January 2012
Our favorite stories from 2011
- YouTube phenomeon Jimmy Wong
- World champion paralympic ambassador Anjali Forber-Pratt
- Visual artist Sharon Inahara on “The Day We Left”, a Japanese American Internship exhibit
- From our APA Popwatch series: Local youth reflect upon Vincent Chin: Vincent Who?
- Simon Young’s Angry APA Minute on the Slants trademark debacle
- Purvi Shah’s Angry APA Minute
- Sarika Mehta’s “Monkey Brains” Angry APA Minute
Listen to the entire January 2012 APA Compass program
February 2012
- Cultural anthropologist, Dr. Linda Isako Angst, speaks about Japanese and Hapa issues
- “Island World” trilogy author, Prof. Gary Okihiro, talks about Asian-Americans in Hawaii and the mainland
- Ralph Puget, award winning Filipion-American performance artist from Portland State University
- Sarika Mehta’s “My Ambiguous Ethnicity” Angry APA Minute
March 2012
In celebration of International Women’s Day
- Tiger Mom (and Yale Law professor) Amy Chua and her book, “Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother”, instigated a worldwide parenting debate
- Thanhha Lai, author of “Inside Out and Back Again” based on her life as a ten-year-old immigrant, won the Newbery Honor and National Book Award
- Goldann Salazar and Musa Ahmed share autobiographical stories from their performance of “Race Monologues” at Lewis and Clark College.
April 2012
- Provocative roundtable discussion about the Coalition of Communities of Color’s “Unsettling Report” on the Asian Pacific Islander Community in Multnomah County, Oregon. Surprisingly, the local API community is worse off than that of Seattle or the nation, and we’ll discuss why with Prof. Ann Curry-Stevens, June Arima Schumann, and Rev. Joseph Santos-Lyons.
- Catherine Chung, Granta New Voice and author of “Forgotten Country”
- Samip Mallick, president of the South Asian American Digital Archive (SAADA) which documents the early immigration by South Asians into Oregon and other little known stories of the community in the United States.
May 2012
- Kilong Ung shares emotional stories of how he survived the Khmer Rouge genocide and what he did for revenge.
- Anupama Jain tells us about how the city of Schenectady, New York was actively recruiting Indo-Guyanese into their city, saying “Quite frankly, you’re an opportunity for us. We are very much looking for a new ethnic group.”
- We also interview Samhita Mukhopadhyay, feminist blogger and author of “Outdated: Why Dating is Ruining Your Love Life.”
June 2012
- Investigative reporter Gregory Nokes, who reveals the story of the murder of 31 or 34 Chinese gold miners in Eastern Oregon in “Massacred for Gold: The Chinese in Hell’s Canyon”
- Dilruba Ahmed, award winning author of collection of poems “Dhaka Dust”
- Anne Cherian, author of “The Invitation”
- Congresswoman Judy Chu, who speaks about the glass ceiling in government and other Asian Pacific Islander issues.
July 2012
- Comedian and community organizer Hari Kondabolu, who blends comedy and activism in his extremely entertaining style.
- John Jung, author of Sweet and Sour: Life in Chinese Family Restaurants, tells us about how he and Madame Chiang Kai-Shek both grew up in the same small Georgia town.
- Professor Vivek Shandas of Urban Studies at Portland State University, on environmental racism affecting Portland’s immigrant communities. (rebroadcast from 11/2011)
August 2012
Our annual music show
- Kiran Ahluwalia, an award winning singer of ancient Persian and Punjabi Ghazals
- Herb Ohta, Jr., the Hawaiian ukulele virtuoso who visits with us and local elementary students
- Bhi Bhiman, an exciting new singer songwriter from San Francisco, who’s creating cross-cultural folk music
September 2012
Back to School
- Our affirmative action roundtable was inspired by the upcoming Fisher v The University of Texas supreme court case, in which a white female student claims she was denied admission to the university due to a race-conscious admissions policy. The panelists include
- * Tricia Brand, Associate Dean of Students, Director of Multicultural Affairs, Lewis and Clark College
- * Dr. Toeutu Faaleavam, Director of the McNair Scholars Program, Portland State University
- * Prof. Yoon Pak, Associate Professor of Education Policy, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
- An Interview with Professor Karthick Ramakrishnan of Polysci at UC Riverside
- An audio postcard from the 2012 Asian-American Youth Leadership Conference
Listen to the entire September 2012 APA Compass show
October 2012
- Graphic novelist GB Tran
- From our APA Popwatch series:
- An audio postcard from the Asian American Youth Leadership Conference
- Sara Onitsuka‘s APA Minute “Visiting Japan as a Japanese-American”
- Anne Cherian, author of “The Invitation” (rebroadcast from June 2012)
Listen to the entire October 2012 APA Compass show
November 2012
APAs in Politics
- Pulitzer Prize winning journalist, Jose Antonio Vargas, who recently came out as an undocumented immigrant in order to break the stereotypes and advance the conversation around US immigration policy.
- Kushlani de Soyza hosts a roundtable discussion with local APA leaders, Helen Ying and Joseph Santos-Lyons, on APAs and politics.
- We highlight the 1882 Project, which successfully pushed for Congress to apologize for the Chinese Exclusion Act.
- This month’s Angry APA Minute comes to us from the local librarian and writer, Linda Ueki Absher, who tires of granting the “Asian Seal of Approval” and proclaims, “Keep Portland White!“
December 2012
Three internationally known personalities – one artist, one musician, and one athlete.
- Jorge Cham writes and illustrates his popular comic “Piled Higher and Deeper (PhD comics)”, drawing from his experiences at Stanford and Caltech.
- Rupa Marya, lead singer and director of the band, Rupa and the April Fishes, tells us about the inspiration for their third album, “Build”: people all around the world who are waking up and speaking up against the abuse of power.
- Basketball phenom, Jeremy Lin, spoke with us during his recent visit to Portland. Jeremy Lin, with his outstanding play, unusual backstory, and humility, generated the global phenomena known as “LIN-sanity”!
- Kushlani de Soyza’s Angry APA Minute, “White Christmas – a Rant”
APA Compass 