A Queer-Friendly Fashion Show That Widens the Lens on Asian Identity - The New York Times

The art collective CFGNY held a conceptual fashion show at the Japan Society.

New York Fashion Week was more than 10 days away, but CFGNY, an art collective founded in New York City that challenges dominant narratives around Asian American identity, held a conceptual fashion show at the Japan Society in Manhattan on Saturday.

CFGNY, which stands for Concept Foreign Garments New York (its original name included the words “cute” and “gay”), is led by four New York artists — Tin Nguyen, Daniel Chew, Ten Izu and Kirsten Kilponen — who use art and fashion to explore the term “vaguely Asian” and how it is often used to homogenize very different cultures.

“CFGNY is a project of critique, but we’re also interested in playfulness,” Mr. Chew, 35, said backstage before the show.

Kirsten Kilponen, left, and Tin Nguyen, one of the founders of CFGNY.Jutharat Pinyodoonyachet for The New York Times

Beverly Nguyen, left, and Alex Tieghi Walker.Jutharat Pinyodoonyachet for The New York Times

Fashion show front rows usually hold fashion editors and retail buyers, but here there was a cross section of the city’s Asian and queer-friendly creative class. Attendees included Beverly Nguyen, 32, a Vietnamese American stylist and design influencer who wore a chenille skirt by CFGNY made of large bumble bee patches; Kiko Soirée, 32, a drag artist and comedian, wore white knee-high socks that read “camp”; and Doris Ho Kane, 42, a Vietnamese bakery owner and archivist, wearing orange drawstring pants under a long off-white coat.

They were joined by reality TV stars, pastry chefs, party promoters, jewelry designers, museum curators and activists.

By 7 p.m. the 350 attendees had found their places in the sprawling marble lobby that evokes a Japanese garden with bonsai trees, rock beds and shoji walls. A snaking catwalk had been carved out with temporary seating and wooden walkways over an indoor pond.

Daniel Chew, another founder of CFGNY.Jutharat Pinyodoonyachet for The New York Times

The last person to take her seat was the mother of one of the founders, Ngoc Le, 62, who came in from Massachusetts and made Vietnamese dishes for the cast and crew earlier in the day. Dressed in a conservative black dress and a single string of pearls, she filmed the crowd with her phone as she made her way through the room.

Around 7:20 p.m., the lights dimmed and a howling soundscape by Okkyung Lee, a South Korean cellist, started. CFGNY had its network of artists, influencers, designers and performers walk as models, instead of professionals. They drew from diverse pockets of the Asian diaspora.

The show opened with the artist Stewart Uoo, who served corporate realness in a sage silk shirt tucked into cobalt chinos, with a sparkly dash of rhinestone fixed to one leg. Miho Hatori, an artist and co-founder of the band Cibo Matto, wore a baseball cap with an olive green work jacket and an indigo blue silk skirt with two stuffed animals tucked inside.

Blake Abbie, 32, who stars on the Netflix reality show “Bling Empire: New York,” wore a blue shirt with English non-words. And West Dakota, a Brooklyn Liberation March organizer, wore a sheer mesh top, Jelly platform heels and a skirt made from cartoonish caterpillar patches.

Nhu Duong modeled one of the looks by CFGNY.Jutharat Pinyodoonyachet for The New York Times

Helen Chan, who walked the show, was scouted at a Trader Joe’s.Jutharat Pinyodoonyachet for The New York Times

There was Kawaii cuteness, references to K-pop and anime, blurred gender lines and a mishmash of sartorial references including tartan, animal prints, Western logos and parachute pants. About 13 minutes and 35 looks later, the show ended.

After the designers took their bows, the chairs were cleared, a bar was set up, and sushi was served for an after-party in the lobby. (Some guests lingered upstairs to see CFGNY’s art installation, part of “Refashioning,” on view until Feb. 18.)

From left: Diane Severin Nguyen, X Zhu Nowell and Korakrit Arunanondchai.Jutharat Pinyodoonyachet for The New York Times

A group gathered around Helen Chan, a retired real estate agent who lives in Brooklyn, impossible to miss with her big purple-silver hair. She was still wearing the bodycon mesh dress and patchwork plaid corset she wore in the show.

