Talk to me/ So you can see/ What's going on

In Solidarity with Black Students at UCSD

2010-03-03T08:12:00.000-08:00

I don't know if you have been following the racists acts that have been happening at UCSD, including a fraternity's "Compton Cookout" party, students defending the party by using racial slurs, and a noose that was "accidentally" hung in the library. I've been in contact w/ some of my former students who are now at UCSD. They are understandably distraught at what is happening on campus.

Here's one way for the Asian American UC community to show solidarity with black UCSD students. It's just a simple petition to read and sign: http://www.petitiononline.com/cvlihs11/petition.html

flossing my teeth

2010-02-28T23:26:00.000-08:00

most of my childhood was w.out health/ dental insurance (i think it's something like 33% of Korean Americans in CA are uninsured compared to 15% of all Californians). perhaps only because of Highlights Magazine and those cheap flat green/ lime lollipops do I have vague memories of going to the dentist in 1st grade. after then, the next time i went to the dentist was sophomore year of high school. i got a root canal. on the drive home my dad kept saying, "be careful not to chew the inside of your cheek". i had no idea what that meant but it sounded soooooo intriguing. being the crazy person that i am, i went a head and did it anyway. 2 hours later, i was in lots of unnecessary pain.

but i digress.

3 weeks ago, for the first time in my 27 years, i started flossing my teeth. 3 weeks ago I went to the dentist after 3 years of avoiding the dentist. turns out my teeth are super healthy (actually, i think i have super teeth even though i chew on ice, bite plastic pen caps in half, and chew on things i'm not supposed to chew on: "no braces? reallly? so straight" "upper and lower jaws are per0fectly aligned." "nice arch" "wow, you can open your jaw really wide. if anyone ever hits you in the face with a baseball bat, you'll still have good range of motion in your jaws! yup, no worries about jaw problems for you!" yes, my dentist really said that). anyhoo, my gums are not so great due to the absence of flossing.

i like my new dentist so much, i decided that i would finally floss. for 3 weeks, i flossed every single night. but in the last 2 nights have been so tired i just went straight to bed. fast forward to 10 minutes ago when i flossed for the first time in 2 days. SERIOUSLY DISGUSTING. b/c i started flossing right after i got my teeth cleaned, i only saw build up w/in a 24 hour period. 72 hours of build up is nasty. i can't believe I have gone so long w/out flossing. NEVER AGAIN.

that is all.

Rest in Peace Loni Ding

2010-02-24T21:21:00.000-08:00

I just heard that Asian American filmmaker Loni Ding passed away. Loni Ding* was an multiple Emmy award winning filmmaker, producer, activist, artist and teacher. She joins the list of distinguished Asian American sheroes and heroes who have passed on in the past year. My condolences to her family and those who love her.

My junior year at Cal, I had the honor of taking Loni Ding's Ethnic Studies class called Documentary Film in Communities of Color. We spent a quarter of the semester in a traditional film studies class and spent the rest of the semester working on our own documentary.

That was a crazy semester with a lot of long nights and weekends filming and editing. It took us forever to figure out how to smuggle our mini dv camera into the Media Resources Center in Moffit Library so we could copy clips from films/ docs to use as b-roll.

Anyway, the first time I met Loni Ding (and pretty much every time I saw her after then), I thought, "Loni Ding is genius and crazy!" Crazy in the best way of course! She embodied life. Loni Ding had so much vibrant spunkiness to her. She knew what she wanted and got it. She knew what she wanted from us as well and had no problem letting us know. Her outlook, her art, and her way of being complexified for me what it could mean to be Asian American.

At the time I took Loni Ding's class, I think was in her early 70s, but you would never know it. We only had 3 clues to her age 1) She always yelled at us to "Stop muttering! I can't hear you! Why do you all mutter?!" But it was really her hearing. I used to wonder, how has she not figured it out yet? 2) She always yelled somewhat because of her hearing and 3) Once my group went to her house for a meeting. It was totally something you would see in the movies. Long shot from the street: Three Asian American college students approach an old house. Trees and plants are growing everywhere. Birds eye angle of the students and house: Students gaze up, look around and wonder, Where is the entrance? Extreme close up: Hand knocking on a door. Medium shot: students look at each other nervously. We hear creaking, squeaky door hinges and a voice off to the right that yells, "What are you doing over there! Come here!" Pan far right to the other side of the house, up some stairs: enter Loni Ding shaking her head at the silly college students.

Thank you Loni Ding for these memories. RIP

Loni Ding on developing her identity as Chinese American and as artist:

"Before I went to Mexico, my whole sense of myself and my esthetic sense of what I liked in shapes and colors in clothing, furniture, sculpture, buildings, anything, was really into WASP culture. I liked gray colors, linear, Gothic shapes and hollow-cheeked people. I wanted to be a hollow-cheeked person, a wispy, tubercular type. Instead I was sturdy, chunky, mesomorphic.

Then I hit Mexico. I just went for the work camp but ended up seeing the murals of Diego Rivera, Orozco, and a lot of countryside of Mexico—the colors of the earth and people. I started to see that all the good people in the Rivera murals were the round, brown people: I saw the orange and the reds, the deep greens and the purples of the culture, and the round bodies painted by Rivera. When they sat down on the little chairs, part of their buttocks would hang over the edge! Very real and tender. The lean, gaunt faces were of Henry Ford, Rockefeller, the Conquistadors—the evil people.

When I came back my tastes had completely turned around. I looked in the mirror and I rather liked this round person that I saw! Everything turned into reds, oranges and brilliant colors. I also looked differently at someone like Eric Sevareid, the news commentator who was a classic WASP type. I used to think that he was the absolute last word. And when Sir Kenneth Clark, in a PBS series, would talk about "Civilization," by which he meant only western European culture—I used to think that this was wonderful.

Well, when I got back I suddenly looked at both of these men with a totally distant eye. I had a skeptical attitude, and they no longer had any power over me. I thought they were quite ordinary."

On why she does her work
"For the problem of absence, the main work is to create presence. My preferred approach is to displace stereotypes by creating vital images of Asian Americans as real human beings, with individual faces, voices, and personal histories that we come to know and care about.

They would not be the Americans whose differences are dissolved in the "melting pot," but people speaking with the distinctive accents and rhythms of their real individual and family histories; neither looking nor sounding like the "typical American."

Authentic images of minorities do not abound. For ourselves too, we have a need for the objectifying record. We think we know what we look and sound like, until we’re surprised or shocked by hearing our actual voices on a tape recorder, or seeing our physical selves in moving images".

-------
*For some reason, I never feel comfortable calling her "Loni", she is always Loni Ding to me!

Korean Parents (blurry iPhone pix)

2009-12-26T08:47:00.000-08:00

Parents are here for a few days!

1) First meal Umma makes is crab chigae with kimbop!

2) Appah trying to fix my Crocodile Dentist

3) Umma and Appah at Ovo

I hate train tracks

2009-06-30T21:58:00.001-07:00

Last night I made plans for a long (for me) bike ride this weekend. I'm a little rusty in my biking skills and nervous about biking so far so I decided to ready myself by pedaling to work this morning. This helps me get used to riding in traffic and gets my bum used to the saddle again. I also was worried about falling on the long weekend ride and being to scared to finish the ride. I figured if I fell on a short ride, I could get my nerves together better and just generally be used to falling. Yes, I am that uncoordinated that I anticipate falling all the time.

I pumped up my tires at midnight, fixed my fenders and filled up my water bottle, ready to go. This morning I hoped on and pedaled over the bridge, under the highway, and on the Embarcadero. Vroom vroom vroom or whatever the noise is that bikes make. Three-quarters of the way there I fell. Hard.

My bike flipped over as I was crossing a set of train tracks. I fell off and bruised my legs up really bad. Thank goodness I was wearing jeans and gloves as that saved my knees and hands. A cop stopped and started to ask me questions about how I fell, even though he obviously saw the whole thing/ I was too disoriented to answer, super flustered, embarrassed, scared (that for some reason I was going to get a ticket for falling off my bike) and in a lot of pain. I jumped up off the ground, put my shit back in my basket (which was really bent from the fall) and said incoherently, "the tracks... train.. crossing...". The cop just shook his head and sped off. I as relieved that I didn't get a ticket (why would I worry about that tho?) and then was sad b/c I realized I was too scared to get back on my bike and could have hitched a ride w/ the cop.

I made it to work but was wobbly all day long. My bike basket was crushed; my legs ached; my pinky was bleeding; and my wrists were really sore. To top it off, a piece of my pedal even broke off! So scary.

At the end of the day, I had to gather up all of my energy and courage to bike home and cross those same tracks. My bike commute requires me to cross train tracks 8 times one way; 16 times round trip. Very, very scary. On the way back, I rode over tracks 1,2, and 3 just fine. When I got to 4 though-- the set I originally fell on-- I couldn't do it. I had to fully dismount my bike and walk it across the tracks. Yes, I was that shaken up. Yes, I am happy I fell today so that if I fall again on the weekend bike ride, I will already be an expert.

I am also happy cuz my bike was so messed up I had to take my bike to Alameda Bike to get it adjusted. There I learned some new tips on how to avoid falling on those damn tracks. yay bikes! boo train tracks!

how we sit in class: part deux

2009-06-28T09:14:00.000-07:00

White Female
White Male
White Male
White Male
White Male
White Male
White Female
Black Female
Korean Female
Latino
Latina
Pinay
Pinay
White Female
Latina
Latino

bad student!

2009-06-24T16:11:00.000-07:00

in high school i was a slacker. yes i had pretty good grades, but honestly, i just knew how to work the system. when i think back on it, i'm amazed that people didn't call me out on my bullshit. i'm even more amazed that I, a child of korean immigrants who have very little cultural captial, was able to move through and manipulate the white and economically privileged world of my school. how did i pull off that shit? incredible.

in undergrad and in my masters program, i was totally different student. i readily consumed everything that was assigned to me and found almost everything intellectually stimulating. i was very torri torri-- almost running around finding more to read, think about, and do. no more bullshitting.

today, as i push through my third semester of my doctoral program i realize i am de-evolving into the unmotivated student i was in high school. i am not engaged at all this semester. i can't even get my shit together to fake it. must be one of the most undisciplined people i know. BOO!! :(

How We Sat In Class- U Shape

2009-06-20T15:44:00.000-07:00

White Female
Asian Female
Latina
White Female
Asian Female
Latina

Latino
Asian Female
Black Female
Latino

White Male
White Male
White Male
White Male
White Female
White Male
White Male (Instructor)
White Male (Guest Lecturer)

Mehn-su,1992

2009-06-20T15:35:00.000-07:00

Mehn-su,1992

I looked down and saw a small stain on my cartoon-printed underwear. Panic rushed over my body. What is this? Am I dying? I yanked up my pajama bottoms and sprinted towards my Unie’s room for help. I stopped at her door, waited for her to look up, and said in a small, scared voice, “Unie? Something’s wrong.”

At ten years old, I didn’t know what it meant to have a period. All I knew was that my mom would buy gigantic Kotex pads would wrap them neatly in tissue before depositing them into the wastebasket. The year before I started my period, in fourth grade, the girls had a day of “Sexual Health Education.” My parents checked the “NO, I do not consent” box on my form. My um-ma and ap-pah grew up after the Korean War, when there was certainly no such thing as Sex Ed. The letter from my elementary school explained the purpose of Sex Ed, but my parents spoke limited English and they only needed to understand one word: SEX. So, while all the girls learned about periods, pads, and puberty, I sat with the boys and watched “Big Ben”, a movie about a brown bear.

The morning that my period first started, my sister handed me one of my mom’s bulgy pads and showed me how to use it. I secretly wondered why there was no “belt” as my only exposure to periods and pads was from an outdated version of “Are You There God? It’s Me Margaret” in which Margaret and her friends yearn for their periods and practice fastening belts to a pad. I also wondered, How often should I change my pad? How should I take a shower? How long my period would last? Why did I have it? And most importantly, How could I keep everyone from seeing the outline of this bulgy, extra-long, overnight Kotex from the back of my Bongo shorts? This was my introduction to my period: many questions and no answers.

My um-ma didn’t find out that I had started my period until three days later. I didn’t know how to say “period” in Korean. In true tradition, she simply asked me if I had started my mehn-su. I had no idea what mehn-su meant but from my um-ma’s tone, I could guess that she was talking about my period. I slowly nodded my head and she yelled in exasperation, “You’re so young! Why are you starting so soon?!” I clearly did not have the answer, so I silently added it to my growing list of questions about my period.

It wasn’t until sixth grade, when I slyly moved the checkmark from the NO box to the YES box, that I finally got some answers.

in My Little Red Book

Thank you Ron Takaki

2009-06-06T16:33:00.000-07:00

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/31/education/31takaki.html

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/06/01/BA7B17T6TQ.DTL

Like many students at Berkeley, I first heard of Ron Takaki in my Asian Am 20A. Strangers From a Different Shore was one of the many books we were assigned to read but it was the book that had the biggest impact on my life. Two years later in my junior year of college, I had the honor of taking a small research seminar led by Professor Takaki. We met in a dark classroom in Wheeler Hall once a week. Creaky chairs, too small tables, dusty blackboards. The 15 or so of us, including Professor Takaki, sat in a small circle every class period sharing our research. Professor Takaki opened up the semester asking us his famous question, “How do you know you know what you know?” and we spent the first three weeks of the class sharing our epistemologies. Riveting to learn from him. Riveting to learn from each other.

Professor Takaki’s discussion of his epistemology deeply resonated with me and still does. I was moved to hear him share his experience entering academia, publishing his first book, and going home to Hawaii to his family. His uncle said to him, “Hey Ronnie, it’s good that you did all that but when are you going to write something for us? Something that we can read?” And that shaped the rest of his career as a historian, writer, researcher, and teacher. He told us this story at a time when I was struggling to reconcile my own identies as a student in Asian American Studies and as a daughter of Korean immigrants. Every time I went home to San Diego, I left something behind in Berkeley. Every time I left to Berkeley, I left something behind in San Diego. At that point it was something I had never talked about and instead struggled alone in this constricting binary paradigm.

But I digress.

Professor Takaki invited our class to his house for lunch. He took us on a tour of his study which was really a basement room with a bunch of filing cabinets. On top of the file cabinets you could see plaques and awards collecting dust. An after thought. He proudly showed us the paintings that he and his wife Carol made (I don’t remember what the style is called, one was a mallard duck though!). In the living room there sat a piano that was cluttered 40 photos or so of their children and grand children. The only thing that could make you think this man was a big deal was a picture of Professor Takaki and President Clinton taped to the wall. No frame. Just tape.

In that seminar, Professor Takaki was so supportive of me and my writing. Even though we were just undergrads, you could tell he really cared about our writing and storytelling. Out of his class came my paper Yuhl-Sheem, which is captured in this blog as a series (See Tag: Yuhl-Sheem).

In the past year I have thought a lot about Ron Takaki. He has been on my mind as I identified my dissertation topic and did some preliminary work in the spring semester. Even more so, in the past few months, I have come to a strong realization that Ron Takaki has influenced me beyond academia and into my work as an educational practitioner. The work I did in Richmond and the way in which I did my work was deeply rooted in working with my students to shape, name, and tell their stories as young folks who live on the margins and to find ways to develop fluency in multiple Discourses so that we may retell our powerful stories.

I was so saddened when I read about Ron Takaki’s passing. Short of breath when I read how he passed. I send my deepest condolences to his family and the thousands of other people who have been profoundly touched by his work and life.

kimchi fried rice recipe

2008-09-15T00:38:00.000-07:00

2 cups of day-old cooked rice (I use brown but white tastes better!)

1/2 c of kimchi- chopped into small pieces

2 scrambled eggs, cooked

1/2 can of SPAM (I use Spam lite) chopped into small pieces

any additional veggies you like (peas and carrots?)

saute the kimchi in 1 T EVOO for about 5 minutes, until transclucent

add 1 T EVOO to pan (with the kimchi still in it); add rice, fry :)

at this point i like to add in the liquid from the kimchi

after your rice gets nice and red!!!, remove rice, add the spam to the pan, let cook crispy ( you can just dump it into the rice too), then add the kimchi fried rice back into the pan = kimchi fried rice w/ spam

add cooked scrambled eggs

modifications: no spam? add some beef bouillon to the rice to make it tastier

instead of adding cooked scrambled eggs, make an omelette with the rice as the filling. squiggle some ketchup on top of the omelette.... DELICIOUS!

Help my students by eating!!!

2008-02-14T17:09:00.000-08:00

Here is an easy and tasty way to help out some amazing students from Richmond High School. I have a few 12th grade students who are undocumented and are thus, ineligible for federal and state financial aid. My students are leaders at their school: student government, service clubs, and academic clubs. They have worked really hard the past four years to make college a possibility and you can help them get a step closer to their goal, just by eating!

Cafe Cacao (http://cafecacao.biz) in Berkeley has agreed to donate 25% of your total bill to my students. All you need to do is eat there any weekend in February and present a printout of the donation card ( http://docs.google.com/Doc?id=ddgfrwzj_0t3sdxccw) Easy, right? Cafe Cacao has brunch (french toast, chocolate banana pancakes, poached eggs in rosemary butter, savory egg scrambles), yummy mochas (one time they drew a kitty cat in chocolate powder on top of my mocha foam), and sweet desserts. It was even featured on "The Secret Life of: Brownies" on the Food Network! Cafe Cacao is located right next door to the Sharffen Berger Chocolate Factory, so you can book a free tour to the Factory (http://www.scharffenberger.com/factory.asp) and eat at Cafe Cacao afterward.

Cafe Cacao is open for weekend brunch 9-3 on Saturdays and Sundays. For large groups, you can rsvp by calling 510. 843. 6000
Don't forget to bring this printed card! http://docs.google.com/Doc?id=ddgfrwzj_0t3sdxccw
Happy eating!

~Amy

fried calamari

2008-02-11T15:39:00.000-08:00

i've been having a tough time :( as a result, i've been scared to fall asleep without sleeping pills... i'm afraid that i won't be able to fall asleep and i'll stay up all night alone. also, i don't want to wake up in the middle of the night and not be able to go back to sleep. *sigh*

getting up after taking a sleeping pill is a challenge. even though i give myself the 8+ hours of sleep recommended it fucks with my mind. Sunday morning I woke up and could not bear to pull myself out of bed. not only was I weighed down with several heavy blankets, but my mind was hazy and slow. i stayed in bed, groggy and literally terrified that i wouldn't be able to get up. it felt like a giant squid's tentacles were tightly wrapping my body and limbs... i kept thinking that the suction tentacles were injecting a slow but steady stream of poison into my body to keep me from leaving my bed. it was only after i said a prayer that i had the ja-sheen to pull myself up...

2008-02-11T15:32:00.001-08:00

i think i'm back to blogging

Yuhl-Sheem 12

2006-11-16T19:05:00.000-08:00

That night I called Christen who was in her last year of undergraduate school at Yale. I told her what happened. I asked her to translate the events that lead up to my firing and write a letter so I could take it to an attorney. It wasn’t fair. I’m suing because I think of the other women that I worked with. It makes me sad to think of those women working there. They work the hardest because they couldn’t go to college and get the least in return. The people who came out of college and work there do nothing and make the most money. I don’t want the Marriot to do the same thing to these women. They have such hard lives. Big corporations shouldn’t make it harder for them.

In America you have to have everything documented. That’s the only thing that counts if you want justice. Since I got injured at work my whole body hurts. If I sit for more than a few minutes I feel like my bones are going to crumble. When I sleep on my back at night and I try to roll over I can't because of the pain. If I sit in the car for more than half and hour, I get shooting pains into my lower back when I try to stand up. I hurt so much and I still went to work. They still ripped me off. None of this matters unless it is on paper. I told this all to my daughter crying from anger and sadness.

My husband had been very supportive of me during this whole time. He knows everything that has happened to me and he knows where my pride and where my shame is. He saves Korean newspaper clippings that give websites and advice for immigrants. They're posted up all over our refrigerator with pictures and postcards from our daughters. On one of these clippings is a website for the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) and one is for Workers Compensation. He went to the EEOC and filled out paperwork for me. It took him days to fill out the paperwork because he would have to go back every day with questions. He would stand in line for a long time to help me. After three months the EEOC did an investigation and said they found nothing. The letter they sent us did say that we could file for a hearing if we were not satisfied with their findings.

We decided to file for a hearing. Before the hearing I had to have a deposition. The hotel's lawyers kept asking me the same questions over and over again. They were harassing me, trying to catch me in a lie. We didn't have a lawyer then so we didn't know that they couldn't harass me. I was questioned for hours and hours. They let my husband stay in the room as long as he didn't make any sort of looks or signal to me or say anything. They kicked him out though after a little bit. The translator made a wrong translation and my husband spoke up and corrected her. They were so mad. They told him to leave the room and he said, “Who is supposed to correct the translator? You don’t know if the translator makes a mistake! My wife doesn't know if the translator makes a mistake! This is ridiculous!” That was the last straw. The attorneys made him wait outside.

When we finally went to the hearing it was me and my husband standing up against the lawyers of the hotel's insurance company. They told the judge that I had been injured somewhere else and was trying to scam the hotel. The insurance company lawyers said they did an investigation and couldn’t find anything. The judge asked us if there was any doubt that I had been injured on the job. I said that there was no doubt and that I hurt myself on the job. She asked if we had proof. My husband said yes and he pulled out the letter my daughter had written to Ron. The insurance lawyers were so surprised! They were all scrambling through their papers and whispering frantically to each other, not knowing what had happened. Robert and the hotel lied to them and kept the letter from them. The judge said that the letter was proof that I was injured and that I should receive treatment. She told us that we should sue but that we need a lawyer. She was so surprised that we made it to a hearing without a lawyer! She said only people with lawyers file for a hearing. She asked us how we made it this far and my husband said, “I just asked a lot of questions and filled out the paperwork.” We told her that we couldn't hire a lawyer because we didn't have enough money. The judge let us know that workers compensation lawyers are only paid if you win, no up front money. That’s why we now have a lawyer. Even though we have a lawyer, the hotel is still doing illegal things by keeping documents from us.

My younger daughter asked me how I got up the nerve to sue such a huge corporation. I think that in America it is a lot easier to get justice. America still has a lot of problems but it is better than other countries. It has laws to help protect the powerless. I know this sounds corny but I love America. To me, America really is like the song America, the Beautiful.

abortion= undocumented immigrants

2006-11-13T15:52:00.000-08:00

"A Republican-led legislative panel claims in a new report on illegal immigration that abortion is partly to blame because it is causing a shortage of American workers."

