By Enzo Mangubat

A screencap of the NYTimes.com home page Monday morning, Aug. 23, featuring the Manila crisis. Photo: Alan Chan, Flickr.

To my fellow Filipinos:

I’m sure many of you have strong feelings about the recent hostage crisis in Manila. It is painfully frustrating to witness a botched operation costing innocent lives and defacing the Philippines before the international community.

Yes, so many things went wrong. So many “obvious” and terribly “stupid” mistakes were made. Our police force was inadequately trained. The media did not help by compromising the operations of the police. And the big question: what ever happened to negotiations? The whole thing was so stupid, so careless, that perhaps many of you feel that if you were there, you could have easily done a better job.

But something isn’t right here. We chastise the people on scene for their mistakes as if they were not fellow Filipinos. We reprimand them for failure as if success was solely a function of their willingness to do a good job. We rant that “they” are stupid as if “we” know better.

What isn’t right here is that those who hate on the police, the media and anyone else present aren’t looking at the bigger picture. The cops weren’t trained; they were ill-equipped and clumsy. But why? All these problems were brought about by the social reality in our country. The finger-pointing, the divide between fellow Filipinos, the arrogance, the selfishness, and the hatred: these are a reality we are all responsible for.

My point is that this was not a failure of the police force or media but of the nation. We are quick to hate the police, but did we ever give them the respect to motivate them toward excellence? Did we ever express how much we appreciate their risking their lives for others even though they are underpaid?

Or have we completely resigned ourselves to the stereotype of bribe-hungry cops and pushed the few remaining decent policemen into corruption by doing so? Did we ever challenge the media to be more discerning and judicious? Or have we simply invited the media to provide us with the latest chismis, regardless? Most importantly, have we ever done anything to better our nation, or have we barricaded ourselves into our comfort zones while accusing others of mistakes such as this, as if the problems of our country are always exclusively those of some other Filipino?

This entire mess is as much the responsibility of the Filipino with the sledgehammer by the bus door as it is of the Filipino with a laptop ranting with Facebook statuses. If I may tolerate divisive language for a moment: the police messed up their tactics, but we disrespected them, tempted them with bribes, corrupted them, and hated them. None of these will make it any better the second time around.

This is our mistake. Take responsibility.

Enzo Mangubat is a senior majoring in chemical engineering. He is an international student from Manila, Philippines. Mangubat’s post originally appeared on his Facebook page.

Read the review of “Enemies of the People” here.

By Beroze Dubash

USC’s next incoming class of undergraduate students will contain 1,150 Asian American and Pacific Islander students, according to USC’s Asian Pacific American Student Services.

That’s about 26 percent of the entire class. These students either have racial backgrounds or are directly from a variety of countries in Asia, such as China, India, the Philippines, and Vietnam. While the term “Asian” suffices for the whole of East Asia, “Indian” appears to be the go-to word for Americans when it comes to describing anyone from South Asia.

The term “Indian,” taken for all South Asians, is a tricky matter. Given the historical tensions between India and Pakistan, it wouldn’t be in your best interest to identify a Pakistani individual as Indian. Above all that, however, is the fact that all the countries within South Asia are vastly different and, to a native of the region, could not possibly be mistaken for merely “Indian.”

Students of Asian backgrounds can likely agree that the term “Asian” is ambiguous. Sahil Khandwala, a sophomore majoring in Business Administration and a native of Mumbai, India, answered a firm “no” when asked if he would consider himself to be “Asian,” as he believes it to be reserved exclusively for those of East Asian descent.

Julia Kim, a sophomore architecture student, agrees with this general conclusion but  is comfortable using the term to describe herself.

“I look East Asian, but I grew up in America,” Kim said.

Sumun Pendakur, an American of Indian heritage and the director of APASS, explains why she still considers herself Asian American.

“We all have been affected by the same anti-immigration laws, the same anti-miscegenation laws, the same anti-citizenship laws, and the same xenophobia,” Pendakur said.

Pendakur said that identifying with this term does not remove from her South Asian ethnicity but rather enhances the diversity of her culture. Not all objective classifiers are completely neutral in their denotation of an ethnic group. African Americans and Hispanics have long struggled for equal representation and assimilation into American society and the harsh reality is that even today, they face many of the same struggles, much like Asian Americans.

