Cartoonist Keith Knight had a busy time at this year’s San Diego Comic-Con: he was part of The Black Panel, hosted his own panel, Nappy Hour, and promoted his own work, Too Small To Fail, the latest collection of work from (th)ink, his one-shot cartoon published in alternative newspapers around the country.

Too Small breezes through a host of topics, sometimes with sensibility, as in the case of a series of informational posts about Black History Month, and other times slinging barbs at targets both political:

and social:

As a result, the compilation can go from funny to affecting to edifying within just a few pages, making it a good introduction to Knight’s work for those who can’t read it in their own local papers. Meanwhile, at Comic-Con, Knight has been using a similar rapid-fire strategy for “Nappy Hour,” which he brought back this year with a panel that included “Black Panel” host Michael Davis, Bad Azz Mofo head honcho David Walker, and writer/performer Pam Noles.

I caught up to Knight at the convention to talk about the panel, his memories of McDuffie, and his impressions on fandom and race. The clip and a full transcript are under the cut.

Keith Knight: Hey, Racialicious, I am Keith Knight. I am creator of The Knight Life, and the K Chronicles, and Think, which I have a new book collection of. Check it out at Kchronicles.com.

Arturo: So how’s your con going so far?
KK: So far, so good. Today’s been gangbusters, actually, Saturday. Which actually in the past couple of years has been the slow day, ’cause everybody usually goes up to check out the movie panels. But, maybe that’s to do with the drop in movie studios coming here this year, ’cause it’s been less than last year. But it’s much busier today.
AG: For the second year [in a row] now, you’ve done Nappy Hour. You said you created that panel as a way to bring some of the conversations you’ve had with other black creators … take some of those conversations and put them into a con setting.
KK: Yeah, yeah. Nappy Hour originally was this thing where we met up in a dive bar just off the beaten path in the Gaslamp District. But, as everything has gotten busier and they did the baseball stadium, that little dive bar is no longer the empty place anymore, so I said, “this is good timing to try and make this happen inside the con.” So I got a great line-up last year with Dwayne McDuffie, Ned Cato and C. Spike Trotman, and an egg timer, which is the key to making a good, quick fast-paced panel. And it was a real big hit, so this year we did it again.
AG: And this year you had Michael Davis from The Black Panel on. There seemed to be a bit of synergy between Nappy Hour and the Black Panel in that both of them were tributes to Dwayne McDuffie … could you give us a quick memory of Dwayne for our readers?
KK: Yeah, Dwayne … he was … it’s funny, ’cause everyone has the same story about Dwayne, about how this guy, who was so busy, who did so much, who accomplished so much in the industry, would take so much time to talk with you. And he was a real big supporter of me – especially me being a newspaper cartoonist, among all the superhero stuff, he was always there, and picked up every piece of work I did. And, it was just really nice, that he supported me so much, and it was a conversation with him that really got me to bring Nappy Hour inside. It was nice of him to be on the panel. Just, after he passed, was hearing everybody’s similar stories, just how smart he was and how she shared so much with other people. Great guy, great person, and one to emulate.

Twenty years ago, it used to be 40-year-old white guys in the audience. That audience has changed, but it’s still 40-year-old white guys in the comics.

AG: Talk about your experience hosting a panel. ‘Cause it’s different from just having a conversation with your buddies at the bar. The timer’s a great aide, but what else have you had to adapt to pull this off?
KK: I was a little loose yesterday. I let Michael talk a little bit, because I was a half-hour late to his panel, so he could pretty much do whatever he wanted. But, you want people to make their points, have their points made, but one thing … I let it go a little but I wanted to make sure our panel’s constructed without a lot of complaining, and I think there was a little bit too much complaining, but you gotta reel that in, because there’s so much positive stuff that we can talk about, and so many things that we can accomplish in a positive way … A con isn’t a con without a little bit of complaining, right? Isn’t con the short version of convention? Pros and con, negative connotation?
AG: How do you see conversations about diversity – not just at this convention, but in fandom in general – how do you see those evolving over the past couple of years?
KK: Evolving? Well, I really liked David Walker’s point [during the panel]: the convention crowd has become so diverse – I mean, just look around. I’m looking around right now at people who walk by, there’ve been like Six brown people, two white people just walked by. There’s a white guy. Black girl. White guy. Kids. Two brown kids. You know, it’s very diverse. Age-wise, sex-wise, it’s great to see, and Dave Walker was saying, let’s see that reflected in the comic-books now. Twenty years ago, it used to be 40-year-old white guys in the audience. That audience has changed, but it’s still 40-year-old white guys in the comics.
AG: One of the points made in the panel was, we’re responsible for our own stories. Having the internet now is a great equalizer now, I’ve found, ’cause we have more outlets. I’ll ask you what I asked the panel yesterday: why is there still so much of a blind spot around fandom when it comes to race in particular, even among those who would normally define themselves as kind of progressive?
KK: Well, it’s one of those things where people need to be dragged kicking and screaming into the future, and a lot of folks may not admit to their own biases or what they’re used to all these years. Making that transition may be hard. They may be forced to do that transition. I’ll tell you this: I’ve had more than a few people, after the panel, come down and say, “I just want to tell you, I wasn’t there for your panel, I was there for the panel after – I was squatting – but your panel was, like, the best panel I’ve seen at the con. You guys touched on a lot of issues that we just don’t hear in some of the other panels.” So those folks were tricked into hearing it, you know … sometimes people need to be tricked into learning about that stuff. I tell you, I always talk about the Ken Burns documentaries on PBS, because many of his documentaries have a lot to do with race in America – the Civil War, baseball, jazz, even the national parks, how they talked about the Buffalo Soldiers, who were the first park rangers, and a lot of people were being told for the first time, “You can’t do that in this park,” by black people. Those aren’t Black History specials, they’re Ken Burns documentaries, but people learn about black history through those documentaries.
AG: They get snuck in there.
KK: They’ll see something during black history month, like a Black History Month special, and a lot of white people won’t watch that, you know?
AG: But everybody likes baseball.
KK: Either you like or hate it. Still, even if you don’t like the game, that documentary was great. The biggest thing, though, was … what’s his name? … the guy who was the Negro League player who became a big -
AG: Buck O’Neill?
KK: Yeah, Buck O’Neill! He didn’t make it to the Hall of Fame when he was alive. These writers wouldn’t get him in the Hall of Fame in his last year, and then when he passed, they put him into the Hall of Fame. That’s something that bugged the hell out of me. But just for his performance in that documentary, being the star of that documentary was worth him getting into the Hall of Fame.

By Arturo R. García

In a better world for Idris Elba, we’d be writing about the return of Luther, the cops-and-robbers drama he produced for the BBC, in more glowing terms: the rising film star (thanks to Thor) coming back as a producer and lead for his relatively-little project that could. But given that the show’s ratings actually decreased during its’ first season despite Elba netting an NAACP Image Award and a Golden Globe nomination for his work in the title role, let’s just be glad it’s back at all.

Especially since the show ended that first season on a suitably squirmy cliffhanger: when we last left the despondent Detective Inspector, he was in the absolute wrong place at the wrong time – standing near his friend’s bloody corpse with his co-workers, convinced he was involved in another murder, closing in. His last question before we hit the credits – “Now what?” – would surely be the first one answered this year, right? Especially since showrunner Neil Cross only had four hours to wrap the case this year?

The show returned to British airwaves Tuesday, though no word yet on if and when it will air on BBC America. So far, though, the answers are few, while the problems for Luther are new. Be aware, spoilers are under the cut.

As it turns out, we don’t pick up the action anywhere near the events of the finale; the premiere takes us to Luther a year later. He’s alive and, somewhat surprisingly, now serving as the lead investigator for a new, L&O-ishly named “Serious and Serial Unit.” Even more surprisingly, the man formerly charged with investigating him, DSU Schenk (Dermot Crowley) is not only his supervisor now, but Schenk reveals that he “fought long and hard, and fought dirty” to keep Luther on the beat.

For his part, Luther spends some time reconnecting with the few people he can relatively trust. He rescues stalwart partner Ripley (Warren Brown) from his demotion to desk jockey to once again play Sancho to his Quijote, and also makes time to visit his wife’s boyfriend Mark (Paul McGann), the other emotional casualty from last year, even if, as Mark says, calling them close “is probably pushing it.”

But what Luther is not, of course, is alive and well. He lives in what seems like relative squalor – not that Luther’s ever been high-maintenance, decor-wise – and he’s discovered a rather disturbing morning ritual, the first sign that trigger warnings are still in effect for this show.

The reason why Luther’s legally, if not emotionally, free is a sacrifice by his gal-pal fatale Alice Morgan (Rose Wilson). Alice happily confesses to taking (uh, make that shooting) the bullets for Luther. At this point, Alice is  a willing resident at a “secure” mental ward. At least, she is for now. When Alice suggests to Luther they could escape to warmer climates, it’s as casual for her as suggesting a spot for lunch.

When she offers to help him with his latest case, Luther initially scoffs: “No. I’m pretty up to speed on my lunatics,” he says. But at this point they’re too intertwined (“We grew close,” she tells Schenk. “… I pitied him.”) for either of them to walk away so casually. And Luther also seems to know this – he’s going behind Schenk’s back to visit her, after all.

Alice might have gotten a kick about this season’s first antagonist, a failed artist (Lee Ingleby) with a knack for the theatrical, a Punch mask, and a hatred for the “cretinization” of the world. So his career choices were limited to serial killer and film critic? (Kidding.) Anyway, the killer – and just like last year, there’s never any doubt as to who the killer is, even when we “meet” him unmasked – has taken it upon himself to teach London how to be scared once again, drawing on the Victorian character Spring-heeled Jack for inspiration as he assaults and kills several young women in the first hour alone.

