Wonton Cruelty

Life here, there, and other places.

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The end of the unknown

I was thinking today that there won’t be archaelogists who study the way we live today and wonder why we lived the way we did, or how. Humanity has so many more resources now to spell out the details of our existence. We have a milion ways to let everyone know what we did and why. Life was simpler when that wasn’t so important.

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I looked up snakes with arms yesterday on google and these are my findings.

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New fave, late to the game.

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Unlawful in Motherland (Нүүх Эрхгүй Нүүдэлчид)

This video is painfully powerful. The discrimination, slurs, and the blame directed at rural migrants living in Ulaanbaatar are shameful and hateful. The use of these slurs reflects a self-loathing, a punching down that says a lot about a "city"  person's own sense of self-worth and general insecurities about being perceived as having more and doing better. The air pollution has only grown worse since the government banned migration to the capital, access to education and healthcare has grown worse, unemployment is on the rise.

The resentment that city-dwellers have for migrants is ignorant and short-sighted. UB's elite and privileged youth love to wear modern deel, reimagine traditions, and claim cultural pride, visiting Terelj resorts on the weekend to sit on a horse and to "be with nature". UB's privileged expats fetishize traditional culture and nomadic lifestyles, and spend their time online in expat forums belittling and infantilizing the Mongolia people. Most of these people are not willing to be honest about how they are complicit in perpetuating UB's realities, and how doing something about the wealth gap and how it drives state spending is the only way to fix problems like pollution, poverty, and congestion in the city.

This video touched me deeply. Watch it all the way through.

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Essay for 'They're All So Beautiful', an online forum for Debbie Lum's documentary 'Seeking Asian Female • Michelle Borok

This was originally published in 2013, but the website has since been left to expire and fade away into the digital nothingness… I was recently asked about my Mongolian love story by a filmmaker coming to Mongolia to document stories about love. I... | Michelle Borok | Writer, editor, and mother living in Mongolia’s third largest (but best) city.

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‘What God Is Honored Here?’

I’m proud to announced that my essay on the loss of our son will be part of a powerful anthology available in October. It was a gutting process to revisit that time, but it also helped a tremendous amount in the process of processing our loss. I’ll be forever grateful for that experience, and I know that reading all of our collected stories will facilitate even more.

What God Is Honored Here? Writings on Miscarriage and Infant Loss by and for Native Women and Women of Color Shannon Gibney and Kao Kalia Yang, Editors What God Is Honored Here? is the first book of its kind—and urgently necessary. This is a literary collection of voices of Indigenous women and women of color who have undergone miscarriage and infant loss, experiences that disproportionately affect women who have often been cast toward the margins in the United States of America. From the story of dashed cultural expectations in an interracial marriage to poems that speak of loss across generations, from harrowing accounts of misdiagnoses, ectopic pregnancies, and late-term stillbirths to the poignant chronicles of miscarriages and mysterious infant deaths, What God Is Honored Here? brings women together to speak to one another about the traumas and tragedies of womanhood. In its heartbreaking beauty, this book offers an integral perspective on how culture and religion, spirit and body, unite in the reproductive lives of women of color and Indigenous women as they bear witness to loss, search for what is not there, and claim for themselves and others their fundamental humanity. Powerfully and with brutal honesty, they write about what it means to reclaim life in the face of death. Editors Shannon Gibney and Kao Kalia Yang acknowledge “who we had been could not have prepared us for who we would become in the wake of these words,” yet the writings collected here offer insight, comfort, and, finally, hope for all those who, like the women gathered here, have found grief a lonely place.

Shannon Gibney is a writer, educator, activist, and the author of See No Color, a young adult novel that won the Minnesota Book Award in Young People’s Literature. She is faculty in English at Minneapolis College, where she teaches writing. She has been a Bush Artist and McKnight Writing Fellow. Her critically acclaimed novel Dream Country follows more than five generations of an African-descended family as they crisscross the Atlantic, both voluntarily and involuntarily.

