If you follow Asian American news and issues, there’s a very short list of must-read blogs to visit every day. They include Angry Asian Man, 8 Asians and Slant Eye for the Round Eye, for starters.

And there’s also Disgrasian, the influential blog created by Diana Nguyen and Jen Wang, two friends in the LA area who cover Asian American pop culture and politics with an edgy, acerbic, funny, smart and smart-ass attitude.

Diana and Jen have been featured on NPR, The Associated Press, The Daily Beast, Metro NY’s “Best of the Blogs,” and Hyphen magazine (a cover story!), and they have spoken at NYU, Yale, Harvard, UCLA, Loyola Marymount, and USC. Diana and Jen are also regular contributors to the Huffington Post and have created a web series for Adult Swim called Hollywood Slant. But their greatest achievement by far has been being named “Race Hustlers” and “Assorted Moonbats” by conservative pundit Michelle Malkin.

Jen received her BA in Literature from Yale and her MFA in creative writing from Columbia. Her fiction has appeared in WSQ. She’s also worked as a freelance journalist and her writing has been published in Vogue Hommes, V-Man, C Magazine, and The New York Times’ T Magazine.

Diana is a Los Angeles-based writer and producer. Her production company, New Birch, creates non-fiction/documentary television. She has developed viral marketing strategies for various LA non-profit organizations, including Youth Mentoring Connection and Generation Obama Los Angeles. Previously, she served as Associate Director of Norman Lear’s Declare Yourself, a national nonpartisan, nonprofit campaign that has registered 4.4 million first-time young voters.

Together, the pair are a terrific tag-team of opinionated rants and acerbic observations of Asian America, including news and issues for and about AAPIs from Tila Tequila — a popular Disgrasian target — to the upcoming reboot of “Hawaii Five-0.” No one is safe from the pair’s sharp wit, including their own “hard-ass Asian parents” (a topic they bring up often). Here’s an excerpt from a recent post by Diana:

I spent most of today trying to remember what my official “birds and bees” talk was like. My memory was just so fuzzy—didn’t my mom walk into my room one day during junior high, sit down on my bed, pat the seat next to her, and ask if I’d been feeling a little different lately? Something like that?

Oh wait, that was a Full House episode or something. My mom never gave me the talk. Like, NEVER. We NEVER TALKED ABOUT SEX.

… I think the conversation, if we’d ever had one, would have been one-sided: “Don’t have sex.” Conversation over.

These women don’t suffer from the Asian stereotype of being meek and mild-mannered, and not wanting to make waves. They don’t hold back, and they’re in your face with their running commentary, which is what makes them so refreshing.

Please join us for what promises to be one of the most unforgettable visualizAsian conversations we’ll have (and submit questions for Jen and Diana)!

Here’s a great video interview with Diana and Jen by Steve Nguyen of FlipHD:

We’ll be talking to Roxana on Tuesday, August 31 at 6 pm PT (9 pm ET) via phone and web –You’ve missed the live interview, but for a limited time, you can still join in the conversation by registering and listening to the archived MP3 recording..

Roxana recently spoke about her ordeal at the annual convention of the Asian American Journalists Association, and she captivated the audience with her story of choosing to be a journalist in a dangerous political hotspot, of her unexpected capture and fear and frustration at her situation, the flashes of humane treatment she received from some of her guards, and even the humorous moments over her efforts to give surreptitious messages to her boyfriend and family. She captures all of this and more in breakneck prose in her book, and she’ll be reading passages from it during our conversation.

Here’s the description of the book from Roxana’s website:

Roxana Saberi moved to Iran in 2003 to work as the Iran correspondent for the U.S.-based Feature Story News. She filed reports for organizations such as NPR, BBC, ABC Radio and Fox News and was working on a book about Iranian society when she was arrested on January 31, 2009. Saberi was later sentenced to eight years in prison on a trumped-up charge of espionage. In May 2009, an Iranian court overturned the sentence, and she was released.

Since her release, Saberi has joined others in bringing attention to the situation of human rights in Iran. She has received the Medill Medal of Courage, the Ilaria Alpi Freedom of the Press Award, the NCAA Award of Valor, and a POMED (Project for Middle East Democracy) Award, and she has been named Jaycees’ 2010 Outstanding Young North Dakotan.

