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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
Flea Bodine was a very particular type of rock musician, almost only found playing bass guitar, which would become Flea’s instrument, or rhythm guitar. This is the musician who is drafted into a band in need of a particular instrument that is not especially difficult to learn and who then learns that […]
It is often said that when an elder dies a library burns down. It could also be said that when a tavern keeper dies a tavern burns down. So many moments of fellowship, of shared music and drinks, that would have happened now will never happen—they vanished before they could exist. Jacobsmeyers […]
Often we think that the paths we choose are straight—northerly from Florida to Maryland, in the case of the transit of my friend’s boat, Castaway—but in reality our lives are made of arcs, loops, and retracings. Chris and I often veered off course, lengthening the trip significantly, to get fuel, reach […]
An exchange at the start of Norman Mailer’s The Executioner’s Song portrays the comedy of surprise at learning something that changes the landscape we thought we knew. Brenda Nicols and her husband Johnny are driving to pick up her cousin Gary Gilmore, who has just been released from prison for armed robbery […]
