twLF & Mental Health

The rally today was really amazing. Often times I feel as if people of color movements are seen as a black, brown, and red struggle.

It was nice to see the inclusion of yellow. particularly, southeast asians.

On a side note. Do you think it's possible that mental health issues like anxiety and depression amongst students of color could be partially caused by the hostile campus environment?

It's gotta be depressing to grow up with a bunch of people of color only to come to campus and realize you're different from all these privileged ass people.

a link between academia and our community?

while i sit here and read articles upon articles about the resettlement of Southeast Asian refugees in different parts of the world . . i can't help but wonder . . how will reading all these articles make anything better for our people?

how is this relevant to making actual change in our communities?

southeast asian intercollegiate summit

i'm still recuperating from a weekend of making my vision into reality and haven't really been able to jump back into the "real" reality as of yet both because i'm ridiculously sick and also because i feel i should reflect.

while the hope of the summit was to highlight the similarities of programing or projects that students were doing at each of their campuses, i guess the summit also helped to bring to the surface the differences in types of student organizing. i only hope that being exposed to a very political, progressive, and action oriented type of organizing, some of the students and organizations will go back to share this type of organizing.

however, all in all, i would call the event a success. not because of our differences in organizations. not because of our differences in our ethnicities. not because of our differences in the type of institution we attend. because regardless of whether the participant attended a private school, research institution, or professional institution . . everyone had love for their people and ultimately, OUR people and OUR struggle.

that all on its own is a success.


the fear that i have is that one day, southeast asian youth will replace the pride for the struggles of our parents and grandparents with shame. when that happens, i don't know who is going to ever be able to advocate for my mom who barely speaks english, my grandma who doesn't understand the concept of inflation, and my grandfather who still thinks he needs to work and make money at the age of 75.

because essentially, "if not you, then who?"

Cambodian Deportees Suicide

Many sent me this email earlier today while I was working on my paper for AAS 126:

Hey… One of my staff killed himself. Chan, he was 33, from Long Beach, California.

I was training for an AUSAID workshop in Kompong Som last Wednesday – Saturday and got the call Friday night around 1am. Smiley, Trip, Van and Saw found him hanging in his room. He'd been dead for over a day. Saw cut him down.

He was depressed and suicidal for a long time, he'd been here a year and had worked at Korsang for about 11 months. I kept him around because I knew how fucked up he was and that he needed support. In the states he had major depression with psychotic features and was on medication that basically kept him stable. Since his deportation out here he could never get the proper medications in Cambodia, so he went on a huge decline into some really deep dark place. And then he started smoking yama and that escalated his demise. I got him meds from the clinic, but they didn't work, I got him a counselor from the Australian Embassy, but he couldn't keep appointments.

Needless to say the staff is messed up, again. And I came back from the workshop to a critical debriefing with the staff who found him.

Chan was a very sweet, sad, gentle, fragile, quite guy. This has to stop.

I want to use Chan's death to stop the deportation of Cambodian's with a diagnosed mental health disorder. It's a death sentence. Can we try to do something?

Thanx, Holly

It made me question really, what am I doing sitting here in my living room writing some paper on Southeast Asian second generation youth when there are Southeast Asian second generation youth shoot each other and themselves somewhere in the world. How will my paper help the community? Or how will this degree help me help myself and my community?

Sometimes I wonder what my priorities are. Why do I sit here with my 23 units when I could be doing something down the street in Oakland or Richmond.

I suppose one can only be an effective advocate for the community if they are educated about the community. Otherwise, I guess I would just be another uninformed charity person who is doing work as a result of sympathy or pity as opposed to a true advocate.

Looking at the greater picture, this paper is probably very important. It's just emails like these that make me want to hop on a plane and head back to Southeast Asia.

why smoking weed is illegal

today in my social welfare policy class, my professor went into this tangent about why marijuana is illegal in the United States.

First he made the claim that the conservatives today are just pissed off at the liberals who were smoking, getting high, and fun in the 60s and now they're trying to get back at them.

Then he pointed out that before the hippies, the artists and jazz musicians were the ones that were smoking marijuana. That kind of lifestyle went againist out whole puritan work ethic thing because essentially, our country was built by people who wanted to form a country that didn't have fun.

That was great. He has a PhD.

sometimes, i love berkeley.

. . would you rather be poor in a poor country or poor in a rich country?

Reading an article by Morrison Wong about post-1965 Asian immigrants to the United States brought about this question.

