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Original Offenders: Larry Shinoda

  • November 25, 2011 11:46 pm

What do the 1963 Corvette Stingray, Mako Shark I and II, the Boss 302 and 429 Mustangs, Jeep Grand Cherokee, the Corvair Super Spyder and even the Goodyear Blimp have in common? They were all the creations of Japanese American automobile designer Lawrence (Larry) Shinoda.

Born in 1930 in Los Angeles, Shinoda was interned with his family at Manzanar during World War II. Later, he built hot rods and became involved in the then-burgeoning drag race culture in Southern California. In 1955, he won the first National Hot Rod Association Nationals.

Thus, began a life-long affair with cars and positions at Ford, Packard and GM—ultimately leading to his work on concept cars that would give birth to the 1963 Corvette Sting Ray, which would secure Shinoda’s reputation as one of the most innovative automobile designers in the business.  Read more...

Original Offenders: Dr. David Ho

  • November 3, 2011 12:12 am

Today marks the 59th birthday of Dr. David Ho, the Taiwanese American AIDS researcher who pioneered the use of protease inhibitors in HIV-infected patients and other treatments against AIDS, prompting Time Magazine to name him “The Man of the Year” in 1996 and “The Man who Could Beat AIDS” in 2010.

The Taiwanese-born Ho immigrated to Los Angeles at age 12 and grew up to pursue a career in medicine; choosing to study infectious diseases at the UCLA School of Medicine in the late 1970s/early 1980s. It was during this time, while a resident at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, that he noticed the first reported cases of what would soon come to be known as AIDS in mostly young gay men.  Read more...

Happy Birthday, Freddie!

  • September 6, 2011 2:31 pm

Yesterday was Freddie Mercury’s birthday. Offender Phil previously wrote about the first British Asian rockstar and his influence on the global rock scene in general. Google honored the great icon with their “Google doodle” on their homepage. Check it out, it’s amazing. Happy Birthday, Freddie!  YouTube Preview Image

Original Offenders: Burlesque Hall of Famer–Barbara Yung

  • July 7, 2011 12:10 am

When we think of famous burlesque dancers, names like Gypsy Rose Lee, Dita Von Teese and Josephine Baker may come to mind, but rarely are Asians mentioned. But you can now add Chinese American Barbara Yung to that list. The still alive and kicking 92-year-old Yung was inducted into the Burlesque Hall of Fame last month and received the 2011 Legend of Burlesque Award (click here for an overview of the history of women in color in Burlesque).

Yung had a long career as a burlesque dancer from the early 1940s to the mid-1970s. She got her start as a dancer in San Francisco on the “Chop Suey Circuit” and by 1949 was headlining the “Chinese Girls-a-Peekin’” Revue at Fong Wan’s Club in Oakland and the “China Darlings of 1950” Revue at Fong’s Club Shanghai in San Francisco. By 1952, she was starring in the “Chinatown After Midnight” show at the historic El Rey in Oakland. Yung went on to perform at clubs and cabarets all across the United States from Hawaii to New Orleans at such legendary venues as the Kubla Khan and the Sky Room.  Read more...

Original Offenders: Afong Moy, the First Chinese Woman in America

  • January 25, 2011 12:02 am

The world is so small these days that it’s hard to imagine being the first of your people to visit a foreign country that you’ve had no real contact with or know nothing about. But back in 1834, the idea of an Asian woman coming to America would have been akin to someone today visiting a newly discovered alien civilization on another planet. Yet, that’s what it must have felt like for Afong Moy whom history has recorded as the first Chinese (and most likely first “Oriental”) woman to set foot on U.S. soil. But the circumstances under which Moy became a pioneer was not the most pleasant one.

In 1832, American traders Nathaniel and Frederick Carne made their first trip to China. Up to that point, they had made their fortune importing items from France but realized there was an untapped market in the Orient they could exploit. Their search led them to China where they started to import fancy, but affordable Chinese goods that the growing American middle-class population could afford.

The Carne brothers were also showmen, always searching for ways to better market their business to the public. And they hit upon the ultimate marketing ploy when they decided to go one step farther and import a real live Chinese woman to America for the first time.  Read more...

Original Offenders: Eddie Fung

  • November 11, 2010 12:10 am

A few years ago, Judy Yung, who was my Asian American studies professor back in college, was in Los Angeles to give a talk at the Chinese American Museum. I had been Judy’s teaching assistant for her Asian American Experience class and she had been my faculty advisor when I had taught my own course in Asian American literature at UC Santa Cruz and we’ve kept in touch since I graduated. It was at that event when she introduced me to her “new” husband, Eddie Fung.

Eddie training to be a soldier at Camp Bowie, Texas.

Although Eddie was in his 80s when I met him, there was nothing frail or elderly about him. Judy introduced him to the audience during her talk and I remember he jumped up and moved around and spoke with the energy of a man a third his age about the new book he and Judy had collaborated on that told the story of his life entitled The Adventures of Eddie Fung: Chinatown Kid, Texas Cowboy, Prisoner of War. And among his many amazing accomplishments, he had the distinction of being the only Chinese American soldier (and one of only two Asian Americans) captured by the Japanese during World War II where he was put to work building the Burma-Siam Railroad made famous in the 1957 film The Bridge on the River Kwai.  Read more...

