Second GenerAsian

[“Second GenerAsian Theme” by Tenny Tsang]

Sophia Lo: Hello hello, and welcome to

All: Second GenerAsian!

Sophia: I'm Sophia.

Hannah Yoon: I'm Hannah.

David Deloso: And I'm David.

Sophia: And we are back with our first episode of the quarter even though it's Week Seven.

David: Yes.

Hannah: Hell yeah. So this topic is Asian American Studies.

Sophia: Since we've all taken classes on this topic, we wanted to go more into the history of Asian American Studies. But we brought in an expert to tell us more about the field. I talked with Ray San Diego, who's a Visiting Professor in Northwestern’s Asian American Studies Program. Before coming here, he taught Asian American Studies at San Francisco State University, and he's been teaching here since last quarter.

Ray San Diego: There's been a lot of changes with Asian American Studies since it started. And I think earlier in the late 60s and 70s, because of immigration policy at the time, it was mainly focused on Chinese Americans, Japanese Americans, maybe to a degree Korean Americans. You didn't have much about Southeast Asians, people of mixed race, Filipinos even. And so I'd say over the past 40 or 50 years, you've sort of seen the incorporation of different ethnic groups and different perspectives. But also I would say what makes Asian American studies a little different than some of the other groups is how heterogeneous we are. So it's not like everyone speaks Asian, right, compared to like speaking maybe Spanish or something like that, or we don't have necessarily a shared history of how we came to the United States. It was much more staggered. On the one hand, it's the experiences, the politics, the cultural production, the stories of struggle and survival of Asians in the diaspora, and people of Asian descent in the United States or North America even more broadly, but at the same time, it's also just as perspective of how we understand power relations in our society and what is equity and what is activism.

Hannah: A major thread in Asian American Studies is activism. In fact, student activists are the ones who really pushed for ethnic studies, and they're honestly the only reason why they exist altogether. I personally didn't know anything about the history of ethnic studies until I took my first Asian American studies course, last year, spring quarter. But it all started with a student-led strike at San Francisco State University, and Ray’s going to tell us more about it.

Ray: In 1968, it was the largest student strike ever in history. It was about five months. Students were upset about the way that faculty of color were not being hired in the college or the university I should say, they weren't receiving tenure. A lot of students of color weren't getting admitted to schools. And when they were they were only learning from like a white male, upper class heteronormative, Eurocentric perspective. And it was sort of like if this is our money and our education, we should be able to learn about ourselves. And so it started with the Black Student Union. And they were upset over the firing of a professor and wanted to make change. And so they had 10 demands that included things like open admissions for students of color, hiring faculty of color, having a College of Ethnic Studies, and then a lot of the other student groups joined in so PACE, the Pilipino American Collegiate Endeavor, Raza students, the Native American students, pretty much everyone and even a lot of whites joined in and were like, we want ethnic studies, classes, curriculum, content, faculty because it was really a time in the 1960s about self determination about understanding who you were as a person and where you fit in the world. And you sort of saw a lot of decolonizing movements happening around the world as well. So a lot of these places that we're throwing out sort of the imperial ways of thinking and were like, “We have our own ways of producing knowledge that we need to learn and celebrate and spread.”

David: Students didn't get all their demands, but they did establish the College of Ethnic Studies and got more students of color admitted. Now we have ethnic studies at universities across the country.

Sophia: The strike was really intense. Like Ray said, it lasted five months, and many students faced police brutality and were arrested. There's a lot to unpack here. You can check out the transcript for more links.

Hannah: We've seen the history of activism and Asian American Studies. And there's also this idea of serving the people which includes providing and improving access to public services for Ray, his classes are a place to combine theory and put these concepts actually into practice.

Ray: So every project that we did, and even in most of the classes I teach in some way is about how could we take what we're learning and make it accessible to people who don't have access to college. That need to serve communities to train people to become you know, journalists, social workers, doctors, lawyers, advocates of all kind, but who understand racism and sexism and homophobia and how all of those dynamics shapes people's lives is a lot of what Asian American studies classes teach, but also allow students to practice.

