Hyphen magazine - Asian American arts, culture, and politics

Medical Malpractice?

Catherine A Traywick — Mon, 07 Nov 2011 23:28:28 +0000

Writer Catherine A. Traywick

Jane Sandoval can’t speak a lick of Tagalog — her parents made sure of that. “There’s no excuse for you to not speak well. You were born here,” her father used to tell his children, often punctuating this expectation with an adage gleaned from his own life as an emigrant from the Philippines: “There’s just too much competition.”

Today, at age 50, Sandoval is uniquely positioned to reflect on her late father’s credo. For the last 26 years, she’s worked as a nurse at San Francisco’s St. Luke’s Hospital, which has, for decades, teemed with Filipino nurses of all ages, backgrounds and dialects.

Yet their apparent success as white-collar professional belies their collective vulnerability. Since the 1980s, when hospitals began recruiting nurses in large numbers from the Philippines to alleviate US nursing shortages, Filipino nurses have earned less than their white peers, worked demanding or unpopular shifts and been disproportionately impacted by bad economies and other industry changes. Over the past few years, they’ve even become the target of English-only policies so far-reaching they might have shocked even Sandoval’s father.

Most recently, health care facilities from California to Maryland have allegedly targeted Filipino American nurses for suspension and termination, in an effort to quell dissension and curb worker solidarity. American-born nurses like Sandoval — who were once exempt from the exploitative labor practices imposed upon immigrant workers — are increasingly finding themselves locked in the crosshairs of anti-union animus as they band with their foreign-born counterparts.

Sandoval, ever reminded of her father’s struggles with discrimination and disparity, has positioned herself squarely in the center of this struggle, having wended her from affable emergency room nurse into vocal labor organizer — and she’s not alone.

Filipinos, once regarded as docile and disposable, are increasingly organizing for their rights within an industry that has, according to historians and sociologists, reaped its profits on gendered pay scales and ethnicity-based inequalities. So perhaps it was just a matter of time before the industry that gave them quarter began efforts to turn them out.

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Long before Filipino nurses ever set foot in the United States, American nurses journeyed to the Philippines.

After the United States colonized the islands in 1898, American nurses descended on the country en masse and began establishing elite nursing schools as part a larger effort to “civilize” — or, in the words of one such nurse, “sanitize” — the Filipino people. Later, as US demand for trained hospital workers increased, these schools evolved into a premier manufacturing site for foreign-trained nurses.

By the 1950s, American hospitals were recruiting nurses from all over the Philippines. A decade later, the 1965 Immigration Act facilitated even more widespread recruitment of Filipino nurses, who were as much valued for their Americanized educational background as for their economic vulnerability.

“US hospitals, for the most part, exploited Filipino nurses,” said Catherine Ceniza Choy, a professor of Asian American studies at the University of California, Berkeley, and the author of Empire of Care: Nursing and Migration in Filipino American History.

“They were only being paid a stipend as opposed to a regular salary. They were supposed to get training, but many didn’t,” Choy said. “There is a larger collective experience of being vulnerable and exploited because of their immigrant status and because of their previous colonial status.”

By the 1980s, when Sandoval was graduating from St. Luke’s nursing program and beginning her career, US hospitals had fully realized the cost-cutting potential of hiring Philippines-trained nurses and began doing so in droves, at the expense of hiring unionized American nurses. Today, one in four employed Filipinas works as a nurse and, in California, Filipinos make up 18 percent of all nurses, despite being only 3 percent of the population.

“Hospitals wanted to change the pay model so they hired professionals from the Third World to basically break unions,” said Peter Chua, professor of sociology at San Jose State University and author of Ating Kalagayan: The Social and Economic Profile of U.S. Filipinos. “Initially, there was an assumption that if you recruit them, they’ll be subservient,” Chua said. “Their contracts are set, so why would they join unions?”

Today, many hospitals still recruit Philippines-trained nurses in an effort to keep wages low or otherwise cut costs. According to Chito Quijano, a CNA organizer, US medical facilities can get away with paying newly immigrated registered nurses (RNs) the wages of a nursing assistant, confident that the women won’t protest for fear of losing their work visa. This amounts to as little as $20,000 annually — $15,000 less than the average starting salary of an American registered nurse.

That wage gap doesn’t entirely disappear for Filipino American nurses, either — especially if they work in non-unionized facilities. Kuusela Hilo, an organizer with the United Nurses Association of California, said that non-unionized Filipino Americans disproportionately bear the consequences of understaffing and cost cutting. In one hospital she recently organized in Beverly Hills, CA, for example, the predominately Filipino nursing staff hadn’t had a raise in seven years.

The wage disparity between Filipino and white nurses becomes glaringly clear after nurses unionize, Quijano said. Nurses who win a union also win the right to information relevant to collective bargaining, including a list of wages for all of a hospital’s nurses. “That’s a moment of truth,” Quijano said.

Yet, as more nurses unionize, that dynamic is slowly changing. In 2008, RNs in Northern California — where a deep history of unionization drives wages up — earned on average $20,000 more per year than RNs in Southern California — where unions have yet to forge a stronghold.

Given these disparities, it’s becoming increasingly difficult for hospitals to keep even immigrant nurses from unionizing — especially as the line between “Filipino” and “American” has dissipated. That reality is at the center of Sandoval’s struggle. Once hailed as the solution to worker solidarity, Filipino nurses have become part of the “problem.”

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St. Luke’s Hospital has an old heart. At its center, one can still walk through century-old hallways dressed in dark wood and carved stone, toward the original chapel and its antique reliquaries. Newer, less stately wings radiate to the left and right — an architecturally dissonant pastiche of more antiseptic designs. The hospital’s latest addition is from 2008: an oversized placard facing Valencia Street that identifies the facility as the newest campus of the California Pacific Medical Center (CPMC), an affiliate of the health care giant Sutter Health.

As one of just two hospitals located south of Market Street — the stark dividing line between the city’s affluent, largely white neighborhoods and its working class communities of color — St. Luke’s mostly caters to San Francisco’s low-income, underinsured and uninsured residents. (By contrast, there are 10 hospitals located north of Market, four of which are owned by Sutter.)

Like the hospital itself, the nurses at St. Luke’s are a Mission District institution; many have worked there even longer than Sandoval and most have bonded over decades of service. They’ve been unionized for years. “There’s a sense of community. A feeling of staff ownership,” Sandoval said.

Since CPMC acquired the hospital four years ago, the nurses said things have changed for the worse. Instead of focusing on patient care, they’re attending hearings, organizing strikes and coordinating protests in an effort to keep CPMC from relocating the hospital’s services or closing its doors altogether. Now, they’re alleging that hospital managers retaliated against their efforts to organize by implementing an illegal hiring ban on Filipino nurses beginning in 2008 and persisting until today. Lending teeth to the complaint, the alleged ban coincided with a precipitous decline in the rate of Filipino hires — from 65 percent in 2007 to 10 percent in 2008, according to a joint investigation by the California Nurses Association (CNA) and the National Alliance for Filipino Concerns.

The St. Luke’s case is just one of many similar disputes recently brought forth by Filipino workers at health care facilities across the country. In 2008, 10 Filipino nurses made national headlines after their Smithtown, NY, employer, Avalon Gardens Rehabilitation and Health Care Center, filed retaliatory criminal charges against them after they went on strike. The nurses, who had been recruited from the Philippines in 2005, later told The New York Times that they had been overworked, grossly underpaid and “treated like dirt” for years.

More recently, in June 2010, four Filipino nurses were fired from the Bon Secours Health System of Baltimore, allegedly for speaking Tagalog during their breaks at work. Six months later, a group of 53 current and former Filipino health workers from the Delano Regional Medical Center in Delano, CA, filed a similar complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, accusing hospital management of imposing an illegal and discriminatory English-only policy exclusively on Filipino employees.

Zenei Cortez, one of the presidents of the California Nurses Association, which is backing the St. Luke’s nurses in their fight, said the situation at St. Luke’s epitomizes the typical Filipino American nursing experience. As in most hospitals across the nation, Filipinos at St. Luke’s comprise a disproportionate share of the nursing force and are especially vulnerable during slow economies, management changes and hospital restructuring — all factors at play there.

When Sutter Health acquired St. Luke’s in 2007, it had little use for the chronically unprofitable hospital. The facility’s 220 beds, however, were a valuable asset to the company, which, according to a 2010 Bloomberg investigation, has spent the last several years buying a majority share of Northern California hospital beds, in an effort to increase its bargaining power with insurers.

Through a well-documented pattern of hospital takeovers and medical redlining — moving profitable services from low-income neighborhoods to more affluent ones — Sutter has gained control of 44 percent of the hospital beds in San Francisco, meaning that the company can essentially dictate the cost of health care. That leverage is, in part, why health care costs in Northern California are between 30 and 70 percent higher than in Southern California, according to health care analysts.

The company had planned to shutter St. Luke’s after laying claim to its beds, but was thwarted by the hospital’s tightly knit (and largely Filipino) nursing staff, who balked at the notion of leaving its community without accessible health care. Partnering with community groups and other victims of medical redlining, Sandoval and her fellow nurses organized two massive strikes against the health care giant, during which 5,000 workers walked out of 11 Sutter facilities.

