Glefen is a Lyft driver I met this week in DC. He immigrated here from the Philippines as a kid, and is in his twenties now. A naturalized American.
He makes me an OG. But what does that make my dad? An OOG?
Glefen has the AC on in DC, where we’re coming up to the hottest day in the last few years...
I finally get out of Iowa, where it’s not inhospitable, but I am reminded of a group of Filipino men and their Japanese American wives and their Filipino-Japanese American kids who showed up in Iowa to live and farm in 1942 and were told to get out.
It happened. It made the news.
In 2019, after my...
I’m hurtling through the heartland where the majority of the time the posted speed limit is 75-80 mph. Then my car broke down.
I’m heading to Washington, DC to do my show, “Emil Amok: All Pucked Up.” (Get your tickets here.)
I just thought replicating my father’s immigrant experience in my own cou...
With the Supreme Court hearing the DACA appeal in the fall, Trump’s decision to end Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals will surely a campaign issue going forward. Same with the Census citizenship question that was blocked for now but thrown back to the lower court. And then there’s the 5-4 SCOTU...
The New York Times has been called “The Gray Lady” for decades, supposedly because its inked front page always gave a gray, bland appearance with few or no pictures.
The digital age has brought more color, but Wednesday morning was exceptional.
The picture said it all.
Facedown in the river were ...
Are you still in that reflective meditative coma I’ve suggested? Or have you busted out, ready to take action?
Five years ago, I proposed a special time– a period of community reflection– as an adjunct to May’s Asian American Pacific Islander Heritage Month, these days reduced to an obligatory and ...
The pictures from Hong Kong are impressive.
Hong Kongers are resisting and standing up to China’s real attempt to extradite dissidents and transform the old “one country, two systems” idea into more of the ruling party’s autocratic view.
Seeing the massive crowds, it’s never been more clear that p...
Every year I tell you, dear readers, about how my dad died the week of Father’s Day.
This year, I’m announcing my show about my 1920s Filipino dad is coming to the east coast.
“Emil Amok” is about how a colonized Filipino arrived in America in 1928, and how I completed his journey taking him to Ha...
I wonder if Trump could imagine an Asian American war hero like Dan Inouye, the former Hawaii Senator awarded the Medal of Honor and the Purple Heart for what he did in the south of France during World War II? Or would he see a Democratic firebrand who was leading the charge against him?
Too compli...
While Donald Trump is in England as our country’s Republican standard bearer acting like a horse’s ass, you know the Brits are simply being civil the way you’re supposed to with people you can’t stand—“un-officially.”
That’s the value of that stiff upper lip stuff. It’s the only logical parry to “T...
Omphalopsychite.
It’s a $500 word for navel-gazer.
Some say it’s what I do for a living.
I didn’t know I was part of that august group until I saw the Scripps National Spelling Bee, a/k/a the national Asian American (specifically South Asian) display of word deconstruction, one letter at a time.
...
I’d like to say whatever happens in the Philippines stays in the Philippines, but it seems that “nationalistic/authoritarian thing” is racing round the world. And it’s not going to stop in the Philippines.
As I write, Prime Minister Narendra Modi in India has secured another victory in parliament w...
It was appropriate that I.M Pei, the legendary architect, died during Asian American Pacific Islander Heritage Month.
The month, which started as an homage to the first Japanese immigrants (May 7, 1843), as well as the completion of the transcontinental railroad (May 10, 1869) by Chinese immigrant ...
Considering his slow death by subpoena, Trump has to find joy where he can get it. Glorifying a redeemed Tiger Woods is about as fun as his job gets these days.
It wasn’t exactly an Asian American Pacific Islander Heritage Month ceremony, but Trump scored an ace when he honored Woods with the highe...
It’s here again. Asian American Pacific Islander Heritage Month.
AAPIHM!
God bless you?
Every year in May we celebrate. But a friend of mine seems to be growing weary of it all.a
Instead of joy for the month when people of Asian American and Pacific Islander descent can feel united and strong in...
I admit to having a strange pang of Filipino/Asian American pride knowing that Noel Francisco—his father a Filipino immigrant who came to America to practice medicine—was arguing before the Supreme Court of the United States as the U.S Solicitor General.
Too bad he was on the wrong side of the case...
The most oft-quoted line of the day? It’s what Trump said when he first learned about the appointment of a special counsel.
“The president slumped back in his chair and said, “Oh my God. This is terrible. This is the end of my presidency. I’m f***ed.”
But I didn’t print out 500 pages of the Muelle...
Tiger, Tiger, Tiger?
No, I say, “Tida, Tida, Tida!”
Like many of you over the weekend, I was glued to my television, watching golf again and wearing red, and not because of Palm Sunday.
There was Tiger Woods, who after enduring nearly a decade of both physical and emotional debilitation, not to m...
Every week comes the hope that things will get better. You know, slow down, get back to a normal where we’re seen as all being on the same team, and America could seem like America again.
But every week brings a new set of crises for the Trump administration, guided by a moral compass that spins wi...
Donald Trump has proposed a new redistricting idea to have Congressional districts carved out in the shape of his silhouette—the actual outline of his full body profile to scale.
“I was doodling on some scrap paper–last year’s budget I think–and as I drew myself, I thought I saw the future of North...