Luther also faces a different sort of domestic trouble, when the vengeful wife of a former collar (Kierston Wareing) bugs him into trying to nudge her daughter Jenny (Aimee Ffion-Edwards) out of her life as a “sex worker” – specifically the willing victim in a series of snuff films. It shouldn’t spoil things too much to tell you that Luther takes the most awkward route possible to fulfilling his latest duty.

So not much has changed about Luther, even if the world around him has changed dramatically. His newest squad member, DS Gray (Nikki Amura-Bird) is already questioning his leadership, but not because she’s insolent; she just knows what running with Luther did to poor Ripley. Even Luther, the character, seems to know his time is running out; he admits to returning in part to get Ripley’s career back on track. If the past of both the character and the show are prologue, then Luther probably won’t get a graceful ride into the sunset. But the question going forward is, can Elba the producer make this show a hit for Elba the actor on its’ way out?

Note: Trigger Warning

Since the days of Prohibition, Juarez has been a place for First World visitors to come and indulge in any number of illicit pleasures (alcohol, guns, drugs, sex). It is also the site where global capital has been making a killing to the tune of billions of dollars in annual profit…Because pollution laws are conveniently lax, the factories can emit fumes and dump waste without much concern or coversight. For all these reason, the U.S.-Mexico border has been made into something of an international sacrifice zone.

I’m not sure how old I was when I first heard about the women who were being sexually violated, horribly mutilated, and discarded like garbage in the desert surrounding Ciudad Juarez, Mexico. The femicide that has claimed the lives of hundreds of women–with thousands more unaccounted for–began in 1993, although no one can really know for sure. Looking at several of the time frames listed in Making a Killing: Femicide, Free Trade, and La Frontera and doing the math, I was stunned to realize that I’ve been hearing about this femicide for at least fifteen years now. Over the years, I’ve been even more stunned to learn how many people still don’t know that the murders are even taking place.

To give a brief overview: since 1993, hundreds of women have been found in the desert, deserted lots, and landfills, as well as in more public areas. Mexican government officials and various NGOs estimate that around 350-600 murders have occurred, though there’s no way to get an exact figure, especially since thousands of women have disappeared without a trace over the years. The youngest of the (known) victims are five years old and the oldest are in their seventies, but most of the victims are teenagers and young women in their early twenties, many of whom worked in maquiladoras along the border. Before dying, many of the women suffered through various forms of unimaginable cruelty–stabbings, burnings, beatings, rape, genital mutilation, breast mutilation. Because of the nature of the murders, the femicide has often been sensationalized by the media. But as one of the book’s contributors, a forensic psychologist named Candice Skrapec, writes:

[The crime scenes in Juarez] are like what we see in North America in cases involving the sexual violation of the victims…the motive may be less sensational, and, in fact, more like what we are accustomed to seeing: sexual violations of victims for purposes of personal gratification on the part of the offenders who then discard the bodies.

Yet to this day, the crimes continue to go unpunished. As more information about the femicide came to light, the victims were the ones who were initially blamed by the government, police, and the media for their own murders and disappearances; they were rumored to be prostitutes or wild girls who liked to stay out and party, leaving themselves vulnerable to attack.

Many of the victims were young women from rural areas in Mexico who had come to Juarez to find work in the factories; this influx of young women and the increased demand for a female work force challenged traditional gender roles, and the femicide was portrayed by many to be a result of this disruption of patriarchal norms. In the essay titled “Gender, Order, and Femicide,” the authors write:

If, for women, entrance into the paid labor force often meant acquisition of greater independence, increased status within the family, and freedom to socialize outside the home, it also underscored a process that required local and complex negotiations regarding how these changes would be understood and implemented….To the extent, then, that the failure of maquiladora development began to be written in terms of men’s absence from the maquilas, women workers were cast as a problem rather than another exploited group within Mexico’s struggling development plans, and all women became a target for male resentment.

Perhaps because I was born and raised on the Texas-Mexico border, perhaps because, for the entire time I’ve been aware of the femicide, I’ve also been in the age group that most of the murdered and kidnapped young women fall into, I’ve always felt drawn to the horrific events taking place in and around Juarez. One of the first papers I wrote in grad school was an analysis of media representations of the murdered women. I traveled to Juarez for that project (though I had been there before years earlier with my family), walking around and looking at the black crosses painted on pink backgrounds throughout the city in remembrance of the murdered women. In the years since, the only reports of violence in that area that I hear about have been related to drug cartels, and I’ve often wondered what effect this sharp increase in violence has had on the femicide and its (in)visibility to the rest of the world.

When I heard about Making a Killing, I was immediately drawn to it. Alicia Gaspar de Alba and Georgina Guzmán have put together a powerful book. Though it is mostly academic in nature, Making a Killing also has a very human aspect to it that might appeal to non-academic readers.

The book is divided into three parts: “Interventions,” “¡Ni Una Mas!,” and “Testimonios.” Part One provides a socioeconomic examination of the murders. Taking the effects of the global economy, NAFTA, the prevalence of maquiladoras along the border, and the influence of patriarchal ideals into consideration, this section gives readers a closer look many of the key factors that have allowed the femicide to continue. Part Two takes a closer look at the local and global activism that has developed in response to the femicide. The final section of the book gives some of the victims’ mothers a chance to speak out about their personal experiences. In this section, a forensic psychologist, Candice Skrapec, explains the femicide from a forensic perspective. An artist, Rigo Maldonado, closes this section with his testimonio on activism through art.

For the sake of brevity, I won’t go into detail on each essay in the book, though a full review can easily be written on every one. Instead, I will say that Part Two, ”¡Ni Una Mas!,” especially appealed to me. This section contained many critical readings of feminist and activist responses that have taken place over the years, and it raised many questions about ethics and the “othering” of the victims and their families. In 2004, for instance, a large V-Day march was organized by Eve Ensler. In “The Suffering of the Other,” the authors write:

[W]hen the call for the V-Day march was received, questions circulated in private conversations: What for? Isn’t it too late? Why not last year, when three more victims were found? Why not seven years ago, when we were struggling to prevent more murders? Why after hundreds of victims? Why’s benefiting from this march? Far or unfair, this is how the majority of the local activists felt and how they structured their feelings. The spirit had its reasons…[Several local NGOs] openly appropriated and misued Eve Enslers’ V-Day event in Juarez by erasing the main objective of agloval movement destined to stop violence against women and girls.

The authors, who themselves participated in the march, were also introspective about their involvement in any “othering” that may have occured as a direct result of the march. They raise many important points about privilege and the practices of using a victims’ pain in order to further one’s cause. This quote in particular stood out to me:

Juarense women cannot be seen as a homogenous group of “Third World subalterns.” This (mis)representation has had serious implications in that privileged women in the locality have been uncritically and socially constructed as the benefactors when they, intentionally or not, have perpetuated oppressive practices toward underprivileged women in Ciudad Juarez.

Other essays that were of high interest to me were the ones on the victim-blaming in government femicide awareness campaigns, as well as those that critically examined media representations of the victims. The mothers’testimonios in Part Three were also powerful–and painful–to read.

The only thing I wish the book had included is an update on the current status of things. Rarely a day goes by when I don’t hear about Juarez in the news, but all of those news reports are related to the cartel-related violence that claims the lives of thousands of people in the city each year. Though that, too, is a narrative that cannot and should not be ignored, it seems that reports of femicide-related news have been subsumed by those related to the drug wars. Because of that last fact, I am all the more grateful that this book was published.

Coming on the heels of a seemingly endless surge of anti-Muslim bigotry in the U.S., CNN picked the most opportune moment to air its special on Muslims, titled Unwelcome: The Muslims Next Door with reporter Soledad O’Brien.

After having been glued to the news in the last couple of weeks, following Rep. Peter King’s hearings on Muslim extremism in the United States and the recent display of anti-Muslim bigotry to hit the community of Southern California, I cringed at the title of this documentary.

The commercials, accompanied by what can be described as the soundtrack to a thriller, seemed to employ fear-mongering tactics to get viewers to tune in. Ready for the onslaught of virulent stereotypes that usually accompanies stories about Muslims, I was armed with an arsenal of curses to churn out at the television screen.

However, I was fairly surprised by the way the documentary portrayed American Muslims and specifically, American Muslim women. Muslim women are portrayed as active members of American society and as a multi-dimensional group.

The hour long special documents the heated debate surrounding the building of an Islamic center in Murfreesboro, Tennessee. Local community members are polarized, prompting a series of hearings against the proposed Islamic center in order to justify withholding constitutional rights of freedom of religion. It is here that viewers witness a series of heartbreaking Islamophobic sentiments fueled by ignorance and bigotry.

In attempt to show how different community members of Murfreesboro, Tennessee have been affected by this controversy, O’Brien interviews a varied group of individuals. Among them were a handful of Muslim women, who are as diverse in their appearances as in their experiences as American Muslim women.

Two of these young women, who are both students at Tennessee State University, are among those interviewed by O’Brien. They say they always felt welcome in their city, even after 9/11.

For years, some 250 Muslim families, who consider the town of Murfreesboro home, have been practicing their faith and worshipping at the local Islamic center, which has now become too small to house the growing congregation. The proposed mosque would include a place for both men and women to pray, a swimming pool and a cemetery.  When the Muslim students heard about the new Islamic center one of them says, “It was a dream come true.”

As construction on the land (purchased by donations from mosque-goers) began, the community was shaken by acts of vandalism: the mosque sign was spray painted and building equipment was set on fire. One of the girls says that it was hard to see the words “not welcome” spray painted on the sign.

Another Muslim woman, Ivy, the wife of the mosque Imam, was also interviewed. She is a white woman who was raised Methodist and converted to Islam after 9/11. When asked by O’Brien why she converted, she said that anyone who knew a Muslim would hear the things said about Muslims after 9/11 and say it wasn’t true. So she picked up a Qur’an and started reading it to find out for herself.

