Earthquake Weather

As a kid, I spent a lot of time intricately tying chicken drumsticks to pieces of string attached to crab traps. The San Francisco Municipal Pier at 5am – the bane of my childhood. Some x amount of years later, I’ve since figured out my mom and her brother simply needed my sister and I to be their gateway to illegally harvesting Dungeness crab. Things were more lax then. There was minimal security and the kids at the pier almost always had their own miniature ice chests. If pier patrols were in sight, you can bet we hauled ass to the car, mini ice chest in hand. And if caught, there was that cloyingly sweet believable innocence present. Real clever, mom. To 10 year old me, San Francisco was the city of crabbing, roasted chestnuts, and that damn Palace of Fine Arts and in a way, it still embodies just those things.

Is Your Halloween Costume Offensive?

 

Image courtesy of color-blinding

It's October 23 which means it's ALMOST Halloween. Halloween brings a lot of fun things: parties, candy, pumpkin-flavored everything, dressing up and being silly. But because we can't have nice things, Halloween can also bring about costumes that are tasteless and racially offensive.

Here at Within Color, we've tackled cultural appropriation before (Alicia's intro, Jen's post, and my post) but it seems important to talk about it again now that people are looking into costumes that could be seen as offensive.

Interview of Madhulika of PreetiRang Sanctuary

I recently had the pleasure of visiting PreetiRang Sanctuary and was so inspired by Madhulika's wisdom and passion that I had to share her with you. She has taught me many things about Hinduism and Indian culture and has left me completely inspired.

Can you tell me a little bit about your background? Where are you originally from? What brought you to the US?

I was raised by very supportive and encouraging parents, i.e., parents did not differentiate between sons and daughters. Realizing that I am very intelligent and wanted to study Engineering, they agreed though they would have preferred that I follow the common path of getting a Bachelors’ degree and getting married.

Two more notable recollections about my parents are:

1. They always told us, “Do what you want to do and be happy that you are doing what you want to do."

2. Without telling us what to do or not to do, they made it plenty clear that anything less than one’s best is NOT acceptable. An example is, throughout school, a Bachelors’ degree and 3 Masters’ degrees, I have NEVER missed an assignment, actually never missed even one question on an assignment. I didn’t know it was possible to go to school and “face” a teacher without completing my assignment.

Our oldest taught me it’s not possible to do every assignment when he was in High School.

I remember joking with my mother after that, “You and Papa didn’t raise me right. You didn’t teach me that I could take shortcuts. You didn’t tell me I could skip assignments.” My mother laughed, “I don’t know to this day that it is possible to go to school without completing assignments and I would teach that to my children even today."

Also, I am highly influenced by the discipline, hard work and integrity of my maternal grandfather who was the Chief Justice of India. I wish I could achieve a fraction of what he did.

I am originally from Kolkata, West Bengal, India. I got married to a gentleman, settled in the USA, and had just gained admission at Yale University for a MSEE (Master of Science in Electrical Engineering) degree.

Things You Might Have Missed: Asian(American) Edition, Part II

In this week's edition, we talk about the changing face of the "girl next door," how nerds can be of color, too, and if it's time to retire Apu.

As always, what are some cool things you have read lately?

 Image courtesy of Wall Street Journal

1. "Miss America Nina Davuluri Reveals Her Secret Life As a Nerd"

I think the title of this piece is misleading as she doesn't talk about her "nerdy" qualities until an afterthought of the piece and as someone who is in the public spotlight, it's not very secret is it?

But aside from the nitpicking, here are some gems:

“I grew up watching Miss America for years and years, and as the daughter of immigrants, I always thought to myself that I could never be that — because I didn’t look a certain way; I didn’t fit the model of what was up there on that screen,” she says. “And it shouldn’t be about race, it shouldn’t — but it is. To be able to stand up there, and be an example for other little girls that America is now a very different place, that’s everything to me.”

and:

There’s something else that Davuluri, Lee and Yeh have in common as well: They’re all Asian American, the first time in history that three out of the top five Miss America finishers were of Asian descent, in a year that saw more Asian American contestants than ever.