I've had students make sex ed materials for people of color, or for queer and gender non-conforming people that sort of de universalize this idea of what a body is or how we relate to our bodies, other classes, you know, people have gone to protest. They've interviewed people like at city hall or if a state legislator – oh in my class right now, my history class, we are doing a public history class later, or a public history final project in which will have to for example, create videos. There's not a lot of Asian American museums, so what if it was online and other people can see them so that people who don't have access to major cities that have a large Asian American population can still again, learn about these things, even if they're far away. Certainly what this podcast is doing would be part of an activism practice.

Sophia: You heard it here. Second GenerAsian is part of activism practices, so keep listening and support us.

Hannah: So you've heard from us and you've heard from the professor, but here to talk about their own experiences. We talked to some other students in the program.

Isabell Liu: Hi, my name is Isabell Liu. I'm currently a sophomore in Weinberg majoring in Asian American Studies. Back at UCSB, which is the school I transferred from, I was originally a communication studies major and then my – I think it was winter quarter, I needed to fulfill distros. I took an Asian American history class, and my mind changed completely. This is the major I’m taking right now, and this is the major I love and will definitely graduate with.

I think the biggest misconception that a lot of people have about Asian American studies is that it's only about Asians. One of the biggest things for me is that Asian American Studies is about essentially developing an oppositional consciousness, right. It's about fighting oppression. It's about all people. It's about revolution and stuff like that. And like, for the first time, like sitting in that first Asian American history class, I was reading about myself, and I know, that sounds kind of selfish to some people, but then you realize, a lot of the history that I at least consumed as someone who went to public school in the States is it's all white male history. For the first time someone like me was on like, the podium telling me about myself, and like, what my people have been through here, you know? And so it was just a really powerful experience.

Sophia: Is there a specific moment or thing you learned in that class that really made you change? Or was it sort of the class as a whole?

Isabell: Well, there's this book called No-No Boy, I really wish I remember the name of the author (John Okada), but it's basically about Japanese internment. And how Japanese-American citizens were given this choice to either fight in the army, or essentially betray your country, and I'm saying that with quotation marks. And so if you said no to both that you weren't going to revoke your like, loyalty to the Japanese government, which is a dumb question to ask American citizens. So that was no to that first question. And then also no to fighting for the military than you were called a No-No Boy. And you were excluded from both people who were intering because they wanted to appease the American government, and then you were also obviously like, hated on by the American government. And reading that book just made me realize that like, not just for Asian American Studies, but for like minority studies in general we are constantly living in this in between that is not defined for us by anybody. No matter who we try to appease to, for example, we tried to like play into white beliefs and like appease white supremacy. At the end of the day, we are still people of color, we don't appear white, and even if we do pass as white, we're still coming from non-white backgrounds. But at the same time, I'm not from China, I speak Chinese. But ultimately, my nationality identifies as American. Reading that book, it was like reading a book written for me.

Hannah: So a lot of students also take these classes because they want to learn a little bit more about their identity.

Gene Kim: Hi, I'm Gene Kim, I'm a second year here and I have an Asian Am minor. I definitely think that they are a great place for Asian Americans to come together and talk about their identity. I think that's really important. It's like a place for Asian Americans of different backgrounds to come together and to research together and work on stuff and learn together.

David: If you're looking to register for some Asian American studies classes, here's some names to look out for.

Isabell: I really, really, really love Techno-Orientalism with Michelle Huang. She's housed both in the Asian American Studies Program and also the English department. I also really love Patricia Nguyen and I took her intro to Asian American Studies class last quarter, which is really bomb. And then I'm also taking her Refugee Aesthetics class right now. And it's just super cool because she's also a performance artist who like went back to Vietnam and performed all this oppositional work under the fist of Vietnamese censorship, which is, you know, super badass. Any classes taught by those two professors. I also really love my U.S. Asian-Black historical relations class although I will say if you have taken an African American History class, or an Asian American history class, a lot of the beginning might be more review than like critical thinking, but it gets good later.

Gene: Last quarter, I took Asian Americans and Digital Cultures with Ray San Diego, and he's super chill. I think the professors are a lot more approachable. I can't really say for other classes though because I haven't taken too many other courses outside of Asain Am. All the professors that I've taken from feel like people that I have been on a first name basis with, honestly like people that I could go to their office hours chat, talk about things outside of school.