Ms. Chan said she was buying bananas a couple of weeks ago at the Trader Joe’s on Grand Street when Mr. Nguyen approached her to walk in this show. “My husband said, ‘Why do that? You’re a nut head,’” Ms. Chan said, laughing. When asked her age, she replied, “my mother is 102.”

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Is This an Asian Story? | Opinion - Harvard Crimson

Meet our fictional protagonist, Kelly. She helps start a magazine, an Asian one. (She’s Chinese-American).

She plans its launch party, catering Korean fried chicken and Kung Fu Tea, the twin monopolies on Asian™ culture. Disclaimer: She had a paper to write — otherwise, she would’ve hand-folded dumplings as taught by her ancestors.

***

My stomach turned when I read yet another novel with the Chinese Cultural Revolution as its backdrop. When I watched Turning Red, the Disney movie with the strict-Chinese-mother versus rebellious-daughter trope. And when I wrote a story about intergenerational trauma based on my (Chinese-American) family.

Because I thought, “Uh-oh, another one.”

Hear me out. If we only tell certain narratives, those may be the only things people think define the Asian diaspora — for example, in the case of the Chinese-American community, parental expectations and hauntings of the Cultural Revolution. Instead, perhaps we should strive to tell stories like the film “Everything, Everywhere All at Once” which “takes apart” and “wackily reassembles” Asian stereotypes (and just earned 11 Oscar nominations).

After stewing over whether this revelation was self-loathing of my identity or next-level-woke, I decided it was both.

We make room for countless romances in Paris, so why can’t there be multiple stories about Chinese-parent trauma? Why can’t Michelle Yeoh – who just took home a Golden Globe for her performance in “Everything, Everywhere All at Once” — keep playing strong-wise women in her films, like Owen Wilson playing awkward-endearing men in his gazillion rom-coms? Telling a story that overlaps with another, shouldn’t make it any less valuable. It says, I am here, and this is my story: as one of this eclectic yet shared we.

Moreover, expecting marginalized storytellers to chart new frontiers may unjustly burden them – echoing how minorities in the public eye are often asked to speak for their “people.” For instance, Indian-American actress-producer-writer Mindy Kaling, across her works, has received criticism for leaning into South Asian stereotypes – from rom-com “Never Have I Ever” to Scooby-Doo prequel “Velma.” But as one of the few high-visibility South Asian women in Hollywood, Kaling has been, perhaps unfairly, a “lightning rod” for such criticism.

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Ideally, we all can have our stories heard, simply because we want to tell them: without the duty to forge equity under our fingertips.

***

Kelly runs into her roommates on her way to the party. She mentions the magazine and the importance of diverse stories. One roommate says iLoveCrazyRichAsians. They nervous-giggle, and congratulate her on her Asian Achievement.

***

So, diverse stories can’t all be perfect. But it’s still a first step that “Crazy Rich Asians” was the first major film with an all-Asian cast in 25 years, and that Asian-diasporic writers are getting book deals. Right?

Sure. But (surprise-surprise) that isn’t enough. As a kid, I was happy to encounter any characters who looked like me, from ditzy London Tipton on Disney’s “The Suite Life” to (the maybe-racistly named) Cho Chang in the “Harry Potter” series. But, I first realized I could truly be in a story when I met Frank Zhang of the “Heroes of Olympus” series: a relatably awkward kid whose Chinese lineage granted him extraordinary powers. And indeed, research indicates the need for authentic storytelling, since positive portrayals of characters with our identity correlate with increased feelings of belonging and self-esteem.

In addition to the lack of such storytelling, our current “diverse” narratives still aren’t diverse enough. For instance, Disney’s “Raya and the Last Dragon” had a mostly east-Asian cast while muddling the individuality of Southeast-Asian countries into the fictional land of Kumandra. Popular series (‘To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before”, “Never Have I Ever”) feature Asian-American gals with white guy love interests – implicitly limiting the potential range of Asian love stories, and alluding to the historical fetishization of Asian women by white men. And there’s heavy upper-caste presence within Indian representation on screen — not to mention how many articles discuss Asian achievements, referring to only those of east-Asian descent.

In short, we need visibility of Asian stories that encompass: in theme, genre, and the term Asian itself. But I don’t want to overlook current efforts to do so: from Kaya Press, an imprint unconstrained by stereotypically Asian topics, to Randall Park’s film “Shortcomings,” with Asian characters simply “going through life stuff.”