Saberi grew up in Fargo, North Dakota, the daughter of Reza Saberi, who was born in Iran, and Akiko Saberi, who is from Japan. She was chosen Miss North Dakota in 1997 and was among the top ten finalists in Miss America 1998. She graduated from Concordia College in Moorhead, Minnesota, with degrees in communications and French.

Saberi holds her first master’s degree in journalism from Northwestern University and her second master’s degree in international relations from the University of Cambridge.

The Committee to Protect Journalists reports that in 2008, Iran was the sixth-leading jailer of journalists and Reporters Without Borders has ranked it 172 out of 175 countries in the world in terms of press freedom.

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A collection of music inspired by some of the people and events in Saberi’s book, Between Two Worlds: My Life and Captivity in Iran, is available here. At least 20 percent of the proceeds will be used to promote human rights in Iran.

For information on Saberi’s father’s writing, please visit his website.

Roxana’s father is Iranian and her mother Japanese; we’ll talk to her about her cultural upbringing, and how her rich dual heritage impacted her decision to become a journalist, and to work in Iran.

Please join us for our conversation, and Many thanks to Roxana for helping us launch our second year of visualizAsian interviews!

We fell in love with Hirahara’s ability to effortlessly capture the spirit and personality of the Japanese American community with her instantly engaging first book, “Summer of the Big Bachi.”

Her characters, starting with reluctant crime-solver Mas Arai, a retiring gardener in Los Angeles, speak and think and live in a culture rich with JA rhythms, from their speech to historical references. Arai is a survivor of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, and he has a knack for stumbling into murder mysteries.

The plots of the Arai series, which also include “Gasa Gasa Girl,” in which Mas travels to New York, and “Snakeskin Shamisen,” in which Hirahara explores the rich culture of Okinawans in LA. “Snakeskin Shamisen” won Hirahara the prestigious Edgar Award for mystery writing.

Here’s Hirahara’s bio:

Naomi Hirahara’s fourth Mas Arai mystery, Blood Hina, was released in hardcover by St. Martin’s/Thomas Dunne Books on March 2, 2010. Other books in the series, which features a Japanese American gardener and atomic-bomb survivor who solves crimes, includes Summer of the Big Bachi, Gasa-Gasa Girl, and the Edgar Award-winning Snakeskin Shamisen.

Her crime short stories are featured in Los Angeles Noir, Los Angeles Noir 2: The Classics, A Hell of a Woman, and The Darker Mask. Her book for younger readers, 1001 Cranes, was chosen as an Honor Book for the Youth Literature of the Asian/Pacific American Award for Literature in 2009. She also contributed a mystery serial, “Heist in Crown City” to an English-language weekly in Japan, Asahi Weekly.

A graduate of Stanford University with a degree in international relations, she is the president of the Southern California chapter of Mystery Writers of America.

Welcome Naomi Hirahara and join us when we interview her about her books, her characters, and how she comes up with her fast-paced, clever and exciting plotlines.

By Jason Jem

We’re thrilled to announce the next interview of visualizAsian.com’s Asian American Empowerment Series, a free one-hour conversation with award-winning photojournalist Corky Lee, who has captured Asian America through his lenses for over three decades!

You’ve missed our April 20 conversation with Corky, but for a limited time, you can still register to listen to the call and see the slideshow of the Top 10 photos from below that you chose, and hear Corky’s stories about them. REGISTER NOW for the call, which will be held Tuesday April 20 at 6 pm PT — this one’s going to be extra-special!

In addition to the conversation that you can listen to via phone or webcast, we’ll be showing Corky’s work in a slideshow, and you can vote on your 10 favorite images from the 30 shown here, and Corky will discuss the Top 10 during our talk!

We’ve been privileged to know Corky for a few years. The New York-based photographer has been a fixture at Asian American events, gatherings, meetings, conventions and protests since the 1970s, when the idea of “Asian Americans” instead of separate Chinese, Japanese, Vietnamese, Filipino, etc communities was a new concept. We first met Corky when he was in Denver for an annual banquet of the Organization of Chinese Americans and Japanese American Citizens League. He was there to auction off a framed print of a group shot he took, of Chinese American descendants of 1800s railroad workers who worked on the joining of the Union Pacific and Central Pacific railroads, a big event in American history (the first time that the east and west coasts were connected in trade and commerce by a transcontinental railroad). If the photo is chosen by you (it’s #18), Corky will explain the image.

