What's your heritage?

When I first started my blog back in November, it felt like I was this leaky faucet just dripping with ideas. My inspiration stemmed from my desire to explore the unique faces of the Pinay identity. It was a way of reaffirming my own sense of self since coming into my mixed Filipina Canadian heritage had definitely been a work in progress.

Throughout my youth, I had convinced myself that I was a Canadian that just happened to be Filipino. So being a Filipina was merely a consequence of my ancestry. Whenever I answered the well-played-out What's your heritage? question, I always felt the need to emphasize my Canadian-ness in my explanation: “I was born in Canada but my family is from the Philippines.”

It was a reflex I had developed over the years in order to convince people that I really was one of them even though I didn’t look like them. It was a second skin I had grown way back in elementary school when kids would shrug their shoulders and crinkle up their faces in puzzlement whenever I said I was a Filipino, as if this was synonymous with me saying I am a Martian. And at the time, it was my way of resolving both my Filipino and Canadian identities since I perceived them to be two diametrically opposed entities.

Complicating matters even more was the way my family always seemed to blame my teenage shortcomings (ie. cutting classes and missing curfew) on my Canadian (ahem...White) friends, convinced that all of my own free will suddenly flew out the window when I was in the company of these infamous ringleaders.

While peer pressure obviously played a large part in my teenage rebellion, I'm pretty sure that race had nothing to do with anything considering I knew a bunch of Filipino kids, and Chinese kids, and Indian kids who used to smoke cigarettes and cut classes all the time. It was like a right of passage or something. But before I get carried away here, my point is that my family had harnessed these discriminative notions of Canadian culture from their own coming to America experiences. To them, I was doing my Pinay heritage a grave injustice by behaving more Canadian. What that really meant was well beyond me and somehow I felt like I was a square peg trying to fit into a round hole.

So with all sob stories aside...

I started to figure things out. Seeing the amazing work done by Dr. Melinda L. de Jesus (Pinay Power Peminist Critical Theory: Theorizing the Filipina/American Experience) and Sabrina Margarita Alcantara-Tan (Bamboo Girl) made me realize that I was walking down a well-worn path paved away by millions of other Filipina Canadians and Americans. We were nurses, and punks, and teachers, and queers, and professors, and activists. Some of us could speak Tagalog, while others could barely utter a single sentence in our ancestral tongue due to highly held values of assimilation. Some of us were raised in strict Catholic households where girls were just girls, while others were taught the values of Pinay Power. But despite our uniqueness, we were all Filipinas.

As I began to connect the dots, I couldn't help but feel this overwhelming affinity for all of the women in my family.

So what's my heritage?

While I was the only Filipina at those punk rock shows, my aunt was the first Filipina nurse to arrive at Winnipeg’s Health Science Centre. As I crowd-surfed my way closer to my favourite band, yet another aunt carried her sister on her back as they fled from the Japanese during the Second World War. And even though I had earned my own shred of street credibility, my mother was busy earning two academic degrees and balancing the responsibilities of single motherhood.

That's who I am...

**Note: A section of this post was previously published in my article,"That's What a Filipina Is!", which appears in the latest issue of RicePaper Magazine.

The Quest for Cool

We're cool, right? Or as Conan exclaims, "Be cool my babies!"

But wait a minute, what does cool even mean?

OK, so this post was inspired by an Adbusters article I just read--"The Reconquest of Cool", in which Kalle Lasn accuses the culture of corporate "cool" of creating a generation of consuming robots who have been hypnotized into submission by savvy advertising campaigns. In Lasn's words, "We’re finally beginning to understand where this bogus cool has been leading us: not to happiness and prosperity as promised in the ads, but to cynicism, ecocide and a brutal, dog-eat-dog future."

