The Conversation
- Scapegoating our own (13)
- King: ^Yeah, but so did Obama 4 years ago. It’s inconsistent to think that Obama can have an arch of decision...
- Frank Chow: @King He definitely said he opposed “same-sex marriage”, that didn’t change....
- King: @ Frank But Manny didn’t even say what he’s been accused of.
- Facebook co-founder renounces U.S. citizenship prior to IPO (13)
- Raguel: This is a storm in a tea cup, a new five minutes of hate. This is because despite the outrage, people will...
- Frank Chow: “The country is not over-taxed; in fact, tax rates are near 60 year lows.” -source,...
- bigWOWO: Linda, Mark Cuban is rich (richer than me anyway), and he’s just as horrified as I am. I don’t...
- The Perversity of Human Biodiversity, a.k.a. “Scientific” Racism (428)
- LadyBlack: Hello, you who believe that some races are inferior and that some are superior. As a Black (in particular...
- bigWOWO: Thanks, Grover!
- Grover Porquel: Excellent roundup. I have taken on these “biodiversity” types myself over the years and...
- Higher education: the next subprime bubble (5)
- bigWOWO: Let’s think hypothetically. Let’s say they had quotas, such as a company of X number of...
- kobukson: In the past, a high school diploma was sufficient for getting a job. Things changed and a HS diploma...
- bigWOWO: I do agree with you, Ei, to a certain point. I have heard that some lawyers and engineers are having...
- Americans Eat the World’s Cheapest Food (36)
- bigWOWO: A week in, and: I liked the mock chicken, but the family didn’t like it. I don’t know if...
- King: ^ But isn’t Anthony Bourdain the same guy who recently called Paula Deen the “Worst Unhealthy Cook” for...
- kobukson: I like Anthony Bourdain’s take on vegetarians and vegans: “Vegetarians, and their Hezbollah-like...
- Why Do Asian People Have Bad Eyesight? (37)
- Suing the Bachelor for racial discrimination (34)
- George: The problem with the entertainment industry is that they have already stated that blacks are not on the show...
- George: “Oh and prediction, you know the first female non white bachelorette will be Asian, and it will be...
- Chen: i’ve been reading about BFOQ cases, and it seems as if the entertainment industry wins unless they do...
- Reasons to eliminate black studies (23)
- Asian Men, Black Men, and the Competition for White Women (569)
- Raguel: Actually, white people may laugh at him even more, and that may be why they like him so much.
- Raguel: How does this nihilistic dog so filled with ressentiment and love of the slave morality even dare to mention...
- ChineseMom: (continued) Criticism of contemporary Chinese literature and Marxism Q: After the publication of your...
- Immigration records of Asian immigrants to be made available to public (2)
- American woman becomes hero to abused women in China (39)
- Chen: thats it. This woman got beat up, and that is wrong. I’m sure some assholes are going to use that and run...
- Eurasian Sensation: Patriarchal practices are incredibly ingrained in some countries and are extremely hard to shift....
- Raguel: Wasn’t it reported in one of the major american magazines like life, time etc that travelling ulamas...
- San Diego student left alone in cell for five days (3)
- bigWOWO: Haha…I know, Zach! This is the absolute worse kind of invisibility that there is!
- Zach Katagiri: Man — talk about asian american males being invisible!!
- Linda: this will be the next episode of “I survived….” I am surprised they don’t have video...
- Adventures of the Karaoke King by Harold Taw (Review and Question) (4)
- bigWOWO: Alpha, Glad that you see the precious metals rather than the ranking! Although I guess I should consider...
- Raguel: Why not make contact with other blogs and Asian American websites to feature your reviews? This way,...
- Alpha Asian: B, I know what you mean. A lot of reviewers just give very bland reviews and they don’t really...
- Asian women fetch high prices for egg donation (5)
- Dman: I don’t get the article Asian women in demand for donating her eggs. I did not see anything mentioned...
- bigWOWO: I think that buying an egg is financially easier these days than adoption from China. I know people trying...
- Linda: Also regarding about adoption. I think a lot of Americanized Asians are open to adoption in the US. (unlike...
- Re-Programming Your Mind (74)
- Chr..: I’m not making this up! I saw this guy in front of a Trader Joe’s here in NYC not too long ago as...
- Asian Women and the Invisible Chain (187)
- Chr..: @ King Yes, and what can the general masses do to stop with what’s going on right now? Not much I would...
- King: @ Chr Because the money, more than anything else, is ‘the system’ that affects everything else.
- Chr..: “The whole thing looks like a very twisted version of musical chairs, doesn’t it?” Why does this...
- Creative Monopolists (3)
- Asian husband-wife team on Shark Tank (3)
- Artists Who Refuse to Work for Free (5)
- Courtney: I have been drawing for 22 years. I think it’s really inconsiderate to ask an artist to sit down for...
- More Asian Americans Marrying Within Their Race (106)
- Chr..: “Look at some of the fatcats on Wall Street–a guy who can drop $800 on a single night out isn’t...
- The Richer Sex by Liza Mundy (Review) (12)
- Chr..: “dystopian mating marketplace where, like income inequality, the rewards of female sexuality will go...
- Whiteness and American TV (9)
- Linda: @hadoken – I don’t know why korean dramas are like crack. I go thru phases. since it’s a...
- Scapegoating our own (13)
Category Archives: Features
Maggie Q in Nikita
Maggie Q getting ready to kill someone
(saw the story of Maggie Q on 8Asians.com)
I’ve been posting overtime on Asian people on TV. Maggie Q is getting a lead role on prime time. See below for a sneak preview of Nikita, which is coming to the CW this fall.