We’ve run into Corky at various conventions for the Asian American Journalists Association, a group he’s very deeply involved with. He received the Dr. Susan Ahn Civil Rights and Social Justice Award, a great honor that he deserves, from the AAJA at the organization’s national convention last year in Boston.

Corky’s a self-taught photographer, and the “undisputed unofficial Asian American Photographer Laureate.” The ubiquitous Corky has covered the day-to-day lives of Asian Pacific Americans, and he’s been there to capture some historical moments in American history.

For over 30 years, Corky has used his camera to ensure that the faces of Asian Pacific Americans and their experiences be included in American history. His mission has been to document the incredibly diverse Asian American communities ignored by mainstream media. In an interview in AsianWeek Corky commented, “I’d like to think that every time I take my camera out of my bag, it’s like drawing a sword to combat indifference, injustice and discrimination, trying to get rid of stereotypes.”

At once intensely personal and socially conscious, Corky’s self-styled photojournalism crosses the divides of different Asian nationalities, and presents a rich picture of AAPIs adjusting and finding their place in America. As a photojournalist imbued with an unyielding passion for community activism, he’s challenged stereotypes by offering diverse images from the often invisible and excluded Asian Pacific American communities.

His work, which has been described as “only a small attempt to rectify omissions in our history text books,” has appeared in Time magazine, The New York Times, The Village Voice, Associated Press, The Villager and Downtown Express, as well as exhibitions throughout the United States, including Boston, San Francisco, Honolulu and Denver. On college campuses, his photographs have been exhibited at Cornell, Columbia, Harvard, Princeton and John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York City. Lee contends that he owes much of his success to the Asian American press, notably A. magazine, Filipinas magazine and Koream Journal in addition to the following newspapers: AsianWeek, Asian New Yorker, NY Nichibei, Rafu Shimpo, International Examiner and Hawaii Herald.

Born and raised Queens, N.Y., Lee is a second-generation Chinese American and the eldest child of a “paper son” laundryman and a seamstress. Lee is a graduate of Queens College and lives in Queens.

He was the 2002 Artist-In-Residence at New York University’s Asian/Pacific/American Studies Program.

Corky Lee’s photographs are in 40 to 50 books, including a retrospective he’s publishing this year. Three of Corky’s photographs are included in a recently published coffee table book, “100 NY Photographers” edited by Cynthia Dantzic and published by Schiffer Book Publishing.

His images are in good company, flanked by work from the likes of Bruce Davidson, Annie Leibovitz, Jay Maisel, Elliot Erwitt and Mary Ellen Mark — all iconic photographers of the last century.

We’re honored to have such a heavyweight of Asian American culture and media join us for our next call!

From movie stars, musicians, and skate-boarders to toys, technology, and history, Giant Robot magazine covers cool aspects of Asian and Asian-American pop culture. Paving the way for less knowledgeable media outlets, Eric put the spotlight on Chow Yun Fat, Jackie Chan, and Jet Li years before they were in mainstream America’s vocabulary.

Although Giant Robot has an Asian pop culture focus, it has earned a loyal readership of all colors. The readers are about half-Asian and half-not.

Under Eric’s leadership the magazine consistently has featured superior editorial content, innovative design, and a no-holds-barred attitude, garnering Giant Robot notoriety across a diverse crowd ranging from high schoolers to senior citizens. The magazine’s graphic sensibility has featured a slew of artists who have gone on to fame in the art world.

The magazine’s popularity has led to the opening of Giant Robot retail stores, selling the kinds of cool products that the magazine writes about.

Eric Nakamura graduated from UCLA with a degree in East Asian Studies. He got his start in magazine making through a stint at the Palisadian Post newspaper and Larry Flynt Publications (yes, that Larry Flynt — register for the call to ask him about it), but worked on numerous punk rock zines in the early ’90s.