Sutter eventually conceded — or, as Sandoval puts it: “Stayed our execution.” The company allowed St. Luke’s to remain open, but downscaled — shutting down a number of less profitable units, like the neonatal intensive care unit, while relocating others to more lucrative CPMC campuses.

For St. Luke’s nurses, that wasn’t the end of the struggle. Though Sutter incorporated St. Luke’s into the CPMC system, its nurses were still earning at least 25 percent less than their counterparts at other campuses, and Sutter executives refused to bring them to parity.

It’s a common problem for Filipinos, Chua said. “Filipinos tend to be underpaid, given the sort of educational background they have. Registered nurses tend to have high salaries, but when you actually look at the kinds of jobs they do, Filipino nurses tend to be working the night shifts, tend to be working overtime. So when you actually calculate it all, they actually earn less, relative to other workers.”

The disparity is linked to Filipino nurses’ history of being temporary and immigrant workers. Even after Filipino nurses became US residents, citizens and permanent employees, hospitals were reluctant to pay them as such. Consequently, their economic status failed to increase at the same rate as that of other nurses — an outcome that has persisted even as more US-born Filipinos enter the field.

By the beginning of 2008, however — when the alleged hiring ban purportedly went into effect — St. Luke’s nurses had put so much pressure on Sutter that, in addition to keeping the hospital open, they managed to win wage parity with the rest of CPMC’s nurses.

In other words, the nurses had become a thorn in the side of a notoriously anti-union company and — in Cortez’s opinion — they were about to pay for it.

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While US hospitals have generally welcomed foreign nurses, that trend is dotted with dark exceptions. Norma Ruspian Watson, a skilled and ambitious young nurse who immigrated to the United States in 1973, experienced firsthand the industry’s shadow side when she began looking for a hospital job. Her skin color, it turned out, trumped her skill set. The first hospital she approached refused even to give her an employment application, explaining that the facility “does not hire brown-skinned Filipinas.”

Though not quite the norm, Watson’s experience was not uncommon. During the 1970s and 1980s, the American Nurses Association, one of the most influential nursing unions in the country, actively lobbied against the hiring and recruitment of Filipino nurses, because they feared that nursing migration would put white nurses out of work. Their efforts to quell the trend often capitalized on misconceptions that Filipino nurses were poorly educated and didn't speak English well, and prompted many hospitals to ban them altogether.

Luisa Blue, a registered nurse and the national president of the Asian Pacific American Labor Alliance, claims that such bans persist today, albeit surreptitiously. She explained that, while working in a facility in Miami several years ago, she witnessed an underthe- table hiring agreement: “A promise was made about ‘Don’t hire Filipino nurses,’ she said. "'Hire nurses from India because, after two years of getting acclimated to U.S. culture, Filipino nurses get mouthy.'"

Such incidents tend to go unreported by staff and overlooked by the public, which is why the St. Luke’s case is so unique. Not only have several nurses signed sworn statements testifying to the existence of a hiring ban, but the issue has also generated local and international media attention — not least because CPMC’s response to the allegations has played on many of the cultural stereotypes that, nurses say, prompted the ban to begin with.

Sandoval first caught wind of a hiring ban in the spring of 2008. Two of her supervisors, Ronald Rivera and Ron Villanueva (both Filipino Americans), told her that they had overheard CPMC’s vice president of nursing Diana Karner say something to the effect of: We should probably not hire anymore foreign graduate nurses, because it is hard to understand them and be understood by them. The supervisors allege that Karner was referring specifically to Filipinos, who composed the vast majority of St. Luke’s foreign-trained nurses.

The nail in the coffin, as far as Sandoval was concerned, was a later statement made by Chris Hanks, St. Luke’s director of critical care from 2008 to 2009. Hanks, who reported directly to Karner at the time, attested that she had told him: “The Filipinos are always related, or know each other, and that’s not good. You’re not to hire them.”

“One of the first people that brought this to CNA’s attention was not even a Filipino,” Sandoval said, referring to Hanks. “That’s key. These weren’t just Asians or Filipinos that were appalled. ”

Shortly afterwards, the rate of Filipino new hires dropped dramatically, according to employee rolls reviewed by CNA. According to CPMC, Hanks was “later fired for misuse of funds.”

CPMC, for its part, maintains that no ban ever existed and, while the company denies that Karner made the alleged statements, it concedes that, if she engaged in a conversation about foreign-trained nurses, it was in only light of “certain patient complaints (about the) the nurse’s ability to effectively communicate,” according to a public statement released by the company. The statement further acknowledges “there has been a preference at St. Luke’s for bi-lingual (Spanish-speaking) nurses.”

“The hospital is in the Mission. The patient population is 60 percent Latino. Our nurses at St. Luke’s are 66 percent Asian,” said Kevin McCormack, CPMC’s media relations manager. “We need to make sure that we have nurses who can not only be linguistically sensitive to the patients but also culturally sensitive.”

This particular justification of an incident that, according to CPMC, never even took place, riled Sandoval. Along with many Filipino nurses at the hospital, she doesn’t speak Tagalog, doesn’t have a foreign accent and — like most brown-skinned Filipinos with typically Spanish surnames — is mistaken for Latino often enough. “I grew up in the Mission District, near St. Luke’s, so I know what this community is made of. If the managers would work side by side with us for 10 minutes, they would see there is no cultural divide,” Sandoval said. In essence: Filipino nurses and their Latino patients have more in common than a shared history of Spanish colonization.

CPMC’s efforts to demonstrate the company’s cultural sensitivity didn’t stop there. Its CEO, Warren Browner, addressed the dispute on his personal blog. “If I take the accusation personally, there’s a good reason,” Browner wrote, further explaining that, as a medical student and intern, he developed a special rapport with a group of Filipino nurses at San Francisco General Hospital — even taking on extra shifts so that he could enjoy “lumpia at midnight” with them. The formative experience, he explained, instilled in him a deep respect for Filipinos and even informed his decision to spend a month in the Philippines after med school. He concluded:

“I never did garner the strength to try balut … but I did get to see the rice terraces of Sagada and the white sand beaches of the outer islands. To this day I regret not buying a hand-carved chess set from a remarkable man in Banawe who had been in Apocalypse Now, which was filmed in the Philippines.”

The post sparked an intense ire in the Filipino American community. The San Francisco-based Filipino Community Center (FCC) released a statement calling Browner’s comments voyeuristic, an insult to injury and ultimately irrelevant.

“It’s like saying, ‘I can’t be racist, because some of my best friends are black,’ ” said Raquel Redondiez, vice chair of the Filipina advocacy group Gabriela USA. “It demonstrated how unsophisticated their understanding is of power dynamics, of race — even dynamics within a corporate organization.”

Browner subsequently removed the post, but the damage was done. Numerous Filipino advocacy groups quickly joined the fray, recasting the case as a Filipino community issue, rather than simply a labor dispute.

Soon both local and foreign media were covering the issue, and Philippines-based news correspondents scrambled for exclusive interviews with Sandoval, the fast-talking, English-speaking underdog.

In the face of the media blitz, CPMC went on the offensive, claiming that the CNA union had fabricated the allegations to cover up its own failure to win a contract. “We offered the nurses a 21 percent pay increase … and a whole host of other things that most people would think was amazing,” McCormack said, “But the unionists … got in the way.” He cedes, however, that the proposed pay increase would not have brought the nurses to parity with other campuses. When CNA insisted on equal pay, the company reduced the offer to 2 percent. Since then, CNA has won parity for St. Luke’s nurses.

McCormack further contends that CNA’s allegations are an attempt to embarrass CPMC into allowing the union to organize the company’s newest hospital — which is intended “to open up as a non-CNA facility.” The union’s interest in the new hospital, he argued, is money — potentially $1,000 in dues from every new nurse that joins the union.

It’s an interesting counter-allegation, especially given CPMC’s reputation as a union buster.

“Hospital chains will spend millions of dollars to mount an anti-union campaign,” Luisa Blue said. “Sutter Health Systems is one of the most anti-union health care systems in the country. … They’re notorious — it’s that kind of company.”

By all accounts, CPMC stands to lose much more money from unionization than CNA could hope to gain and that, Cortez said, is the crux of the issue. St. Luke’s vocal nursing staff and its pesky union are costing CPMC a lot of money, as well as sending a “bad message” to the other non-unionized campuses. The fact that the agitators are predominately Filipinos, who, in Karner’s purported words, “are always related or know each other,” makes them an easy target for retaliation.

When this article went to press, an investigation of the case was pending by the San Francisco Commission on Human Rights, and the nurses at St. Luke’s remained in deadlock with CPMC management. While the nurses and their union hold out for a public admission of guilt and the right to organize nurses at other CPMC campuses, CPMC is adamant about keeping CNA out of its other facilities.

“They’re not taking this as seriously as we are,” Cortez said. “They think we’ll get tired and go away, but we won’t. We’ll persist.”

Catherine A. Traywick is a contributing editor at Hyphen. This story was funded in part by the Spot.us community.

