Inspired by Korean pickled cucumbers, one of my favorite summer snacks :)
We are back! Thank you for waiting through our longer-than-expected hiatus. Jamie's poor sweet iPad has been retrieved from the depths of Philly temporary storage and has found its way to a good, over-priced NYC apartment.
Thank you for reading this newsletter - we put a lot in today and hope you learn something. Bringing this back:
Prompt: How has your idea of race and ethnicity in your life evolved over the past year?
๐ Melinda & Jamie
PS. Look out soon for a ~ free merch ~ promo (tbd).
News
๐บ๐ฒ Biden has "nominated the first out lesbian to an ambassador-level position in U.S. history," Chantale Wong. If she's confirmed by the U.S. Senate, she will be the U.S. director of the Asian Development Bank and "the first LGBTQ person of color as well as the first gay woman with the rank of ambassador."
๐ซ Fear of anti-Asian attacks has driven an increase in Asian American gun purchases. A survey indicated that firearm purchases between Jan-Jun 2020 were up 42% from the prior year, and membership in gun-safety and Asian-based firearm groups has grown.
๐จ๐ฝโโ๏ธ Last Thursday, U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy made an appearance at the White House news briefing to urge Americans to get vaccinated. "I say that as someone who has lost 10 family members to Covid-19 and who wishes each and every day that they had had the opportunity to get vaccinated." ๐ข (Back during the Obama administration, Vivek became the U.S.'s youngest surgeon general and first of Indian descent.)
I quite like Vivek Murthy and would highly recommend this podcast episode that he did with Brenรฉ Brown.
๐ฏ๐ต Well, the Olympics begin this Friday... although vaccination rates are low in Japan, sigh. (up to 83% of the Japanese public wanted the Olympics to be canceled or postponed.) Also, the International Olympic Committee chairman initially called Japanese citizens "Chinese" in his first public comments since getting to Tokyo...
Regardless, I'm looking forward to cheering on Naomi Osaka (who's representing Japan), Sunisa Lee (first Hmong American gymnast to go to the Olympics), Sakura Kokumai (the first confirmed U.S. Karate Olympian since karate is new to the summer Olympics), and Coryn River (Filipino American Cyclist). ๐ช
I never got into watching the Olympics, but this year sounds particularly like a shit show lol... poorly planned & irresponsible! Do better Tokyo!
๐ Last Tuesday, the 2021 Emmy Nominations were announced! For AAPI, we have Bowen Yang (SNL), Padma Lakshmi (Top Chef), Philippa Soo (Hamilton), Tan France (Queer Eye), and Max Minghella (The Handmaid's Tale). The Emmy Awards aren't until September tho.
๐ฆธ๐พโโ๏ธ Marvel announced that Samira Ahemd will write a new Ms. Marvel comic! Ms. Marvel a.k.a. Kamala Khan is a Muslim & South Asian superhero. Ms. Marvel first appeared in 2014 in an issue of Captain Marvel and will be in a TV series in 2022, played by actress Iman Vellani.
๐ While there are def problems on earth, I gotta admit that the flights to space are kinda cool. Last week, Sirisha Bandla became the second Indian-born woman to go to space when she went aboard the ship with Richard Branson. Check out pics here because they look p sick.
๐ (late?) Eid Mubarak besties! Check out some pics of Muslims around the world celebrating Eid al-Adha here.
TIL... Lau v. Nichols and the development of English Language Learner programs
While going through some of our old topics that we wanted to write about, this court case kind of jumped out at us. In elementary school, I remember a couple of my friends getting pulled out of regular classes to join the ESL (English as a second language) classes. I never thought much about it, but it's quite interesting how these programs were implemented and found widely throughout public schools.