Kao Kalia Yang is author of The Latehomecomer: A Hmong Family Memoir, winner of two Minnesota Book Awards and a finalist for the PEN USA Award in Creative Nonfiction and the Asian Literary Award in Nonfiction. Her second book, The Song Poet, won a Minnesota Book Award and was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Chautauqua Prize, the PEN USA Award in Nonfiction, and the Dayton’s Literary Peace Prize. Contributors: Jennifer Baker, Michelle Borok, Lucille Clifton, Sidney Clifton, Taiyon J. Coleman, Arfah Daud, Rona Fernandez, Sarah Agaton Howes, Honorée Fanonne Jeffers, Soniah Kamal, Diana Le-Cabrera, Janet Lee-Ortiz, Maria Elena Mahler, Chue Moua, Jami Nakamura Lin, Jen Palmares Meadows, Dania Rajendra, Marcie Rendon, Seema Reza, 신 선 영 Sun Yung Shin, Kari Smalkoski, Catherine R. Squires, Elsa Valmidiano. $19.95 paperback with french flaps

ISBN 978-1-5179-0793-8 256 pages, 5 b&w photos

October 15, 2019

Early praise for WHAT GOD IS HONORED HERE?

"Miscarriage is a most enigmatic human sorrow, unique to every woman who suffers it. These stories of resilience, grief, and restoration are essential, for to understand is to heal."—Louise Erdrich "What God is Honored Here? is the hardest and most important book I've read about parenting, loss, and imagination. It's also the most frightening book in my world, but not because it is horrific: it is about the terrifying possibilities of love."—Kiese Laymon, author of Heavy, winner of the Andrew Carnegie Medal and finalist for the Kirkus Prize "These writers have pierced the silence that too often surrounds miscarriage and infant loss, crafting hallowed stories from thoughtful, honest prose. As readers we are invited to witness the heart-mending love of mothers as they share memories of their lost babies, and in the telling offer solace in community."—Diane Wilson, author of Spirit Car and Beloved Child "To remember is an act of will and courage, an affirmation of hope and a dreamed-for life. These stories and poems, heart-rending and often traumatic, reveal the resilience that transcends the pain of loss. What God Is Honored Here? consecrates personal and collective sacrifice and contributes to the validation that is essential to adapt to and heal from significant loss."—Susan Gibney, founder, University of Michigan NICU Hospitals Bereavement Program and Walk to Remember, MS, LLP, RN

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This article was originally published by the UB Post in June 2016, but has since been taken down. Sadly, the newspaper has a habit of removing articles upon the request of companies, individuals, and government agencies (foreign and domestic) that... | Michelle Borok | Writer, editor, and mother living in Mongolia’s third largest (but best) city.

I just discovered that an editorial I wrote for The UB Post about the introduction of what3words in Mongolia was removed (no notice from the editorial staff, of course). I’ve thrown the article up on Svtble to rectify that problem.

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Click here to support Tsagaan Sar Food Drive Challenge organized by Michelle Borok

Join the 2018 Tsagaan Sar Food Drive Challenge and help make the holiday great for some special families in need in Mongolia. Help my family deliver boxes full of holiday essentials (and basic pantry staples) to families in Darkhan-Uul and Orkhon Province that are struggling. Your donation will...

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Sometimes you go looking for a Tsagaan Sar trade fair and end up finding a traditional wrestling match instead...

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My friend Anita helped facilitate the donation of 50 brand new Mongolian children’s books from Internom Bookstore to kindergartens in Darkhan. Terra attends a public kindergarten and we knew her teachers would treasure the books, so they got the books for older children. The rest of the books were donated to a low-cost daycare center in Old Darkhan’s ger district.

I have never in my life seen children so excited about books. As soon as we told the teacher what was in the box, nearly every single one of Terra’s classmates jumped out of their chairs and ran over to see them. Her teacher let them take a few books to share and sit down with until their parents arrived to pick them up.

The next day, Terra’s teachers told Aagii that they were going to be coming by for a home visit to play some Tsagaan Sar games with Terra.

We suspect the visit was thanks for the gift of books and other things we have given to her classroom and to her classmates, but they didn’t tell us that outright, and it was the most lovely display of gratitude I could have imagined.

Unfortunately, I had to work, but I got Terra started with making some coffee for her teachers and bringing them cookies to nibble with their coffee. Aagii got dinner started (buuz) and gave them a tour of the house, and just as they settled in to play a traditional Mongolian game, the power went out.

Aagii got the wifi back up again with the car battery backup system he has for me so I don’t have a meltdown during a power outage, and we set up a small lamp for the visit upstairs and candles and the portable gas stove for dinner downstairs.