Sophia: So for anyone who's interested in starting some Asian American Studies classes, you can check those out. Hopefully, we've made a pretty good case for why you should take an Asian American studies course. But if you're not convinced, Isabell is going to tell us why this is such an important topic.

Isabell: Because complacency is not an option. And I'm not saying that in like the super badass activist way. Ultimately, no matter what major you're in, no matter what you want to do with your life, the situation you're in doesn't have to stay the way it is. And I think that for me, that's what the heart of Asian American Studies is, besides caring about other people, of course. Racism doesn't have to be forever. Discrimination does not have to be forever. This is pretty American, but isn't progress always the goal? Asian American Studies isn't just about Asians. It's just about fighting discrimination, fighting the man, fighting white supremacy and also just demonstrating and continuing this idea that what we have now we're unhappy with can change.

Sophia: And that pretty much sums up Asian American Studies. If you're Asian American and want to learn more about the history that you're a part of, these classes or any ethnic studies classes are a great place to start, especially if you want to get a non-Eurocentric perspective of the world.

David: And even if you don't identify with an ethnic minority in America, these classes can still be good food for your brain. And speaking of food, here's Hannah with the snack of the day.

Hannah: So today’s snack of the day is jjapaguri, otherwise known as ram-don from the Korean movie “Parasite.” The dish is a mix of two instant noodles cooked together to make one dish. Because the name is a mix of two brand name instant noodles in Korea, the English translator decided to name the dish ram-don instead when they were writing the subtitles, to reflect that the dish is a mix of two different noodle dishes. While jjapaguri isn’t a mix of ramen and udon as the English name suggests, this was the closest translation that they could come up with, and I’d say it’s a pretty clever name.

Sophia: Thank you so much for listening!

David: I'm David.

Sophia: I'm Sophia

Hannah: And I'm Hannah.

David: Our theme music was composed by Tenny Tsang. This is NBN Audio.

Hannah: Signing out!

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Episode Description: Summer’s over and we are officially back! Sophia, David and Hannah (along with special guests Carl Morison and Jakob Lazzaro) talk about studying abroad in Asia in the latest episode of Second GenerAsian!

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For this special edition of Second GenerAsian, Dr. Joy Sales sat down with us for a discussion on colonialism in the Philippines.

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Episode Description: Sophia, Hannah and David discuss the Americanization of Asian cuisine, the difficulties of finding our favorite foods and more in this episode of Second GenerAsian!

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[music]

Sophia Lo: Hi everyone, welcome to…

Everyone: Second GenerAsian!

Sophia: I’m Sophia.

Hannah Julie Yoon: I’m Hannah.

David Deloso: and I’m David.

Hannah: And today’s special guest, we have our friend Gabby!

Gabby Rabon: Hi!

Hannah: Can you tell us a little bit about yourself?

Gabby: Sure, so I am a quarter Japanese and otherwise very very White. I’m a freshman here studying Journalism and Spanish.

Hannah: How do you know us?

Gabby: We all live together in CRC.

Hannah: Yes we do!

Gabby: It's great.

David: So when you were growing up, were people aware that you were part Asian?

Gabby: I mean, sort of. I look very White so it's not something people would have guessed right away, but it was always one of those “fun fact” things for when we had culture day in school, you know, the teachers would always ask my mom to bring in our Japanese dolls and make sushi or something, so it was something that people were aware of once they knew me, and then it became sort of a weird thing in that most of my school was, or almost a 100 percent of my school was very White growing up so when I left, I was told I couldn't leave because I was the diversity.

Hannah: Wow, diversity matters.

[laughs]

David: So did people treat you differently, as the sort of diversity?

Hannah: As the token Asian kid?

Gabby: Right right, which is funny because I'm really not, but...

[laughs]

Gabby : Definitely because once they knew they would either make jokes about it. I got the eye thing a lot, or I got called names which I am not going to say on the air because I am a White person. Also, there would be sometimes where people just wouldn't believe me, which is fine, it's valid, but also, but also I don't know what to tell them. I guess I don't really care what they think or whether they believe it.