Original Offenders: Christine Sterling

  • August 31, 2010 12:01 am

Los Angeles’ Chinatown is still one of the most vibrant ethnic communities in the country and holds the title as the first Chinese enclave in the United States “owned” by Chinese Americans. But the Chinatown that we know today may not have existed if it hadn’t been for a woman named Christine Sterling.

Sterling (1881-1963) was a Los Angeles socialite (a.k.a. wealthy white woman with time on her hands) who had a passion for local history. She once remarked: “Los Angeles will be forever marked a transient, Orphan city if she allows her roots to rot in a soil of impoverished neglect.”  Read more...

Original Offenders: Ice Ice Desis — Robin Bawa and Manny Malhotra

  • May 18, 2010 4:46 pm

With the National Hockey League playoffs well into the homestretch for the 2009-2010 season,  it serves as an opportune time to spotlight the national sport obsession of our neighbors from the True North. It’s not exaggerating to say that Canada’s pandemic pride  — trite though it may sound — is measured in parallel to its fortunes in hockey(reference the national team’s thrilling overtime gold medal victory over Team USA at February’s Winter Olympics in Vancouver), such is the importance of the sport within the country’s national and global identity.  How much? Would you believe Canadians have 5 on it?

 Read more...

Olympic Gold Offender: Victoria Manalo Draves

  • May 4, 2010 11:30 pm

I’ll take ‘American Icons’ for $2000 please, Alex.

“Jeopardy” host Alex Trebek, outfitted in sporty tweed, picks up the cue card and in his recognizable Northern Ontario-tinged and CBC-honed baritone, presents the video clues while reading the answer in his trademark fashion:

“Despite a racist exclusion policy from her own swimming club, this San Francisco native became the first woman to win two diving gold medals in the same Olympics and in doing so was also the first Asian American to medal in an Olympiad.”

Time winds down and micro-seconds from the buzzer, the third place contestant offers, out of desperation, an obvious crapshoot guess.

“Uh, who is . . . Olga Connolly?”  Read more...

Beers, The Draft and One Big Order of Wang

  • April 28, 2010 3:10 am

Tyson Alualu

Ed Wang

This past weekend in culmination of months of heightened, whispered anticipation, a group of well-into-thirtysomething men, temporarily gave the slip to their families and professions; and relinquished general responsibilities in order to secretly converge and engage in a private, annual male bonding ritual held sacrosanct since high school.

The guys are me and some friends.

No, we’re not Freemasons, militiamen nor are we on the down low.

We met, as we’ve done for the previous 18 years, to watch envelope ourselves in the NFL Draft. We are draftniks — people with a hyper-geekified interest in an annual, sensationalized, non-event event where collegiate football players are selected, round-by-round, by the professional football teams that will employ and pay them large amounts of cash to play a game they played as children.  Read more...

Original Offenders: Marion Wong

  • January 29, 2010 12:17 am

If you think it’s difficult being an Asian American director today trying to make Asian American-themed projects, imagine what it must have been like 94 years ago. Up until recently, it was, in fact, thought that no Asian American filmmakers existed that far back (Sessue Hayakawa wouldn’t start his own company, becoming the first Asian American producer/actor, until 1918). That is until 2006 when two reels of a 1916 silent feature entitled The Curse of Quon Gwon were discovered. The director and writer of the movie was a Chinese American woman named Marion Wong.

Documentary filmmaker Arthur Dong was researching Hollywood Chinese, his excellent look at the history of Chinese Americans in Hollywood, when he unearthed the two 35 mm reels (about 35 minutes of footage) in an Oakland basement. The film was preserved on highly flammable nitrate stock and had to be carefully handled and restored (among other dangers, old nitrate stock has a tendency to suddenly explode). The Curse of Quon Gwon was the first narrative feature made by a Chinese American and also one of the first films to be directed by a woman.  Read more...

Original Offenders: Alien Kulture

  • January 16, 2010 11:36 pm

I promised previously to continue to blog about the impact that Asians have had on rock n’ roll so…saw this recent article from the UK about the seminal British “Asian punk band” Alien Kulture. It’s safe to assume that most of our readers probably never heard of this group—they never achieved the level of fame of their “peers” like the Clash–but when they stormed onto the London music scene thirty years ago, they had an impact on the culture that’s still being felt today.

The band formed in the late ‘70s and consisted of three young Asian/Pakistanis (Azhar Rana, Pervez Bilgrami, Ausaf Abbas) and a “token white bloke” (Huw “Jonesy” Jones). None of them were trained musicians (with the “possible” exception of Jonesy), but like other punk bands, they had something to say and it was loud and angry. In this case, Alien Kulture was created in reaction against the then-new Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, the country’s move toward the extreme right and an anti-immigrant xenophobia that was violently rearing its ugly head (the band’s name came from a speech Thatcher made where she said “people rather fear being swamped by an alien culture”).  Read more...