Two Filipina sisters grow up in Boston, head off to UC Berkeley for college, end up staying in academia, and now write about sex. They’re also both Stanford Univ. Press authors: Rhacel Salazar Parreñas’ most recent book investigates trafficked Filipina hostesses (Illicit Flirtations, 2011), and Celine Parreñas Shimizu has just authored the first full-length study of the racialization of Asian American men in movies (Straitjacket Sexualities, 2012).
And we're not the only ones who thought this was neat: this fall, the two professors are going to be featured in a segment on LA18, a SoCal TV station. (Edited to add: check out the television interview on Youtube here and here.)
In the meantime, here are two thoughts to mull over from Professor Shimizu about filmmaking and being Asian American, taken from a Hyphen Magazine interview about her new book Straitjacket Sexualities:
- It’s not breaking news that Asian American men in movies have often been marginalized as practically asexual. But after taking a closer look at Hollywood films, Shimizu has another way of looking at it: rather than being macho-bravo, Asian American men are shown as being ethical, caring, and selfless. It’s a different kind of manhood--one that goes against all the stereotypes.
- Minority art has a reputation for portraying warm and glossy versions of minority life--stories that usually don’t get told anywhere else. But according to Shimizu, the urge to only tell the positive “story of your people” doesn't always do justice to the people it's supposed to represent, for it's still just another fabric of incomplete truths.
If you’re in Los Angeles later this summer, check out this upcoming book talk with Shimizu and Parreñas entitled “Filipinas, Feminism and Sex.” Details: Echo Park Branch Library; Saturday, August 4, 2012; more information here.
Check out Celine Parreñas Shimizu’s Straitjacket Sexualities: Unbinding Asian American Manhoods in the Movieshere.
Check out Rhacel Salazar Parreñas’ Illicit Flirtations: Labor, Migration, and Sex Trafficking in Tokyo here.
Well, technically it was yesterday, but happy first day of summer! To mark the Summer Solstice and all the glorious things summer brings—weekend trips to the beach, the happy sound of crickets chirping, lazy picnics with watermelon and red ants—we bring you our favorite vacation-related fact of the season:
Half of all U.S. motels are owned by Indian Americans. What’s more, the vast majority of them have immigrated from the same region in India, and even share the same surname Patel (though that doesn’t mean they are related).
And other summer- and vacation- related facts you weren't aware you wanted to know :
Take it easy: Kicking back with a beer is a simple pleasure in life that also makes you more all the more tantalizing and delicious smelling to mosquitoes.
On the origins of summer vacation:Summer vacation wasn’t universal in American schools until 1840, when educational reformer Horace Mann cited then-current medical theory that “overstimulating young minds would lead to nervous disorders or insanity.” A break during the hottest months also was thought to reduce the spread of disease.
Travel stats: New Jersey has the highest percentage of residents with passports (68.36%), and Mississippi has the lowest (19.86%).
Hold on to your seats! It was a threat for a while, but it seems to be ok now: British budget airliner Ryanair’s infamous attempt to roll out planes with $10 standing room “seats” seems to have been foiled by safety regulators.
Looking for something to fill that beloved L. L. Bean tote bag you haul to the beach every summer? Look no further! SUP's summer reading list has something for every taste:
Shahla Talebi's Ghosts of Revolution: Rekindled Memories of Imprisonment in Iran, co-winner (Gold Medal) of the the 2012 Independent Publisher Book Awards (Autobiography/Memoir Category), sponsored by the Independent Publisher Book Awards, and Honorable Mention, for Biography & Autobiography, in the 2011 PROSE Awards (PSP Awards for Excellence), sponsored by the Professional and Scholarly Publishing Division, Association of American Publishers.
As we ring in the Lunar Year of the Dragon (along with Warren Buffett, who played "I've Been Working on the Railroad" on his banjo (!?) to the Chinese people in honor of), President Obama reminds us that "we are stronger because of our diversity; we are richer because of the different cultures that make up this country." Having spent some time in Chicago, our President knows more about how the lunar year is celebrated there than most.
Most of us think of the massive, colorful celebrations on the West Coast or in New York when we think about how the "Chinese New Year" (or the Spring Festival, as it is known in China) is celebrated in the US. Far fewer know about the vibrant community of Chinese Americans that developed around the same time (late nineteenth/early twentieth centuries) as its coastal counterparts. In Chinese Chicago: Race, Transnational Migration, and Community Since 1870, Huping Ling offers the first comprehensive history of Chinese in Chicago, beginning with the arrival of the pioneering Moy brothers in the 1870s and continuing to the present.