Terra was taught the meanings of the different sides of the anklebones, the turtle the game is played on, and how to play.

I have my complaints about what the public school system here can offer children, rather, what they are able to offer with what funding they are given. But it is things like this - this lovely home visit - that remind me that she is learning tremendously valuable lessons about how to be a good person and make the world around her a better place. She is learning about who she is and who she can grow up to be, and she has two lovely women helping to show her the way.

This was another very auspicious precursor to Tsagaan Sar and the new year ahead. Of course, now I feel like I need to do something extra special to thank the teachers for this lovely gift of an evening....

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» #21 Postal Addresses

4 billion people in the world don't have standard addresses - so how do they get mail? The Facts Surprisingly Awesome’s theme music is by Nicholas Britell and our ad music is by Build Buildings. We were edited this week by Annie-Rose Strasser. Peter Clowney weighed in too. The show was produced by Elizabeth Kulas, Christine Driscoll and Rachel Ward. It was mixed by Andrew Dunn. Special thanks to Maeve Higgins, who brought us the Kurt Vonnegut essay. We had production assistance from Shani Aviram, Jacob Cruz, Emily Kennedy, Rikki Novetsky and Sarah Stodder. Additional music for this episode came from Our Many Stars, Onry Ozzborn, and One Two Three. Headlines Addresses in Mongolia are Changing Welcome To Mongolia's New Postal System: An Atlas Of Random Words Mongolia's New Address System Gives Every Location A Poetic Three-Word Name Sending Mail in Mongolia? ‘Dissident.sloth.ploy’ Could Be the Address WHAT3WORDS in Mongolia (ARD HOLDINGS) (MONGOL POST) Mongolia Adopts Address System That Uses Three-Word Names SNAIL MAIL PROBLEMS? A THREE-WORD SOLUTION IS COMING Sponsors Frank + Oak Wealthsimple Prudential

I was interviewed for this episode of @truesharkattackstories (Surprisingly Awesome) and got to talk about what3words being used in Mongolia. My full rant about it is here.

I still find the whole thing ridiculous, but I also still hate blogs for killing zines.... so, you know...

Great episode though, and not just cause I’m in it. Give it a listen and never take your postal carrier for granted.

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"Drivers travel the roads, know them in their minds, in their bones, in their blood. They feel the landscape and move through it--connecting what they know with their instinctual knowledge of the land. It's beauty in action."

My friend Heather blogs about her new life in Mongolia, which I’m really happy to be a part of. She just came back from an 8-day tour of some of the most beautiful parts of the country and Agii was her driver.

I’ll be telling Agii about her observations and he’ll probably enjoy them. Thank you for this, Heather. You noticed things most people don’t.

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Terrible Terra Takes Thailand

October 2014, Our first family vacation!

It only took nearly two years, but I finally uploaded all of our photos from our 2014 trip to Thailand. It was an amazing time and our first family vacation. We had lots of first for all three of us. Our trip to Chiang Mai was a gift from my parents to help us heal a bit from what was a very difficult year. It reminded me that the family we were going to be from that point forward was still pretty magical, and that we could move forward in making our lives as parents to our one living child magical.

Flickr is great for trips down memory lane. I’ll be adding new photos to new albums soon.

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Naadam in Darkhan | The UB Post

We had a mellow naadam this year. We hit the festival grounds on the first day, as folks were still getting set up and then went to a race on the final day with Otgoo. See pictures here.

(3/25/20) As the link is dead, here’s a Naadam story I wrote in 2015.

Province Naadam for the people

As it should be, the National Naadam Festival in Ulaanbaatar is a tremendous production. It showcases the best of competitors in the "three manly games", the country's top cultural performers, and days filled with special events celebrating Mongolia's history, traditions, and culture. In the provinces, naadam has all the same energy and excitement but on a much smaller scale.

Many provinces schedule their naadam festivals in the days leading up to and following the National Naadam Festival in UB. Soums schedule their festivals the same way based on the schedules of the festivals of the province centers. When one naadam is finished, there's always another one to follow! An ambitious traveler could easily attend a week's worth of naadam festivals by traveling from soum to soum.