Undocumented students & CA post-secondary ed

2006-11-02T17:47:00.000-08:00

It's that time of the year... college apps... my students and i have been trudging through their personal statments. some are even on draft 13! anyway, here's some info to pass along for those of you who may have undocumented students in your California classrooms:

A student’s legal status does not have any bearing on his/ her admission to college. Colleges and universities do not share a student’s status with the federal government. Undocumented students, however, are not eligible for federal or state financial aid such as the Cal Grant or Federal Pell Grant.

California law AB 540 grants undocumented students the in-state tuition rate at public institutions (UC, CSU, CCC). AB 540 students are undocumented students who have attended a California high school for at least three years AND graduate from a California high school or receive an equivalence to a California high school diploma. The monetary savings is as follows:

• Paying $26/ unit versus $197/unit at a California community college
• Paying $2,864 in fees versus $12,420 at a CSU
• Paying $6,141 in fees versus $22,504 at a UC

To pay the in-state fees, students must request and submit the completed AB 540 Affidavit to the appropriate office at the school in which they enroll (usually the registrar or admissions office). The affidavit states that the student will file for legal status as soon as she/ he is able to do so. This is kept confidential with the school and is not shared with federal authorities.

Please use these materials with your students as you see fit and pass them onto other colleagues. Math teachers can use AB 540 in word problems or weekly projects to have students figure out the savings cost from filing the affidavit. English and Oral English teachers can have students write persuasive essays or debate about the issue at hand. Also, SB 160, the California DREAM Act was vetoed in September by Gov. Shwarzenegger. This would have required CSU and CCC and requested that UC allow AB 540 students to participate in all state student aid. English teachers can have students write letters to Honorable Gil Cedillo’s office to push for further action (www.senate.ca.gov/cedillo)

i have a whole packet of info, so if you want more leave me a comment w/ your email (i'll keep your comment private of course!)

Students of Color Conference 2006

2006-10-20T16:13:00.000-07:00

UC is hosting it's 18th annual Students of Color Conference on Nov 17-19 at the Berkeley campus. The conference theme is RISE UP! Reclaiming Our Education and Making Our Voices Heard. To register and find out more about the conference got to their website . I'll probably be leading a workshop on the effects of Prop 209 on the APA community, so maybe I'll see you there!

i love my students

2006-10-19T21:19:00.000-07:00

my students are encouraging and inspiring.

on monday, i did a thesis-statement writing workshop w/ my students. we identified different components of a thesis statement, looked at 3 examples of UC-personal statement thesis statements, dissected them, etc etc. my plan was for them to work individually and write a thesis statement for their personal statement draft. after 5 minutes of working, i could tell they were stuck so i asked them if they wanted to verbalize their thesis components (concession, assertion, reason, significance) to the group and work through them together.

it was amazing. yes, in the end they were able to accomplish the task, but in addition to that they were uplifting and validating each other.

example: rudolfo's writing about the accelerated math program he's taking advantage of. junior year, students cram through alg 2 in a semester and cram through Calc AB the spring semester. Senior year, students take calc BC as a year-long pace. the class of 2007 is the first class who is doing this. anyway, rudolfo has been really hesitant to write about this b/c he struggled through the class. he thought writing about the struggle would make him look "dumb". even after multiple conversations and drafts, i knew he still felt like it might not be the right topic. on monday, when he shared w/ the other kids his topic and working thesis he had the following:
concession: Math is my most difficult subject
assertion: I enrolled in an accelerated math program at my high school
Reason: I know that higher level math will prepare me from college.
Significance: BLANK.

my students always struggle at the significance. the so what? they hate that i always ask them, so what? why are you telling me this? what am i supposed to learn?

anyway, rudy started questioning the topic again and the significance. "did i really get anything out of it?" the other students started jumping writing it. "you totally need to write about that. out of everyone in the class you worked the hardest! remember how we all had mr. spear the year before and you were in mr. hunn's class? and mr. hunn didn't teach you anything? you were really behind. you stayed every evening working w/ mr spear to catch up. you missed all the club meetings b/c you were getting tutoring during lunch. remember when we visited so cal? you were the one that made us take our calc books so we could study in the hotel! you could have dropped the class but you didn't. you didn't give up. you ended up w/ an A-!" etc etc etc. Rudy's face totally lit up. these kids were repeating everything i had already pulled from up and reinforced, but it was different b/c it was coming from his friends, who according to him are the "smart" ones. and then he saw the significance of this-- not just that he went from a quarter grade of a D to an A, but that he didn't give up, he knew he had to ASK and SEEK support from his teacher and his classmates.

example two: Edgardo's worksheet had something like

concession: Richmond has a lot of social problems. There's a lot of poverty and hopelessness.
assertion: I started Y-ME? a club that helps our community
reason: b/c nobody is going to help us, we have to help ourselves. it's not fair that we live like this. most of us won't leave the city to go to college so people are suck here. anyway, people shouldn't have to leave their homes for a better life or a safer place to live.
significance: BLANK

Edgardo started talking about his passion for social justice and activism (he didn't use those words). he had a lot of reasons written and verbalized even more. he's a very silly and fun young man at times but also sometimes quiet, observant and introspective. as he kept talking about what why he started Y-ME? and he started talking about the community he got pretty emotional and started getting tears in his eyes. i think at first all the other kids didn't know how to react. i think maybe they were in a bit of disbelief. edgardo kept talking about how it's important for people inside and outside richmond to really think about what's going on and try to make a difference. then the other students started talking about the huge change the club has made on the campus and in the lives of the students in the club. "people care now b/c of you. people think they can actually do something and then they do it. you didn't even like talking in front of people but you started this club and you have to make the presentations and do the workshops and nobody can even tell that you're nervous. well we know, cuz we know you, but it doesn't seem like you're nervous. people are starting to change here and its because of you." edgardo didn't quite finish his thesis statement. we're working through a lot different topics. i'm trying to help him create a new outline that is more focused. right now it clearly demonstrates his passion through his words, but not through his actions. it's more "this is important because" not "b/c this is important, i did...." but no worries... it's a process. he'll finish.

although these examples may seem a bit small, to me they are HUGE. one of the biggest barriers of helping students write their uc personal statement is that they are asked to write about themselves-- their greatness and their contributions. they must showcase themselves. the students that i work with, who are primarily students of color, children of immigrants, and from working class families often come from a cultural background where you don't talk about all the great things you're doing, all the awards you've won. you refuse your compliments. you're brought up to think you shouldn't be proud of something you did, you're just doing what you needed to be doing. the college essay caters and thrives on a white middle class culture of entitlement, ownership, and perservation and adoration of self. it's so hard to get my students to "fake it" to write the statement. i know it feels so awkward, embarrassing, prideful, shameful to write about yourself in the way that basically declares, "HEY ADMISSIONS, I'M THE SHIT!!!!!" helping my students navigate that culture is very, very difficult. the beauty of monday was that the students affirmed each other. they have infinite confidence in each other. when they share their thoughts w/ each other and hear what other ppl think of them, they start to build the confidence that needs to come through in the essay. all of a sudden, it's not just me telling them that they are smart, resourceful, caring, leaders, etc etc but they're hearing from their friends. it is very beautiful.

p.s. sorry for the occassion posting. i've been very busy. i want to blog more often b/c its a way for me to preserve the happy things about work and life.... i still need to blog about the T4SJ conference.....

Denial

2006-10-14T21:25:00.000-07:00

Tonight, I called in an order for chickan biryani-spicy to my favorite Indian restuarant called House of Curries (formerly Naan n Curry) on College Ave. Since I'm picking up the order and still recovering from a late Friday night and a long day at the Teachers 4 Social Justice conference (will blog about taht later), I'm dressed like a total scrub. Anyway I walk in to pick up my order and this is what happened:

Me: Hi, I'm here to pick up my order
House of Curries Guy 1: Are you Amy?
Me: Yup
Guy 1: It's going to be a minute.
Guy 2: You're not Amy are you?
Me: Yes
:Guy 1: Are you Amy Amy?
Me: ?
Guy 2 proceeds to pull out a piece of paper from under the counter and hands it to me.
Guy 2: Is this you?
I take the paper and read it over. It's a review from Yelp! that reads : "chicken briyani, extra spicy... pure goodness. i've never had anything bad at this location. i love the mildness (perhaps watered down?) of the FREE chai, the blaring music, the spiciness, and of course the hot guys who work at the counter." written by Amy L.
Me: Um, I'm Amy but that's not me
Guy 1: Well, we thought it was you because you're Amy and you ordered chicken biryani spicy.
Me: oh... nope, not me.
Guy 1 to Guy 2: Well, what about that other girl?
Guy 2: No, I know her. Her name's not Amy.
Guy 3 (super hot dude) comes out and hands me my spicy chicken biryani. I pay, say thanks, and leave

DOH!!!!!! OF COURSE that is my review! when i realized what they handed me I was super embarrassed because of the hot guy remark. i couldn't confess b/c i looked like a scrub! damn. I should have gotten the biryani last night when i was REALLY craving it and looking smokin' hot!

next time? i'm calling in and requesting chicken biryani, extra spicy. and when they ask for my name, i'm going to say, Amy L. and of course, i'll make sure i look good when i go in!

Yuhl-Sheem (11)

2006-10-13T18:30:00.000-07:00

I only worked at the hotel for a few months. I was fired because I wouldn’t work on Sundays. On my application I wrote that I could not work Sundays because of church. Also, at my interview I said I couldn’t work Sundays. After they hired me they would post my schedule every week and schedule me to work Sundays. All the other ladies at least had one Sunday off. I was scheduled for every single Sunday. I went to Robert, one of the managers, and asked him for Sunday off. He said, “The hotel business is 24 hours a day 7 days a week; I can’t do anything to help you.” Sometimes when I couldn't find Robert, I would tell my supervisors, Carlos and Rudolph, that I couldn't come to work on Sunday. They would tell me that it was fine.

My shoulders and my back kept hurting so I finally went to the doctor. I got shots but I still had a lot of pain. I had to schedule an MRI. The Thursday before my appointment I told Robert that I had a doctor’s appointment for the next day. He said, “What? What? Speak up!” So I got closer and said it louder. I also asked him again to switch my Sunday schedule. He was upset and made me follow him to the Human Resources department. He was looking for Michael, the head of the HR department. The secretary told Robert that Michael wasn’t in and she asked what the problem was. He yelled and said, “This woman doesn’t want to work on Sundays!” The secretary looked at me and said the same thing that Ron had told me about the hotel business being 7 days a week.

I said, “I know. I know, but when I interviewed with Robert I said, ‘ No work Sunday.’” I said to her, “Please, please, I go to church on Sundays.” The secretary’s eyes got really big and she said in a nasty voice, “Go to church Sunday morning and come to work in the afternoon! Or tell your pastor that you can’t come to church because you work!” Her eyes were so big and angry. I thought she was going to grab me and tear me up. If I could speak English well I would have said, “Hey! Who are you to talk to me like this?” That’s what I wanted to say but I couldn’t say it in English. I felt so bad inside that I wanted to cry. But I kept it held inside of me. I did not cry. They told me to wait and they went inside the HR office. They talked for 20 minutes or so and came out and just told me to go home.

On Friday I didn’t go to work because of my doctor’s appointment. The following Saturday when I went to work in the morning Robert called me into his office and asked me again, “Why didn’t you come to work yesterday?” I said, “I told you that I had a doctor’s appointment. I told you yesterday.” He said, “Well if your arm hurts so much why don’t you go find another job? You don’t even want to work on Sundays. Why don’t you find another job?” He was trying to get me to quit. I told him, “No. I like it here.”

Then the woman who writes out our schedule asked Robert how many rooms she should put me down for. Robert whispered something in her ear. She looked at me like she was sorry and put me down for only six rooms. He was cutting my work time short. He stood there for a while. He finally said, “Look, I like you. The other women like you and you work hard but I have to take the side of the hotel. You have to work on Sundays.” We went back and forth for a little bit more and he finally told me to go start my rooms. After I finished my six rooms I had nothing to do. I was hired fulltime though so I went downstairs to the laundry room and helped them for the rest of my day.

On Monday I went into work and looked at my schedule. I had no rooms assigned to me. My supervisor Carlos said to me softly, “Song, come wait here (meaning in front of Robert’s office).” Carlos looked sad. Robert called Carlos in and they talked for a while. Carlos came back out and told me that Robert wanted me to wait longer. I waited for 20 minutes. I was so mad. I came to work that day and Robert had no reason to be so mean to me. He thinks because he’s the manager he can do whatever he wants, treat people however he wants. I finally just walked into his office and said, “Should I work in the laundry today?” Robert told me, “No. No more work for you. You don’t want to work on Sundays. You say you're sick. You can’t work here anymore.” I said to him, “I don’t speak that much English. Please talk to my husband about Sundays.” Robert told me he had talked to my husband several times but they had not agreed. Robert told me that he and Michael in Human Resources had already decided not to give me any more work. He said to bring my husband to the hotel on Friday if he had any questions. I told him, “No, I still want to work. I don’t want to go.” He said, “No. You’re done.” I stood there for a bit and finally said, “Are you sure?” He was quiet. I said it again, “Are you sure?” After a few seconds he said, “Go home.”

Before I went home I looked at my name on the schedule. Robert had written that I had not called in to say I wouldn’t be in on Sunday. I told him twice that week that I wouldn’t come in on Sunday. My husband also called him and left him a message on his cell phone. He wrote a lie on my schedule. He was covering up for himself. It was done.

Before I left, Carlos looked at me and shook his head in dismay and said, “I'm so sorry. It wasn’t right what Robert did.” The other women were upset too and hugged me before I left.

Damn Bay Area

2006-10-11T21:56:00.000-07:00

I've been swamped with work, work, and sickness so it's been a while since I've blogged...

Quick post:
I love the Bay Area. After 18 years in conservative San Diego and beginnning my 7th year in the Bay, hands down the Bay wins for many, many reasons. Because of my diehard love of the Bay, it makes me really sad when my Bay Area bubble pops.

Despite its reputation as embracing "diversity" and "culture" , there is a shitload of closet white racist liberals living in the Bay. Usually, I can feel it out in bits and pieces... a few comments here, a few comments there. People who pararde around as liberal but secretly hate people of color or liberal folks who are politically motivated by condescending and ignorant rationale.

One of the best online places to witness such beahavior is Craigslist , specifically on rants and raves. For example, last year when a young black woman slashed the throat of an elderly white woman in North Berkeley, this page was filled with comments such as "This is what happens when you let n****** go free" or "Those people are such savages. They should stick to killing each other" or "Lynch that fucking n******"

Confession: I read Celebrity Dish on SFGate.

Anyway, on today's Dish there's a mini-headline that reads: Jolie Criticized by Black Rights Groups. It begins with:

The casting of Angelina Jolie as the mixed-race wife of late journalist Daniel Pearl in the new movie "A Mighty Heart" has been heavily criticized by black rights groups.

Make-up artists are believed to have used special cosmetics to darken the star's skin to match that of Mariane Pearl -- but campaigners believe a real-life mixed-race actress should have been given the part.

Some blog comments read, "This is the most ridiculous thing I have heard since from them since reparations."
"blacks are always crying... get over it and fix your neighborhoods. thanks."
"actually i think the concept/term of "white privilege" is the most stupid thing i have heard since reparations. your alleged oppression and "white privilege" are figments of your wild imagination and are used only as excuses to make you feel better about yourself and that's sad and pathetic. "
"Guess what? I'm Jewish, you don't want me to start whining about what happened to the Jews now do you??? No, I choose not to whine, I choose to move on with my life REGARDLESS of what happened to my ancestors. I choose to make MY life MY own and do what I need to do to make myself happy in life, not sit back and ask for handouts and expect others to do it for me, thats all."
And of course stupid comparisons to J. Lo playing an Irish person, skinny people getting fat for fat roles, and hallie berry playing roles written for white folks.

I do not have the energy or the want to break this down. I will leave it at this: Damn. Haters.

School Day Cupcakes

2006-09-26T22:41:00.000-07:00

The LA Times has this story on the banning of cupcakes and other unhealthy foods from classrooms in an attempt to curb obesity. Apparently this is creating mini-cupcake rebellions by parents who are pissed that their child can't be the center of a sugary celebration on their special day. Texas even passed a Safe Cupcake amendment to ensure a parent's rights to bring cupcakes into the classroom.

I actually don't care about this story at all, but it does remind me of a story from my childhood (surprise, surprise)...

I am a summer baby and was always a bit sad that my birthday was never celebrated at school. Thank goodness for year-round school!!! By the time third-grade rolled around I was on a track that had me in school in my birthday month! sweet, i thought. I FINALLY get to be the center of attention... The envied one... muhahahahhaha...

As my birthday approached, I told my parents about the coveted cupcake tradition. I guess they thought it was pretty cool, so the night before my birthday we went to our local grocery store to buy these mini-confections. Did I leave with a class set of sprinkled cupcakes? Nope. What did I leave with?

BLUEBERRY MINI-MUFFINS

My parents decided the cupcakes were too expensive to buy for the whole class, so instead they bought me blueberry mini-muffins*. I was seriously devastated. I'm sure my parents didn't think it was a big deal. Not only were they both in the bakery section, but to the untrained eye, cupcakes and muffins may look similar so mini-muffins should be fine right? Despite my sadness, I accepted the mini-muffins w/out protest. I didn't want to hurt my parents feelings, but my little third-grade throat definitely tightened... sigh...

so the story ends with me bitterly walking to school w/ my Albertson's plastic bag of mini-muffins, contemplating throwing them out before I arrived at school. I was also definitely sad that I had to bring them myself, rather than have my parents bring them to class w/ ice cream or something. I ended up reluctantly sharing them with my classmates, who loved them, but I was still a bit bummed in the end.

this story isn't sad or anything but whenever my sister and i see mini-muffins we always crack up at the , "Remember when...?"

---
*so cupcakes aren't that expensive, but for us they were. not only were we pretty poor, but we rarely bought snacks and goodies so this was definitely going to be unusual. on top of that my parents dont think birthdays are important. i think i may have "celebrated" 5-7 birthdays with my parents; they don't even call to say happy birthday now. it wasn't a big deal to them, so why should be a big deal to a third-grader right? b/c EVERYTHING is a big deal to third-graders!

---
I was the only Asian kid in my class, i'm pretty sure everyone else was white. now when i think about my mini muffin fiasco, i'm convinced that i was hyper aware of being different and thought that it would reinforce how different i was. as if the mini muffins were the apple in the Garden of Eden and eating them would open up the kids eyes to the fact that I'm Korean!!!!

Stoopid

2006-09-24T21:57:00.000-07:00

Today's SFGate has an article entitled Same Sex Marriage Foes Says Divorces Prove Their Point
Here is an excerpt:

Two of the highest-profile same-sex couples in the country split up this summer, and their breakups immediately became fodder for opponents of such unions.

Julie and Hillary Goodridge, the named plaintiffs in the Massachusetts case that legalized same-sex marriage in that state as of 2004, announced in July that they had separated after two decades together. And in August, Carolyn Conrad and Kathleen Peterson, who entered into the nation's first same-sex civil union after five years together, ended it.

"The separation of Julie and Hillary Goodridge is tragic not only for their daughter," the Rev. Lou Sheldon of the Traditional Values Coalition said in a statement released the day after the couple confirmed the separation. "But ... they have clearly shown just how little they value the institution of marriage and provide a chilling look into what our nation faces if homosexual marriage is legalized elsewhere."

Something tells me that Rev. Sheldon doesn't believe that the "chilling" divorce rate of heterosexual marriages is a call to halt male/female marriages as well.

Yuhl-Sheem (10)

2006-09-22T14:43:00.000-07:00

I have a lot of pity and sadness for women who do housekeeping. Even though we didn't really share a language, I felt close to the Mexican women workers. The housekeepers have the hardest work to do in the hotels but they get the least amount of money. When I worked there I lost a lot of pride. Sometimes I couldn’t keep my head straight. I would come home and not want to eat anything. It was a hard time. I would work 9-5. When I came home my husband would be sleeping so he would be ready for his night shift. I'd make dinner for us and we would spend some time together but then he would have to leave for work at night. When he would come home in the morning, I would be leaving for work. When I would sleep he would work. When I would work he would sleep.

At lunchtime I would eat with the other ladies and they would talk about their problems with their kids. So then I would think, well I’m not the worst off. I would think about my daughters at the best universities and my mah-uhm would feel better. I know that they will never have to do the type of work I have to do.

The work I did at the hotel was very physical. I would have to bend over a lot to scrub the toilets and the bathtub. I had to push around heavy carts and lift up the mattresses to fix the sheets. After awhile I started to have pain in my shoulder and lower back. I went and told Rob, the department manager, that I had hurt myself. He dismissed my complaint and told me to go back to work. The pains didn't stop. I had Christen write a letter to Rob telling him that I had been injured and asking that I be given less physical work. After Rob got the letter he told me if I needed help to ask him and he would help me. Of course, he was never around when I needed help.

Yuhl-Sheem (9)

2006-09-13T18:28:00.000-07:00

Two or three years later both of my daughters were in college. Christen was in her last year of undergraduate school at and Amy was in her second year. Again, I wanted to send them just a little bit of money, enough for books. My mah-uhm hurts when I think of my daughters trying to study and work at the same time. I would think of Amy who was at work more than she was in class and I was willing to do anything to help my children.

I started working at a newly built hotel. I was hired as a housekeeper. I was the only non-Spanish speaking housekeeper. Even though my co-workers and I couldn’t really communicate because most of them spoke Spanish, we got along. Also my supervisors were nice to me because I worked hard. It was my first time doing housekeeping in a hotel, but I was good at it. The other ladies would ask me how long I had been doing it and I’d say, “First time.” They would be so surprised.

At lunchtime we would sit together. If you looked at the cafeteria everyone sat according to their department. The other housekeepers and I would sit together and try to chat. I would bring apples for lunch and cut them up so we could all eat them together. It didn’t matter that I couldn’t verbally communicate. We were all housekeepers. None of us went to college; we’re all alike.