We've heard this diatribe before, right? A familiar apple, which frankly, hasn't fallen far from the tree of Naomi Klein's anti-brand manifesto, No Logo, or Michael Moore's expose' filmmaking. Lasn's ethos also sounds a lot like that of Tommy Corn, Mark Wahlberg's character in I ♥ Huckabees. He's that jaded firefighter-turned-environmentalist whose 9/11 experiences have opened the door to a seemingly endless existential dilemma in which the human cost of that Swoosh and the true price of oil have suddenly become the centre of his universe.

But instead of continuing down this well-worn path, I'm more concerned about discovering the source of the supposed sands of coolness. If corporate cool is referred to as "bogus cool," then what the heck is authentic cool?

Well, according to Lasn's dubious claim, "[C]ool has always been an attitude of resistance to subjugation, an expression of rebellion and a posture of defiance...." She even calls on her loyal readers to, "Start generating authentic cool from the bottom up again."

Is it just me, or have we become completely lost in semantics here?

So in my admittedly trivial quest to find out where cool actually came from, I did make some interesting discoveries. While Lasn agrees that the origin of the word can be traced back to Africa, its meaning has not always been rooted in the kind of countercultural activism she has claimed.

On the contrary, the linguistic equivalent of cool was originally conceived by certain West African tribes to describe the most desirable state of being. According to Robert Farris Thompson's "An Aesthetic of the Cool," the Gola people of Liberia defined the term as, "[The] ability to be nonchalant at the right moment...to reveal no emotion...It is particularly admirable to do difficult tasks with an air of ease and silent disdain."

This notion of coolness was also shared by the the Yoruba of Nigeria who sculpted bronze busts of kings and other notable figures in the likeness of this calm and serene aesthetic.

And low and behold, there is also a plethora of other cultural interpretations of cool:

• sprezzatura: an Italian term with as many ambiguous meanings as its cool counterpart, used to describe an effortless artistic chic most famously personified by da Vinci's Mona Lisa--popular during High Renaissance Europe
  


• Dada: an anti-war countercultural Arts movement that turned contemporary art and culture on its head--originated in Zurich, Switzerland during WWI



• American "cool": made popular during the 1940s in both the Jazz and Beatnik countercultures
  

Out of all these derivations, I'm assuming the last two reflect Lasn's perceptions of authentic cool the best. But frankly, I'm doubtful if her brand of cool even exists. We can all agree that the expression has become so generic and ambiguous that it now seems, well, meaningless. And during a time when we are all struggling to restore the intrinsic value of community in the world, while trying to heighten the sense of urgency in regards to our significant social and environmental responsibilities, using cool to symbolize this movement somehow just doesn't cut it.

Moments

Don't you love when you catch yourself in one of those moments?

When you're a kid, these instances seem to be endless. Everything is so new and exciting and magical and well...meaningful. Children become engrossed in everything they do, whether it be playing soccer at the park or learning how to play a new instrument, so much so that their passion and enthusiasm becomes beautifully contagious.

Even though I don't have children of my own (yet), I've spent a lot of time mentoring kids in youth groups and working with students within the public school system, so I've been lucky enough to share some memorable experiences with them. One of my favourite moments was when I had the opportunity of teaching a group of grade 2s a Music unit on percussion instruments. And believe me, it was just as fun as it sounds...

I taught the Music class at an inner-city school in Victoria. Since 70% of the demographic consisted of Aboriginal children, the school had a number of cultural revitalization programs such as a Coast Salish Studies class, First Nations' drumming groups, and a number of social supports in place to ensure the well being of these students. With the dark leagacy of Canada's residential school system marring the lives of many of these students' parents, such measures were integral in providing meaningful education for this new generation of Aborginal youth.

So with all of this in mind, it only made sense that I geared my unit plans towards a First Nations theme.

The beautiful thing about Aboriginal music is that there is such a strong spiritual component to many of the songs. Since many of these nations depend on storytelling to carry on their ancestral legacies, family songs are treated like sacred scrolls that are passed down through the generations. I was also in luck because First Nations music just happens to be very percussion-oriented.

