Claire Light from Hyphen Blog wrote an excellent piece on Yuri Kochiyama and her problematic legacy of being the woman whose arms Malcolm X died in:

She is the activists' activist; she is the Asian American North Star, she is our godmother, our justification, our revered elder and sacred crone, she's the one everyone points to when we think of Asian American women role models. She is our Malcolm X: beyond doubt, or corruption, or naysaying. And, whereas Malcolm was placed beyond doubt, corruption or naysaying by death, Yuri is there by the grace of her association with the sainted Malcolm.

This constant association, though it honors her, causes me discomfort; because the first thing anyone mentions about Yuri, and the top priority, is her relationship with Malcolm. It's true that this relationship was very important to her, but ... Malcom X died in Yuri Kochiyama's arms, they always say, and in just that tone of hushed reverence. It makes a Mary of her, the woman who washed Jesus' dead body, or the one who first saw Jesus alive when he came out of his tomb; her significance is that of witness to the transcendent sacrifice of a man. (Or two men: in this Democracy Now! interview, they have her tell at length of her father's death and then Malcolm's, but nothing about her own life.)

Second in my fake series of cool AsAm female comedians. The first was Charlyne Yi (WHO IS DATING MICHAEL CERA, WHO IS ON BOARD FOR ARRESTED DEVELOPMENT), if you remember.



Mindy Kaling is gold. I don't watch The Office though. Leave me alone!

So remember that new committee, Society of Asian American Sisters (SAAS), that started this year and I semi-blogged about? Well, it's holding an event! Yay!

SAAS, Columbia University’s first student organization devoted to the exploration and discussion of issues facing Asian American women is proud to present…

WOMEN WHO WORK IT!

A professional panel of successful Asian American women from all fields sharing their impressive stories and giving tips on how to work it in the workplace! Come for the unique opportunity to learn from women involved in engineering, finance, law, academia, film and publishing!

Panelists include:

ELIZABETH R. OUYANG, Esq. – Civil Rights Attorney/ Professor

Elizabeth R. OuYang has been a civil rights attorney for the past 22 years. Her areas of expertise include voting rights, immigration, and combatting hate crimes and police brutality. Since 2001, Ms. OuYang has taught a comparative constitutional pre-law course with Columbia University's Center for the Study of Ethnicity and Race. She also is coordinator of the Fund for New Citizens at The New York Community Trust. Under President Clinton's administration, she was appointed a special assistant to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights.

KATHERINE LAO – Vice President, JPMorgan; Chair of the Junior Women in Banking networking group

FAY ANN LEE - Screenwriter/ Director/ Filmmaker

Fay Ann Lee, a Broadway actress with both Sondheim and Shakespeare credits to her name, wrote Falling for Grace as a proactive response to the lack of good roles for Asian American actors. Falling for Grace premiered at the 2006 Tribeca Film Festival, where it was one of that year’s biggest hits, selling out every showing.

MIRAL SATTAR - Product Development Manager, Time Magazine; Editor-in-Chief of Divanee magazine

Please join us on:
Wednesday, March 11th
Satow Room, Alfred Lerner Hall, Columbia University
116th & Broadway
7:00PM – 8:00PM
Light refreshments will be served

Co-sponsored by the Asian American Alliance (AAA) and supported by Kappa Phi Lambda (KPL)

This in from The New York Times, former prostitutes from South Korea are blaming their government for "encouraging them to have sex with the American soldiers who protected South Korea from North Korea. They also accuse past South Korean governments, and the United States military, of taking a direct hand in the sex trade from the 1960s through the 1980s, working together to build a testing and treatment system to ensure that prostitutes were disease-free for American troops."

The scandal of it all is that both South Korea and the United States are publicly against "illegal activities of human trafficking and prostitution" (South Korea even has a Ministry of Gender Equality), so this whole ordeal makes them look like big fat hypocrites. Oops! Better think twice before you use sex to regulate military and diplomacy.

(Thanks for the tip, Linda)

Just thought about this, especially since I just realized that I'm the only regular contributor who reps Millie the dancing Barnard bear pride. Our friend Saffiyah Madraswala BC '09 recently started an initiative to make Ethnic Studies a more feasible reality at Barnard. She's been organizing weekly meetings, and a small group of students discuss issues surrounding Ethnic Studies and discuss academic articles.

In other cool APA Barnardian news, Katie Wang BC '10 and Joanne Lin BC '09 have been heading a relatively new committee called Society of Asian American Sisters (SAAS - we know, it sounds like BOSS) where APA women on Barnard and Columbia's campuses conjoin to talk about the intersecting issues of race and gender. There are sometimes also funny, awkward film screenings, like the one where we got together at David and Nhu-Y's suite and watched Ang Lee's Eat Drink Man Woman, which was completely in Chinese so Nhu-Y felt marginalized (even though it was subtitled).

Both these initiatives started in the Fall '08 semester, and both are started by really cool awesome Barnard APA women whom I'm proud to mingle and work with.

Michelle Rhee (see entry title for her job) made the cover of Time magazine! That is an awesome feat. As our crazy friend Joanne describes, "She's a mad woman tearing her way through the school system; the teachers hate her, the principals fear her and I think she's awesome." Thanks, Joanne, we think so too.

Whoa. I didn't believe it until I saw it myself:



According to Apple Trailers, East Broadway (or Falling for Grace) is a romantic comedy of errors premised upon a hilarious misunderstanding at an opera soirée. There, some Manhattan socialites mistakenly believe that Grace Tang is an heiress of a major Hong Kong fashion industry (she's actually a major Wall Street banker). She doesn't actually correct the mistake, and instead goes on to meet, date, and (maybe) love New York's most eligible (rich, white) bachelor.

Margaret Cho and Ken Leung feature as supporting characters, which has absolutely no way of going wrong. My favorite moment in the entire trailer is when Christine Baranski's character asks the male lead if Grace Tang only wants him "for [his] green card" and if she is "unusually willing to perform bizarre sexual favors". Anybody remember Cruel Intentions? She played an equally racist mother who cracks down on an interracial relationship between her daughter (Selma Blair) and her African American cello instructor (Sean Patrick Thomas).

In some ways, this story might look, read, and sound like a cleaned-up cosmopolitan version of The Joy Luck Club (the ignorant mother comments are uncomfortably familiar), which I don't love and probably never will. However, Fay Ann Lee takes some classic Asian American problems in a world of race-class-immigrant-identity confusion and strings them into a contemporary, relevant storyline. It actually looks good enough that I want to see it on opening night (April 15).

Lee has previously starred in Law & Order and Third Watch, but this is her first writing, producing, and directing debut.