Adventures in Multicultural Living Friends vs Relatives on Thanksgiving | InCultureParent

from ACJ Advisory Board member Frances Kai-Hwa Wang in InCultureParent.com:

My parents say that there is a Chinese saying (there is always a Chinese saying) about how distant relatives are not as good as nearby friends. To illustrate, they recall the time our car broke down on the winding and treacherous Pacheco Pass after midnight and how our neighbor, Mr. Shigematsu, came to rescue us and did not get home until after 2 a.m. Our relatives in distant Los Angeles or San Francisco could not have done anything to help because they were too far away.

Thanksgiving is a time of feasting and family, and people are traveling, cooking and cleaning like mad, trying to get to their families for four brief days. Because many of my children’s friends are from international families and do not have extended family close by, I like to gather up all our friends and celebrate “Thanksgiving Eve” the night before with a big potluck of what turns out to be the most amazing spread of foods from around the world — teriyaki turkey, sticky rice stuffing, butternut squash Thai curry, chicken biriyani, babaganoush, tabbouli, lasagna, shrimp and broccoli, mangoes and black sticky rice, Thai pumpkin custard and more.

click on link for more: Frances Kai-Hwa Wang | InCultureParent

AML: Showing off our many local treasures, the power of sharing our ideas | annarbor.com

from ACJ Advisory Board Member Frances Kai-Hwa Wang at annarbor.com:



The Asian American Journalists Association (AAJA) National Convention was held in Detroit this month. I really wanted to attend, since it was home, but unfortunately I was not able to make it. Still, I watched from afar via Twitter, I saw my friends smiling in Twitpix, I connected people to each other via Facebook and email, I read newspaper articles online, and I even received a cellphone call that would have allowed me to listen in on one of the panels (if only I had not been driving at the time).



It was a little surreal seeing a photograph in the Detroit Free Press of my real-life friends together with my virtual friends, not to mention hearing about the conversations they had because of my virtual introductions.




href="http://www.annarbor.com/passions-pursuits/showing-off-our-many-local-treasures/#.TmOBlShd-4E.blogger">Showing off our many local treasures, the power of sharing our ideas

AML: From Band Camp to Ramadan - finding strength, skinniness and similarities | annarbor.com

from ACJ Advisory Board member Frances Kai-Hwa Wang at AnnArbor.com:



At the annual Band Camp concert at Interlochen a few years ago, my friend Shih-yi joked, “This would be a good day to rob Ann Arbor. Half the town is here.”



After a summer of family time, it is quite the plunge back into the cold refreshing waters of school life up at Interlochen where (some configuration of) the Huron, Pioneer and Skyline bands, orchestras, and choirs perform every year after a week of band/orchestra/choir camp — not only for the children who are summoned by the bugle call at 6:30 every morning, but also for the parents and siblings who have not seen all the other parents and siblings all summer.



The Huron Music Association has a bus for folks to ride up to Interlochen so that we do not all have to drive, but I sort of like the drive. I load up Ella Fitzgerald and Frank Sinatra songs in my CD player or iPod and I sing at the top of my lungs for four hours up and four hours back.



Driving long distances alone makes me nervous (I am always — justifiably — worried that my car is not going to make it), but once I manage to make it there and back successfully, I find that I am recharged, revitalized, renewed.



There is something about going someplace new to see things from a new perspective.



click on link for more: From Band Camp to Ramadan - finding strength, skinniness and similarities

AML: Thinking of peace at the Buddhist Toro Nagashi after the terrorist attack in Norway

From ACJ Advisory Board member Frances Kai-Hwa Wang:

Two weeks after the Obon Festival, a Buddhist holiday to remember and celebrate one’s ancestors, during which spirits are said to come home to visit the family for two weeks, comes the Toro Nagashi, a Buddhist ritual to send our visiting ancestors back on their way to the realm of the spirits.

It is a beautiful ceremony, held at sunset at water’s edge, with Japanese American ladies in purple robes chanting, a Buddhist priest saying prayers, younger folks performing taiko drumming and song. Individual paper lanterns are dedicated to family members, lit, then towed out to sea by a small boat.

The ancestors who have been home visiting their families in the world of the living follow the bobbing lanterns down the river and out to sea, which helps them find their way back to the land of the spirits.

One could make a bad joke here that although we all like our relatives to visit, we do not like them to stay too long.