Still, the keyword is visibility (as exemplified by how I had to do some digging to find those examples). True progress requires traditional decision makers to prioritize the reach of diverse creators to wider audiences. A lofty prospect for media institutions, considering how all minority groups are underrepresented in screenwriting and directing in Hollywood, and how 85% of those at the Big Five publishing houses are white.

No matter how many nuanced narratives we create or seek, we only truly move the needle if the Gatekeepers do it with us. (Or better yet, if we become the Gatekeepers and rip the gate off its hinges.)

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***

After the party, Kelly is tired. She wants to have a laugh watching “Never Have I Ever,” acknowledge its glorification of Indian cliches, and discover vastly more stories.

But, she doesn’t want everyone to think that all Chinese kids have a family temple, love bubble tea and boybands, and morph into animals like the Turning Red protagonist. Her, and Frank Zhang’s stomachs, might turn at that.

(Well, she does love taro milk-tea and had a K-pop phase, and Frank’s superpower is animal shape-shifting. But that’s besides the point. Since they can overlap and tell their unique stories with pride.)

Vanessa B. Hu ‘23-24 is a junior in Currier House studying Computer Science. Her column, “Hopes and Hypocrisies,” runs on alternate Mondays.

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YoonA appears as only Asian model for Miu Miu's global S/S 2023 campaign - allkpop

Girls' Generation's YoonA has been selected as a global campaign model for Miu Miu!

The idol participated in the Italian fashion brand's new Spring/Summer 2023 collection campaign as the only Asian model. Other top celebrities joining the campaign, which was photographed by Zoe Ghertner, include Kendall Jenner, Ever Anderson, Achol Ayor, Emma Corrin, Esther McGregor, Quintessa Swindell, and Karolin Wolter. In the photos, YoonA stuns in a minimal makeup look, creating a chic and captivating mood.

Meanwhile, YoonA will be returning to acting this year through the JTBC drama 'King the Land.' She is also expected to play a role in the movie '2 O'Clock Date,' directed by Lee Sang Geun.

Check out YoonA's Miu Miu campaign photos below!

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Skinny Cashew Chicken Recipe: A Fantastic Asian Crock Pot™ Recipe - 30Seconds.com

Put that wok and oil for frying away! This easy cashew chicken recipe cooks in a slow cooker, so you have time to do other things while it becomes delicious. And it's a healthier version of cashew chicken with less sugar. Perfect!

Chicken breast is cut into bite-sized pieces before being coated in a sauce made with reduced-sodium soy sauce, reduced-sugar ketchup, red wine vinegar, a sugar substitute, garlic and ginger. The chicken cooks for four to eight hours in a slow cooker until cooked through and tender. Cashews and green onions complete the Asian recipe. 

Serve this slow-cooked easy skinny cashew chicken over brown rice or quinoa for a healthy dinner the whole family will dig into. Pack the leftovers for lunch the next day.

Cuisine: Asian
Prep Time: 5 minutes
Cook Time: 2 1/2 to 3 hours
Total Time: 2 1/2 to 3 hours
Servings: 3

Ingredients

• 1 1/2 pounds (24 ounces) chicken breasts, cut into 1-inch pieces

Sauce

• 1/4 cup reduced-sodium soy sauce
• 2 tablespoons reduced-sugar ketchup
• 2 tablespoons rice wine vinegar
• 1 packet stevia or sweetener of choice
• 1 teaspoon minced garlic
• 1/4 teaspoon ground ginger

Garnish

• 1 ounce cashews, chopped
• sliced green onions (optional)

Here's how to make it: 

1. Spray a nonstick skillet with cooking spray. Season the chicken with salt and pepper, if desired. Brown chicken in the skillet, stirring occasionally, for about 3 to 4 minutes. (It will continue to cook in the slow cooker.) Add chicken to the slow cooker.
2. To make the sauce, combine soy sauce, ketchup, vinegar, sweetener of choice, garlic and ginger in a small bowl. Pour the sauce over chicken. Gently toss chicken with sauce to coat. 
3. Cook on LOW for 2 1/2 to 3 hours. Since the chicken is browned in the skillet first, it doesn't need a lot of time in the slow cooker. This method results in moist, chunks of chicken. If you want the chicken to be shredded in texture, you can use whole raw chicken breasts and cook on HIGH for 4 hours or LOW for 8 hours. Then shred the chicken with a fork after cooking. Garnish with cashews and sliced green onions. 