From soum to soum, although the script is the same, the scenes are different. Soums without a stadium still hold wrestling matches, they just set up in a clear, open field. Tents, chairs, gers, and tables map out the boundaries of the ring and the space serves for wrestling, equestrian demonstrations, knucklebone throwing, dancing, singing, and award presentations.  The big circle of spectators leaves plenty of room for families and friends to set up a spot to watch events without obstructions. Little ones sit up front, warned not to stray too far into the ring, and elders are given stools and camping chairs. Spectators walk their horses up to the edge of the circle and stay in the saddle for an even better view. There are no tickets, reservations, VIP seats, or parking passes required.

Erdenet, Darkhan and other cities in the provinces have official naadam stadiums, and budgets for more fanfare. They can hire bands to put on concerts and they have enough traffic coming in to have local police coordinate traffic and half-heartedly collect parking fees (not if you arrive on horseback, of course). Darkhan's naadam is scheduled after those of neighboring soums, but ahead of the National Naadam Festival.

As welcome a vacation as it is in the city, naadam is also a chance for herders to step away from their work for a while.

This summer has been a challenging one. The snowfall last winter and the modest rains in the spring and summer haven't given the steppe enough water to be filled with tall, green grass. In Selenge Province the crops are stunted and don't show signs of a healthy harvest. Herding families are preparing for what will be a very rough winter. These inevitable and insurmountable challenges aside, naadam is still a time to relax, travel (if you can get the extra help to watch your herds), and to simply enjoy the fun of the festival.

The naadam stadium in Darkhan is surrounded by a ring of sales and gaming tents, an adjoining field filled with gers selling khuushuur, and an open field for picnicking, go-carts, horseback riding, and home to the less professional khuushuur and shorlog vendors.    

The festival grounds can be seen in under an hour, but the fun of Darkhan naadam is to take your time strolling the channels of vendors, people watching, dodging boys eating ice cream cones on horseback, ordering towers of hot naadamiin khuushuur to share with friends, and to sit with a cold drink in your hand and watch the wrestling matches. Running into friends, family, and neighbors is a given. The heat makes hanging around a challenge, but there's always more shade to be had under the cover of a khuushuur tent, and there's always room for more khuushuur.

Horseracing in the provinces can be more exciting when you have a horse and rider to root for. In the countryside it's not only trainers and racing officials who drive alongside racers, but regular spectators as well. But the best place to be for any race is at the finish line, where you can get close enough to crowd around the winning racehorse to swipe at its sweaty neck and flank for good luck.

While province naadam festivals lack the magnitude and grandeur of Ulaanbaatar's celebrations, they give visitors a more intimate experience of the sights, tastes, and action. For next year's naadam, after you've secured your tickets to the National Naadam Festival's opening and closing ceremonies, head out to the countryside and experience naadam in the provinces. If you aren't too hung over from too much khuushuur and airag, you should still have plenty of time to make it back to the city and get changed into your best summer deel and make it to Central Stadium.

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Why.this.gimmick? | The UB Post

Foreign media is abuzz about what3words, but what's behind the hype and why doesn't the average Mongolian know about it?

I wrote a rant about the ridiculously poorly researched stories being covered by tons of foreign media about Mongolia “adopting” the what3words app. Bad reporting has got me fired up to be better about writing Mongolia stories for  news outlets outside of Mongolia.

(3/25/20) As the post was deleted by my editor shortly after it was published...

Why.this.gimmick?

Creeping its way into international media and viral news is the story of Mongolia abandoning its existing address system and "adopting" the addressing system of the what3words app nationwide.

What3words is an online application that assigns a three-word "address" to any location on the planet based on GPS coordinates, with addresses like crass.liver.atomic and bliss.teeth.exams. The address for The UB Post office on what3words is puzzles.unites.confident, a less than reassuring moniker for any newspaper.

The foreign stories paint this move, something said to take place next month despite not being covered at all in local media, as an exciting development in the digital revolution and some kind of groundbreaking gift to the nation.

It just sounds like clever marketing to me.

To set the record straight, addresses do exist in Mongolia. There are certainly gaps in the system in ger districts surrounding cities like Ulaanbaatar, Darkhan, and Erdenet, where people are less concerned about having a tidy address than they are about having access to fresh water, heat, paved roads, and sewage systems. Rural settlements are planned in much the same way ger districts are, with residences and new businesses sprawling out from the soum's central local government structures and major marketplaces. Nomadic herders may have two to four camps a year, and those locations change based on environmental conditions from season to season. Mailing addresses are not a priority.