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AML Dancing to summer music outdoors and for the Japanese American Obon festival

from ACJ Advisory Board member Frances Kai-Hwa Wang in AnnArbor.com:

My daughter Hao Hao and I were at an outdoor music festival when she first spied the little girl. About 3 years old, in a pink Hello Kitty dress, and one long brown curly ponytail, the little girl was dancing and twirling and hopping and flopping along with the music in front of the stage. “Awww, so cute.”
“That was you, not too long ago.”

(Then the little girl tried to climb onto the stage for her adoring fans, “That was definitely you.”)

I love listening to music at big outdoor summer events like Madcat Ruth at Ann Arbor Summer Festival's Top of the Park or George Bedard and the Kingpins at Grillin’ for Food Gatherers.

There is always an older couple dancing close on the side, cute little kids in sandals hopping all around. Perhaps the Internet has ruined my ability to concentrate for long periods of time, but I like the openness, the casualness, the fresh breeze ruffling the leaves on the trees.

click on link for more: Dancing to summer music outdoors and for the Japanese American Obon festival

AML: Reading light summer romance without Asians, Asian Americans, or people of color | AnnArbor.com

from ACJ Advisory Board Member Frances Kai-Hwa Wang in AnnArbor.com:

While looking for light reading material for a recent airplane ride, I grabbed a pink book with a naked male torso that I vaguely recalled picking up at the King School Book Fair for 50 cents. I read the back cover, I read the first page, I randomly flipped through the book, and I could conjure up no memory of actually having read the book, so I stuck it into my carry-on, well within my 22-pound limit.

Although I usually prefer writers like Richard Rodriguez and Andrew Lam, not to mention Literature with a capital L, it’s summer, it’s an airplane, and I want something light and easy and with a happy ending. I have an equally embarrassing secret weakness for watching bad romantic comedies on the plane this time of year, too.

(I was sorely disappointed to realize at 35,000 feet that I had indeed read this book before, but it was so terrible that I could not remember how it turned out, so I had to read it all the way to the end a second painful time).

Summer is the season for light romantic comedies, and because there typically are no Asians cast or written into these stories, I can, ironically, go “off-duty” regarding race and culture for a moment and indulge myself in the great American illusion that the white experience is “universal.” It can actually be extra-hurtful to accidentally encounter an "Asian" character (like Mickey Rooney's character in "Breakfast at Tiffany's") when I am in this mode because I thought I was safe.

click on link for more: Reading light summer romance without Asians, Asian Americans, or people of color

AML Balancing old and new traditions for family and community at Fourth of July and Ann Arbor Summer Festival

from ACJ Advisory Board member Frances Kai-Hwa Wang in AnnArbor.com:

When my seven-year-old son, Little Brother, came home from school and said that his first grade class would be talking about family traditions the next day, his older sisters all simultaneously said, “Uh oh.”

Because our family talks about traditions a lot more than “normal” people, his sisters jokingly call a lot of things “tradition” that are not really traditions in the normal sense. However, because Little Brother is so little, he cannot always tell when his sisters are joking. What if he thinks these are real traditions and tells his classmates about them?

For example, whenever Hao Hao does anything that bothers her older sister M — including going into her room and sitting on her bed and reading her books, she insists that she has to do it because, “It’s tradition!” Whenever anyone breaks out into song and dance, the stated reason is always because, “It’s tradition!”

Every Friday night we have dumplings for dinner before Chinese School. Is it because Mommy is too tired to cook on Friday nights? No, it is because, “It’s tradition!”

M always argues back, “It’s not a tradition just because you say it is.”

click on link for more: Balancing old and new traditions for family and community at Fourth of July and Ann Arbor Summer Festival

AML Resisting 'Slacktivism,' Remembering Vincent Chin, and Singing with Joe Reilly - NAM EthnoBlog

from ACJ Advisory Board Member Frances Kai-Hwa Wang in New America Media:

I recently interviewed for a job launching a new online literary magazine about literature and social justice activism. (The interview did not go so well, but...) What a great idea to link the glamour of novelists and poets with the purpose of social justice activism. This gives literature more weight and meaning, and gives activism more color and style.
Otherwise, social justice activism can be such a downer sometimes.

