camvanandtruong:

Dad’s naturalization certificate photo, circa 1991

thats my dad!

camvanandtruong:

I love my mama and I think she knows this. She’s that kind of lady who doesn’t really need to be told. She’s that kind of mama that actually feels that as long as her kids are doing well she does well. It is crazy to me how selfless mothers (and fathers) can really be.

I can’t be sure about many things in life but I know that I will never truly understand my mother’s love for her children because it is beyond understanding. And she is is so selfless and so humble that she will never need me to understand it. She’s not looking for gratitude or credit or reciprocation. She’s not looking for anything in return because that’s how mama does. She doesn’t ask for anything for herself but she damn well deserves it. 

camvanandtruong:

There was a period of time when my parents were away on business for very long periods of time so my siblings and I were staying with my grandparents. My brother, Eric, and I shared a room back then and every night after we had turned out the lights we’d say out loud, “goo’ nigh’ ma, goo’ nigh’ ba,” cutting out the ends of those English words the way a Vietnamese-speaker usually would. 

bulletproofweekss:

9) Quote your favorite line from the movie.

The Duke: I don’t care about your ridiculous dogma! Why shouldn’t the courtesan chose the maharajah? 
Christian: Because she doesn’t love you!… Him… Hi-him, she doesn’t love… she doesn’t love him. 

Christian, you really let the cat out of the bag on that one. But I love it!

The Times Are A-Changing

        Its really interesting.  These last 8 months or so I’ve been going though certain phases about life changing and getting older.  Realizing that my world isn’t exactly as I remembered it anymore.  One example, music.  Everything I hear on the radio now is like dubstep and techno or some sort of hybrid form of it.  All songs have that moment in them where the beat speeds up really fast and then gets high pitched then it goes back to that original beat but with more noise.  All the kids love it these days.  Its catchy but to me its inferior music to what I listen to, there are some songs that I think are amazing, deep, etc.  But most of it feels too mechanical and lacking that soul that I want from my music.  To me it feels like a lot of the pop music isn’t going for that emotional tie anymore, but that animal instinct tie that makes you just want to go crazy. (that was a quote from hai pham).   Same with fashion. I have no idea what highschool kids and Middle School kids are doing anymore.  I remember when I was in HS and Middle School I had won the “Best Dressed”  vote in the year books.  I was trendy and avant garde.  But now I notice myself not shopping at Urban anymore as I did when I first discovered them in 8th grade in uptown minneapolis, but finding myself drawn to styles you’d see in a JCrew catalogue. I bet all these things Pop-Culture realizations happen to every generation.  Imagine what our parents thought of rap and rock when they first heard it.  

I actually had a dream last night that I was balding dramatically and I freaked out.  One of those panic filled dreams that when you wake up and realize it wasn’t really happen that flush of relief stills your frantic heart.  

But ok. To the point of this blog entry.  Like the title says, the times are a-changing and surprisingly enough, this entry isn’t as pessimistic as my other entries.  This one is a hopeful one! 

If you wondering why I have pictures of Harry Shum Jr.  in this entry, you’re about to find out why.  But before we do, lets just take a look at him really quick and bask in the handsome-ness and sexiness that is him.  Ain’t that a sight?  

Alright.  So enough with the digressing.  Its 2008.  The Asian American Student Union on the University of Wisconsin Madison campus was trying to rise from the Ashes.  And we wanted to have an APA 101 forum/discussion event that was thought provoking and relatable to our target audience.  After some soul searching the group came up with idea of Asian Sexuality.  (Kao, Yun-Jung, Kim, Phil, Gil, Chanel, Duc, Vora-wanted to give credit where credits due hopefully i didn’t forget anyone)   We went back and forth with what topics should be and what not and came up with 5 categories.  

Sex in the Household

LGBTQ issues in the Asian American Community

Interracial Dating

The Hyper-sexualization of the Asian Female

and the Emasculation of the Asian Male. 

I was put in charge of the Male emasculation portion.  I combed data bases, articles, books about media portrayal of the Asian male and how its affected their Sexual Image in our culture.  From the Japanese internment to breakfast at tiffany’s you’d be surprised about some of the things that people believe distorted the image of the Asian male. 