Since my students were very young, I planned my lessons with a very simple progression:

• Lesson 1: The Beat


• Lesson 2: Introduce Percussion Instruments


• Lesson 3: Rhythm


• Lesson 4: Dynamics


• Lesson 5: Combine the Beat, Rhythm, Dynamics


• Lesson 6: Performance

Throughout this whole process, I taught my students only one song called "Gitsigakomim" (pron: git-see-ga-ko-meem), a lovely Cree melody which means honour/love thy mother. Again, this was to keep things simple. Over time, they would layer each of the components learned above, using their percussion instruments.

When I first taught the students the song (sans the instruments), I was almost moved to tears. "Gitsigakomim" carries a very simple yet powerful melody consisting of 1 verse and 1 chorus that are repeated throughout the song. So there I was, standing in the middle of this circle of 8 year-olds, as 30 of these little voices joined in unison to fill the classroom with this melodic chant:

"Gitsigakomim/ He-ey Ya/ Gitsigakomim/ He-ey Ya/ Gitsigakomim/ He-ey Ya/ Git-si-ga-ko-mim/Hey ya, he-ey ya/ Hey ya, he-ey ya..."

And once I started introducing the instruments, I knew these kids were naturals. Their impressive skill level actually caught me off guard since I was able to teach Lessons #2-4 in just two lessons. A pretty crazy feat when you consider the logistics--30 students, 30 sets of very noisy percussion instruments, and 8 year-old attention spans--need I say more? But somehow we just plowed on through since the kids loved to sing, and play the instruments, and hear the fruits of their labour. It was so gratifying for me because I could tell they were really very passionate about making music.

During their final lesson, the students combined all of the elements they had learned into a single performance. As their teacher, aides, principal, and vice principal came together as the audience, the students strutted their musical stuff...

>enter triangles: TING///TING///TING///TING

>>enter hand drums: BOOM/ BOOM/ BOOM/ BOOM

>>>enter rhythm sticks: ti-ti/ ti-ti/ ti-ti/ ti-ti

>>>>enter tambourines: TA-ti-ti-ti / TA-ti-ti-ti/ TA-ti-ti-ti/ TA-ti-ti-ti

>>>>>start singing "Gitsigakomim"

Smiling happy faces sang their little hearts out during that performance. Our voices rose together in that room to achieve that same euphoric energy one feels when watching your favourite band play at an outdoor ampitheatre. Except this time, the kids were the band and the venue was the classroom, where we were sharing our special moment together...

Oh! Yeah! I wanna riot!--Slam Dancing to Pinoy Punk Rock

Golly gee whiz, Filipino punk rock does exist!

In my very first post, I shared my experiences of frequenting my hometown's local punk/ska scene as seemingly the only Filipina at any of those shows. It was almost comical at times since I would often show up with my buddy, Andy, a big tall Black guy with a heart of gold, who was also an aficionado of Black Flag, Dead Kennedys, Operation Ivy, and the like....Andy and I, along with the rest of our friends, would often arrive at these gigs amidst stares ranging from mere curiousity to sheer puzzlement, which seemed to imply:

Dude, are you in the right place? SNFU is playing tonight not Run DMC....

Okay, so no one ever came out and said that but like I said, their stares often said it all. And the thing was, I also happened to listen to Hip Hop, Trip Hop, Indie, and Classic Rock--Who the f*** cared? But once I got older and started checking out DJ buddies of mine spinning Breaks and Jungle beats at local clubs, I would be one Pinay in a sea of other Filipinos so I was always treated with a special kind of respect--the nod--like I was their long lost brethren.


So what did this all mean?


I wasn't sure. It was something that I was aware of, but couldn't quite put my finger on.


So years whizzed by and this subject fell right off my radar as university, relationships, and careers begin to take centre stage. That is, until recently....