In response to the mosque vandalism, Ivy says that the hardest thing for her is hearing her young daughter voice concern about her mother’s safety while wearing hijab outdoors. The tactics of intimidation, she says, have affected the children more than anything. When asked by Soledad if she thinks people hate her she replied, “No, I don’t. I just think they don’t know or understand who we are.”

Perhaps the most moving testimony comes from a 19-year-old woman, Lema Sbenaty, who is a member of the Muslim community of Murfreesboro. As hearings prompted by anti-mosque community members take place, Lema speaks out, saying she was raised as an American Muslim and she is like any other 19-year-old girl in the community.

Upon leaving the courthouse, she is met by a congresswoman who, in attempt to discredit the mosque, says that Shariah law oppresses Muslim women. Lema challenges the woman, but is ultimately ignored. The imam’s wife later reiterates Lema’s statements, saying, “I am not oppressed.” She says that even though she is the imam’s wife, she and her husband make decisions in the home as a family.

Soledad later asks Lema, “Why not just not build it [the mosque]?” Lema responds by saying that it is their right. She says she understands people’s fears but, an entire community of people cannot be condemned for the actions of a few.

Among the local anti-mosque community members who are interviewed, Sally Wall, a prominent Murfreesboro community member does not shy away from telling viewers how she really feels.

In a move so indicative of the pervasiveness of media images of Muslim women on American society, Sally produces the cover of a recent TIME magazine featuring a disfigured Afghan woman. She says that she is worried that this is what will happen to women here if this Islamic center is built.

If the alleged fear over the mistreatment of American Muslim women is the real concern here, I think it would suffice to say that the likes of Sally Wall and other members of the Murfreesboro community pose the real threat to American Muslim women. Their attempt to marginalize Muslim women and cast-type them as a fringe group of Americans, undeserving of their first amendment rights, is symptomatic of a larger problem: racism and Islamophobia is yet to be passé in America.

By Arturo R. García

Toward the end of Down & Delirious In Mexico City: The Aztec Metropolis In The Twenty-First Century, author Daniel Hernandez talks about encountering a group of seven muses. It’s a credit to his craft and this book that he’s able to weave the entire septet together skillfully, not just with each other, but with the whole other array of characters that inhabit the worlds he encounters as part of his own journey.

The title of Down & Delirious calls to mind Hunter S. Thompson’s more famous stories, and the similarity comes through in the content: the stories we get are part-journalism, part-diary and part-history lesson. But whereas HST dove headlong into chronicling the excesses of things he despised, Hernandez’s stories show him on the path toward becoming not just a visitor to Mexico City, but a full-fledged capitalino, is one of reconciliation: “Mestizaje became a material truth operating inside me, inside all of us,” he writes. “So Mexico City, teeming with millions and millions, as surreal as Los Angeles, as majestic as New York, a mighty city all its own, became both my crossroads and my destination.”

Along the way, in Hernandez’s hands, the megacity itself becomes a character, not just because of its’ size or its’ multitude of places to be and to do – though those get visited in depth – but because its’ somehow has produced a population of smoking enthusiasts despite its’ reputation as one of the world’s smoggiest cities:

During this extra-smoggy weekend in January, residents in my building make an effort to go outside as little as possible. We open beers and talk. In the darkened interior of an apartment upstairs, my neighbor Ponce, a cartoonist and illustrator born and raised in the capital, calmly explains the air of normalcy while smoking a few singles. “We’re mutants,” Ponce says.

I down my can of beer, ask for an extra smoke, and retreat back to my apartment. What Ponce says makes my eyes pop in recognition. To be raised in Mexico City, or to willingly assimilate yourself to it, is to relinquish control over your natural state. The environment physically alters you. Because we’ve physically altered it. Ponce has uttered a cosmic truth. The Mexico City mutation is real.

Hernandez’s own assimilation grounds the rest of his stories. He finds fast friends in the Federal District’s fashionista crowd (“I have never seen posing like this in Los Angeles, and people in Los Angeles carry posing in their DNA”); he joins the city’s old-school punk community in their hoyo fonquis; he watches people mourn their dead, then finds himself in mourning. Love and religion, crime and music, all collide around him. But somewhere in the middle, Hernandez manages to find the seven muses, add them to his own, and give us portraits of a city, and a people, on a constant search for its’ own redefinition.

Perhaps the most celebrated Fall collections to debut at this year’s Fashion Week were those that creatively incorporated technology. Several designers showcased computer-generated prints, retooling traditional craft textiles into computerized patterns comprising ultra modern garments. But even as fashion critics overwhelmingly celebrated this preponderance of technological innovation, most seemed similarly enamored of Ralph Lauren’s far less pioneering embrace of one of fashion’s oldest tropes: Shanghai Chic. Critics eagerly dedicated valuable column inches to the collection, which featured all the mainstays of Asian-inspired fashion: jade jewelry, golden dragons, cheongsams. While some candidly wondered whether the designer’s invocation of China was a statement about the nation’s growing economic competitiveness, others were simply happy to break out as many tired euphemisms for “Eastern” as possible. (Not only did the “Orient Express” make several stops but East, inevitably, met West.)

The familiar scenario aptly reinforces a key observation made by culture critic Thuy Linh Nguyen Tu in her newly published book, The Beautiful Generation: “Even when freed to dream and invent,” she writes, “[designers] seem only to return to long-held ideas about an exotic and erotic orient.”

The phenomenon Nguyen Tu describes, of Euro-American designers’ quixotic and cyclical infatuation with an often undifferentiated “East,” has for — literally — hundreds of years dictated Asia’s participation in one of the largest and oldest industries to date. Asia, in the deft hands of fashion industry titans, is at once a sumptuous fantasy and a convention in need of constant reinterpretation; both an inexpensive manufacturing site and — as one New York Times critic made a point of mentioning with regard to the Ralph Lauren collection — an expansive consumer market.

The Beautiful Generation, as much a fashion history as a cultural study, gracefully takes us through the many phases of that evolving dynamic: From Gaultier’s introduction of luxe Chinese coats in seventeenth century Paris, to American Vogue’s strategic establishment of “fashion designer as cultural anthropologist” in the mid-‘90s, and finally to the curiously successfully rise of Asian American designers in the present decade. While it’s all a good read, the last is arguably the highlight of the book; Nguyen Tu’s compelling examination of Asian American designers, whose precarious positions in the industry are plainly defined by their historic exclusion from it, is clearly a point of personal connection for her.

In one way or another, she’s been studying those designers since the 1990s when, as a grad student at New York University, she began noticing that a number of emergent downtown boutiques were helmed by Asian American women. Initially driven by her recognition of a unique cultural phenomenon (up to that point, Asian Americans in the fashion industry had been relegated to low-wage manufacturing jobs), she was eventually propelled by the realization that she shared a lot more with the designers than just a fine fashion sense.

Like many of the designers she interviewed, Nguyen Tu had emigrated from Vietnam as a child, and her family had settled in what she describes as “all-white working class towns in Connecticut … urban spaces where it was hoped we would assimilate faster.” Her working class parents, whose vision of acceptable work centered on the potential for financial security, expected her to become a pharmacist or, if she was really ambitious, a doctor. But her ostensibly poor command of the sciences eventually pushed her towards liberal arts and, to her parent’s dismay, a PhD in American Studies.

“It was like telling them I was going to join the circus,” she said. “And throughout my interviews with the designers I heard the same thing … the same story of how parental expectations enabled us to do the work that we did even as it constrained us.”

As she learned, familial ties and expectations figured prominently in the rise of Asian American designers, informing their careers paths and perspectives on the industry while lending them valuable human and material resources during their lean beginning years. Most of the designers she interviewed (including notables like Philip Lim, Derek Lam and Doo-Ri Chung) were the children of garment producers — the low wage sewers, cutters and pattern makers upon which the fashion industry relies. From an early age, the designers had assisted their parents with piecework, learning to cut, sew and assemble. Yet few set out to become designers, influenced instead by their parents’ narrow views of acceptable work as much as by cultural stereotypes that depict Asians as industrious but inherently uncreative.

“The majority of people that I interviewed didn’t even go to fashion school,” Nguyen Tu said. “Instead … they went to dental school.”

While many told Nguyen Tu that sewing was in their blood, having been trained in the skill since childhood, most nevertheless pursued radically different careers — in finance, biology, anthropology, etc. — before circling back to the fashion industry as designers.

But unlike the prototypical American designer (who, according to Nguyen Tu, strives to distance himself from “unskilled” producers in an effort to elevate his own role in the creative process), Asian American designers have tended toward the reverse. Guided by their intimate connections to garment workers and familial expectations about the nature of acceptable work, they are more inclined to view fashion design as chiefly a business rather than an art, and tend to emphasize their close relationships with producers rather than eschew them. For many, this pays off. While fashion design is an unstable, financially risky, and resource-intense occupation for most, Asian American designers have benefited from their intimacies with producers, who can provide them with both labor and material resources at little or no cost. It’s a crucial advantage that has enabled many Asian Americans to stay competitive in an especially gendered and racialized industry.

And just as the American children of garment workers are increasingly crossing the assembly line — graduating from the industrial to the creative — so are Asian sites of outsourcing leveraging their manufacturing industries into more lucrative creative centers. Once the original locales of inexpensive labor, China and Korea have started dedicating considerable resources to cultivating home-grown design talent, sending scores of Chinese and Korean fashion students to New York every year to acquire skills and exposure. Though their fashion industries are fledgling yet, the transformative effort has plainly provoked anxiety within the Euro-American fashion industry; Nguyen Tu notes that the latter has subsequently striven to define itself as a global innovator by reinforcing the industry’s creative vs “unskilled” dichotomy. Euro-American designers are embracing technology, ever-reinventing familiar motifs and further distancing themselves from the mass-producing masses in an effort to maintain their global dominence.

