Author Archives: Emily Luu

In chapter sixteen of the book, “East Main Street: Asian American popular culture” edited by Shilpa Dave, she argues that South Asians are the model minority and stereotyping goes beyond physical appearances. Using Apu from the television series The Simpsons as an example, she brings light that the voice behind this character is a White man who is using the practice of brown voice.

Out of all the different Asian races, South Asians are seen as the privileged minority due to the fact that their English is “an accessible dose of foreignness rather than an irritating form of speaking that resembles American English.” (p.317) South Asians do not speak in broken English like most other Asian cultures. Their way of speaking the dominant American language is through the use of a unique phonetic technique. They put stress on certain syllables in words that differ from American English. Dave also mentions that “sociolinguists such as Rosina Lippi-Green have chronicled how language and accent stereotyping influence social identity formation and how these stereotypes are reinforced by educational institutions and media outlets.” (p.316) She questions why people associate an accent with a stereotypic view on a race. Dave believes that anyone can imitate an accent. However, an imitation is far from sounding like the authentic one. Taking Apu as an example, people who have never heard a real South Asian accent, they would believe that the man behind Apu’s voice is a native or descent from the South Asian culture.

A key term in this chapter is “model minority”. Being the model minority means to be well adapted to American culture but not fully. As stated previously, South Asians are seen as the model minority because their English is extremely similar to American English. The words are mostly the same with the exception of stressing different syllables. South Asians are usually categorized as Asian America. However, they believe they should have their own category as South Asians due to their major differences in the rest of the Asian cultures.

The Canadian sitcom, Kim’s Convenience, a story that centers around a Korean Immigrant family who tries to make a living in the city of Toronto, is similar to this chapter in a way.  Paul Sun-Hyung Lee plays Appa (the father) in the series and was interviewed about his character. He revealed that when you are Asian American in the film industry, they automatically ask about the different types of accents you can imitate. In this father role, he needed to imitate a Korean accent which he admitted was difficult due to the fact that he had been living in Canada ever since he was three months old. This goes to show that stereotyping goes beyond the physical aspect.

In chapter four of Marcelo Ballve’s book, Profiles of Ethnic Media: California’s New Civic Communicators titled “Asian In-Language Publications”, he gathers the views from multiple Asian publication journalists on how print media has not only impacted their own lives, but also the lives of many during tough times. It is quite disappointing to see the new generation taking no interest in print media compared to their elders. Many of these journalists put their heart and soul into perfecting their publications. However, print media is slowly starting to run out of business.

Michael Motoyasu, the general manager of Rafu Shimpo, revealed that “after a peak of about 22,000, its readership has leveled off at about 18,000.” (p.36) The number of readers are evidently dropping at a high rate which means the people are getting their news from a different kind of source. After World War II when the Japanese were put into internment camps, Japanese Americans were able to stay informed about how to give aid to their families in the camps through news publications. The newspaper Nichi Bei Times even provided instructions on how the elder Japanese American surviving victims could receive their redress money. Motoyasu also states that “as the readership gets grayer and the average reader’s age rises above 40” (p.37) he hopes that the staff will continue to have the same passion for journalism as he did.

Yen Do, the founder of Nguoi Viet, a Vietnamese publication, says that “for the first 10 years people needed information – how to drive in the freeway, how to fill out tax forms.” (p.40) The newspaper served many purposes. It was an outlet for Asians to understand the American ways. Asians were coming into the U.S. with no background information or instructions on how to function in everyday life. Their English was not proficient and these news publications would be printed in their language. News publications are now also being printed in English because not a lot of Asian Americans are bilingual. As Motovasu mentioned in this chapter “the Japanese and English ratio in the Nichi Bei Times is usually 6:2, which changes to 5:3 on Saturdays to attract a younger readership.” (p.34) However, this action is not making a big impact to the new generation.

There were two key words that were mentioned multiple times throughout this chapter which include ‘bilingual’ and ‘community’. Being bilingual is having the ability to speak two different languages. It is important for the youth to be bilingual these days to not only communicate with elders and increase their chances of getting a job but also to be able to read the news publications that are written in their native language. A community is a group of people that share the same characteristics. News publications are a way to express what the community wants. Without it, the community would not be able to have as big of a voice.

This chapter kinda reminds me of the movie, Claiming a Voice: The Visual Communications Story in the sense that Visual Communications tried to bring awareness to the Japanese in internment camps just as print media did. As mentioned previously, print media tried to get other Japanese Americans to understand how their fellow people were being treated and how they could give aid to their family members and friends in these camps. Visual Communications’ film, “Hito Hata”, told the story on the process of being put into these camps and the mistreatment of the Japanese despite being loyal to America. Most Americans have only heard of the Jews being put into internment camps and if some Japanese people did not have someone that went through this tragedy, they could learn about it through this film. Therefore, Asian print media and films like “Hito Hata” play a vital role in bringing light to news revolving Americans and Asians.