Pendakur explained that both South and East Asians are burdened with the “forever foreigner” and “model minority” typecasts.

“The forever foreigner trope invalidates our ability to be American, forever positioning us as un-American, un-assimilable, and un-trustworthy,” said Pendakur. “The model minority stereotype positions all Asian Americans as wealthy, problem-free, the ‘good minority.’”

These prejudices disguise real problems that Asian communities face and portray an image of idealism. The fact that most of us still categorize people based on racial identity still leaves a foundation for stereotyping today. However, the terms have come to be accepted as normative and to a large extent, so has all of the Asian community in America. The media has begun to be more saturated with East and South Asian actors, there are entire restaurant chains and markets dedicated to our flavors and some of our customs have become staples of life today.

We certainly have come far from being just “great at math” or “very Bollywood.”

By Nimisha Thakore

The opening line of Cambodian journalist Thet Sambath’s “Enemies of the People” is a chilling one: a declaration in Sambath’s shy voice that some say almost 2 million people died in his country’s Killing Fields.

So begins the hour-and-a-half quest to coax any sort of explanation out of Nuon Chea, Brother Number Two, second only to Brother Number One Pol Pot, in the Khmer Rouge, a brutal Communist party that reigned over Cambodia in the late 1970s.

But what is to viewers a 94-minute documentary was a decade-long project for the almost inhumanly patient Sambath. The quiet journalist’s family was massacred along with untold numbers of Cambodians under Khmer Rouge leadership. Yet with a reserve and unexpected kindness toward Chea that is hardly fathomable, Sambath regularly visited the now white-haired old man for three years, all the while keeping mum about his dead family so as not to appear accusatory.

He was looking for an answer, a missing piece of a haphazardly strewn puzzle that makes up the history of the Killing Fields.

Thirty years after the bloody murders, there is still no satisfactory explanation, but “Enemies of the People” comes the closest to unearthing a justification that appears to have never existed.

It is hard to imagine that the hunched and toothless Chea, balancing a grandchild on his knee or staring blankly at Sambath’s rudimentary camera, could have anything to do with the hundreds of thousands of human bodies that piled up in village fields between 1975 and 1979.

Sambath and co-producer and script writer Rob Lemkin achieved such a disbelief by cutting their film with long runs of silence, lingering close-ups on the creased, sun-browned faces of murderers, and repeated gritty shots of the fields themselves. Green sprouts there now, from water contaminated by buried bones.

The resulting calmness suggests that the theme of the film might be just that this is the way things are, with or without reason. These are the facts of life: these people have already died. All we can do is remember them.

Neither Chea nor any of the other former Khmer executors can pinpoint why so many people died, or even where the orders to kill and keep killing originated. They don’t shed tears or beg for forgiveness. But their faces appear weathered not just by the sun but by a burdened conscience. These are the faces of killers – but they are also the faces of remorse and of truth.

Near the close of the film, Sambath finally reveals to Chea that his father and brother were killed by the Khmer Rouge and his mother was forced to marry a soldier, later dying in childbirth.

Chea blinks. Then he apologizes.

“I’ve won the war, we beat the enemy, but then we were defeated,” he said, admitting for the first time that his beloved regime made a grave mistake.

Chea, charged with war crimes and crimes against humanity, is currently awaiting sentencing in 2011 by a United Nations-supported tribunal.

“Enemies of the People” is more than simply a recount of one of the bloodiest regimes of the twentieth century. It is an artfully and compassionately constructed testament to the distinctly human capacity to kill, to regret, to remember, and to forgive.

“Enemies of the People” opened in theaters Friday, Aug. 6. Watch the official trailer here.

By Jessica Men

Teriyaki Boyz, a hip hop group from Tokyo, are among the myriad talents who have performed at Kwon's Asian Hip Hop Summit. Photo: Sry85, Wikimedia

In recent years, Asian Pacific Americans have made surprisingly great strides in the entertainment industry. Just look around: We are no longer just the contestants on Jeopardy or the nun chuck-wielding sensei in straight-to-TV movies.