The house numbers and the addresses every urban resident currently has are not disappearing next month to be replaced by nouveau haiku.

Some stories have mentioned that the what3words system could help nomadic herders open bank accounts. Herders have been able to open bank accounts without having permanent residences for over 25 years, since commercial banks first opened here and herders still outnumbered city folk.

The stories suggest that residential mail delivery exists here already, but that there are postal carriers walking the streets and scratching their heads wondering where to find recipients. Residential delivery does not exist unless you pay for premium delivery service from Mongol Post. Mail is delivered to businesses and large organizations, but you won't find mailboxes in Soviet-style block apartment buildings. Sometimes you're lucky to find light bulbs in their stairwells.

Where are these ambulance drivers who are downloading what3words to their data-enabled smart phones to rapidly respond to emergency calls? They don't exist.

Qz.com cites the example of a new address for the U.S. Embassy in Ulaanbaatar, which already has an address that looks as American as apple pie. Their current address starts with the recipient's name, a street and building number, a district, and a city. There's nothing convoluted about that address. The what3words address for the embassy, the one that lands you within three square meters of their heavily guarded entrance:  constants.stuffy.activism. Maybe a fitting replacement actually.

Mongol Post, the nation's postal service provider, is privately owned. While it functions like a public service (beholden to state policy and full of the bureaucracy you'd expect of a Mongolian state agency) it apparently doesn't have to run its decisions to uproot the address system by the public or the nation's lawmakers. Thank goodness the uprooting isn't actually happening, despite what major media outlets like The Guardian reports.

Hopefully no taxpayer money is being funneled into the software Mongol Post will have to purchase from what3words to turn its gibberish into actual GPS coordinates (and to reference them against actual mailing addresses already being used). Thankfully, Mongol Post will get a discounted rate for the software based on Mongolia's socio-economic indicators set by World Bank. If you're going to change the world, make sure you run things by multinational financial institutions first.

With all of this media attention, let's not forget about homegrown efforts to right Mongolia's urban planning mayhem. The Asia Foundation has been working with Ulaanbaatar's residents and city administrators on a comprehensive ger area mapping project since 2012. The effort is a tremendous one. It is very much a citizen-led effort and the project's goals are shaped on ger area resident feedback. The people whose neighborhoods (khoroos) are being mapped decide what makes sense for them and how structured urban planning can enrich their lives. In 2014, after studying data on 87 khoroos in UB's ger districts the website manaikhoroo.mn was launched, making interactive maps available in Mongolian and English.

The site is just a start, and has the potential to expand into a more user friendly resource. For now you can find maps detailing where public services are available, as well as data about crime and environmental concerns. Streets still have to be labeled, but be reminded, residents determined what information was most valuable to them. The project had many foreign and domestic partners, but was also certainly assisted by what Google has invested in improving the mapping of the city. Data available on Google Maps is considerably more current and detailed than what's now available from what3words.

Despite the headlines, is what3words in Mongolia really meant to improve people's lives or meant to boost profits for a handful of businesses with an elite customer base?

I imagine the what3words plan was locked down in some meetings with local entrepreneurs looking to expand the range of online shopping and delivery services, which have been growing in number in the past two years. The entire pitch must have been about profits. The official announcement of the adoption of what3words on the Mongol Post website is a press release written by what3words, and it  directs those with inquiries to an email address for the British company's media relations department. The press release is not available in Mongolian on the Mongol Post website, which is just as well, since the what3words app isn't yet available in Mongolian anyhow. So, English-speakers around the world have more information about this "pioneering" step Mongolia is going to take than most Mongolians.

Rumor has it that China's omnipresent digital marketplace Alibaba is looking to set up camp in Mongolia. A dedicated delivery address system used just for app based and online businesses - many of which still rely on telephone operators to confirm transactions conducted online - could certainly help Mongol Post pay its monthly what3words bill, but why not just leave it to the app based businesses to invest in the software and try it out first?

