I was browsing the LA Times’s A&E blog Culture Monster when I saw an article about CalArts (the California Institute of the Arts) recently opening a new building called Wild Beast. The name comes from a Morton Feldman quote: “I am interested in how the wild beast lives in…

For my Ethnocommunications class, we viewed a documentary called A Village Called Versailles. One of the TAs believes that this is what opened the nation to acknowledging that a Vietnamese community exists in New Orleans. Even when Hurricane Katrina occurred, this community remained voiceless from mainstream media. Sure,…

We affectionately call each other a “fob” when we speak ungrammatically, watch anime, or even eat chicken feet for Dim Sum, but at one point in the past, the term “F.O.B.” had been derogatory. When the term F.O.B. was first coined in the 1980s, it was used as…

I am sitting here with Al-Talib Editor in Chief Sayeda, listening to journalism jargon. Along with the other newsmagazine editors, we’re all in Washington D.C.  for a weekend conference hosted by Campus Progress. As a first-time visitor of D.C., I have found this city to be pedestrian-friendly, overly…

Allison Chin is one of my Asian American eco-heroines.  She is the current president of the Sierra Club, the nation’s oldest and most influential grassroots environmental organization. As president, she is the top leader of the Club’s volunteer structure. Even before I was hired by the Sierra Club,…

According to a 2007 CNN article by Elizabeth Cohen, Asian American (AA) women have the highest suicidal rates for females aged 15-24. Below are several factors that Cohen discusses.  I added my own commentary when relevant. 1) AA immigrant parents set high academic and career expectations for their…