Shows like America’s Best Dance Crew and American Idol, as well as the viral memes of the web, have propelled APAs into the pop culture spotlight, providing to the rest of the world that we have more to offer than math skills and kung fu prowess.

The Asian Hip Hop Summit is an annual music festival that celebrates ethnic diversity. The 8^th summit toured North America from Los Angeles to Detroit to New York this year. At each stop, local artists are invited to perform, including Los Angeles-based artists such as Dumbfounded and Lyraflip. The first summit was held in 2002 in Koreatown in remembrance of the 10^th anniversary of the L.A. Riots and showcased young talent in rapping, DJ-ing, dancing, and more.

The mastermind behind the festival, Kublai Kwon, 32, organized the summit to empower APA artists and showcase the craft of poetry in hip hop lyrics. Kwon attended USC for grad school but did not compelte his degree. After disagreeing with the grading system for his Writing 140 class, he was moved to Thematic Option, where he could teach a corse of his choosing. Kwon designed Hip Hop as Poetry, an afro-centric course around transcribing and analyzing song lyrics.

“I was 21 years old at the time and free-spirited. But I often felt like I was always just seen as ‘the Asian guy,’” Kwon said.

Kwon left the Ph.D program and moved to Koreatown. Even there, within the hub of Asian urban culture, he was surprised at how meek of a presence APAs had.

“Our country has one of the biggest East Asian populations outside of Asia, but nothing ever was really going on with us,” said Kwon. “We don’t really have our own power movement.”

Influenced by an APA poetry summit that had spoken word performances, Kwon drew from his scholarly background and created a subculture of Los Angeles youth and a mass pan-Asian music scene. Funding the summit has been difficult. Kwon works a part-time job, pays for all expenses out-of-pocket, and doesn’t know how much longer he can keep this up.  But Kwon hopes that by giving APAs a venue for their voices, they will create original music that they can claim to be their own. African Americans have blues and jazz; Latin Americans have salsa and meringue.

“Our country has one of the biggest East Asian populations outside of Asia, but nothing ever was really going on with us. We don’t really have our own power movement.”
Kublai Kwon

The first summit took place in Seoul International Park, bringing out break dancers, rappers, singers, and even electric guitar players – all talents that Asian Americans aren’t usually perceived as having.

“Everyone expects Asians to do a certain kind of music, usually classical music,” Kwon said.

The summit aimed to change that perception and show the world how much talent the APA community had in various areas. Early performances were in parking lots, churches and parks.

Throughout they ears, the festival has boasted an impressive myriad of talents, including several now-mainstream artists such as The Black Eyed Peas, Fort Minor, and the Teriyaki Boyz. More recently, the tour has been carried by hip-hop regular Dumbfounded on the West coast and Lyricks on the East.

But there is more to the summit than the unification of APA hip-hop culture and providing an outlet of individual expression for performers.

“Of course, it’d be great to create a nationwide Asian movement. But to be more realistic, the tour is more about focusing on the art involved. It’s also great to get everyone connected through the music and make a statement,” Kwon said.

The tour has since expanded to 28 cities throughout the continent to great enthusiasm and feedback. Even states such as Minnesota, New Jersey and Texas boasted successful turnouts – not exactly the first places that come to mind when you say “Asian population.”

However, the presence of many non-Asian Americans was even more of a positive influence in encouraging interracial unity through the shared hip-hop culture.

“There’s Asian communities in all these places, and we’re trying to connect to them through music,” said DJ Zo, a member of the summit, according to Maroon, a University of Chicago newspaper.

Kwon took advantage of the universal power of music and its ability to break barriers to unite and celebrate different cultures. Thanks to this unifying spirit, relations between races have come a long way since the L.A. Riots.

By David Lau

“Daddy always told me only doctors & some lawyers succeed
In what we call the present day
Momma always told me I would never stand a chance in this world
Singin’ my life away.“
Tim Be Told, “Ordinary,” from the album Getting By

From the Inside EP, Tim Be Told's newest release. Photo: Tim Be Told, MySpace

Four years ago, Tim Ouyang was just another architecture student at the University of Virginia, feeling the pressure to succeed that many Asian Pacific Americans can relate to. But he put his worries into melodies, writing songs and jamming with classmates. By 2007 he and four friends had completed their debut album, Getting By, a genre-bending medley of soul, rock and pop.

