Natty Jumreornvong was outside Mount Sinai hospital on the Upper East Side of New York around 11am one morning in February when a man approached her. “Chinese virus,” he spat out. She told him she was a medical student and tried to walk away, but he followed her, kicked her knee and dragged her across […]
Last summer, a Chinese man approached me on a crowded Beijing street and asked me in Mandarin if I was Chinese American. It seemed innocent enough, as I was speaking English with expat friends. But after I nodded, he switched to English and bellowed “go back to where you f**king came from”. These stinging words […]
And with that, Hideki Matsuyama is the first male Japanese player ever to win a golf major. Quite interesting timing, particularly as anti-Asian hate crimes in the US have risen 150% over the past year, spurred on by conspiracy theories – spread by those in power – about the origins of Covid-19. The hashtag ‘Stop Asian Hate’ surged more than […]
A wave of violent attacks against Asian American and Pacific Islanders has triggered a national reckoning in recent months that’s now finding its way to the world of professional comedy. Former “Tonight Show” host Jay Leno issued an apology last month for decades of making racist jokes about Asians, a majority of which revolved around the derogatory […]
When it happened, those watching couldn’t quite believe what they had just seen and heard. During the Ovation Awards for local theater Tuesday night, a nominee in the category of featured actress in a play had her name mispronounced — and when her face was supposed to appear onscreen, the photo of a fellow Asian […]
When Mike Park first heard about the recent shootings in Atlanta, he felt angry and afraid. But almost immediately, he had another thought. “We can’t just sit back,” he said. “We can’t sit in our little enclave anymore.” Born in South Carolina to Korean immigrants, Mr. Park grew up wanting to escape his Asian identity. […]
President Biden announced steps Tuesday to protect Asian Americans from discrimination and violent attacks, including establishing a Justice Department initiative to address a rising number of hate crimes. The announcement comes two weeks after shootings at Atlanta-area spas killed eight people, including six women of Asian descent, and as Biden has faced pressure from Asian […]
Picture an athlete. Now a movie star. And now a politician. You probably pictured a White man. Or a Black or Latino person. I’m guessing you didn’t picture an Asian American. I know I usually don’t. And I’m an Asian-American television writer who thinks up imaginary people for a living. We Asian Americans don’t have […]
While the first major wave of Chinese immigrants arrived in the U.S. in the 1850s, Andrew Hsiao, senior editor at Verso Books, says that “Asian American was an invention of the 1970s.” He goes on to explain that “the generation of young activists in the late ’60s and ’70s who came up with the pan-Asian political […]
Sung Hee and I were walking home from school together, trying to put on a brave face in front of our grade school tormentors. “Rocky,” they shouted at me making monkey noises. “Ching, chong, chink,” they mocked my friend. Rocky was an ornery, ancient gorilla who lived in the zoo across the street from the […]