Don’t get me wrong. I am on the Advisory Board of American Citizens for Justice, the original Asian American civil rights nonprofit formed after the baseball beating death of Vincent Chin 29 years ago today.

click on link for more: Resisting 'Slacktivism,' Remembering Vincent Chin, and Singing with Joe Reilly - NAM EthnoBlog

Adventures in Multicultural Living: The importance of ethnic new media for filling out the conversation

from ACJ Advisory Board Member Frances Kai-Hwa Wang in AnnArbor.com:

As my children scurry around excitedly before our neighborhood’s annual Memorial Day Parade—decorating their bikes, finding bags for the candy the Girl Scouts will throw, thinking about doughnuts in the park, planning to barbeque with friends afterwards — I remind them to be respectful, that Memorial Day is not just about the parade, that it is actually a very somber occasion, one that honors the brave men and women who have given their lives to protect our freedom in America, and that although we do not glorify war, their great-grandfathers and grandfathers were all in the military.

Yet, every year when parade organizers ask if I want to bring a group of Chinese School kids to march or lion dance in the parade, I hesitate. I worry. I agree only if I can get a big group of parents to walk with the kids, as security, just in case someone thinks people who look like us do not belong.

Of course, I know that people who look like us do belong.

click on link for more: The importance of ethnic new media for filling out the conversation

Adventures in Multicultural Living: Explore the richness of the Asian Pacific American experience with literature and the arts

from ACJ Advisory Board member Frances Kai-Hwa Wang in AnnArbor.com:

Asian American writer Lisa Yee, author of Millicent Min Girl Genius, recently wrote an article for parentdish.com about how her mother instilled in her a love of reading. She opened by recollecting the books she and her mother read together:

“When I was little, my mother and I had a nighttime ritual. After my bath, when I was zipped into my pink footie pajamas, she'd sit on the bed and read to me. Mom's voice wrapped me up in fairy tales about princesses beset by trolls, a monkey named George and the adventures of Madeline who resided in an "old house in Paris that was covered in vines.”

When my daughter Hao Hao read the introduction (over my shoulder, as always), she said, "I know all those books." Then we joked that if she wrote a similar article someday, it would read, "My mom read me Ed Young, Allen Say, Laurence Yep, Grace Lin, Lisa Yee, Linda Sue Park..."

click on link for more: Explore the richness of the Asian Pacific American experience with literature and the arts

Adventures in Multicultural Living: Citizenship questions on Mother's Day for President Obama, Wong Kim Ark, Superman and the 'birthers'

from ACJ Advisory Board Member Frances Kai-Hwa Wang at AnnArbor.com:

My oldest daughter was almost born in Thailand. I was living in Kathmandu, Nepal, at the time, and the closest western hospitals were a day’s flight away in Bangkok. I loved cruising Bangkok Chinatown, and I thought that would be a fun way to spend a month, hanging out, waiting for the blessed event.
My mother said absolutely not. I had to go home to deliver the baby so that the child would be a U.S. citizen.

I tried to explain to my mother that the child of two U.S. citizens is automatically a U.S. citizen, no matter where she is born. Even the child of one U.S. citizen is a citizen. I had already checked with the U.S. Embassy.

“What do they know?” was my mother’s response.

And the kicker, “What if your child wants to be president of the United States one day?”

I thought my mother was needlessly worried, but since it was the Christmas season, it was just as easy to go home to California and have the baby among family and friends (and presents). Of course my mother was right.

Now, after President Barack Obama has released his long-form birth certificate to prove yet again that he is a natural-born citizen — which is still not enough to assuage the "birthers" — I see, once again, that my mother is always right. (Happy Mother’s Day!)

click on link for more: Citizenship questions on Mother's Day for President Obama, Wong Kim Ark, Superman and the 'birthers'

Adventures in Multicultural Living: The power of pancit: Try something new during Asian Pacific American Heritage Month

From ACJ Advisory Board Member Frances Kai-Hwa Wang:

My children recently had steamed broccoli for the first time.

Confronted with an entire head of soft green mush, they did not really know what to do with it, so they smiled politely and pushed it around on their plates.

One of my daughters confided in me later, “Now I know why other kids don’t like broccoli.”

As a child, I never understood why other kids did not like broccoli either. Or spinach. The first time I had spinach that had been cooked to death, I remember grieving, “What did that poor spinach ever do to anybody?”

I was embarrassed and felt like such an oddball for being the only kid in the world who wished her mother would make broccoli or spinach more often — crisp and bright, stir-fried quickly in just a shimmer of oil and a splash of salt.