Ling focuses on how race, transnational migration, and community have defined Chinese in Chicago. Drawing upon archival documents in English and Chinese, she charts how Chinese made a place for themselves among the multiethnic neighborhoods of Chicago, cultivating friendships with local authorities and consciously avoiding racial conflicts. Ling takes readers through the decades, exploring evolving family structures and relationships, the development of community organizations, and the operation of transnational businesses. She pays particular attention to the influential role of Chinese in Chicago's academic and intellectual communities and to the complex and conflicting relationships among today's more dispersed Chinese Americans in Chicago.
Many are familiar with the work of the late Chalmers Johnson, author, pre-eminent scholar of China and Japan, and more recently a sharp critic of American imperialism. But not many know that his earliest works--those that helped him "set the agenda for ten or fifteen years in social science scholarship on China," according to Wikipedia, were published by Stanford University Press. Find out more here as Sheila Johnson recounts some highlights of her husband's career in Truthout.
Some highlights: You can’t read a newspaper these days without some mention of China, and for good reason. The economy continues to grow, and along with it an ever-expanding gap between the rich and poor. At some point, will China’s citizens say they’ve had enough? In Accepting Authoritarianism and MYTH OF THE SOCIAL VOLCANO, SUP authors Teresa Wright and Martin King Whyte demonstrate why social upheaval isn’t imminent. But that’s not to say that the Chinese, both urban and rural, are content with the status quo, as Yongshun Cai explores in COLLECTIVE RESISTANCE IN CHINA: Why Popular Protests Succeed or Fail. For those less interested in what happens next, and perhaps a bit nostalgic for last year’s World Expo, Marie Claire Bergere’s SHANGHAI: China's Gateway to Modernityprovides readers with a witty and wonderful stroll through the cosmopolitan city’s history. Our limitless books on China give a glimpse –and in many cases, a deep dive – into the myriad issues that make China a country we’ll continue to watch.
With the ongoing North Korean threat, the alliance between the United State and South Korea is more critical than ever. But key differences in the ways each country views the partnership threaten to destabilize it. In ONE ALLIANCE, TWO LENSES: U.S.-Korea Relations in a New EraGi-Wook Shin explores this important bilateral relationship and how to strengthen it.
Two decades ago, Vietnam made the transition to a market economy, which wrought changes at all levels of society. While many Americans think of Vietnam first and foremost as where they’d like to vacation next, some of the most interesting changes taking place are not happening in its hospitality industry, but among its families. RECONFIGURING FAMILIES IN CONTEMPORARY VIETNAMtakes readers into the lives of Vietnamese men and women as they negotiate new challenges of work, HIV/AIDS, reproductive policies, and more.
Nadia Kim, author of Imperial Citizens Koreans and Race from Seoul to LA, was interviewed recently by New America Media. The book Imperial Citizens examines the origins, nature, and extent of racial ideas about Koreans in relation to White and Black Americans, investigating how immigrants engage these ideas before they depart for the United States, as well as after they arrive. It shows how Korean history has shaped race relations, from interactions with white soldiers in Korea to interactions with Americans in the US.
In her interview with New American Media, Kim addresses the fact that when Koreans enter the US they become part of our distinct way of life. She first addresses the fact that when Koreans enter the United States they are grouped into one large distinction: "Asians." This term is in fact offensive because it lumps all Asian minorities into the same group, some of which have long and complicated histories with each other. The fact that Koreans are indistinguishable from the Japanese is a disturbing fact because of the love/hate relationship between the two cultures as a result of historical colonization.
Koreans became an even less prominent group in the US because their communities were so tightly knit. Because Koreans do not have as extensive a history in the United States as other Asian groups, they can seem a little harder to reach. However, Kim makes it clear that Koreans did not fade into the American background so easily. She talks about what she refers to as "the unrest" or the 1992 riotsand the tensions afterwords. These riots were the point when Koreans became intertwined in the long history of white/black tension in the US. The riots were sensationalized in the US as a battle between Koreans and blacks and popularized as the "black riots" in South Korea. The media flashed pictures of Koreans on their roofs with guns and stores being looted. Though it was a time of great tension, the Unrest actually fostered an alliance between Korean and black churches. Cultural exchanges took place: scholarships were organized, and black pastors were invited on trips to South Korea.
What Kim calls the Unrest shows how the Koreans were thrust into the racial tensions already existing in the United States, and how Koreans are still severely misunderstood here. Kim's book and interview are gateways to understanding Korean racial history, because, as she puts it, Koreans remain an "invisible and foreign minority here."
