Asian American / Asian Research Institute
The City University of New York
EXACTLY 50 YEARS AGO, as the first English edition of Brazilian educator Paulo Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed was being published in the United States, his friend and fellow educator-activist Richard Shaull noted that Freire’s analysis applied to the U.S. as well as Brazil: “Our advanced technological society is rapidly making objects of us and … Read more
武侠 电影 Wuxia Flick Produced by Corona Studios, Unlimited, 2020. Trailer: A decade before, the world in 2009 Was divided into diseases of pigs and birds— Split into desires with stunted names Like SARS, AIDS, FLU that flew From tongue to lavender tongue, that entered through moist boba pearls Of saliva, blood & unprotected sex, … Read more
All poems are translated from Chinese to English by the author.
Isamu Noguchi (1904-1988) was an acclaimed international sculptor, designer, and landscape architect. A Japanese American, Noguchi was born in Los Angeles but raised in Japan and studied pre-medicine at Columbia University, New York. In 1942, he founded Nisei Writers and Artists Mobilization for Democracy, and voluntarily entered a U.S. internment camp in Arizona during World … Read more
CHINESE PARENTING IS IN MANY SENSES strikingly similar to porcelain making. One manipulates the clay as one wishes; yet after the firing, only few turn out exactly the same as desired. Legend has it that the ancient Japanese figured out how to repair the cracked pieces of ceramic vases at an enormous cost, which they … Read more
IN 1962, I SKETCHED at the Western Suburbs Zoo in Beijing and saw two North American bison for the first time. Bison are huge in size, brown and black, and move slowly in a space that is not much larger than their bodies. They are incompatible with the zoo, an artificial environment. When sketching, … Read more