Housekeeping is hard and humiliating work. I would knock on the room doors and say “Housekeeping” to see if anyone was in there. After a little bit, if nobody answered I would take my key and open the door. Sometimes there were men in there! I would tell them that I’d come back but they would tell me to go ahead and clean. I was scared. If somebody else was in the room I’d always keep the door open. One time I had to clean a room and it smelled heavily of cigarettes. I couldn’t breathe because it smelled so disgusting. I propped the door open to air out the room but the guest told me to close the door because he had a cold. I told him that I couldn’t breathe because of the smell; I was coughing and everything. He still made me close the door. So I tried to clean it in a hurry but he would say, “You missed a spot. Clean over there.” That bastard didn’t even give me a tip. Most of the customers don’t tip. The families on vacation would tip, but not the business people. The business people always leave the biggest messes too and they still don’t tip!

When I first started working we had to set up the rooms before the grand opening. We had to get all the sheets on the bed, wipe down all the furniture down, hang up the shower curtains and put the new furniture in place. It was too much hard work. When I worked at the hotel I cried so much. It was back-breaking work. I would be working all day and I would get thirsty. I would want water but I would have to take the elevator to another floor and that would waste time so I wouldn’t even drink water. In 8 hours I had to clean 15 rooms. The manager gave me all the smoking rooms. I was the only one who was assigned to clean these rooms. Everything smelled like smoke, even the floors. One time I got so mad that I took a drinking glass in the bathroom and threw it at the wall. It shattered into pieces and I felt good.

Are you there God? It's me, Amy. + Awesome youth

2006-09-10T21:29:00.000-07:00

in the midst of my craziness the past... oh say... six years? i decided at the last minute to cancel my weekend plans and attend a retreat with the graduate student fellowship.

this is my second church retreat-- the first was one i was 8 or something. anyway, i went because all my life i have felt distance from God. for the most part i grew up in a church but i never felt the way other people seemd to feel or even knew the Bible all too well. since i started college and became more and more passionate about doing work in social justice, there has been huge tension between my faith in God and my passion for work. the amount of passion and convinction i feel in my work ('used in general terms, not just my paid work) i have never felt in God. this never sat well with me, but never bothered me enough to really do anything about it.

last year i joined a women's small group in my church, in hopes to find a community of Christians who would help me strengthen my faith. the women in my small group are wonderful, but sometimes i would feel this disconnect. my life is experienced through a gendered, raced, and classed lens. because of this, when i share my thoughts, feelings, or concerns that are filtered throug this lens, i felt like sometimes people wouldn't know what i was quite talking about, thought i was "too much" something, and/or i was asked to explain. many times i tone down what i would normally say to soften the blow. once i said something about learning to work w/ white allies and i think some people thought i was racist. always accommodating. so frustrating. so voiceless.

the contemporary western Christian church does seem to care about social justice issues. however, i feel like it is usually addressed at a global level (poverty or AIDS in other countries). if it is domestic, it seems to be incidental (Katrina) or a form of class inequity (homelessness). a part of me cannot help but feel like this is a sanitary, non-threatening way to addresses issues of equity. like someone else' country is messed up, not ours. or there is a failure to interrogate the intersections of power, ESPECIALLY race/ ethnicity, which lead to inequity. a lot of these sorts of thougths keep me from feeling at home in a community of Christians.

ironically, what pushes me away from God is what also draws me to Him; the Bible has a very strong message about justice and love. i feel very strongly that i am put on this earth purposefully to be working with people who live on the margins. so this is a small part of what draws me back and makes me long for a solid faith.

i went on this retreat and again there was this tension. it was on my mind the whole time. many of the grad students are in mathy/ sciencey/ computery fields. there are some grad students who are in fields i would guess would make them progressive, but they say stuff that is slightly shocking. and then bc this is UC Berkeley and b/c this is a GRADUATE student fellowship, many ppl come from privleged, privleged backgrounds. so many times i felt displaced and alienated from people simply b/c i could not identify (in my car was the daughter of a mathematician,the son of a dean of engineering, and the sone of someone else equally impressive. they were talking about how their parents professions influenced their learning/ careers. i was like... okay... how can i relate to this when my mom went up to junior high?). other times ppl said stuff that totally pissed me off and made me feel like i had to go into my "working class, woman of color, educator mode". the blessing was that i also saw glimpses into ppl who care about injustice. their work may be in physics or astronomy or electrical engineering, but they do think about things i care about. the bigger blessing was that i was able to start seeing people as what they are, rather than what they are not.

did i witness a miracle? am i now w/out hesitation and fear able to proclaim to people that i am Christian? definitely not. but i am rethinking, rearranging things in my mind, which is always good. i think i learned that being a Christian does not demand that i be complacent. in fact, it demands the very opposite. after the retreat i went to church today and the sermon was about just that. the connection and oneness between worshiping God and human relationships.
click here and then on the 9/10 sermon to listen it was very relevant to me.

awesome youth
today i had my first meeting w/ the youth who are interested in helping me start an APA youth program in Richmond. i'm so pleased with them. excited to start. scared as well.

today; tonight

2006-09-07T23:17:00.000-07:00

the power of one supportive, dope ass person is amazing.

i started this day still feeling upset about all the stuff i blogged about last night. i fell asleep at 3 am, woke up at 7 for an 8:30 appointment at school #1 where all is well and the admin embrace me w/ open arms, went to school #2 w/ my supervisor. school #2 only had glowing remarks about me (which was extremely embarrassing b/c the nice words are undeserved). THEN we had to tell them that our program was leaving their school. that made the kind, undeserved words feel even worse to me. went to school #3, told them that we were no longer going to be working at the school but trying an out-of school model (internally meaning, we are slowly transitioning to drop your high school as a partner school), never made it to school #4, went back to the office and was swamped w/ work. all in all my work day sucked. i came home tired, numb, and still feeling unresolved from the night before. i got stuck in my bed.

then i get a call from my beautiful Romeo to get dinner. romeo is a dope ass educator and friend. his motivation, intention, passion, and work is solid. i take notes when we talk. there is not pretense with him at all. i am able to purge my guilt, check myself, bounce ideas, get feedback on my work and myself, be nakedly honest and vulnerable, be critically questioned and pushed to examine different lenses and be articulate, be inspired and encouraged, and give and receive good hugs. he gives me the space and permission to indulge in my self-discovering/ questioning/ processing shit and turns it into something that is reflective and helpful. i feel like romeo went into my head and sucked all the negativity, hesitation, and self-doubt out of my head. all happened in one leisurely meal at that!

adding fuel to the fire? Red Doors

2006-09-07T00:56:00.000-07:00

inspired by Gar's post about the movie Red Doors by Georgia Lee. Lee's come under some fire from some ppl for having a movie w/ 3 asian american sisters who all have white male love interests (i think). BTW gar, in my post i use "your" or "you" a lot, but that does not equal Gar, it's a general "you".

let me start by saying:
-I am an APA woman who finds APA men extremely sexy and lovable.
-It makes me really disgusted when i hear APA women say "i can't date an asian guy b/c it would be like kissing my brother" i think to myself, wow, you must also subscribe to the idea that all asians look alike b/c you can't tell your brother part from another APA man!
-I live in the Bay where yellow fever is rampant and often get annoyed by its huge presence. i try not to, but i def sometimes maddog these couples. (I *really* try to stop doing that)

back to red doors
i have not seen it or really followed the back and forth too closely. i did read michael kang's post on it. i ONLY read kang's post and Gar's post. i did not read all those comments on Kang's blog. here is an excerpt from kang: "Georgia didn't grow up in a predominately Asian community. She grew up in an upper-middle class suburb of Connecticutt. She probably didn't have much exposure to Asian men in her love life growing up. For her to write a story about these three sisters in relationships with Asian boys would have been false. She stuck by the old adage that you write what you know. When I see Red Doors, I believe she knows this material inside and out."

not only is this part of Georgia's reality, but also the reality of many many APA women and men (including myself up to age 17). that story deserves to be told as much as anyone elses (even if you think it doesn't further your APA agenda)

i often think about the large burden that artists of color are expected bear. it's not fair of communities of color to expect artists to dismantle negative images in all of their projects. when i think about supporting APA artists, yes, i def throw my support behind those whom i feel create new and refreshing representations of APAs, particularly those that fit in w/ my political agenda. HOWEVER, one of my many hopes for the APA community is not so focused on dismantling negative images of APAs but providing a diverse and complex representations of our experiences, INCLUDING white male/ asian female loving. mores stories, more voices right? we are not homogenous, our experiences certainly are not.

hopefully, Georgia's characters are complex. i know if i watch red doors, i will have to really try and remove my automatic dislike of white-on-rice to see if the characters are multi-dimensional, if the film is beautiful, if the story is solid, etc etc. my political beef on APA male representation can play a role in how I recieve the film, but hopefully it will not be the only role.

another thing i want to say is that APA men can be the harshest critics when it comes to this shit. for those of you who don't know why, i'm not going to take the time to explain it right now. anyway, i get frustrated b/c implicit in getting upset over asian female/ white male couples is that it becomes framed w/in ethnicity and sexuality (demasculinizing APA men, right?). however, SOMETIMES IT'S JUST AN ISSUE OF PATRIARCHY! it becomes a competition of ownership. "Who can legitimatley own APA women?"

last thoughts?
this issue will always depress me. the outrage over representations of APAs can seem so silly to people on the outside, but it is def grounded in a sociohistorical context AND of course it affects our everyday lives. no doubt, it is very personal. it sickens me that there are so few APA artists/ writers/ filmmakers who are given acccess to resources, publicity, acceptance, etc that we must staunchly defend/ defeat them because the artists are not making an image that is palatable for our community. it's like we get someone and we have to immediately assess "For or Against"? because there's so few in the first place! FUCK MAN. you know white folks don't ever get slammed for showing trailer trash or their suburban counterparts. it's hard enough to break out and decide to follow your heart and your art, then get funding, then get publicity, and then also have to please all APAs? come on, now.

here are some related thoughts: on black male/ asian female relationships (an old post of mine)

Breathe

2006-09-06T21:44:00.000-07:00

disclaimer: this is me unloading about my job... sorry. it is also slightly incoherent.

right now at work i've been trying to get set up at my high schools. finding space, requesting transcripts, hiring interns, training interns, getting materials, planning, etc. i haven't even started working with my students yet and i'm pooped!

this will be my first year simply working. my first two years as a "professional" were shared with being a graduate student. although i was crazy and busy all the time, i cut myself some slack at my job and at school. i did the best that i could understand the circumstances i was presented. even though i think i did a pretty good job at both, i definitely have small regrets. being the perfectionist i am, i end up being really hard on myself. i think. (sometimes i think i'm hard on myself and other times people tell me, "um yeah, you think?") anyways, now that i'm "just" working, i have no excuses to not kickass at my job. that is very very scary.

most people know, i'm not too happy with my job. this year i'm trying to make my job more rewarding by creating opportunities for work that goes beyond the traditional scope of college access. one idea i have is this super-ambitious (but def kick ass) leadership retreat. will it be funded? maybe. right now i'm trying to make it fit into meeting our "goals" and our "outcomes." blech. even if it is funded a part of me thinks i shouldn't do it. i'm projecting a weekend in early January for the retreat. this means that college apps are dues Nov 30th so i would be doing college apps while i plan for this retreat, i would begin admissions "reading" first week of december (work 50 hour weeks through february), train my seniors in facilitation skills in december, take a small vacation in december, have the retreat january, start planning for southern california trip in mid-january. and all this time, still go to schools 4 days a week... i really want to do this retreat but know i will be super duper tired and worn out. why is it that when you come up w/ a good idea it just means more work? mediocrity is totally rewarded...

another thing i'm trying to do to make my job more rewarding is by recontextualizing my work into the larger history of public education. we had a training today w/ our interns and i did a facilitation on this topic. i def made some mistakes in my facilitation and need to improve on those skills but i feel like the interns were engaged, participated, learned some new information, and maybe felt a little bit more grounded in their work in education. they thought about how all of these court cases and propositions inform our work with students and schools. overall, it felt incredibly awkward doing this facilitation because it is atypical of our intern trainings-- our org definitely utilizes banking pedagogy and we RARELY talk about anything related to education that lives outside the realm of college access (even though its' def interconnected right?).

i felt nervous and scared because i took up all of this time doing something that is important to me, but i feel like is not valued in our program. i wasn't sure how the other staff would receive it. i felt like the interns were engaged but i couldn't read the professional staff. at some points i rushed and cut people off because it almost felt inappropriate to do this facilitation (even though it is DEF appropriate). its so interesting how your audience and place changes your facilitation. i feel comfortable as a facilitator in my undergrad/ grad classes, with my students at the schools but not with my coworkers. what sucks is that our director comes from a background of popular education. in her job now, she doesn't utilize that approach (i have no idea why). so today i had this paranoia that she was critiquing my approach, even though she never practices a similar method. in a nutshell? sometimes i feel suffocated at work. i feel myself becoming a drone and am trying to fight against it but am not sure the program and my coworkers have the capicity to support me in this. and i'm not sure i have the confidence, experience, or ability to change things.

which brings me onto my fledgling youth program... as of now, unnamed. this is my attempt to do something that i cannot do w/in the constraints of my job. so far? the only update i have is that we (me, plus 3 youth) have our first planning meeting on sunday!!!! yay!!! excited as i am, i'm superscared about this venture. i have no experience doing stuff like this... in fact, i'm so scared that i will probably never talk about this program again on my blog, for fear of public failure... i'm serioius.

so what is my point? why did i write this long, incoherent blog entry?
1. nothing in my life makes sense right now. thus i am incoherent.
2. i dont give myself time to reflect so i have to write it all out
3. it's my blog i can talk about whatever i want

CRAP! i'm a lefty so when i write w/ marker (like i did today) i get marker on my left hand. i just left a pink spot on my white laptop. ARGH !!!!!

oh yes. i'm also dealing with (ongoing ... for a very long time) trying to find a strong faith in God. i'm not going to blog about this. again, for fear of public failure. *sigh*

Yuhl-Sheem (8)

2006-09-04T20:06:00.000-07:00

When Amy started high school, James started working at a hotel. Even though he was working, there still wasn't enough money. For extra money he delivered newspapers early in the morning. Later he found a better job at a luxury hotel but he had to work the graveyard shift. It was the only shift he could take that didn't require him to work Sundays; it also paid a little bit more money. He would leave for work around 10 p.m. and come back around 8 a.m. He would only be home for a little bit because he would leave to put in a few more hours at a school cafeteria. My husband works so many hard hours that it fills me with sorrow.

I couldn't sleep when my husband worked nights. It was too strange to sleep by myself. My daughters would take turns sleeping in my bed with me. I would lie in bed and think, “If only he had gone to school here his life wouldn't be so hard.” He is such a good, kind, and humble man. Even though we don't have money, God has blessed our family with love and happiness.

As Christen was about to go to college I decided that I needed to start working. I didn't want her to work while she was in school. She was going to Yale; I thought she should spend her time studying, not working. I also wanted money to pay back some money I had borrowed.

I was tired of not having money and not working. I didn’t know what kind of work I could do. I had little skills and didn’t like the idea of somebody ordering me around. Finally, I decided to do garment work for a while. The garment factory was in LA so the manager said I could take a sewing machine home and do my work at home. He said I could make $2,000 a month. So every weekend we would drive from San Diego to L.A. to pick up pieces and patterns. We would also drop off all the shirts that I had made. But I didn't even make $2,000 a month. I only made $800. I would get up at 5 in the morning and stop at midnight. Everyday. I only made $800 a month- about $30 a day. My back started to hurt and so did my shoulder. It ached so much. Even though it was hard work, I would have still done it for $2,000 a month. I went back and talked to the manager about my pay and how he had lied to me. He didn't care. He simply said, "Bring back your sewing machine." I did just that. People in the garment industry are crooks. They exploit people. Around that time I saw on the news that a group of Mexican women sued a factory owner. They won. I was so proud. It made my mah-uhm feel cleansed and refreshed.

Yuhl-Sheem (7)

2006-09-01T23:41:00.000-07:00

Our family stopped going to church then too. There was a scandal with our minister at that time. He had convinced our family to donate money to buy a church van. We thought it was a good idea; the church could use the van for the youth group and to pick up the elderly church members. We gave a lot of money. In the end, the minister kept the money for himself. The other congregants didn't seem to know or care. They got mad at us and thought we were lying. One of the men yelled at me and said, "You're a woman! You need to keep quiet and listen to the men! How dare you talk so much?" I yelled right back at him and said, "Yes I am a woman, so what? Women have minds and eyes and also know what is going on." We left that church. It was around the same time that we lost our business. I didn't go to church or go to work for a long time.

All that time I didn't go to church it didn't feel right. It was very uncomfortable. Something was missing. I wanted to hear hymnals being sung; I wanted to sing; I wanted to hear sermons; I wanted to worship. My life felt so different then; I didn't know that it was because I wasn't going to church until much later. As Christians we should go to church. We need to go to worship. That's why we went back to church.

The first few years after the bankruptcy were very hard for me. I didn't feel like I could talk to anybody about it. I had my husband but I didn't want to make him feel bad. I didn't want to bother my family either. My parents and brothers and sister are very close to me but I didn't want to burden them so I kept a lot of my feelings inside of me.

Then, and now, I didn’t really have any friends to talk to either. Korean people make friends at church. They think a lot about money and are always competitive about their kids. I don't really care for that. I admit though, sometimes there are women at church that I want to talk to but almost all of them went to college in Korea. So even if I want to talk to them, I have a complex. I feel like I can't talk to them because I didn't go to college. Because I think about that a lot, I can't make friends. Even my husband knows that. But then I try to think that even though they went to college there are other things that I know that they don't. A lot of the times I look at their kids who run around all the time or do bad things. In the end I try to remind myself that they're not better than me because they went to college. I think so what? I didn't go to college, but there are still lots of things that I know. So what? And I just move on.

Because I couldn’t go to school, this is my biggest dream for my daughters. After we moved back into an apartment I felt so sorry for them. Our apartment was so little and crowded. James and I worried about the well being of our daughters. The room they shared was so little and dark; I didn't want them to be like my plants: cramped and suffocated. My husband and I decided to give our daughters the master bedroom in the apartment so they could have enough room to think and do their homework. So from that day to the day Christen went off to college, the two of them shared the bigger room.

dreams

2006-08-22T23:13:00.000-07:00

so i'm thinking of starting a program in Richmond for APA youth... scary... i'll be satisfied if i can start small (like 5-8 youth)... i have some ideas, am still thinking about how this can work, need to talk to the youth... so scary... if you're available to bounce ideas around or want are in the east bay and may want to help (ahem... cynthia?) lemme know. if this gets off the ground, i'll prolly start a separate blog to document the process. YIKEs!!

Yuhl-Sheem (6)

2006-08-22T00:23:00.000-07:00

After the first Gulf War, the economy went bad. A lot of our customers ended up getting laid off and had to move to other states. We also had contracts with big companies and hotels and a lot of these businesses had gone under. So after a couple of years fifty percent of our customers had moved away. It was hard-- we had payments to make.

That year was very difficult for our whole family. Christen had started high school and we had enrolled her in a school that was out of our district. We had read in the newspaper that many students from a particular high school graduated and went to an Ivy League or another top school. It was the best public school in San Diego County. Because it was so far away James would have to drive Christen to school before he came to the cleaners and pick her up after our store closed. She would spend an hour in the library before school started and three hours after school ended. We wanted to give our girls everything we never had but it was getting harder and harder to do so.

As our business got smaller I had more stress. We had so many payments to make: $2,400 in house payments, $2,500 in payments to the elder from our church whose business we had bought, and $3,000 in rent payments for our cleaners. It was too much. For almost a year, after all our payments were made we still had $5,000 a month. In the end, after five years of business, we couldn’t even make our payments. We were in debt. Even when our business was good we hadn't been extravagant with our money. We had bought a house, but had never owned a new car or bought anything with a designer label. Even our furniture was old. All the money we had saved had gone to make back payments.

In the end we decided not to sell the business. We just left it. We didn’t want to sell it to anybody because it was failing. A broker had a person who wanted to buy our business but we didn’t want anyone else to suffer like we did so we just closed our doors. We also helped Lola and Margarita find new jobs; we didn't want them to suffer either. We couldn’t meet the mortgages on our house so we had to file for bankruptcy. I cried so much then. Since I was born, that’s the time when I cried the most. My mah-uhm was broken. I cried every night, all night long. We had back payments on the mortgage and the property taxes. We couldn’t sell our house either because of the economy. So the bank repossessed our home.

After we went bankrupt we moved out of our house and back into an apartment. It was so little and cramped compared to our house. It was hard to live at first. Nobody in our house worked for about a year or two. We had property in Korea that we had inherited and sold so we used that money and also borrowed some money to live. I didn't work for many years. I had so much stress from the dry cleaners and the bankruptcy that I couldn't work. I had no heart to work. I just wanted to stay home. I was so sad then.

Even though I didn't want to work or leave the apartment I hated being in the apartment. I felt trapped. It was so cramped compared to our house. We had given away a lot of our material things that we didn't have room for like our barbeque, our daughters' bikes, and some of our furniture but we still had a lot of things. It was all crammed into a two -bedroom apartment. The tiny balcony in our apartment that replaced our backyard was overflowing with plants and flowers. There wasn't enough sunlight coming in. My plants were overcrowded so some of them started to die. In the end I had to give many of them away.

dental torture

2006-08-21T20:03:00.000-07:00

normally i'm very good at the dentist. like many children of immigrant entreprueners we did not have health/ dental insurance for a very long time. in fact, the first time i really remember going to the dentist was in 10th grade! so many years of never visiting the dentist resulted in a root canal on my first visit. :( depsite this, i enjoy going to get my teeth cleaned. it's kind of refreshing. today's appointment was totally different.

let me start off by saying i really don't like my dentist. you can tell that he thinks he's very good looking and that his work is extremely important, like life changing. he lectures me constantly about the importance of flossing, tells me everything about anything related to teeth, and thinks he's so pro that he knows my dental history w/out looking at my chart. "i see you had braces." "no i didn't." "of course you did." "no, really i didn't." "are you sure? lemme check your file." wtf? OF COURSE i would know if i had braces. goodness.

what is most irritating is that when he cleans my teeth he loves to say soothing things like, "you're doing GREAT!" or "see that wasn't so scary?" as if i was a little kid wimpering in my chair! i am totally chill at the dentist. i breathe normally and certainly don't tense up. the only problem i have is i hate the grittyness after the cleaning and they only give me a tiny bit of water to rinse. that is seriously the most dramatic thing about my dentist visits.

today, different story. i don't know what happened but i freaked out in the chair as soon as the first high-pitched tool turned on. i scrunched up my eyes, curled my lips, and gripped the arm rests. the noise was horrible! i was really scared. i did everything i could to calm myself down but nothing worked. 5 minutes into my cleaning, my neck and shoulders were aching because i was so tense. 7 minutes into my cleaning i almost started crying because the noise was so irritating. plus it hurt!

in the end i made it. i endured and my teeth are nice, smooth, and plaque free! silly how i'm so proud of myself!