Sophia: So how do you relate to your Japanese culture?

Gabby: Ooh, um, that's a tough one.

Hannah: Well, , how much, I guess how Japanese was your life growing up?

Gabby: Yeah well, so when my grandmother came to the United States, she made a very very determined effort to force all of her kids to assimilate so that they would be accepted because she faced so much discrimination. So even my mother who is half Japanese does not have as strong of a relationship to her culture as a lot of the half Asian people that I know nowadays for that reason. So I definitely didn’t have that much exposure to it growing up we would have mochi on the new year, we would eat pocky or whatever and we would go visit my grandmother. She lived in Ohio, so we didn't get to see her that often. We were several hours apart. But when we did see her, I was aware and I had a book of Japanese fairy tales that I would read. So, I had some relation to it growing up but I sort of kind of tried to ignore it because it was a reason I got made fun of, and I didn't really feel comfortable with it because I don't look Asian, so now I'm trying to reach out and accept it more.

David: So what forms has that taken? ow have you tried to reconnect?

Gabby: I think a lot of it has to do with processing and learning more about my grandmother's history. Part of the reason that I want to dive more into my Asian background is because of all the things she went through and I don't want that to just die out because she's no longer alive, because she went through a lot and I feel her experience is important and it’s incredibly unique but it's also a part of the larger story of immigration to the United States and feeling forced to assimilate to White American culture. So really just diving into her story and learning more about it, I've also, Subtle Asian Traits has been really helpful, going to dim sum or whatever, having a good time, it's been fun.

Sophia: So you seem to have a lot of your grandma in mind when you're thinking about your Asian identity, could you tell us a little bit about her?

Gabby: Sure! So my grandmother's name was Katsuko Ujihara and she lived in Japan, she was born in Japan, she lived there until she was around 30. She grew up during World War II, so there was an air raid near her school and a piece of shrapnel decapitated her best friend and lodged in her arm, so that's the beginning of her struggle. And then her family had her in an arranged marriage but right before she got married she eloped with an American GI, my grandfather, because she wanted to get out of this arranged marriage. And she kind of expected the whole American Dream, you know, white picket fence, suburban living, whatever, but what she ended up getting was an abusive husband, five children, and a single wide trailer. And then her husband ended up leaving her, she didn't really speak English very well, she couldn't drive, she worked for less than minimum wage, which was at that time two dollars and 33 cents an hour. So, she had a really rough time. She was heavily discriminated against not only for not being able to speak English very well and for her appearance but also because this was right around the time of the Korean War. So everyone hated Asian people!

David: So how do you feel the White side of your family has interacted with the Asian side? Do they click together?

Gabby: Yeah, I mean, my family on my mom's side is very melded together. We're all just kind of a hot mess. We have a lot of fun, we're all very loud, very in your face. It's less about, the difference between who's Asian and who's not — that doesn't really come into it. It's just sort of a fun thing we all laugh about my grandmother because she was very much a character at the end of her life. So we like to talk about those memories, but it's mostly just about coming together as a family in a fun group of people.

Hannah: Just curious, do you have any more family members on the Japanese side of your family?

Gabby: Not that I'm aware of. From what I understand, most of my grandmother's relatives have passed away. But I am not super familiar with that side of our family, just because when my grandmother broke off the arranged marriage and eloped with my grandfather she was disowned from the family. So I don't know any of them.

Sophia: Is there anything else you'd like to share?

Gabby: I'm really proud of my heritage and specifically my grandmother, just as much for being a strong woman and surviving everything that she did as for anything else. I'm just really proud of that and that's kind of what I associate with this part of my identity.

David: Um, so I guess what are some of the struggles that you've encountered just trying to find and build your identity here as someone who is mixed race?

Gabby: I think a lot of it has been White guilt, quite honestly. Because I feel bad claiming this part of my heritage a lot of the time when I don't experience the discrimination that comes with it because I don't look Asian. And so there's like this big conflict in me where my grandmother sacrificed everything so that we could have this better life and she would want us to accept who we are and to be a part of everything, but she also had this part where she experienced so much discrimination that she felt she had to assimilate and that her family had to. So kind of this conflict between should I or should I not even be thinking about this.