Note: 30Seconds is a participant in the Amazon affiliate advertising program and this post contains affiliate links, which means we may earn a commission or fees if you make a purchase via those links.

Recipe cooking times and servings are approximate. Need to convert cooking and baking measurements? Here are some kitchen conversion charts. Here's how to submit your recipes to 30Seconds.

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Opinion: Ballroom dancing remains a refuge for Asian immigrants - CNN

Editor’s Note: Lynda Lin Grigsby is a journalist and editor who has written for NBC News, Shondaland, Parents magazine and Romper. She is a former editor of the Pacific Citizen, a national Asian American newspaper. The views expressed here are her own. Read more opinion at CNN.

CNN  — 

A dance floor has equalizing power. When the music starts, differences fall away. On the dance floor, it doesn’t matter if you’re rich or poor. No one judges where you came from or what language you speak. What matters is how you dip your partner when the song is over.

The egalitarian nature of ballroom dance is why many older Asian American immigrants use it to practice their social and physical fitness. As dancers move, everyday problems roll off elegantly gesturing fingers and pointed toes.

Lynda Lin Grigsby

Courtesy Lynda Lin Grigsby

Thu Luu, a competitive ballroom dancer and teacher who owns the Ballroom & Country Dance Studio in Calgary, Alberta, explained to me that, as recreational pastimes go, ballroom dancing is not too expensive, and it’s a great way to work through tough emotions.

But there is something he can’t seem to shake — the identity of the gunman, who on the eve of Lunar New Year, fatally shot 11 people, and wounded nine others in a Monterey Park, California, dance hall.

Luu didn’t know the gunman, but he recognized a connection: They were both refugees who escaped war-torn Vietnam. In 1980, Luu arrived in Canada and rebuilt his life by working as a welder. He learned a new language and customs. At night, ballroom dancing was an entry point to his adopted homeland because when words failed, he could communicate through movement.

While we talked, Luu, 63, apologized often for his halting English but quickly added, “I am well-educated in dance.”

Friends eating tasty Chinese food at table

Pixel-Shot/Adobe Stock

This most important day for Asian Americans has a meaning everyone can embrace

In many ways, I am connected to Luu and the Monterey Park tragedy, too. I can recognize the struggle. I witnessed my Vietnamese refugee parents battle to establish a toehold in American life without easy access to a supportive community or resources.

Long after the war in their home country ended, they continued to live in survival mode in the margins of American society, in part, because the luxuries I enjoy by birthright as a second-generation Asian American — freedom, education, language access — are all things for which they had to fight.

Now in their 70s, my parents have found time and space for recreation. They do exercise and other rigorous movement with friends. They don’t work out on a dance floor, but the intent is the same — it’s an opportunity to move their bodies with a diverse community of older adults, free from judgment. In this place, I see my parents laugh, with eyes twinkling gleefully.

The dance floor offers people a chance to move their bodies with a diverse community of older adults.

FG Trade Latin/E+/Getty Images

I recognized the expressions of joy when I used to walk from my old studio apartment in downtown Alhambra, California, by Lai Lai Ballroom & Studio, site of the second Lunar New Year Eve incident by the gunman. The same armed man who opened fire in Monterey Park showed up there — presumably looking once again to inflict violence on older immigrants like himself. Fortunately it was the end of the evening, and the ballroom was almost empty. An attendant, Brandan Tsay, was able to wrest away his firearm, in the process possibly saving many lives had the shooter headed to yet another dance venue.

During my walks, clusters of older adults would sometimes burst out the doors glistening with sweat and sequins, but mostly I just heard the cadence of ballroom music wafting through the air to remind me that these are sacred places for older Asian Americans in the golden days of their lives to find joy and release from daily pressure.

Ballroom dance attracts a mature crowd — about 55 years and older, said Bailey Morgan-Whitfield, studio manager and dance instructor at the Fred Astaire Dance Studios in Arcadia, California. Morgan-Whitfield told me that most of the clientele at her studio consists of older Asian Americans, who keep coming, she thinks, because the community is craving social interaction. This is especially true after the isolation of the pandemic and the anxiety stoked by spikes in anti-Asian hate.