Yuhl-Sheem (5)

2006-08-20T12:05:00.000-07:00

I worked at Horton Plaza for about a year and I didn’t work again until James and I decided to start our own business. This was in 1988. We didn't have very much money saved up so we borrowed money from my father-in-law and some other people. We wanted to open up a restaurant inside of a food court at first but we couldn’t because restaurants are open on Sundays. My father-in-law told us that we shouldn’t do that because the Bible says to rest on Sundays. So we thought about that and realized that most dry cleaners are closed on Sundays so we decided to do that.
There was an elder at our church who owned two dry cleaners. He was about to retire so he sold the cleaners to us. It was a mistake to buy it.

At first we made a lot of money. After just a few years we had enough money to put a down payment on a house. It was a big house in a new area. It was safe and spacious. We did the landscaping ourselves. I planted trees, plants, and flowers all over our front yard and backyard. I had always wanted a large backyard to grow my plants. There, they had a lot of space to grow. It was nice to own something and not have to pay rent.

We each worked about 90 hours a week and never took a vacation; our only breaks were on Sundays. We worked so hard that we never got to see our daughters. We would leave early in the morning around 5 or 6 a.m. before they were up and come home after they went to bed, around 10 or 11 p.m.

The girls would ride the bus home from school and take care of themselves until bedtime. It’s so sad. They would make their lunch to take to school. They didn’t have time to make sandwiches in the morning so they would just take a bag of chips and a juice box. When they would come home they would make ramen or sandwiches. I eventually taught the girls how to make soo jeh bee, a simple Korean soup that I made for my brothers and sisters when I was a girl in Korea. Christen and Amy would sit in front of the TV and knead the flour for the soup at the same time. I didn’t want my girls to cook too much because I grew up taking care of my brothers and sister at such a young age. I didn’t want them to cook or clean like I did when I was a little girl. Amy was in fourth grade then and still very little. She had to pull herself on top of the counter so she could reach the stove and the microwave. One time she tried to cook and her hair caught on fire!
The long hours we put in at work got to be too much for our family. My husband said that we needed to spend more time with our daughters, even if it was only eating dinner together. So after our store closed at night, James would drive home, pick up our daughters and bring them back to the cleaners. The four of us would eat out as a family. Sometimes we would eat at this fancy Chinese restaurant called Chin’s but mainly we ate at Kentucky Fried Chicken or got Mexican food. After dinner our family would come back to the cleaners. My daughters would work on their homework or read and they'd help us with our work. We spread out sleeping bags on the counters and floors so they could sleep if we stayed there late.

When Christen and Amy were younger, on the weekends or their school vacation they'd come to work with us, or we would drop them off at a library near our work and they would stay there and read books for the entire day. They never complained. After Christen was in sixth grade she would run the small agent store for us. Amy would play in the back and keep her sister company. It was just those two little girls at a store all by themselves. These are sad memories for me but my daughters say they talk of those times with happiness.

At that time I had a lot of stress. My English wasn’t perfect so it was challenging for me to talk to the customers. Sometimes they would complain and I couldn’t explain everything in English. It was hard. I would think, “We started this business for nothing. It was a mistake.” Also some customers would accuse us of ruining their clothes and they would sue us. We would clean something according to the label but the clothes would get ruined. It wasn’t our fault; it was the manufacturer’s fault. Still sometimes we had to pay $300 for one piece of clothing. They would yell at me and tell me to go back to my own country. I always thought that having another business wouldn’t be so stressful.

Even though it was hard to run the cleaners, there were good times too. Some of our customers were so good to me. The elderly customers would tell me how sweet I was. They liked how I smiled a lot. They would say, “Song, you're such a nice girl.” Some of the customers would give us gifts on Christmas and always speak very kindly to us. Sometimes the men would ask me to go golfing with them or go on a date! I would have to tell them I was married and had two daughters. The men would be shocked and embarrassed.

Aside from the nice customers we had two employees, Lola and Margarita who helped make our time at the cleaners less stressful. They didn't speak very much English so they would teach us Spanish words and we'd speak to each other broken English. All of us would laugh at the way we sounded. They were good employees. My husband and I believe you have to treat your employees well so they feel that it is their business too. They worked so hard. All day long, sweat would drip from their foreheads and I would think, they are such good people—they work that hard only for their children. I had a lot of respect for them.

The Book Meme

2006-08-17T22:19:00.000-07:00

1. One book that changed your life. Strangers from a Different Shore by Ron Takaki

The first Asian American Studies class I took was a reading and composition class. This class made me branch out into other Asian Am classes the following semester. Reading Strangers in Asian Am 20a was pretty much what decided my want to major in AsianAm. This book helped me find my place and face in U.S. history. Additionally, Takaki's humble approach to life and writing makes this book even more fascinating.

2. One book you have read more than once. The Outsiders by SE Hinton
I first fell in love with this book in sixth grade. I have the same tattered and loved copy on my bookshelf. "Stay gold, Ponyboy. Stay gold"

3. One book you would want on a desert island. The Bible

If I had the Bible w/ me on a desert island, i'm pretty sure i'd read it in it's entirety, something I have yet to do.

4. One book that made you laugh. Same Difference and other Small Stories by Derek Kirk Kim

Derek Kirk Kim is an amazingly talent artist and storyteller. Check out his website and click on comics to read some of his work.

5. One book that made you cry. Blu's Hanging by Lois Ann Yamanaka
Despite the controversy that surrounds this book, it is one of my favorite books of all time. We were supposed to read it for Asian Am Lit. Almost all the women in my class (including me) admitted we cried when Blu gave Ivah maxi pads for Christmas. *sigh*

6. One book you wish had been written.
I don't understand this one... I'm changing it to One book you wish you had written: Teaching to Transgress by bell hooks
I have so much admiration for bell hooks' writing. this is a book to turn to when my work with students becomes tiresome or difficult

7. One book you wish had never been written. i can't think of any... sorry!!

8. One book you are currently reading. In AP US History, Mr Evans supplemented the textbook w/ A People's History. I was too young and stupid to really appreciate it at the time. Good thing I've grown up since then! The Reader is a collection of his publishings. I love people who write in a way that is accessible to everyday people.

9. One book you have been meaning to read. too many to list. i'm always looking for good fiction (despite what most of my meme looks like)

10. I tag Gar, Marie, Alphonsis, and Tiff

Yuhl-Sheem (4)

2006-08-17T21:00:00.000-07:00

One day I turned on the TV and what I saw gave me hope. There was that show with the puppets-- Sesame Street. When I saw that show, I felt like education in America was so accessible. It's like it was being given away for free. By that time I had two young daughters-- Amy was born in 1982. I knew that both of my daughters would be able to be successful in a country that let everybody learn. That is one of the only things that I had hoped for that came true since I lived in America. My daughters are successful. It makes me so happy to think of them because they have what I couldn't have.

When I was a little girl in Korea, our family was so poor. My sister and I had to quit school to find jobs and make money to get ready for our immigration to America. We had to make money for airplane tickets, documents, and things like that. After we came to Guam I wanted to start high school but the school officials told me I was too old. So when I think of my daughters, it's like a dream.

I started working after a couple of years of living on the mainland. Amy, was only about three years old and Christen was five years old when I started to work. James would come back from work and we would have dinner and put our daughters to bed. We would go to downtown San Diego to the Horton Plaza mall and clean up the movie theaters there. We would leave at 9 or 10 p.m. and come back sometimes 2:30 a.m.-- on the weekends we finished around 4 a.m. We would come home and Amy would be sleeping but Christen would just be sitting up in bed, with her eyes wide open, not crying or anything but just waiting for us. It's illegal to leave your kids home alone! If they had cried and the neighbors called the police they would take our kids way. We would have had to get a lawyer. But we didn’t know that. We couldn’t help it. If we had known it was illegal we wouldn’t have done it. That was my first job in the mainland. Together, James and I made about $1,500 a month. We didn’t get paid by the hour. It was contract work. We worked there for about two years. Now, when my family and I go to Horton Plaza to shop or eat at Claudia's Famous Cinnamon Rolls, I can't believe how far I've come. Even though we worked there until the very early morning, I never regretted coming to America. I could ask myself that 10 times or 100 times and I always think that it was a good choice to come here.

At that time James also had a job doing maintenance work at the Holiday Inn. After we had been in San Diego for about three months he looked in the American papers for jobs. It makes me laugh to think about him going to a job interview and not knowing very much English. When he told me he got the job I didn’t believe him. But he did get the job! When I think of my husband finding jobs with just a little bit of English I think it must be God’s blessing. The man who hired my husband must have a kind heart. Even in Guam when James first came to America he found work at the Hilton Hotel. He says he could survive anywhere, even in Africa. I ask him, “How could you survive in Africa?” And he says it is because God protects and takes care of our family. He is right.

It was around the time that my second daughter was born that my faith in God had started to grow. When I was little girl in Korea I would go to Sunday school every week. Sometimes my brothers or sister would come along, but my parents never came to church. I would go every Sunday because I loved hearing Bible stories, drawing pictures, and singing songs like Jesus Loves Me. Even though I went almost every week, I didn’t know God. It was just a place for me to go and be a child. There, I didn’t have to worry about taking care of my brothers and sister, finding food, or carrying heavy loads of dirty clothes to the river. I could go to Sunday school and have fun and have no responsibilities. Even when I was a young woman in Guam, I went to church every week to listen to the choir. I still didn’t have faith in God, but I loved listening to the beautiful voices of the choir. It wasn’t until after I married James that I became a true Christian.

For me, when I first came to San Diego I thought, “I have to find a Korean church.” In America, Korean churches have a lot of members who weren’t Christians when they first started coming to church. They’re new immigrants who need to be with other Koreans. They have to go to a Korean church because that’s the only place where they can see other Koreans, make friends, and hear about the news. After they start going to church I think a lot of them start to have faith in God.
For my husband and me it was different. When we started to go to church in San Diego, for us it wasn’t about making friends. We just wanted to go to a Korean church so we could worship God. We went to a Korean church because we wouldn’t be able to understand anything at an American church.

Magnetic North

2006-08-16T22:11:00.000-07:00

i've been meaning to post this since june.

my friend freida k. got me hooked on hip hop duo Magentic North. i've been listening to their album non-stop since i got in (that is until ben jacked it... don't worry, MN, he's just borrowing it until his own copy arrives!). their sound, lyrics, and delivery are beautiful and complex, plus their DJ has bombass voice. my favorite song is called "drift away". listen to it on their myspace or buy their album on their website

resolution

2006-08-16T00:37:00.000-07:00

i'm not one for new year's resolutions, but in light of all the happenings in my life (too many to name), i'm making an August resolution.

I resolve to keep my mind, body, and labor from being exploited by people (including myself)/ institutions that i love and hate.

"i'm not a rock; i'm just a pebble. "

so far, i have no action plan. but seriously, if you see me yielding too much to people, slap me hard.

Yuhl-Sheem (3)

2006-08-14T11:55:00.000-07:00

Since I was a young girl I dreamed of going to America. As I grew older I was surrounded with tantalizing tokens of America. Sometimes our family would get food supplies from the United States. I loved the food—things like Spam and that powdered drink mix—Tang—it was like nothing I had ever eaten. Such ingenuity! I would watch movies and see the convertibles and beautiful scenery and I thought that all of America was that lucky. America seemed so beautiful.

When I was almost 20 years old, my family finally got the chance to leave Korea. We first went to Guam and lived there for about three years. Soon after I arrived in Guam my uncle showed me a picture of James. James was a young man who was looking to come to the U.S. on a work visa. Our families had a mutual friend who was trying to set us up. I looked at his picture and thought that he looked like a nice man but I was not attracted to him. I had no want to get married. Eventually, James came to Guam. He was a very kind man. I could tell from the way he spoke to others and the way he spoke to me. Despite this, I still didn’t want to get married. I wanted to go to school or find a job and become a career woman. I had big dreams; I came to America to make those big dreams come true. Even though I didn’t love him my parents had arranged my marriage so I had no choice. We were married in December of 1978, only after five months of knowing each other. At that time a part of me resented him. I wanted to be free. It wasn’t until five years after we were married that I grew to love my husband. It wasn’t until much later that I became grateful and glad to have him as my husband.

In December 1979 my first daughter, Christen, was born. Two years later we were able to go to the mainland. When we were flying to the mainland I felt like I was truly going to America. To me, Guam wasn’t a real part of America. I wanted to go the mainland. I was so excited.

One of my brothers picked James, Christen, and me up at the LA airport. As we drove home to San Diego I kept staring at the open roads. They were so spacious; it felt so free. We stopped at a rest stop to use the bathroom and I was amazed at how clean and nice the bathrooms were. America truly was like the movies! Riding on those huge roads made me happy. I had no fear at all. Even though I couldn’t speak any English, I didn’t care. My mother and father were already in San Diego; my entire family was already here. I wasn’t scared at all. I just kept thinking about how I was going to see my family. I never wondered what would happen to me because I couldn’t speak English.

LA

2006-08-14T00:49:00.000-07:00

Saturday night Ben and I went to see Blackalicious at the LA Tofu Festival. Some DJ named the Gaslamp Killer opened for them: “Alright guys, this is the Gaslamp Killer comin’ at you. (does a little dance) I wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for my friend!!!! It’s time for a roll call: SHAR-ON! TIM! BRUCE! HEA-THER!! NANCY!!! (shouts out like 10 more names) THANK YOU SO MUCH!!! (does a little dance again) ETH-I-O-P-I-A!!!!!!!!! (crowd cheers) THAT’S MY FAVORITE COUNTRY RIGHT NOW!!!!!” I kid you not, that is actually what he said. Why did the crowd cheer when he made a shout-out to Ethiopia? FOOLIOS!!! LISTEN!!

Plus, there was some fat fool who looked like an epileptic b-boy minus any form of talent was dancing in front of us during that lame ass Dj’s set. He was taking up the space of three people and was still stepping on people’s toes and backing his ass up into Ben! To make things worse, he was getting into people’s faces because they weren’t dancing or bobbing their heads. “THIS IS HIP HOP!!! YOU MUTHAFUCKERS GOTTA FEEL IT!! YOU CAN’T JUST CHILL!!!” Needless to say, this boy disgusted me:
1. the physical space he was taking up was ridiculous. I couldn’t help but feel that the right he felt to the space was partially due to the fact that he is a young, white male, a demographic that dominates hip hop shows (and of course, everything else)/ I was particularly sensitive to this because hip hop shows are definitely a male- space, so as a woman of color, I was not feeling this fool trying to get into my physical space.
2. the ownership he felt over hip hop culture was so apparent. Who the fuck is he to tell people how to act at a hip hop show? I hate fuckers who think there is only one correct way to enjoy music.

Anyway, I spent most of the show trying to rep the Bay, but failed miserably in a crowd of Los Angelenos.

Yuhl Sheem (2)

2006-08-10T06:47:00.000-07:00

This is part of an oral history project I did when I was an undergrad. It is written in my mother's voice.

The day that I was born will never be known. My American documents say I was born on October 16, 1956. My mother told me I was born in 1955. I think I was born in 1953 or 1954. All I know is that I came out of my mother’s body soon after the end of the Korean War. We were a poor family. I remember a lot of the time there wasn't enough food so my mother wouldn't eat. I would try to give her food from my rice bowl but she would say she wasn't hungry. My family wasn’t concerned with recording or remembering dates. They had no big hopes or dreams for me; they were concerned with finding food for our next meal.
Even though we were a poor family, all six of the children still celebrated their baek-il, the Korean celebration of a baby's 100th day. It is an extravagant celebration with lots of good food and family. At the baek-il, three items are put in front of the baby: paper money for wealth, a pencil for intelligence, and a piece of string for long life. Whichever the baby grabs is a sign of its future. I am told I grabbed all three.

Yuhl-Sheem (1)

2006-08-09T20:40:00.000-07:00

Lately my life has been swamped with some very personal responsibilities, resulting in my blog remaining loveless. Sorry blog.

In an attempt to maintain my blog, share some of myself with my readers, and try and become re-inspired to write some shit that has been stewing in my mind for the past few years, I’ve decided to post an oral history I wrote in college. This was a very personal project for me because it was on my mother and because one of my mentors worked very closely with me on it.

Yuhl Sheem- Introduction
The post-1965 wave of Korean immigrants are generally characterized as a college-educated and middle-class group. The American media's representation of the Korean population in this country consistently ignores the complex socioeconomic makeup of that population by defining the whole after looking at a select, economically prosperous portion of that population. New York magazine called Koreans New York City’s “super immigrants” and “most productive community”. The article cites that seven hundred Korean-owned businesses opened in 1994, but failed to mention that another nine hundred closed down. Ironically, the aftermath of the 1992 Los Angeles Uprising rendered these “super immigrants” as deserving of the punishment they suffered. When Koreans in America are a “model minority,” they are entrepreneurial and educated; when they are “foreigners”, they are clannish and selfish.
This paper is based on an oral history of my mother. My mother never finished high school and is a working class woman who immigrated to the United States in the late 1970s. She is neither a model minority nor is she a cliquish woman. She lives on the outskirts of an English-speaking society and sits apart from her middle class Korean immigrant counterparts. This paper explores how she lives her life in America as a woman who lives in a peripheral space of a marginalized group.

Dirty Water

2006-08-06T23:53:00.000-07:00

i've been meaning to post this link for awhile. it's a fascinating series on how our oceans are changing due to pollution. i don't really consider myself an environmentalist but this did cause me to make some small changes in my life and write a letter of appreciation to a few corporations who have made some environmentally-friendly changes.

Righteous Bastard

2006-08-05T23:06:00.000-07:00

today i was in a store when I overheard this woman ask a store worker where she could find a particular item. The worker, a Latino man, said "Go to the pharmacy" in an accented voice. The woman starts working toward the pharmacy (and behind me)and mutters "Get some fucking English under your belt!" *sigh* I turned around and gave her this incredulous look. She stared back at me puzzled. My mind was buzzing. i was so disgusted by her xenophobic words. my stomach was churning. i thought about my parents and all the people that remind me of my parents. i seriously wanted to throw up... I had so much I wanted to say to her, so much that i couldn't straighten out my thoughts. i couldn't get anything out of my mouth except, "Well, maybe you should move out of California." Right. It was neither the most articulate or even pointed statement I could have made, but it was what came out of my mouth*. Anyway, her response was, "I've lived in California my entire life!" Then she quickly scurried away.

I was in fucking OAKLAND. I was so pissed off. I tried to continue my shopping but was so angry that i almost started crying in the store.

anyway, 6 hours later i'm still thinking about this fucking woman and my stupid ass response. what do you do in that angry moment? what can you really say? i know i could have said something far more clever or thought provoking than " Maybe you should move out of California" but even then, what would i have achieved? there is nothing i could have said in the passing moment to make that woman rethink her racist comment. what's the point in even saying something in that situation?

________
*admittedly, a part of me was trying to gauge if this woman would try and start a physical fight with me or would just use words. she was kinda big. i'm kinda small.

2006-07-31T16:01:00.000-07:00

I called 4 APA/ Korean American community health agencies in Oakland today looking for Korean-language literature on depression and suicide. Only one of these spots has literature. Unfortunately, they won't share it unless the person who needs the info makes an appointment, does an intake, and is serviced. :( What a sad indication of their funding! None of these other places were able to help me out. If you know of a Korean-language website that has accurate information on depression, please let me know.

Addiction

2006-07-29T20:18:00.000-07:00

A week ago I decided it was time for our relationship to end. Eight days later, I feel like shit.

As each day passes, it is harder and harder to wake up without you. Going to work every morning without the taste of you on my lips is hell. I won't lie, nothing can replace you. I try to satisfy myself with poor substitutes. My body and mind has shut down. It's so hard staying strong when I know that I can have you any time of the day. I must keep reminding myself that you are not for me. I was so dependent on you-- needing you at least once a day, sometimes I was so bad that I demanded you four times a day. *sigh* I swear to you Coffee, if I can hold out for another week, I know I will be through with you.

J-5

2006-07-23T15:23:00.000-07:00

Last night I went to see X-Clan and Jurassic 5 at the Fillmore. The audience was the whitest audience I have ever seen at a hip hop show. Every show I have been to white folks have been probably been the majority. Last night, however, the place was lily white.

When X-Clan opened, I could not stop looking at the audience. There were couples doing some serious bumping and grinding to songs like “Raise the Flag” and “Xodus” What must it be like to be militant and Afrocentric and perform to an audience with only a sprinkling of black folks? How/ Does the performance change when your audience changes?

Anyways, here are some other, non-related comments about the show:
-I love Chali 2na
-I hate when people can’t control their highs in public places
-I saw this nasty couple who were literally digging their fingers into each other’s butt cracks
-I love my poster

Seaside, Ca

2006-07-23T14:28:00.000-07:00

Sometimes, when I leave my Bay Area bubble the world slows down. It’s like being a hunted animal in the wild. My hair pricks up, my senses heighten, and I get on edge. Okay, that might be a little dramatic but that is similar to how I tend to feel.

Friday, on my way to Monterey, I made a pit-stop in Seaside, California. We were tired and hungry and ended up stopping at a McDonald’s for a quick bite. First mistake? Stopping in a place called Seaside. Second mistake? Stopping at a McDonald’s in Seaside. Like I said, when I end up at a place outside the Bay, specifically a place with an obvious lack of color, I get a little sensitive.

Now let me be clear. When I saw I get sensitive I mean that I often interpret too long looks, off-color comments, etc as racist. But this also means that I get all anthropological and shit as well. I often find myself observing white folks in predominantly white areas and find some bizarre behavior—almost like I’m watching TV.

