BY KARYN KUBO LAMBORN Examiner Film Editor “Brokeback Mountain” Director: Ang Lee Cast: Heath Ledger, Jake Gyllenhaal, Michelle Williams, Anne Hathaway Rated R, 134 min.strong> Director Ang Lee has made the best love story of the year with “Brokeback Mountain.” Based on the short story by Annie Proulx, “Brokeback Mountain” is set in Wyoming in [...]
BY KARYN KUBO LAMBORN Examiner Film Editor “Memoirs of a Geisha” Director: Rob Marshall Cast: Ziyi Zhang, Ken Watanabe, Koji Yakusho, Michelle Yeoh, Gong Li Rated PG-13, 137 min.strong> One of the many dilemmas in bringing a popular novel to the screen is how much to edit. If you cut too much, it could invite [...]
The Wing Luke Asian Museum’s capital campaign project received a $500,000 grant from the M.J. Murdock Charitable Trust based in Vancouver, Wash., earlier this month. The Trust’s mission is to enrich the quality of life in the Pacific Northwest by providing grants to organizations that seek to strengthen the region’s educational and cultural base in [...]
Visual Arts“The Simple Cup” is a small exhibit that explores this basic form as created by over 50 ceramic artists worldwide including Northwest names like Akio Takamori and Beth Lo. Through Dec. 30. KOBO at Higo. 604 S. Jackson. www.koboseattle.com. KOBO Teapot show features work from Japan, Europe and the Northwest. Through Dec. 30. Works [...]
BY JUDITH VAN PRAAG Examiner Arts Writer From Sunday, Dec. 18 through Thursday, Dec. 22, Seattle’s downtown Grand Hyatt Hotel hosts a special exhibit of the Dai Family Art Collection of 19th and 20th Century traditional Chinese master pieces. On Sunday, Dec. 18, the “National Treasures of China” art exhibit at the Grand Hyatt Hotel, [...]
BY PAUL MORI Examiner Contributor No Japanese American festival celebration today would be complete without the sound of the drums known as “Taiko.” But it wasn’t always this way. In the early 1970s there were only three performing taiko ensembles in America – San Francisco Taiko Dojo, Kinnara Taiko in Los Angeles, and San Jose [...]
REVIEW BY JUDITH VAN PRAAG“Mahjong All Day Long” Hardcover 32 pages Size: 11 x 8-1/2 January 2005 In “Mahjong All Day Long,” Ginny Lo (a computer science professor by profession) tells the delightful story of her Chinese immigrant family’s preoccupation with the centuries old game of Mahjong. The underlying message however, is that: “Families that [...]
REVIEW BY ANDREA LINGENFELTER “Willow, Wine, Mirror, Moon: Women’s Poems from Tang China” Translated with an Introduction by Jeanne Larsen Rochester, NY: BOA Editions, Ltd., 2005 Many people believe that classical Chinese poetry reached its apogee during the Tang dynasty (618-907 CE), and there are countless collections of Tang poetry, both in the original Chinese [...]
Review by Tommy Kim Not long after the publication of “Imagined Communities,” Benedict Anderson often found himself in a rather curious situation. Whenever he would speak in front of a multi-disciplinary, academic audience, he would be confronted with questions that often began with the phrase, “I’m intrigued by your analysis of ‘X,’ but I’m disconcerted [...]
Alan Chong Lau interviews Bruce Fulton on his book, “Modern Korean Fiction.” BY ALAN CHONG LAU Pacific Reader Coordinator Q: How did you initially get interested in Korea and, more importantly, become involved in translating Korean literature? A: I got interested in Korea when I went there as a Peace Corps volunteer in 1978-79. I [...]
BY ALAN CHONG LAU Pacific Reader Coordinator As the year winds down, we are in the enviable position of seeing three new books on artists from the Northwest just published. As local independent curator Beth Sellars once told me, “It’s critical that artists get documented in print form because each publication helps mark their growth.” [...]
A special insert on Asian American books and authors Hello readers! It’s been too long since we came out with a book review supplement and I felt we couldn’t let this year slip away without re-connecting. This issue takes a look at local writers and titles. We pull in some lists of favorite recent reads [...]
BY CYNTHIA BROTHERS NAPAWF On Nov. 18, the House of Representatives approved $265 billion in budget cuts to reduce aid to low-income families, immigrants, seniors, and the disabled. Included in the proposed cutbacks are $844 million from the Food Stamp Program. Approximately 255,000 individuals would lose food stamps (the Basic Food Program in Washington State), [...]
BY KELLI NAKAYAMA Examiner Contributor When the Washington State Legislature convenes on Jan. 9 for the 2006 legislative session, the state will face an estimated budget surplus of $1.4 billion. On Feb. 2, 2006, members of the Asian Pacific American (APA) community will meet with legislators about using part of the surplus to address pressing [...]
BY ANDREW LAM What do you do when you graduate from Berkeley with a broken heart and a B.A. in biochemistry? You break your immigrant parents’ hearts and become a writer. When I was a freshman at the University of California, I fell hopelessly in love; a year after I graduated, my heart was shattered. [...]
