|
Race in America 🌎
What does it mean to be a South Asian from Appalachia? In this memoir, Neema Avashia explores themes of LGBTQ+ identity with a distinct approach as an Asian American who grew up in the South.
Avashia talks about representation and the nuances of racial ties to Appalachia. While it was predominantly white, working-class and Christian, she elaborates on how religion within the Indian community also played a large part in the erasure of Muslim families. Surrounded by a variety of families from various class backgrounds, a large part of her childhood was informed by laborers, working-class family friends and the constant code-switching needed to survive in racially homogenous environments.
To this day, Avashia holds onto her Appalachian identity dearly. It’s a core part of her experience and one that makes her different.
...
In an effort to erase the red squiggly line denoting your name as a mistake, Elimin8Hate has created a database, a dictionary, if you will, of over 8,000 Asian names from several Asian countries that you can download into Microsoft Word.
If you’re anything like me, your name will always have a red squiggly line on the bottom. (My mom even chose an anglicized name!) Often, many Black, Indigenous and other People of Color names are recognized as an error because of its misalignment with the English language. But our names are not a mistake.
The free dictionary will eradicate that erroneous marking from your digital document as part of their ongoing campaign to combat digital racism and alienation, showing that names are important because they are ties to our identity.
In Other Asian News 🗞
Asian Latines have existed far longer than we realize. But, historical erasure often doesn’t remind us of our long-standing history within European colonization.
Filipinos and Chinese laborers were forcibly brought over from their homelands to work in newly colonized regions by the Spanish. While they were not traded and pushed into chattel slavery, this exploitative and traumatizing labor system is rarely mentioned in our history textbooks. The impact of colonialism through state-sanctioned human trafficking and subsequent racial massacre and violence, is one that must be remembered.
Today, Asians make up a significant portion of the population in Latin America and history experts and professors are continuing to advocate for holistic education that prioritize accurate histories.
...
In Taiwan, the first successful infusion of CD19 CAR T-cells allowed 10-year-old Ting-Ting’s cancer to go into remission.
Cancer is the second-leading cause of death for Taiwanese children and Ting-Ting’s case of leukemia was diagnosed when she was just 6. Doctors at the National Taiwan University Hospital introduced to her a new form of immunotherapy when her cancer came back last year.
Previously, many treatment options only revolved around chemotherapy, but now, with Ting-Ting’s success, doctors are more optimistic about its potential to treat other children. Currently, the treatment is not covered by the national health insurance policy, which incurred a cost of $334,571 for Ting-Ting’s parents and forced them to sell their home. However, the National Health Insurance Administration is looking into revising that policy so that others can afford the treatment more easily.
Art and Music 🎶
Japanese painter Yuta Niwa mixes traditional and contemporary art to depict natural disasters. He utilizes techniques such as traditional paper, ink and pigments to illustrate events like earthquakes in the form of catfish, a motif inspired by the tale of the species being a source of earthquakes since ancient times.
For Niwa, he was initially reluctant to use natural disasters in his works as to not trigger recent survivors, but he also sees value in doing so. “Whether it is an earthquake or a plague, I am sure that giving a tangible form to something unknowable will convince people and make them feel better. Whether people really believed it or not, a visible threat was probably better than an invisible one. I believe this is how various imaginary specters and monstrous beasts were created in Japan and have become paintings and stories,” he says.
...
K-pop girl group ITZY is kicking off their summer with the release of their latest mini album “Checkmate” today, led by title track and music video “Sneakers.” The album includes an English version of “Sneakers” and five other tracks. For the ITZY fans who’ve been waiting for the other shoe to drop after their debut full-length album “Crazy In Love” last year, this is it.
ITZY will also be embarking on a world tour starting Aug. 6 in Seoul before heading to Los Angeles on Oct. 26 for the U.S. leg of their tour and then finishing in New York on Nov. 13. They are also one of the headline performers for KCON LA’s 10th anniversary this year, which is taking place next month.
|