Correction: A version of this article published on November 8, 2011 incorrectly described Chito Quijano as a union organizer with the United Nurses Association of California. It has been changed to correctly state that Quijano is a union organizer with the California Nurses Association. Zenei Cortez's title has also been updated to reflect her new position as one of four CNA presidents.

Voices of Bullying Victims

Helen I. Hwang — Mon, 07 Nov 2011 23:08:51 +0000

Bullying includes verbal taunting, physical assaults, exclusion from a peer group, spreading rumors and cyber bullying — and Asian Americans are the most frequently bullied ethnic group, according to a 2004 study conducted with nearly 1,400 students. Psychologists believe Asians are particularly vulnerable to bullying because of stereotypes of being submissive. Read more about Asian Americans and bullying from the Issue 24 feature here.

Here are some accounts of Asian American bullying victims.

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One Taiwanese American woman, now in her early 40s and who wishes to remain anonymous, remembers the bullying she endured growing up in a predominantly Latino neighborhood in Queens, NY. “There was a period of time (when I was 11) when a group of kids would follow me home from school and call me names, make me trip, hit and shove me. They found it very amusing and funny.”

When the woman told her parents about the incidents, she didn't get much of a response. “My parents are not comfortable talking about feelings. I believe they thought it was just a few kids making occasional mischief and didn't ask further questions.”

The bullying, she said, lasted for a few weeks and culminated when the bullies came to her house and broke a window with a large stone. In retrospect, she said that was actually a good thing. “Otherwise, it wouldn't have come out in the open and consequently stopped.”

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Sixteen-year-old Loan Tran in Charlotte, NC, has had to endure bullying for being Asian American as well as being gay. “In middle school, I got teased for having an immigrant identity. People would call me names like ‘rice picker’ or ‘fresh off the boat.’ ” She still hears these types of verbal assaults in school. “Starting high school, I was getting teased for my sexual orientation,” she said. “I feel like the bullying I have faced has my ethnicity always intertwined with my LGBT identity,” she added.

During her weeks riding on the bus freshman year, she was verbally bullied and then a kid who was tapping on the back of her head threatened to punch her in the face. “It was definitely a competition to see who was the coolest by being the meanest,” Tran said. Soon after that incident, she asked her mom to drive her to school, partly because of the bullying.

She has even been intimidated from other Asian Americans about her LGBT status. “Other Asian Americans have said to me, ‘Is that something that the Asian culture really wants to support?’ I find that it’s really interesting that they would use one aspect of me to bully the other aspect of me,” Tran said. She also said that she didn’t feel supported by her mother when she tried to talk about the bullying. “She was reassuring and dismissive, said it was going to be OK,” Tran said, but she didn’t feel that was enough.

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In Whittier, CA, Tina Tsai recalled being shoved so hard that she fell on a concrete sidewalk when she was 9 years old by an older girl. The physical bullying followed after the girl had been making racist taunts, like putting her hands together and bowing to her while saying “shalom,” for some bizarre reason. Her friends jumped to her defense and shouted at the bully, “She didn’t do anything to you! Why did you push her! That’s just mean!”

Tsai, who is now a 33-year-old teacher and author, said, “They totally had my back, and the chorus of their indignation caused her to back down.” The bully never bothered her again — illustrating how bystander intervention can be effective.

In the Face of Bullying

Helen I. Hwang — Mon, 07 Nov 2011 22:35:22 +0000

Writer: Helen I. Hwang

On a cold December day in 2009, just weeks before Christmas, 15-year-old Trang Dang was walking home from school with her sister and eight friends, all recent Vietnamese immigrants. Also part of their group: the principal of their school.

Dang, who is 5’9” with a medium build and a dimpled, contagious smile, asked the principal to accompany them because she and the others were terrified by the intense bullying and violence against Asian students that had taken place earlier that day at their school, South Philadelphia High School. Midway through the walk, the principal, LaGreta Brown, disappeared, Dang said. “She walked to the corner with us and then we didn’t see her anymore,” Dang said. They debated whether to stay or continue walking. “Our friends said if we stand here, we’ll get in trouble,” Dang said. So they opted to try to make it home that day on their own.

They never did.

About half a block from school, a mob of at least two dozen students started chasing them. Dang was the first to be caught. She was punched in the face, shattering her glasses. “It was a quick hit and then they ran,” she said. “After I got hit, then my mind just went blank. I was crying. It wasn’t that painful, I think, but I don’t really remember. I think because I’ve tried to forget about that day.” The entire group was cornered, and all were hit. Dang still doesn't know for sure why the principal seemingly left the group, and the school district denies this allegation.

Earlier that day, Duong Nghe Ly, a junior at the school, was waiting in the cafeteria line to get lunch. A large group of approximately 10 African American students appeared and attacked about three or four of his Chinese immigrant friends at the back of the line, punching and hitting them. “Around 40 other students cheered,” Ly said. An African American teacher intervened and physically used her body to protect the Chinese students, Ly added.

The entire day, roving gangs of high schoolers searched for and attacked Asian teenagers in a nightmarish ordeal. Most of the attacks took place on the premises of this poor school in south Philadelphia while teachers, security guards and other staff were present.

In total, at least 26 Asian immigrant students were physically assaulted in a series of violent conflicts. Thirteen Asian students ended up in the emergency room for injuries ranging from a broken nose to black eyes. One had to have surgery because he could no longer breathe through his nose. Community leaders believe more kids were attacked but didn’t report it for fear of retaliation.

“There isn't really an event like December 3, where you had a number of students severely harassed and beaten in one day,” said Cecilia Chen of the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund. Helen Gym, a board member of Asian Americans United, a Philadelphia-based community advocacy organization, described the melee as “off the charts in violence.”

Bullying includes verbal taunting, physical assaults, exclusion from a peer group, spreading rumors and cyber bullying — and Asian Americans are the most frequently bullied ethnic group, according to a 2004 study conducted with nearly 1,400 students. Psychologists believe Asians are particularly vulnerable to bullying because of stereotypes of being submissive. Sometimes the bullying of Asian youths also lends itself to an ugly cycle, where they become bullies of others.

For the teens at South Philadelphia High School, it took direct action and community support to turn the school around.

Asian Americans Prone to Bullying
All the usual stereotypes contribute to Asian Americans being prone to bullying: Asian Americans are perceived as “foreign” no matter how many generations their families have been living in America; physical differences make them stand out (in the aftermath of 9/11, Arabs, Muslims and Sikhs were victims of bullying based solely on their physical appearance); and there is the stereotype of being obsequious and meek. “Socially submissive behavior increases the risk of peer victimization,” said Dr. Jaana Juvonen, a psychology professor and bullying researcher at the University of California, Los Angeles.

There aren’t many places for Asian youth to turn when bullying occurs. William Ming Liu, a psychologist and professor at the University of Iowa and an officer of the Asian American Psychological Association, explained that Asian bullying victims often feel they can’t turn to their parents because their parents don’t understand what bullying is.

“Some lack English skills or the understanding of how to intervene in the school,” Liu said. In addition, immigrant parents are often under economic pressure, working in environments that don’t offer flexible schedules and are less able to take time off to talk to their children and help them cope with bullying experiences. Asian American parents, especially new immigrants, may even encourage their teenagers to keep a low profile and endure the brutal attacks on the children’s self-esteem and physical well-being.

Quietly enduring such pain can take a toll, especially in communities where seeking help for mental health is not in the cultural norm and culturally appropriate services may not be available. Bullying is linked directly to depression and anxiety. In one study, 31.5 percent of victims reported higher levels of depression, according to Jin Y. Shin, a psychology professor at Hofstra University who studied bullying among Korean American youths in New York and New Jersey. They also experienced loneliness, poor social and emotional adjustment and interpersonal difficulties. Shin also found that Asian American youth experienced higher levels of emotional distress compared to other ethnic groups.

In some cases, bullying can lead to thoughts of suicide, according to Eliza Noh, an Asian American studies professor at California State University, Fullerton, who has studied suicide among Asian Americans. “Some Asian American women I interviewed reported being victims of racist bullying when they were young, contributing to their low self-worth, suicide attempt or depression later in life,” Noh said. Liu pointed out bullying victims are essentially trauma victims who experience post-traumatic stress disorder similar to war veterans. He warned that young people may experience psychosomatic symptoms like feeling ill, as well as hypervigilance, heightened startled responses, depression and social withdrawal.

Some long-term psychological effects are “acting out” behaviors like getting in trouble in school, talking back to their teachers, anxiety or even bullying others as a means of self-defense. In one of Shin’s studies on Korean American adolescents, she found that some victims “go after those who bully them” using tae kwon do or karate skills.

A Day of Violence
That horrible day at South Philly High was no isolated incident, according to Xu Lin, a community advocate who worked at Philadelphia Chinatown Development Corporation at the time. Asian students in Philadelphia have been subjected to bullying for more than a decade. Lin witnessed a similar mass assault in the cafeteria of another Philadelphia public high school as a teenager. “I saw my friend getting punched and I went to defend him,” said Lin, now 27. “Suddenly, 10 people surrounded me and started beating me.” His friend suffered a concussion.