        So based off of some research and personal experience of my own and the group I came up with a central themes that resulted in the emasculation of the asian male.  One of the more interesting themes is I would have to say the Media Portrayal of the Asian male.  

At the time of those workshops, most of what I saw in mainstream media was Asian males being portrayed as the stereotypical A-Sexual computer expert, the hyper-sexual computer expert, the silent martial arts warrior, and last but not least the William Hung…(remember him? yeah he set us back a couple..)  Always the broken english sidekick that never got the girl.  I came across a statistic saying that the Asian-Male was the least desired.  

What does that do to a person’s self esteem?  Even when you hear asian women say “I don’t asian guys”.  Why is that?  Why don’t you date asian guys? Seeing that a person that looks like you is never romantically linked with anyone on screen?  And on the rare occasions they are, its with only other Asians.  Never with non-asians.  I’d imagine growing up in a neighborhood as the only asian that being tough.  

Now I’m going to say some things that you can and can agree with, but I’m going to say it because it was either true for me, or I felt is true.  

Being seen as attractive is an important thing.  If you see yourself as attractive it can do a lot for your self-esteem.  For me and I believe many other men out there, If girls thought i was cute, that was the best feeling in the world and it lifts your spirit in a very unique way.  For me, if I find out that you think I’m attractive, I can’t help but smirk and feel fuzzy inside.  

But with the mainstream telling me I’m either a Jet Li or a  William Hung its hard to see myself as the guy that will sweep the girl off her feet.   Beau Sia’s poem Love pretty much sums it up.  (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0sXOxIq65zg)   “I feel unloved” 

  In the end we put in many hours researching the topics and coming up with meaningful discussion questions for our attendees and was very well received by the majority of our attendees. 

But now.  Lately.  I’ve been starting to see a change.  This Harry Shum Jr.  On some show called glee has been tearing it up! What inspired me to finally write something about this was because I saw that he was on People Magazine’s list of Sexiest men alive this year.  A sexualized asian male in the mainstream.  Who would’ve thought?!  This is awesome!  we need more of this!  etc etc.  Is this the beginning of some real change?  Will my kids have to go through the same growing pains I did?  

Now before I get carried away I want to draw attention to some possible cons from this.  Asian Men are sexy.  That could easily turn into a short lived fad and women will begin to date asian men for all the wrong reasons and then the whole hyper-sexualization will happen to both genders.   Just like asian women, the men could become fetishized and liked for the wrong reasons.  So lets make sure that doesn’t happen.  We can’t sit idly by and let this opportunity pass us by.  

Our foot is in the door fellas.  its up to us to make sure our image is portrayed in a way that we want it to be, not how hollywood sees us to be.  

Don’t take what they give us, take what we want.  

If you want to ever talk about some of these issues with me, I love discussing them.  Just hit me up.  etc etc.  

did-you-kno:

Source

(via phuongnguyen89)

What Grandpa’s Were Meant For

This is my Grandpa.  3:08pm Sept 2007 he died.  I was probably planning what I was going to do that Friday night when I got the phone call from my sister telling me that he had just died, quietly in bed surrounded by our cousins, aunts, uncles, and Grandma.    As some of you might now, grandpa was one of the more influential people in my life. And today is the anniversary of his death and so I wanted to write a short post about him and I.   

I wanted this post to be about how my grandpa had imparted some sort of god teacher like wisdom onto me.  How he said something to me that absolutely changed my perspective on life.  A memory of him telling me those few words of wisdom that changed me completely, kind of like Uncle Ben in Spider Man or Yoda in Star Wars.  With great power comes great responsibility, and Do or do not, there is no try. 

But to be honest, after some thought I realized, the only specific things I remember him saying to me were “If you can open my fist up then I will give you a dollar” and “No kicking and Punching, Only wrestling and grappling”.   And even then I feel like those may just be my subconscious filling in the dialogue of my memories.

So I guess I can’t tell you about any words of wisdom that he imparted onto me even if there were any.  However, I can tell you about some memories I have of him, and how they made me feel because like they say, “People may not remember exactly what you did, or what you said, but they will always remember how you made them feel”. 