Those other kids had no idea how lucky they were to have mere broccoli and spinach as their foes, when I knew the real dishes to face down were suen (bamboo shoots) and xue li hong (red in the snow preserved vegetable), which my mother once cooked every night for a month until I learned to love them (or at least swallow without grimacing).

click on link for more: The power of pancit: Try something new during Asian Pacific American Heritage Month

Adventures in Multicultural LIving: Selections from the smorgasbord of spring celebrations, learning from Passover and Black Day

from ACJ Advisory Board Member Frances Kai-Hwa Wang in AnnArbor.com:

In fifth grade, my class held a Passover dinner as part of our unit on Exodus. Exodus was a big deal then, with Charlton Heston starring in the “Ten Commandments” rerunning every year on television, so we knew the story well (that and “Gone with the Wind”).

I remember baking the unleavened bread and marveling at how flat it was. I had only ever had Wonder Bread at that point and was unfamiliar with the concepts of crust and crumb. I remember mixing the bitter herbs in a bowl, the pungent smell of them, and serving a small spoonful to each student and parent at our long table. We each held a small piece of paper with our lines, our prayers, our questions.

Since I attended a Catholic school, I am sure we held our Passover dinner on Holy Thursday to tie it into the Last Supper, and I am sure this unit segued right into Easter. I do not remember being taught that Passover was a living tradition, that there were still Jewish people and that Jewish people still celebrated Passover.

In my child’s mind, Passover was something the Israelites did right after they escaped from Egypt with Charlton Heston. My image of it stayed in ancient times.

Still, it is one of the big events that I remember from elementary school, and I always think of it every year when Passover comes. My understanding of it is nowhere near complete, but at least I know a little bit about unleavened bread, bitter herbs, salted water, and “Why is this night different from all other nights?” And I know it viscerally because I was there.

click on link for more: Selections from the smorgasbord of spring celebrations, learning from Passover and Black Day

Adventures in Multicultural Living: Lessons from Taiwan Bangzi Company's Chinese Opera adaptation of Merchant of Venice, "Bond"

from ACJ Advisory Board Member Frances Kai-Hwa Wang in AnnArbor.com:

The Taiwan Bangzi Company was in town this past week with their Henan Chinese opera adaptation of “The Merchant of Venice” called “Bond.”

I always love Chinese opera once I am there, but I have to drag myself in there because in my mind Chinese opera is categorized as “good for me.” Chinese opera is beautiful, stylized, and rich with meaning; but it is also layered with interpretation and code. My children wriggle their fingers at each other in the kitchen to show how Chinese opera singers represent anger.

But for “Merchant of Venice.”

I also love Shakespeare, but, again, resist it somewhat because it also falls into the “good for me” category. The language is beautiful, the meaning is not easy or obvious. My sixth-grade daughter Niu Niu recites, then laughs, “No, sir, I do not bite my thumb at you, sir, but I bite my thumb, sir.”

So the children and I leave the beautiful spring sunshine and rush into the cool darkness of Lydia Mendelssohn Theatre just before curtain where we meet under new names Bassanio, Antonio, Portia, Gratiano, Nerissa of medieval Cathay; and the (presumably pre-Islam) Saracen Shylock from distant deserts. I whisper a steady stream of plot and dialogue into 7-year-old Little Brother’s ear because he cannot yet read the supertitles.

click on link for more: Lessons from Taiwan Bangzi Company's Chinese Opera adaptation of Merchant of Venice, "Bond"

Adventures in Multicultural Living: BBC show looking for Tiger Mother would have been disappointed in our chai-museum-library routine

from ACJ Advisory Board Member Frances Kai-Hwa Wang in AnnArbor.com:

I got a call from the BBC last month looking for an Asian American family to take in two troubled and unruly British teens for a week of “good old-fashioned values, discipline and boundaries” for a reality TV show called, "World's Strictest Parents."

Trying to capitalize on the current hype over Tiger Mothers, the producer had found me through my articles facing off with the dreaded Amy Chua Tiger Mother — never mind that all my articles reveal that I am pretty much the opposite of Amy Chua Tiger Mother.

I told them to call Amy Chua Tiger Mother directly, but they thought I was joking.

click on link for more: BBC show looking for Tiger Mother would have been disappointed in our chai-museum-library routine

Adventures in Multicultural Living: Seeking the wisdom of our elders, including legendary civil rights activist and author Grace Lee Boggs

from ACJ Advisory Board Member Frances Kai-Hwa Wang in AnnArbor.com:

I was amused when Asian American filmmaker and keynote speaker Koji Sakai introduced himself to the Asian/Pacific Islander American High School Conference at the University of Michigan as an "old person," from the time of the dinosaurs (complete with dinosaur graphic).
He was born in 1977.

