In 1870, “Chinese” was the first time an Asian category for race was included in the U.S decennial census. By 1890, “Japanese” was the second. It was not until the 1910 census that other Asian categories were identified as “Filipino,” “Hindu” (used incorrectly for Indian Americans), and “Korean.” That year, 160 Filipinos lived in the […]
Nestled in the Park County Local History Digital Archive, an electronic collection of visual and oral documentation from Park County, Colorado, lives a photograph titled “Woman of Asian descent sitting with bound feet.” Inscribed on the lower right corner, is an address: 619 Kearny St, San Francisco. And next to it, on […]
The occasional validation of clichés and other well-worn phrases by scientific studies is one of life’s unsung oddities if not glories. No one conveys an idea without words to hold them. In the curious case of pain, however, words do some impressive heavy lifting. Clichés about pain are—and, sorry, this cannot be […]
Many of us are old enough to remember the 1970s and its endless debates, battles, and even “war of the sexes,” when feminism emerged from its nascent forms and became a seismic force. How many of us, by contrast, cringe at the seemingly endless debate of what it means to “be […]
I remember the crack of a gunshot in the 2018 debut of Huang Ruo and David Henry Hwang’s two-part An American Soldier. I remember the operatic death, the performance of it, the abruptness of it, the sonorous belting, the tall wooden structure on stage right, and the tenor on top of it, playing Danny Chen, […]
If you are one of more than 200 million Amazon Prime members worldwide, you probably have sitting on your kitchen table what has sat on mine for the past week or so: the Amazon Holiday Gift Book, Unwrap Joy, printed in robust paper stock. If you did not receive your copy, […]
While societal norms often discourage us from discussing politics, I found that this could not be further from the truth in D.C. Instead of causing a notorious Thanksgiving style blowout, it united people with a common passion. Not because we agreed on everything, but because we had chosen to entrench ourselves in politics to the […]
Horror film connoisseurs are not born. They are made. They are made after watching endless iterations of the jump scare, after several trips to the kitchen or bathroom while basic plot points mount into ratcheting tension, and after nerves and stomach are steeled against dry heaves while viewing mind-bending scenes of […]
On Friday I self-diagnosed myself as “suffering from a mild case of Scribe’s Fever, a form of neurasthenia common among the intelligentsia of [our] time.” I had just watched Wes Anderson’s film Grand Budapest Hotel, twice in a row. It has been an active season in Essayland. Everyone—the whole town—was out […]
“Cultural diplomacy”—the propagation of art and other culture by a government as a form of soft power—can be a tricky thing. As UNESCO (the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization) says, “Beyond State driven policy processes, cultural diplomacy engages a wide range of non-governmental actors such as artists, curators, journalists, […]