Indeed, the defensive posturing and industry angst to which she alludes were in full swing at this year’s Fashion Week — in the self-aggrandizing speech of designers, on the ultra-modernized backs of models, and even in laudatory mainstream reviews. Commenting on Ralph Lauren’s collection, for instance, the New York Times’ Suzy Menkes repeatedly juxtaposed descriptions of the designer’s Shanghai-inspired aesthetic with disparaging references to the “fast fashion factories of today’s China” and Asia’s “Made in China”-quality mass productions.

Asian American designers don’t get off too easily either, falling as they do somewhere between artist and producer, American and foreigner. While critics extolled Ralph Lauren’s and Oscar De La Renta’s modernization of “tourist trap” Asian motifs, for example, they also repeatedly and simplistically categorized the commercial success of Asian American designers as the product of Asian consumption. Reviewing Anna Sui’s collection, Menkes patronizingly notes that “Ms. Sui may have had a big success in the Asia of her family origins, but her heart is forever in the England of swinging London, with its layers of history.” At Vogue, Hamish Bowles curiously remarks that Jason Wu’s “conservative” collection would never be as radically deconstructionist as those of the Japanese designer Kawakubo — notwithstanding the fact that their aesthetics are so radically different that they defy comparison; their only tangible similarity is their (albeit divergent) Asian heritage. Mark Holgale, also writing for Vogue, similarly makes much of Philip Lim’s connections to Asia, attributing the designer’s current and future successes to the voraciously consumptive Chinese — even as he notes that Chinese consumers are just as “familiar with everyone from Altuzarra to Rodarte.”

The stark differences between critical reception of Asian American work and that of mainstream, establishment designers seems to suggest that, while Asian cultures desperately require Western designers to modernize and retool their elements into something worth purchasing, Asian American designers nevertheless owe everything to their Far Eastern touchstones. In either case, the Euro-American fashion establishment wins … but perhaps not for long.

“I think the dominance of Euro-American fashion will eventually wane,” Nguyen Tu speculated. “They’ve held the monopoly for over 200 years, but I think there will be a radical shift away from the US and Europe as the only centers of fashion, and that China and India and all of these places will rise in a sort of global realignment of where we get our style … and in the production of fashion itself.”

Fashion illustrations courtesy of Noemi Manalang

Two episodes in, and the North American adaptation of Being Human is uneven, but not without some merit. In fact, the show is less hemmed in by its’ brilliant British predecessor than by storytelling cliches on this side of the pond.

Spoilers and a quick explanation after the cut.

I waited an extra week before writing about the show because I wanted to give the American/Canadian version of BH some time to find its’ legs, and see if we’d get more storyline developments for its’ own ghost, Sally (Meaghan Rath). I was glad to get positive answers on both counts, and so far, the show’s best choices have come from side-stepping the mythology in the original show.

For instance, last week’s series premiere was set “before” the events of the British version; we saw a more fleshed-out take on Aidan the vampire (Sam Witwer) and Josh the werewolf (Sam Huntington) getting their newly-haunted pad, and their first encounter with Sally. As a result, it gave the opening of this week’s episode – pretty much a remake of the original’s opening flashback sequence – a little more texture. That little bit of extra context was much appreciated.

Also appreciated was the extra spotlight given to some new characters: Josh’s sister, Emily (Alison Louder), who was not only shown in a same-sex relationship in a respectful, non-titillating light, but supplied some much-needed depth to Josh, whose histrionics, as written by Jeremy Carver and Anna Flicke, veered north of “quirky” and into grating. (More on the writing later.)

The character who seems to be benefitting the most in this crossover, oddly enough, isn’t part of our primary trio. Early on in both series, we saw the vamp go “off the wagon” and kill a young woman. In the BBC version, Mitchell turns his lover, Lauren into a vampire; she would on to become an ancillary figure before sacrificing herself for Mitchell at the end of Series 1. Here, Aidan’s victim, Rebecca (Sarah Allen), is turned by the Herrick equivalent, Bishop (Mark Pellegrino) and set loose, and she’s been written with a more aggressive presence – the Darla to Aidan’s Angel, to reference another post-fatal attraction.

In fact, one might say it’s Joss Whedon’s spirit that’s haunting the proceedings more than original BH creator’s Toby Whithouse’s. The new version is written in a Whedonesque hyper-”quirky” fashion that clicks when it works and stumbles when it doesn’t – and unfortunately, so far it’s missing the mark at the worst of moments: in the second episode, as Sally’s ex-fiancee, Danny (Gianpaolo Venuta) finishes telling the boys about her death, he says, “But that’s for VH1 Behind The Music, right?” If this were a screwball comedy, you could accentuate that line with the sound of a record screeching off its’ player.

At least such a sound cue might break up the show’s other bad import from Whedonville: an over-reliance on the “introspective” montages that plagued Dollhouse. The second episode went from one overbearing piece of music to the next over the course of its’ final few minutes. And included in those few minutes was a sequence that went from introspective to ridiculous within seconds, as Sally re-enacts the cause of her death, letting herself fall down the stairs. She ends up floating down, with some Adult Contemporary piano-driven nonsense telling us this was “deep.”

Rath seems to have a handle on her character, but those kinds of stylistic choices threaten to undercut her performances, as well as Witmer’s and Huntington’s. Because the parts of this show that are truly different from the original show some promise. It just seems like this creative team chose not to import the little things that made this concept so watchable in England: the settings that felt truly lived-in when we discovered them; the moments of silence, balanced out with those scored and presented like something truly out of a horror movie; and most of all, the real tension our protagonists have been facing throughout the show.

Perhaps the revival’s biggest obstacle is the fact that the original Being Human is still going; the third series kicked off Monday night, gave us a better take on the new one’s “best part” – the cliffhanger involving a werewolf – and still delivered another scary, uncomfortable sequence to top that. It’s tough enough to try and adapt a show with an existing fanbase. But knowing the original is out there, getting better and increasingly easier to obtain online? Not much of a ghost of a chance of fighting against that.

In a way, author and journalist Jennifer L. Pozner’s latest work was endorsed by The Learning Channel, without her even having to appear:

We have made it known from the start that Sarah Palin’s Alaska is not a political show.   Sure, there has been plenty of conversation of Sarah Palin’s Alaska through a political lens — some of it on our blogs — but when the focus turns political the conversation goes off track.  And for that reason we try to avoid conversations that are seen as being political wherever possible.

- Brian Reich, host, Sarah Palin’s Alaska podcast

Over the weekend, Pozner, founder and executive director of Women in Media & News, and more recently the author of Reality Bites Back: The Troubling Truth about Guilty Pleasure TV, was invited, then un-invited from appearing on the channel’s Alaska podcast after Pozner called the series a “series-long unpaid political advertisement.” Her post and subsequent live-tweeting of an episode, Reich went on to say, “created an untenable environment tonight that wouldn’t allow for us to focus on the topic we both want to discuss.”

Translation: the call-in portion of the show would veer into flame-war territory, because Pozner’s analysis would have revealed some truths TLC and Palin’s fanbase weren’t comfortable confronting.

Indeed, Reality Bites Back makes its’ stand not just on analyzing the goings-on in front of the cameras in shows like The Bachelor, America’s Next Top Model and Flava Of Love – identified as three turning points in the Reality TV genre – but in shining a light on the behind-the-scenes machinations that go into making this kind of “entertainment” possible. The tone is set early on, as we get a closer look at the thought process of Mike Darnell, the Fox executive who changed the game 10 years ago, when he brought Who Wants To Marry a Multi-Millionaire? to the airwaves with executive producer Mike Fleiss:

Mike and I … knew that the National Organization for Women would hate us. That this would be the most controversial show ever! We thought it was all good, but it got so hot, so crazy red-hot. They said it was the most talked-about show since Roots! It was the lead sketch on Saturday Night Live.

Fleiss went on to launch The Bachelor in 2002, and Fox promoted Darnell, giving him the all-clear to launch shows like Joe Millionaire, The Swan and Temptation Island. Fleiss provides a chilling summation of these and other programs’ calling cards: “It’s a lot of fun to watch girls crying. Never underestimate the value of that.”

Under Pozner’s lens, the multi-pronged assault on these shows’ female participants and feminism in general is only confirmed: the emphasis on restrictive norms concerning body type; the faux-Cinderella narratives; the consumerism; and, as regards race, the wholesale revival of the worst of stereotypes, with the introduction of Flava Of Love setting the stage:

Producers made sure viewers understood that race was the reason why this show was so different from anything we’d seen before. From the archetypal reality TV limousine during the series premiere, Flav screamed, “I know y’all heard of that show called The Bachelor. Flavor Flav is the Black-chelorrrrrrrr … orrrrrrr ….” Lest that prove too subtle, he yelled, “I’m the pimp behind the wheels!”

While Flava and its’ extended family of spin-offs pick off contestants’ self-esteem at the “street” level, another chapter in the book focuses on Tyra Banks and the high-rise abuse on Top Model. On the page, without the camouflage of mood music or product placement, the show’s pattern of victim-blaming and hypocrisy is laid bare, from the framing of Yaya DaCosta in Season 3 as pretentious to the “sexy little animals” photo shoots. Yet, Pozner theorizes that Banks herself is dealing with her own form of brainwashing:

From age fifteen on, Banks was raised by the fashion and beauty industry and its advertisers. In loco parentis, they gave her fame and fortune beyond her wildest dreams – but always while pitting her against other women, requiring her to hide her natural hair and reminding her that her value depended on being young and thin. And so the cycle continues.

