Asian American / Asian Research Institute
The City University of New York
Midnight January 25, 2020, Asian Americans usher in the Lunar New Year of the Metal Rat—representing new beginnings. Two months later, those new beginnings will become misfortunes, in particular for the small businesses of New York City’s Chinatowns. Over the next two weeks Lunar New Year celebrations continued across the city, quieter than usual—brought on … Read more
WHEN YOU REACH A CERTAIN AGE, you are forced to confront your own mortality. As I sit at home with my family in our Chelsea Hotel apartment in New York City, Covid-19 is infiltrating cities around the globe. One thing about isolating yourself is that it gives you plenty of time to think and reflect. … Read more
PANDEMIC BRINGS US TO PANDEMONIUM, not the center of Hell—Pandemonium in Milton’s Paradise Lost—but tumult, chaos, the upending of our quotidian lives due to the infernal virus, on which we have conferred the somewhat majestic title, Novel Corona Virus-19. Normalcy is a far-away country, and even with all its attendant and even discordant notes, seems … Read more