Performing under the name Tim Be Told (a pun on the phrase “truth be told”), the five-man group dominated every scene in which they performed, from the mainstream club circuit (opening for OK Go and Parachute), to collegiate crowds along the East coast, to mostly APA audiences at Kollaboration New York. Now, Tim Be Told is traveling across the nation for its second West Coast tour, cementing its status as a well-loved band on both sides of the map.

On Jan. 20, Tim Be Told came to the University of California, Irvine, for an electrifying concert, one of four California colleges on their tour (the others being Berkeley, Stanford and Loyola Marymount). The venue was a lecture hall, lit with deep red floodlights that seemed out of place next to the wall-mounted periodic table.

But the audience forgot their surroundings the moment drummer Jim Barredo smashed into the first song, “Analyze.” Driven by distorted guitars and shimmering keys, the song’s chorus quickly soared and filled the room, reaching the vaulted ceiling just as Ouyang hit his highest falsetto.

Suddenly, the music quieted and Ouyang’s keyboard went solo, his now quiet voice holding his lyrics dearly, and each word heartfelt: “Hey you, could you analyze my state of mind/what did you recognize?”

Lead guitarist Andrew Chae slowly entered the mix, working his wah pedal with vocal-like soulfulness. With a gradual swell, the band came back in and ended with a crescendo of power chords, keyboard and bass that sounded more orchestral than indie rock.

As the room erupted in applause, my friend turned to me and said, “Man, I like that sound. It has that…that feeling…” He made some quick hand motions.

I smiled and replied, “That punchiness?”

“Yeah! But it’s not too much, y’know?” he said

Such is the magic of Tim Be Told: their ability to navigate highs and lows, driving anthems and poignant confessions while never sacrificing clarity. While some indie bands take shelter in their walls of noise and mumbled lyrics, these guys always keep their music accessible. The band knows how to balance its instruments without overpowering Ouyang’s voice, which has a transparent, R&B feel. Throughout the evening, the band morphed its way through Maroon 5-style funk, Ben Folds ballads, and John Mayer jams. Though the show was held in a lecture hall, the audience lost themselves in the music as they sang along to the rousing performance.

The unreleased song “The Lament” gave an insightful glimpse into want motivates these musicians. Ouyang prefaces the song by explaining how he had been struggling with a vocal cord infection for the last year. Despite the career-threatening illness, he maintained a “defiant hope” that he was meant to keep fighting on and living out his musical dreams.

Much of his songwriting comes out of such optimistic yet vulnerable circumstances, in the hope that audiences will take away more than just a good time. Ouyang and his crew have certainly come far since Ouyang’s days of singing in his dorm room. Tim Be Told is a band to watch in the coming year.

Check out Tim Be Told’s latest album, From the Inside, available on iTunes and MySpace.

Download TBT’s single “Analyze” for FREE here.

Bamboo Offshoot: What can someone expect when they come to a Tim Be Told concert?

Tim Be Told: Our live show is like a story with many movements. We try to take the audience on a ride, from rocking grooves to emotional power ballads. We hope to inspire the audience with spoken word, lyrics, and epic instrumental interludes. If the audience walks away with nothing else, we hope that they leave inspired.

BO: You’ve participated in Kollaboration NYC and many of your fans are Asian American. How does being Asian American influence what you do as a band?

TBT: We don’t really feel like we’re all that different. We all grew up in the US, and we are more familiar with American culture than any other culture. We make music, not Asian music, not Asian American music. It’s simply music. Being Asian American is a coincidence, not an intentional pursuit, and our hope is that music (regardless of who creates it) will cross the lines of ethnicity and social status. However, we are aware that there are some unique challenges in trying to break into an industry that has no significant Asian icons… That doesn’t deter us from our goal of reaching a diverse audience.

BO: You have connections with the Asian American Christian community but also play in

mainstream venues. How does your faith inform your music?

TBT: Our faith influences our music by causing our songs to be about issues that hopefully connect with people on a deep level… We feel that today, many songs don’t really address many of the issues people face and the problems that they deal with on a daily basis. Our hope is that the music we make will influence people in a positive way and bring even a small amount of hope to their lives.

