere else?

For me, calling our blog 'American Asians' was a conscious acknowledgement of this foreignness thrusted on us. We are foreign despite where we were born or where we live, but instead because of the shape of our eyes or nose or the foods that we eat and the languages that we speak.

For so long, we have been back alley fry cooks manically yelling, "di di mau".  We have been broken-Englished nail technicians. Buck-toothed, squinty-eyed caricatures. "Hi-ya!" screaming, high-kicking, karate master bad guys. Bepectacled, quiet, uninteresting bookworms. Unattractive, asexual, boy in the background of the class. Short-skirted, fair-skinned, exotic temptress.

But there is a movement growing; if you navigate your browser away from Facebook, turn the volume down on the tv, leave your iPhone at home, you can hear the buzz: we are redefining what it means to be Asian American. And I don't just mean the 3 of us here, but all of us brothers and sisters: West coast, East coast, the dirty South and beyond, we're taking back our identities.

Diane, Doug, and I each have our own views, our own perspectives, our own thoughts on what it means to be 20-something Asian Americans, fresh out of school -- some of us back in school seeking higher enlightenment -- in different cities across the U.S., existing, carving out space and navigating day-to-day life.

I'd like to share these experiences with you here. This blog is just an open space for us to share our lives, talk about what's going on and things we see, whether it be about foods we love, stories we like, or media portrayals we hate.

I hope that you'll enjoy our words and add your own. Join our discussion, give us your perspective, and help us create a living, growing portrait of what it means to be Asian American in 2012.


-melissa