Police officers guard the area near the location of a shooting that took place during a Chinese Lunar New Year celebration, in Monterey Park, California, U.S. January 22, 2023

Mike Blake/Reuters

The incomprehensible tragedy of Monterey Park

In Asian immigrant communities, dance is a great escape, and it has roots in American history. In the 1920s and 30s, taxi dance halls were dance spaces that allowed young Filipino men employed as farmworkers to cut a rug in their limited leisure time. There was little else they could do — laws at the time limited the number of Filipinas in the United States, prohibited interracial marriage and even prevented Asian American land ownership.

For disenfranchised communities, dance can be subversive and revolutionary. It can represent an act of joyful rebellion that exists today on the ballroom dance floor.

Millie Cao has danced through war, a global pandemic, and now, a mass shooting that took her friend’s life. Her formal training in ballroom dance alongside her husband and dance partner started 10 years ago when she was in her 50s, a journey documented in the 2019 Oscar-nominated short documentary “Walk, Run, Cha-Cha.”

But even before then, Cao had always loved to dance. In the Vietnam of her youth, she would sneak off to dance parties to forget about the war. “Dance gives you a sense of freedom, a release from reality,” Cao said.

Ballroom dancers fill the floor at a senior center in Oakland, California.

Michael Macor/San Francisco Chronicle/Hearst Newspapers/Getty Images

That’s part of the appeal of ballroom dancing. Its joyfulness and its accessibility attract a diverse group of Asian Americans who want to rumba away their worries. At Lai Lai Ballroom & Studio, according to Cao, the students come from China, Taiwan, Vietnam and many other countries. Her longtime dance teacher, Maksym Kapitanchuk, is from Ukraine. The cultural and language diversity is no problem because “we speak the same language of dance,” Cao said.

For years, she danced at Lai Lai Ballroom & Studio almost daily with her friend, Mymy Nhan, one of the victims of the shooting at the Star Ballroom Dance Studio.

Cao’s voice trembles when she talks about her friend. Everyone in the dance community is still in shock. Nhan was ever-present on the dance floor. “I don’t know how it will be like when I go back,” Cao said.

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Not long after the fatal shooting, at a candlelight vigil in front of the Star Ballroom Dance Studio, dancers tearfully hugged each other in front of a line of pictures of the victims. Their grief was so fresh it was difficult to see. I had to close my eyes. In the darkness and quiet of our grief after a tragedy like this, how do we return to ourselves? Maybe it’s best, as poet Ocean Vuong says, to “fold the page so it points to the good part.”

The best version of this community shattered by gun violence is dancing — it has always been. Their bodies in motion are symbols of joyful rebellion and resilience. Cao said she will dance again. They all must get back on the dance floor.

They dance to forget, but also to remember.

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Opinion: Ballroom dancing remains a refuge for Asian immigrants - CNN
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Opinion: Ballroom dancing remains a refuge for Asian immigrants - CNN

Editor’s Note: Lynda Lin Grigsby is a journalist and editor who has written for NBC News, Shondaland, Parents magazine and Romper. She is a former editor of the Pacific Citizen, a national Asian American newspaper. The views expressed here are her own. Read more opinion at CNN.

CNN  — 

A dance floor has equalizing power. When the music starts, differences fall away. On the dance floor, it doesn’t matter if you’re rich or poor. No one judges where you came from or what language you speak. What matters is how you dip your partner when the song is over.

The egalitarian nature of ballroom dance is why many older Asian American immigrants use it to practice their social and physical fitness. As dancers move, everyday problems roll off elegantly gesturing fingers and pointed toes.

Lynda Lin Grigsby

Courtesy Lynda Lin Grigsby

Thu Luu, a competitive ballroom dancer and teacher who owns the Ballroom & Country Dance Studio in Calgary, Alberta, explained to me that, as recreational pastimes go, ballroom dancing is not too expensive, and it’s a great way to work through tough emotions.

But there is something he can’t seem to shake — the identity of the gunman, who on the eve of Lunar New Year, fatally shot 11 people, and wounded nine others in a Monterey Park, California, dance hall.

Luu didn’t know the gunman, but he recognized a connection: They were both refugees who escaped war-torn Vietnam. In 1980, Luu arrived in Canada and rebuilt his life by working as a welder. He learned a new language and customs. At night, ballroom dancing was an entry point to his adopted homeland because when words failed, he could communicate through movement.