BO: How have you guys grown and developed as a band and in what directions are you moving towards in your future?

TBT: When the band first started out, the songs were more singer-songwriter because Tim had basically written all the songs by himself. Since then, as new songs are written, everyone in the band develops their own parts, adding to the creativity and uniqueness of each song… For the future, we plan to continue writing new songs and touring even more.

By Vicki Yang

Photo: LisaSee.com

When we think of Chinese history, we think of stone lions, gilded dragons, and the face of Mao Zedong tinted red with the blood of the Cultural Revolution. We think of kung fu masters, the Great Wall, and the first Chinese immigrants stepping ashore Gold Mountain, eager to explore the riches of California.

Critically acclaimed novelist Lisa See strives to tell a different story. Her 2009 novel Shanghai Girls delves into forgotten territory. In the book, two sisters, former beautiful advertisement models, flee Shanghai from the Japanese invasion and go to Los Angeles in arranged marriages. Shanghai Girls is a journey that rings true for those of us who immigrated to Los Angeles. See talks about her heritage and the nature of being Asian American.

Bamboo Offshoot: How does your own heritage play into writing such novels as Shanghai Girls?

Lisa See: I’m one-eighth Chinese, but I grew up in a very large, very traditional Chinese family. I have about 400 relatives in Los Angeles – some mixed, like me. I was born in Paris but grew up in Chinatown, Los Angeles.

BO: Where did you first come up with the idea for the plot of Shanghai Girls?

LS: This time it was a combination of about five or six things. First, I really wanted to write about the time period, which was around 1937 – the final moment before the Paris of Asia was invaded by the Japanese.

The city became a grave place. It was no longer the “Paris of Asia” in the 60s and the 70s, and even in the 80s. I was really interested in that final hurrah before the fall.

Next, I’ve been collecting the poster ads of Chinese models for a while. I wanted to write a story about these girls in the ads. I wanted to write about arranged marriages. We’ve had a lot of arranged marriages here in my family. I think it’s something most Americans don’t think ever existed in America, but it still does.

I have never written about Angel Island from a woman’s perspective. I also wanted to write a little bit about China City. My grandparents and grandaunts and uncles moved our family into the last Chinese antique store of China City. As a little girl, I had these memories of being in the skeleton of China City. Today, there is not a brick left. I wanted to capture stories of people who may have had shops or cafes there, or the stories of their children before they were wiped off the map of memory.

Finally, I wanted to write about the Confession Program.* There is little written about it even by scholars. The people who participated were victimized; they don’t want to talk about it due to the shame and guilt. I just think by now, people trust me. They know what I’m going to do with these stories.

Also, I really wanted to write about sisters. So you see, there were several things that I wanted to write about – not just one.

BO: Since your story is fundamentally about Pearl and May and their underlying hopes, dreams and frustrations – which sister do you identify better with and why?

LS: As the author, I think I identify with them both to some extent. Sometimes I take a trait that I really don’t like in myself and really blow it up in the character. Both have weaknesses and on any given day I could identify with either of them. I am the eldest sister in my family, but I like to think that I don’t act too much like the eldest.

BO: Although in recent years there has been an upward surge of Asian Americans in the creative fields, many children still fall victim to familial pressures to study professions that will yield a steady income. How would you encourage them to do what they love?

LS: I have two kids myself. Oftentimes, people don’t even know what they want to do. It would be nice to have the time to figure out. Instead of automatically deciding that you want to pursue law or medicine at the beginning of your college career, take a variety of classes. It’s fine to be undeclared. How do you get your parents to let you do that? You’re the one ultimately singing up for your classes.

A lot of people love the work that they do, and a lot of people don’t. Life still gives them the room to do the things that they want to do after work.

Let’s say your passion is…paleontology. Well, on your winter break you could go explore that side of your interests. I love to write, but I still play a lot of tennis. I still spend a lot of time wandering the museums; I was an art history major.

And now, I’m a writer. I love what I do, but I still have room for other interests outside of my career.

*The Confession Program (1956-1965) was a federal government policy requiring Chinese immigrants to “confess” their paper-son status and to name everyone they knew who came illegally to America. The program was designed to pinpoint Communist connections, but ultimately, it divided families.