NIKKEI VIEW: The Asian American Blog

Although I covered pop music at a time when punk, hardcore, “alternative” rock, rap and hip hop were the coolest sounds, I always had a soft spot for the sweet sugar of pure pop. I once wrote an essay comparing Michael Jackson to Prince, as if Jackson were the Beatles and Prince were the Rolling [...]

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Asian Americans are finally showing up in American pop culture at large, but Asian American fine artists are still mostly invisible. Only a few have had notable — or rather, noted — careers in the art world. When I was an art student, I didn’t think much of my heritage. You might say it was [...]

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From Los Angeles-based Asian American comedy/improv troupe 18 Mighty Mountain Warriors, via Angry Asian Man, here’s a totally politically incorrect skit about race and immigration, but with the tables turned and European Americans as the FOBs (“fresh off the boat,” for you non-AAPIs). It’s a Thanksgiving satire that gave me a chuckle, despite its disgusting, [...]

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I admit it, I’m stooping to lowest-common-denominator tactics. People love animal videos. And I shot one. Erin began feeding unsalted peanuts in the shell to a squirrel she saw out back, which turned into two squirrels, and then three and now possibly four or five different ones. We recognize “Fatso,” “Runty” and “Rat-tail,” but there [...]

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Betty James just passed away. Who’s that, you say? She’s the woman whose husband invented the Slinky, and the woman who headed the company that manufactured all the wacky variations of Slinky, from Slinky Dogs to Plastic Rainbow Slinkys, for decades. My friend Leland Rucker, with whom I co-authored “The Toy Book” in 1991, just [...]

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Kerrry Hada at the microphone during the dedication of Highway 285 as “Ralph Carr Highway.” Carr was the governor of Colorado during World War II who fought the unconstitutional internment of Japanese Americans from the West Coast, and lost his political career for his stand. Hada helped lead the effort to name the highway after [...]

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Erin and I have great respect for Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders’ need to preserve our traditional heritages — they enrich our lives and help give us our sense of identity with the countries of our ancestors. I think too few young Asian Americans hold on to their ethnic heritage. At the same time, we’re [...]

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For Veteran’s Day, 2008: Hoang Nguyen, 37, knew as a kid that he would join the U.S. military. “I wanted to repay back the United States for helping my family after the fall of Saigon,” he says. He remembers the chaos of the end of the Vietnam war in the late ‘70s. “We took a [...]

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Barack Obama’s victory last night in the U.S. presidential election brought tears to my eyes not only because of the incredible historic nature of his mere candidacy, and the poignancy of his life story, and the righteousness of overcoming the odds and connecting with the majority of Americans to win the White House. The emotions [...]

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Erin and I have seen Barack Obama speak three times. We were at Invesco Field for the climactic speech he gave during the Democratic National Convention in Denver. We were in the audience for his interview with CNN during the Unity Conference of journalists of color in Chicago in July. And, almost two years ago, [...]

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