Pozner makes it clear she doesn’t want people to not watch the genre, but, through games, how-to tips on writing to programmers; and community-oriented mini-commentaries from an array of guests, she devotes the book’s final two chapters to a sort-of self-help guide of her own: how we as readers and viewers can watch these shows and their ilk more critically – and, hopefully, stem the tide of faux-reality a little bit at a time. On a personal note, I’d recommend buying this book for the avid Flava, Tyra or Bachelor fan on your holiday list as part of that process.

By Arturo R. García

Over the weekend a reader asked us to take a look at Misfits – kind of surprising, since it doesn’t get the attention lavished upon other British shows. But, it’s been fun to list the show as one of my secret pleasures since it debuted last year.

I say “secret” and not “guilty,” because it’s been the kind of under-the-radar show that I hope remains out of the grubby reach of American media outlets. (By the way, if you’re a fan of Skins, my condolences to you in advance. But I digress.) Slight spoilers under the cut.

We don’t get many glimpses into the home lives of the titular quintet, who meet at court-appointed community service. It’s apparent early on that each of them is part of a lower-middle class family, and only Curtis, the ex-track star stuck with the group after a drug bust, is credited with having any ambition before his current situation.  But at the same time, these characters are not easily-dismissed “bad seeds.” Throughout the series, we’ve seen each of them be crass, or creepy, or kind. And unlike the self-important family figures in Heroes, this Breakfast Club gone wrong doesn’t obsess over the abilities they gain after a freak storm. After learning the new rules of the game, they fold the powers into their extended adolescence: partying, popping pills, popping off at the mouth; hitting the pub, or going for ill-advised romantic entanglements.

The show’s debut season last year was six episodes long, allowing each member of the group to get a turn in the spotlight. In Curtis’ case, his attempt to rewrite history led to one of the best uses of time-travel on television in the past decade – more daring than almost anything Doctor Who has pulled off. Here’s the (NSFWish) trailer:

One of the show’s main subplots throughout its’ run has been Curtis’ relationship with Alisha, whose no-nonsense sexuality is turned against her when the storm causes her to drive anyone into a sexual frenzy just by touching them. At first, she revels in the attention, but the thrill doesn’t last long. Regardless, the two of them do share some sweet moments (“You don’t need to use your power on me,” he tells her. “I’m already there.”) even if they can’t actually touch, though they do, uh, get intimate. Sorta.

It’s not spoiling too much to tell you the relationship dissolves in Season Two. But, possibly because short seasons means little time to waste for writer/producer Howard Overman, we’re spared a melodramatic break-up. Instead, the pair simply drifts apart and finds somebody new. Curtis begins seeing another newly super-powered woman, and Lisa finds herself drawn to “SuperHoodie,” first seen at the end of Season One. I’ll leave his identity for you to discover.

It’s also worth noting that, in the group dynamic, neither Lisa nor Curtis is played up or down compared to, say, the wiry wall of snark that is Nathan, the kind of smart-mouthed pretty-boy who would be the de-facto leader in the hands of a lesser show. Bound by two layers of circumstance, the group’s overall alliance is tenuous throughout most of Season One, before finally evolving into friendship this year. But the series has proven to be refreshingly free of clumsy stabs at edginess or navel-gazing over its’ own mythology. As Season Two nears its’ end this week, the characters are still very much in the process of growing up – but they’re not going gently into adulthood by any means.

Critical buzz around Misfits has grown since its’ debut, particularly after the non-BBC show won Best Drama Series at the 2009 BAFTAs. So the chances of somebody like MTV or Syfy attempting to do an awkward “re-imagining” of the series are probably increasing. Luckily, the first season is available on DVD, and Bleeding Cool reported last week that the series has been renewed for a third season. It’s worth your time to catch up.

By Fatemeh Fakhraie, cross-posted from her blog

Last Sunday, I went to a local production of Jennifer Jajeh’s solo show “I Heart Hamas.” The show’s site gives a pretty good synopsis:

With the current ongoing conflicts in the Middle East, the threat of global terrorism, and the never-ending negotiations and hostilities between Israelis and Palestinians, it’s hard not to feel overwhelmed by all of the bad international news. That’s exactly how Jennifer Jajeh feels. And to make matters worse, Jennifer is Palestinian. Well, Palestinian American. Or more precisely: a single, Christian, first generation, Palestinian American woman who chooses to return to her parents’ hometown of Ramallah at the start of the Second Intifada.

Join her on American and Palestinian soil on auditions, bad dates, and across military checkpoints as she navigates the thorny terrain around Palestinian identity. Weaving together humor, slides, pop culture references and live theatre, Jajeh explores how she becomes Palestinian-ized, then politicized and eventually radicalized in a fresh, often funny, searingly honest way.

I really enjoyed the performance. Jennifer’s wit when talking about her Jewish cat Judah or preachy Palestinian audience members made the evening fly by. She’s a wonderful performer, and it showed in both the show’s comical aspects and its serious ones. Her performance and the show’s vivid audio brought her life in Ramallah into startling perspective.

It was comforting and refreshing to hear someone address the, “No, where are you really from?” question. Though I’m Iranian and Muslim, I related to so many of Jennifer’s experiences as a Christian Palestinian trying to figure out where she fit in America. She spoke about feeling confined and uncomfortable in the small Palestinian American community, but being completely alienated from Palestinians in Ramallah. She talked about her frustration with trying to find a place for herself within mainstream American life, sharing examples from elementary school and her attempts to find work as an actress. She spoke about making people uncomfortable just by virtue of who she was—wishing aloud that she could be “ethnic, but without the baggage.”

If you get a chance, you should definitely see the show. She’s currently doing a college tour and will be in Los Angeles early next year—watch for updates at her website!

By Guest Contributor Jorge Antonio Vallejos, cross-posted from Rabble.ca

A drug dealer with a conscience, straight boys who jog naked at night in a group, and a hit-man who finds himself in a life changing ceremony; yes, there’s everything under the sun (and moon) in Richard Van Camp’s new collection of short fiction The Moon of Letting Go.

A member of the Dogrib Nation of North West Territories, Van Camp is one of Turtle Island’s (Canada’s) premier writers. Published in The Walrus, Descant and Up Here Magazine, Van Camp brings stories from the North to the rest of Turtle Island.

Just as raw, funny and intelligent as the characters in his other works, Angel Wing Splash Pattern and The Lesser Blessed, it’s hard to put down The Moon of Letting Go. Twelve stories in all, some connected via characters, places and events, readers feel like they are hearing town gossip straight from Van Camp’s mouth and want to get involved. At times, I wanted to kill the father who molested his daughter; attend the hockey games the town looks forward to; be one half of the couple who has great makeup sex; and meet the mysterious medicine man who has a town in constant fear.

Throughout the collection Van Camp tackles tough issues including the differences between Aboriginal peoples, dealing with mixed-nation relationships and the pressure to have children. Van Camp shows readers how complex humans are, that there is no black and white, that we can walk the good road while practicing the opposite and vice versa. At times the issues Van Camp addresses seem autobiographical: “I’m quite fair and often invisible to other Indians when I’m out of NWT,” says the narrator in “I Count Myself Among Them.” Van Camp, fair skinned himself, shows how not all Aboriginal people look the same.

In “Show Me Yours” Van Camp proposes a solution to hostility in one community: people wear their baby pictures around their necks. Photos of the innocent bring praise leading to peace then laughter-our best medicine. Natives, Inuit, and whites come together by admiring photos of their past. “There are just so many beautiful babies inside us all,” writes Van Camp. True, we hope everyone would realize this.

In “A Darling Story” Van Camp demonstrates the difficulties of mixed-nation relationships. Lance, a Dogrib, and Shari, a Dene, hang with Duane, a Gitxsan, and Juanita, a Haida: two couples, four different nations, many differences and similarities. Van Camp shows the differences between nations, how different customs are practiced, and how a couple has to negotiate and compromise around their differences — whether partnering in a mixed-race relationship or one that’s mixed-nation.

A large part of “A Darling Story” is the struggle to have a child. With Aboriginal peoples making up only three per cent of Turtle Island’s population there is a push to have children by Aboriginal Elders, communities, and parents for their nations and cultures to survive and continue. Van Camp does not emphasize this pressing reality enough.

Van Camp’s title story, “The Moon of Letting Go,” about medicine man Rattlesnake, and Celestine, a young mother who fears him, reads like a Stephen King story. Yet, though Rattlesnake with his black eyes, long fingernails and rotting teeth is villainized — he is also respected. Van Camp does not cheapen his character, or the story, as do many writers who incorporate stereotypes such as mythical songs and dance with smoke and feathers. There are no pictures burned, or pins and dolls, no eggs with black yoke, or birds smashing into windows. Rather, in one scene, Van Camp describes how Rattlesnake has no fingernail clippings or strands of hair anywhere in his home. “The medicine man had cleaned his home in his own way for anything of his that could be used against him in a medicine war.” Throughout the story Rattlesnake is called “The Devil” and later turns to “uncle” showing that not all is as it appears to be, and that people have many sides to them.

Van Camp’s stories are important, innovative, well-crafted and a pleasure to experience. I loved his endings because of their timing and completeness, but hated them too because I didn’t want his stories to finish. There are many interesting characters that will hopefully appear in future collections or novels. They say a good book is like spending time with a friend; you don’t read Van Camp, you listen to him.

By Guest Contributor Rob Fields, cross-posted from Bold As Love

Like Tina Turner, you get the feeling from listening to Tamar-kali’s debut album Black Bottom that she never did anything nice and easy. But it’s that struggle she articulates to come into her own that has helped Tamar-kali create Black Bottom, and the result is an exhilarating, cathartic rock n roll tour de force.

In many ways, this album flows like a coming-of-age story. Not so much of a young girl growing into a woman, but rather the transformation of a young woman who’s unsure of her own power into the warrior goddess who’s fierce with the light of her own clarity.