Grandpa had the biggest laugh and the widest smile.  When I was younger, whenever I heard that laugh it was usually followed by me being angry or some form of grouchy.  Its probably because it usually preceded with him either tricking me into giving him a back massage for an hour by offering to pay us 1$ and then going back on it.  One of his many cons.  You’d be surprised how many of these little tricks I fell for -_-. 

Grandpa hated congee.  I hate congee. He is also born the year of the dragon like me!

Grandpa would always play this game with us called “bat chan” or loosely translated “catch your leg”.  Basically he would sit in one spot and we’d all try to bait him to catch us, which he was able to often which was followed up by ruthless amounts of tickling.  Sometimes one of us grandchildren would get tickled so much that we’d storm off and not talk to him for the rest of the evening.  We were little punks. 

Grandpa told ” ‘Muscle’ is a Vietnamese word” (ask me and I’ll tell you the story in person :P)

Grandpa always talked winning the lottery and about the things he would buy, not for himself, but for the grandchildren.  He would tell me how he’d buy me a new car, and the only thing I’d have to do is run down to the convenient store a couple blocks away and check if this was in fact the winning lottery ticket that he was destined to get.  Oh how excited I would get when I’d check the numbers and how disappointed I was every time we didn’t win.   But of course his talks of grandeur always kept me hoping

Grandpa was secretly a teddy bear.  As loud as he would yell at us when we were bad, as tough as he would act he was as mushy on the inside as anyone.  I remember the day we moved out of Grandma and Grandpa’s house.  All the cousins were helping us pack up all of our worldly possessions in the corolla, the aunts and uncles were all saying our goodbyes grandma was calling grandpa a baby. I just then realized that I hadn’t seen grandpa yet at all this morning.  I didn’t get why at first but understood when it was time to hit the road and grandma told us to go say goodbye to him and that he was in the bed room.  I remember a feeling of nervousness and slight embarrassment. 

Grandpa was sitting upright in bed with the lights out and he was crying.  It was dark but the light was leaking through the curtains no matter how hard they tried to keep it back.  I could barely see his face but I didn’t dare flip the light switch.  I felt like I was intruding on something private and forbidden.  In a voice that wasn’t its usual strong and boisterous self, he told us to be good and make sure to “hoc hanh” study well and to drive safely. 

That was my only memory of seeing or hearing grandpa cry.  Cindy (sister bear) told me about a story about him during the twilight years of his life after he had suffered strokes and lost much of his memory.  Often times he wouldn’t remember anyone else but my grandma (i think proof of their love). 

In her words.

“Before he died, my grandpa couldn’t remember me. the last thing he ever said to me was, “I don’t know who you are.”  he looked so distraught.

I said to him, “it’s okay ong ngoai, you don’t have to remember me, I’ll remember you.”

When I think about him, I don’t think about only him, but everyone that connects me to him, and him to me.  I will always appreciate how he took the time to play with me and his grandchildren and the love that he showed us.  I heard stories about what he was like as a Father.  My mom tells me how he used to be strict and mean to the aunts and uncles.  How back in Vietnam he would whip their butts if they got out of line.

             To be honest, I don’t remember him being anything like that to me and I’ve come to realize its because He is my Mother’s Father.   And that’s what fathers were supposed to do, that’s what they are meant for. But for me, He was grandpa.  And grandpas are meant for teasing, joking, and play. 

And of course the occasional argument on whether or not the Vietnamese word for ‘muscle’ was in fact ‘muscle’. 

awhipandafedora:

thenerdycrockett:

Dear Cosmopolitan Magazine,

I do not once recall in Star Wars and its subsequent installments a moment where Han Solo… “whipped it out” in front of Princess Leia. I’m not sure what movie you were watching, but I can attest with 100% certainty that it wasn’t Star Wars - a cheap ripoff maybe, a sleazy porno of said film, even. Regardless, I’m not denying Han Solo of the fact he’s a suave ladies’ man, something we all aspire to be.

Truly,

“The Nerdy Crockett”

PS

Luke Skywalker used the lightsaber, not Solo; poor analogy.