What the World Owes You
Elijah Muhammad
“The slavemaster is no longer hindering us, we’re hindering ourselves. The slavemaster has given you all he could give you. He gave you freedom. Now get something for yourself.”
In the last post, Neutral Observer called me to task for being against reparations for slavery. He makes many good points, and I’d like to clarify why I’m against reparations. It essentially boils down to two reasons–direct relationship and mentality.
Miss Saigon: bigWOWO review
bigWOWO rating: Asian American Silver
I only use the bigWOWO rating system for works created by Asians or Asian Americans. In this case, I believe I’m being consistent since Miss Saigon isn’t just a work written by a bunch of White dudes but also a musical performed by one of the greatest voices in history, which happens to belong to an Asian woman. I also don’t usually review plays twenty years after seeing them, but since I’ve been on a Lea Salonga kick, I figured now is as good a time as ever. I got the soundtrack from the library, and I’ve been reliving my initial impressions of the musical. (I never got to see Lea perform it. I think she was sick on the night I went to the theater, so I saw the understudy.)
Posted in Asian American, Features, Reviews
Tagged interracial relationships, Lea Salonga, Miss Saigon
16 Comments
Taking Back the Key
The Princess and her non-black Prince
I had a longer discussion relevant to this topic before, so I’ll try to keep this one short. Neutral Observer had asked what I felt about the FlashForward IR between John Cho and Gabrielle Union, and I said that it was a positive step, but that there was something a bit off about it, perhaps mostly the fact (as I see it) that an Asian man will never be a king in a land of plentiful single black women, and that a black woman will never be queen in a land of plentiful single Asian men. There are some people who are demanding to see more such couples, but the vast majority of black women strongly prefer to be with black men, and a large (though significantly smaller, according to John Tierney from the the NY Times) majority of Asian men prefer Asian women.
Posted in Activism, Asian American, Features, Knowledge, Strategy
Tagged interracial relationships
9 Comments
Where the Black Man is King/FlashForward's IR pairing
Zoey and Demetri from FlashForward
Neutral Observer asked me to comment on Gabrielle Union and John Cho’s onscreen romance on FlashForward. He writes:
Asian male bloggers have long compared their dating plight to that of black women, and have long said that maybe they need to expand their dating pool outside the asian female sphere.
Seems, at least on TV, we’re getting a dramatization of this “solution.”
Combine that with how this is a pushing back against the media’s systematic “de-sexualization” of the asian man’s image, and I’m doubly curious to get your thoughts on this.
Posted in Activism, Asian American, Features, media
Tagged Asian men, black women, interracial dating, IR
44 Comments
"Orange Days": Review and Ideas
Orange Days
I’m going to post this with the fore-knowledge that no one is going to watch it. Like I said in my last J-Drama post, I don’t expect anyone here to watch J-dramas unless that person has a prior interest in Japanese culture and language. Maybe that frees me a bit; I don’t have to worry about dropping spoilers. If you’re going to watch this drama, feel free to stop reading, watch, and then come back (One of the links was broken, so I had to watch about fifteen minutes of the last episode with Spanish subtitles. You may need some knowledge of spoken Japanese and Japanese sign language to make that 15 minutes work. 
) If you’re not going to watch this drama, feel free to read and comment–you won’t need to see it to understand the ideas. For those catching up, I’ve been checking out Japanese dramas just to get a feeling of the narrative style of Japanese TV. It’s supposed to help my writing. It’s pretty cool to see media by and about Asian people.
bigWOWO's Editorial Policy: Fair, But Not Always Balanced
Erin from Hyphen brought up an interesting issue on the Hyphen Blog: After the Banana: Reflections on the AsAm Blogosphere. In her blog post, she raises the question of neutrality, and whether we as bloggers ought to be adhering to fair and balanced reporting. With respect to the Banana event, she links bigWOWO specifically:
Write-ups of the event since, though, have been troubling to me. Aside from Jon Yang‘s very balanced account (thank you, Jon), I find that my fellow bloggers have opted for a kind of resolute cheerleading, such that our team can do no wrong, and to be critical is to speak treason.
Alphas vs. Betas
The Alpha Asian had an interesting post on something that I have been meaning to blog about for a long time: Alpha vs. Beta strategies. I specifically wanted to address this quote from him:
You just got to play up your strengths. I once watched a documentary on some birds. They showed a scene where two male birds were battling each other to see who would win the affections of a female. One male was protecting his woman, the other was challenging. While they were battling it out, another male sneaks up behind the female watching the fight and starts doing her. So as you can see, there’s no one way to succeed in life and love.
Posted in Citizenship, Features, Strategy
Tagged alpha, beta, mating strategies, social norms, sumo, winning
28 Comments
Tony Hing Wong, July 21, 1924-October 19, 2009
My grandfather (Yeh-Yeh) Tony Hing Wong was born in China and was of Chiuchow lineage. He immigrated to this country around the age of 15. As far as I know, he is the only person in my family named Wong to immigrate. If I remember the story correctly, he loved ships and the sea, and he was able to get employment as an errand boy from the American and Australian crewmen who were shipping cargo around the world. He spoke no English at the time, and the crew communicated with him by drawing pictures and asking him to do whatever it was that they needed (his English would eventually become flawless and without even the hint of an accent). He was a fast learner, loved the sea, and loved seeing how machines worked, and so the American mariners gave him more and more responsibilities as they transported cargo back and forth across the Pacific. Sometime during his younger years while on land he also worked in restaurants.
Posted in Asian American, Features
Tagged family, HIng Wong, New York, Tony Hing Wong, Tony Wong, U.S. Lines
11 Comments
