stories of asian canadians: tgbhf:
My mother, one of twelve children, was born in Nanaimo, B.C. to Fun
Gee Wong and Hone Hung Mah, both of Canton, China. My grandfather
emigrated to Canada to work as a farm labourer. Mom left school at theage of 12 to work and support her family. In 1935, she moved toToronto and later…
love this. Fuck Weed: Legalize My Mom
Asian American activism and resistance has been ongoing, outspoken, and multi-front since the 19th century and completely counters the racist stereotype that Asians are somehow predisposed to go along with the system.
(via angryasiangirlsunited)
From Siu Sin Far’s “Leaves from the Mental Portfolio of an Eurasian”, Sui Sin Far, via berfrois:
Whenever I have the opportunity I steal away to the library and read every book I can find on China and the Chinese. I learn that China is the oldest civilized nation on the face of the earth and a few other things, At eighteen years of age what troubles me is not that I am what I am, but that others are ignorant of my superiority. I am small, but my feelings are big—and great is my vanity.
My sisters attend dancing classes, for which they pay their own frees. In spite of covert smiles and sneers, they are glad to meet and mingle with other young folk. They are not sensitive in the sense that I am. And yet they understand. One of them tells me that she overheard a young man say to another that he would rather marry a pig than a girl with Chinese blood in her veins.
In course of time I too learn shorthand and take a position in an office. The local papers patronize me and give me a number of assignments, including most of the local Chinese reporting. I meet many Chinese persons, and when they get into trouble am often called upon to fight their battles in the papers. This I enjoy. My heart leaps for joy when I read one day an article by a New York Chinese in which he declares, “The Chinese in America owe an everlasting debt of gratitude to Sui Sin Far for the bold stand she has taken in their defense.”
The Chinaman who wrote the article seeks me out and calls upon me. He is a clever and witty man, a graduate of one of the American colleges and as well a Chinese scholar. I learn that he has an American wife and several children. I am very much interested in these children, and when I meet them my heart throbs in sympathetic tune with the tales they relate of their experiences as Eurasians. “Why did paper and mamma born us?” asks one. Why?
I also meet other Chinese men who compare favorably with the white men of my acquaintance in mind and heart qualities. Some of them are quite handsome. They have not as finely cut noses and as well developed chins as the white men, but they have smoother skins and their expression is more serene; their hands are better shaped and their voices softer.
Some little Chinese women whom I interview are very anxious to know whether I would marry a Chinaman. I do not answer No. They clap their hands delightedly, and assure me that the Chinese are much the finest and best of all men. They are, however, a little doubtful as to whether one could be persuaded to care for me, full-blooded Chinese people having a prejudice against the half white.
Fundamentally, I muse, people are all the same. My mother’s race is as prejudiced as my father’s. Only when the whole world becomes as one family with human beings be able to see clearly and hear distinctly. I believe that some day a great part of the world will be Eurasian. I cheer myself with the thought that I am but a pioneer. A pioneer should glory in suffering.
at #MOCA—looks good! “Front Row: Chinese American Designers” and “Shanghai Glamour: New Women 1910s-1940s”.
OPENING TOMORROW at the Museum of Chinese in America, 215 Centre Street, NYC
Front Row: Chinese American Designers
Front Row traces and celebrates the rise of Chinese American designers who decided to make their marks in New York. In the 1980s, designers such as Anna Sui, Yeohlee Teng, Vera Wang and Vivienne Tam emerged in the New York fashion scene just as the city was transforming its identity from a garment center into one of the fashion capitals of the world. Curiously, the growth of New York’s Chinatown, the preponderance of Chinese manufacturers (tailors and seamstresses) in the city’s garment district, and the increased outsourcing of garment manufacturing to China, occurred alongside the rapid growth of fashion’s creative industries and a broader shift towards creative driven production in New York.
Since then, a new generation of young designers, from Derek Lam to Phillip Lim, have gone on to build global enterprises alongside established figures in an international fashion world. The diversity of their aesthetics, their individualized approaches to branding, and their varying personal relationship to cultural identity has shaped what we now understand as not only New York fashion, but an American sense of style.
This exhibition, guest-curated by designer Mary Ping, features the unique visions of 16 designers amidst a larger narrative of social and cultural forces that accentuated and cultivated this group’s rise. Front Row will feature designer assemblages of signature looks while drawing on personal reflections that speak to unique artistic visions and entrepreneurial paths. From the origins of their careers and development of signature styles, to understanding their own complex relationship to the concepts of New York and Asia, the exhibition will explore the rise of these Chinese American designers and their relationship to New York City.
Shanghai Glamour: New Women 1910s-40s
Shanghai Glamour explores how Shanghai women and their fashionable dress epitomized the seduction and mystery of this legendary city as it was modernizing in the early 20th century. Shanghai was established as a treaty port in the nineteenth century and became a major modern metropolis by the 1920s, internationally known as “the Paris of the East.”
The city’s identity was deeply associated with its women and their fashion. Their dresses and manners textured the city’s modern life and became the emblems of Shanghai modernity. Beyond the glamour, the changing styles of female clothing and the controversial images of modern women also manifested the social and political anxieties in the transitional period that ushered in new gender roles.
The exhibition, guest-curated by scholar Mei Mei Rado, features 12 exquisite outfits from 1910s to 1940s on loan from the China National Silk Museum in Hangzhou – on view for the first time in the United States – and three dresses from prominent private New York collections. They will be presented alongside over 50 accessories, posters, lifestyle magazines, and period images. Focusing on the unique Shanghai allure represented by women of different roles and their dresses, the exhibition examines how Shanghai women initiated styles that expressed their identities in relation to the city and how each archetype of femininity came to be associated with a certain characteristic Shanghai look. The show will describe styles from various corners of Shanghai society — the student, socialite, courtesan, movie star, artist, dancing girl, and housewife — to reconstruct the social and cultural pulses behind the many facets of Shanghai glamour.
i am very excited about these shows and MOCA holds a special place in my heart (i used to work there!) if you’re in the NYC area, make sure to check these out!!
reminds me of my stint spreading the word on bilingual ballots in boston chinatown. via migrantography: Multilingual voting instructions in Los Angeles.
Hot nerd Bruce Lee.
Bruce Lee was the 1958 Hong Kong Cha-Cha Champion. via
pierrebennu:
(via chinatowndo)
(via fortunatelight)
A rare scholarly bright spot amidst a brutal week of news: today was the official launch of the Digital Public Library of America:
(From the NOBLE Digital Heritage collection, hat tip Rebecca Nedostop)
It is a treasure-trove of goodies, including this 1879 Boston studio portrait of …
what i feared would happen. and yet my (non-POC) partner doesn’t understand why my heart starts pounding and i try to make myself as inconspicuous as possible anytime i am near any kind of representative of state authority (traffic cop, police, U.S. Customs). always suspicious before proven innocent (if ever).
He was injured in the blast and was running away like everyone else. But a bystander thought that was suspicious and tackled him. Police grilled him and ransacked his apartment. The new York post calls him a suspect immediately. Drudgereport links it under a screaming headline. World media pick it up. Everyone thinks he’s behind it. But. It’s. Just. Not. True.
I like how an innocent, injured, and scared man was tackled by bystanders, taken into custody, and defamed in the international media just for his skin color and his audacity to run from a fucking bombing and this warrants one tiny paragraph in an article about how “vigilant” they’re being in their investigation.
This is post-racial Amerikkka!