While we talked, Luu, 63, apologized often for his halting English but quickly added, “I am well-educated in dance.”

Friends eating tasty Chinese food at table

Pixel-Shot/Adobe Stock

This most important day for Asian Americans has a meaning everyone can embrace

In many ways, I am connected to Luu and the Monterey Park tragedy, too. I can recognize the struggle. I witnessed my Vietnamese refugee parents battle to establish a toehold in American life without easy access to a supportive community or resources.

Long after the war in their home country ended, they continued to live in survival mode in the margins of American society, in part, because the luxuries I enjoy by birthright as a second-generation Asian American — freedom, education, language access — are all things for which they had to fight.

Now in their 70s, my parents have found time and space for recreation. They do exercise and other rigorous movement with friends. They don’t work out on a dance floor, but the intent is the same — it’s an opportunity to move their bodies with a diverse community of older adults, free from judgment. In this place, I see my parents laugh, with eyes twinkling gleefully.

The dance floor offers people a chance to move their bodies with a diverse community of older adults.

FG Trade Latin/E+/Getty Images

I recognized the expressions of joy when I used to walk from my old studio apartment in downtown Alhambra, California, by Lai Lai Ballroom & Studio, site of the second Lunar New Year Eve incident by the gunman. The same armed man who opened fire in Monterey Park showed up there — presumably looking once again to inflict violence on older immigrants like himself. Fortunately it was the end of the evening, and the ballroom was almost empty. An attendant, Brandan Tsay, was able to wrest away his firearm, in the process possibly saving many lives had the shooter headed to yet another dance venue.

During my walks, clusters of older adults would sometimes burst out the doors glistening with sweat and sequins, but mostly I just heard the cadence of ballroom music wafting through the air to remind me that these are sacred places for older Asian Americans in the golden days of their lives to find joy and release from daily pressure.

Ballroom dance attracts a mature crowd — about 55 years and older, said Bailey Morgan-Whitfield, studio manager and dance instructor at the Fred Astaire Dance Studios in Arcadia, California. Morgan-Whitfield told me that most of the clientele at her studio consists of older Asian Americans, who keep coming, she thinks, because the community is craving social interaction. This is especially true after the isolation of the pandemic and the anxiety stoked by spikes in anti-Asian hate.

Police officers guard the area near the location of a shooting that took place during a Chinese Lunar New Year celebration, in Monterey Park, California, U.S. January 22, 2023

Mike Blake/Reuters

The incomprehensible tragedy of Monterey Park

In Asian immigrant communities, dance is a great escape, and it has roots in American history. In the 1920s and 30s, taxi dance halls were dance spaces that allowed young Filipino men employed as farmworkers to cut a rug in their limited leisure time. There was little else they could do — laws at the time limited the number of Filipinas in the United States, prohibited interracial marriage and even prevented Asian American land ownership.

For disenfranchised communities, dance can be subversive and revolutionary. It can represent an act of joyful rebellion that exists today on the ballroom dance floor.

Millie Cao has danced through war, a global pandemic, and now, a mass shooting that took her friend’s life. Her formal training in ballroom dance alongside her husband and dance partner started 10 years ago when she was in her 50s, a journey documented in the 2019 Oscar-nominated short documentary “Walk, Run, Cha-Cha.”

But even before then, Cao had always loved to dance. In the Vietnam of her youth, she would sneak off to dance parties to forget about the war. “Dance gives you a sense of freedom, a release from reality,” Cao said.

Ballroom dancers fill the floor at a senior center in Oakland, California.

Michael Macor/San Francisco Chronicle/Hearst Newspapers/Getty Images

That’s part of the appeal of ballroom dancing. Its joyfulness and its accessibility attract a diverse group of Asian Americans who want to rumba away their worries. At Lai Lai Ballroom & Studio, according to Cao, the students come from China, Taiwan, Vietnam and many other countries. Her longtime dance teacher, Maksym Kapitanchuk, is from Ukraine. The cultural and language diversity is no problem because “we speak the same language of dance,” Cao said.

For years, she danced at Lai Lai Ballroom & Studio almost daily with her friend, Mymy Nhan, one of the victims of the shooting at the Star Ballroom Dance Studio.

Cao’s voice trembles when she talks about her friend. Everyone in the dance community is still in shock. Nhan was ever-present on the dance floor. “I don’t know how it will be like when I go back,” Cao said.