Turns out, before the 70s, ELL/ESL programs were not a big part of the education system. The case, which was argued in front of the Supreme Court in 1974, centered around the San Francisco Unified School District (SFUSD) and its efforts to incorporate non-English speaking Chinese students into the public school system. Bilingual education, at the time, was available on a voluntary basis for schools to enroll in but poorly resourced and enforced. Many of the non-English speaking students, without institutional support and language abilities, at the time were forced to stay behind repeatedly in the same grade.
Kinney Lau was among the 1800 Chinese students represented in the class-action lawsuit against SFUSD. Like others in his cohort, he was failing school because he didn't know English, and the lawyers argued on his behalf that the absence of English instruction (even with the same materials, books, and classes) prevented a truly equal education under the Civil Rights Act. The Supreme Court agreed in a unanimous decision and ruled that federally funded school districts must provide non-English speaking students with English language education.
Do any of you have experience with ELL/ESL programs? We'd love to know your thoughts!
PS. Is it ELL or ESL? I only heard ESL growing up, but the things we read for this kept saying ELL, so I am unsure if the terminology has changed over the past few years. If anyone knows, do share!
Small Feelings
thank god for western medicine. pump me full of claritin because these allergies are going to be the end for me
rip yeah my allergic reactions to pollen and plants is so inconsistent, sometimes i think i'm fine but then i'm not
^ rip my sinuses out
also it's been strange to adapt to living in a new place... it feels like time has moved so quickly and changes were all condensed into a short few weeks... the memories of just chilling at home with the same exact routine every week has already faded away, which feels odd to me... I've been happy to be off on my own now in a new place, but it's more of a tentative excitement.
a tumultuous start to this comeback... the way both of us got covid tests this morning
โจ S P O T L I G H T โจ
Tim Wu
The spotlight today is on Tim Wu, a Columbia Law professor who created the term "net neutrality" in 2002 and is a prominent antitrust scholar. Born in DC to a Taiwanese independence activist and an immunologist, Wu went to McGill University for biophysics (lol) before going to Harvard Law. He clerked for SCOTUS Justice Stephen Breyer and became a professor soon after.
In the Obama and Biden administrations, he served as a special advisor to the FTC from 2011-2012 and was on the Obama's National Economic Council. He most recently was appointed to the latter position again but in President Biden's administration, where he will focus on competition policy (specifically with regard to Big Tech).
Previously, he ran unsuccessfully as the Democratic Nominee for lieutenant governor of NY state behind the candidate Zephyr Teachout (sick name tbh). Fun fact, Lina Khan (currently of the FTC) was one of their campaign staffers.
Chef's Specials ๐๐
๐ + ๐ = I've liked Japanese Breakfast (the artist, not the concept) since I saw her speak at a school event a few years ago. This was back when Crying in H Mart was an article in the New Yorker and not a bestselling novel. The book has sat on my "to read" list for a while, and until I actually pick it up from the library, I'm reading these reviews about it to see what's in store.
๐จโ๐พ I thought this article was really cool. It interviews Punjabi Sikh families who live and farm in Central California. They've created prospering family farms over the past half century, but still keep up with their agricultural roots in India by supporting the farmers protest and serving their communities.
๐ธ Listen to this short podcast about No-No Boy, a band that "combines vivid narrative storytelling with Asian-American history" that Julian Saporiti created for his Ph.D. dissertation at Brown to "reexamine American history and music".
๐จ Artist Zipeng Zhu made a they/them pronoun in Mandarin Chinese! I always wondered why the "sub-character" (idk if that's the right term) for he/him (ไป) is the word for "person" ไบบ but then there's a different "sub-character" for she/her (ๅฅน) - which is the word for "woman" ๅฅณ... ahem we all know women are people too. Here, Zipeng changed the "sub-character" to a word that means "without" or "none" ๆ which makes sense to me and is p cool
๐๏ธ Lol Never Have I Ever season 2 is on Netflix now!
๐๏ธ Book list on AAPI organizing against oppression
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AAPI Artists Spotify Playlist (it's collaborative again!) :