Lin was familiar with the situation when his friend Wei Chen, an English Language Learner (ELL) student, called him from the school soon after the attacks began that day. Lin arrived at the school to find some of the victims standing at the school gates freezing in T-shirts. The security guards and school officials were trying to get the victims to leave school immediately, and they hadn’t been allowed to go back to their lockers and get their coats. (The school district did not respond to repeated requests from Hyphen about this and other allegations by the students. The allegations are consistent with the official statements in the Justice Department’s investigation and the 11 public hearings held by the Philadelphia Commission on Human Relations after the incident, though the school district has denied these allegations in the settlement with the Justice Department.)

The source of that day’s mayhem was a false rumor, found to be untrue during the investigation following the incident: that an African American student in a wheelchair had been bullied by a group of Asian American students the day before.

The violence started before 9 a.m., when a dozen students rushed inside a classroom, beat an Asian student and threw a desk on top of him. Another Asian girl was dragged down the stairwell by her hair by up to five students. Teachers reported groups of students roaming the halls looking for Asian students.

For even one of the most violent schools in the School District of Philadelphia, there was an unusually high level of tension that morning. Wei Chen, who started the Chinese Students Association in 2008, recalled that everyone seemed to be looking at the Asians. “I told my friends to watch out. I feel like there will be a fight."

A group of Asian ELL students asked a security guard to escort them to the cafeteria, which he did. The students took a look inside the cafeteria and deemed it too chaotic. As they turned to leave, a mob pummeled them with fists and kicks. The security guard had disappeared, according to students’ accounts documented in the subsequent investigation. Crowds of onlookers from all races cheered on the attackers.

Wei Chen heard about the assault while in class, and some African American classmates offered to accompany him to his next class as protection. Later, he saw some fellow Asian students in the nurse’s office. What he saw made him almost cry: One student’s shirt was completely covered in blood. The nurse told the students to leave her office at the end of the school day because it wasn’t “her duty” and she wanted to go home, according to Chen, who provided the same testimony in official investigations.

Simmering Tensions
All of the bullying victims were Asian immigrant students, though the ethnicities of the attackers were predominantly African American, whites, Latinos and allegedly even an Asian American student participated.

Some speculate that the ethnic tensions at the school can be attributed to lack of adult intervention, adults modeling bad behavior such as racially charged name calling, stereotypes and an influx of Asian students in a relatively short time period without the school or district adequately addressing the changes.

Asian students at South Philadelphia High School were regularly pelted with food in the cafeteria, punched in the hallways and endured verbal abuse and other harassment. Teachers and cafeteria staff called the students “Yo Dragonball” or “Yo Chinese” and even mocked their accents, according to Gym of Asian Americans United.

Ly, the junior at South Philly who saw his friends attacked in the cafeteria that day, said that ethnic tensions had long been circulating. The school “remained indifferent for years to allow the tensions to escalate to that day,” Ly said, accusing it of refusing to address the root causes of the harassment and violence that the students regularly endured.

South Philadelphia High School has a student population that is layered and complex. Nearly all the 900 students live below the poverty line. Only four out of 10 students will graduate within four years. About 65 percent of the student body is composed of African Americans and new African immigrants. The Asian American population accounts for 22 percent and a significant portion are just learning English because the school offers an intensive program for new immigrants. Six percent are Hispanic and 6 percent are white; 19 languages are spoken in the school. While diversity is usually heralded as something positive, it seems this school wasn’t able to benefit from it. In the last five years, there were 534 documented assaults at the school, more than any other in the district.

Ly noted that stereotypes, such as those that say African Americans are supposed to be in violent gangs and Asian students are supposed to be smart, create “lots of tension” by allowing misunderstandings and fears to fester. Asians are seen as the model minority, but the mostly working-class Asian students at Philly face challenges.

“There’s a struggle to get Asian students to go to college just like any other students,” said Otis Hackney, the school’s new principal and its fifth in six years. “My Asian students are working-class immigrant students. Once they’re done, they work in restaurants and factories. Getting them to understand that college is an option is a struggle.”

Given the school is over 100 years old and located in a section of the city where new immigrant families have always moved into, whether it be Jewish, Irish or Asian, “there have always been ethnic or racial tensions,” Hackney said. But it hasn’t always had “the strife to keep the school from being successful.”

Liu pointed out that school systems in many urban districts like South Philadelphia experience a sudden influx of Asians in a few short years and lack a structure to respond to the diversity through things like language training and anti-harassment policies. School administration may have been trained to deal with African Americans and Latinos, but the intersection of cultural influences may cause some growing pains. Gym accused the school of not adequately addressing the school’s shifting demographics: “They are going along like nothing has changed at the school and express surprise when problems erupt or are caught lead-footed on how to address problems when they do happen.”

Bullying and other violence in schools is often a response by youth to controlling and alienating school environments, experts say. Yolanda Sealey-Ruiz, a professor of education at Teachers College, Columbia University whose research covers African American identity as well as culturally responsive teaching, said that schools are among the most powerless places for adolescents. “[Schooling] is about controlling the bodies,” Sealey-Ruiz said. “ ‘Don’t say that. Don’t curse. Don’t speak to this person that way.’” Bullying becomes a means of “trying to get power and ultimately gain respect—particularly for students of color in a place that least respects who they are.”

And bullying is not particular to urban school settings. A recent report released by the National Center for Educational Statistics surveying over 25 million school-aged youth about their experiences with bullying (broadly defined, from looks and rumors to actual physical abuse) showed that bullying occurs consistently across these settings: 27.8 percent of suburban adolescents and 27 percent of urban youth report being bullied.

Sealey-Ruiz pointed to such examples as Columbine, an upper-middle class school in which bullying resulted in tragic school shootings, as evidence that bullying is prevalent among white, middle-upper class youth. Suburban schools, she noted, are usually where incidents of bullying that escalate to the point when people are killed take place, contrary to popular thought. “We’re so used to typecasting urban schools,” Sealey-Ruiz said. “Everything ill goes on in urban schools. It is the breeding ground for bullying and kids throwing chairs at teachers. All this horrible behavior that may be taking place, probably worse things take place in suburban schools.”

Some factors that Hackney and others believe increased the tension include segregating the new immigrant students from the rest of the population. Non-ELL students weren’t allowed on the “Asian floor,” even to the use the bathroom. Students were also allowed to sit where they chose, leading to de facto segregation in the classroom. Hackney acknowledged that stereotypes and cultural misunderstandings are also at play. A simple gesture, like saying “excuse me” when bumping another kid in the hallway, can diffuse potentially volatile situations. He saw many Asian students keep their heads down and avoid making eye contact — actions that could be misconstrued as rudeness. Hackney has since tried to address these misunderstandings with the students.

Interracial tensions at schools are also a result of the larger impact of racism on students’ self-perceptions and sense of selfworth. Sealey-Ruiz explained that some tensions between students of color arise out a desire to not be seen as different. “You might have these groups who, for all intents and purposes, are seen as the ‘Other’ by the dominant standpoint,” said Sealey-Ruiz. “Yet they want to distinguish themselves so that they can be as close to the norm or dominant as possible.”

Community groups noticed these tensions early and met with school administrators to address the harassment that Asian students regularly endured in many Philadelphia public schools prior to the December 2009 incident. Nothing changed as a result of those meetings, community organizers said.

Tensions within schools can also be exacerbated by lack of funding and neglect. Lack of resources, high teacher turnover, and lack of adequate staffing are all factors that may create unwelcoming climates that cultivate violence and conflict. A former teacher at South Philadelphia High School (who wished to remain anonymous) says the school suffered from a lack of attention by the district: “Everything seemed stacked against this school, as if the district didn't want it to improve because it was a community school, a third-tier school. All of the policies and funding decisions always seem to hit those schools the worst.”

Cecilia Chen of the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund emphasized the lack of accountability and response from school and district officials to the longstanding anti-Asian and anti-immigrant harassment. “School districts have an obligation to address bias-based harassment,” she said. “They cannot turn a blind eye. What this case makes clear is that when school districts are notified about harassment, they must take steps to stop, address and prevent harassment."

The Boycott
As a result of the melee, approximately 80 students decided to boycott the school until officials could ensure their safety. Lin worked with the students to come up with statements about what bullying incidents they had endured, and the group held press conferences to show the injuries they sustained, garnering international media attention. Even the FBI came. School officials met with the students and tried to persuade them to return, but no one felt there was a solid plan to protect the kids. Lin said a student at the meeting pointed out, “We were attacked in front of you. How can you tell us we will be safe?”

The boycott lasted eight days, receiving massive support from the Philadelphia community. The students eventually co-sponsored the Campaign for Nonviolent Schools with the Philadelphia Student Union, a diverse organization of students working to improve the Philadelphia school system. The Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund filed a civil rights complaint with the Justice Department, accusing the school administration of being “deliberately indifferent” to the hostile school environment for Asian students.

In early 2011, the Justice Department entered into a settlement with the School District of Philadelphia. The school hired a diversity consultant and implemented a school-wide anti-harassment policy in seven languages along with staff training. It also provides translation services for students and parents and posts data about harassment incidents on its website.

