The International Examiner

A comprehensive list of Arts Events happening around Seattle. Updated July 21st 2010.

This is my last column as a bachelor. By the time you read this column, I’ll be a married man, which is almost an incomprehensible concept to those of us who have never been married. I might as well say, “by this time next week, I’ll sprout wings and turn into a unicorn.” Three years [...]

I first met Ray Chinn in 1991 when I started working in the ID. He and other family members owned the Rex Building and operated the Wa Sang Grocery store next to Tai Tung Restaurant on King Street. The store closed in 1997, but Ray has remained an important leader and role model in the [...]

Boarded windows and “For Lease” signs are a common sight scattered throughout the International and Pioneer Square districts. But community members and business owners hope to change this with Storefronts Seattle, a plan to “activate” vacant space through art. With a call to artists in effect and a launch date of Sept. 2, advocates hope [...]

There’s a big move to revitalize Little Saigon by acquiring a neighborhood park — a “showpiece for the community.” So says Quang Nguyen, who is spearheading efforts under the leadership of Joyce Pisnanont. Both are representing the Seattle Chinatown/International District Preservation Development Authority (SCIDpda) IDEA Space, a community development resource center where people could go [...]

It can be filial piety, cultural traditions or family values. For many Asian Pacific Islander families, they have taken the responsibility as caregivers or sole providers for their ailing and aging loved ones. But within the intricate family structures, complexity of generation gaps and immigration patterns, taking care of the Asian Pacific Islander elders can [...]

Last year, Light Rail opened to great fanfare at Othello Station. A coalition of neighborhood groups, including the Martin Luther King Business Association (MLKBA), organized the Othello On The Move festival to celebrate the long-awaited launch of Sound Transit’s Light Rail passenger services on July 18, 2009. In the many months preceding July 1818, the [...]

As midterm elections approach, immigration reform has moved to center stage as the nation debates the pros and cons of enacting new laws tightening restrictions for illegal immigrants crossing our borders. Much as we might like to think otherwise, Washington state is not immune from that debate. As they have many times before, certain persistent [...]

To better inform the public about crimes being committed in Seattle, the city and the Seattle Police Department released in June an online interactive crime map that details the types of crimes being committed in neighborhoods in and around Seattle. The SPD and the city created the map as part of an effort to raise [...]

When Yun-Sook Kim Navarre learned about a protest against “The Last Airbender”, she grabbed two picket signs, her six-year old daughter, and headed to the ArcLight Theater in Hollywood. There, she marched alongside UCLA students, followers of Racebending.com, and members of Media Action Network for Asian Americans (MANAA), Korean Resource Center (KRC), and National Korean [...]

After 3 ½ months in Southeast Asia, I leave Vietnam for my volunteer assignment in Ghana, Africa. It feels thrilling to know I am the only person in the world traveling from Nha Trang, Vietnam to Ghana, Africa. It takes me over 48 hours to get to Ghana, with four flights, 24 hours of layovers [...]

Summer is here — kind of. It reached 90 degrees a few weeks ago after 200+ days of being below 70 degrees. Anything that is labeled for outdoor purposes is a big hit — strolling in the park, swimming, and firing up the grill. Many Seattleites are ready for some fun in the sun, and [...]

Recently, about 50 people crowded the dining room of The American Hotel hostel, located in the Chinatown/International District on 6th and King Street, eager to hear two travelers discuss their backpacking adventures. Among the trekkers’ worldly destinations were India, Kenya and Vietnam. But instead of booking fancy hotels with swimming pools, the pair stayed at [...]

When you enter “Migration”, artist Stephen Nguyen’s installation at Suyama Space, the first thing you see is a wall painted dark matte gray, almost black, pierced by dozen of holes, as if someone had taken a sledgehammer to it (see image above). Fist-sized and larger, the holes reveal steel studs, smashed wallboard, the gallery beyond, [...]

For novelist Jean Kwok, spending a decade of her life writing “Girl in Translation” in the attic of her home in Holland meant risk. “It was bypassing traditional success,” she says while tucked amid boxes in an office at Elliot Bay Bookstore in Seattle, calm but energized despite the pressures of a book tour. Kwok [...]

The release date of “Long for This World” by Sonya Chung was March 2nd. If it hadn’t been for Chang Rae Lee’s latest “The Surrendered” hitting the shelves two weeks later, everyone who reads the Sunday paper’s Parade Magazine would have come across a review of Chung’s debut novel. But hers was bumped for the [...]