Epic fail Cosmo…

(via heart-of-palladium)

So I was having a discussion about the Nivea ad and the “Re-civilize” yourself. To summarize it features an ad with an Black Male holding a mannequin head and hurling it into the distance.  The Mannequin head looks like what a black male would look like if he had worn his hair naturally.   There was an uproar at the ad because its presenting the idea that Black hair worn naturally is “Uncivilized”.  Nivea Apologized and retracted the ad.  There was a huge debate over whether or not people should be offended or not especially because they had run a similar ad but featured a White male holding a mannequin head.  However that particular ad  had the words “Being in Sin City is no excuse to look like Sin”.  There was a friendly debate online with some friends and I and I came to a conclusion that the What male’s ad draws no connections to being civilized or not.  I concluded that this is even more unacceptable due to the fact that even though there is a white male version of this ad, it does not draw the same mental connotations as the black male version.  This is because white males and females do not have a history of being seen as “uncivilized and unacceptable” by wearing their hair naturally. We live in a country that constantly tells us that these traits are inferior whether its through television, magazines, or in the hair salon.  

I’d love to elaborate but I have a feeling this entry is going to be pretty long so please bear with me ^^’.   It brought up some questions from other people and myself how come there has been so much dialogue on this ad and none on the latest DirecTV commercials playing all over tv. Especially because it is featuring not only an Asian American but a Vietnamese american.  (These discussions were happening between UVSA Midwest and UNAVSA folk)  

For those of you who don’t know, the commercial features Dat Phan as a huge Casino “Whale” with a heavy “vietnamese” accent talking about how he gets everything bigger because of his status as being a “Big Whale”  Here’s the link if you’d like to see it.

Dat Phan Direct TV “The Whale” commercial - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CFDUOfRXP_k

It got me thinking, why haven’t we talked about this?  Should we even?  Is this a good or a bad thing…?  

So when seeing this commercial for the first time I instantly though, oh look Ken Jeong knock off. cool. Then I found out it was Dat Phan and thought to myself, “have some self respect man. ”   But why did I think like that?  I then thought back to the first time I saw Ken Jeong in the Movie “The Hangover”.  When he leaped out of the trunk of that car and started screaming and hitting the other actors with the crowbar I instantly did a palm to forehead.  Great another Long Duk Dong I thought.  

After the film I did some research on his background and found out that he was a Doctor and it was always his life long dreams to be an Actor. And that I could respect.  I tabled the debate in my head whether or not his role in the Hangover would do more harm than good.  

Well, as always when Hollywood sees that something sells, they beat it until its dead and here we are with Dat Phan.  (For those of you who don’t know, Dat Phan is a pretty well known comedian and one of his more popular bits are when we uses an “asian accent” while speaking english, (often times broken).  

When I see these characters in the mainstream this is what first comes to mind, “Great, Asian stereotypes again, now everyone is going to think that I speak english as a second language thus subliminally making me a second class citizen in the minds of anyone who thinks “If you live in american then you should learn how to speak AMERICAN.” And then I think, great now kids (that aren’t used to broken english) are going to think how my parents are speak english as comedic and they’ll never be able to take anything they say seriously.  

So I don’t go on too many tangents this next portion is going to focus on the use of the “Fob” as a comedic tool.  Now I do admit, I do laugh at some of the things my parents say when they say something incorrectly. (For instance this one time when my sister sneezed my dad said to her “Achee”.  She just looked at him and was like “What’s Achee?” and then he responded with “You know, what you guys always say after you guys sneeze, Achee”  My sister responds with “You mean Bless you???”  It turns out he confused the words Achoo and Bless You.)  But I justify this with the fact that I know to not pigeon hold people with these accents like the Majority might/may/have/has.

  As i think about this question I’m still at an internal debate.  My first reaction is if Asian American’s want to no longer be seen as a “token Asian Comic” then they have to move away from poking fun at the accent and what not.  However I think to myself it is a way for them to stand apart from all the other comedians, using their “asian experience” to stand apart, so is it that bad?”  

Not wanting to write such a long post and not offer a concise opinion I would have to conclude that at this moment in time, I believe that they should move away from that stereotype for these reasons.  