“Isn’t that a pretty good example of where we are as a country?” says Davuluri. “We’re not just a nation of black and white anymore. People need to see the amazing variety of cultures we have in America — and to learn a more inclusive respect for everyone’s traditions and beliefs.”

Cultural Appropriation, Part Two.

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Here on Within Color, we've had so many discussions on cultural appropriation (see two great posts from Alicia and Vivian here), but it's still an issue that is easily overlooked or forgotten by many and even some of us POC due to the bastardization of ethnic prints, styles, and patterns by large and popular corporate stores (even smaller local boutiques)! It's a slippery slope in which it leads to thinking, "Well, it must be okay! Forever 21 and Asos do it!" Except it's not. There's still so much confusion about it, so the purpose of this post is to just hopefully clear the clouds on it a little more.

I currently subscribe to Who What Wear, an online fashion and beauty magazine that sends out daily newsletters touching on beauty looks, products, celebrity outfits, street styles, trends, etc. Created by two white women, it is as you would expect, not inclusive and inconsiderate of culture, ethnicity, and race. While I enjoy WWW from time to time, it's why I love WC and why contributor Michelle created it. Not to toot our own horn here, because while we have made mistakes, we do try incredibly hard to be respectful of all cultures and ethnicities and races and to keep our own privileges in check. And in cases where we haven't, we have owned up to our misgivings and mistakes without excuses. There are so many blogs out there who put fashion as their first priority without thinking of the implications of their choices, while we strive to put inclusivity and respect as our first priority above all else, even as a fashion and beauty blog. What I like to think makes us different is that we keep conscious of race, culture, and ethnicity in mind in all of our posts.

9th Annual Asian Pacific Asian Film Festival

Last weekend I had the pleasure of attending the 9th Annual Asian Pacific Asian Film Festival hosted by OCA-Greater Houston and held at Brilliart Studios. I didn't even know there was an Asian-American film community in Houston! Brilliart was a cute little studio in the middle of "China town" that's still expanding and very cool. The film fest was a free four day event that showcased Asian Pacific Asian film makers about issues within the community. The films ranged from witty and laughable moments, to real tear jerkers.


It was a great event, especially since they even showcased local film makers that were there for Q&A and commentary. I was only able to attend for one day, however, now I have a whole list of films and documentaries I want to check out.

Eastern Womanism: Sampat Pal Devi and the Gulabi Gang

It is funny how the older I become, the harder it is for me to become inspired. Maybe it has something to do with loosing my imagination. Or my hope. Maybe it has to do with not being exposed to people who share common identifiers. Whatever it is, I am always looking for inspiration.

Taken from Sampat Pal Devi's Facebook Page

When I found out about Sampat Pal Devi and her Gulabi Gang, I was initially delighted. I had only read a snippet about their mission and promised to revisit their website again. After catching some of Kim Longinotto's documentary "Pink Sari", I began researching the group. I tried to steer clear of articles from white feminists and looked towards their website, Sampat Pal's Facebook, and other publications.

Working with NGO's I have read several mission statements, some bad, some good. Never have I seen a "Vision" (different than their mission). Simple and sincere, it stirred something inside me.

"Protect the powerless from abuse and fight corruption to ensure basic rights of the poor in rural areas and discourage traditions like child-marriages."

Taken from the Gulabi Gang Website

Sampat Pal is really an extraordinary women.  According to the Indian Express article she is a "barely educated, impoverished grandmother [who] has emerged as a messianic figure in the region." But they don't talk about her empathy. She's a tough lady (I would never want to be on the receiving end of her fiery), but she is gentle and compassionate. She is a practitioner of tough love, but also tenderly wipes the tears from the faces of scared, oppressed women. She cries with them, she shares her home with them, she protects them.

What is more powerful than that?

She is quoted in the Gulf News article saying:

"When I’d confronted him alone, he refused to listen to me,” she says. “But when I approached him with a group of women, he admitted his mistake. It was then that I realized the power of unity."