For example, at the Seaside McDonald’s there was this middle-aged lady w/ two kids who were probably 7 or 8 years old. The lady was wearing a purple tie-dyed tank top with no bra. Now this may sound sexist, but I’m going to say it anyways: Sometimes women just need to wear bras. Anyways, it was so interesting. I found myself observing this small family. The mom was super-rude and demanding to the McDonald’s worker. One of the kids was a total brat, demanding change to put in the McDonald’s charity box for children. When the mom wouldn’t give him change, he threw a tantrum. He held onto the nailed-down box, shook his body like he was epileptic, and whined, “I WAAAANTTTTT CHAAAANGE NOW!” After his whining made no difference, he turned to his mom and asked, “Who are these kids anyways? And why do they need change?” That was pretty funny.

After we got our food, my sister and I sat down to eat and tried to make small talk. I say tried because we kept getting distracted by the people around us and exchanging “WTF?” looks. I turned my head and there is a father and son. The father definitely could be a NASCAR fan. Because my senses get heightened in this type of area I could clearly hear him chew his food. He devoured his food. All other noises ceased with the exception of his chewing and slurping. I turned my head and saw this elderly couple. They were eating S-L-O-W-L-Y… I couldn’t tell if my mind had slowed down their actions or if they were actually moving that slowly…

It’s kind of funny that I do this, because I KNOW some white folks do that to my family as well. “Why the hell are those Chinese people jabbering so loudly?” “How do you eat, what is called? KEEEEM-CHEEEE? You know that spicy stuff? It smells so bad!” It’s amusing to be on the other end.

Depression

2006-07-19T22:19:00.000-07:00

I pray for strength, patience, diligence, love, compassion and wisdom.

Again.

“Don’t worry, I won’t kill myself; I couldn’t do that to my family and my friends… I wouldn’t mind if something happened to me though.”

To hear how someone you love has over and over again contemplated death at her own hands is painful. To know the detailed ways that she has contemplated doing so numbs the mind and the heart.

In the past year and a half severe depression has affected someone I love and as affected myself. For the most part my depression has passed. I remember those mornings after taking a sleeping pill to sedate myself. I did not want to live, but I did not want to kill myself. I didn’t contemplate taking all my pills or walking over to the bridge. I just wanted to sleep and never wake up. Those mornings were wretched. I felt swallowed by bed, my limbs and head felt like they had melted into my mattress. My entire face felt sore like I had been punched in the face the night before. I remember thinking that I was going to die.

Those were my worst moments. I had only a few of those. My work and school suffered a little bit but for the most part I was still able to focus. I actually welcomed the distraction of my students and my books. My depression was not debilitating and was treated by a few months of therapy. I’ve had a few bad days since the fall, but they are caused by severely stressful situations. My bad days do not come unannounced.

Yesterday was a bad day for someone I love. Her depression has been treated by drugs and therapy. Her depression prevents her from working or going to school. Her depression leads to suicidal thoughts and moments of feeling like a “ghost”. I don’t know what it’s like to have those kind of bad days.

A year and a half ago when she told me she thought about killing herself I cried everyday. We fought because she didn’t understand why I cried when she talked about killing herself. She just wanted me to listen, not react. Today, we have a better understanding of each other but it does not make it easier when she tells me she often thinks of the bridge-- last year it was car accidents and sleeping pills.

Lord, thank you for giving herself enough will to live to check herself in.

Some points on APAs and Depression/ Suicide
-Asian American women 15-24 and Asian Americans over 65 have the highest suicide rate of any ethnic group (CDC 2001).

-Mental health issues and its complexities in the Asian American community are intricately linked to issues of cultural tension, immigration, access to resources, language, and native cultural values. These attributes not only affect the high rate of depression and suicide rates amonn APAs but also the fact that APAs are less likely than whites to seek help for mental health problems (NLAAS, 2003). When help is sought, treatment is also complicated by cultural disconnects. (My therapist made many wonderful suggestions that were horribly culturally insensitive. Sometimes I would have to laugh at her suggestions.) Obviously, some of these issues may concern particular generations in a different manner.

-Second generation APAs are more likely than APA immigrants to have emotional disorders (not really quite sure how reliable that is though b/c I also think that there is a higher likelihood of underreporting for immigrants).

-The National Asian Women’s Health Organization (NAWHO) reports that “intimate partner violence is believed to be the single most important precipitant for female suicide attempts in the country.” Additionally, NAWHO found that low self-esteem, self-confidence, and a sense of control over one’s life puts women at risk of depression.

- Depression is real. It is not merely the inability to cope with stress or hardship. It is not a character flaw, an indication of weakness or lack of willpower. It is not shameful.

claim that shit

2006-07-18T00:06:00.000-07:00

this summer is horrible. i am having a lot of trouble with my students. i'm trying to think of a pep-talk aka "education has been and continues to be systematically witheld from people of color so you better understand that you need to go and CLAIM your fucking education b/c nobody is going to hand that to you" w/out supporting the myth of meritocracy... plus i want them to understand what i mean by "claiming" their education and what i mean by "education" sigh.. this gets so complicated. tomorrow we're supposed to talk to our students about our college experience ("ask me about my alma mater day") but i think i'm going to talk about why i care that they go to college and why i do the work that i do.

failing my students

2006-07-06T22:37:00.000-07:00

Frustration. That was my key word for today.

Some of my students are doing very well in our summer program and others… well not so much. I feel like I am hitting a wall with some of my students. Today i felt myself getting very short with some of them and not uplifting them.

About a third of my students are on the brink of failing one or more classes. Sometimes it is because they lack the skills-- it’s very difficult to try and make up for 10 years of poor education in 6 weeks. Other times it is because they lack resources. This year we are trying out Berkeley’s online community (similar to blackboard). Some of them do not have a computer, printer, or internet. BUT this is not a good excuse. They are on campus 5 days a week for 5 hours a day. Our office is always open and staffed, internet is on campus, and I bring my laptop to homeroom so students can type or use the internet. Sometimes they lack time. They work in the morning before coming to class and go to practice after class so they can’t utilize office hours to the fullest extent. Other times they just don’t care. They have the resources and time at the very least but still don’t post their questions online. They don’t read directions and miss a point by not initialing their math quiz. They have an hour for lunch but don’t go to office hours. But I don’t think they totally don’t care. They still come everyday to the program. Something is missing.

One thought is that they have difficulty transferring knowledge. The geometry class can use old quizzes, notes, and homework on their daily quizzes. My students have pretty decent homework grades. They show their work etc. However, they don’t seem to know HOW to refer to their notes and find a similar problem and utilize the same method for their quiz problem. I know that this is only one small element of a larger issue.

So yes, one frustration is my students. The other? The staff!

Every week the advisors (like me) get a weekly progress report on the status of the students. Our role as advisors is to facilitate tutoring, provide college-advising workshops, and share weekly progress reports with our students. Although this can be a great support network for students, it can also backfire. Some of our instructors seem to think that having advisors share weekly progress reports means that they (the instructors) don’t need to have conversations w/ the students regarding progress, effort, attitude, etc. It doesn’t really help if I tell students that their teacher said XYZ about them when the teacher has never talked about the issue with the students. When I ask teachers to talk to the student before I check in with the student, they often agree but fail to follow up.

So, when I sit in our weekly staff meetings and see the frustration building among teachers a part of me is not sympathetic, esp with those who do not follow-up with students. To be fair, some teachers do work with the students and they still fall behind. Even then, older teachers talk about how in previous years students were much stronger. I made it pretty damn clear who my students are, what their regular school is like. I KNOW my students are the ones who are struggling the most. Going to school in Richmond is no joke. It is under-resourced, overshadowed by Oakland USD, and overlooked. I did not hide that fact from anyone. This school is no joke. Some of the teachers do not assign homework b/c they believe the students won’t do it.

Our program’s student population is changing. Structurally we need to change our program to address the population or else we will fail our students. I have many ideas on this but know none of them will be implemented… I hate the politics of education.

As I said in the beginning I feel like i'm failing my students. At the end of my day I asked myself, Who am I giving up on? I wrote down their names, wrote 3 encouraging actions they have taken to remind myself (and also them) of some indication that they care to be at our program. Students, I am recommitting myself to you.

my new toy

2006-06-27T19:06:00.000-07:00

i'm blogging from my new 13" mac book! frivolous purchase? i'm not so sure. previously i was using a powerbook that belonged to my work. my old imac has been superslow (it's almost 5 years old) so i moved all my files onto my powerbook and use it as my primary computer. at first i was excited cuz i had this sleek powerbook at my disposal. now i realize, however, that it meant all my personal files and work files were always with me. being the anal person i am, this meant i was working on my work at home all the time! my 13' widescreen macbook is my first attempt at trying to leave work at work... (i hope it works!)

brief review (i really don't know much about computers): so far i like my machine (the 30 minutes i've been on it). i definitely am still getting used the keyboard (the buttons are spaced out a little bit) and don't like that the keyboard is not lighted like my powerbook. i definitely like that the casing is not aluminum. the aluminum looks sleek and sexy but honestly, my powerbook has been dropped several times and is dented all over the place). so i'll settle for the white plastic casing. i'm not going to lie. i was tempted to purchase the macbook PRO for the lighted keyboard and the hot aluminum but i'm not about to shell out 400 bucks for that! the mac book also does not have a latch as a opening which is awesome! i don't like that the ac adapter has changed from the ibook/ powerbook. this will make it very difficult to borrow other mac user's ac adapters. BUT what is nice about the charger is that there it comes with an extension so you can have the option to make it long, but don't have to carry it around w you all the time. also, the power cord is magnetic, so it snaps right into place!

after i transfer ALL my files from my powerbook to my macbook via firewire (i LOVE firewire!) and use this sucker a bit more, i will probably write a new review (although it will be just as inarticulate and un-techy as the above!).

lastly, this was an awesome deal! after i bought it i wondered if i just bought the computer cuz the salesman was fine. the i realized that i was thinking of buying it for 20 minutes before we entered the store anyway. it was really a sweet deal. it's $1099 plus a free ipod nano ($179- we actually went to the apple store specifically to buy a nano) plus a $50 educator discount, plus a free $100 printer! i gave the nano to my sister (cuz she was going to buy one anyway). also, you can get the Office package for educators/ students at a savings of $50 (i'm getting my office installed from work though)... i was also checking out the new ipods cuz mine is 4 years old and only has 4 hours of battery life, but this should suffice for now!

the best students ever!

2006-06-22T23:17:00.000-07:00

This summer I’m in the advisor for 25 of the 200 students in our summer program. I facilitate a “homeroom” that has tutoring (w/ 3 tutors) and a series of workshops to help students build a college resource binder and portfolio. I’m trying to utilize something called “bspace”, which is Berkeley’s version of blackboard. I love bspace. I’ve set up a resources page that has financial aid links, college links, and “cool stuff” which has links to youth programs in the Bay Area. There’s a wiki feature so we can make a college-wiki (COOL!). Of course, there’s also a discussion feature. I’m having my students log onto our bspace site at least twice a week for the discussion/ posting homework. Turns out 5 of my 25 students don’t have internet or email. I’ve resolved the problem by bringing my laptop to homeroom so they can log on during homeroom. Students can also use the computers on campus or at our office. Access is one thing, literacy is another. It took one of my students 2 minutes to properly type in the URL, then another 5 minutes to type in his 1 sentence response to my discussion question. I actually left in the middle of his 5 minutes, returned to find another student typing for him! I made him delete his answer and retype it.

I felt kind of harsh making him start over. I’m stuck between wanting to push him to be comfortable w/ computers (he’s about to start 11th grade) but also being sympathetic and understanding of his situation (which is def reflective of his family’s income and his school). I’m really scared of alienating him and the other students by using bspace but feel that part of helping them prepare for college is having them use the internet. I don’t know. I promised him that he would be pro by the end of the 6 weeks and hope to meet that promise.

In general, my students are awesome (not only cuz they show me mad love). My group is interesting in that all of the students in my homeroom are either from Richmond High or De Anza High, two schools in the same district w/ API 1s. The De Anza kids are all in leadership, honors classes, and mostly east Asian. They’re very confident. The Richmond kids are extremely thoughtful, I see inklings of leaderships, are struggling academically and mostly Latino@ and south east Asian.

Although many of the RHS are going to struggle academically this summer, I have to say I am in love w/ my Richmond students. Here is why: Every Thursday afternoon students go to their “elective”. This year we have an iMovie elective, Youth Radio, slam poetry, Salsa Dancing, Community and Youth Activism, the history of R & B, Surrealism, etc. Cool classes right? Students who scored poorly on their diagnostic tests were recommended not to take an elective but go to Skills Lab instead (basically, 1-on-1 tutoring for a 2-hour block once a week). Our of 200 students, 30 are in skills lab. Out of the 30 students in skills lab, 8 are from Richmond (we have kids from about 20 schools). These kids were EXCITED and RELIEVED to find out they were going to do skills lab instead of “fun” electives. They were like, “I’m so glad. I know I need help with my writing/ math.” How could you not be in love w/ students like that?

yuri k.

2006-06-22T18:10:00.000-07:00

It’s been a while since I’ve posted. I feel like the past week has flown by in the blink of an eye.

Saturday we had our parent/ student orientation for our 6 week summer program. 200 kids plus their parents/ guardians/ siblings, plus 50+ summer staff. A while back, I wrote about meeting Yuri Kochiyama through my friend Aaron. Because of that meeting I was able to get Yuri to be our keynote speaker! Although I was very excited, I was also very scared. I had to introduce Yuri (scary b/c, well… she’s Yuri); I had to introduce her in front of 500 people (scary b/c I’m good at speaking to large groups on the fly, but not good speaking to large groups w/ prepared material); I’ve had a crazy cough for the last week (scary b/c I didn’t want to get into a coughing fit); and I wasn’t too sure what Yuri was going to talk about (scary b/c I work for a big university). Our keynote speakers have traditionally been professors or faculty and nobody I work w/ knew who Yuri was in the first place (after they read her bio, most people were excited). Anyway, I talked w/ Yuri probably once a week for the last month setting this up. I gave her a topic: the importance of education. I let her interpret this however she wanted. Two days before she went through her notes w/ me and everything sounded inspirational and relevant. On the day of she basically said everything she told me she was going to say. She talked about seeking truth, thinking critically, working together, returning to your community, learning from everyone, etc etc. Everything she said she was going to talk and also linked it to the war in Iraq and the Vietnam war. She talked war for about 15 minutes. Now this was unexpected. Call me a pansy, but I was little worried. Our program is in such a precarious position. We have no funding for next year; we are expected to boost the number of black students in our program w/out directly targeting black students (the outcome of working in educational outreach post-affirmative action); we had to turn away 200 students for our summer program and have a bunch of angry parents; and we also have some incompetent leaders who won’t stand up for our program in our unit, in the university, or in the UC system. So yeah… I was a little bit nervous.

BUT here is the beauty of a keynote speaker. You can’t ask someone to come speak and coach her/him. You can’t cut them off, your speaker is your guest. So then I could relax.

A beautiful moment? Yuri was talking about Helen Keller’s teacher Anne Sullivan but couldn’t remember her name. One of the parents yelled out “Anne Sullivan!” Yuri says, “Yes! Annie Sullivan! Thank you! What is your name? “ “My name is Daisy Bates—“ In unison Daisy and Yuri say, “You were/ I was named after civil rights activist Daisy Bates from Arkansas!” That was pretty cool… Well, who am I kidding? It was awesome to have Yuri come out and speak to our families.

In the end, there were some disgruntled parents (“Is everything in this program so political?” Sadly, no.) But overwhelmingly parents, staff, and students were touched by Yuri’s words.

2006-06-13T22:38:00.000-07:00

i'm so happy! my lovely cynthia will be back in the Bay in August!!!! i was just talking about your distinguished-Racial Formation- Asian Am Prof crush the other day! girl, are you looking for a job? we have 2 openings....

on the other hand, one of my friends the other day reminded me of my f-ed up ex and i got all mad... sigh... i keep myspace stalking him and am tempted to send crazy messages to all his friends and let them know he is a pathological liar...

2006-06-12T16:13:00.000-07:00

okay, i've been tagged by Gar (i guess).
(The rules: list five songs that you are currently loving. it doesn't matter what genre they are from, whether they have words, or even if they're any good, but they must be songs you're really enjoying right now. post these instructions, the artists, and the songs in your blog, then "tag" five other bloggers/friends to see what they're listening to.) i'm going to modify this by listing 5 albums i'm currently loving:

Soul Sides: Vol 1: Various Artists, compiled by O-Dub (i can't believe i used to have a crush on him when he was my instructor...)

Sea Change: Beck (my favorite breakup album)

Blazing Arrow: Blackalicious (can't stop listening... love Aural Pleasures)

Infinite Possiblities: Amel Larrieux (the first time i heard her was in "Glitches" w/ the Roots. I can listen to her over and over and OVER again.)

Confessions: Usher (tee hee! (?))

i don't own any new music. i'm in dire need for new stuff, but kind of like listening to the same shit everyday.

2006-06-11T01:51:00.000-07:00

just came back from the roots show at the grand... i'm a little disappointed. i really like blackalicious but thought their performance was average compared to what i've seen before. the roots were dope... talib was dope... unfortunately, the acoustics at the grand are atrocious. :( i'm never going to see a show at the grand again!

here are some other random things:
-it was sponsored by Kools cigarettes. BOO!!! there were women walking around in lime green Kools dresses w/ old skool ciggie trays giving out free packs to people who traded in an email address. the emcee was wearing a ralph lauren polo shirt that was the same lime green as the Kools dresses! argh. so irritating.
-tall ass white folks were everywhere. my five foot one inch frame doesn't cut it when it comes to most things. i get stressed out going to the movies late, going to shows, going to lectures, etc b/c i'm so damn short. when you barely clear 5 feet, everyone is tall to you. so the people that average people think are tall are like giants to me. anyway, i was trying to be considerate to the person in front of me by leaving a small gap in front, but that gap kept getting filled by someone really tall. it was so rude! at one point, this HUGE dude, like 6 and a half feet tall stood in front of me to my left. he was massive. his limbs were SO long. he was like some giant bald eagle or something. it was really awkward, cuz he was swinging his arms and i was scared that his elbow would hit me in the eye. i got superscared when he started clapping his hands in the air. he would swing his arms almost perpendicular to his body, practically swiping at my nose! i was totally irritated by him and asked him to chill out a bit w/ his arms. after about 20 minutes he ended up leaving. then i felt a bit guilty cuz he must know how tall he is and it's prolly just as uncomfortable for him as it was for me (but at least he can see everything!) 3 minutes after he left his space some tall ass woman (well she was like 5"10 came to the front right of me. she kept backing into me, totally trying to push me backward. i just pushed her forward. we silently battled it out for awhile, but i lost when she put her arms up to dance. her pits were totally in my face. they were hairy which i prolly wouldn't mind but also sweaty. eh. i hate being short.

harrassment

2006-06-07T21:06:00.000-07:00

Today I was harassed. Again.

I won’t go into the details of today, and actually in comparison to other things that have happened to me, this is probably an average form of harassment. Regardless, I feel compelled to write about this.

As a middle-class woman who has a roof over her head*, the degree of harassment I experience most likely pales in comparison to what many other women experience. Despite this, the powerlessness I feel when I am harassed does not change. It suffocates me, arrests me, and infuriates me.

Every time I share these experiences, I am told, “This always happens to you” or “You’re the only person I know who goes through this.”* I’m not sure why this is. I don’t dress sexy (of course even if I did, I STILL shouldn’t have to deal w/ this shit), stare at men and slowly lick my lips, or “accidentally” drop my wallet and bend over in an obscene fashion. Fuck, I’m not even hot. If anything, I’m sort of Hello Kitty-cute. People even tell me I remind them of cartoon characters or that I look like I’m in 8th grade. So, WTF? Sorry, that was a rant.

I remember the first time I was sexually harassed. I was four. The next significant time was when I was 12. Then I had several experiences in college. When I was 4 and when I was 12, I didn’t feel powerless. Just confused and embarrassed. It was when I hit college that I started to feel stripped and lost. In college I had two experiences that I would consider to be pretty major forms of harassment. In between those “big” incidents, I’ve had kind of the run-of-the-mill experiences. Men who were too aggressive in trying to get my number, piercing looks, catcalls on my way to work, innuendo at work, etc. No matter what happened, I felt the same the way. I don’t know how to take back my power.

Because of my family history, I grew up with a critical class-consciousness. Class was primarily on my mind. Class trumped gender; class trumped race. When I started college, however, I became very aware of the intersecting nature of my sexuality, my gender, and my race. I think this is partly why I am so sensitive now. When things happen to me, I may or may not reflect and connect it to my race, class, gender, etc and examine the intricacies in the exchange. Regardless, there is always this initial gut feeling. I get pulled out of my relatively privileged life, my bubble, and get reminded that to mostly everyone else, I am “just” a woman of color.

_______________________________
* my former best friend actually had the nerve to say that it was Karma. That fucker, blaming the victim!

Kimchi Chigae

2006-05-29T20:55:00.000-07:00

I’ve decided to post some of my Korean recipes b/c well… there are few good Korean recipes online!

When I moved out of my parents’ house 6 years ago and craved Korean food I was very sad. Korean restaurants are expensive and the recipe’s I found in the internet all sounded weird—not like my mom’s food. It was an uphill battle to get her to share recipes w/ me. She doesn’t measure anything, so I always had to guess what she meant by “a little” or “a lot”. She didn’t want me to cook b/c she started so young and feels like she has spent her life cooking. She says there’s plenty of time for me to learn. ALSO, I think she likes knowing that I still need her.

ANYWAY, I’m sharing some of my recipes. These are not my mom’s recipes, cuz my food is pretty good but never is as tasty as her’s. She still makes all her own kimchi (a billion different types), brings the dish that first disappears at church potlucks and family celebrations, and just in general is an AMAZING cook. I’m going to mainly post Korean recipes but will occasionally post other recipes as well (including cookies! YUM!) So, here is my first recipe post:

Kimchi Chigae (Kimchi Stew)
Tastes: spicy (duh), garlicky, and a tad bit sweet
Difficulty level: EASY*

Ingredients (the measurements may be off by a little b/c I’m my mother’s daughter and don’t measure unless it comes to baking ):
2 C water
1.5 T sogogi dashi dah ( Korean beef bouillon)
1 T Olive Oil
1 C Kimchi w/ the juices (you need the napa cabbage kind)
1/2 package of tofu (soft or medium)- cut into 1-inch cubes
1 Green onion, chopped into 1-inch pieces
6 oz stew beef cut into half-inch cubes

Directions:
In a medium pot heat up the olive oil. W/ the stove on medium heat, add in the kimchi and stew beef and saute until the kimchi leaves turn almost translucent (abt 5 minutes). Add the water to the pot, cover, bring to boil. Add in sogogi dashi dah; stir; taste. At this point you can add in more kimchi juice or dashi dah to adjust to your liking. Add the green onion and tofu, bring to boil once more. EAT!!!!! (Don’t be greedy and burn your tongue like I sometimes do).