The most popular and widely used apps and online data sharing platforms around the world all started out with beta tests and incredibly niche user markets (think Twitter and Facebook). Why has Mongol Post put the country out on the world stage as some kind of backwards, address deprived country that is taking this blind leap into a digital future? This is not how technologically innovative countries put themselves out there. While foreign media outlets are loving the clickbait headline and the imagery of a herder standing outside their ger to wait for a drone delivery, are herders really part of the Amazon Prime demographic?

The Mongol Post logo gives a nod to one of the very first known postal delivery systems in the world, the relay messenger system used by Chinggis Khan at the height of the Mongol Empire. It was brilliant, and it worked. With horses. How is Mongol Post going to make a name for itself by launching this software system next month when their post offices still use handwritten ledgers for every transaction and parcel they handle?

People residing in Mongolia have access to post office boxes, and can also get mail delivered to their closest post office with their name and phone number included in the address. A postal worker gives you a call to let you know a package has arrived, and it sits there and patiently waits for you. It's sort of sweet in a down home kind of way, but there are numerous deterrents to using the services of Mongol Post, aside from the fact that they don't do free residential delivery.

Mailing a small parcel via Mongol Post from Darkhan to Ulaanbaatar can cost three to four times more than what it costs to hand a box with the recipient's phone number written on it to a taxi driver headed to UB. The package that would have cost you 8,000 MNT in postage and taken three days to reach its recipient via Mongol Post costs you 2,000 MNT in the hands of a taxi driver and is delivered to the city in four hours. An extra 2,000 MNT will get the taxi driver to drop it off in the general vicinity of the recipient's front door.

Multitasking taxi drivers are the swift couriers of modern Mongolia. They risk life and limb to courier what they've been entrusted with, flying down the pothole filled roads of our crumbling road network. They practice a code of honor; promising to deliver items safely with no contract signed, just a phone number saved to your phone and a license plate number and vehicle description remembered.

When renegade transport outpaces and outperforms the very much analog national postal delivery service, I say use.what.works.

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AAPI HISTORY & ACTIVISM PRIMER

I've compiled this very short list of resources, notable activists, and essential reading for people who are looking for an introduction or access to more information about Asian American identity, politics, and activism. There is SO much more out there, but many of these links should help point you to deeper investigation and exploration. I'm hopeful that there will be a more widespread re-emergence of Asian American activism as Americans keep shaking off the dust of apathy and isolation.

This is only the most general of skeletal beginnings, but I hope it’s a useful starting point for people.

RESOURCES ONLINE:

 "Unnoticed Struggle", Elaine Low

https://jaclseattle.wordpress.com/resources/jacl-materials/

This booklet is a great starting point and also includes a great reading list to explore different eras and issues that Asian American activists have been actively engaged in.

"Initially set out to assemble this booklet in an attempt to form something of a comprehensive history of Asian American civil rights, but soon realized that our history cannot be smartly categorized by ethnicity and then chronologically listed and detailed. Our history is full of overlaps and parallel struggles. Our history is not neat. And to so many Asian Americans coming of age today, it is unfamiliar."

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Asian American and Pacific Islander Movements

http://culturalpolitics.net/social_movements/asian_american

This is a really great list of online resources (reading, active organizations, and events) to learn more about today's Asian American activism and our history.

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Left or Right of the Color Line: Asian Americans and the Racial Justice Movement

http://www.changelabinfo.com/research-paper/left-or-right-of-the-color-line/#.V0UBmOQmnHQ

This is a really interesting report from 2012 on a survey that was conducted regarding Asian American identity and politics. It's really informative concerning why there's so little organized action taking place now compared to 40 years ago. We have so much to fix within our community before we can get back on the right track again.

"On the question of Asian American identity, participants expressed concern that the Asian American construct represented an awkward coalition of ethnic subgroups, and not a racial group with shared experiences and political interests. People said that deep disparities in power and access within the Asian American or API coalition created too much fragmentation to allow for meaningful political unity."

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Three Things Asian Americans Owe to the Civil Rights Movement

http://www.racefiles.com/2013/07/31/three-things-asian-americans-owe-to-the-civil-rights-movement/

A good summary of some of the key issues that Asian Americans have participated in and benefited from (the headline is a bit misleading) as a result of the civil rights movement. Our issues have always been linked and Asian American experiences can't be separated from African American experiences in some of these instances.