“For those not good at math,” he joked, “That makes me 34 years old today.”

He talked to students about how Asian American media is so much better now than in ancient times (the 1990s), and even better still than when a really old person he knows was growing up in the 1950s, when it was nonexistent.

All my life, I have been drawn to the wisdom of those older than myself, especially women of color. As a child, while my younger cousins played in the basement, I would sit in the kitchen with my mother and six aunties, or my maternal grandmother and eight great aunties, or all my parents’ friends, as they bickered and laughed, scolded and shared.

click on link for more: Seeking the wisdom of our elders, including legendary civil rights activist and author Grace Lee Boggs

Adventures in Multicultural Living: In wake of infamous YouTube rant by UCLA student, responses display humor, grace

from ACJ Advisory Board Member Frances Kai-Hwa Wang in Ann Arbor.com:

I did not want to write about now-infamous UCLA student Alexandra Wallace and her ignorant racist YouTube rant complaining about Asian American families, manners and Asians talking on their cellphones in the library during “the tsunami thing,” complete with mocking ching-chong nonsense. I found her young and dumb and hoped that it would all blow over and she would be forgotten.

No such luck. The story is all over The New York Times, National Public Radio and MSNBC. Asian American students at the University of Michigan and across the country are discussing it.

click on link for more: In wake of infamous YouTube rant by UCLA student, responses display humor, grace

Adventures in Multicultural Living: Remembering the dolls of Girls' Day, facing forward from Japan's tsunami

from ACJ Advisory Board Member Frances Kai-Hwa Wang in AnnArbor.com:

The first time I went to visit my parents in Hawaii, I went during mid-winter break at the end of February, scheduled to return to Michigan on March 1 or 2. Strangers were indignant. “What? You’re leaving before Girls’ Day?”

March 3 is Girls’ Day or Hinamatsuri, a Japanese and Japanese American holiday to celebrate girls. Girls are given one beautiful Japanese doll a year in order to build a collection of dolls which they bring out every year on Girls’ Day to create a red-tiered display of emperor and empress, ladies, musicians, and guardians.

I am entranced by the idea of bringing the big box of treasured dolls out of the closet, quietly unwrapping them, one by one, and gently arranging them for all to see. To recall each dolls’ familiar face like an old friend, to remember beloved parents and grandparents who gave which one, to replay one’s memories of Girls’ Days of years past.

Remembering the dolls of Girls' Day, facing forward from Japan's tsunami

Adventures in Multicultural Living: Just being there at Losar Tibetan New Year and standing with our Muslim American neighbors

from ACJ Advisory Board Member Frances Kai-Hwa Wang at AnnArbor.com:

The woman at Jewel Heart temple recognized me, saying, “We have met before,” but she could not remember my name.
“I came last year for Losar,” I said. “And the year before.”

I was a little embarrassed to admit I was like those once-a-year-Christians my Catholic School nuns used to complain about, the folks who only went to church once a year on Christmas. “If they are only going to go to church once a year, they ought to at least go on Easter. Easter is the more important holiday,” the nuns said.

However, I was even worse. Not only did I only come once a year, I did not even arrive until after services had ended — the three-hour services, I should add. I passed the restless children playing outside in their Tibetan silks, “Are services still going on?”

click on link for more: Just being there at Losar Tibetan New Year and standing with our Muslim American neighbors

Adventures in Multicultural Living: One perfect day with my professor: real connections with real people - AnnArbor.com

from ACJ Advisory Board member Frances Kai-Hwa Wang's column, "Adventures in Multicultural Living":

On the first day of my Philosophy of Mind course my junior year of college at UC Berkeley, Professor John Searle picked me out of a crowd of 200 undergraduates and gruffly barked, “You look troubled. Come see me in office hours.”

I was scared to death, but I dared not disobey. With the help of all my friends, I managed to come up with some passable questions worthy of asking this very famous philosopher. Then — for reasons I still do not fully understand — he took me under his wing and taught me philosophy.

For the next two years, I spent nearly every day walking with my professor to cafes and bookstores and lecture halls, learning how to ask questions, how to extend arguments, how to analyze the structure of thought and action, how to search for logical inconsistencies, how to fight intellectual battles like a prizefighter.

Under his tutelage, I was thinking a mile-a-minute all the time. I loved philosophy, and I loved being a philosopher.

I had no idea how special and rare this sort of teacher-student relationship was. I thought it was normal.

click on link for more One perfect day with my professor: real connections with real people - AnnArbor.com