Variations: Until recently I’ve been a relatively broke and extremely busy student. This means my kimchi chigae usually is just the water, oil, dashi, and kimchi. If I’m lucky I put in the tofu.

Beef: You can leave out the meat entirely or substitute SPAM (sounds good, but I like my SPAM fried). I’ve also heard people say they use canned tuna, but that’s a bit weird to me.

Sogoi Dashi Dah: You can probably substitute regular beef bouillon or beef stock. I’ve never done this, but imagine it to be okay. OR you can just go to the Korean market and buy some. Sogogi dashi dah is the base for all of my soups and a minor but important ingredient in a lot of my panchan recipes as well.

Too lazy to make rice? Add vermicelli noodles (like the kind in jap chae) or tuk/ rice ovalettes to your kimchi chigae for some starchy goodness!

*hmm, actually, almost everything I post will be spicy, garlicky, and easy to make (my top 3 qualities in a food)

Korean Food Recipes

2006-05-28T01:42:00.000-07:00

Among the non-Asian folks I know, Korean food gets no love (unless it's from a guy who loves Koreans). Even though the weather is warming up in Oakland, I have been craving spicy Korean food, especially soups and stews. So, check back for an occassional post w/ some of my favorite recipes. Any Korean who has called their mom for a recipe knows that everything is measured by "a little", "a lot", "some", or "until it tastes right". This is also how I measure things. I'm going to try my hardest to avoid this when I wrtie my recipes. Here are some recipes I'll be posting:

Soon Dubu (Soft Tofu Stew)
Kimchi Chigae (Kimchi Stew)
Deng Jang Chigae (Korean Bean Paste Stew; like miso but much stronger and spicy!)
Yukae Jang (Spicy Beef Stew)
Chicken Soup (my momma’s recipe)
Mi Yuk Guk (Seaweed Soup)
Tuk Guk (Rice cake soup)
Tukbooki (spicy rice cake)
Jajang Myun (black bean noodles)
Mandoo (Korean Dumpling)
and some simple panchan recipes as well

BTW, my sister and I are boycotting Koryo BBQ in Oakland. I'm not a huge fan of Korean BBQ so I prefer Sahn Maru ( 4315 Telegraph Ave. (at 43rd. St.)) which is right across the street from Koryo. Sahn Maru has BBQ but does not have table top grilling. If you're in the mood for non-BBQed Korean food, w/ YUMMY panchan, and EXCELLENT service, make your way over. Y

2006-05-26T20:14:00.000-07:00

Due to unforeseen circumstances, I’ve been out of the blogging world for while. But now I’m back.

Since I turned in my thesis, I’ve been feeling pretty depressed. I’ve had thesis tunnel vision for a few months, which means I haven’t taken care of myself in many ways—mostly psychologically and physically. I feel like I’ve put on “thesis weight”. Sitting, typing, and eating out are not conducive to maintaining a fit lifestyle. Last week, I had a breakdown in my car. I felt disgusted w/ myself, repulsed even, all because of this damned thesis weight. I have never been filled w/ so much self-hate; it felt almost poisonous.

Some people know that my family is CRAZY about standards of beauty. These pressures come from both the women eand the men. In the past 10 years or so, I’ve really begun to notice it b/c I have many young female cousins. As young as the age of 4, the plump girls are critiqued by their parents, uncles, and aunts. I remember being super-body conscious at the age as well! I was tormented about my weight, admonished for hitting puberty early, yelled at for sitting in the sun and getting dark, and of course, bothered about not having the “double eyelid”.*

It wasn’t until I left for college that I realized how much better I felt about myself when I was away from most of my family. Sad, huh? I’ve definitely had moments of feeling gross, unattractive, etc but overall, I ended up with a pretty healthy body-image and avoided eating disorders. I feel pretty proud that I have been able to resist what my family, what Korean culture, what American culture has told me about my body and my worth. Thus, my mental breakdown in my car started w/ tears over my looks but ended up mixing w/ anguish over feeling that I had been defeated—that my will had been broken. It was extremely saddening.**

Lately, I’ve been feeling a bit better. Now that I’m done w/ school and only have work to worry about I have time for the gym, which is exciting. I think I will get back into shape and have more energy for a crazy summer w/ 200 high school kids, Also, I did realize this: People have told me I am beautiful, attractive, or even sexy. Although, I’m always a bit surprised when I hear this (and embarrassed b/c I don’t know how to accept compliments (Asian much?)), it is encouraging. Aside from being a small boost in self-esteem, it is a realization that I am one among many people who seek to or have redefined beauty in their minds. This is heartening

* my uncles actually used to chase me around my grandmother’s house w/ a pencil. If you have a single-fold eyelid and stick a pencil in the outer corner of your eyelid, it makes a temporary double-fold.) this story is actually kind of funny. I have many stories that are very sad and humiliating, especially for a young girl.

**Later that day, I got a request from a friend to call into her radio show to talk about having a positive body-image. That request made me feel even worse.

2006-05-15T19:36:00.000-07:00

today i finished 19 consecutive years of schooling. i turned in my masters thesis today and don't really know how to feel except that i should have reread it once more. my students are very excited for me and keep saying, "I'm going to call you Master Amy from now on." There's so many things wrong w/ that! anyway, it's cool that i have a line on my resume that says, "Masters of Arts in Education with a concentration in Equity and Social Justice" kick ass!

2006-05-14T00:10:00.000-07:00

Tbanks to my friend Aaron, I had the honor of meeting Yuri Kochiyama. I’ve heard Yuri speak several times at large events but have never actually met her. Yuri came to visit Aaron’s first grade class so Aaron and I picked her up, stayed with her before her classroom visit, and then did a brief interview. For some reason, I feel funny blogging about meeting Yuri so I’m going to leave this at a few comments:

-Yuri asked me where I was from and I told her I grew up in San Diego. Usually when I tell people I’m from San Diego people respond, “San Diego is so beautiful!” or something similar. Yuri’s response? “Isn’t San Diego very racist?” Classic.

-Yuri’s range is amazing. She straight up asked a group of administrators and parents, “Don’t the students wonder why there are no black students here?” (the school is in the Oakland hills). When the students asked her “What can we do to help people?” She told the students they can ask someone who is carrying a lot of bundles if she/ he needs help or to offer help to someone who falls down on the playground. One parent asked her, “Has it ever been scary or hard for you to do the right thing?” Yuri basically told the students even if it was scary she was usually with a group of people and that made things better. She encouraged the students to work together when they think something needs to be changed. Then she said, “Just try not to get arrested. Hopefully, whoever the leader is will know about your rights.”

-The students wanted to know who Yuri considered to be a shero/ hero. Yuri said that Anne Sullivan was someone she really respected because of her patience. That struck me.

-Aaron’s class gave Yuri a teddy bear to add to her teddy bear collection. Yuri loves teddy bears and seemed to like this one in particular. After the class visit we had a chance to do a brief interview. To watch bad-ass Yuri hug a multi-colored teddy bear while speaking about Malcolm X was… I don’t even have a word. But it was good.

-I’m so excited that she has agreed to be the keynote speaker for our summer program. Our program needs this. Yeah, Aaron, I know I owe you.

Finally, Yuri’s love for people and commitment for social justice is apparent. She is such a loving and sincere woman.

2006-05-14T00:04:00.000-07:00

Marie’s comment on my last blog post:
“I think a problem that a lot of multi-generation white Americans face is that they've lost their own culture/heritage/community. Whenever I try to claim, say, Italian (five generations back to the boat), my lovely British fiancé basically tells me to shut up because I'm American and that's the end of it. After all those years of assimilation, we whities have lost something valuable in exchange for fitting in. Those little white kids probably got excited at the opportunity to recognize where their own ancestors came from - however uneducated they may be on what their great-great-grandparents' culture actually is. I'm guessing they have no community to identify with other than the WASP community, which, let's face it, is pretty boring. Then again, they're also like six.”

I have many thoughts on this but b/c i'm trying to finish my thesis, here are some preliminary and rushed thoughts:
"my lovely British fiancé basically tells me to shut up because I'm American and that's the end of it. "
I think there is a globally powerful notion of “American”.
Even when children of immigrants or immigrants who have lived in the U.S. for 20+ years go visit their home country, this happens (at least I know, especially in Asian countries). I know Korean Americans who grew up in predominantly Korean American communities, speak flawless Korean, go to Korea and try to act “Korean” (whatever that means) and still get outed as an American. It can be pretty devastating to have two countries tell you, “Go back to where you came from.”

“Those little white kids probably got excited at the opportunity to recognize where their own ancestors came from - however uneducated they may be on what their great-great-grandparents' culture actually is”
I’m not so sure that knowing a lot about your ancestral culture has a whole lot to do w/ being a ______ American. I try very, very hard not to dismiss people as “white-washed” b/c they don’t know a lot about their ancestral history or the history of their people in the U.S. As someone who only found 6 lines about Korea in her ENTIRE K-12 education and ZERO lines about Korean American history or Asian American history, I am pretty sympathetic. That said, that doesn’t mean that sometimes I don’t meet folks and think, “You need to go ask your parents or read a book.” Some of what I do think matters in identity politics is the following (piggy back off of Peggy McIntosh):

Do you primarily identify yourself as Korean/ Arab/ Italian/ German/ etc American or an American?

When there is an international situation or national situation involving the country of your ancestors in what ways are you as a Korean/ Arab,/ Italian/ French/ whatever American affected? Examples range from WWII & Japanese Internment; 9/11& illegal detainment of Arab-Americans,/ racial profiling, illegal campaign contributions from China and donor investigations into Chinese Americans, and just generally stupid questions like, “So tell me about the nuclear weapons in North Korea, do you think they really exist?”

In general, is your loyalty to the U.S. ever questioned b/c of the way you physical racial/ ethnic attributes?

When you write/ direct/ create any form of art, are you pretty sure your ancestral heritage will be mentioned in any reviews? Are people from your ethnic community going to evaluate you on whether or not you are accurately representing them?

Do people want to know when you last visited the country of your ancestors or ask if/ expect you to speak that language?

I think those questions can clarify what it really means to claim a hyphenated identity (even though I don’t hyphenate Asian American), especially in terms of social and political repercussions. Basically, it is frustrating to hear people claim ethnic American identities when it is something they can CHOOSE to reveal and even then it doesn’t change much about their position in society.

“I'm guessing they have no community to identify with other than the WASP community, which, let's face it, is pretty boring.”
Renato Rosaldo writes about the importance of visibilizing and naming white American culture. I have often heard my white students and my white colleagues talk about feeling left out of “multicultural days”. Well, my obvious response was, Now you know how we feel year-round! J/k… kinda…* Basically, he problemitizes the idea of white Americans feeling cultureless. Rosaldo critiques the anthropologic value in studying the Other (particularly in search of “pure” culture). He highlights the importance of understanding the existence, behaviors, and practices of white American culture. I’ve only read excerpts of Rosaldo but have really enjoyed his arguments. I have also seen many books on similar topics at Cody’s which I hope to read this summer.

“Then again, they're also like six.” Yup. Even with high school students or adults topics like this can be difficult to articulate and difficult to understand. sigh

* anyway, these days are problematic also for the students it is supposed to uplift. it usually is only cool to bring cultural food that would be the least visually unusual and has a neutral and mild taste or smell, basically letting me know that you can be a little bit ethnic, but not TOO ethnic.

2006-05-10T00:08:00.000-07:00

my friend aaron is doing some awesome things w/ his 1st graders. Aaron's bringing activist Yuri Kochiyama to speak to his 1st graders this week! I'm so excited b/c I get to go too! tight. anyway, i will blog about that once it happens. B/c i work with HS students i miss out on many of the darling things little ones do/ say. To prep his students for Yuri, Aaron paired the kids and had them write 2-3 questions they have for her. Tonight we looked through the questions in preparation for tomorrow's class. There were the usual ones: What is your favorite color? Some good questions: How is in your community? Why do you help people? How did you help kids get street lights? And then some laugh out loud questions: How did you save the day? What is your favorite dinosaur? I LOVE the dinosaur question!

On another note, Aaron has been doing a lot of teaching about "community" w/ his kids. He gave examples of what different communities look like, one example was his mixed race heritage (JA, Irish, etc etc). All the students of color remained quiet while the white kids in his class got excited and claimed "I'm Irish and French" "I'm 100% European. That is my community. " AND "The Pilgrims are my community"". Man, how do you problemitize and explain all that to 1st graders?

2006-05-08T22:27:00.000-07:00

Jeff Yang who writes the Asian Pop column for SF Gate posted some questions on his blog. Here is my attempt to answer some of his questions.

QUESTION: WHAT DOES ASIAN MEAN TO YOU?

NAME: Amy Lee
LOCATION: Oakland, CA originally from San Diego, CA
DESCRIBE YOURSELF: 2nd generation Korean American. Daughter of working class immigrants. Educator.

Do you think of yourself as Asian? Why or why not? Do your parents?
Outwardly, I think of myself as Asian American. I think of myself as part of the “Asian American community”. I like the ambiguity of the term. Because Asian American refers to so many people, so many ethnic groups, I think it’s harder to stereotype than “Korean American.” There’s a lot more space to define/ redefine. Inwardly, I think of myself as Korean or Korean American. I don’t feel like I have a Korean American community outside of my family so my identification as Korean American is very specific and very personal.

My parents do not think of themselves as Asian or me as Asian; in their eyes we are definitely Korean. When I came home from school upset because some stupid kids pulled their eyes to the side and chanted “Ching-chong Chinaman!” my dad said, “Tell them you’re Korean, not Chinese!” Not exactly comforting for a 7-year-old.

When was the first time you referred to yourself as "Asian"?
This is a hard question. This must have been when I was older, probably 8th grade.

Stream of consciousness: What ideas immediately come to mind when you think of the word Asian?
Perfectly made-up face with a cigarette dangling out of shiny red lips
Diesel jeans, vintage shirt, kangol hat, puma shoes, hipster who lives in the Haight.

Mental health issues ignored. Body image. Heterogeneous. Homogeneous. Modest. Asian fetish. Someone you can share “whipping” stories with and not be embarrassed or think he/she will pass judgment on your parents.

What does Asian taste like?
At American restaurants “Asian” tastes like ginger, peanuts, scallions, and mandarin oranges. For the record, Korean food never uses peanuts OR oranges.

What does Asian look like? (For my mother)
Your hands are rough from manual labor. They are aged with chemicals that make floors and toilets sparkle. They rub sweat out of the collars of “dry-clean only” shirts. They are scarred from running endless yards of poly-cotton material through commercial sewing machines to turn a 22-cent-profit on a trendy top. You come home tired from your minimum-wage job and make dinner: two types of kimchi, neatly-folded mandoo, three types of nam-mul, gamja ban-chan, fried fish, a spicy chigae -- all homemade/ handmade. Your hands give life.

What is Asian good at and bad at?
Despite coming from a culture where cycles are prominent, we are LINEAR. (Good or bad, your call).

What's the most Asian thing you've ever done?
The most “Asian” thing I’ve ever done is go to UC Berkeley. Or maybe the most Asian thing I’ve done is plan out a day to eat Spam. I loved canned meat!!!

Who's the most Asian person you know? Why?
Umm… Wu-Tang Clan?

If you're Asian, how do you feel when you see someone who's not Asian aspiring to be Asian--flattered, or embarrassed, both, or neither?
One time I was in a random church crying, looking for refuge. I was a low-point in my life. I ended up talking to the pastor who was a white male. The pastor kept making suggestions that were TOTALLY culturally insensitive. After I told him his suggestions weren’t realistic for my family situation, he briefly excused himself. He came back and introduced this white lady to me: “Amy, this is ____. She might be able to help us out. ____ has been working at the Asian Art Museum for 10 years. She knows a lot about Asian culture.” Despite the fact that I was crying so hard that I had hiccups, snot all over my face, and my eyes were swollen, I had to stop and laugh. Usually, I just laugh.

Extra: Last summer we took our students ice skating. They were supposed to brown bag their lunch and eat it at the rink. I ended up sitting next to some students from San Francisco, all Chinese kids. They had tupperware with rice and some unidentifiable home-cooked Chinese food. It was so cool! I was always stressed out when we had to bring a lunch for a field trip instead of being able to buy lunch from school. For the most part I grew up in lily-white areas of San Diego. I definitely did not want to bring my momma’s food for fieldtrips. It was such an ordeal to bring lunch from home because we’d have to think “American”. We’d have to buy a whole package of brown paper lunch bags, a loaf of bread, mayonnaise, ham, lettuce, tomato, chips, juice boxes, sandwich bags, etc etc. It was so expensive. By the time the next fieldtrip rolled around the paper lunch bags would be all dusty, the mayonnaise would look weird, and the sandwich bags would get tossed so we would have to start ALL over. Anyway, I told my students all of this and they looked at me like I was silly. They could not understand why I wouldn’t just bring Korean food to these field trips. Maybe I thought eating like an “American” would make my eyes bigger and my hair lighter and fool the rest of the kids! I think though, if you grew up in a predominantly white neighborhood and are a person of color, you know what I’m talking about.

2006-05-06T11:10:00.000-07:00

As I prepare to complete (probably) the last step in my education, I keep thinking I should also look to find a new job. My job is very stressful and physically and emotionally demanding (like most jobs in ed). This past week has made me really emotional. My students and younger staff I have worked with have validated the work I am doing—a job that I often feel like is thankless (esp, by my office).

My job is interesting and varies. Some students will get into their dream school w/ or w/out me; they just don’t think they can do it by themselves. Others need the support to tell their stories to contextualize their less-than-impressive grades (one of my students got denied from every college EXCEPT from Berkeley (we have a crazy admissions process that I actually think is the best process in the UC system). This student did not want to talk about immigrating to the U.S. and living by himself for a year an a half while going to school (getting mainly D’s) and working 60 hour-weeks because he didn’t want to be pitied. Others just get scared seeing a bunch of bureaucratic forms and don’t want to attempt to do it by themselves. Some have messed up so much academically they gave up on college their junior year and then came for help senior year (one student actually cried when she got her acceptance letter to CSU eastbay). And then, of course, there’s all those personal stories… the ones that happened and the ones that are on going. Sometimes its just listening. Sometimes it referrals to clinics/ hospitals. Sometimes it’s just a coffee and a pastry. The worst is when you remember you are a mandated reporter. Then thinking of the cultural implications and ramifications of mandated reporting and how “abuse” looks different to different people. Then having to trust your own judgment…

I’m responsible for about 80 seniors (in total about 300 9-12 graders. My interns do most of the work with the younger students). Admittedly I don’t know many of my seniors (some have actually never come to see me). I’ve probably worked directly with about 60 students and have built close relationships with about 2/3s. I can’t even express how deeply these students have touched me.

All of my seniors are going to college next year-- about 90% are going to a 4-year. A good handful of the ones I am very close to are going to Berkeley, Davis, SFSU, and Sonoma so will be nearby. What is hard is many of their friends aren’t graduating. About 25% of seniors in West Contra Costa Unified have not passed the high school exit exam. At one school I work at, more than 40% of seniors have not passed the exit exam. This makes my role at the school seem luxurious and makes the school admin not so nice to me…

As the school year starts to wrap up I’m already thinking about how much I’ll miss my seniors. This year’s class has a special place in my heart because many I have known since they were in middle school. Also, some of the ones I just met within the last 1-2 years have been amazing, especially in perseverance. This year, I’ve also had the privilege of meeting and working with some students who are not in my program, but friends of friends. These young women in particular have left a strong impression on me. In a few years they will be even more kickass.

2006-05-04T23:17:00.000-07:00

Dear Ex,
Luckily for you I've spent the last 6 weeks busting my ass to finish my thesis. b/c of this, I have yet to release my wrath on you. most likely I never will b/c I'm scared I will say something that will reignite your psycho-ness and find you waiting outside my office ready to kill me.

The last time I went to your house was a nightmare. To find out from your roommate that everything you had told me was a lie-- including the "fact" that weeks before you were lying unconscious in the fucking hospital—left me nauseous. Then to hear from your crazy cousin the next morning was too much. You know some fucked up people. The worse is that you need to have someone call for you!!!!! (You can at least stop being a thief and return my things!)

Since I have deduced that you are a pathological liar it makes sense that the big dreams and silly promises you had for yourself and for us never appeared. You were truly absurd. I always tried to convince myself that your absurdity was really just hyperbole squared or even cubed, but alas, I was wrong.

No, really, in all seriousness, I regret wasting a year on someone who is a figment of your imagination. I hate to be an elitist, but even if you are a real pathological liar you could have at least dreamed up someone w/ impressive credentials.

I have thought about why I didn’t try and break up with you before or after that crazy time in November when I asked you how you felt about taking a break (remember? you didn’t take that conversation too well. You peaced out for 6 fucking weeks. It took 4 weeks to get you to FINALLY put my stuff in my car trunk w/ the spare key (like I had asked you to do 3 weeks earlier) and you threw my keys in my mailbox and doorbell ditched me so I could find my keys. THEN two weeks later randomly showed up in my backyard early in the morning w/ a dramatic and tearful apology). You did SO MANY HORRIBLE THINGS TO ME. Yet I stayed with you or gave you more chances. Yes, this is going to make me look bad, but in all honesty it was guilt. I was always insecure about you.

Yes, you are physically beautiful. Beyond that, at our best I felt safe and secure w/ you. You made me feel beautiful. I loved your silliness; I loved that I could be silly with you. I liked that you were many things that my college boyfriend was not. (Yes, I do have some happy memories, but don’t feel like they’re mine since the person you said you were was mostly a lie). Ironically, I liked that you had dreamed big (at the time I did not know how much you “dreamed”). Despite this, I was insecure about what other people thought about us being together (no, by this I don’t mean that I was insecure cuz you’re black and I’m Korean). I hated the fact that I was insecure about who you were. I tried to push it away, to let go of my pride, to let go of what was a reflection of my own downfalls. I tried so hard that I was suffocated by it. Every time you did something to make me feel literally worthless, I was scared that those superficial insecurities were playing into my want to leave you, so I always held out. Dumb-ass me should have just said, “Who the hell cares if my insecurities are superficial? This man is neglectful and abusive!” and then dumped your ass.