The album’s opener “Pearl” sets the tone for the rest of the album: focused, powerful, grinding guitar lines, sharp, crashing drums and a distinctive, reverberating low end. She sings:

her oyster walls this big city
she is the pearl roughly confined
and to you alls still a mystery
filled with doubt though she is ripe
so she moves anxious but steadily
fading now into the night

And it only gets better from there.

It would be a selling her short to talk about Tamar-kali as just a powerful voice and well-written songs. And it’s true: She can shift her voice at will, one moment a caress, the next piercing or pummeling. No, what’s also striking about Black Bottom is the feeling you get of catharsis. Not a word I use too often when talking about music, largely because I don’t have that experience often. And I credit this to her ability to as a composer, not just as a lyricist. There goes that clarity thing again, in that I feel like there was a very strong vision on her part. Not only did she know what she wanted sonically, but she was able to get that out of her band. That’s no small thing.

You want specifics? I can’t listen to “Caught” or especially “Warrior Bones” without wanting a cigarette afterwards. And I don’t smoke.

Yeah, “Warrior Bones.” If you chart this person’s development through all the songs—‘cause not all the songs are necessarily about her–this song is like that moment in The Matrix, where Morpheus says, “He is finally beginning to believe.” Or when the warrior, rejuvenated, comes down from the temple ready to face her opponents. But, even though she’s ready for battle, not everyone else is:

These warrior bones ache for revolution
But the people ain’t ready
These pathetic souls yearn for revelation
But there’s no message, just silence.

After one listen, I dare you try to walk down the street without that stuck in your head.

Even when you think you’re catching a break from the fury and wrath—check out the melodious first half of “Maimed” with its shuffling beat riding just under her honeyed delivery—ferocity is never far away.

And I gotta give it up to the band–Jerome Jordan on rhythm guitar; Jeremiah Hosea on bass; Mark Robohm on drums, and Thom Loubet on rhythm/lead guitar—these guys are tight and they can stop on a dime. And Tamar has said as much that these guys are an equally important part of this story.

Yes, this album is soulful. But make no mistake: This is a rock album through and through. And it’s also easily made the list Boldaslove.us’ Best of for 2010.

Wanna check it out?  Ready to buy?  You can do all of that here.

I remember being 14 years old and watching the media circus labeled “The Oka Crisis.” A fistfight in the bush between a brown man and a white man surrounded by white soldiers was played over and over for days on several different news stations. I identified with the brown guy and wanted him to win the fight.

It was primal instinct then to root for the person of colour who looked like me. As an adult who knows much more about the colonial history and practices of the stolen land called Canada that I live on, I now root for the Mohawk peoples as an informed ally.

July 11, 2010 marks the 20th anniversary of what is now known as “Oka.” Leanne Simpson and Kiera Ladner, have compiled a timely and important anthology called This is an Honour Song: Twenty Years Since The Blockades.

Filled with soul grabbing poetry, academic and personal essays, beautiful artwork, a short story and a play, Simpson, Ladner, and their 33 co-writers — including well-known contributors such as Ellen Gabriel (who stood in the front lines at Oka), and respected writer and professor Patricia Montour — provide educational pieces about the events of the standoff. They also take a stance on paper by sharing new issues that have come since Oka, and how it influenced a new generation of activists who seek justice in similar battles in their own territories.

The strength of the book lies in its poetry and personal essays. Aboriginal feminist, activist and writer Lee Maracle writes that “poetry is song.” Poems and poetic essays sing truths about these writers’ experiences, reflections and hopes for a better future.

In her powerful essay “Rights and Roots: Addressing a New Wave of Colonialism,” Melina Loubacan-Massimo, a Lubicon Cree, writes about her traditional territory in northern Alberta. She shares past victories such as when the Lubicon Cree got much needed press during the 1988 Calgary Olympics about a standoff with Japanese logging company Daishowa. The standoff ended with Daishowa pulling out of a contract with the government of Alberta.

Massimo also writes of the current destruction of Lubicon land at the hands of oil companies. According to Loubacan-Massimo, the tar sands have “moved more earth than was moved for the Great Wall of China, the Suez Canal, the Great Pyramid of Cheops and the ten largest dams in the world combined. The targeted area of destruction will amount to the size of Florida or the country of England.” Her essay touches on environmental racism, the waste of water, the displacement of peoples, the massacre of wildlife, all of which is part of what she describes as “the biggest and most destructive industrial project in human history.” Although the descriptions of devastation are scary Massimo writes with optimism about a better future.

The number four is sacred in Aboriginal teachings. There are four directions, four grandfathers and four seasons. Clayton Thomas-Muller, took only four pages to send a message that could go round Mother Earth four times over. His essay “The Seventh Generation” recaps his learning about Oka on the news, how it changed his view of what it meant to be Cree, and what Oka means to all inhabitants of Turtle Island today.

“My human relatives, I write these words to encourage you to be strong and to continue to seek justice in our struggle. Do not give in to the quick fix of money and political favor of the state or from the corporations that control these colonial governments,” writes Thomas-Muller. His essay is raw and refined at the same time; his tone is both gentle and strong; his words are piercing and healing; his message is confrontational yet embracing. Thomas-Muller ends his teaching with a warning: “We will never stop, not for one second, so you better be ready.”

Like the Mohawk man I saw on TV at the age of 14, poets Ryan Red Corn and Al Hunter pull no punches. In his song “Bad Indians,” Corn starts with:

I was told by the old ones
that every song has a special time and a place where it’s sang
this is our song
and this is our time

It is Corn’s time, as it is the time of all the original peoples of this land, to stand up and end 500 years of colonial injustice. Corn writes the old, racist saying “the only good Indian is a dead Indian” and counters it by encouraging Aboriginal people to be bad if that’s what it means to be alive.

Hunter writes with the same fervour and intensity. To Hunter, hope is a noose placed around the necks of Aboriginal people. To hope is to wait, and Hunter calls his people to take action in his poem “Hope Can Be A Lie.” Twenty years after the blockade, after the event that had a nation and the world watching for almost two months, after the name “Oka” became forever etched in Canadian history, Hunter encourages peoples to speak up, free their voices:

Watch their world fall away
When you see that
You control
Your own
Destiny.

I control
My own
Destiny.

We control
Our own
Destiny.

We control
Our own
Destiny.

(*I will try to keep spoilers to a minimum*)

When I started reading The Time Traveler’s Wife, I was already aware that in the movie version of the book, Eric Bana and Rachel McAdams were cast to play Henry DeTamble and Clare Abshire. So I was already aware that the two main characters were white, and I didn’t really bat an eye at it – most successful authors (particularly if their book is becoming a movie) choose white protagonists for whatever reasons (or without even considering other options).

But as I was reading, I started to notice a trend – in contrast to the white main characters, who were rich, musicians, lawyers, artists, etc – and versed in punk music as well as opera, and in German, French and English literature, the characters of color were either silent, strange, and/or did not speak English, but rather english, or slang/broken/obviously-second-language English.

Which annoyed me.

Don’t get me wrong; as an English Major, I fully enjoyed the book, and consider it possibly one of my favorites.  To deny the racism/lack of race in the “usual” favorites – Pride & Prejudice, A Tale of Two Cities, Wuthering Heights, etc, or in the general canon of English Literature is a bit ridiculous – so I have come to accept that many books I love were born out of a time of racism, or have subtle or overt racism in them themselves…(Did you know Heathcliff might’ve been a person of color??)

But the fact that representation after representation of smart, intelligent, or ‘worthy’ characters in the Time Traveler’s Wife were white…troubled me. There are flaws to the white characters, but their “flaws” are human flaws – they somehow never struck me as weird, and they never took away from their roles in Henry’s life as saviors and friends, respectable and intelligent.

There are two major characters of color in the book who seem to get wrapped up in stereotypes. First, there is Mrs. Kim, or “Kimy” as Henry calls her – his “crazy Korean card-playing babysitter” (28).

Kimy

The major stereotype/characterization of Mrs. Kim is arguably be a reflection of realities: throughout the 30 + years of the novel, she speaks English as a non-Native speaker, rather than English. While English is a difficult language to learn through immersion without grammar lessons, it was also, on first glance, unneccessary for Niffenegger to make Mrs. Kim to speak English. The significance that emerged, at least for me, was that Mrs. Kim’s english syntax made her ‘other’, ‘different’, and cemented her place as a person of color rather than a mother figure to Henry.

Considering that Henry “spent most of my waking hours with Kimy”, that she had been in America for over 30 years throughout the novel, that she was close friends with the DeTambles – a great violinist, and an opera singer, and that she lived in the same apartment building and frequently takes care of Henry well into his adulthood, it struck me as odd that in world of eloquent dialogue and literary/upper-class references, Mrs. Kim never stopped speaking in broken ESL-english throughout the novel. After Henry’s mother dies, and his father becomes alcoholic, it is left on Mrs. Kim to raise Henry who would become fluent in English, German and French.

Now, I’m not saying that someone who doesn’t speak standard English can’t be friends with the DeTambles of the world, or cannot (or haven’t) raised intelligent, successful children who speak multiple languages to study European literature. On the contrary, women from less privileged countries frequently raise the children of richer (often white) families, and women who don’t speak English can (and do) raise their own children to be successful, intelligent and multilingual. However, in Audrey Neffenegger’s constructed world, by simultaneously denying Mrs. Kim the eloquence of the white companions with whom she is always immersed, and by characterizing her as a “crazy Korean” – she seems to deny Mrs. Kim the equality or respect an adult would otherwise automatically demand.

Seeing how “Kimy” spoke to Henry, and how Henry refers to her, especially as an adult, made me cringe. I often felt that he was talking down to her; that somehow the dynamics of their relationship changed when he got older to a point where he was more familiar and comfortable in the world as a time-traveling librarian; but that “Kimy” would always be the “crazy Korean” who still said spoke in ‘ESL-english’.