I cannot agree more with this statement. I think it is so important for women to stand together. Still, I sometimes find it hard when women who are "progressives" or "feminists" do not include, or even acknowledge, the women who are fighting for their rights as women of color. Those who choose to not see race are, in reality, erasing us and our struggles from the conversation. As if we are already not invisible enough.

Though, I can't put 100% of the blame on white America. I know my community and I know the problems we face. Those who chose to help their community should also spend time focusing their efforts in fixing the problem within it. That is something I think Sampat Pal has not only realized, but executed bravely.

It is time to stand up, together. "Only if you stay together can you fight such crimes in society". 

English Only!

Just this past week, I was venting to a fellow contributor about the sorts of demands my mom regularly receives as a Vietnamese nail technician, more specifically - the demand for beauty sessions to be a strict English Only zone as a means of comfort for paranoid white customers. And then a few days ago,  I learned that Whole Foods suspended two employees at a New Mexico location for speaking Spanish during work hours, which is laughable and ironic in itself considering NM has the highest percentage of Spanish speakers in the country as well as constitutional laws and regulations that protect the language. Whole Foods has since aggressively responded to the uproar on social media with the predictable justification for their actions with reasons such as, "for consistent communication, inclusion, and especially for safety and emergency situations". Shameful! In light of this situation, my mom, and the multitude of other speakers who are continuously reprimanded for the use of their native languages in professional settings, this post serves as my own personal rebuttal to the same xenophobic bullshit reasons I so often hear.

A Lesson In Cultural Appropriation

A couple weeks ago, I made a fashion post on WC featuring a dress I picked up at American Eagle. I purchased the dress because I thought it was cute, didn't necessarily think twice about the design on the dress. It was pointed out to me that this dress, which was produced by a mass retailer, was a prime example of cultural appropriation.

Honestly, I had very little idea of what that meant until the ladies of this community educated me a bit further.

Cultural appropriation can be defined as "Taking intellectual property, traditional knowledge, cultural expressions, or artifacts from someone else's culture without permission. This can include unauthorized use of another culture's dance, dress, music, language, folklore, cuisine, traditional medicine, religious symbols, etc. It's most likely to be harmful when the source community is a minority group that has been oppressed or exploited in other ways or when the object of appropriation is particularly sensitive, e.g. sacred objects."

Even though I see these types of cultural prints on clothing from mass retailers on the regular, I wasn't fully aware of how it exploited those cultures. Educating myself on this issue made me pretty upset that mass retailers don't treat these cultural symbols with any sort of respect.

I have a ways to go in understanding the difference between cultural appreciation and cultural appropriation, however, retailers have a pattern of disregarding cultural groups when it comes to mass producing products. We can still appreciate cultural pieces; instead of buying them from a mass retailer, buy them from the group that originally curated those pieces.

More articles on Cultural Appropriation: Sharp Tongue Charlie, The Sadness of Pencils, Jezebel, Refinery29

Cultural Cuisines

Summer's coming, and for most of us, it might already feel like it's here. I went down to San Diego last weekend, and the high was 95 that day! Unbelievable. The latter of this week has been cool mid 70s (still below my ideal temperature though), but the beginning of this week was almost unbearable at mid 90s. I like warm, but not that warm. For some reason which is unbeknownst to me, my family loves eating Phở, bún riêu, and bánh canh cua, as well as other types of noodle soups in the summer, on the hottest days of the year. We'll all sweat furiously, but we'll do it while enjoying the hell out of our dishes.

I love many types of foods, so I am a never ending eating machine, but I love Vietnamese cuisine the best. For me, nothing compares, and nothing tops homemade Vietnamese food.

Top left: Phở; Top right: Wonton noodle soup

Bottom left: Chow mein with crispy shelled shrimp; Bottom right: Cơm tấm

Now that I no longer live at home, I crave home cooked meals everyday. I miss rice, soup before or after my meals, dishes beautifully prepared with years of knowledge and experience and no need for measuring cups/spoons.