After starting my blog and writing that first post, it seriously got me thinking. Are there actually Filipino punks and rude girls/ boys out there?


A night of unscholarly research via GOOGLE and an entire bag of Clodhoppers turned up the answer I was looking for: YES!


Issues of race, identity, politics, activism, and resistance becamse apparent in the voices of :

ESKAPO--a Filipino American hardcore band outta Vallejo, CA

KADENA--a Filipino American punk band from Brooklyn, NY

T.R.A--a Pinoy punk/ska band from Cainta, Rizal Phillipines

Delubyo--Filipino American hardcore band outta Vallejo, CA

Shuffle Union--Pinoy ska band from Quezon City, Metro Manila

Marcos Cronies--Pinoy Ska band from Angeles, Pampanga Philippines

Put3Ska--two-tone ska outta Manila

I.O.V., G.I. the Idiots, Betrayed and Dead Ends--Filipino hardcore godfathers circa 1980s

What I realize now is that I shouldn't have been surprised. Extreme poverty and the seemingly endless generations of political instability--most recently marked by the corruption of Marcos, Ramos, Estrada, and Arroya--naturally went hand-in-hand with the origins of punk rock ethos. Instead of Joe Strummer and Johnny Rotten expressing their disillusionment in regards to the British monarchy and blatant classism in the UK, Pinoy hardcore trailblazers, Urban Bandits, were screaming their angst about the political assasination of Sen. Ninoy Aquino, a man seen as a symbol of hope in succeeding the notorious Marcos. They were all voices of punk rock resistance, only separated by geography.


And in discovering this rich history of Pinoy punk rock, I couldn't help but feel a sense of personal validation. My identity had been legitimized in much the same way I had suddenly become relavant when I went from being the only Pinay kid in Elementary School, to becoming one of many Filipino Canadians in High School. I wasn't the only one....


As a very fitting end to this post, I'll leave you all with this great documentary made by a group of Filipino American students at the University of San Francisco entitled, Rock and Resistance: Filipino American Identity Beyond Bebot (**"Bebot" is a reference to a Black Eye Peas song of the same name, which translates into 'hot chick' in Tagalog**). The documentary spotlights the contributions made by Filipino American musicians outside of the realm of Hip Hop.

Rock and Resistance: Filipino American Identity Beyond Bebot (Pt. 1)

(Pt. 2)

An Unofficial History of Philippine Punk

Philippines--80s Hardcore

Razorcake zine--"Philippine Hardcore/ Punk Scene Report"

Can We Really Give Peace a Chance?

A few days ago....

Since my partner, G, has a background in Sino-Candian History, we seem to have a lot of philosophical conversations about war, politics, and random historical facts (I know, we need to get out more). So a few days ago, we're talking about Canada's "role" in Afghanistan, while slowly transitioning into a discussion about John Lennon:


G: You know, we never really did give peace a chance.

M: Ha ha ha! Did you really just say that? You're beginning to sound like John Lennon.

G: Well, he does have a point. Lennon's attitude is all like--Why don't we just try it out and give peace a chance? So you have to wonder what would actually happen if we did.

M: That definitely is an idyllic way of looking at the world, and you of all people know that war is rooted in structurual issues pertaining to religion, borders, poverty, and resources.

G: Obviously. But I don't think warfare is an inherent part of humanity. We just choose war as the means to justify the ends. Believe it or not, there are cultures in the world that have actually coexisted peacefully.

M: True. But remember, when you say we, you're talking about Canada, Britain, the U.S., Israel, etc....These countries' histories are embedded in warfare. It's the way they function on the world stage.

G: I know, the realities are bleak but it's hard not to entertain the notion of peace. I want there to be some hope for the world.

M: Me to....

So can we actually coexist without war?