It outlined the normal highlights of higher education and higher income of Asian's in the United States. However, unlike most articles that only give Southeast Asians an honorary mention in a paragraph or so, Wong mentioned Southeast Asians in every one of his highlights and even explained these constrasts in an extensive conclusion.

Asians are usually more educated than average Americans.
Not Southeast Asians.

Asians generally make more money than the average Americans.
Not Southeast Asians.

Asians have tight ethnic enclaves to support them, unlike the Average Americans.
Not Southeast Asians.

Asians have lower fertility rates than the average Americans.
Not Southeast Asians.

More than half of Asians own houses.
Not Southeast Asians.

These past ten months here in Thailand has made me almost feel as if working internationally in developing countries is where I want to be. Now I'm not so sure.

Whats worst. Would you rather be in a developing country with no real hope of first rate opportunities or be in a developed country with no real chance of first rate opportunities? In a developing country, sometimes it's okay to be poor because everyone else is also. However, in a developed country and you're poor, you get to sit on the sidewalk in some metropolitan city and watch all the hotshots walking to work in their suits carrying their briefcases. What hits you more. Being apart of the developing world or being apart of the developed world but sitting on the side as only a second class citizen? Someone without access to the healthcare. Someone without access to the education. Someone without access to the labor rights. Someone without access to the high standard of living.

Whats worst? Not having the opportunity or seeing the opportunity just within your grasp?

I dont know.

International Relations / Humanitarian Rights? Public Interests?

Racializing of the Virginia Tech Shootings

Racializing of the Virginia Tech Shootings

Today, my co-worker, Maliwan, mentioned to me how it must be so hard to be an Asian student in the states now – post Virginia Tech… which got me into this talk about Asians and Asian Americans in higher education and blah blah blah…

The following discussion does not in anyway mean that I agree with or support the actions that were taken by Cho Seung-Hui on the Virginia Tech campus on 17 April 2007. As a college student and as a person, my heart goes out to the students, friends, and families of the victims who have had to suffer as a result of this massacre.

What do I do not agree with, however, is the way in which the media is presenting and spinning the coverage of this incident both during and especially after the massacre.

I was sitting in the Behavioral Medicine reception office of Bumrungrad International Hospital (the most “high-so” or bougie private hospital in Bangkok) when I first heard about the incident.

I’ve come to the conclusion that anything with “international” on it in Thailand means that not only is it catered to rich foreigners, but is one instance in which illustrates very clearly the wealth disparity that exists here in Bangkok.

The waiting room had a flat screen television that was turned to CNN and on it was a man who was on the scene of the massacre. The reporter caught my attention with his zealous tone of voice speaking of the worst school shooting in history.

Great, I thought. As if people around the world didn’t already think Americans were overly violent and America as already extremely unsafe.

Then my attention was drawn when the reporter started talking about the shooter. An Asian student from South Korea.

Even better. Now it’ll be even harder to for foreign exchange students who are trying to enjoy the pleasures of living, learning, and experiencing another culture and environment.

But later I found that, yes, the shooter was from South Korea. But his family lived in Virginia. His sister a graduate from Princeton. Him, an English major at Virginia Tech.

Great. He’s practically Asian American. Well, he’s as Asian American as my sister and believe me, Malisa is pretty American.

One of the biggest issues I’ve encountered living and traveling through Asia is that I’m never seen as western. Never seen as a “Genuine” American. Always catch people by surprise by my “wonderful English.”

While the media emphasizes that Cho Seung-Hui is a non-American born college student in the United States… it wasn’t his non-American-ness or Korean-ness that drove him to do what he did. It was growing up and living in America… as an American.

While the media emphasizes that Cho Seung-Hui is Asian and NOT American (in the sense that he was NOT born here)… it only reinforces the problems of being a perpetual foreigner that hangs over people of color in the states. Whether we were born in the U.S. or not, there will always be the assumption that we are not really American. We don’t belong. And maybe we’re just Cho Seung-Hui… another Asian kid in the states trying so hard to fit in by using academic excellence that we’re really just some ticking time bomb.

In any case. I really wouldn’t know how difficult it is to be an Asian college student in the states right now. But looking through facebook and the wave of groups that have sprung up denouncing Cho Seung-Hui as not representative of Asians… not representative of Koreans… etc. It looks like there is yet another issue to divide us in the already too fractured APA or API community.