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Not long after the fatal shooting, at a candlelight vigil in front of the Star Ballroom Dance Studio, dancers tearfully hugged each other in front of a line of pictures of the victims. Their grief was so fresh it was difficult to see. I had to close my eyes. In the darkness and quiet of our grief after a tragedy like this, how do we return to ourselves? Maybe it’s best, as poet Ocean Vuong says, to “fold the page so it points to the good part.”

The best version of this community shattered by gun violence is dancing — it has always been. Their bodies in motion are symbols of joyful rebellion and resilience. Cao said she will dance again. They all must get back on the dance floor.

They dance to forget, but also to remember.

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Wall Street Journal columnist accused of racism over 'Are there 'too many Asians?'' op-ed - Yahoo News

[Source]

An opinion columnist with the Wall Street Journal has been accused of racism after penning an article initially titled “Are there ‘too many Asians’?”

In his piece published Monday, William “Bill” McGurn, who served as chief speechwriter for former President George W. Bush, describes ideas behind population control as a “Western import,” much like Marxism. His writing focuses on China, whose declining population in recent years has raised alarms over a demographic time bomb.

The article’s headline now appears to have been changed to “China and the Population Bomb That Wasn’t.”

However, McGurn’s tweet promoting the original headline remains live, and his subsequent posts do not reflect the modified title.

More from NextShark: Japanese 'Twitter Killer' Found With 9 Severed HEADS Pleads Guilty to His Crimes

“@wsj allowing a racist to write articles and work for you? How many more of you are there at @wsj?” one user questioned.

“No,” another user wrote as a response to the original headline. “But there’s too many racists like you.”

Others took offense to the article’s publication on the heels of the Monterey Park and Half Moon Bay mass shootings.

More from NextShark: Son of Pakistani Immigrants Becomes the First Muslim American Federal Judge in US History

The incidents, which occurred on Saturday — the eve of the Lunar New Year — and Monday afternoon, respectively, left 17 Asian people dead.

“Incredible to write this after two mass shootings of Asian people,” one user wrote.

Another tweeted sarcastically, “Thank god we had multiple mass shootings of Asians over the weekend to take care of the problem of there being too many Asians.”

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Meanwhile, some users pointed to McGurn’s Wikipedia page, which noted that McGurn has adopted three children from China, and questioned how they would react to his original headline.

McGurn has yet to publicly address the controversy.

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Monterey Park Helped Me Embrace My Asian American Identity - The Cut

Photo: Jim Ruymen/UPI/Shutterstock

Born in the Year of the Pig, I grew up seeing the symbol of good fortune and prosperity everywhere. Pigs were an auspicious sign to be born under, and my parents took that seriously. Glass, wood, and ceramic pig figurines decorated every shelf in our house, and garish stuffed pigs lined my dresser and the tops of our closets. But classmates I invited over often found my parents’ obsession with pigs strange and overwhelming, so as a kid I shied away from embracing my Chinese-astrology counterpart.

That all changed one day when my uncle took 6-year-old me to the locally beloved SUPERCO appliance store on Garvey and Atlantic in Monterey Park, California. In the parking lot, a large picnic blanket covered with children’s toys caught my attention. An older Chinese woman sat on the sidewalk beside it, a black visor shielding her eyes from the sun. A plush, pale-pink pig stood out to me in the sea of fluorescent animals. “I want that one. I’ll name her Piggy,” I said in Mandarin to my uncle, who knew my distaste for pigs and was surprised at my choice. Unlike the Chinese sculptures that stood out around our house, this pig looked like any other American kid’s stuffed animal; I could keep this part of my heritage with me everywhere I went while still feeling like a “normal” kid.

For many people reading the news this week, Monterey Park is just a place. It’s where the country’s deadliest mass shooting in months took place last weekend, in which a gunman killed 11 people and injured nine others at a dance studio across the street from a Lunar New Year festival. But for me, Monterey Park brims with memory. San Gabriel, my hometown, grazes the northeast corner of the Asian-majority city located about seven miles east of Downtown Los Angeles, nestled between Alhambra to the north and Rosemead to the east. Growing up, we’d visit at least once a week to run errands or grab a bite to eat. On afternoons I had a bad day at school, I’d eat my feelings away with the macaroni Spam soup at JJ’s or the baked spaghetti at OK Café. Whenever I had a persistent cough, we’d visit the Chinese medicine doctor and stock up on herbs. If my mom got the rare urge to cook fresh seafood, we’d pick out a live fish from the clear glass tanks at HK Supermarket; once, we got home only to realize the fish was still alive.