Theoretically, I would say yes. There are societies that have emerged from non-violent values in which peaceful conflict resolution is favoured over physical aggression. Here are just a few of these warless cultures:

Amish--midwest and mid-atlantic United States
Batek --Malaysia
Birhor--central and eastern India
Buid--Mindoro Island, Philippines
Chewong--Malaysia
Inuit--Arctic and northeastern Canada, Alaska, Greenland
Ju/'hoansi--deserts of Botswana, Namibia, Angola
Lepchas--northern India, Bhutan, Nepal
Mbuti--Congo, Africa
Tahitians--Tahiti
Yanadi--southern India

While each of these societies are unique and have their own diverse cultures, languages, social organization, and spirituality, there are remarkable similarities in regards to their conflict resolution strategies. Such practices include:

• egalitarianism--Amish, Birhor, Buid, Ju/'hoansi
  
• individual humility--Amish, Inuit,


• permanent separation of conflicting individuals--Batek, Birhor, Buid, Chewong, Kadar, Tahitians,


• avoiding conflict (retreating/fleeing from aggressors)--Batek, Lepchas, Mbuti, Tahitians, Yanadi
• small communities--all of these societies have populations of under 400,000

Even though physical conflicts may still arise between individuals from these cultures, violence is never seen as a justifiable means of conflict resolution. For this reason, several social guards are in place to keep greed and competition between individuals in-check, thus preventing the outbreak of open warfare due to the perceived moral consequences of such actions.

But are peaceful relations achievable on a grander scale ?

Maybe. While we (Canada and the United States) maintain social order in the form of laws, police enforcement, courts, and prisons, we follow this code of conduct fully conscious of the underlying double-standard:

Killing someone in cold blood outside of combat is a vicious crime, but killing an enemy of war is perfectly acceptable. In fact, it's encouraged. C'mon it's for the freedom of your country or for "peacekeeping"--we'll even pay you for it. And not only do we want you to kill 'em, we'll give you a variety of ways to do it. You have an entire aresenol to choose from! What will it be? A couple of M-16s and RPGs? How about a M-24 to peg them off one by one?

And as we all know, much of this duplicity leaks right into our politics (ie. "Watergate" and "The Sponsorship Scandal") and economy (ie. Nortel and Enron) as the rich get richer and the poor get prison. It's just the nature of the system.

But what happens if the Canadian and American powers-that-be had a sudden change of heart: You know what? We're just sick and tired of invading sovereign nations in order to maintain our influence on the world stage and strategize our own personal gain. Attempting to clone their systems into our democratic model was also a really bad idea. Instead, we should focus the onus of our foreign policy energies on an area that actually needs us. Hmmm...I have an idea. Why don't we help Africa? Yeah, that's a great idea it's a continent ridden in famine, warfare, and AIDS--they could really use our help....

OK, so bear with my little fantasy for just a moment. So what would happen? Canada and the States would now be faced with a quandery: they couldn't expect to withdraw their military forces overseas without any future reprisals, not to mention the enormous infrastructural damages and political instability left in these nations. Factum infectum fieri nequit--what is done cannot be undone.

And with all fantasies aside, once you start peeling back the layers, it seems like there are several obstacles standing in the way of "world peace"--the desire for oil and other valuable resources, religious border disputes, human rights abuses, corrupt governments, poverty, global structural inequalities, and the list goes on....

According to the 14th Dalai Lama:

Peace, in the sense of the absence of war, is of little value to someone who is dying of hunger or cold. It will not remove the pain of torture inflicted on a prisoner of conscience. It does not comfort those who have lost their loved ones in floods caused by senseless deforestation in a neighboring country. Peace can only last where human rights are respected, where people are fed, and where individuals and nations are free.

Sometime in the late 1980s....

There I am. All of the harsh fluorescent lights in the gymnasium have been dimmed in favour of a few strategic spotlights that cast their beams on my third grade choir. I’m really nervous because there seems to be thousands of oogling eyes from the audience staring in our direction. They sit over a hush of quiet whispers, eagerly awaiting our performance.

