442: The Woman at the Heart of Two Chinese American Food Empires
Cecilia Chiang (1920-2020) was spent more than four decades shaping the Chinese American food landscape at a time when immigrant Asian female entrepreneurs were extremely rare and built a multimillion-dollar restaurant empire. Her youth spent with Shanghainese family in Wuxi, Chiang found herself on the run in 1937 owing to the Second Sino-Japanese War. Meeting…
442: Bow Down to the Queen—of Chinese Food
Today, Chinese restaurants are inescapable in the American culinary landscape. But it was not so when Sylvia Cheng (1915-2022), better known as Madame Wu, began her business. After moving to the USA during the Second World War, Cheng was disappointed with the quality of Cantonese food in the USA. After moving to Los Angeles with…
Asian massage therapists targeted by ‘classist and racist’ crackdown in Newmarket
In Newmarket, Asian-owned massage parlours and therapists are finding themselves targeted by surveillance and police harassment. Last year, Newmarket passed a bylaw that required all massage businesses to obtain a new type of license, and as of June, this bylaw requires them to prove all massage therapist employees are registered massage therapists (RMT). Between these…
Pakistan aid efforts in Canada call for solidarity, reparations
Pakistanis living in Canada have watched the flooding of their homeland in horror, and worked to create solidarity initiatives to provide relief. Countless people have found themselves unable to contact family in Pakistan, amid electricity and telecommunications outages. Now questions have arisen over Canada’s contribution to climate change, as its CO2 emissions are more than…
Carleton University PhD candidate reunites with his husband after two years of detention in Turkey
After 2 years of detention in Turkey, Carleton University PhD candidate Cihan Erdal is now reunited with his husband, Ömer Ongun, Erdal was initially imprisoned under on charges of inciting violent protests six years prior, before those being released on bail under constant watch when the charges were proven to be false. After walking hours…
For queer Asians, community means family
After more than two years of physical distancing due to the COVID-19 pandemic many queer Asians feel that need to come together more urgently than ever before and are coming out in force. In Montreal, they gathered in July for the Lotus Festival, the city’s inaugural queer Asian art and culture celebration. In Toronto, they…
How having queer folks in power at non-queer media organizations can shift coverage
In 2020, Viet Tran launched the magazine Sticky Rice, which focuses on Asian Canadian issues, in the thick of the COVID-19 pandemic and a rising wave of anti-Asian racism. A psychiatrist by training, Tran is the editor-in-chief of this successful publication, and we sat down with him to discuss how being a gay Asian man…
Asian spa workers reflect on the Atlanta shootings, one year later
On the first anniversary of the Atlanta spa shootings which left eight people dead, six of whom were Asian women and spa workers, massage work has been shoved in the spotlight. Despite the longstanding stigmatism of massage businesses due to their association with sex work, many spa workers don’t engage in sex work. Numerous spa…
Ruth Lor Malloy
Ruth Lor Malloy (née Lor), journalist, writer, activist (born 4 August 1932, in Brockville, ON). Malloy was a key figure in fighting against discrimination in Ontario in the 1950s (see Prejudice and Discrimination in Canada). She participated in the high profile Dresden restaurant sit-in of 1954. In 1973, she published the first English-language guidebook to…
LGBTQ+ Asians Look to Michigan Rave Scene for Acceptance and Found Family
The latest group driving the rave renaissance has been steadily full of Asian faces, including many queer Asians. These partygoers find community, joy and acceptance in the scene, which, for the queer Asian demographic, is a communal experience that harks back to collectivist cultures that highly value group gatherings. Many Asian ravers can be spotted…
Sprouting seeds of hope: How a garden united Montreal’s Chinese diaspora
Creating a community environment of sharing and increasing awareness of food security and urban sustainability are the aims of Green Chinatown Montreal (GCM). Founded in 2011 in Montreal’s Chinatown the GDM brought together multiple generations of Chinese-Canadians and helped them reconnect with nature and their agricultural roots. Today it finds itself in whatever space is…
Racism led to a rise in anti-Asian hate in the pandemic. What the community wants to see in Canada’s next leader
The COVID-19 pandemic has brought about many challenges and disruptions and among them was a spike in anti-Asian racism. Asian-Canadians seniors faced a surge of attacks and many Asian-Canadian businesses were the victim of vandalism. In this article we hear from members of the Chinese-Canadian community on their concerns regarding this issue, access to health-care,…
Vegetarianism Has Deep Spiritual Roots in Asian Cultures – Yet Many Asian Vegetarians Report Feeling Judged, Attacked, and Dismissed
Vegetarianism runs deep in many Asian cultures and adopting a vegetarian lifestyle is on the rise worldwide. Yet, alongside this rise there has also been a disturbing rise in racist and xenophobic behaviour among vegetarian communities. I talked to multiple Asians about their experiences relating to their vegetarian diets and challenges from their own communities…
De l’adoption à l’immigration, les défis de santé mentale dans la communauté asiatique
Pour beaucoup des asiatiques, il peut être difficile de discuter de santé mentale pour de multiples raisons. Mais à cause de racisme souffert pendant la pandémie, cet enjeu a été mis en lumière. L’adoption, l’immigration et l’adaptation à la société d’accueil sont tous des réalités qui affectée la santé mentale des asiatiques. Cet article a…
Sauver les femmes afghanes : une instrumentalisation occidentale
Face à la crise du logement qui sévit à Montréal, des citoyens redoublent d’efforts pour changer la donne et faire valoir leurs droits. Ici on voir ce qui se passe à Avec les états-unis ont déclaré le retrait complet des troupes américaines de l’Afghanistan pour le 31 août 2021, et que les talibans maintenant contrôlent le…
Dialogue avec la communauté sino-montréalaise
Dans le cadre de l’exposition Dialogue avec la communauté sino-montréalaise, j’ai écrit une série de textes qui abordent des thèmes majeurs qui touchent notre communauté – les nouveaux arrivants, l’art sino-montréalais, l’aménagement urbain du Quartier chinois, et la résistance de notre communauté contre l’adversité. J’ai consulté beaucoup de gens issus de la communauté qui ont…
The Revolutionary Anger of Asian Women
For Asian women in the diaspora, the denial of our anger exists at the toxic intersection of sexism and the model minority stereotype, enforced on two fronts by white Western culture and from within our own communities. The prohibition of our rage actively endangers us. But attempts to suppress our anger also reveal its power: it…
Plan A Presents: The Rebel Minority
My millionth sincere attempt to become “the worst minority ot all time”, The Rebel Minority is my monthly column. Published on the first Wednesday of every month, I perform countercultural analyses of various societal and lifestyle phenomena in a sometimes light, sometimes serious tone. The goal of this column is to break the veneer of…
Navigating Capitalist Mandates of Happiness and Collectivist Fears of Shame
Using some of my own experiences with university applications, I analyze North American and Asian cultural frameworks with regards to dealing with failure. I perform an intersectional societal analysis to explore how failure is dealt with in a capitalist society that relies on exploitation to function and compare it to a collectivist society that requires…
Raving Asians Make the Bass Drop: The New Rave Culture
As part of an investigation into the cultural phenomenon of raves within the Asian diaspora, I talked to Asians in the United States, Canada and Australia to learn about their experiences in the subculture and investigate the reasons behind their popularity. Young Asian ravers, experienced Asian ravers who have been in the scene for decades…