dna

Just heard about the mess that YA author Maggie Tokuda-Hall has been dealing with. tl;dr, Her publisher offered her the chance to be part of an initiative that would’ve put her work in a lot more stores and libraries. It’s an initiative specifically aimed at amplifying Asian voices… but only if she removed the word “racism” from her author’s note. On a book about the Japanese internment.

I am very glad she rejected this offer, and I 100% agree with her that this is pure cowardice. I’m appalled at Scholastic – or any other publisher who’s doing this but whose authors can’t take the risk of speaking out. This is the kind of crap that marginalized writers have to deal with all the time – and it is also how fascism takes root:  “just business” decisions that perpetuate injustice, systematic erasure of targeted groups from their own damn stories, institutions choosing to do what’s easy over what’s right.

(I have been very fortunate to never have a publisher do this to me. Plenty of disrespectful bs from institutions and individuals within the industry, but never from the people who signed my checks. I’m also somewhat insulated from the book ban bullshit because my work is genre and isn’t aimed at kids – though that’s coming, of course. Fascists don’t stop until they are stopped.)

㋡🥀

Never trust a soul in Night City.

FLEABAG | season 2, episode 4.

(So, I actually wrote this a while back but never posted it here. In light of the recent events surrounding the shootings in Georgia, I thought it would be the right time to post this.)

The Internet is a weird and oftentimes wonderful place. It allows people from different countries, cultures, backgrounds to come together, communicate, and share interests. However, given that anyone anywhere can go online and join a community, sometimes unconscious biases/ignorance can spring to the forefront and lead to discrimination and prejudice.

What we’re going to talk about today is an all-too-common yet rarely talked about form of racism: anti-Asian bigotry.

“But Asians don’t experience racism! You guys are model minorities!”

No, that’s not true.

“Well, even if you experience racism… it’s not as bad as what other minorities go through!”

Let’s please not make “who experiences racism the most” a competition. Pitting minorities against one another does nothing except hurt people from vulnerable groups while simultaneously allowing those in power to avoid real responsibility for addressing racism.

In this essay, we’ll be tackling:

·  The Myth of the “Model Minority”

·  The Reality of Anti-Asian Racism

·  The Co-Opting of Asian Narratives in Media

· The Subtle Bigotry in Online Spaces

·  The Simple Things Allies Can Do to Combat Anti-Asian Racism in Online Spaces

104＊.゜

train cafe

勝田台にあったトレインカフェ♩ 去年の年末で辞めてしまったようです