An Ounce of Prevention
Much research has been done on how to prevent bullying. Adrienne Nishina, a professor of human and community development at the University of California, Davis, who has studied bullying, said that a “whole school approach” has been proven the most successful. The premise is that teachers, school administration officials, parents and other students are taught to intervene when they see bullying and to foster an atmosphere that discourages it. Having a more tolerant school environment in general can also help. One study Shin conducted in an upstate New York high school found that Asian Americans experienced low levels of bullying due to school policies fostering multiculturalism and tolerance.

Bystander intervention is important as well. “Bullies are very sensitive to how they’re perceived by their peer group,” Liu said. “They need a peer group, or they can’t be a bully on their own.” He also added, “Most people put their heads down and allow (bullying) to continue. Ignoring it allows the bullying to persist. Ignoring doesn’t give the bully any information to counter that behavior. The peers have to say something in that situation to curb that behavior.”

But for some Asian Americans, bystander intervention, where kids have to speak up to bullies, is “counter to the cultural values of many Asian immigrants. A lot of bullying interventions are geared toward white mainstream kids,” Liu said. Some traditional Asian values, like avoiding conflict and deferring to authority, can be detrimental to Asian Americans in bullying situations. Liu encourages Asian Americans to persist in drawing attention to the issue, regardless of whether teachers or authority figures refuse to listen and to speak up for bullying victims. A simple “that’s not cool” remark can go a long way.

Creating cultures of caring and mutual understanding are key to preventing violence on school campuses. “Schools have a lot of power that they’re not exercising in the most positive way to bring groups together,” said Sealey-Ruiz of Teachers College, Columbia University. She said that in her experience as a researcher and teacher she has seen schools resolve incidences of violence by bringing in speakers, holding community-wide events such as film screenings, and letting students come together to respond openly. Sealey-Ruiz also said that involving school safety officers, who may not be Asian American, in a conversation around cultural difference is one way to encourage their active participation in bullying intervention.

Preventing bullying also starts with conversation and dialogue. Nancy Kuei, an English teacher at Newark Memorial High School, located in the socioeconomically diverse San Francisco Bay Area, said the simple act of writing and sharing stories can preclude violence and bullying among students. “They can see that they actually share a common ground with people who may not look like them on the outside,” said Kuei. “That will prevent violence a lot more effectively than when it’s already happening.”

Changes at South Philly
Since new principal Hackney has come on board and the Justice Department has intervened, the atmosphere at South Philadelphia High has improved, students said. “Safety is my No. 1 priority,” said Hackney. One of his assistant principals is the point person to handle complaints from the students, though they’re encouraged to tell any adult if there is a problem.

He has also implemented other changes to ease the tensions. Classrooms no longer have African American students sitting on one side of the classroom and Asian students on the other; they have to integrate. Hackney regularly meets with Asian students to check in on the climate. The school now posts signs in the hallways in several languages on how to get help from the security guards and guidance counselors. There are also 126 new security cameras installed around the school, at a cost of almost $700,000.

Ly, now a freshman at the University of Pennsylvania, has seen a significant decrease in racial conflict. “I believe there’s a lot of improvement this year compared to last year and the year before.”

The students involved have been lauded for speaking out and for their work on improving the racial climate. In 2011, Ly won the Princeton Prize in Race Relations, which honors young people working to increase understanding and respect among races. Lin, Wei Chen, Ly and fellow student Bach Tong won the national Freedom from Fear Award, which honors those fighting for immigrant and refugee rights.

Wei Chen, Ly and other kids who started the boycott now tour other schools to talk about bullying as part of the Asian Students Association of Philadelphia. Gym described the students as “an incredibly focused and organized immigrant student body who went from being victims of violence to powerful agents of change in their school and the district.”

Though the spotlight began with Asian students as the bullying victims, Cecilia Chen of the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund sees this settlement as a move that will benefit “not only Asian students but to ensure that all students are able to go to school in a safe environment.” She hopes that other school districts realize that they cannot ignore bullying or hostile environments, or they will face lawsuits and unwelcome media attention.

In September, New Jersey enacted the strictest anti-bullying law to date. The Anti-Bullying Bill of Rights was spurred by the 2010 suicide of Rutgers student Tyler Clementi — who was involved in a cyberbullying case where the two alleged perpetrators were Asian American. Under the law, public schools in New Jersey must have in place comprehensive an antibullying specialist, anti-bullying policies, staff trainings and better reporting of incidences. Some have said this type of policing of youngsters has gone too far, while others laud it as progress to protect students, especially since online bullying has increased.

As for the School District of Philadelphia, they don’t want to see a repeat of 2009. District spokesperson Shana Kemp said: “We welcome the opportunity to address the needs of the school and the community. We want to make sure that all the students are benefiting from multiculturalism.”

Ly agreed that, now, South Philadelphia High School is “truly a safe space to come and learn.”

Read accounts from Asian American bullying victims here.

Helen I. Hwang is a freelance journalist and author based in Scotland who previously lived in Philadelphia for 13 years. Her works have appeared in People magazine, The Philadelphia Inquirer, A Magazine: Inside Asian America, The Huffington Post and other publications. Additional reporting by Cathlin Goulding. This story was funded in part by the Spot.us community.

Editor's Note: Moving Forward, Moving On

Harry Mok — Mon, 07 Nov 2011 20:11:23 +0000

Hyphen is not unlike many of the subjects in this Survival Issue. While the Internet was killing traditional media, Hyphen survived by finding a niche as a nonprofit telling stories about Asian America that were missing from the mainstream press.

Disruptive change is part of our DNA: Hyphen’s creation was spurred by the demise of a.Magazine, which for more than a decade, was one of the few Asian American publications before it died during the early 2000s dot-com bust.

In its nine years of existence, Hyphen has evolved. When I took over as editor in chief in 2007, Facebook was just emerging from college campuses and Twitter was something birds did. Today, we’ve built a vibrant community on social media (like us and follow us at facebook.com/hyphenmagazine and twitter.com/hyphenmagazine) that augments our redesigned website.

The Hybrid Issue was my first as editor in chief, and the theme was about how Asian Americans can encompass many combinations of ethnicity, generations, languages, races and sexual orientations. I wrote in my first editor's note that, in many ways, every edition of Hyphen was like a hybrid issue because of this wonderful mixture.

Now in my final note as the editor in chief of Hyphen, the community we serve is still incredibly diverse but blogging, social media and other innovations have changed how we disseminate our coverage. After this issue, I’m stepping down, and my hope is the transformations during my time as editor will leave Hyphen in a better place.

The founding vision of the renegades who gathered around a kitchen table to start Hyphen — to create a magazine that depicts Asian America in a more nuanced, accurate way that’s a fun read — not only survives, but thrives. No doubt it’s due in large part to the hundreds of volunteers who’ve given their blood, sweat and tears to Hyphen. I salute them and the readers they’ve served. It’s been an honor.

Harry Mok
Editor in chief

Taiyo Na and Dirty Boots Rock the Survival Release Party

Cynthia Brothers — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 17:18:21 +0000

photo by Brian Cleaver

This Saturday's "Survival" Issue Release Party will feature artist Taiyo Na, backed by San Francisco-based multi-instrumentalists Dirty Boots. Taiyo sat down with Hyphen to discuss surviving as an artist, his latest projects, and what we can look forward to for the show.

What does “survival” mean to you?

Getting over and meeting the basics, especially in the face of challenge. There are different degrees of how we maneuver that survival, whether with dignity and integrity or not. It’s a broad word, it can mean many different things, but those are the things that come up for me.

What has been one of your most rewarding moments doing what you’re doing as an artist?

There have been many important moments, but for example -- the latest music project with Magnetic North and our Home: Word album, which was re-released last year with five new tracks and a music video done by Wong Fu Productions.

With all the different feedback and YouTube comments we received from our audience and new fans, it did something very special and meaningful to a lot of young people. When I read these comments and hear these stories that they shared, it really helped to heal families. Like a lot of young people were able to make connections with older people and vice versa through this music, and that’s definitely been very rewarding.

What’s the toughest part about your job?

It’s kind of hard to say what the toughest part is because the tough parts make the rewarding parts more rewarding. I could gripe about the representation of Asian Americans in media, in the economy, and pop culture -- and other people do and rightfully so -- but I also do recognize that what artists like myself are doing is in the spirit of a pioneering kind of work, and that’s another privilege in itself to have. There are challenges that come with that, but a lot of us certainly have the understanding that the rewards and benefits may not come immediately, it comes years from now or maybe generations from now. That’s the perspective I have. Thinking about tough times or challenges -- they all happen for a reason and things manifest later on, like a karmic effect.

Is there something you know now about your career that you wish you had known when you were younger?

As a teenager and young adult I was just really vain and egotistical. I just wanted to be a star and I thought certain things would come really easily. Now I know with anything -- whether it’s career, love, relationships … when I was younger I tried to look for the easy way out, but there really is no easy way.

Do you see yourself as a leader/activist?

I tend to shy away from labels like leader and activist, but people put that on me and I don’t mind it really, because I know it’s meant in a positive way most of the time. I think just being an artist is enough of a mantle for me. I’m just trying to fulfill that.