It’s my first solo—ever—and I anxiously wait for my musical cue. I am only supposed to sing the first verse of our first selection, but at the time, it feels like I have to sing an entire opera. Once I hear the piano intro, I know that the time has come and there’s no turning back now: “Let there be peace on Earth/ and let it begin with me/ Let there be peace on Earth/ the peace that was meant to be….”

**So let me pass the question onto all of my dear readers: Can our current global system acutally coexist without warfare?

For Your Interest:

Conflict Resolution Among Peaceful Societies: The Culture of Peacefulness

Peaceful Societies

Warless Societies and the Origins of War

Storytelling Our Lives

"Home is where the heart is. My heart is at home." --from "Storytelling Our Lives" project

Last year, I had the pleasure of working on the Intercultural Centre of Victoria's "Storytelling Our Lives" project. It was a community-based program which sought to empower immigrant and refugee women, as well as women of colour, through a series of workshops appealing to a variety of modes of self-expression--theatre, music, dance, and like the name suggests, storytelling. Each of these workshops eventually culminated into a theatrical production of the same name put on by the Puente Theatre.

As you can imagine, participants came from all walks of life and represented various cultures. There were women from Ethiopia, Korea, the Philippines, China, Sweden, Chile, Bangladesh, Mexico, Iran, India, the UK, and of course Aboriginal women from Canada. Even though these women started off as strangers at the beginning of each workshop, they came out as sisters, mothers, and daughters by the end.

The essence of each event could be summed up in one word: powerful. Since I was piecing together a story about the project, I was originally going to sit on the sidelines and watch from afar. But I soon realized that was not an option as I got roped into every single activity--and absolutely loved it! Not only did you get to hear the diverse voices of women often silenced by racism, sexism, and language, cultural, or religious barriers, I had the privilege of listening to their individual songs, while learning to dance their dances.

Most notable of all the activities would have to be both the storytelling and voice workshops. As each woman was encouraged to share a special story from either her family or culture, this lovely First Nations women brought all of us to tears as she candidly took us all along on her spiritual journey. From her tortured childhood within the confines of the residential school system to her current work in building a cultural revitalization program for her band, this amazing women shared how she eventually found her own peace in her nation's special spiritual relationship with the land. It was truly moving.

During the voice workshop, an exuberant vocal coach led the group through a series of exercises that helped the women ease into the idea of singing their lungs out to a bunch of strangers. In the beginning, one would get the sense that most of the group was extremely uncomfortable with the prospect of singing...well...anything. Some participants even decided to sit-out during the first few activities. However, this all changed once the women realized how great they sounded together. Since the first language of most of the women was one other than English, the coach designed an activity to showcase their diversity. As the women were broken into various "language groups," each section was to sing "Home is where the heart is/My heart is at home" in their designated language. Working like dominoes, the first group would start, then subsequent sections would layer each of their songs until the group formed one harmonized voice. As I looked around the room, I realized that we were all sharing a very special moment with one another. And at that melodic climax, I couldn't help but think how strong and beautiful our voices sounded as they resonated together as one.

"Picasso of the North" Dies at 75

photo courtesy of Louie Palu

Canada mourns the death of one of its most treasured icons--Norval Morrisseau. Waging a long-time battle with Parkinson's disease, Morrisseau passed away on Tuesday after suffering from related health complications.

Morrisseau was a groundbreaking painter and Grand Shaman of the Anishinabe (Ojibwa) nation. As a self-taught artist, he revitalized Ojibwa iconography by creating the Woodlands art movement which showcases his culture's visual artistry. An honorary inductee into the Order of Canada and a recipient of the the eagle feather, the highest honor of the Assembly of First Nations, Morrisseau's critical acclaim reached far beyond national borders. In 1989, Paris' Museum of Modern Art showcased his work in the Magicians of the Earth exhibit, calling Morrisseau the "Picasso of the North."


