I confess.
In 9th grade I did not read Dickens’ “Great Expectations.” Instead, I read the Cliff Notes. Couldn’t get past Pip sounding like a Filipino name. But I did feel deprived knowing only through a secondary source about Miss Havisham’s wedding dress.
Sort of like I feel now after reading Att...
I’m sad to say I’m stuck out in California and won’t be in New York for the big AALDEF dinner this Wednesday when it celebrates 45 years of fighting on behalf of the community.
But if you’re on the East Coast, I hope you’ll be there in person to celebrate the organization that after all these years...
The news of the shooting in New Zealand was so fresh, it hadn’t yet been called a massacre. Or an act of domestic terrorism.
When I found out it was in two mosques, my heart sank.
I thought instantly of my cousin M. from the Philippines, whom I first met nearly 40 years ago. When she visited us in...
I pulled out my old “Emil Amok” columns from Asian Week for the class on diversity and the media that I teach at San Francisco State. One of the yellowing columns I wrote was on the occasion of my mother’s death in 1998.
Josie Guillermo wasn’t famous. But she fulfilled a role in history after World...
You know Donald Trump is up late in Vietnam, not eating pho, but watching Fox to see how he’s playing back home, not to mention how Michael Cohen’s doing.
Cohen? You know he’s about to perform under oath before the House Intelligence Committee in full public view. How high the stakes? Ask Rep. Matt...
Here’s what bothers me about the hubbub over Jussie Smollett.
If his name were Fufai Pun, Kheong Ng-Thang, or Tsz Mat Pun, Smollett would’ve received a mere fraction of the coverage he did during his whole ordeal.
And then maybe, if he concocted it all, it wouldn’t have been worth it.
A mere frac...
Heading into the Presidents’ Day Weekend, there’s nothing to celebrate.
Unless constitutional crises are your cue to party down.
Given all that, boy, could we use a laugh. Enter Ken Jeong a/k/a Leslie Chow, Dr. Ken, hardest working ex-HMO doc turned comedian with his new Netflix special.
But firs...
Other pundits and pontificators have their wish list about what President Trump should say in his State of the Union Address tonight.
As your humble Asian American amok scribe, I have a simple list of my own, which includes the same things everyone else wants to hear.
The truth would be a good sta...
Fred Korematsu passed on in 2005, but he’s worth celebrating every year, especially this year on January 30, 100 years after his birth in Oakland, Calif.
You’ll recall Korematsu is the American who realized that his own government saw him as the enemy when it issued an executive order to incarcerat...
If you haven’t heard, Kamala Harris is running for president.
This morning, she’s just a percentage point behind the leading Democrat, VP Joe Biden, when the latest Washington Post/ABC poll asked people who they would vote for today. And that includes Trump, who has just 4 percent. Biden leads with...
No doubt, Trump isn’t draining the swamp. He’s demoralizing our country and diminishing our sense of democracy.
So long as we’re not in this thing together, we’re doomed.
My American Filipino friend, a furloughed federal worker, feels stuck.
He’s not making money. And he can’t do some of the work...
If you haven’t seen the BuzzFeed story yet, a/k/a the most damning Trump revelation yet, here’s the gist: President Trump directed his attorney Michael Cohen to lie about a Moscow condo project prior to the 2016 election. That’s according to two unnamed federal law enforcement officials with knowled...
Any federal workers out there? I’m sorry you don’t have a wall around the president to protect you from this new U.S. phenomenon: the payless pay period.
Zero point Zero-Zero is a triple-placeholder that does not compute as a fair wage for honest work.
I have two close friends in Washington who ar...
Ken Jeong got all sorts of face time on NBC’s broadcast of the Golden Globes, but “Crazy Rich Asians” went empty handed and left the night Globeless.
This was one Golden Globes when it wasn’t about the winning. It was just being there and using the platform to be seen.
But Sandra Oh was like a tri...
Is it so bad for anyone to use the angry but inelegant phrase “impeach the motherf*****,” when the guy you are referring to has a salty vocabulary to match?
Everyone can certainly recall before the November 2016 election when Donald Trump boasted about his treatment of women by using a now patented...
As we enter 2019, we should be so lucky if we could extend and expand on the aura of “Crazy Rich Asians,” a film that helped balance the scales in pop culture and media in 2018. The film, which earned $174 million domestically ($238 million worldwide) was the Asian American story of the year.
That ...
When Donald Trump thinks “Asian,” what does he see in his heart and mind?
An immigrant waiter in Chinatown? With or without documents?
Senator Mazie Hirono? His cabinet member, Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao?
Or is he thinking China’s president Xi Jinping?
With Trump, the self-described “T...
Asian Americans may be more behind this federal government shutdown than you think.
If you’re one of the 1.8 million who were covered by President Obama’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, you’re a big reason we’re in this mess.
Yes, it is ironic that the man in Santa’s sleigh...
So Trump’s attorney Michael Cohen gets three years and Michael Flynn will get sentenced this week. What should Trump get?
Oh, yes, let’s not get ahead of ourselves. He’s still just “Individual-1,” but there is so much out there, it’s hard to keep up with all the lies. Just ask Rudy Giuliani, charge...
There is only one major question after Friday’s devastating memo dump.
Is it time to bring out the “I” word, in all its glory?
For Asian Americans, a key point person in the House of Representatives has been Congressman Ted Lieu from Los Angeles. I’ve followed him since his days as a California st...