In a recent post in The China Beat, Jeffrey Wasserstrom commends Bergere on the first English language book of this topic.
Shanghai, China's Gateway to Modernity is the fist comprehensive history of Shanghai in any Western language. Bergere’s tale takes readers back to when Shanghai first opened up to the world as a trading hub. She narrates the city’s beginnings as a treaty port in the mid 1800’s, the capitalist boom after the 1911 revolution, the fifteen years of economic decline after Japanese invasion in 1937, and the city’s years under communism. Her account shows that Shanghai is in a sort of evolutionary process that was set into motion a century and a half ago.
Eclipsed for three decades by socialism, Bergere’s account vividly shows how Shanghai is once again a symbol of China’s quest for modernity. Her book describes the city’s long and fascinating cultural history.
Look out for reviews and more news related to this book as we moved closer to publication.
Asian American Art: A History, 1850-1970 is a groundbreaking volume that not only presents these artists’ important contributions to and influences on American art and culture, but also details the political and social conditions that have delayed the recognition of these achievements. It spans the period from the Gold Rush to the late 1960s, when a heightened civil rights and cultural consciousness began to emerge along with the emergence of Asian American Studies as a subject of academic study.
The volume is connected with a current exhibition at the de Young Museum, Asian/American/Modern Art: Shifting Currents, 1900-1970, which continues through Jan. 18, 2009 in San Francisco. The art showcased in the volume and the exhibit presents familiar places, people and experiences in unfamiliar ways, allowing us to see America with “new eyes.” Chiura Obata’s Setting Sun: Sacramento Valley and Chang Dai-chien’s vision of Yosemite, Autumn Mountains in Twilight, offer fresh perspectives on the American landscape.
On seeing the exhibit, I was particularly struck by--Yun Gee'sWhere is My Mother, an early, poignant work where the artist expresses his sorrow at leaving his mother behind in China in color prisms of yellow, ochre, and green. An Untitled (Winter Internment Scene), by George Matsusaburo Hibi, painted in 1943 when the artist was confined with thousands of other Japanese Americans at the internment camp in Topaz, Utah. This stark and spare painting is at once gripping with isolated and dark figures moving through thick snow past gray barracks. The cascading destruction depicted in Eitaro Ishigaki's Disaster by Atomic Bomb is striking. And, the Bauhaus inspired modernism of Ruth Asawa's hanging wire sculptures disassembles any stereoptypical ideas one might have about the "asianness" of American art.
In an interview with the San Francisco Chronicle, one of the volume's editors, Mark Johnson remarks, "I think the range and sophistication of expression and the complexity of references are going to take you aback," this show "expands our understanding of American cultural history. It isn't often that one gets to be a part of rewriting such an important chapter in our national cultural heritage."
The Stanford Asian American Art project, whose work resulted in this volume, found "over 1,000 professional artists working in California alone," said Gordon Chang (in an interview with the Stanford Report), adding that these were not Sunday afternoon artists but "professionals, who lived by their art." Over the years these artists' names disappeared from art history, said Chang (watch a video clip of the interview), leaving the project's researchers to "excavate knowledge, because the knowledge wasn't there." It was "an undercover, hidden history—a history hidden before my eyes. Most names were "erased," he said, as people who live on the margins of society often are. Hence, the researchers combed old newspapers, art school rosters and museum catalogs from a bygone era. They hunted down families and looked for artwork in "attics, basements, garages."
The volume covers several
of the most important centers of Asian American creative activity—from
New York to the West Coast cities of Seattle, San Francisco, and Los
Angeles, and exhumes the careers of more than two hundred artists—most
of whom are seen here for the first time in many decades, some in more
than a century. Profiled artists include painters, sculptors,
printmakers, photographers, textile artists, and ceramicists who were
active for a decade or more in the United States.
Also see a longer video of a panel discussion at the exhibit's opening at the de Young.
With the 2008 Summer Olympics now underway in Beijing, the spotlight is on China to see if their role as host will cast a new image on the communist nation which has recently been under attack by civil rights groups for its stance in Tibet and Sudan.
Lynch notes that the Olympics is a prime example of China's integration into global affairs which along with their rapid economic development and Internet usage are proving how Chinese society is changing.
Lynch notes that despite the fact that these developments are often moves toward democratization, there are several reasons why democracy will be more difficult to apply in China. For example, the popularity of patriotic notions that democracy is a ploy by Japan and the West to impede China's progress contributes to the nation's resistance to political change.