In addition to founding and publishing issues of Giant Robot magazine since 1994, curating art exhibits, and picking products for the shops, located in Los Angeles, San Francisco, and New York City, Nakamura found the time to make an independent movie called “Sunsets” in 1997.

He consults companies on Asian popular culture and designs t-shirts for the Giant Robot brand. Recently, Nakamura curated a museum show, “Giant Robot Biennale” at the Japanese American National Museum in Los Angeles, and works on projects outside of Giant Robot for different communities and entities.

Giant Robot continues to be a leading source of Asian popular culture and is often considered a lifestyle magazine and store for the fans of animation, art, and design.

Recently, Giant Robot has asked for help from its many fans around the world:

While diversification allowed Giant Robot to escape the fate suffered by many of our indie publishing peers in the second half of the ‘00s, 2009 was brutal. In addition to several distributors cutting out small press or folding altogether, paper has become more expensive and postage has skyrocketed exponentially. And while there has also been the support of loyal advertisers, the middle class of supporters has dropped, creating peaks and valleys in income that force us to live issue to issue. Complicating matters, store revenues and art show sales have suffered along with the economy, depriving the magazine of resources that allowed it to operate freely and thrive without the benefit or constraints of being part of a large publishing house.

Reducing pages, going from bimonthly to quarterly, or becoming an online entity are not options, and our editorial and production staff of two full-timers and two part-timers (intact since issue 18) is already as lean as can be.

And so, we are taking a series of actions with the intention of not only outlasting the economic downturn but becoming an even tighter operation with an improved publication. These steps include improving the content, explore printing and distribution options, and evolving with technology. We are also seeking help from friends.

THE MESSAGE
Although the idea of a Giant Robot Foundation is not new (a non-tax-deductible donation form has been included with subscription renewal notices for years now), this particular online campaign is. We believe that there are multiple generations artists, designers, bands, filmmakers, and travelers, as well as fans, students, and supporters of interesting culture who believe in what we do and want Giant Robot magazine to continue on its path without sacrificing quality, quantity, or independence.

We have done the math, and an infusion of $60,000 (hopefully more) will ensure another year of full, unfettered operation with no strings attached to a shifting media paradigm, advertising climate, sketchy distributors, and the economy—each of which we are not ignoring but addressing straight-on. In concert with the other measures (not to mention the realignment and recovery of our shops), we feel that Giant Robot’s future and its continuing impact of society will be secure.

If you have been affected or inspired by Giant Robot—perhaps even featured in the pages of the magazine—please help however you can. All support, both through finances and spreading the word, will be appreciated and make a difference.

We’ll talk with Eric about Giant Robot’s future as well as its stellar, and groundbreaking, past and hopefully spark some support. These are indeed tough times for Asian American publications, so join us and support for Eric’s great work!

The group was formed by bandleader, saxophone and flute player Kuramoto in 1974 with his then-wife June on koto, a traditional Japanese harp on which she’s a master player, percussion and taiko drum player Johnny Mori, keyboardist Dave Iwataki and drummer Danny Yamamoto. The group has evolved over the years with different players as well as various R&B singers on some songs, but the core sound of the Kuramotos and Yamamoto has remained the same.

The group’s been consistent and prolific over its three-decade history, mixing traditional Japanese sounds and melodic and rhythmic sensibility with a soulful, contemporary R&B and jazz flair. Throughout, whether the music rocks out or is contemplative, there’s a foundation of Japaneseness that sets Hiroshima apart from other bands playing in the fusion groove.

“We’ve always stood apart from other instrumental groups of our time by taking the graceful classical sound of the koto and experimenting with varying American musical idioms around that,” says Dan Kuramoto on the band’s bio page on its website. “We create musically a cross-commentary about a multitude of cultures that comes from our backgrounds as Asian Americans growing up in a racially diverse America. The album title grew from the idea that as people of Japanese heritage, we are ethnically in the middle of black and white, drawing from the traditions of both races yet also creating an identity that is unique to our heritage.”

June Kuramoto, who’s the only member who was born in Japan (she moved to the U.S. as an infant) has released several solo albums as well as a duet album with Derek Derek Nakamoto.