Yes, I know, this letter has gone from hateful to reflective. Mainly, I hope you get help. I hope your family stops lying for you to cover up your pathological liar-ness. If, by some miracle you are not a pathological liar and just a horrible, terrible person, I hope you… Hey, I have some class so I won’t even say it.

~Amy

This is my month biatch!

2006-05-03T19:31:00.000-07:00

In honor of APA heritage month, I offer you a list of 10 things YOU can do to celebrate (seriously, I was an Asian American Studies major!):
1. Make origami cranes
2. eat fortune cookies (strike that)
2. take out your planner and schedule in a different asian cuisine for every day of the month (thai, Burmese, Indian, Chinese, Korean, Japanese Vietnamese, Pilipino, Taiwanese, Singaporean, etc etc.)
3. tell your asian girlfriend/ wife “I love you” in her home language
4. go to yoga/ tae kwon do/ jujitsu/ etc etc
5. wear a cheongsam, hanbok, kimono w/ chopsticks in your hair (or a sari w/ a bindi on your head)
6. get an asian tattoo/ henna
7. Watch Madame Butterfly
8. Tell an APA how your dad/ grandfather/ uncle/ brother fought in the “war”
9. make a newspaper rice paddy hat and wear it on your head
10. watch hentai

May is APA heritage month. like most people of color, I don’t really know what to make of the tokenized month that celebrates the greatest of me (or rather, APAs). May has never been anything special to me except that it meant the end of the school year for the last 6 years of my life. as a former Asian American Studies major you'd think i'd get really excited, go to a bunch of events, and be... well, yellow and proud. in actuality, i'm never quite sure what to make of this month. it seems very anti-climatic.

This year, I’m going to try and remember WHY May is APA heritage month:

-May is the month in which the first Asian arrived on American soil (so I’ve read)

-Chinese exclusion Act, Passed May 6 1882: Chinese were banned from immigrating to the U.S. Originally a 10-year-policy, was extended and made permanent in 1902. It wasn’t until 1943 when China was an important ally of US that the act was appealed.

-On May 3, 1942, General DeWitt issued Civilian Exclusion Order No. 346, ordering all people of Japanese ancestry, whether citizens or non-citizens, to report to assembly centers, where they would live until being moved to permanent "Relocation Centers."

-Chinese American railroad workers finish building the Transcontinental Railroad on May 10, 1869. 2/3 of the 4,000 railroad workers were Chinese. Workers risked and lost their lives to chip away granite and plant explosives to blast tunnels.

Okay, so here is my REAL list to celebrate APA heritage month:
1. Listen closely and stop thinking you can’t understand someone speaking w/ an accent
2. Be nice to service workers
3. teach your kids/ yourself/ someone to stop pulling their eyes and saying “ching chong chinaman”
4. write to Michelle Malkinand John Yooand let them know you’re ashamed of them
5. stop thinking in a black/ white paradigm
6. vote
7. read a book by an APA writer that is not Amy Tan or Maxine Hong Kingston
8. love an APA man
9. stop thinking you can’t be a feminist and an APA activist
10. Read Heartbeat of Struggle: The Revolutionary Life of Yuri Kochiyama

11. if you’re an APA take care of your mental and physical health. If you’re an APA woman who is not “Asian-skinny” love your body. We don’t all have to be a BCBG size 0, ya know! (Fact: Suicide is the leading cause of death for APA youth (second only to unintentional deaths) according to CDC 2000. In 2003, the American Psychological Association found that APA girls have highest rate of depressive symptoms of all racial groups and the highest suicide rate among women 15-24). Let's take care of ourselves kiddies!

2006-05-03T19:29:00.000-07:00

i keep forgetting to post stuff from my myspace blog:

I'm working at the Starbucks in Barnes and Noble in Emeryville. The place is packed today. The only table open is next to this group of 7 people. We grab the table, but Im secretly thinking, oh no, I bet theyre going to be loud. Theyre not. Theyre completely silent only laughing occasionally. The only noise is the adorable baby making baby noise. I wonder why 7 people are sitting in silence. I look over and I see that theyre all signing to teach other! Totally unexpected. I actually see people signing to each other pretty often. This time though its different b/c theyre Asian. Ive never seen Asian folks using sign language. I wonder if my surprise is an internalization of the idea that Asian folks dont have disabilities. Those issues are really hidden in our community. Its pretty sad and damaging to APAs who are disabled and their families. Not only is there an issue of shame, but theres little outreach to the community by larger advocacy groups.

Anyway, its really cool cuz the baby is like 1 year old. The seven adults are signing to each other but then also teaching the baby how to sign. It must be neat to have your baby attempt to sign. Its so cute when babys mess up big people words cuz their voices are so squeaky and well, babyish. It must be just as cute to have your baby sign cuz you get to see those chubby hands clumsily communicate! You can tell when the baby is doing baby-signing (as opposed to baby wiggling and waving) b/c you hear excited sounds from the group and everyone gets these huge smiles. Nice.

UPDATE: SWEET!!! they're korean! they're singing/ humming/ signing one of my Korean baby songs about 3 bears (better than goldilocks). oooh sooo cute!!!

2006-05-02T23:40:00.000-07:00

today i was telling aaron about how much i like wikipedia. whenever i want to find something i check out wikipedia; it's like an internet Dad. for example, i love eating pommelo. i figured it was a hybrid of a grapefruit and orange but wasnt sure. B/c of wikipedia i now know that a grapefruit is actually a hybrid of an orange and pommelo. who knew pommelo was a pure fruit?! B/c of wikipedia i also know that Marlon Brando loved "exotic women".

in 1957 he married actress Anna Kashfi believing her to be South Asian. She was actually from Wales and was Irish Catholic. She "dressed and made herself up as an Indian beauty after learning that Brando gravitated toward exotic women." weird huh? if you look up "lactose intolerant" on wikipedia you can see a graph that shows the % of lactose intolerancy by ethnic group (swedish 2%; white americans 12%; black americans 75%;; chinese 83%.)

a few months ago, my sister and i looked up "care bears" cuz we love those little buggers. not only is there a lengthy article on care bears, but it lists the main care bears and the care bear cousins. my favorite care bear, funshine bear used to be a girl in the 80s but was recently reissued as a boy! funshine is transexual! amigo bear was added this year and is the first bear to speak spanish. amigo bear got me thinking that the rest of the bears are probably ethnically white, instead of ethnicity-less like they should be since they're bears. anyway, today i revisited the page to see if any care bear descriptions would have ethnicity clue. guess what i found? in an episode called "long lost care bears" there are 2 bears named Polite and Perfect PANDA. WTF? come on, you know ppl think asians are polite (bowing, pouring tea, etc etc) and strive to be perfect (overworked kids going to kumon, language school, piano, karate, church, etc) . these bears are obviously Asian, more specifically Chinese (cuz you know, panda's are from china). i hope the creators know that polite and perfect might be care bear COUSINS, not actual care BEARS b/c there's some classification controversy if pandas are bears, related to raccoons, or are in a class by themselves.

silence

2006-04-27T00:26:00.000-07:00

i've been stuck on my "Researcher Background" section for a long time... so stuck in fact that i sent over a draft to samhita for feedback ( i NEVER let ppl read my unpolished writing, it's too embarrassing, unless its in blog form) anyway, samhita told me what i have is too skeletal and that i'm holding back. so i think i need to do some more free writing...

asian american studies was the only place in berkeley that i didn't feel silenced. despite being on a campus full of APAs, i always felt marginal. up until my college, i lived most of my life feeling alienated from my surroundings, especailly in high school. i was used to the loneliness and able to disguise it pretty well.

when i came to cal, i felt out of place. def i felt out of place b/c so many people on my floor had college-educated parents or came from middle class families. yes, there were a lot of APAs, but few who were interested in social justice. everyone wanted to get into the damn b-school... SO IRRITATING. when i took my first asian am class it was exhilarating. thrilling. i've been going through my college writings. many of my asian am classes required a Why are you here? response the first week. all of my responses sound so excited. i felt grounded in that space. i could speak. i learned about things i didn't know existed.

what was unsettling was when i left that safe space. my ed classes were predominantly white (even though all the classes required an interview and i'm sure they used some informal Affirmative Action)-- that space was not safe. too many racist white liberals who want to be educational missionaries. my random GE classes- everyone was Asian but was STILL trying to get into B-school. even my ethnic studies classes were not safe. you cannot be an Asian Am major and think in the black/ white paradigm (you prolly can't be a chican@ studies major either). you def cannot be an Asian Am major w/out considering how immigration hinders/ supports your access to resources in the U.S. you cannot be an asian am major w/out talking about that damn model minority myth. M3 keeps coming back and biting me in the ass. the internalization of the myth is why AAS is dying at UC Berkeley. it's why there were only 13 ppl who graduated from AAS in 2004. the pervasive nature of the myth is also what keeps the discipline so insulated from the rest of the ES department. that's why in comparative ethnic studies courses that are not taught by an APA professor, APA issues are glossed over and superficial. that's why APA students who have an interest in cultural studies don't want to be in AAS-- i've heard so many ES folks say, Asian Am is too limiting. some dumbass actually told me it was not revolutionary enough.

2006-04-26T10:50:00.000-07:00

my thesis draft is due Monday, yet i'm still finding plenty of ways to procrastinate:

angry lil boys,
Tasty Candy,
Daddy blogs,
Biggest waste of time ever ,
More Daddy blogs,
second biggest waste of time ever ,
Plug for Gary,
Plug for Samhita,
Clothes that I could never fit into, but like to look at ,
and
Making my ears happy

beep beep

2006-04-22T13:43:00.000-07:00

for some reason, i forgot to publish the post below abt wanting to get a scooter, that was supposed to go up on monday. oh well. anyway, today i went to actually go test drive scooters. i was looking forward to it all week long, super excited. i kept looking at my sister and saying, " i'm so excited to get a scooter! " i'd put my hands in the air like i was driving a scooter and say, "putt-putt-putt-putt-putt" . that's my scooter sound, even though i would never want to ride a scooter that actually sounded that janky...

ANYWAY, this morning i woke up all excited. while we were driving over to the Yamaha/ Honda dealer, i told my sister how i want to go skydiving again and how exhilarating it was... i was a fearless skydiver my first time around. while i was saying this i parked near the dealership (which mainly sells motorcycles, not mopeds) and glanced over at the lot full of bikes. i ended my skydiving story, turned off my engine, looked back at the dealership, looked to my sister, paused and said in a small voice, "um, there's all these big white guys over there... i'm kind of intimidated." (i imagined myself (barely clearing 5 feet 1 inch) approaching a salesman and saying in a baby voice, i wanna test out the scooters!) she agreed that the men looked intimidating so we agreed to go back on sunday w/ her friend James (a big asian dude who rides motorcycles).

we ended up going to REI instead. after REI i said, "i feel bad! i was so excited this week. we have to go back!)

SO we drove back. i got all nervous when we were approaching the dealership. turned the corner to park, made a u-turn instead and headed back home.

boo... i TOTALLY bucked under the fear of a male-dominated industry. :(

2006-04-16T16:06:00.000-07:00

i havent done shit on my thesis in two weeks.. burnt out... hopefully will be reinspired to write or at least guilt-tripped into writing...

i came back from a 4-day so cal college tour w/ 48 high school juniors. so crazy. so fun. so stressful. so worth it. maybe will post reflections later. considering how much time i spent on a bus w/ so many people, it was inevitable that i got sick. i've been procrastinating/ healing in bed by looking up mopeds. i picture myself zipping from oakland to berkeley on this or this. i won't have to worry about quarters for parking, parking tickets, parking spaces, or gas (90 mpg on these suckers!). i'm gonna test drive them this week. i might be too scared to ride one though.... we'll see...

2006-04-02T17:33:00.000-07:00

all of my curriculum is done biatch!

actually this is a delayed post. i finished it last monday but have not had a chance to celebrate it.

this past week has been an emotional rollercoaster, filled with a lot of.... i guess... grieving (?). perhaps more disbelief and anger. i have been trudging along and getting my work and school done though. i've actually been pretty damn productive which worries me a little. i've been told that my coping mechanism is not so good... i guess i start coping w/ stuff but once it interferes w/ my responsibilities, i cut it off and never let it run its course. for someone who's so damned sensitive this is puzzling.

also in the past two weeks or so i have felt young. most people know that i am age sensitive. i hate being referred to as young or "only 23" or the worst, "when i was your age" (by people who are only a few years older). in the past 2-3 years I have felt esp sensitive b/c everything in my life has been on super-high gear w/ a lot of responsibilities. as a result, i've always felt somewhat older (even w/ all my big ass stuffed animals on my bed). recently when i'm sitting on my floor or lying in my bed thinking about stuff that's going on i get this feeling... stronger than a feeling... not as strong as a revelation... but whatever it is, my mind takes a big gulp of air and i feel something inside me that i instinctually associate w/ being young... vulernability perhaps.

2006-03-22T09:39:00.000-08:00

all night i had this itch on my stomach. in my half-sleep i feared that my stress rash was returning. i kept scratching it but stopped because the skin on my stomach felt all weird. i rolled around all night and kept hearing this crinkling, kept feeling sharp poke in my skin (like my rash!). i was scared... dreading the thought of missing school and work to take care of that damn rash. i was so tired though that i didnt bother to get up and really check it out. this morning i checked it out. i woke up w/ yellow post its stuck to my sheets, my pajamas, and my stomach! i lost the suckers yesterday morning. instead of being stuck together like the regular kind, these are accordian style so the pad falls apart all the time, esp when you roll on top of them in your sleep.

big, giant OOPS

2006-03-21T23:21:00.000-08:00

i did not meet my monday deadline of having all my lesson plans done. as of this morning, i have 14/15 completed. today i met w/ this awe-inspiring teacher named Liza. liza teaches lit at community college and has her shit TOGETHER. i'm so happy that she is a teacher. anyway, what came out of this meeting was a realization that my curriculum development is way off. i have built in about 13-14 books to read in addition to some other supplemental readings. i based this off of my experience and other folk's feedback on their experiences in lit courses or freshman year reading and comp courses. i was very, very happy w/ my lesson planning until today. when i met w/ liza she told me she teaches 3 books a semester in a literature course at community college. THREE BOOKS to my 13. she broke down what it takes to teach at community college, which among other things is a lot of skill building. we had a long talk about her classes, the politics of community college, and all the stuff i should get if i want to teach there in the future. very, very helpful.

anyway, what does this 3 v 14 books mean? i have to REDO my curriculum. i whittled my list of books down to: Woman Warrior, M Butterfly, Temperature of this Water, Dictee, and Rolling the Rs, plus one student-selected reading for a total of six books (a student at Skyline told me today, MAYBE he'd sign up for a class that was going to read six books, def not 13). i'm now expanding each of these books into multiple lesson plans, which is painstaking work. i'm also building in more time for.. i'm not sure what to call it... not skill building but a lot more peer review, overview of literary elements, etc. it's a totally different course now. i'm trying to do all the reworking in 1 week too!!!! that way i'll only be behind my original schedule by one week.

rekindling the romance between me and my thesis

2006-03-15T22:30:00.000-08:00

i just read this great essay called "Reading Asian American Poetry" by Juliana Chang. Her esssay really helped me think not only about poetry but all art forms created by marginalized people. this is just what i needed to read to get me through one or two more lesson plans. (hopefully i will read something equally wonderful on Saturday so I'll be able to finish by Monday.) Here are my notes on the reading for my lesson plan. there is a definite deconstruction of multiculturalism in this reading that i really appreciate. i want to read more about and from David Palumbo-Liu, who until today i don't think i've ever heard of.

Reading Asian American Poetry by Juliana Chang

-Audre Lorde argues that poetry is not a luxury. “Of all art forms, poetry is the most economical. It is the one which is the most secret, which requires the least physical labor, the least material, and the one which can be done between shifts, in the hospital pantry, on the subway, and on scraps of surplus paper.”

History of Asian American poetry
-Ethnic poetry in the 1960s and 1970s can be viewed as a “racial project” creating links between cultural representation, racial inequity, and racialized empowerment. The late 70s and 80s there was a shift from poetry to prose.

-Asian American poetry dates back to 1890s. Japanese folksong-derived plantations worksongs, Cantonese rhymes in Chinatown, poems carved into the walls of Angel Island.

-Despite the long history of Asian American poetry, it is marginalized by Asian American literary critics and mainstream critics.

How is Asian American poetry is received?
-Poems are considered lyric and private, not public or social even though in the 1960s and 1970s poetry was often oral and performative (public). Chang argues that poetry, not just the novel, can be read as dialogic and heteroglossic (Bhaktin & the novel as genre).

-Rendering poetry as private v. public gives the perception that poetry has less social relevance. The perceived private nature of poetry also makes it seem inaccessible or difficult to comprehend.

-When poetry is perceived as public:
-Artists must deal with the “burden of representation” and the gaze of a white audience.
-Runs the risk of being co-opted by “liberal multiculturalism”. David Palumbo-Liu says that liberal multiculturalism is a “mode of managing a crisis of race, ethnicity, gender, and labor in the First World and its relations with the Third.” Ethnic texts become stand-ins/ proxies for people of color.
-Palumbo-Liu says a critical multiculturalist practice would examine the “rough grains of political history” and its maintenance of inequity.
-Chang writes, “The reader attains the enlightenment of cross-cultural understanding, which s/he imagines as both enabled by and contributing to such a democratic pluralism. Potential social conflicts and tensions are presumably smoothed over in these literary encounters. “

-When poetry by people of color is accepted by mainstream society, then it is seen as a success for high culture. Standards for “good poetry” become universal. The accepted writer transcends race and color; the racial other has been civilized.

(How can Asian American poetry resist being appropriated by hegemonic narratives?)

-Depoliticized poetry is perceived as more authentic than prose. Mainstream readers witness a moment of “cultural authenticity.” Poems that may deal with claiming America are read as wanting to have membership of a white America/ dominant culture.

(How can Asian American writers/ people claim America in a counterhegemonic fashion? “How might we re-vision the United States in ways that interrupt the racist and imperialist ideologies of dominant ‘Americanism’?”)

What does this mean?
-Chang argues, “The project of reading Asian American poetry assumes the significance of ensuring that linguistic and cultural cracks and fissures do not get smoothed over in culturalist readings and containments of dissent.”

-Proposes reading poetry that highlights disruptions of meaning and space (Does this remind you of Bhabha?)

humble pie

2006-03-15T20:30:00.000-08:00

so i keep hearing from people that i need to take time off from work to focus and finish my thesis. i already decided a while ago to take about 8 work days off to finish up my thesis in late april. three days ago i thought, "what if i can't finish everything in those days?" then i panicked. lately i have left 2 of my four schools to my interns. i thought this would give me time to work on my thesis, but on those days i go into the office to catch up on office work and planning for a big field trip. my boss keeps telling me to take time off; she actually encourages it. yesterday i realized there is no reason for me to not do so. according to my last time sheet i have over 400 hours of vacation time/ sick leave/ and comp time (overtime i've worked that converts to vacation time, not money). with 400 hours, why am i still on the fence?

actually, i am no longer on the fence. today i decided to work four days a week for the next two weeks and see where i can go from there. how did i come to this monumental decision?

1. i realized that i only complete about 80-90% of what i need to do in a 40-hour week. well i knew this before and that's why i didn't want to take time off in the first place. i already feel behind and working 4 days will put me even more behind. what changed my mind? the amount of work we have to do is infinite. i will never finish it (mainly b/c the expectations are unrealistic). my thesis however is finite. there is an end and if i squint hard enough i can see the end! i may as well concentrate on what i can finish and let the rest pile up.

2. i didn't want to take time off b/c i was too proud to admit that i cannot work a 40-hour week and go to school full time, at least not while writing my thesis. unfortunately i am not superwoman.

3. i didn't want people at work to think that i was slacking or not contributing enough. screw that. i do a lot at my damn job and if those bastards can't see it well... actually i don't know what to say here. but for real, who else can you ask at like 7:30 saturday morning to lead a campus tour at 9:30?

4. Finally, i realized that my perception of work is influenced by my parents. i grew up w/ parents who when self-employed worked 60-hour weeks, no vacations. even as employees of other people, they rarely take time off. family vacations? on the first day of school, the elaborate family vacations i reported to my class were all made up*. the one time we actually took a vacation we went camping in Yosemite. too bad i only knew the way my parents pronounced it "yo-seh-mee-teh". my teacher was like huh?! anyway, i think my parents' work habits really rubbed off on me. it seems very luxurious to take time off whenever i want/ need. deep down inside i am still struggling w/ my entrance into the middle class. it's embarrassing. i feel like by taking my time off, my working class roots, which i think have given me a lot of positive attributes, are losing hold. actually this is something that i have struggled with since sophomore year of college. privilege is hard to accept. i know though that my parents would slap me upside the head and tell me to take time off and graduate on time. they bust their butts and backs for me and my sis. it's prolly insulting and mindblowing to them when we don't take hold over everything we have that they don't.

so? next tuesday i am officially taking a day off! i'll prolly just call in sick, but i'm excited. my four day weeks did come a little late though. i have a self-imposed deadline of having my curriculum done by monday. (yikes!!) tuesday will give me time to do write up an eval sheet for my curriculum and send it out to folks. maybe in two months i'll be hooded!

* i actually spent a lot of my youth making stuff up. i.e. Daily Journal (please write in cursive): What did you eat for breakfast this morning? Answer: "This morning I ate cereal, pancakes with blueberriese and syrub, scrambled eggs, bacon, and grapefruit. i also drank milk and orange juice." what did i really eat in the mornings? leftover rice and kimchee stew. but TV shows that whole spread for American breakfasts! my teacher must have been like, "how does this lil chinese girl eat all that food?! " Homework: Draw your Family tree. I'd ask my dad what harubjee's name was and my dad would be like "why do you need to know his name?" "it's for homework" to this day i still don't know the names of any of my grandparents. what would i turn in for homework? grandpa joe & grandma sarah, grandad bob & grandmom sally. obviously, school alienated me from my family life.