In John Fong’s article “Beyond Finishing The Game: A Look At Asian American Grassroots Outreach,” he expresses the struggles of having a successful Asian American film in American cinemas. Although, Asian American films have been doing well in the market recently, there are many obstacles that prevent these films from reaching its highest potential. The problem still lies within a company refusing to invest in a cultural film they lack cultural awareness in which leads to the usage of “grassroots outreach”.

Fong states that “Hollywood films have marketing budgets that would eclipse the entire production budget of most indies by many times – getting the word out is an expensive thing to do. And most Asian American films are not flush with cash reverses.” (p.3) Companies have no problem investing in other categories of movies. However, when it comes to a non-white film, they hesitate in providing their support because they have no clue as to how to market it to the audience. They also believe that there is less likely to be a big audience in the movie theaters when those films are released.

An important term that is used throughout this article is “grassroots outreach”. Due to the fact that Asian American films do not get much funding for production, Asian American producers and film directors have found an alternative way to advertise their films and bring in a more relatable audience. A few ways they advertise is by “asking the cast and crew for their personal time to travel and promote the film, and moving city to city, mobilizing their base audience.” (p.8) Some of the cast members and crew members make personal appearances at venues, film festivals, and colleges such as San Francisco State University, UC Davis, and UC Berkeley. These strategies help to engage an audience in their film which will eventually lead to more companies understanding the Asian American culture and there won’t need to be such labor intensive work in order to get funding for productions.

Arthur Dong’s film “Claiming a Voice: The Visual Communications Story,” is similar to this article in ways such as the limited promotional opportunities of Asian Americans film. The Visual Communications Organization was made up of a few UCLA trained filmmakers. Their goal was to establish an identity through the visual communication productions and educate others on the knowledge of different cultures. They wanted to be a voice for the community and they took into consideration of what the community needed to be told. When their film “Hito Hata: Raise the Banner”, a story that took place after WWII when the Japanese were being sent to concentration camps, was in production, they had to close down the streets of East Los Angeles in order to capture every detail vital to the film. Due to the fact that stores had to be temporarily closed for shooting, the Visual Communications Organization was in a lot of debt by the end of production. However, as “Hito Hata” gained more popularity around the world, other organizations pulled together communities to promote and fund the film. This action is what is meant by the words “grassroots outreach”.

In the second chapter of William Wei’s book, The Asian American Movement, he addressed the issue of identity in the Asian American culture and what exactly defines being an Asian American. The Movement is something that gave these Asian Americans the opportunity to discover themselves and have a voice in the dominant culture. It was through songs, plays, art, documentaries and many more that the Asian American community was able to differentiate themselves from the rest of the World.

Asian Americans were suppressed of forming their own identities because they had to “refute societal stereotypes that had degraded them; reclaim their history, which had been relegated to the periphery of American historiography; and reconstruct a culture that reflected their experiences. Then and only then could they begin bringing Asians in America together and giving them a sense of who they were.” (p.47) It is difficult for a person to change their perception of a race when all that they’ve known was the false representation. Not only were they victims of stereotyping, but there was a major obstacle that stood in the way of Asian Americans constructing their image. The problem was that there were only a limited number of Asian Americans living in the west coast, so the chances of them having interactions with other races to prove the stereotypes wrong were very slim. Therefore, they had to revisit their past in order to gain a sense of who they were before conforming into the dominant society to create their distinct image.

This chapter circulated largely around stereotypes. Another quote I wanted to incorporate was what the reviewers of The Asian American Children’s Book Project revealed. They discovered that most books written about Asian Americans is that they are “foreigners who all look alike and choose to live together in quaint communities in the midst of large cities and cling to ‘outworn,’ alien customs.” (p.49) Stereotypes are learned at a very young age and these books were giving people the wrong impression of Asian Americans as if the community didn’t already have a bad reputation. The books categorize Asian Americans and traditional Asian into the same culture which in some ways they do share similarities. However, Asian Americans intend to show society an identity of their own.

Arthur Dong’s documentary “Forbidden City, USA,” is a well represented example of how a group of Asian Americans tried to create an identity for themselves. The movie centered around a Chinese nightclub located in San Francisco called Forbidden City. The Forbidden City was the first nightclub to feature Asian American entertainers who danced and sang to all-American production numbers. Their journey was not easy because the Asian dancers had to be better than the Caucasians or else they wouldn’t get the booking. They were of course looked down upon in the beginning for performing. However, these men and women didn’t care about others’ opinions. They even rebelled against their family to pursue their passion.