Hiroshima’s other bandmembers have also been busy with other projects over the years:

Aside from touring with such greats over the years as Miles Davis, Hiroshima’s members have engaged in some interesting side projects between recording and traveling dates. Dan, June and Johnny Mori have played on numerous soundtracks together, including those for “Black Rain” and the Oscar nominated “The Thin Red Line,” while Kimo Cornwell has produced and played with top Hawaiian artists, including Randy Lorenzo.

In all, Emmy winner Dan Kuramoto has scored over 50 plays, films and TV shows including the Showtime miniseries, “Home Fires,” “Bean Sprouts” and the Oscar nominated “The Silence.” He also served as the musical arranger for the L.A. and New York productions of the play/musical, “Zoot Suit.” June Kuramoto was trained on koto by Madame Kazue Kudo, herself a protégé of Japan’s most famed kotoist and composer, Michio Miyagi. She’s played on countless recordings (including the #1 hit record, “Sukiyaki” by Taste of Honey), films, television and concert performances with artists like Ravi Shankar.

The full band was also featured in a 1976 documentary titled “Cruisin’ J-Town,” directed by Duane Kubo, and they’re part of a permanent video installation at the Japanese American National Museum in Los Angeles. The group also wrote an original song titled “The Moon is a Window to Heaven” for the 1989 film “Star Trek V: The Final Frontier.”

They’ve been representing Asian Americans for 30 years in an industry that still has too few Asians in the spotlight — it’s not an overstatement to say that Hiroshima has broken new ground, and gone where no Asian Americans have gone before.

Here’s one of their most famous songs, “San Say,” in a decideldy 1980s video treatment:

Beau Sia is a Chinese-American poet from Oklahoma City. He’s an artist who uses words as his paint and canvas, and his work has been widely showcased.

He’s made it to the silver screen: Beau has been featured in the award-winning film “Slam” and the documentary “Slam Nation.” He’s also acted in “The Manchurian Candidate,” “Hitch” and “Rachel Getting Married.”

As an author, Beau wrote the poetry book, “A Night Without Armor II: The Revenge.” A few of the anthologies Beau’s work appears in include “Def Poetry Jam on Broadway,” “Why Freedom Matters” and “Spoken Word Revolution.”

Beau has two spoken word CDs, “Attack! Attack! Go!” and “Dope and Wack.” He was a recipient of the California Arts Council Writer-in-Residence grant for Youth Speaks in 2001-2002, and was the lead artist for the Creative Work Fund.

Beau has appeared on all seasons of HBO’s “Russell Simmons Presents Def Poetry,” and has also performed on ESPN’s 2000 Winter X-Games, “Showtime! at The Apollo,” and the 2003 Tony Awards.

He is one of the original cast members of “Russell Simmons Presents Def Poetry Jam on Broadway,” a 2003 Special Event Tony Award Winner, and has toured with Norman Lear’s Declare Yourself, a project dedicated to increasing the number of young voters in 2004.

His one man show, “Fish Out of Water” won the 2004 Jury Prize for Best Alternative Show at the HBO Comedy Festival in Aspen, Colorado.

Recently, we hear he’s been playing guitar and singing while on tour in Europe.

Phew — Beau keeps himself busy!

We’re thrilled he has the time to spend an hour with us. Meet him on visualizAsian.com, and you can even submit questions to Beau on the webcast page. Register here for the show:

Here’s a sample of Beau’s funny, insightful and powerful work:

Lac Su is an executive for TalentSmart, a global think tank and management consulting firm, in the day time, and a husband, a father, a painter, a photographer, and a writer after 5 p.m. and on the weekends. He was born in Danang-Vietnam, grew up in Los Angeles, and now resides in San Diego. “I Love Yous Are for White People” is his first book—a memoir.

The book opens at a breakneck pace with the memories of his family’s escape from Vietnam, and segues into the family’s introduction to life as refugees in Los Angeles. Lac’s father is authoritarian and abusive, and as the years go by, the entire family lives in fear of his temper.

The lack of affection and support from his father — the book’s title refers to the idyllic loving families the young Lac saw on American television shows and movies, and at his school friends’ homes — eventually lead Lac into the world of gang thuggery to seek an alternative family acceptance and a sense of belonging.