Black Men, Asian Women

2006-03-12T23:19:00.000-08:00

I'm a fan of ColorLines magazine but have a hard time digesting an article by Rinku Sen entitled Black men, Asian Women. Sen writes about the growing trend of Asian female/black male relationships. As with most articles that discuss the bodies of Asian American women Sen turns to Darrell Hamamoto* for some words of wisdom. Here is an excerpt: "He [Hamamoto] asserts that the U.S. military draws large numbers of Black men looking for a ladder to the middle class, whose status changes when they go abroad. These men see Asian women as subjects of the American—and, by implication, their own—empire.

“This trend is rooted with American colonialism and occupation. Material and historical forces shape these relationships,”said Hamamoto. “You have three, four, five generations of African-American men who have served oversees in Asia, whose experience with Asian women has been pretty intense in a foreign land where they are treated not as subordinate people but as superior Americans.”

Um okay. First of all, I am so SICK and TIRED of having my body and sex written about. This is not to say that I think articles/ discussions such as these should not be had, I just feel... stuck? i'm not sure what the right word is. Anyway... So when I am already a bit tired of reading about Asian American women's bodies, sex, and relationships it really irks me that hamamoto aka "i want to start an asian american sex revolution to reclaim asian men's sexuality/ reclaim asian women" is talking about this stuff.

So back to Hamamoto's quote. I don't agree that black GIs' status dramatically changes when they go abroad. Even if some Asian people exalt "Americans" there is still a clear understanding that Black is second (or third) class in the U.S. racial order. My dad remembers the black GI who taught English in their Korean classroom as a "nice man." he continued to say that it wasn't until he came to the U.S. that he started stereotyping black people. my dad's conclusion was basically, "American media is full of negative images of black people. when i came to the U.S. then i started thinking bad things about black people. Even now in Korea people look down on black Americans beecause that's what they learn to do from watching American movies." (i do know however that black folks are "in vogue" in some parts of asia)

Plus, that does not explain why Asian American women are CHOOSING to be with black men. Black men can't just make Asian/ Asian American women into the building blocks of their "empire." Yes, military occupation and neo-colonization have led to many War Brides, post-War brides, etc. but what about my generation of U.S.-born APA women who don't need a marriage visa? The Asian Woman/ White Man arguments of women trying to "move up" or wanting to assimilate don't neatly transfer to Asian Woman/ Black Man combo. our internally colonized minds equate white not black with American, prosperous, moving on up, etc.

Sen does briefly mention that perhaps the flipside of the Whoriental aka Dragon Lady is the sexually inexperienced Asian woman who would want to pair herself with "the most sexualized actors in American culture." or perhaps asian women who won't get with a yellow brother (the most asexual actor in American culture) would choose to be the most sexualized actor in American culture.

kate rigg says: "It would be a big turn-on for an Asian girl or guy to be with people who have been more successful in asserting their rights,” said Rigg. “This is a case of like likes like. A Black person is less likely to be as racist as a white person when it comes to dating an Asian girl. And a Black person might not feel as oppressed as they would by a white person in their family structure.”

does a black man turn me on b/c i see him as a big F-you to The Man? probably not, but okay kate rigg. am i turned on by activist men? yes. does black=activist? no. also, i think an asian woman who has the hots for activists would know that asians and asian americans have played an important role in access to rights as well. Lau v Nichols and bilingual education? Wong Kim Ark & citizenship? Property rights in Fujii Sei v State of California? just because we're still taught in a black/white paradigm doesn't mean we don't know our yellow history! j/k... kinda... (interestingly enough, i think most AsAm contributions or contestations were done through the legal system, or at least that method is best documented. that probably reflects on some larger belief on the goodness of the nation-state).

also, i have heard horror stories and of course have my own about Asian daughters w/ black boyfriends, rigg needs to rething her idea that black folks don't feel as oppressed by asian families. i personally don't know any asian women who's parents have opened their homes to black boyfriends. there is definitely a racial-dating hierarchy at play in asian families that is probably different in nature but equally horrific as that in white families.

anyways, i guess what i'm saying is that it is problematic to assume that the power issues in the Asian woman/white man phenomena can be transferred onto asian woman/ black man relationship's (Hamamoto's main argument). or that the near absence of power is what makes these relationships possible (Rigg). are there powers at play? of course? what are they? hey, i'm just here to deconstruct the argument. oh how po-mo of me!

p.s.
I actually like Ross' observation: “I’m not sure that African-American men have been involved in sexual relationships with Asian women in that context any more than white men; it’s just that when African-American men are doing it, it gets noticed more." word.

p.p.s.
just in case you don't know, i'm not one of those women who are like "my love exists in a vacuum and is unaffected by power that is raced/gendered/classed/ etc" i'm not saying this issue is stupid, i just think the arguments resemble swiss cheese.

*Hamamoto is an Asian American Studies Professor at UC Davis. In the late 90s he wrote "The Joy Fuck Club: Prolegomenon to an Asian American Porno Practice." In this article he basically argues that there needs to be an Asian American porn movement to help APA men reclaim their sexual identities (Asian American, not Asian). Pretty interesting article, obviously problematic as well. A few years later he actually directs an Asian American porn called "Skin to Skin" featuring a nervous Korean American neophyte male and a Cambodian-Thai American female porn star. "Master's of the Pillow", a documentary on the filming of this porn tours the film festival circuit along with Hamamoto's DISTURBING short entitled YELLOWCAUST: A Patriot Act? (basically an abridged version of his porn w/ scrolling text abt US imperialism in Asia. come to your own conclusion here. ) When asked at a screeing by an audience member why there was no use of condom's in his porn, Hamamoto answered he made an artistic decision to omit condom use. granted the documentary showed the two getting tested for HIV, but that can take a while to show up. the lack of existing sexual health education in asian american communitities made this particularly disturbing. i'm just scratching the surface here.

Write a sentence using the following words

2006-03-06T23:36:00.000-08:00

Please use each of the following words in a sentence (not a sentence that is defining the word though)

Hegemony
Marginalize/ Marginalization
Orientalism/ Orientalist
Silence & Voice (both of these in one sentence or in two related sentences)
Power
Agency
Hybridity

don't use all of these words in one sentence. one word per sentence please. thanks!

Forgive me, but some Oscar stuff

2006-03-06T22:16:00.001-08:00

NOTE: I have not read the Oscar coverage in any mags, so i may just be repeating what is already written. sorry.

So the Oscars... i neither watched the oscars this year (no cable tv) nor did i see most of the movies that were up for best picture. i do however have two comments:
1. I am very glad that Ang Lee won best director for Brokeback Mountain. I finally saw this film and really enjoyed it. After I watched it, i checked it out on IMDB and read some threads on the symbolism between the elements of the earth and different characters. After I write three more lesson plans this week, I will def watch it a second time. Also Ang Lee is the first Asian/ Asian American to win this award, so that's pretty cool too.

2. I know every newspaper in the U.S. ran some kind of article about Crash upsetting Brokeback Mountain for best picture. Was I surprised? Hell no! I actually was pretty doubtful that Brokeback Moutain would win anything but did really believe that Crash would win big picture. I haven't really quite thought abt the implications of Brokeback Moutain losing***, but I def knew that Crash would win. Why? B/C of our society's need to pat itself on the back of "addressing" hard issues on race and power . YEAH RIGHT!

DISCLAIMER: This is not an attempt to be all academic and racial theorizing shit. this is simply what i remember as my initial reaction to the film.

I've seen this film once, only in the theater. Everyone was so freaking moved by this damn film. For me it was more like, "Eh, pretty much what a expected." Some ppl have compared it to Spike Lee's Do the Right Thing. NO WAY. Crash did very little to push the boundaries on the discussion of race. People thought this film was revolutionary and profound b/c they felt better educated and informed on US race relations, therefore they felt revolutionary and profound. it's kinda like when some white folks read peggy mcintosh's White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack and are like, "Wow, she's right. "Flesh-colored" Bandaids do more or less match the color of my skin!" and stop there and think they have now acknowledged their privilege. Not to diss Peggy McIntosh, or anything. ANYWAY back to Crash.

Again, this is only what I remember from my ONE viewing of this movie. Crash attempts to complicate race, power, and racism by moving beyond good v evil, black v white. now, you all know i am a big fan of moving beyond the Black-White
paradigm. So far, so good. Actually, that was as far as i can remember being good. Okay, so what was problematic?

SPOILER ALERT

Beyond the black and white characters, the rest of the characters were seriously underdeveloped and one-dimensional. Now, I am not saying that there needs to be an equal number of black, white, latin@, asian american characters in this film, but come on, it's in freaking LA! the korean couple human trafficking? yes. super important issue. but one-dimensional representations of underdeveloped characters that basically leave you with, "oh, the korean ppl are selling other immigrants. whoa! those damn koreans." hello, matt dillon's racism (or was it his dad? i don't remember) is all superdeveloped and you know where he is coming from. most ppl know where white racism is coming from. not many ppl (including me) understand all the shit that surrounds human trafficking. so how are you going to overdevelop a familar character and underdevelop and applaud it for being controversial, educational, and pushing the envelope? HUH? also the family who owns the store. the store gets all wrecked and has some 9/11 Osama crap painted on the wall. one of the family members makes a statement like "they think we're arab. when did persian become arab?" interesting bringing in post 9-11 racialization, but again, just left at that. last comment, the locksmith guy who was latino? his daughter lives and "saves" him from being shot. OF COURSE his story line has some magical realism in there

alright so what is my point? it's easy to applaud a film that really does nothing but remind us that racism is still around in different ways. that people of color are racist too, not just white folks. that doesn't really challenge any images or stereotypes. this makes us all feel thoughtful and down for the struggle in a superficial way.

***actually, i have and am thinking about this. i am not quite ready to articualte my thoughts. obviously this is linked to our society's superficial ability to accept LGBTQ communities, particularly a legitimization of LOVE, not just sex. i am going to leave this untouched for now b/c i don't think i have the means to work through the complexities of the situation. yes, my heterosexual privilege allows me to not think about this often. because i don't often think abt lgbtq issues, when i do think abt such issues, i struggle with articulating my thoughts. still, always working on this. ya know?

2006-03-03T17:32:00.000-08:00

There is nothing worse than finding out that someone who
-qualitatively and quantitatively does less work than you do
- is so incompetent that your defunded program is hiring a fulltime person to help the fool do her job
-has no knowledge of the field
-supervises less people than you do

is making 15-20 Gs more than you are.

it's even more insulting when i think about how when i was first hired they implied i should be grateful to be making the amt they offered me right out of college and that i should be grateful for the opportunity. FUCK!

i feel guilty being bitter than i'm not making more money for all the extra work that i do when i want to do it for the students, but that's just reality.

Amy and the Terrible, Horrible, No-Good, Very Bad Day

2006-02-28T10:06:00.000-08:00

-Woke up late
-Went outside in tennis shoes/ no socks and cropped jeans. It was raining HARD. No Umbrella. No time to chagne b/c i was already late
-Rushed to Richmond HS
-Said I would host meetings on Wednesdays when I'm already really busy
-Rushed to De Anza HS
-Found out my laptop w/ my thesis and all my work info is STILL broken and won't be serviced until i give them something to backup all my data.
-SASI computer not printing at De Anza
-Rushed to doctors
-Spent 20 minutes looking for parking
-Arrived at Doctor's office
-Told my appointment is actually NEXT monday not this monday. (All the rushing at the schools was a result of thinking i had a doctors appointment)
-Drove to class.
-Did nothing while waiting for class to start
-Decided not to go to class
-Got a flat tire
-Called AAA so I could get my spare changed
-GOt my spare changed
-Drove about 12 blocks, got a flat SPARE!!!!!
-Had to get my car towed
-Still waiting for the tire ppl to call me back and tell me when I can get my car so i can actually go to work.

The bright side? My spare could have blown out on the bridge while it was rainy and windy. At least I was in a residential area.

Stalker

2006-02-25T21:27:00.000-08:00

I can't get away from my damn thesis! When i'm not working on it, i'm thinking about it. When i sleep or nap, i dream about my thesis. they're not even normal dreams like i'm working on it or i miss a deadline. i just have a list of all these things i still need to do running through my head on repeat. how am i supposed to get rest from that!

Locus Arts

2006-02-24T00:53:00.000-08:00

"I Do" For Queer Love

FEATURING:

Danny Nguyen, Humorist
Jennifer Lin, Asian Poster Bride Comedian
"Muni To the Marriage" Short Film by Stuart Gaffney
DJ Toro spinning hip-hop, r&b and old skool classics. and more.

About the Film

"Muni To the Marriage"
February 12, 2004—the day San Francisco made marriage history. A short Muni ride to City Hall suddenly turns partners of 17 years into newlyweds.

During the ride, the filmmaker reflects on the difficulties experienced by his Chinese-American mother and white father more than 50 years ago, who were only able to marry when California’s law against interracial marriage was overturned.

Co-Presented by Harvey Milk Democratic Club and Equality California, SF Chapter
Mar 4, 2006 8:00pm
SPACE180 - 180 Capp Street, 3rd Floor (@17th Street), San Francisco
Admission: $5-7 sliding scale

ON STAGE:

DENIZEN KANE (Typical Cats and I Was Born with Two Tongues, Chicago)
JENRO (San Francisco)
not your average superheroes
with DJ Phatrick on the wheels

hosted by KIWI (Native Guns)

APEX OUT THE BOX is a collaboration with APEX Express (KPFA 94.1FM) and Locus Arts to feature API hip hop artists on the air AND onstage in the community. Tune in every FIRST Thursday of the month from 7-8pm to catch APEX's API Hip Hop program with host KIWI.

Mar 10, 2006 9:00pm
SPACE180 - 180 Capp Street, 3rd Floor (@17th Street), San Francisco
Admission: $7-10 sliding scale

2006-02-23T23:11:00.000-08:00

this is kinda cool. Pandora is created by the folks who did the Music Genome Project. you type in the name of an artist you like, and then they create a streaming radio station with artists who have musical qualities similar to the artist you typed in. if there's a new artist you like you click the link to the iTunes store or Amazon. it may have a few kinks. for example i typed in "blackalicious" two different times and it gave me two different descriptions of their musical qualities. it's still neat though. it's descriptions of goapele included mild rythmic snycopation,, minor key tonality, and vocal-centric aesthetic. other descriptives are like clean lyrics, party style, laid back lyrics, clean lyrics, thin orchestration, acoustic drum samples, dry sound... endless!

2006-02-23T19:46:00.000-08:00

I'm going through this long, drawn out process of letting go of an intern... basically it's taking a good week and a half from the day i knew i had to let her go until the process is going to be completed (that's the university for you). she graduated from a local high school and was a participant in our program. she also has been an intern for about five years now. we actually started out as interns together. we never became good friends or anything and when i got my career spot i kind of inherited her as an intern form the previous coordinator.

have really mixed emotions right now. her four years with us were kind of messed up-- basically i'm the first supervisor who has held her accountable. since she has been my intern she has done some bad things that i have called her on repeatedly (like being late, not documenting stuff, or lying on time sheets). what she is being let go for is basically speaking her mind to the principal in an extremely rude and arrogant manner in front of students.

did she behave inappropriately? yes, i totally believe that. actually, i was appalled when i heard what she said to the principal. it also jeopardized our program's presence at the school. do i feel like "the man"? a bit. i feel like i am silencing her and her politics. as someone who has felt frustrated w/ the University and silenced by the delicate and apolitical space in which outreach sits, this situation is making me squirm. she is not being let go for the content/ politics of what she said but for WHEN and HOW she said it (and breaking a lot of program protocal). is there a difference? i often feel like, "wtf do i have to watch my words around (enter privileged location here)! Why do people tiptoe around these issues?” hmm, actually in my opinion what the principal did makes sense to me. I don’t feel like she was creating an injustice in the school. And the principal clearly told my intern what the new policies are and why they are in place. But my opinion probably doesn’t matter right? Anyway, I still feel shitty for letting her go (but is that my Asian womanness shying away from conflict? CURSES!) okay, mainly I’m just wondering if I’m participating in political silencing. I’m really unsure right now.

even though i know i have given her more supervision than any one else in the last four years, in general i've been feeling like i haven’t been there enough for my four interns. I’ve been spread too thin between school, working with my seniors, sitting on committees and trying to support my staff. i'm def still on the learning curve of being a supervisor. L

I don’t think any of this post makes any sense. This issue doesn’t even make sense in my head yet! Okay this is the last time I will indulge in stream of consciousness posting… sorry

Answer this please

2006-02-22T00:18:00.000-08:00

What makes a good classroom facilitation?

2006-02-21T10:04:00.000-08:00

i woke up this morning, checked my email, and found out M has been in the hospital for over a week. His cousin's email says there was an accident and "he's breathing better right now." the ambiguity of this email is scary. i feel like i've been kicked in the face. it really doesn't stop.

WTF?!

2006-02-19T22:57:00.000-08:00

Umm okay... how come nobody told me about this?
HR 4437 Border Protection, Antiterrorism, and Illegal Immigration Control Act (sounds disasterous just by the name) was passed by the house in December and is currently in the Senate.

Here are a few tidbits on HR 4437:
-Reduces LEGAL immigration by eliminating the visa lottery which allows 50,000 people a year apply for visas
-Adds 700 miles of fencing at the US-Mexico border
-Makes it a federal aggravated felony to be in the U.S. without proper documentation. This would make it nearly impossible for people to obtain immigration relief
-Criminalizes teachers, hospitals, social workers, clergy, and basically ANYONE who assists undocumented immigrants.

Dianne Feinstein is on the Senate's Immigration Subcommittee, let her know what you think:
Phone:
San Francisco office: (415) 393-0707
Washington, D.C. office: (202) 224-3841

Fax:
San Francisco office: (415) 393-0710
Washington, D.C. office: (202) 228-3954

Rally in Fruitvale

scratch scratch part deux

2006-02-18T19:01:00.000-08:00

okay... so my rash... i went to kaiser and found out my rash is rare for young people to get. basically it's common among people over sixty years of age. it is def a result of an immune system that was weakened due to stress. i'm in A LOT of pain. this rash is not just itchy, but also burns like hell. basically it feels like i ahve 500 needles being poked into my skin (a patch of about six sq inches) with superbad sunburn that someone is slapping... it sucks. the rash will be there for 2-4 weeks and i might still ahve the pain after the rash goes away. i'm really sad. i feel so weak that my body would break down like this because of stress. the last three times i've been to the doctor they've diagnosed whatever i had as a result of stress.

anyway, i did all my faciliation questions for Dictee!!! YAY! i'm extremely satisfied w/ my facilitation questions and my pedagogy. basically, my method of faciliation matches the form of the book. it's kinda hard to explain without knowing the book, but i will share them with you in class. i'm so proud of myself.

Asian American Film Fest

2006-02-15T21:14:00.000-08:00

Eric Byler's (Charlotte Sometimes) Americanese! aka Shawn Wong's American Knees is the opening film for this years film fest!! YES! AND Joan Chen! is in this film. nice... the film is 35 bucks since its the opening night film. last year i missed The Motel, thinking it would get picked up and distributed... still waiting. no freaking way i'm waiting for Americanese. sign up to volunteer to watch movies for free!

scratch scratch

2006-02-15T20:22:00.000-08:00

i have a rash. i know that sounds gross. it is gross actually, but it's not from bad hygiene or anything, just stress. :(

anyway, i'm planning on spending Friday night working on my thesis. i know this sounds boring, but i'm actually excited to have time to do some work. i've had some exciting ideas and a want to do research (!), unfortunately, everytime i think i'll have time to do school work, work work intervenes. I'm hoping to have two additional lesson plans by monday evening

also, i got some hot curriculum for on social justice issues that i'm going to use this summer w/ my students..... :)
-- -- -- --
frusterated as shit with Richmond HS. i'm recruiting for EAOP... trying to boost by 150 kids to 500 kids. yeah right. anyway, 7 potential students i spoke it are still stuck in ELD 5, despite having A- or better in their English 1 or 2 course, scoring in the 75% or higher on standarized tests, and already passing the damn CAHSEE. COME ON!!! it doesn't help that 5 of the 7 kids are undocumented, so you already know that parents are not gonna make a fuss to the counselors and teachers. i'm slowly finding the advocates on campus and hoping they can help me with these students (the counselors at RHS, don't talk to me and are dismissive of me)
-- -- -- --
i was at el cerrito high on tuesday, my first day at the school since the Friday night stabbing of a former ECHS student. out of 100 people at the party, still nobody has come forward to identify or even descrive the killer. tuesday at ECHS was strange. it was business as usual, actually more celebratory b/c of valentines day. in my past year and a half in this district, every time a student/ former student has been murdered (i think 6 times?) there have been memorial posters, reward posters, Tshirts, etc. i saw nothing on tuesday. i'm unsure why this murder is different.

monday monday

2006-02-13T23:18:00.000-08:00

i really don't know what the hell is going on with my students... Beyond senioritis, some are dealing with drug abuse, abortion, homelessness, and depression as a result of past sexual abuse. Many have stopped going to class and are about to fail a few classes. it sounds really crappy to be like, "well don't forget you need to keep your grades up for colleges!" but i have to. they all want to go to college so freaking bad(ly). I'm trying to find a better directory of mental health services in West Contra Costa. most of the services at their schools suck and sometimes aren't culturally sensitive. Asian Mental Health Services has been a great referral, but i need to find some resources in the latino and black community. lemme know if you got some...

i also didn't go to class today. too tired. last week i had a slight breakdown. i don't know why. i went into my sister's room and started crying about work and school. i don't know why i was crying though. at that point i really wanted to quit school. i'm trying to be motivated to go to do my work. i did one lesson plan this past week so i did something. also, i did have an exciting idea for my thesis. it's actually not my idea at all. it's from an undergrad class i took in education. we're gonna come up with our own accountability shit. this worked really well as part of community building.

my ed folks: I need facilitation stuff on popular eduation, articles on the Asian American movement/ Asian American historiography, more lit from SEA, SA, LGBTQ, mixed race writers.
i need more lit... i was thinking of leaving 2-3 books unplanned/ unassigned for folks to decide as a class?

i'm so glad i'm exempt from the protocal. i was checkin out Rom's forms and it's crazy anal.

what's going on?

2006-02-13T22:44:00.000-08:00

Some people have asked me to start a myspace but... out of paranoia i decided against it. i don't like the idea of not knowing who's reading my shit, so back to blogging.