Planning to Move Planets: Thoughts on Returning to the US

One friend of mine described it as "cultureshock" to come back home after being abroad for an extended period of time. And, I must admit, I've got a mix of feelings about returning to the States. Here are some of my thoughts.

Caught My Eye: CultureSHOCK Performers

Here are just some examples of the amazing CultureSHOCK performers and (as promised) some of my favorite Asian Americans on Youtube. Enjoy!

Hari Kondabolu

Kelly Tsai

"Unification" (from UNIFICATION 2009) from BROWNSTAR on Vimeo.

"What Type of Asian Are You?" (And Other Problems)

This is part three in a series of posts on Asian Americans, inspired by and in concert with a charity event being put on by the Columbia student group, Asian American Alliance. Click here to read the first and second posts in the series: "Who is an Asian American?" and "'Will All The Asian Americans Please Stand Up?': The Politics of Self-Identification" and make sure to join in the conversation!

So, we've found our Asian Americans. They are on board to identify as people that are politically and culturally distinct, but who want to organize and represent themselves as a group. Where do we go from here?

Take a moment, first, to envision who you view as an "Asian American" based on just the term alone. What does this person look and sound like? Where are they located? What type of job are they doing?

Who Is An Asian American?

This weekend, Asian American Alliance (a campus group that I am a part of) is putting on their annual charity culture show, called CultureSHOCK. It's going to be an electrifying event with a great lineup including Hari Kondabolu, Kelly Tsai, Brown Star, and many other Asian American performers and designers as part of our fashion show. All the proceeds will go to supporting CAAAV, the Committee Against Anti-Asian Violence. As with all of our work, we'll be working to highlight the broad variety of cultures and politics that exist in the Asian American community. Simple, you say? I think not.

Throughout the planning of this event, we've tried to encompass as much material as is possible to put into one show about Asian Americans - and it raises a lot of intense questions. Who gets to perform? What type of representation do we want to lay out there? How political do we get and how do we get that political message through the jovial/de-politicized atmosphere of a cultural showcase? And then there's the nagging question that undergirds our club's entire existence. The one that the Facebook event for CultureSHOCK puts with a little more vulgarity than I will in this post: "what the f*** is an Asian American?"

While the show will give you some ideas in its jampacked all-star lineup, I want to put down some answers this week in plain text form. Let's begin:

Who is an Asian American?