heritage

Asian Pacific American Heritage Month, held each year during the month of May, celebrates Asian Pacific American cultures and heritage and recognizes the many contributions Asian Pacific Americans have made to this nation.
An Wang

An Wang (1920-1990), a Chinese-born American computer scientist, is best known for founding Wang Laboratories and holding over thirty-five patents including patent #2,708,722 for a magnetic pulse transfer controlling device which related to computer memory and was crucial to the development of digital information technology. Wang Laboratories was founded in 1951 and by 1989 employed 30,000 people and had $3 billion a year in sales, with such developments as desktop calculators and the first word processors. An Wang was inducted into the National Inventor's Hall of Fame in 1988.
Enrique Ostrea

Posting from the "Colorblind" Blog:

Jeff was publisher of A. Magazine, one of the most popular and influential Asian American magazines during its run from 1989-2002. Since then, Jeff has published several books including co-editing Secret Identities: The Asian American Superhero Anthology and is widely recognized and respected as an expert on Asian and Asian American pop culture. I have admired Jeff’s work for a long time but only finally got the chance to meet him at Syracuse.

MAY is ASIAN HERITAGE MONTH in CANADA! CELEBRATE AT THE 14th ANNUAL explorASIAN FESTIVAL – MAY 2010

Some event descriptions/website links pending – please check back for updates.
All events are subject to change without notice. Please confirm performance times and ticketing information with the presenter of the event.

Festival 2010 Calendar http://explorasian.wordpress.com/2010-festival-calendar/

Explorasian Website http://explorasian.org/

A FURORE has erupted over a new mini-series about the deadliest sniper at Gallipoli, Chinese-Australian Billy Sing, who is played by a white.

This portrayal in the The Legend of Billy Sing has been attacked by Australians of Chinese ancestry as a betrayal of their heritage, robbing them of a rare historic hero.

Director Geoff Davis has cast his son Josh in the lead role, while Sing's Chinese father is played by the veteran actor Tony Bonner, who came to prominence as a blond-haired helicopter pilot in the Skippy TV series.

Sing, born in 1886 at Clermont, Queensland, to a Shanghainese father and an English mother, moved as a young man to the canefields of Proserpine, where he became a keen cricketer, kangaroo hunter and a crack member of the local rifle club.

New Studies Show Huge Health Disparities Among Asian American, Native Hawaiian and Asian Immigrant Populations

Critical Avenues to Prevent Cancer Overlooked; Immigrant Women at High Risk of Death from Breast Cancer
WASHINGTON

VANCOUVER - Vancouver's Chinese community had a defiant message for Winter Olympics organisers when it was suggested they should cancel their longstanding Lunar New Year parade - 'no way in hell'.

The city's 36th annual parade, which will usher in the Year of the Tiger, will go ahead as planned on February 14, two days after the start of the February 12-28 Olympics.

City councilor Kerry Jang said there had initially been suggestions from VANOC, the Olympics organising committee, to either cancel or postpone the parade "over security and other concerns".

"The Chinese community said ‘no way in hell'," said Jang, a third-generation Chinese-Canadian.

"They went to city hall and said ‘forget it, we're having it'. So we had a compromise."

He said he was expecting about 20,000 people or more to attend this year's festivities which will start earlier than usual.

 Dec. 31 (by James S. Russell) -- I didn’t want to let the year close without reflecting on the new Museum of Chinese in America designed by Maya Lin.

The location, on Manhattan’s lively Centre Street, poignantly underlines the mutability of ethnic identity. It is steps from the bargain-hunting throngs on Canal Street, around the corner from what’s left of Little Italy, and smack in the path of SoHo’s encroaching slickness. It’s the perfect spot to consider what it is to be a hyphenated American.

The museum’s tinted-glass storefront, half-framed by a long horizontal L of wood, is a rather tentative invitation to a building with richly entwined stories to tell and tough questions to ask.

It’s too bad that Lin, famous for the Vietnam War Memorial in Washington, D.C., avoided the tough task of making a specific statement rather than a generalized one.

Passing as an Asian - an article written by an asian adoptee raised by two Russian Jewish caucasian parents, sharing her experiences while growing up in self hatred but surprisingly finds an awakening that puts her back on the road, acknowledging her asian side and forever searching for the missing pieces.

Passing as an Asian Written by Maya Fleischmann (11 January 2009)

I spent the first fifteen years of my life trying to ignore the fact that I am Asian.  Ironic, considering I was born and raised on the small island of Hong Kong and its population of 6 million other Asians.

By Craig Takeuchi

It's been a while since there's been an Asian North American box-office hit. The Joy Luck Club, The Wedding Banquet, and Snow Falling on Cedars were all from the '90s. Indie successes like Better Luck Tomorrow and Eve and the Fire Horse (by Vancouver's Julia Kwan) have been few and far between over the past decade. Other filmmakers of Asian descent (Jessica Yu, In the Realms of the Unreal; Cary Fukunaga, Sin Nombre), have established themselves by tackling subjects unrelated to their heritage.

The most consistent local source for such works remains the Vancouver Asian Film Festival, which runs from November 5 to 8 at the Cinemark Tinseltown (88 West Pender Street). Unlike other local events that showcase films from Asia, VAFF emphasizes stories by and about Asian Canadians and Americans.

The Washington Post is running a series called “Voices of Power” wherein top White House staffers are interviewed about their positions in the Obama administration. Today, the Post published video and a transcript of their conversation with Chris Lu, who, as Assistant to the President and Cabinet Secretary, is one of the most prominent Asian Americans in the White House.

The full transcript is five pages long, but I found Lu’s comments about his identity as an Asian American in the White House intriguing:

You are among the most senior Asian-Americans in the administration and in the White House. What does that mean to you?

Mr. Lu: It means a lot to me. My parents were both born in China. They moved to Taiwan for grade school and high school. They both emigrated here in the late ’50s for college.