David: Do you think your mom's parenting was influenced significantly by her being half-Asian?

Gabby: Oh I definitely think so.

Hannah: And the fact that she had an Asian mother?

Gabby: Yeah, yeah, my mom is like, I like to joke that she's sort of a tiger mom even though she doesn't look it, just because she was always very strict. Yeah, I think she was definitely influenced by the way she was raised.

Hannah: Well I feel largely whether you feel the need to assimilate to White America or not just depends on where you live in America. Specifically, because I was born in White America Pennsylvania. And then I lived there for six years, the first six or seven years of my life before moving to “mini-Asia,” a.k.a. the Bay Area. "Mini-China;" we literally just call it "mini-China" because all the signs are in Chinese, the school is 60% Asian, so it's basically Asia. You feel, I mean of course , as a kid you are influenced by the people you're surrounded by. So growing up, when I was in pre-school I was the only Asian kid in my pre-school. And it felt no matter what I did, I never fully fit in. When I came to mini-Asia where supposedly I could fit in because 60% of the school looked like me, I still didn't feel Asian enough cause at that point I wasn't super good with Korean. Part of the reason I am at the level I am today is because of Asian guilt. I had to relearn Korean cause I felt like "Wow, all these other kids are super fluent with Chinese, I have to be as good as they are." And then, part of the reason why I was in advanced math was because "Oh shit! Everyone else is in advanced math, I have to be in advanced math." Part of the reason why I developed decent drawing skills is because "Wow, everyone else is decent at drawing. I have to be decent at drawing too." So it largely depends on where you grow up because I do know back where I went to high school,a.k.a. Bay Area, there was a clear racial divide between all the White kids and the Asian kids who were friends. And there was, not a total sense of shame, but it did look a little strange, we did look strangely on the Asian people who liked to hang out with the White people and who didn't necessarily connect with their Asian side, because of how Asian-dominant the culture is in the Bay Area.

Sophia: I mean, I think it's important that if you are fully Asian, if you're half Asian, if you're a quarter Asian, you can identify as Asian. It doesn't mean that you need to be completely immersed in the language or the culture because everyone who is Asian does have some pieces of them that are rooted in culture, language, or just like kind of how they were raised. So I've always felt not as Asian because in comparison, you know, my friends are better at the language, the culture and all that stuff. And I think it's kind of taken me to come here and be a little separated from that, to figure out, like, yeah there are actually parts of me I do embrace and there are parts of me that aren't as Asian, maybe more rooted in American culture, and that's ok!

Hannah: Yeah, I know. Coming here after joining KASA, which is the Korean American Student Association, there's a weird sense where I do feel at home, cause I am with a bunch of people who have gone through similar experiences as me, you know, growing up Korean American. But it's also a weird sense of not feeling Korean enough because there are a lot of people there who are from Korea and who speak the language better, and then, sometimes some cultural jokes I just don't understand sometimes. But honestly, be who you wanna be. As long as you're not hurting anyone, it's like, I mean why not. f you're a little more American, if you're a little more Asian. If you like to drink hot water, if you like to drink cold water, just do what you want.

David: Alright, so, I think we're gonna wrap it up.

Hannah: Today's snack of the week is Sticko.

David: So if you're familiar with Pirouettes, the American snack, the long wafers that are rolled up with some cream in them, Sticko is like the Filipino version of that. And they have some interesting flavors such as ube, which is a purple yam that is very popular in the Philippines.

Hannah: Ube is so good.

David: And it's just a very, delicious snack, you know, not too filling so you can eat a bunch of them. I love Sticko so much, highly recommend that you try it.

Sophia: Please come to CRC and take the Sticko so David can stop saying "Sticko Mode."

David: I'm David

Hannah: I'm Hannah

Sophia: and I'm Sophia

Hannah: and we're signing out!

David: Our theme music was composed by Tenny Tsang, this is NBN Audio.

[music]

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Notes go here

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What does it really mean to be Asian American? In this episode, we try to answer that question through our own stories and upbringing. From language barriers to meme pages, Hannah, Sophia and David take a closer look at what makes the Asian American experience unique.

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