Fascinasians

10x10 with the Director & Cast of Flat3

Jesifiable here, hijacking Fascinasians for a post. If you haven’t checked out Flat3, the latest webseries to hit the web from New Zealand, then you probably should right now. The next story following the trend of quirky female comedies, Flat3 is a webseries that follows the unique perspectives of 3 Chinese-Kiwi women in their 20’s as they try to figure out who they are, what they’re doing in this life, and whose turn it is to buy toilet paper. And I got the lucky chance to interview these amazing women behind the new show—Roseanne Liang (Director/Writer), Perlina Lau (“Perlina”), JJ Fong (“Jessica”) and Ally Xue (“Lee”). Check it out!

How did Flat3 come into fruition and what have been some of your inspirations for the series?
Roseanne Liang: JJ sent me an email one day asking if I might be interested in helping them write a webseries. I said yes. Then they asked me if I wanted to direct. I was actually planning to tell them that they weren’t allowed to use the script unless I also directed it - but I acted all nonchalant and shrugged ‘sure. Whatevs’. And then I told them I had edit it or else I would run away with all the footage.

For me, the inspirations for the series are Sex and the City, Girls, 30 Rock and maybe a little Flight of the Conchords. Oh and Louis CK’s Louie. Freaks and Geeks, my all -time favourite TV show. Seinfeld, Monty Python, The Office. Basically every comedy show I’ve loved and wanted to copy. It’s not plagiarism if you say it’s homage! It’s homage, by the way. In terms of webseries, I discovered Awkward Black Girl fairly late in the game. Also Natalie Tran’s Community Channel, but we’ll never be as quick or cute as her. We can try, but we can’t.

Perlina Lau: For Jess and I, it was a combination of boredom, restlessness to an extent and unnecessary self pity which kicked this project off! Also just our own experiences combined with shows we like watching ourselves. This was the foundation for most scenarios!

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Survey for Asian American Women

Call for Asian American women (ages 18 or older) to participate
in a survey and a chance to win an Amazon.com gift certificate
 

My name is Pauline Chan, a graduate student in the Counseling Psychology doctoral program. I am a second generation Chinese American and am working on my dissertation under the direction of Dr. Belle Liang. The study focuses on the social experiences of Asian American women. The study has been approved by the Boston College Office for Research Protections Institutional Review Board (Protocol #12.172.01A).
 
I am writing to ask Asian American women to participate in my online dissertation research survey and to offer an opportunity to be entered in a random drawing for an Amazon.com gift certificate for participation in the survey (5 $20 gift certificates and 2 $50 gift certificates available).
 
To participate in the study, participants must:
 

• Be 18 years or older and
• Self-identify as a woman who is Asian American or a member of an Asian American subgroup

 
In this survey participants will be asked questions about social experiences in different contexts, social attitudes, culture and wellbeing. The survey will take approximately 35-45 minutes to complete and may be found at the following link:
 

part of my interview with the napawf

cosmopolitan-fascist:

Q: What about undocumented API immigration is not represented in the stereotypical narratives of immigration politics?

Chinese workers built the nation railroads but were asked to step aside when iconic photographs were taken at Promontory Point of the nation’s new railway tracks. The injustice faced by these workers is the point sometimes missed by common narratives of immigration activists. We Dream Activists usually rely on the logic of being American because we are exceptional, educated, or particularly talented. But we shouldn’t be waging a struggle to suggest that our GPAs and fancy degrees make us the right type of immigrants or the good racial minorities (though I’ve fallen into this idea time and time again). I know that this is a deliberate move and often necessary if we want the establishment to make concessions, but we cannot lose sight of the mission even when we engage in strategic essentialism.

I don’t deserve citizenship because I am exceptional: I deserve it because my long-term presence in this nation makes me a member of local communities and because migration is a human right. My talents and achievements are the result of social support, specific local policies, and the family members who sacrificed everything to encourage my education. Most people are not that lucky but that doesn’t make them less deserving. My parents deserve citizenship not because they don’t have criminal records: they deserve it because they are those Chinese workers, laboring in the background and participating in the gritty toil of making this country work. My motivation is not ‘giving back to the nation’ to prove myself; it is the recognition of immigrants as essential and precious stakeholders of American society.

I say all of this only because the model minority discourse has particular meaning for Asian Americans. More than other racial groups, the idea that I am a foreigner is cemented even if I was born on US soil. I want the recognition of this experience, this discourse, this existence of being an immigrant naturalized as a central force that shapes American culture—and not a legally separate and peripheral racial figure. This is a demand I make as an Asian woman because the politics of assimilation cannot work for a race that is deemed inassimilable.

Exceptionalist attitudes also reject critiques of imperialism and establishment politics, and not many are outspoken about the destruction wrought to the lands of our birth by American war machines. If you’d like to displace me from the only country I’ve ever known, please take responsibility for our homelands being ravaged by your predatory capitalism and power plays. If you’d like to guilt-trip me for being critical of Obama or either political party, consider how many families have been torn apart in the last 4 years and critique the motions of capital that lay waste to entire nations. I’m not saying don’t love this country—- I certainly do. But my critique is not out of loyalty to the nation-state, it is out of the need for justice. Critiques are not ungrateful if they result in social progress.

I was both drawn to America and pushed out of Pakistan. For Asians, the legacy of yellow peril and migration restrictions have always had to do with the nation-state’s enemy du jour. Right now, it’s en vogue to deport Muslims because they are the latest looming threat for the white middle class. Displaced Latin@s who have seen drug violence or NAFTA ruin their homes are also witnesses to first world meddling leading to third world havoc.