In Monterey Park’s bustling Chinese community, my parents and I found a confidence we lacked in predominantly white spaces.

Frequently referred to as the United States’ first “suburban Chinatown,” Monterey Park is actually better described as the country’s first ethnoburb, a cluster of residential areas and business districts created to preserve their specific ethnic identity. No one factor fueled the Asian-population boom that began in the 1970s in the surrounding San Gabriel Valley. White flight, eager developers like Frederic Hsieh, and the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, which facilitated the entry of hundreds of thousands of Asian immigrants previously barred from the country, all played roles in the area’s ethnic-cultural shift. But the change was undeniable. By 1987, the L.A. Times reported that the influx of Asians in San Gabriel Valley “had profound implications for nearly every institution of civic life, affecting the way schools, police, city halls, courts and post offices conduct their day-to-day business.”

Even though we lived in the Asian sanctuary of the San Gabriel Valley, I attended mostly white private schools in Pasadena, where diversity in class and culture was a rarity in the student body. Since school constituted nearly all of my social fabric, I felt immense pressure to assimilate into whiteness from first grade into my mid-teens. I often felt I needed to defend my mom’s accented English, or overexplain why the bak kwa (Chinese pork jerky) I brought to school looked so different from their beef jerky, even though it was effectively the same.

There are some other memories that carry such a visceral hurt, it feels like they happened yesterday. In first grade, the only other Chinese boy told me to “speak English” when I went up to say hi on the first day of school. In third grade, a white friend I had over after school told me my dad “smelled homeless” because he couldn’t speak English and lit incense at our Buddhist altar. In sixth grade, I watched a group of white boys steal a Chinese classmate’s red envelope out of his backpack on Lunar New Year, emptying the contents into their own wallets and throwing the red, gold-foiled lined sleeve in the trash. Seeing this happen filled me with a rage I can’t find the words to adequately express to this day.

Photo: Courtesy of Eda Yu

But in Monterey Park’s bustling Chinese community, my parents and I found a confidence we lacked in predominantly white spaces. My mom transformed into a graceful, elegant woman holding her own as she haggled over mahogany chairs, a far cry from the nervous woman I went shopping with in Old Town Pasadena. My father would order for us at restaurants in Cantonese and Taiwanese, a stark contrast to how he stuttered through simple English phrases at Denny’s. And when we visited during Lunar New Year, I felt downright invincible as I looked at the red lanterns hanging from every storefront, the festive spirit of the city washing over me. I didn’t know it then, but Monterey Park’s refusal to assimilate into America’s racial binary helped me proudly embrace my Asian American identity in high school and college.

As I got older, of course, a lot of things changed. I moved away from the SGV, first to the Bay Area and then to Los Angeles. The SUPERCO closed down not too long after I got my first rice cooker to take to college. Our Chinese medicine doctor retired. Mama Lu’s, a dumpling spot we used to frequent, now cites a two-hour wait on busy nights. I was last in Monterey Park just a couple weeks ago, catching up with a friend I hadn’t seen in years at JJ’s on an unusually rainy night, talking for hours over chrysanthemum tea and baked spaghetti like old times.

My partner and I had talked about going to the Lunar New Year festival the night of the shooting, but we didn’t finish cleaning the house in time. A few hours later, a friend texted me asking, “Are you okay? Did you go to the Lunar New Year festival in Monterey Park?” That’s when I saw the tweets and headlines. I texted my mom, asking if any of our extended family went, and called a friend who was there earlier that day. Thankfully, everyone I knew was safe and accounted for.

It felt surreal that such extraordinary violence could happen at the same intersection where my family picked up herbs, where the SUPERCO where I got Piggy once stood. In the days since, all I’ve been thinking about is how much I want to go back to the city, fill my favorite restaurants with the people I love most, and help the victims’ families and Star Ballroom and get back on their feet. Monterey Park has done so much to lift me up over the years. Now it’s time for me to do the same for this community.

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Monterey Park Helped Me Embrace My Asian American Identity - The Cut
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