Dan Mar passed away on Nov. 26. He died at age 80 of heart failure. Mar, a long-time community leader and generous contributor, was born in 1925 in Seattle. He served in the U.S. Navy from 1943 to 1946 as an electrician, Third Class, according to the Wing Luke Asian Museum’s “Reflections of Seattle’s Chinese [...]
Noriyuki “Pat” Morita, best known for his roles as Mr. Miyagi in “The Karate Kid” and Arnold in “Happy Days,” died on Nov. 25 in his Las Vegas home. He was 73. Morita was nominated in 1984 for best supporting actor. He lost the award to Haing S. Ngor, for “The Killing Fields.” According to [...]
BY BOB SANTOS AND FRANCES YOUN On Dec. 1, Partners for Livable Communities presented the annual Bridge Builders Award to seven individuals and organizations from throughout the nation. Bob Santos, Larry Gossett, Roberto Maestas, the late Bernie Whitebear (who was represented by his niece, Kecia Reyes), and Dorry Elias-Garcia were presented with the awards for [...]
Visual Arts “The Simple Cup” is a small exhibit that explores this basic form as created by over 50 ceramic artists worldwide including Northwest names like Akio Takamori and Beth Lo. Through Dec. 30. KOBO at Higo. 604 S. Jackson. www.koboseattle.com. KOBO Teapot show features work from Japan, Europe and the Northwest. Through Dec. 30. [...]
By Bob Suh Examiner Contributor “Aeon Flux” Director: Karyn Kusama Cast: Charlize Theron, Marton Csokas, Jonny Lee Miller, Sophie Okonedo, Pete Postlethwaite, Frances McDormand Rated PG-13, 93 min. When I heard that they were finally going to bring animator/writer Peter Chung’s highly respected MTV animated series “Aeon Flux” to the big screen, I hoped for [...]
BY JUDITH VAN PRAAG Examiner Arts Writer From Sunday, Dec. 18 through Thursday, Dec. 22, Seattle’s downtown Grand Hyatt Hotel hosts a special exhibit of the Dai Family Art Collection of 19th and 20th Century traditional Chinese master pieces. The Dai Family’s ancestors were high level officials in the Qing Dynasty and began the tradition [...]
BY JUDITH VAN PRAAG Examiner Arts Writer Pardon me for licking my fingers. I just ate part of the artfully decorated chocolate “J” I received in the mail yesterday, just in time for “Sinterklaas” on the 5th of December. My friend Albert in the Netherlands wanted me to celebrate Saint Nicholas’ birthday in style, in [...]
BY Kelli Nakayama ICHS Kathy Lin spends upwards of four hours on the phone on most days. Switching from English to Cantonese and back, she makes calls and answers inquiries from mostly Chinese-speaking, Medicare-eligible senior citizens about Medicare’s new Prescription Drug Plan (PDP). Lin is an Outreach Worker at International Community Health Services (ICHS), a [...]
“Balikbayan” is a term commonly coined to people of Filipino descent who have lived in a country outside the Philippines for a number of years, and then returns to the Philippines either to visit or to settle there for good. In Tagalog, “Balik” means to come back; “bayan” means country. R. R-Kayma D. Gander III, [...]
BY NAPAWF National Staff The National Asian Pacific American Women’s Forum (NAPAWF) opposes the nomination of Judge Samuel Alito, Jr. as associate justice to the Supreme Court of the United States. As the only national, multi-issue Asian Pacific American (APA) women’s advocacy organization, NAPAWF believes that Judge Alito would undermine reproductive freedom, narrowly interpret constitutional [...]
President Bush signs Angel Island Immigration Station & Restoration Act San Francisco – On Thursday, Dec. 1, President George W. Bush signed into law H.R. 606, the “Angel Island Immigration Station Restoration & Preservation Act” authorizing appropriations of $15 million for the restoration of the Angel Island Immigration Station, according to a press release. “What [...]
BY CRYSTAL NAM UW News Lab Haruka Uehara knows that when she returns to Japan, she will bring back a new perspective to her studies in the field of international relations after her experiences in the United States. She is among 20 students from Ritsumeikan University in Kyoto, Japan, who arrived in September to take [...]
BY ASIAN PACIFIC ISLANDER COALITION Our immigration policies and practices are broken and in need of major reform. The backlog of those eligible to enter this country includes a huge number from Asian countries that have been waiting for over 10 years. The estimates of persons here in this country without legal permission are as [...]
BY LUCIA ENRIQUEZ Examiner Contributor In a conversation I had with Peter Bacho, he said that figuring out our place in history presents the surest existential problem. And so this defines the problem of Rico Divina, the lead character in Bacho’s latest novel, “Entrys” (University of Hawaii Press, 2005). Divina, a young Filipino-Indian American, or [...]
BY NHIEN NGUYEN Examiner Staff Mike Lee* was referred to Asian Counseling & Referral Service (ACRS) for his mental health problems. He was anxious, emotional and complained about people taking advantage of him. He even made several attempts to commit suicide. After working with Lee, ACRS Mental Health Case Manager Louis Leung discovered the source [...]