The book is structured as a series of vignettes, based on journals Lac wrote throughout his youth. It’s hard to imagine what it must have been like to re-live those memories to write the chapters for this book.

It’s an amazing tumble of a read, and one that lives up to the cliche, “you can’t put it down.”

We can only hope that Lac publishes other vignettes in a sequel, or follows his life beyond the teen-aged years. But then, those stories may not have the same gripping drama of his childhood. He went on to a magnet high school and on to college, and now has a doctorate.

It’s a testament to his strong spirit that he survived the tumult of his early life and then capture it so vividly.

Here’s an interview with Lac by filmmaker Steve Nguyen:

The Making of a Memoir from Steve Nguyen on Vimeo.

Phil has been building a steady, loyal readership since 2001, and his website has been called by the Washington Post “a daily must-read for the media-savvy, socially conscious, pop-cultured Asian American.”

Mixing humor with criticism, Phil’s commentary has been featured and quoted in stories for the Post, Los Angeles Times, National Public Radio, USA Today, MSNBC, Newsday, CBS News and SF Gate. Phil worked previously at the Center for Asian American Media in San Francisco and has served as a programmer for the Los Angeles Asian Pacific Film Festival.

He’s a young leader in our community, and we’re honored that he’s taking the time to speak with us!

Lane is a filmmaker whom we met several years ago, when he was shooting “Only the Brave,” a powerful movie he had written about the Japanese American soldiers of the 100th Battalion/442nd Regimental Combat Team. The film is a fictional depiction of a famous battle towards the end of World War II when the 100th/442nd rescued the “Lost Texas Battalion,” who were surrounded by Nazis in the forests of France. The JA soldiers suffered over 800 casualties to rescue the 200 Texans. The 100th/442nd remains to this day the most highly decorated combat unit for its size and length of service in US military history.

“Only the Brave” weaves in the emotional plot line of the lead character, played by Lane, and flashes back and forth between the war and scenes of all the character’s pre-war lives. It also stars Tamlyn Tomita, Pat Morita, Jason Scott Lee, Mark Dacascos (who you might know now from either “Dancing with the Stars” or as the Chairman on “Iron Chef America”), Kenny Choi and Yuji Okumoto, among other Asian American pacific Islanders.

We met Lane and the cast and crew of “Only the Brave” when we spent some time on the set at Universal Studios’ back lot, which had been transformed into a bombed-out French town. We served as volunteer production assistants and did odd jobs, driving people to and from the parking lot to the set, and then at the end of the production, we organized the wrap party for everyone. It was a great introduction to the workings of Hollywood, and to a slew of talented AAPI artists and performers, led by Lane’s amazing talent.

Lane’s body of work has focused on AAPIs. He is Sansei (third generation Japanese American) and his work often deals with Asian American history and identity issues. He is widely known for a series of one-man shows, including “Life in the Fast Lane,” “I’m on a Mission From Buddha,” “Mifune” and Me and others.

Before “Only the Brave, Lane wrote and directed two short films about World War II veterans, “Forgotten Valor” and “When We Were Warriors” which started the trilogy, which is a tribute to his uncles who served in the 100th/442nd.

Nishikawa has a long history in Asian American theater, having served as artistic director for the Asian American Theater Company, in San Francisco, California for 10 seasons. He was co-artistic director of the Eureka Theatre and resident director at the San Francisco Shakespeare Festival.

Among his stage productions, The Gate of Heaven,” portrayed the unlikely lifelong friendship between a Japanese American soldier and the Jewish survivor he liberates from the Dachau concentration camp – and the racial injustices both have endured.

“I write pieces that give an inside view, a sense of the truth about the Asian-American experience – what it’s like to breathe in my skin. I write for change, so that one day I might walk down any American street and not have someone look at me and try to guess which country I’m from,” Nishikawa says.

We’re especially happy to speak with Lane now because after four years of work and independently funding screenings of “Only the Brave” across the country, as well as DVD sales, he has finally signed a distribution deal to get the movie on DVD and in stores nationally, and is planning a television premiere for the future. The DVD releases officially on Veteran’s Day — and apt launch for such a heartfelt tribute to veterans.

Here’s the trailer: