BIG SHOUTOUT to Dzung Nguyen for writing and sharing a piece with us this week! Check out her article on foods in her hometown of Can Tho, Vietnam here or in the bottom section! If you're interested in more of her ✨content✨, check out her website. The illustration this week is inspired by her favorite dish, Cam Tam Thit Nuong.
Hi all, thank you so much for sticking around for this newsletter! We have one big update for you all, which is that we are going to make this newsletter every two weeks instead of every week. This decision comes as both Jamie and Melinda are starting to get busy with work, and we hope the longer periods between publications will bring higher quality writing and research. That said, the next issue after this will be out on Wednesday, August 5th. Stay tuned!
Our prompt for the week is a reflection on creating and maintaining friendships. Both of us recently read about the idea of "Big Friendship" by Aminatou Sow and Ann Friedman and found it to be a particularly illuminating insight into the intentional effort and communication to build lasting relationships.
Prompt: How do you think about creating and maintaining friendships (especially when not in-person)? What sorts of conversations do you have with your friends? What sorts of conversations would you like to have (that you haven't)?
Last... we're on Instagram! We'll prob post some additional content @aroundthetable_newsletter and hopefully get to have conversations with you all more directly. We'd love it if you gave us a follow (we'll follow back dw). TY!
Love,
Jamie & Melinda
News
‼️ Asian American members of Congress - including Rep. Grace Meng, Judy Chu, Ted Lieu, and the rest of the Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus (CAPAC) - discussed long term allyship this week following the Black Lives Matters protests. CAPAC supports the Justice in Policing Act (read more about that bill here; TLDR - a national registry of police misconduct, lower conviction standards for police, and limit qualified immunity) and the need to address institutional racism and is pushing for action with the Congressional Black Caucus and the Congressional Hispanic Caucus.
⚖️ In last week's issue, we mentioned briefly the case against Cisco on the basis of caste discrimination, and we're back this week with an article that goes more in-depth with the history and experience of caste in the US - and, in particular, Silicon Valley. Interesting read about India's affirmative action policies, workplace and education discrimination, and the experience of race and origin within diaspora communities.
😷 Feeling a "responsibility to help", Peter Tsai, the inventor of the N95, came out of retirement to aid in the COVID effort. In 1980, Peter immigrated from Taiwan to the US to pursue a Ph.D. at Kansas State University. He patented the N95 electrostatic filtration material in 1995 and went on to work at the University of Tennessee as a professor in the Material Science and Engineering department until he retired last year. Fun fact: "While he was required to finish 90 credits to graduate, he ended up completing more than 500 at Kansas State." What big 🧠
💒 Netflix drops new show Indian Matchmaking about the professional matchmaker "Sima Auntie" Taparia, who travels from country to country to set up dates and help arrange marriages for three Desi women and three Desi men. While decidedly interesting to watch at times, the show has come under criticism for glamorizing arranged marriages and the continuation of a system rooted in caste. Viraj Patel, an administrator from Penn who advises students and South Asian campus groups, wrote an "Unofficial Reflection/Discussion Guide" on the show that is good to check out before (or after) watching the show.
🛒 Trader Joe's has started to do away with product labels that have been criticized for being racist. Maybe you've seen Trader Ming's for Chinese food, Trader José's for Mexican food, Arabian Joe for Middle Eastern food, Trader Joe San for Japanese food, or Trader Giotto's for Italian food. Though Trader Joe's had begun to remove some of the labels a couple of years ago, it seems like the process is being fast-tracked because of an online petition. With almost 4,000 signatures, it was started by a high school senior from California, where Trader Joe's got its start. She explained that the labels are racist "because it exoticizes other cultures—it presents ‘Joe’ as the default ‘normal’ and the other characters [fall] outside of it."
❤️ Last week, Yuki Llewellyn died at the age of 80. In 1942, she was the subject of an iconic photo documenting the experience of Japanese Internment (below). Yuki and her mother were among the last to enter and leave Manzanar, one of the 10 concentration camps. Later in life, she would become a lifelong Asian-American activist. As the Assistant Dean of Students at UIUC, she spoke out about Executive Order 9066 and opened an Asian American cultural center.
Source: AFP on Wion News
Uyghur Human Rights Bill Passed
TW - Violence and Abuse
Since 2017 (or perhaps even earlier), China has detained over one million Muslims—Uyghurs and other Muslim ethnic minorities of East Turkestan (Xinjiang region of China)—in internment camps. **From what we know, China has engaged in awful human rights violations in these concentration camps that have been used as a tool for ethnic cleansing. This has met the U.N. definition of genocide. From interviews of those who have escaped and other information being leaked, we know that Uyghurs are being blindfolded and led onto trains, detained, interrogated, and tortured (e.g. electrocution, beatings). While living in horrible conditions, they are "re-educated," forced to renounce Islam and pledge allegiance to the Chinese Communist Party (e.g. reciting slogans, learning Mandarin). In China's attempt to limit their population growth, women have been forced to have abortions, be sterilized, or get IUDs inserted. Some are even forced to marry Chinese men. There's sexual abuse, denial of medical treatment, and lots of forced labor. 😞
In late May 2020, the House and the Senate passed a human rights bill that would punish top Chinese officials and demand transparency on the construction and operation of these internment camps. Historically, condemning China's human rights violations has been bipartisan—thus, much of Congress wanted Trump to take a stronger stance against these abuses happening to the Uyghurs in China. He did sign the Uyghur Human Rights Policy Act of 2020 into law on June 17, 2020. However, some noted that he's apparently said, "Xi should go ahead with building the camps" and that the Trump administration's China policy did not include human rights as a core pillar.
TIL... History of Indo-Guyanese Communities
I recently started watching Indian Matchmaking on Netflix (which has been interesting so far), a reality TV dating show that sheds light on the arranged-marriage process for young Indian people today. One of the women featured, Nadia, described how her being Guyanese made her feel different—it was a distinction from what people normally thought of as Indian American. That got me wondering... we talk so much about Asian Americans, but the diaspora is spread far beyond the confines of just the U.S. So, I wanted to learn more about communities outside our immediate borders.
(For those thinking "Where is Guyana?") Guyana, pronounced "guy-ah-nuh", is a South American country that is usually considered as part of the Caribbean. A lil history - the Dutch first established colonies there in the late 1500s/early 1600s, but later, the British took control, combining three different colonies in that area, which would become British Guiana in 1831. Only in 1966 did the country finally gain independence from Britain. (Note: at that time, there was still the French Guiana and the Dutch Guiana, later known as Suriname, but Guyana today is technically the former British Guiana).
To backtrack a little, when I was reading the beginning of Ericka Lee's Making of Asian America, I recalled that some of the first Asians to step foot in the Americas arrived in Central/South America/Caribbeans. The first were Filipinos who sailed to modern-day Cuba, Mexico, Panama, and Peru as part of the Manila Galleons.
Following the abolition of slavery in the Caribbean and the broader British Empire in the early 1800s, demand for cheap labor on sugarcane plantations prompted a wave of indentured servitude from India and China. According to Lee, in 1838, the first indentured laborers from South Asian arrived in British Guiana—over 238,900 would come over the next 79 years (Lee 39). Nadia herself mentioned that her ancestors were among the first groups, having arrived in the Guianas in 1850.
Sadly though, these indentured laborers were treated really badly. Given the derogatory nickname of "coolies," they worked under awful conditions on British Guianan plantations —they inherited the old slave quarters as their homes and were deceived and paid minimal salaries with high incidences of "contract breaches". By 1891, they constituted 80% of the workforce on these plantations, and the workers had a mortality rate of almost 25% (Lee 42-43). Historians comment on how the British enforced this indentured-laborer system to control and exploit Asian workers to grow wealth through the sugar trade in British Guiana. This system was connected to "a much larger system of white dominance and labor control/exclusion worldwide" (🇺🇸👀). South Asian workers did go on strikes and demonstrations (in the West Indies overall, there were 100 strikes between 1886 and 1889 and 141 between 1900 and 1913), but only a few were large scale (Lee 44). By 1920, finally, the indenture system was abolished in the British empire. Historians seem to agree that it was abolished so that British rule could be seen more favorably in India, but there hasn't been enough research on the abolition of the indenture system. Sadly, we do know that in British Guiana, plantation servitude basically continued under private corporations.
Starting in the 1970s, which we noticed is (1) after Guyana gained independence and (2) after the US Immigration Act of 1965, "a growing number of South Asians from the Caribbean, Guyana, and Suriname migrated to the United States. In 2000, there were an estimated 150,000 to 250,000 Indo-Caribbeans, as they are known, in New York City alone. Blending their British colonial, Caribbean, and Indian identities, they are known for running small businesses that reflect their mixed heritage such as food trucks and restaurants serving jerk chicken alongside roti and dal" (Lee 366). To me, this information matches how Nadia's parents moved from Guyana when they were in their late teens (if I recall correctly), the scenes of her ordering Guyanese food in NYC, and how she lives in North Jersey (lol). Guyanese food looks fantastic—it seems to blend the flavors of Caribbean and Indian food (e.g. there's Guyanese style roti and curry, but apparently the roti is flatter and curry is less spicy). I wish I could go to Little Guyana in Queens to taste some of it!
Source: Alex Staniloff for Eater.com
Today, Guyana is almost 40% ethnically Indian. Also known as Indo-Guyanese, these descendants of indentured laborers are the largest ethnic group in Guyana (as well as Trinidad and Tobago and Suriname). Ethnic divisions inform politics between parties like the "largely Afro-Guyanese People’s National Congress and the largely Indo-Guyanese People’s Progressive Party". Generations of Indo-Guyanese grew up in a distinct culture with British, Hindu, and Caribbean influences. It's no wonder that some of them don't entirely identify as "Asian" and have been told, "you're not really Indian." And now, I better understand what Nadia meant when she mentioned how she felt different from Indian Americans around her. Re: dating, she said, "When I meet guys here, they say, 'You're not exactly Indian, so we're not interested.'" 🙃
Anyhow, we find it super cool to learn about the histories of Asian communities in other parts of the Americas. For example, the Chinese were also brought to the Caribbean in the 1800s, first to islands like Trinidad (who now has the highest Indo-Carribean population) and Cuba, as indentured workers part of the "coolie" trade. They're sometimes known as the "Sino-Caribbeans." Many Chinese migrants also found themselves in Peru, which would also be home to a growing Japanese population, known as Nikkei. Today, in Latin America, Peru has the second largest population of folks of Asian descent (only behind Brazil) at about 600,000 people.
Small Feelings
💡S P O T L I G H T💡
Melissa King
Chef, Entrepreneur, LGBTQ+ Advocate
We learned about Melissa King (she/they) when she won Season 17 of Bravo's Top Chef last month! Known as one of the best chefs in San Francisco, she had gotten to finals of Top Chef back in Season 12 in 2014. But, she came back 5 seasons later to secure victory with a final 4-course meal of glazed octopus, squash agnolotti, grilled squab, and Hong Kong milk tea tiramisu (omg 🤤).
She grew up near LA with her Cantonese mother and Shanghainese father, both of whom are engineers. After getting a B.A. in Cognitive Science at UC Irvine, she went on to graduate at the top of her class at the Culinary Institute of America in New York. She was making her way at multiple Michelin-starred restaurants, during which she cooked for OPRAH (!!) and Al Gore. Before getting national attention as a queer, Asian American chef on Top Chef, Melissa recalled, "I was only really out to my immediate family...To go from that to a couple of years later, being in a Levi's Pride campaign? I was just so proud of myself." She added, "Top Chef really opened up my confidence in so many ways — my confidence as a chef, but also my confidence as a queer Asian-American woman in this country."
Today, she continues to redefine what it means to be a "successful chef." Instead of opening the typical brick-and-mortar restaurant, she established her own company to work on a variety of projects. She does pop-up dinners, hosts virtual cooking webinars, and produces a line of handcrafted sauces. She loves working with a ton of partners (e.g. an ice cream company to make Hong Kong milk tea ice cream!). And, she raises money for The Trevor Project, a national org that supports LGBTQ youth, through sales of her Pride-themed hats. Oh, and she's a level 1 Sommelier. We're in awe.
Chef's Specials
🥺 Foods to try in Can Tho, Vietnam by our lovely friend, Dzung! I've been stuck inside since March, and do I so so desperately want to try some Banh Bo (steamed rice cake)??? Yes...
🎬 PBS has its online short film festival right now until Friday, July 24! One film we'd like to highlight is In This Family, by Filipinx filmmaker Drama del Rosario. "Ten years after being outed by his teacher, a gay man revisits raw audio recordings of his Filipino family's reactions."
📽 FilAm author Melissa de la Cruz, author of the Isle of the Lost and Blue Bloods series, signs deal with Disney Publishing to develop and launch a new studio. Check out her work, including Something in Between, a YA novel inspired by her own immigrant experience from the Philippines.
💅 How Vietnamese Americans rallied behind nail salons during the California shutdown
Events
July 24, 7pm ET: Author talk on FB Live with Helena Ku Rhee, who wrote The Paper Kingdom (a children's book about a boy whose parents work as janitors→ "The Paper Kingdom expresses the joy and spirit of a loving family who turns a routine and ordinary experience into something much grander.")
July 28, 6:30pm ET: De-Escalation Techniques by Q-Wave (org dedicated to the queer & trans API community)
July 30, 7pm ET: Transformative Justice in South Asian Spaces