SEPTEMBER 21, 2022

Hello, everyone!

On Monday, the 23-year-long murder conviction of Adnan Syed was thrown out by Judge Melissa Phinn, citing that the prosecution had failed to turn over key evidence to Syed’s legal team that could have helped in his defense.

In 1999, Syed was accused of murdering his ex-girlfriend, Hae Min Lee, both of whom were seniors at Woodlawn High School in Baltimore, Maryland. In January of that year, Lee was found strangled and buried in a public park after being reported missing. In 2000, Syed was charged and convicted of murder, robbery, kidnapping and false imprisonment, and subsequently put behind bars.

Now, two decades later, prosecutors in the case admitted that they did not release information about two alternative suspects in the case and stated that they did not have “confidence in the integrity” of the verdict, leading Judge Phinn to vacate judgment and release Syed.

Spotlight 💡

Yiyun Li, an expatriate novelist from China, is teaching creative writing at Columbia University. While she may have discovered her literary talents through propaganda writing, her current works discuss grief, mourning, and becoming an author known for her style of describing themes like suicide.

In 1996, Li had a degree from China’s most prestigious university and was generally known as a talented scientist. She would move to Iowa City to start her Ph.D. in immunology, but later, she discovered she did not want to be a scientist. She wanted to be a writer. Her career in writing started small with evening classes but soon blossomed into awards and fellowships like The Paris Review’s Plimpton Prize for debut short-story writers.

Her work leads many, often teenagers, struggling with suicide to send her letters. While each letter’s contents vary, Li does her best to respond to each one thoughtfully.

Race in America 🌎

New York City’s Department of Education is the latest public school system to implement and teach AAPI curricula this fall, but Asian American students are skeptical and dissatisfied.

Students like Kellen Zheng, 18, are excited for AAPI history to be taught, but they put an emphasis on the material being taught “right.” Other students, like Humayra Nasita, 17, add that the material must encompass identities outside of the mainstream ideation of Asian American histories of Chinese, Japanese and Korean people. For Nasita, a Bengali American, teaching the history of Bangladesh means more than just including their history, it also looks like funding educational programs in each borough to support the staff and students.

In Other Asian News 🗞

New information on the investigation into Palestinian American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh’s murder revealed that her death was premeditated and not an accident as previously reported by Israeli media.

In a joint effort by Forensic Architecture and Al-Haq, investigators ascertained that the sniper responsible for Abu Akleh’s death had a clear angle of fire, ruling out the claim that they were not able to see journalists in the area. Moreover, they found that the Israeli sniper had fired for two minutes and targeted those who tried to help Abu Akleh. The sniper fired multiple times, releasing six rounds in the first volley and then seven more rounds after eight seconds. Two minutes later, the sniper fired three more times after Abu Akleh was struck to stop others from helping her.
 

...

In Japan, women’s colleges are implementing more trans-inclusive policies and admitting transgender women into their student body.

For Japan’s Women’s University, it was a 2015 inquiry from a trans student’s guardian which sparked the change. Satoko Oyama, professor of the university’s Faculty of Integrated Arts and Sciences, explained that while “in the past, we may have refused immediately…this became an opportunity to engage in the matter as a challenge faced by the institution as a whole, while considering the social climate that recognizes diversity and reflecting on how to address it.”

Although the journey toward establishing a trans-inclusive policy was tough, with administration and staff beginning discussions in 2018, the university is finally allowing trans students into the class of 2024.

Film 📺

Korean American Raymond Lee is playing the lead character, Dr. Ben Seong, in the reboot of NBC’s “Quantum Leap,” which premiered on Monday.

In this revival, Ben Seong is a physicist with the ability to time travel by temporarily jumping into people’s bodies. For Lee, the role is a dream. “I got to play the lead in theater, [but] I didn’t know if the landscape was there for me to do it in television, let alone network television. But lo and behold, it presented itself, and I was like, ‘I have to take this swing.’ This is the role I’ve been waiting for.”

The Filipino film “Leonor Will Never Die” has won an Amplify Voices Award at the Toronto International Film Festival.

“Lenor Will Never Die” is the story of a retired screenwriter who becomes comatose and experiences the world of one of her unfinished works.

What else is on our minds? 🧠
 

• Lana Condor is joining the cast of a thriller film called “Valiant One.”

• Poet Jenny Xie has a new collection of works, “The Rupture Tense.”

• The United Arab Emirates is launching its first ever lunar rover in November. 

• Hokkaido, Japan will now allow same-sex couples and single foreign residents to live in public housing. 

• A gold mask, estimated to be about 3,000 years old, has been discovered in a Chinese royal tomb.