               1. There is not enough mainstream balance out there                                                              -I know that we’re making strives in a positive direction, Especially with the likes of John Cho and Harry Shum Jr, but I have a feeling that they aren’t nearly as memorable to the average consumer than these comedic portrayals are.  We need a balance out there in the mainstream so that people know that this isn’t representative!  And me being a male also think towards what the repercussions could be for myself an Asian American Male in the dating scene.  I seriously don’t think that the likes of Long Duk Dong (16 candles), The Whale (DirecTV) and Leslie Chow (Hangover) had the girls going crazy.   (MALE EMASCULATION!?  Asian sexuality!  ah I could go on forever.) 

2. Neo-Yellow Face                                                                                                Ok, I just googled the term “Neo-Yellow Face” and it came back with only results for neon lights and what not so I guess i Just invented this term.  But ok, you’re thinking, Neo-Yellow Face?  What’s that?  Well just Neo is the greek word for young, which turned into newos later on and then to New. So Neo=New. Yellow face?  Well yellow face is the term used for when a Non Asian person, often times a white person, is cast for a role that is/should/supposed to be and asian person.  Modern Examples; Dragon Ball Evolution,  Avatar The Last Airbender, 21.  And to go way back, back to the old school; Breakfast at Tiffany’s, Charlie Chan, 16 Candles.  

So Neo-Yellow Face is something similar to that. Its a different version of Yellow facing.  Now this just dawned upon me so I might end up rethinking my opinion on this but isn’t what Dat Phan and Ken Jeong’s characters are doing similar to what Yellow facing is?  They are portraying what “asian immigrants” or “asians speaking with broken english” are like, when they themselves are not.  (I know that Dat was indeed born in Vietnam but he immigrated when he was a child and speaks english in a way that when first heard would not draw thoughts of a foreigner might sound like)  I have some friends that have expressed to me personally that they hate it when our mutual friends “Do the asian accent”  because they themselves are not fluent speakers and it makes them feel uncomfortable because it is in a comedic gesture, making fun of the way they speak.  I’m not trying to take shots at anyone here, but if you are a person who does that, just think about it, would you appreciate it if someone made fun of how you spoke/dressed/acted/looked?  

Ok, just to respond to some things that some people might be thinking.  

“Just because they see it on TV. Doesn’t mean that they will stereotype you! or the rest of people! We live in the 21st century, people aren’t that dumb! Racism is basically over!”

Those statements may sound a little over the top, but I have heard the “Racism is basically over” comment very recently from a close friend of mine who is far left when it comes to American Politics.  We do live in the 21st century, and blatant racism (active racism) I have found has been definitely taken the backburner in society but is still very much around.  But i’ve found that Passive racism (socialized, institutionalized) racism is now what we really have to deal with. Things like “Where are really from?”, “Model Minority”, “You’re really good at BasketBall for an Asian!”.  Stuff like that.  So racism is not over.    

I’ve had 2 instances in my life that people have questioned my english speaking skills.  I’ll just tell you about one so that we keep this shorter..  I just moved to Minnesota, Was talking to the school counselor about what classes I should take.  I chose choir over band :P.  And at first I thought that would be the last question she was going to ask, but she slipped in one last question that would be a dagger and her undoing.  ”Do you want to take ESL?”  (English as a second Language).  What blew my mind was that I’m pretty sure I was signed up for Honors English and that we had just spent the last 15 minutes conversing about my schedule in perfect english.  

So ish does happen. 

I understand that a brotha’s gotta do what a brotha’s gotta do to make ends meet.  I am happy for those who are able to do what they love for a living and those who are able to fulfill their dreams.  More power to you.  However, I guess all i’m asking is next time you take a role that may exploit these stereotypes, or any stereotype, think to yourself what the repercussions could be not only for you, but the people who you know and love that may share similar features to yourself.  Your friends, family, kid.  If you believe that the pros outweigh the cons, than take it, its yours.  But if not..

  This post has been very much a downer for me, especially when I a couple articles about it, but one of those articles pointed to a new commercial by target featuring an Asian American Second Grade teacher not “accenting” her asian-ness but the fact that she’s a teacher.  It definitely brought a smile to my face. One step at a time folks, one step at a time…  

Second Grade Teacher Target Commercial - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=glquKfXhLFo

(I read three articles before writing about this, one on JackFroot.com and two on Channel APA which directed me to the Target Commercial) Also, I think i’m very much in love with this teacher. SHE’S SO CUTE!

hehehehehehe