But if there are social, political, or community causes that I find important, then I certainly will support. In some ways, my art and activism are in essence one and the same. I think people regard me for my work with Sulu Series [a monthly APIA spoken word and artist showcase], but it was a natural extension for me as an artist. Because as an artist you need spaces for the art, you need community for the art, you need a hub, a base to share that art over time -- and I think Sulu was one of the ways, along with other concerts and other shows -- I’ve helped to create those spaces with other people who were on a similar vibe. I feel that’s a natural extension of being an artist, to find a space for an audience and community for that art.

Describe yourself in three words:

I Am Taiyo! Done. Boom. Pow!

What can we expect for the Hyphen Release Party performance?

The band Dirty Boots and I will be doing a set together. I’ve played with them before, for the CAAM Asian American Film Festival last year. Dirty Boots are a great band doing a lot of things here locally, so I wanted to play with them and share them with the Hyphen audience. We are both very much live musicians at heart; we just love to play. Expect a lot of fun, heartfelt songs…and maybe a bit of jamming.

From left to right: James Dumlao, Gyasi Ross, and Rachel Lastimosa of Dirty Boots

Dirty Boots are also part of the play that I’m in, Tree City Legends, which opens February 16 at San Francisco’s Intersection For the Arts.

Tell us more about this play.

Tree City Legends is about four brothers at a funeral, written by amazing poet and musician Dennis Kim a.k.a Denizen Kane. Dennis has been collaborating with director Marc Bamuthi Joseph and producer/photographer Joan Osato and theater artist Sean San Jose, and it’s really their brainchild. I play the youngest brother, and he’s one of the older brothers. It’s dialogue-driven but with a lot of music in it -- all of us in the cast in one way, shape, or form provide some music to the play.

Dennis sent the play to me last year and I was blown away and came to the Bay to work on it. I was living in New York, but the timing and everything managed to work out to allow me to come here. I’m just so thrilled and honored to be a part of this team of people. They’re all heavyweights; I feel like the rookie on the championship team. I’m just trying to get in where I fit in.

Other things in the works for you?

Magnetic North and I are working on some new songs with the producers from our Japan label, and some new music video projects. And don’t forget to check out the play!

Hyphen's "Survival" Issue Release Party is on Saturday, February 4 from 9:00 pm to 2:00 am at 111 Minna Gallery, 111 Minna Street, San Francisco, CA. Get tickets here.

And the Beat Goes On: DJ Boogie Brown at Hyphen’s 'Survival' Release Party

Cecilia Lei — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 16:31:00 +0000

DJ Boogie Brown: "People look to one artist or group to change things and ‘save hip hop.’ In reality, it’s all on us." Photo by John Liau.

When the beat drops to your favorite song at a club or a bar, one of the first instincts you may have is to look up at the DJ, acknowledging when a beat moves you or takes you back to a favorite memory. Although hip hop is continuously shifting and evolving, there is a longevity to the music that is due mostly to the artists and DJs who stay true to the essence of hip hop: storytelling and survival.

DJ Boogie Brown, a prominent Filipino American DJ in the Bay Area is, in many senses of the word, a survivor. Born and raised in San Francisco, music was always an integral part of his life. As the mobile DJ scene emerged in the Bay Area, especially among Asian Pacific Islander communities, Boogie Brown was inspired by DJ’s like Shortkut, Apollo, and Q-Bert. They grew up around his neighborhood and shared the same cultural backgrounds.

Boogie Brown says, “Let’s face it, the presence of Filipino role models in the 80s and 90s were pretty scarce." Boogie Brown was first inspired by a best friend’s older brother who spun records in his garage. “I was just amazed at how they were blending the songs seamlessly into one another," he says. He was only in the third or fourth grade when he became hooked on DJing. “It was pretty magical to me.”

Today, being a DJ does not hold the same elusive position as it did when Boogie Brown first fell in love with it. He says, “These days, everyone is a DJ: actors, your cousin, the server at your favorite restaurant, the guy who pumped your gas this morning, your barista at Starbucks: everyone.” Whereas in the past it was a matter of standing out amongst an abundance of talented DJs, Boogie Brown’s artistic survival depends on sticking out “among the talented and the garbage DJs.”

The issue of visibility is a consistent theme in the Asian Pacific Islander community. As a Filipino American, Boogie Brown acknowledges that Asians have always played a role in the different elements of hip hop. He names DJ crews such as Invisibl Skratch Piklz and The Beat Junkies to emcees like Bambu and Hopie, to current prominent dance crews that have helped position the community in the hip hop game. Being active in his community beyond the music industry is also essential. Growing up, Boogie Brown’s education included community organizing on campus. Between putting together high school conferences, participating in cultural clubs, teaching workshops to students, and throwing on Filipino film festivals, he deeply explored his own ethnic identity. But when it comes to music, to Boogie Brown, identity only goes so far. “If you’re dope. you’re dope; if you’re garbage, you’re garbage: regardless of ethnicity,” he says.

Boogie Brown lets his music speak for itself. He acknowledges though that his most important messages may not be heard in a club or a lounge. “Mixtapes is where I feel that DJ’s get a chance to really express themselves, a message, or share some music that they’re really feeling that they don’t get a chance to play at the clubs,” he says. There is, then, the element that the necessity and survival of hip hop’s most genuine messages depends not only on the artist, but the audience themselves. Boogie Brown asserts, "People look to one artist or group to change things and ‘save hip hop.’ In reality, it’s all on us … I think Mos Def said it best: ‘Hip hop is going where we’re going.’ It’s our job to find that good music and support it.” Whereas important artists in the community, like Boogie Brown, play their role in creating and surviving in an ever-changing music industry, we as a community may have to do more than just listen. According to Boogie Brown, the livelihood and spirit of hip hop depends on it.

Final Scratches

What’s a single piece of music/song or artist that encompasses who you are?

If I paid a guy to follow me around everywhere I went with a boom box, my soundtrack while walking down the street would be Outkast’s "SpottieOttieDopaliscious". The horns on that tracks are so fresh.

What is some current hip hop music/artists that you’re excited about?

There’s definitely good music out there. Kendrick Lamar’s Section 80, Dom Kennedy’s From The Westside With Love II, Wiz’s Kush and Orange Juice, and Big KRIT’s Return of 4eva are some of my favorite hip hop albums in the last few years.

Learn more about DJ Boogie Brown:
http://www.mixcrate.com/djboogiebrown
http://djboogiebrown.blogspot.com
http://www.twitter.com/djboogiebrown

Hyphen's "Survival" Issue Release Party is on Saturday, February 4 from 9:00 pm to 2:00 am at 111 Minna Gallery, 111 Minna Street, San Francisco, CA. Get tickets here.

'Survival' Issue Release Sponsors: Meet the Rsrve.me Team

Hyphen Events — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 00:57:00 +0000

The Rsrve.me team at Start-up Monthly's Demo Pitch & Presentation Day where the team came in first place within the Accelerator program and second overall. Co-founders from left to right: Poi Yu, Jennifer Kim Van Nguyen, Tony Yeung, and Christopher Ling.

Sponsoring Hyphen's "Survival" Issue Release party are up-and-comers Rsrve.Me, a web platform that provides the invaluable service for making hassle-free, customized date nights for San Francisco couples. Rsrve.me was conceived last year when co-founder Christopher Ling scoured Yelp and sought advice from friends on how to make plans with his girlfriend for their 6-year anniversary, but his sources just weren't that helpful. Rsrve.me was born out of that frustration and the site, which launched in January 2012, offers exclusive date experiences for those couples who want to save their energy for actually enjoying themselves.

We talk with two of Rsrve.me's co-founders, Jennifer Kim Van Nguyen (Design & Marketing) and Christopher Ling (Business Development) about surviving as a new start-up.

[Full Disclosure: Jennifer Kim Van Nguyen is a former Editorial and Graphic Designer and current business staff at Hyphen]

What does "survival" mean to you?

CL: To me, survival means always striving to better oneself and never being complacent. I believe in pushing boundaries and following whatever your passion is. Whether professionally, socially, or mentally, survival should not only be about “moving onwards," but also about “moving upwards."

JN: Survival, to me, means to consistently be moving, growing and striving to better oneself, but, more importantly, to also remain true to yourself in the process. I think, more than often, it's really easy to lose sight of that aspect in the pursuit of success in whatever industry you're in.

What has been your most rewarding moment doing what you're doing?

CL: Hands down, the most rewarding moment is when I see happy customers. A lot of time and sweat goes into every event that we create, so it’s a great feeling when the owners are happy with the event and excited about creating something special for their customers. It’s equally rewarding to receive feedback from couples who are ecstatic about breaking out of their usual routine to not only discover something new, but also receive a one-of-a-kind VIP experience.

What is the toughest part about your trade?

CL: Solving the chicken and the egg dilemma. Because we’re in the early days of Rsrve.me, it’s a constant endeavor to increase merchant partnerships, as well as expand our Rsrve.me community. Our mission is to offer awesome date experiences, but more importantly, we need the community to want to be a part of the experience. However, tackling this very problem is part of the fun in growing the overall business -- nobody said it would be easy.