But like many significant artists before him, Morrisseau's greatness was often eclipsed by his personal troubles. As a victim of Canada's residential school system, the future painter endured sexual abuse by a priest when he was a young boy. This painful experience led Morrisseau to drop out of school in the fourth grade to pursue work as a miner.

After a vision came to him in a dream, Morrisseau turned to a canvas and paintbrush for self-expression in 1959. Three years later, the Anishinabe artist was putting on his breakthrough art exhibition at Jack Pollock's gallery. And that's when the people had spoken. Each of Morrisseau's featured pieces sold-out within 24 hours of the show's opening.

And as his artistic vision began to take Canada by storm, Morrisseau's personal demons began taking on a life of their own. Before long, he began his dark descent into addiction and eventually homelessness. Morrisseau started shaking hands with devil by trading his valuable paintings with a Toronto mobster in exchange for cocaine and booze, and soon began wondering self-destructively through both Canada and the States. Sadly, the painter finally hit rock bottom on the streets of Vancouver.









And as fate will have, this is also when Morrisseau's life began to change...for the better.







He met a street kid named Gabor Vidas and together, they became each other's crutch. Once they got off the streets, Morrisseau jumped on the wagon and even took Vidas under his wing as his adopted son.



So like the triumphant phoenix, Morrisseau re-emerged--amidst experiences of abuse, addiction, and self destruction--as one of the greatest artists of his time. Needless to say, Canada will miss him.









Morrisseau's Bio
CBC Story on Morrisseau
Collection of Morrisseau's paintings

Will the real Asian woman please stand up?

Images of Asian women you've probably seen...













Just a few of the Asian women you SHOULD have seen...

Trinh T. Minh-ha--prolific Vietnamese American feminist, filmaker, artist, writer, and scholar. Notable works: Reassemblage (film), Women Native Other (book)
http://www.trinhminh-ha.com/
http://movies.nytimes.com/person/198585/Trinh-T-Minh-ha


Vickie Nam--Vietnamese American journalist, editor, and youth leader. Notable work: Yell-Oh Girls!: Emerging Voices Explore Culture, Identity, and Growing up Asian American
http://www.studentnow.com/people/vickinam-interview.html










Dr. Melinda de Jesus--Filipina American feminist, writer, editor, and scholar.
Notable work: Pinay Power--Peminist Critical Theory: Theorizing the Filipina American Experience (editor)
http://www.asu.edu/clas/apas/newsletter/f2000.pdf


Amy Tan--prolific Chinese American writer and scholar. Notable works: The Bonesetter's Daughter, The Hundred Secret Senses, and The Joy Luck Club
http://www.achievement.org/autodoc/page/tan0bio-1
http://www.amytan.net/

Fix Your Asian Lids! (A very SARCASTIC commentary on Asian blepharoplasty surgery...This is NOT a bloody endorsement!)

bleph·a·ro·plas·ty (blěf'ər-ə-plās'tē): n. Plastic surgery of the eyelids.

Are you of Asian descent and sick and tired of those non-existent eyelids? Do you waste hundreds of dollars a year buying the latest designer eyeliners and eyeshadows in hopes of enlarging those invisible eyes? Well, today's your lucky day! As you will see in the testimonial video above, this beautiful young woman has taken the appropriate steps to beautify her once, squinty eyelids. The procedure is called "Asian eyelid surgery" or "Asian blepharoplasty surgery" and it has changed the lives of thousands of Asian people worldwide. Don't miss your opportunity to permanently fix your Asian lids! Remember, you only have one chance to make a lasting first impression!

Vote for Adbusters

No Doubt AbOOt It!