Playing into the discourse of ‘good immigrant’, being an Asian overachiever and all that jazz—all of this does not bode well with how Asians must negotiate model minority status. I am not here to repeat the same mistakes of leveraging myself against other people of color.

Why I Am Not a Dumbfoundead Fan

Dumbfoundead, a hip hop artist, recently released a free EP in honor of Valentine’s Day called Love Everyday. Here’s the video for the single “For You” and the lyrics:

This is for my fifth grade crush
My middle school make out sessions in a bus
Freshman hooking with high school sluts
Burning mix tapes with the bands that you loved
House party hickies unhooking that bra
Man it got real tricky 
But got those panties off 
To my first girlfriend 
that had me feelin’ sprung
then it had to end
man, we were really young
For that rebound that check that I abused
To make an ex jealous
I know wasn’t cool
For the girls I smash and never call back
For the bitchies that dissed me
You ain’t all that 
For the groupies on the road
That will drop real low
For all the chicks sending titty flix for my phone
For Jennifa and Joan
They never got along
For that crazy ass bitch 
Writing about me in the blog
For that one freak added me on the facebook
For that heartbreaker
that got me writing Drake cuts
For the ones I drugged out
And the one I sex it
Sorry I showed up to your crib unexpected
This is for the one night stands, 
And two nice days
Three months relationship 
Few blind dates
For all the girls I mentioned
I wanna thank y’all
For helping me to write this song

I understand that hip-hop is a largely misogynist scene. But it does not have to be that way. I have such problems with the language and objectification he uses in his songs. I remember listening to some previous songs and all were along the same lines. As a role model of an Asian man in the hip hop scene, Dumbfoundead has a lot of attention on him both as a powerful MC and (potentially) brilliant lyricist. It would be inspiring to see him use his position and music to spread positive, strong messages that encompass more than the people who still content with calling women “bitches” and glorify using them as objects solely for pleasure.

Dude, I would love to really jam out to your music. But I cannot support someone who has no respect for women. You’ve certainly built up quite a following, but you’ve lost this particular listener.

Maybe he should check his own words: “Just ‘cause you a nice guy don’t mean you a good man.”

titotito:

weexist-weresist:

thegoddamazon:

daniellemertina:

karnythia:

Ever notice how there’s no mention of the psychological damage done to communities of color by colonialism, imperialism, or slavery? No mention of any syndromes that might be created by an ongoing message of genetic & social inferiority constantly beings spoonfed to kids? Gee, I wonder why there’s no discussion of the long term harm that could be done to a community as a result of systemic dehumanization & oppression.

I was just thinking this the other day. Between the media/ educationally inflicted messages of our inferiority there has to be some psychological ramifications. I know sociology has words like “internalized stereotype threat” and “internalized racism” (although that is only discussed when a black person literally hates other black people when there is far more to that).

I find it interesting that people have theorized about the psychological ramifications of rich people who don’t get attention from their parents, or people in unfulfilling white collar jobs, but NOTHING about the dehumanizing effect of the combination of poverty & blackness. Or just blackness.

They’re afraid of what effects the inescapable truth they are destined to uncover will have on the world. Better to keep the masses ignorant than have them aware that their lives are not okay.

Here are some links to get some discussions started:

Racism and Asian Mental Health

Mental Health Problems More Common Among Kids Who Feel Racial Discrimination

Racial Battle Fatigue and Blacks

Muslims and Mental Health

Depression Among Minority Children

Racism and Mental Health of Children

Poverty Goes Straight to the Brain

Model Minority Myth + Stress

Mental Toll of Racism

Asian Women and Suicide

this list is accessible articles, a quick scholarly search yields thousands of complicated studies for brainiacs who are interested

Helpful links! Thanks for the compilation!

Engage2012 Conference - December 8, 2011!

The Women of Color Policy Network at New York University’s Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service will host a convening of leading people of color policy experts, practitioners and social change advocates working on issues related to immigration, racial justice, economic security, LGBTQ rights and reproductive and environmental justice to better understand how to work across communities to identify common policy goals and targets, strengthen coalitions and dismantle issue silos, and ultimately advance a multi-issue, intersectional framework to address structural and institutional inequalities and disparities present in society.

The public is welcome to attend the opening plenary of Engage2012 with policy experts, practitioners, thought leaders, key stakeholders, and members of the NYU community. 

Confirmed Panelists Include:

—Cornell Belcher, President of Brilliant Corners Research and Strategy

—Rea Carey, Executive Director of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force
—Cheryl Contee, Co-Founder of the award-winning Black political blog Jack and Jill Politics

—Susan Herman, President of the American Civil Liberties Union
—Marc Lamont Hill, host of the nationally syndicated television show Our World with Black Enterprise and Columbia University Professor
—Avis Jones-DeWeever, Executive Director of the National Council of Negro Women
—Maria Teresa Kumar, Executive Director and Co-Founder of Voto Latino
—Clarissa Martinez de Castro, Director of Immigration and National Campaigns at the National Council of La Raza
—Anika Rahman, President and CEO of the Ms. Foundation for Women
—Rashad Robinson, Executive Director of ColorOfChange
—Linda Sarsour, Director of the Arab American Association of New York
—Miriam Yeung, Executive Director of the National Asian Pacific American Women’s Forum

 —Moderator: Sheryl Huggins Salomon, Managing Editor of The Root

When: 12/08/2011 6:00pm-8:00pm
Location:
The Kimmel Center, Rosenthal Pavilion
60 Washington Square South, New York, NY 10012