If you don’t remember how special December 7th is, I get it.
You’re busy. You’re likely traumatized after last night’s GOP presidential debate, where Vivek Ramaswamy attacked fellow South Asian pol Nikki Haley for Americanizing her name and playing identity politics.
But then fellow debater Chris ...
Asian Americans can be blunt about Henry Kissinger. He carpet-bombed Cambodia. He napalmed the hell out of Vietnam, a war that he should be pilloried for extending rather than praised for ending. But in a depraved war mongering world, it got him a Nobel Peace Prize. AAPIs who survived Kissinger’s da...
Post-Thanksgiving week’s Black Friday was more like “Asian Friday” with a little something extra to be thankful for, if you were following world news from the Middle East.
One expected to see the 13 Israeli women and children swapped out for 39 Palestinians in the first major exchange of hostages o...
It should have been a perfect weekend. It included Bowen Yang on SNL playing an airport TSA guy named Umberto. When asked if he were Spanish, Yang in character declared, “I’m Filipino…Your Boy’s Pinoy!”
Now that’s a great AAPI weekend-- in most cases.
But even when my football team won (the 49ers–...
My dilemma this week? I could go to that capitalist meet-up known as APEC (Asian Pacific Economic Cooperation), or I could have a root canal.
Speaking of canals, I would prefer a vacation in Venice.
But as I have an actual tooth issue, I skipped my chance to go to APEC in San Francisco and saw my ...
An Interview with Theodore S. Gonsalves, editor of “Smithsonian Asian Pacific American History, Art, and Culture in 101 Objects.”
Maybe it was the coincidence of the weekend holiday, but when you look at the three Congressional Gold Medals given to Chinese American, Filipino American and Japanese A...
Some of my heroes are Poles, like the late great Chicago Tribune columnist Mike Royko, but polls, I don’t care for much.
I’ll write about them, sure, but usually they say nothing about Asian Americans and what we think. There’s barely enough to mention what Blacks or Hispanics think. At best, with ...
If ever there was an argument for cameras in the courtroom, it was last Monday when Donald Trump took the witness stand for three-and-a-half hours in his civil fraud case in Manhattan and made a mockery of the legal system–and of our democracy.
Again.
If you and I had pulled a stunt like that, we’...
I didn’t want to let the Nov.1 deadline for the so-called “Common App” go without mention. If you missed it, there’s still time to get your application in to the school of your choice, since many schools still have admissions deadlines into January.
But if you want to apply to Harvard, the litigant...
Filipino American History Month comes to a close on Halloween, and what better way to usher it out than in costume as your favorite Filipino historical figure.
This Halloween, I will don a ranch-style jean jacket and parade through the Central Valley holding up a cigar with seven fingers in honor o...
If you turned on “60 Minutes” last Sunday expecting a Middle East lead report, you didn’t really get one.
Instead, Asian Americans, especially Chinese Americans, got a wakeup call from the FBI.
The first story barely touched on the crises in the Middle East. It featured FBI director Christopher Wr...
I saw all sorts of banners when I was travelling this weekend for Hispanic Heritage Month.
None for Filipino American History Month.
But when we pass Oct. 15, Hispanic Heritage Month, which started Sept.15, officially ends, and the rest of October is now solely dedicated to Filipino American histo...
It’s my birthday today. I am 118.
No lie.
I won’t take a day off for Columbus, but I’ll take a day off for me. And my father.
If age is just a number, I had long reached an age where I just stopped counting.
But now I’m into counting each and every year. With honor.
It hit me while preparing fo...
October is Filipino American History Month, but why does it seem different this year?
Maybe it’s because Filipino history appears to be reverberating in real time in the U.S.–a harbinger of what could happen in our very own country.
The Philippines–America’s first colony that was transformed into ...
A friend of mine who writes for The New York Times recently called me “cynical but insightful.” I took it as a compliment, though I’d rather be known as trusting, loving, caring, and giving, of course.
But cynicism is probably the best lens in which to view the announcement of the new U.S. Senator ...
I will bet anything that this question did not come up in the second Republican presidential debate at the Reagan Library.
Should Harvard keep a $2 million gift to fund its first-ever Tagalog language course from the family of Imelda Marcos? Is it clean money? Or just clean enough? Was it among the...
“Here Lies Love,” the new Broadway musical, plays into the seduction of the notorious Marcos family of the Philippines. That’s what we all care about, isn’t it?
Would there be any interest in Filipinos at all were it not for the Marcos’ domination in Filipino and Filipino American history?
The sho...
I was feeling sad on Monday. After all, it was 9/11. I was in New York. I was dreading it. What do I do to honor the day?
I’ll never forget where I was in 2001. In the San Francisco Bay Area, I was thinking about trading the markets, so I was up way early with CNBC at 5.46 a.m. Pacific time when th...
Are you ready to kill the colonizer?
You can on Oct. 2 from just about any AMC theater in the country.
If you’re Asian American of any stripe, but especially Filipino, you can get the thrill of seeing a Hollywood movie that gets it right.
One with the narrative where we win. And the colonizer los...
What? You working on Labor Day weekend?Well, yes. On the weekend that Jimmy Buffett died, we must be mindful that he was no Margaritaville slacker. He made hundreds of millions of dollars selling the fantasy of not working hard. He worked plenty hard, albeit in flip-flops.
Or you just do what you l...