In her middle age and Henry’s adulthood, Mrs. Kim speaks thusly: “We did have child… You guys got a baby yet?”‘; while Henry responds: “No news, Kimy. No baby. Clare and I fight about it just about every waking moment. Please don’t start on me.” Immediately, the scene struck me as Henry talking to Mrs. Kim as though she was a child: “Please don’t start on me”. And Mrs. Kim is only asking what any interested mother-figure would. Furthermore, Henry is shocked to find out that Mrs. Kim and Mr. Kim had had a child. The fact that Henry, who is obsessed with his mother and her death (when he was 5) didn’t even know such a significant event in the life of the woman who raised him for the other 30 years, made me sad. It really displayed the power dynamics: no matter how long you know him, and care for him – you, the “crazy Korean”, will never be his dead, white opera-singing mother. The dynamic shifts from son-mother, to man-elderly caretaker/ex-babysitter, etc.

I think Mrs. Kim’s dialogue would be less damning of the racism in Niffenegger’s constructed world if there was a contrasting character of color who spoke English anywhere in the book. It is not Mrs. Kim’s dialogue alone that makes her syntax troublesome, it is instead Niffenegger’s stubborn refusal to write a character of color who speaks English with the same eloquence as her white protagonists.

On another note, I was always waiting for Mrs. Kim (whose husband seems to disappear in the book, which is another question altogether – the missing man of color) and Mr. DeTamble to get together, particularly since she spent most of her adulthood taking care of him and his son.. but alas, no romantic ending there.

Celia

Speaking of interracial couples, that brings me to the next character that awed me. Celia is the book’s angry black woman who is constantly described as “beautiful”, who is a lesbian, who dislikes Henry for how he treats Ingrid (his ex; her friend/girlfriend/crush), and becomes friends with Clare. Celia doesn’t have a large part in the book, but she is certainly not normalized.

Romantically, Celia takes an alternative path – she does not outrightly hit on or date Ingrid; it all seems forced, contrived, and manipulative. Celia also becomes friends with Clare, someone Ingrid despises for ‘stealing’ Henry, despite the fact that Celia is in love with Ingrid (the book reads more like “because she is in love with Ingrid”, but I think it is in spite of…because who becomes friends with someone your lover hates!). Furthermore, Celia is the only lesbian in the book. In that alone, she stands apart from other woman characters who are perceived as the “norm” – that is, women who pursue love (Ingrid, Clare), have premarital sex (Ingrid, Clare, Shannon, Clare’s mom), and are heterosexual.

Aesthetically, Celia is described as a “small black woman with beautiful long dreads” by Clare. The fact that Clare pauses to call a black woman’s hair (dreads are a statement in and of themselves) “beautiful” kind of annoys me – it reminds me of exoticization; of declaring the appearances of “others” beautiful because they are “other”. In contrast, in the same paragraph, Ingrid’s hair is just “hair”.

Celia’s speech struck me as much as Mrs. Kim’s did. It alienated her from the white characters of the book, who in contrast become increasingly defined by their use of English. Like Mrs. Kim, Celia is never depicted with other people of color, but rather spends time with Ingrid, Henry, and later Clare. Narratively, Celia’s character, and the small role she has in the plot, does not demand, and is not enhanced by her use of english or ebonics. Nonetheless, Celia speaks like this: “Sister… A word to the wise. You are mixing in where you’re not wanted. Henry, he’s bad news, but he’s Ingrid’s bad news, and you be a fool to mess with him. You hear what I’m saying?” To which Clare responds – “What are you talking about?”.

Celia is the first color of character who we see in the book for a long time – the majority of the plot and characters before this are white, privileged, upper class, and readers are wrapped up in a wealthy world of opera, art and obscure literary quotes. However, Niffenegger seems to go out of her way to further “other” her. Celia’s hair is exoticized, her sexuality is ‘other’-ed from the book’s imaginary norm – she even ‘hates’ the characters we are supposed to love (Henry), and loves the characters we are supposed to side against (Ingrid). In this context, it seems obvious to me that her syntax and dialogue is not a stylistic, realist or creative choice; instead, Celia’s dialogue seems positioned to further ‘other’ her, to make her ‘different’ from our lovable protags, and, most importantly, suggests that she is ‘less than’.

To take it a step further, Celia is not only characterized as ‘less than’ in a world where English, music, and art are the qualities that make you “worthy”, she is an “angry” lesser-than. Celia’s aforementioned speech is aimed at Clare when she is angry at her – she wants to threaten/scare Clare off of Henry, out of loyalty to Ingrid. What does that say about ebonics, cultures of color, and english in the context of the novel? To me, it is obvious – those who don’t speak English are colored, othered, exotic, and “beautiful”, but ultimately excluded/outside of the DeTamble and Abshire households/worlds/immediate storyline.

Nell
Speaking of Clare – she is like a bastion of class privilege. First, her family is rich. Second, they live in a huge house beside a meadow where her mother spends her days gardening (or bossing around the gardener). Third, she has servants: Nell and Etta. And of course, Nell is black. When Henry visits Clare’s home, at one point he walks in on Nell “waggling her large hips” singing Christmas carols with with “a young black girl”.

Like Celia and Mrs. Kim before her, Nell is a characterization more than a portrayal of a character. She doesn’t speak English – not even to her employers or their guests, but rather says “Shoo son, get out of here and go sit in the living room and pull on the bell and I will make you some fresh coffee.. I’m gonna feed you up.” As a character, Nell reinforces the Abshire’s class and race privilege by embodying the stereotype of a black servant – doesn’t speak English, is happy to serve at the ring of a bell, and loves her employers.

Gomez

Then there is Gomez.  Gomez is not a character of colour, but he is worth mentioning because of his name. When I first saw the name “Gomez”, I admit I got excited. I thought – “Yay, a main character of color!”. But what’s interesting is the fact that Gomez is white. Gomez is not his real name, but rather a nickname.  I found that so odd – it was like having a character of color in the book without him having to actually be a character of color. On paper, seeing “Gomez said” or “Gomez laughed”; you don’t think blonde-blue-eyed, etc etc. So it allows Niffenegger to have a “different” name, while still retaining the idealized, normalized look – white. Which in turn reminds me of Celia’s exotization as a sexual, black lesbian woman with “beautiful” hair.

There are also other characters of color who are characterized by their silence. For example, I don’t recall Mr. Kim ever speaking and he is absent for most of the book (unless I missed something?).

Basically, after reading The Time Traveler’s Wife, and being pleased by the literary references (Derek Walcott? Hell yes.), the ways in which the protagonists speak (complicated and witty), and the way the story itself is crafted and written, I was disappointed by the lack of characters of color who were real, rather than caricatures.

Of course, had Henry been a POC, his time traveling problem would’ve probably been a lot more damning; his white privilege let him escape a lot. Similarly, when Clare is seen in a care with a much older man (a Henry from the future) when she is 16, no one bats an eye because Henry is white. Had either of them been black in the 70s/80s, that would’ve been something to quirk an eyebrow at; they wouldn’t have gotten away so easily. So yes, I understand the plot advantages of having Henry and Clare be white, but even if the secondary characters alone remained racialized as they are, it would’ve been nice to see some diversity of interest, speech, characteristics and class. Instead, Mrs. Kim, Celia, and Nell come off as the same formula with different stereotypes: i.e. “insert Korean immigrant stereotype”, “insert sexualized ‘othered’, angry black woman stereotype”, “insert black servant stereotype”, etc, etc.

In fact, it is not the characterizations themselves that make Niffenegger’s work particularly offensive; instead, it is the context in which the characters of color are (mis)placed – the only characters who do not speak English, who have lower-paying jobs, and who are often in service of the protagonists. The world Niffenegger constructs is one in which the privileged, white, upper class only encounters people of color who serve them (Mrs. Kim, Nell), hate/threaten them (Celia), or are actually white (Gomez). Henry and Clare never describe people they view as intellectual equals (colleagues, etc) who are also people of color.

In a world of time traveling genes, second string violinists, opera singers, lawyers, drug dealers who seek to cure, is it asking too much for the same imagination to be extended to the characters of color in the book?

Ok. That was a long rant that was long overdue. I’m sure I’ve forgotten a lot since I read the book a few weeks ago in preparation for the movie. I haven’t seen the movie yet, but when I do, I hope that whatever characters of color they choose to keep are more believable and less offensive/racially stereotyped than they are in the book.

Although, Brad Pitt produced it, didn’t he? With his “rainbow” of children, I don’t know if I should expect more.

Saw District 9 tonight, the alien movie by Neill Blomkamp and produced by Peter Jackson. I thought it was appallingly racist; here’s why. (Spoilers ahead.)

Basically, 20 years ago, a million crustacean-like space aliens arrived in Johannesberg. They’re forced to live in a horrible slum called District 9, and now the human citizens want them gone, so they’re about to be evicted from their slum and relocated to a concentration camp outside the city.

If you look at the film as an apartheid allegory, it has problems right off the bat. The aliens are loathsome, trash-eating vermin who fight endlessly, destroy property for no reason, and piss on their own homes, which isn’t a truthful or flattering allegorical comparison for actual black South Africans under apartheid. Apartheid is terrible because humans were denied rights. The “apartheid” of these aliens isn’t that terrible – it’s kind of justifiable, because they’re actually dangerous, violent and destructive. I think it would be a better allegory, and a more sophisticated movie, if the aliens weren’t unpleasant. If they were peaceful and kind, but the humans still demonized them, the film would be much more chilling; the horror would be “man’s inhumanity to lobster-man”, not “eew gross they eat pig heads!”

But to my knowledge, District 9 does not explicitly present itself as an apartheid allegory, and changing the nature of the aliens basically makes it a different movie, so I’m gonna give it a pass in this post (although I’m very open to hearing other people’s thoughts about the allegorical angle). I think the choice to make the aliens disgusting was mostly artistic license, designed to make the film’s tone and visuals more gritty and scary, rather than any attempt to actually be representative of black people oppressed by apartheid. So that wasn’t my problem with this film.