Do you see yourself as a leader/activist? How?

CL: I view myself as a leader with the Rsrve.me team, helping to push the bar in the overall development of the company to ensure we’re making progress towards the overall vision of providing awesome date experiences to everyone. Motivation and trust go a long way in empowering everyone on the team to be a leader in managing their work product, while emphasizing professional growth at the same time.

JN: Definitely. I believe in order to be a great and successful leader, you have to inspire others to reach beyond what convention says is possible, plan how you're going to accomplish your goals, inspire those around you to believe that anything is possible and execute even when success is not guaranteed.

What is one thing you know now about your career that you wish you had known in college?

CL: In college, you are essentially handed a schedule of classes to take in order to graduate with a certain major or emphasis. There is a path outlined for you with the necessary steps required to achieve success. However, when entering the workforce, there is neither a distinct path nor a single metric to define success. I believe the key here is to realize that you are not going to have everything figured out and might not know what you’ll even be doing a year from now, but that’s part of the fun.

JN: Money is only paper. Experience is value.

Aside from being an entrepreneur, what other impacts have you made in the community (Asian American or not)?

CL: One volunteering experience I thought stood out from the rest was participating in Grid Alternative’s Solar Affordable Housing Program, where a group of volunteers and I installed a solar system on a low-income house that was provided by Habitat for Humanity. It was a great feeling to help in something that would save a family money on lower cost power while also learning about something I was passionate about.

JN: Aside from working with Rsrve.me, I volunteer and serve as Chief Marketing Officer for Philanthro's San Francisco chapter, a national NPO that engages young professionals in philanthropy. We connect young professionals with charitable causes through volunteer, social and leadership activities working with organizations such as Make-a-Wish Foundation, Cystic Fibrosis Foundation, etc.

7. How would you describe your team in one sentence?

CL: An eclectic, insanely intelligent group of individuals doing whatever it takes to get things done, no problem.

JN: A group of talented and insanely progressive thinkers living a few years of our lives like most people won't so that we can spend the rest of our lives living our dream.

Hyphen's "Survival" Issue Release Party is on Saturday, February 4 from 9:00 pm to 2:00 am at 111 Minna Gallery, 111 Minna Street, San Francisco, CA. Get tickets here.

The Hyphenite's Social Calendar: Survival Issue Party, Dragon Boy

Cynthia Brothers — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 19:17:54 +0000

Thursday February 2nd -- Santa Ana, CA

Common Ground Open Mic

Common Ground is celebrating the first Thursday in February with the theme "Multitudes of Expression", in reference to the many ways and means to love one another. Featuring comedian Jenny Yang, musician Quincy Surasmith, DJ Mushu, and more. More info here.

7 to 9 pm

Vietnamese American Arts and Letters Association Cultural Center

1600 N. Broadway, Santa Ana, CA

Thursday February 2nd -- Seattle

Book Launch: Remembering Silme Domingo and Gene Viernes

Ron Chew's Remembering Silme Domingo and Gene Viernes: The Legacy of Filipino American Labor Activism recalls their lives and work with friends and allies in a larger movement for social justice and workers' rights. The book also includes a history of Asian labor in the Alaska salmon canneries, written by Gene Viernes. More info here.

6 pm

Community Hall

The Wing Luke Museum of the Asian Pacific American Experience

719 South King St, Seattle

FREE

Thursday February 2nd -- NYC

"Off the Beaten Path" Fiction Authors

Neela Vaswani

Come hear three acclaimed writers read works set in places usually at the periphery of the map: Somerset Maugham Award winner Alice Albinia, PEN Faulkner winner Sabina Murray, and American Book Award winner Neela Vaswani. More info here.

7 pm

Asian American Writers' Workshop

110-112 W 27th St, 6th floor, New York

$5 suggested donation

Thursday February 2nd -- Oakland

The Spot Open House

Come check out the new space of The Spot, a Chinatown-based APIA youth center. Meet The Spot community members, enter to win raffle prizes (Warriors tickets, Kindle Fire, etc.), and enjoy refreshments.

5:30 to 7 pm

The Spot

299 13th St, Oakland

FREE

More info and RSVP here

Thursday February 2nd to Saturday February 11th -- Various

David Choi Forever and Ever West Coast Tour

Singer/songwriter David Choi might be swinging through your town to play a live performance. More info and tickets here.

February 2: Phoenix -- Crescent Ballroom

February 3: Costa Mesa -- Constellation Room

February 4: San Diego -- Lestats

February 7: San Francisco -- Swedish American Hall

February 9: Vancouver -- Rio Theatre

February 10: Seattle -- Vera Project

February 11: Portland -- Backspace Cafe

Friday February 3rd -- NYC

Mouth to Mouth Open Mic: Lunar New Year Edition

Angel Yau

Celebrate the Lunar New Year with hosts Ed Lin and Jen Kwok at Mouth to Mouth's first open mic of 2012. Featuring sketch comedian Angel Yau, who has performed at the NYC Underground Comedy Festival and the Upright Citizens Brigade Theater, and playwright, poet, and 2g's artistic director Carla Ching, who will be performing new work in honor of the new year. More info here.

8 pm (sign ups for 5-minute performance slots begin at 7:30 pm)

Asian American Writers' Workshop

110-112 W 27th St, 6th floor, New York

$5 suggested donation

Saturday February 4th -- San Francisco

Hyphen Survival Issue Release Party

Join Hyphen as we celebrate the release of our "Survival" issue. Participate in our silent auction and win a chance to spend the day with a prominent Asian American community member. Asian American Donor Program (AADP) bone marrow registration drive (if interested, please read requirements) will also be there. Performances by Taiyo Na, Dirty Boots, DLRN, and beats by DJ Boogie Brown. More info here.

9 pm to 2 am (AADP Drive 9 to 10:30 pm in Zappa Room)

111 Minna Gallery

111 Minna Street, San Francisco

$10 ($20 with 1-year subscription); pre-sale tickets here

21+

Saturday February 4th -- Oakland

Oakland Asian Cultural Center Lunar New Year Festival

Oakland Asian Cultural Center's (OACC) Annual Lunar New Year Celebration will include arts, crafts, and cultural performances for the whole family. With performances by American Center of Philippine Arts, Chhandam School of Kathak, China's Spirit Music Ensemble, and much more.

11 am to 4:30 pm

OACC

388 9th St Suite 290, Oakland

FREE

Saturday February 4th -- NYC

Little Dragon Tales: Chinese Children's Songs

Dave Liang of the Shanghai Restoration Project presents an afternoon of Chinese children's songs with a modern twist. In celebration of the Year of the Dragon and the release of his new CD, Little Dragon Tales: Chinese Children's Songs, featuring Yip's Canada Children's Choir. More info here.

1:30 to 2:30 pm

Museum of Chinese in America

215 Centre St, New York

$7 adult / $4 children ages 3+ / Free for MOCA Members

RSVP to programs(at)mocanyc(dot)org

My Brother, My Hero Staged Reading

Yangtze Repertory Theatre of America, in collaboration with the Asian American Film Lab, presents the staged reading of My Brother, My Hero. An ambitious young legislator advances his own career at the expense of his tribe, until his brother galvanizes the tribe to a doomed rebellion against the empire. Written by Jisen John Ho and directed by Wayne Chang. More info here.

5 pm

Richmond Shepard Theatre

309 East 26th Street, New York

$5 suggested donation

Saturday February 4th -- Denver

Finding Voice: Interactive Art Show

Join Stephanie Tanny for "Finding Voice", a night of spoken word, Indigenous hip hop, live interactive art, and a visual art showcase. With Quese IMC & DJ Shock B of Culture Shock Camp, Invinity, and more. More info here.

7:30 to 10:30 pm

Leela European Cafe

820 15th St, Denver

$5 suggested cover

Through Saturday February 4th -- Sacramento

Dragon Boy Exhibit

Dragatomi presents Dragon Boy by Martin Hsu, a series of new paintings depicting the adventures of a boy in dragon suit on his way to find his roots in a foreign land. With his kirin dog Blackie by his side, they travel between reality and fantasy. More info here. Exhibit ends February 4, 2012.

Dragatomi Gallery

2317 J St, Sacramento

FREE

Tuesday February 7th -- Los Angeles

Garrett Hongo Readings

Garrett Hongo will discuss his latest book of poetry, Coral Road, through which he meditates on the dramatic landscapes and tales of the Hawai'ian islands and the possibility of revisiting the cultural narrative through poetry. More info here.

4 to 6 pm

Charles E. Young Research Library Presentation Room

UCLA, Los Angeles

FREE; RSVP to rsvp(at)library(dot)ucla(dot)edu

Opportunities

Intro to Screenwriting with Koji Steven Sakai -- Los Angeles

Visual Communications (VC) is please to once again partner with Koji Steven Sakai to offer a 10-session course on the craft of screenwriting. Students will learn proper formatting and structure as well as how to create effective plots, characters, and dialogue -- all the necessary techniques to draft a first screenplay. The final class will be dedicated to the business of screenwriting and making it in the industry. Classes are on Saturdays from February 4th through April 7th. $400 VC members / $495 non-members. More info and registration here.