While being the stereoptypically cleaner, friendlier, and in essence, more docile version of the behemoth down South, the existence of a collective "Canadian" identity has often been called into question by, frankly, everyone besides Canadians themselves. Yes, there are many striking similarities between the two nations: both have strong global economies, both house impressive educational institutions, both are pushers of democracy, both are guilty historical colonizers, both span 2 coastlines, both are huge purveyors of sex tourism...You get the point. But there is more to being Canadian. While it may be difficult to put our finger on a single tangible distinction that separates us from them, we KNOW we're not just a bunch of American knock-offs!

Take it from fellow Canuck, Douglas Coupland http://www.coupland.com/. He's a visual artist and writer best-known for his novel, Generation X. As an ode to his Canadian roots, Coupland constructed a massive still-life exhibit in an old pre-fab home in Vancouver, calling it --surprise, surprise--"Canada House." He littered the shrine with the most abstract mementos of Canadiana consisting of stubby beer bottles, Robin Hood flour, cigarette packs (w/the Canadian disclaimer of course), French-side-out cereal boxes, etc. For those of us who missed his art show in Vancouver, Coupland followed-up his made-in-Canada project with two books, Souvenir of Canada (part 1 and 2), as well as a documentary of the same name.

The Souvenir of Canada series really struck a chord with me as I imagine it would for many of my copatriots. Each of the books are a collection of his still-lifes and other Canadian imagery, followed by pithy captions such as "Captaine Crounche," "ookpik" (that fuzzy little owl??), and "Baffin Island," while the film mimics it print counterpart pretty closely. For non-Canadian readers, Coupland's work would probably resemble a very bizarre and extremely confusing version of a coffee table book. In the film, there is even a scene devoted to non-Canuck reactions to the exhibit when Coupland presents the show in the UK. However, for fellow citizens of the Great North, Souvenir of Canada reminds us that there is something very unique, very profound, and very real about truly being Canadian, eh?

The Flight of the Filipina Phoenix: The Rise of Pinay Feminism

FYI: Learn more about the history of Filipina feminism. Back in March, I wrote a paper on the emergence of Filipina women's movements both in the Philippines and North America. Check out this link:
http://bamboo.blitz.googlepages.com/home

Filipina: What's in a name?

The word, "Filipina," is associated with:
a) mail-order brides
b) sex tourism (ie. White guys seeking "Filipina treasure" overseas)
c) Asian porn industry
d) all of the above

Seriously, I think our name has been dragged through the mud enough. Don't you think? I can get into the political, economic, and cultural ramifications of the Philippines' long colonial history, but that's a whole other can of worms. Basically, as we all know, the above stereotypes are a result of systemic issues regarding power, sexism, and the globalization of popular culture. But as history reveals, a lot of this is old news. Equally problematic is the lack of authentic Filipina representation within popular (Western) culture and academia known to the general public. If you don't believe me, try naming five Filipina Canadian or American actresses, musicians, artists, academics, feminists, politicians, activists, etc., that even the average Joe would recognize. See, it's harder than you think, isn't it? Allow me to further elaborate:

When I was a teenager growing up in Canada, I was really into the local punk rock/ ska scene. Folks, I'm not talking about Simple Plan here either. I followed the hardcore acts of SNFU and DOA, while skankin' away at Planet Smashers's shows. Before I get carried away and start drifting off into nostalgic space, let me get to my point. Do you think there were any other Filipinas running around in those chaotic circle pits? Nope. Hell, there were hardly any people of colour at those shows for that matter. And it wasn't like I lived in small-town-hicksville either. This was like a major urban, Canadian city in which no other Filipinas or Asians enjoyed the likes of punk rock culture. At the time, I felt I had earned a level of street cred for being the lone Filipina enjoying this subculture, but there is something to be said about sharing such experiences with those from your own culture (especially if you happen to be a "visible minority"). I can tell you that if a group of Pinay punks threw together their own garage band consisting of angst-driven lyrics, "Chelsea" hair-dos, and terribly distorted power chords, such cultural visibilitiy may have strengthened my sense of identity during those years. But I guess hindsight is always 20/20, right?