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Asian American Movement 1968

http://aam1968.blogspot.com/

A really informative timeline and archive of documents, interviews, and accounts of the Asian American movement from 1968 to 1973. It would be awesome to see some new life pumped into this project.

"The Asian Community Center History Group put together this collection of reprinted newspaper articles, mimeographed pamphlets and black and white photographs from the period. We hope to document this unique movement by letting the reader peruse the original writings and concerns of that time. Our collection was donated from the personal keepsakes of many individuals who saved the materials for forty years, preserving their collections for historical value."

20 Asian-American Organizations You Need to Know

http://www.diversitybestpractices.com/news-articles/20-asian-american-organizations-you-need-know

A diverse list of Asian American organizations addressing a number of social justice, legal, networking and community issues.

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The Secret History of South Asian and African American Solidarity

http://blackdesisecrethistory.org/

A history that shouldn't be secret! A great primer on the influence, activism, and presence of South Asians and South Asian Americans on America's history of civil rights and social justice movements around the world.

"South Asians and African Americans have been standing up for each other for over a century. These are the histories we were never taught."

 AAPI ACTIVISTS WHO PAVED THE WAY:

Grace Lee Boggs

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/06/us/grace-lee-boggs-detroit-activist-dies-at-100.html?_r=0

Sadly there is more about her passing than her accomplishments to be read online, but this NYT obituary piece has great links to interviews, books, and other resources about her life and her work.

“I think that too much of our emphasis on struggle has simply been in terms of confrontation and not enough recognition of how much spiritual and moral force is involved in the people who are struggling,” Ms. Boggs told Bill Moyers in a PBS interview in 2007. “We have not emphasized sufficiently the cultural revolution that we have to make among ourselves in order to force the government to do differently.”

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Richard Aoki

http://sfbayview.com/2012/08/fred-ho-refutes-the-claim-that-richard-aoki-was-an-fbi-informant/

He's a controversial and complicated figure, and his name has been dragged in the mud, but he was hugely influential in the 1960s and beyond. The accusation that he was an FBI informant is ill-founded, poorly supported, and came from outside of the community that Aoki was deeply committed to. The smear campaign shouldn't obscure his contributions to revolutionary actions for social justice in America.

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Yuri Kochiyama

http://reappropriate.co/2014/06/rest-in-power-yuri-kochiyama-a-civil-rights-hero-who-inspired-a-generation/

Another activist who is no longer with us. Yuri was a true badass, and entered into activism when she was a mom (double bonus Badass points). Her political and social activism was shaped by her understanding of the Asian American experience as a Japanese American who spent time in an Arkansas internment camp. She understood how the African American civil rights movement was changing the nation for everyone and she became actively involved in it.

"... And I think today part of the missions would be to fight against racism and polarization, learn from each others’ struggle, but also understand national liberation struggles — that ethnic groups need their own space and they need their own leaders. They need their own privacy. But there are enough issues that we could all work together on."

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Fred Korematsu

http://articles.latimes.com/2005/apr/01/local/me-korematsu1

Fred Korematsu was deeply committed to justice and had nerves of steel to take on the U.S. government for decades to fight the internment of Japanese Americans during WWII, resisting it from the start, and was integral in the review of how the Supreme Court responded to the injustice and in the payment of reparations.

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Larry Itliong

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/19/us/larry-itliong-forgotten-filipino-labor-leader.html

Larry Itliong was crucial to the farmworker movement that we all know Cesar Chavez for. He and other Filipino community and labor leaders, like Philip Vera Cruz, have been written out of that history and need to be remembered. Their struggle was one of race, class, human rights, and belonging.

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Wong Kim Ark

http://www.advancingjustice-la.org/blog/wong-kim-ark-constitutional-citizenship-asian-americans

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2015/08/31/donald-trump-meet-wong-kim-ark-the-chinese-american-cook-who-is-the-father-of-birthright-citizenship/#.V0UVCOQmnHQ

A bit of an accidental activist, Wong's story occasionally creeps into today's stories about immigration and citizenship in America. His case was pivotal and laid the groundwork for the rights of the children of immigrants to have access to American citizenship.

"Wong's name has been coming up with greater frequency since some Republican state leaders announced plans earlier this month to challenge the 14th Amendment, which involves introducing bills in various states in hopes of forcing another Supreme Court review. Their goal is a reinterpretation that would lead to the denial of citizenship to children of undocumented immigrants."