"Float Like a Butterfly, Sting Like a Bee": A Poetry Workshop with Monica Youn -- NYC

Monica Youn

Add power to your poetic punches and fleetness to your formal footwork. These classes will focus on adding techniques, tension, and twists to your expressive toolbox. There will be a weekly writing assignment and workshop as well as assigned readings from contemporary poets and other artists offering varied approaches to the week's topic. Please bring a packet of 3 to 5 short poems (no more than 5 pages) to the first class. Mondays from February 6th to March 5th, takes place at Asian American Writers' Workshop. $180 AAWW members/$200 non-members. More info here.

Asian American Writers' Workshop (AAWW) Seeking Program Director -- NYC

AAWW is looking to hire a part-time Program Director to curate, publicize, and manage literary events that are quirky, progressive, and awesome. Applicants should be ambitious, logistical, organized lovers of books who would like to build curatorial experience in a creative, progressive arts center. Volunteer management, operational, and administrative experience desired, as well as ability to help expand programs to both generate earned income and transition programming online via video and podcasts. This is a part-time three-day-a-week entry level position with benefits. Salary dependent on experience. Full-time is a possibility. More info and application here.

DLRN Brings Hip Hop to the Survival Issue Release Party

Victoria Yue — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 17:36:00 +0000

Photo courtesy of DLRN.

Helping us celebrate the launch of Hyphen's Issue 24 -- The Survival Issue -- is hip hop group DLRN. The group, based in Sacramento, CA, is comprised of two fresh artists, Sean LaMarr and Jon Reyes. LaMarr and Reyes were kind enough answer some questions for us on surviving the ups and downs of the music industry.

Being as this was our survival issue, what does “survival” mean to you as an artist?

JR: As much as folks would like you to think otherwise, a lot of talented artists don't get paid very well. Because of that, it's hard to be creative and strive as an artist when you got a day job, bills piling up, et cetera. So in this context I think survival is really being able to get in that creative space while also dealing with the practicalities of reality that everyone else goes through.

SL: Especially right now, survival is like everything. It takes a great deal of persistence and failure to be a good artist. It makes good art when people are struggling and there’s craziness going on, to make good music happen.

What has been your most rewarding moment doing what you're doing?

JR: It's rewarding when folks tell you how much your music has inspired them, whether to make music themselves or just on some life shit.

What is the toughest part about what you do as an artist?

SL: [laughs] Failure. Right now, music is so accessible, that it’s almost become a limitation. We’ve been really successful with what we’ve done, but as an artist, I want more. As a person, I want more. We want to extend our fanbase, reach more people. With so much music on the Internet, it’s hard to stand out. But with persistence and failures, we’re trying new avenues to be heard.

JR: Relating back to the first question, the toughest part of being a blue collar musician is just being able to stay a musician. Accepting that you chose a different lifestyle/career path from most folks.

Do you see yourself as a leader/activist? How?

SL: I feel like I’m a leader. I was born a leader, in a lot of ways. Raised in Sacramento. But personally, I’m not into spreading my politics around like some other people do. I’m into being myself, trying to be a better artist and a better person. If people can relate to my life and my experiences, then that’s great.

What is one thing you know now about your career that you wish you had known in college?

JR: I wish I would've started making music a little earlier. I didn't really start until the end of college.

SL: Gosh. There’s a couple things. I wish I had made music sooner! I just love music so much, I was not confident enough to be an artist for a long, long time. I had loved music so much, I couldn’t imagine myself up there as an artist. But I wish I had started earlier -- I could have been at this for a long time! I hear about my friends who started rapping at 12, 13, and I’m like what?! [Laughs] I feel like I’m behind the learning curve. I started writing at 17 or 18, didn’t start performing until I was about 20.

Aside from what you're known for in the entertainment industry, what other impacts have you made in the community (Asian American or not)?

JR: Growing up, I was always pretty active in the community, particularly in the Filipino American community, volunteering for different community organizations. Through college I served as a youth mentor for Fil Am high school students and worked as a tutor for Fil Am elementary school children.

SL: Yeah. I work with youth a lot, mainly in music and in sports. I’ve always been interested in working with kids, helping coach their basketball or football teams. I also worked in the mental health industry for years. It’s a funny story -- I was working in a sandwich shop, and one of my co-workers randomly asked me if I would be interested in being an orderly at a mental health place. I worked the graveyard shift for 6 months with no knowledge at all about anything I was doing. So I took courses. Learned a lot. And now I’ve been there 8 years. It was just this weird happenstance situation when I was 18.

Describe yourself in three words.

SL: Passionate. Thoughtful. Sincere.

JR: Polymath. Producer. Friend.

Hyphen's "Survival" Issue Release Party is on Saturday, February 4 from 9:00 pm to 2:00 am at 111 Minna Gallery, 111 Minna Street, San Francisco, CA. Get tickets here.

Tiger Mother, The Musical: Is It What You Think It Is?

Adriel Luis — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 14:07:54 +0000

Writing a review for Hyphen can, in some ways, be more complicated than writing a review for The New York Times. As an Asian American opening a book, pressing play on an album, or stepping into a theater to witness another Asian American’s work -- you're barraged with questions more existential than “was the writing good?” and “was the acting good?”

Examples:

Was this created for an Asian American audience or a mainstream audience?

How does this piece fit into our historical narrative??

Is this piece even trying to fit into our historical narrative???

If so, who am I to judge the underrepresented experiences in my own community????

Who is Vincent Chin?????

WHO AM I AT ALL?!?!?!?!?!?!

All the while, you’re trying to keep a stoic facial expression so as not to freak out everyone and get kicked out of the seat that has been so graciously reserved for you. In short, embedded in this simple 750-word assignment is an epic toggle over whether Angela Chan and Michael Manley’s staged musical Legacy of the Tiger Mother should be reviewed as an addition to the reel of Asian American pieces, as a particle within the universal theatrical continuum, or just in context of itself. Which way you lean may determine whether or not this play is worth seeing.

If Legacy’s intention is to commute age-old identity crises for those who missed the Joy Luck Club, Double Happiness, and Eat Drink Man Woman buses, then it succeeds. There are your usual players -- Lily (Satomi Hofmann) is the strict parent who escaped Mao’s China for a better life in America; Mei (Lynn Craig) is the rebellious Chinese child who hates having her piano-playing compared to more obedient Chinese children -- and there’s mention of the shadowy white boyfriend/husband/lover (who at some point left Mei with child for the shadowy white blonde/brunette/redhead). Stories like this continue to be told because they speak to wide swath of Asian American experiences, and Legacy does a fine job retelling it while slipping in some catchy songs. Besides, someone needs to carry the torch -- Joy Luck Club and company aren’t available for Netflix streaming.*

What distinguishes Legacy from its counterparts is its timing -- it catapults itself off Amy Chua’s Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother, the “Strict Asian Parenting for Dummies” book that rocked 2011 in controversy. But apart from the reference in the plot and title, Legacy does little to investigate, satirize, comment on, or resolve the Tiger Mother debacle. It is simply what you’d expect from a musical interpretation of Chua’s concept -- no curve balls, no surprises, and (unlike the rest of the Tiger Mother ecosystem), no controversy.

In fact, Legacy’s attention to walking the thin line between showcasing stereotypes and countering them may be both its greatest accomplishment and my deepest frustration. Legacy was first staged in Las Vegas, and then at New York’s Times Square International Theatre Festival -- attracting a mixed audience each time. In such a situation, the musical opted to balance their “Asian references” delicately to appease but not offend, to challenge but not invalidate. So throughout the play are lines like “B’s aren’t good enough,” “practice piano for at least three hours,” and “don’t disgrace your family!” While these points -- which are scattered generously through the hour -- are a necessary element for establishing the storyline, some of the more excessive instances leave me wondering if they are included as a nod to Asian American viewers (who populated half the theater), or to tickle the predictable funnybones of a mainstream (i.e., white) theater audience. In her interpretation of Lily, Hofmann sometimes slips from her shaky Chinese accent, wandering into Ms. Swan from MadTV territory (she pronounces Mozart’s classic piece “Ful Erise”). Other “Chinese moments” feel contrived and difficult to justify even as a cultural bridge for a 2012 audience (there are constant Confucius quotes, and at one point a character threatens to “hit you with a pair of chopsticks”). Still, the play consciously refrains from using these moments as comical crutches, and seeks to provide context through its dialogue.

So in essence, if we are to evaluate the acting, writing, singing, and overall execution of Legacy of the Tiger Mother, the verdict is that it’s pretty good in comparison to many other Asian American productions out there. But if we are to view it outside of that boundary -- whether as a next step in the Asian American frontier, or as a piece to be judged among the world’s wealth of theatre -- it’s average at best. Unfortunately, we children of Tiger Parents know that average simply isn’t good enough.

*Correction: Eat Drink Man Woman is now available on Netflix.

* * *

Adriel Luis is an artist, writer, and consultant who focuses on identifying imagination's role in social change. He is a member of the music and education collective iLL-Literacy, and has written for Change.org and Colorlines.com. More at drzzl.com