The basic plot was fine: essentially, the human majority herds an alien race of minorities into a ghetto. Eventually the human protagonist gets to know one of the aliens, empathizes, and tries to help him. On some level, the hero comes to realize that the aliens are unlucky individuals who simply desire home and safety, same as everyone else.

The main human, Wikus van der Merwe (newcomer Sharlto Copley, who, incidentally, is great) is a complex character who does the wrong thing (illegally evicts the aliens), then does the right thing (tries to prevent his soldiers from killing aliens for no reason) then does the wrong thing (torches alien babies and gleefully compares their exploding bodies to popcorn), and then eventually does the right thing (risks his life to help alien Christopher Johnson get back to the mothership, albeit for self-serving reasons). That’s good drama; all of the behaviour is motivated; and the alien and his cute little kid even end up being pretty likeable. That’s all cool. I have no problems with the Wikus/Christopher Johnson storyline.

But on the sidelines of all this non-racist action, there’s a subplot storyline with a bunch of Nigerian “refugee gansters” who also live in District 9, and who traffic food and weapons with the aliens. And that’s where the racism is. The portrayal of the black mobsters is disgustingly racist.

The Nigerian gangsters are bloodthirsty, dishonest thugs, which is not a big deal- they’re gangsters, I get it. They see the aliens as mere cockroaches with money, so they don’t treat them well, and that makes perfect sense. They’re just cruel, self-interested mercenaries, and in this, they’re no worse than the film’s (mostly white) government officials, who cold-bloodedly torture and murder the aliens. So far no racism, just characters with motivations.

But!

The Nigerians have a wailing “witch doctor”. Who instructs them to eat the aliens. And they do it. Bloody, wriggling, and raw, of course.

We’re told that the black prostitutes “service” the aliens sexually. ARE YOU EFFING KIDDING ME??!

And when Wikus’ arm grows a claw, the Nigerian gang boss starts licking his chops, eager to commit cannibalism.

Yup, that’s Hollywood’s Africa, isn’t it. Black Africans shown as degenerate savages who’ll have sex with non-humans and are pretty damn eager to eat people.

Disgusting.

The thing that really upsets me is that most people who see this movie won’t question, or even notice, this incredibly racist portrayal. It wasn’t even necessary for the plot, and in fact the racist elements actually created some plot holes.

The gang boss could have tried to take Wikus hostage, and use him and his scaly arm as a weapon, same as the white government tried to do. By trying to eat his arm “to gain his powers” the gang boss was risking everything. If eating the arm didn’t work, Gang-Guy would lose Wikus’ arm entirely, so his hunger for human flesh actually risked the only interface he had to enable the alien weapons. Drugging Wikus unconscious then just puppeteering his lobster hand onto the triggers of various alien flamethrowers would be a much cleverer- not to mention more palatable- plan. Not only does the intended cannibalism paint the black man as bloodthirsty and disgusting, but it’s also a needless risk that could sabotage the character’s goals. (Actually, logic suggests that both the gang boss and the government probably would have taken a few aliens hostage and forced them to shoot the guns long ago anyway, but that’s another story).

And the idea that the prostitutes had been servicing the aliens actually created a huge plot hole. All of South Africa knew that prostitutes had long been having sex with the aliens; so they would also know that Wikus couldn’t have begun an alien transformation from alien sexual contact, since the sexual transmission of alien DNA had already been in place for 20 years of interspecies prostitution. (I get it that the point was just to alarm the citizens so they would help the government in its hunt for Wikus, but still, things could at least make sense).

So why the racist parts? Why can’t the Nigerians just be people with logical motives like money and weapons? Why do they have to go out of their way to be ooga-booga savages? The film would still have held up without the narrative elements of cannibalism and interspecies sex. Why do the blacks have to be sexual degenerates who will eat filth and violate the oldest human taboo by committing cannibalism? The only reason I see is to shoehorn some cheap visceral thrills into the movie. It’s lazy, sensationalist writing, and it diminishes the potential for intelligent, nuanced allegory. And it doesn’t even make sense. Man, it pissed me off.

I first learned about Project Secret Identities over two years ago when a call for story submissions started to float around my corner of the interwebs. My excitement was limitless! No more waiting for some white guy to come save me! Now I could have my own superheroes. Secret Identities promised to fill the need for comics that cast us as the superheroes and I waited with bated breath for the release.

Here we are in 2009 and the book has been released to much fanfare. And yet, I feel disappointed. Don’t get me wrong, I dig the nerd specs on the pleasing green cover (I rock my own pair everyday). There are some real gems in this anthology including the oft-cited “The Blue Scorpion and Chung” (Bruce Lee hated being Kato) and the true-to-life stories in the section From Headline to Hero (“Taking Back Troy” re-imagines Vincent Chin’s story in a way that doesn’t let us forget it). Despite the many great stories found within this anthology there are some glaring holes that I can’t seem to fly over.

The editors of the book tell us that Asian Americans have more in common with Clark Kent than just his geek chic appearance and as such present an opening for our superheroes. Yet the editors define Asian American by the stories they chose, and it seems like they define Asian as “East Asian with a sprinkling of Filipino and a drop of Indian.” In other words Secret Identities is more East Asian than Asian, and Shen and Yang have — I’m sure unintentionally — deleted most of the Asian continent in their selection process.

While Asian America isn’t as explicitly defined as it was in Aieeeeee! An Anthology of Asian-American Writers, where Frank Chin stated in the introduction that the work would feature Japanese, Chinese and Filipino writers, Secret Identities doesn’t acknowledge its bias at all nor does it emerge from the same historical context*. So where are some missing identities that didn’t make it into the book? What about the daughter of a Cambodian refugee and a Filipino cannery worker in Seattle**? Or how about expanding our knowledge of Asian American hate crime victims by looking at the death of Cha Vang, a Hmong immigrant, whose white killer did not get charged with a hate crime? On a similar note: where are the stories of poor and working class families and young LGBT runaways? All of these are real aspects of our diverse community.

There are so many members of the APIA community who have fought courageously to get recognized within the monolith of Asian America and this heavily East Asian male representation does nothing to recognize that battle. The reason why college organizers at UCLA spent so much time trying to disaggregate the numbers of Asian American admitted students is because those identities remain invisible without it. When we allow these identities to remain under wraps there are serious economic and racial struggles that cannot gain any ground because varied communities are dismissed as doing fine and become lost within the model minority myth. Can Secret Identities really be “The Asian American Superhero Anthology”?

Maybe this is less a criticism and more a longing for a different kind of Asian American voice and maybe I’m just a backseat anthology editor. I would have started by taking a hard look at who the editors are and what communities they can reach. When I asked Jeff Yang why Secret Identities has so few stories outside of East Asia I was told that they had put out a general call for submissions and that some of the stories submitted just weren’t good enough to include.

Now I know that you know that this sounds pretty similar to what people of color have been hearing as a justification for crooked systems, biased hiring processes and exclusion from publishing houses for decades. I understand that an editorial board must have standards and cannot squeeze stories out of people but they also have a responsibility to broaden the reach and broaden again if need be. I also know that ALL of the editors of Secret Identities are East Asian men.

If the editorial board had more varied experiences to draw upon then perhaps the War and Remembrance section would have been able to draw connections across time and space to tie our diverse communities together. For example, there is nothing in Secret Identities about wars in Vietnam, the Philippines, Korea, Guam or Hawai’i. By leaving these narratives out of the picture you miss an opportunity to illustrate the arc of U.S. military imperialism across the Pacific Rim. Japanese American internment is a big and still divisive issue (as demonstrated by a Senator’s recent comments) but so is the U.S. presence in the Philippines, Korea, Guam and Okinawa (to name a few). Shifting the focus, not away from internment, to include these other sites of struggle would have been truly welcomed by anti-miltarism activists with comic book nerd secrets.

It could have elevated Secret Identities to a place within academic curriculum that is crying out for more accessible ways to spread this history. I think the story “Hibakusha” stood out to me because it highlighted a story that is often unknown: forced laborers in Japan from Korea whose descendants are known as Zainichi. “Hibakusha” written by Parry Shen is about descendants of survivors from Hiroshima and Nagasaki and focuses on the effect that the atomic bombs had on their physiology. But let’s take a step back and think about the testing grounds for these weapons and how little recognition Pacific Islanders get in the cultural narratives about this war and when thinking about Asian America at large. I would have pushed Mr. Shen to look further and think about places like the Marshall Islands whose waters and atolls were irreparably changed by atomic testing done prior to the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings. As it stands, the anthology essentializes how war has shaped our collective stories of migration and memory when it could have pushed us all to think of our histories in broader and more connected terms.

What I so desperately want to see is a story that handles our connected histories and stories with grace. Something that can hold the multiplicity of the APIA community, particularly the parts that are the most secret. Our shared migration experiences can live side by side on the page and I challenge future anthology editors to see how vast we are ethnically, politically, sexually and socially. I wish I could have claimed this book as one that includes an experience very close to mine as a young, queer, second-generation activist. I wish that the stories of my friends and community could have found a place within this anthology. We all have the responsibility to create spaces for our own identities, but just as important is our responsibility to call out those who claim to represent us while shutting us out.

–
*Aieeeeee! was published in 1974, not ten years after the 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act that finally abolished the quotas of immigrants from Asian nations.

**This is the character generated by the audience at Parry Shen’s and Jeff Yang’s talk at the Wing Luke Asian Museum in Seattle on May 14th, 2009. A fuller description of this potential superhero character: A young woman whose parents are a Filipino canner in Seattle and a Cambodian refugee. Her history is steeped in death and war and her power lies in her emphatic ability which is deeply connected to her Buddhist spirituality.