 ESSENTIAL READING:

"Strangers from a Different Shore: A History of Asian Americans" by Ronald Takaki

http://www.indiebound.org/book/9780316831307

http://articles.latimes.com/1989-09-24/books/bk-121_1_asian-americans

"Takaki's aim is to correct the Euro-centric tilt favored by the majority of American social historians, to render visible Asians' contributions to the making of America, and to firmly establish the pluralism of American culture. His scope is vast: He chronicles the very distinctive immigration odysseys of the Chinese, the Japanese, the Koreans, the Filipinos, the Asian Indians, the Vietnamese, the Hmong. And his method is extraordinary, seaming together meticulous scholarship, impassioned analysis, popular culture and personal memoir. The result is a compelling and timely document about America's changing responses to the threat of de-Europeanization."

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"Legacy to Liberation: Politics and Culture of Revolutionary Asian Pacific America" edited by Fred Ho

https://www.akpress.org/legacytoliberation.html

http://apimboston.org/legacy-liberation-politics-and-culture-revolutionary-asian-pacific-america

"Legacy to Liberation is an ambitious anthology which attempts to fill the void of Asian American historical texts documenting the revolutionary movements of the late '60s and '70s onward. While it fails to live up to its lofty claims, it is nonetheless a worthwhile read for anyone interested in the Asian American movement."

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"Asian American Dreams: The Emergence of an American People" by Helen Zia

http://us.macmillan.com/asianamericandreams/helenzia

https://www.nytimes.com/books/00/03/05/reviews/000305.05sengupt.html

"The main body of the book begins with a history of Asians in America, chronicling the lynching of Chinese in late-19th-century California and the restriction of immigration by the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882. Some of the details are astonishing, but they would have benefited from citations. Zia asserts, for instance, that Japanese-American soldiers were among the first to liberate Dachau but never got credit, and that at home more than 4,000 Japanese-Americans were punished when they refused to take 'loyalty tests,' forswearing their allegiance to the emperor of Japan."

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"The Woman Warrior: A Girlhood Among Ghosts" by Maxine Hong Kingston

http://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/93016/the-woman-warrior-by-maxine-hong-kingston/9780679721888/

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/memoir_week/2007/03/the_woman_warrior_at_30.html

"Maxine Hong Kingston's The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts was published 30 years ago last fall, at a time when Chinese-Americans evoked few associations in the American consciousness other than laundry, chop suey, and Bruce Lee. Steeped in Cantonese legend and folklore, filled with unfamiliar phrases and untranslatable expressions, it won rapturous, if occasionally baffled, praise from mainstream critics; the Washington Post, speaking for many, called it 'strange, sometimes savagely terrifying, and, in the literal sense, wonderful.' Three decades later, it has become a contemporary classic, taught in thousands of high school and college classes every year. When I query my first-year college students about books most of them have read, The Woman Warrior falls somewhere between Beloved, Romeo and Juliet, and The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants."

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"Immigrant Acts: On Asian American Cultural Politics" by Lisa Lowe

https://www.dukeupress.edu/immigrant-acts

https://muse.jhu.edu/article/2347

"The appearance of Lisa Lowe’s Immigrant Acts: On Asian American Cultural Politics is a landmark event for Asian American studies. Her achievement can be summarized by pointing to Immigrant Acts’ three hallmark features: its ability to carry out a study of Asian American culture that is interdisciplinary in more than just name, its demonstration of the integral place and function of Asian Americans in American history and culture, and its exploration of Asian immigration as a site that condenses the contradiction between global capitalism and representative democracy which, the book argues, is a fundamental feature of American society and politics."

[wontoncruelty]

On Sundays I’m stuck at home working, but Agii and Terra go out to the countryside for little adventures.

Next week we’ll be in Seoul, and Terra and Agii will have vastly different adventures together making use of more advanced technology and shinier, faster things. I’m thrilled and grateful that she has access to both worlds and experiences.

Most of all, I’m grateful to have Agii by my side in raising this kiddo to love the world around her and - in a very Mongolian way - to take nothing for granted.

[wontoncruelty]

What brought you to Mongolia?

I’ve written about it quite a bit. You’ll have to dig in the “previous posts”. You’ll hit the jackpot with posts from 2012 and 2013.