Tag Archives: Culture

THE MISREPRESENTED AND HYPERSEXUALIZED LATINA

Growing up, I always struggled with finding a stable identity of my own. I knew I was Latina, but I felt like I could only relate to Latina women in my family and never the ones on television and film who show how an “actual” Latina was supposed to be and act. In television programs, terms like “exotic” became the norm when describing tanned skinned, seemingly typical Latinas. Yet, it wasn’t until adolescence, when I began religiously immersing myself in pop culture, that I started to realize just how pervasive and damaging this one idea of what a Latina is actually was. Continue reading →

POP AND PREJUDICE: NOT ALL FANS ARE CREATED EQUAL

cynthia1

G-Dragon, the lead singer of K-pop boy band Big Bang, dons blackface while dressed up as André 3000.

My favorite thing to do when I want to take a break from the “real world” – work, school, politics, the news, etc. – is to immerse myself in non-serious things I love. For me, these things mainly include music and pop culture: specifically, boybands. Continue reading →

REMEMBERING MANDELA: THE STRUGGLE FOR HIS LEGACY

Nelson Mandela’s memorial service earlier this month met an outpouring of kind words in commemoration. Dignitaries from Barack Obama to Ban ki-Moon to Raúl Castro struggled to convey the significance of his life while still capturing a glimpse of his humanity along the way. Countless others around the globe offered tributes upon learning of his death. Heads of state and an infinite reel of media voices honored his passing, entirely unsurprising for a man so loved by so many. Some spoke from grief, some in celebration of his life. A few politicians casually treated his death as a cheap political opportunity (see Rick Santorum comparing the liberation struggle against apartheid to the liberation struggle against the Affordable Care Act). Other voices, however, were even more perverse. Continue reading →

IDENTITY LOST IN LANGUAGE

I was out shopping one day when a woman walked up to me and started casually speaking to me in Spanish. I stared at her for a moment and then quickly shifted my gaze around her to see if maybe my mom was close enough to hear my call, answer the woman’s question, and spare me the embarrassment of yet another “Lo siento. No hablo Español.” Continue reading →

BUT WHERE ARE YOU REALLY FROM?

This article is the first part of a series on the field of Asian American studies.

To most people, being asked, “Where are you from?” seems innocuous enough. Someone is just trying to get to know you a little bit better. Asian Americans, however, have almost universally had a different experience with this question. At first we’ll answer with “California,” “New York,” or a variety of other places. But then comes the dreaded follow-up question: “But where are you really from?” It becomes immediately clear that there’s a certain answer that is expected, and a failure to comply will just result in more questions.

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FROM IVY TO INMATE: CONNECTING THE DOTS BETWEEN RACE AND CLASS

Concrete walls, bars over the windows and a lot of black faces. In September, I taught a course with other Princeton students at a male youth correctional facility in New Jersey that fit this description. For a few hours every Friday, I could get over everything that made me uncomfortable – except the black faces, because they knew I was black, too. Continue reading →

Elementary, My Dear Watson: Representation of POC in Television

From the exchange of hostile attacks and impassioned defenses over Lena Dunham’s Girls and its lack of minority characters, to the controversy over the delegation of barbarian and slave roles to mainly non-white actors on HBO’s Game of Thrones, conversations about the representations of people of color (POC) on screen have been heating up. Continue reading →