Archives for category: family

Couldn’t Have Said It Better Myself

February 14, 2008 //

Nothing says, “Hey, you’re pretty cool and I would totally have given you this friendship card even if it were not basically mandated to give one to everyone in the class” like this Optimus Prime Valentine’s Day message that my daughter gave out to her preschool classmates today (among other assorted, totally non-sequitur Transformers messages):

Freedom is the right of all sentient beings, Valentine.

I suppose if you’re going to look for every possible (or impossible) marketing hook, tie-in or promotion, then you might as well really go for it. Maybe I can turn this into an Easter outreach postcard for our church :)

Categories advertising, communication, design, family, just grinning

ABC, Easy As 1-2-3

January 31, 2008 //

While I know very little about the graphic novel world (Didn’t we used to call them comics? I kid, I kid… please direct all angry fanboy mail to my publicist), I was very excited to read about American Born Chinese.

In ABC, the first graphic novel to be nominated for a National Book Award, Gene Luen Yang tells the story of three different characters: a Chinese American boy, the Monkey King and “Chinkie” – not the Bay Area ska-punk sensation The Chinkees, but a character amalgamated from exaggerated Chinese and Asian stereotypes. It is truly disturbing to hear that some people have actually told Yang they think that the Chinkie character is “cute.”

NPR has put together a great audio slide show of selected panels from ABC, in which he talks about his background as an author and the social/historical setting of this book. Watching the slideshow of panels from ABC and hearing Yang’s narration transported me back to my days of growing up in a predominantly white school. In particular, his words about struggling with his shame over his parents’ culture struck a familiar chord with me. I’m not sure what it is, but graphic novels such as Persepolis or Maus are able to evoke emotions in a way that other media cannot.

While this book deals specifically with the Asian American experience, there is something universal in the themes of dealing with shame and discovering identity, as Yang expresses at the conclusion of his narration. You can find a longer interview with Gene Luen Yang on the Bryant Park Project here (click on the “listen now” link near the top of the page).

** Edit: Looks like NPR is on a roll here — Terry Gross interviewed Adrian Tomine on Fresh Air today about his graphic novel, Shortcomings, a story about race, identity and love. Check out the interview with Tomine here. A New York Times review from November 2007 says:

Unlike the more playful graphic novelists who influenced him, Daniel Clowes (“Ghost World,” “David Boring”) and the Hernandez brothers (“Love and Rockets”), Tomine isn’t given to flights of surrealism, rude jests or grotesque images. He is a mild observer, an invisible reporter, a scientist of the heart. His drawing style is plain and exact. The dialogue appearing inside his cartoon balloons is pitch-perfect and succinct. He’s daring in his restraint.

Categories art, asian american, books, communication, design, family, race, second-generation

They’re All Our Daughters

January 28, 2008 //

I still haven’t gotten my mind wrapped around all of things God was doing at the Passion::Los Angeles regional event from this past weekend. Perhaps I will be able to unpack some of these things soon but the thought of how closely worship and justice are knit together absolutely gripped my heart.

Although I am doing one thing he specifically requested we not do after hearing him speak in saying this, Francis Chan is everything you’d want a speaker to be — dynamic, funny, engaging. I mentioned to our youth group students this morning at church that if God zaps certain people with lightning bolts of communication ability, Francis Chan is definitely one of them. While I certainly appreciate his giftedness, it is the heart of God that comes through so passionately when I have heard him speak.

During one of his messages, he shared about an artist he knows from Thailand who had been teaching children. As she spent time with them, she discovered that child after child had been forced into prostitution. So she did what she knew was right. This artist would enter these brothels, find these children — each beloved, made in the image of God — and literally steal them away from this life of degradation and exploitation. Quickly, she was receiving imminent, credible death threats, so she took all of her children to safety. Today, she awakes every morning to a houseful of rescue, 120 children.

Francis went on to say that he loves college students because they will do crazy things. For example, if he told this gathering of over 3000 college students that he had chartered six planes to go to Thailand so that we could run into these dark places and rescue as many kids as we could, he knew that they would be filled. If those hypothetical planes had been waiting on the tarmac at LAX, even though my college days are distant memory, I would have left that night to go.

Even as I sit here and type these words, my heart rages against the sin, decay and brokenness of our world. How do we live in a world in which evil men and women would abuse children in such unspeakable ways? When Francis brought his oldest daughter out on the stage as he was speaking on this, I could not help but hold my own daughter close to my heart. If it were our daughters out there, we wouldn’t be sitting comfortably in our churches, critiquing the songs — Well, David Crowder shouldn’t have used that Guitar Hero Flying V during Neverending. I would have used the Gibson SG, and on and on — we would move heaven and earth and until they were safe.

They’re all our daughters. Each one of these children upon whom the worst depravity of humanity has been unleashed bears the indelible imprint of our Creator and is unimaginably loved by Him. I love my daughter more and more each year. Becoming a dad is one of the best things that has ever happened to me. I would do anything for her, and it is overwhelming to imagine what God’s heart must feel like when He sees what is happening to His children around the world.

My heart felt like it was being crushed in a vice grip when Francis spoke of Jesus’ words in Matthew 25 — they’re all our daughters, they are all created and loved by God and, in some barely comprehensible way, they are all Jesus. Who else could be more aptly described as the least of these? It is unbearable to imagine Jesus — Jesus — hungry, naked, thirsty, imprisoned, voiceless, oppressed and yet, when we choose to bring light into dark places, to come against such horror with redemption and rescue, to allow our worship to overflow into righteousness and justice, we have done it for Him.

To learn more or to find ways to get involved, here some organizations committed to bringing about justice in our broken world:

Away with the noise of your songs! I will not listen to the music of your harps. But let justice roll on like a river, righteousness like a never-failing stream! – Amos 5:23-24

Categories college, communication, faith, family, hope, justice, prayer

No, But I Play One On TV

January 25, 2008 //

This morning I went to drop off our daughter at her preschool. As I was searching the courtyard for the coffee, an elderly woman approached me. She asked something, but I was so intent on my coffee hunt that I did not hear her the first time. Then she asked again, a little bit louder: “Excuse me. Are you a custodian?”

I mean, I know I end up doing a lot of mopping, moving and other miscellaneous custodial work around the church, but is it that obvious, even to the casual observer? Quickly, she realized that I wasn’t and she smiled again and said, “Oh, you’re a parent!”

Maybe it was the gloves I’ve been wearing lately. Because our church is extremely cold during the week (well, cold if you’re a completely Southern California acclimatized person like me — did I really grow up in Michigan?), and because my hands are cold most of the time anyways, I went out to the local drugstore and picked up a pair of two dollar magic gloves. The magic quickly wore off, however, when I realized that I couldn’t type with those gloves on. So I did what any reasonable person would do and I cut off the fingertips. While these aren’t Grizzly Paw weightlifting gloves, Patrick Swayze Roadhouse-style motorcycle gloves, or awesome 80s flashbacks, my low budget fix keeps me warm as I type away (and mop the hallways and move tables, etc.).

Actually, my goal is to be like John Bender, Judd Nelson’s erstwhile criminal of The Breakfast Club. Such a range of emotion — subtle rebellion sowing, righteous defiance, earring-switching sensitivity, Friday casual, straight up kicking it, victorious anti-hero. — and all of this based on the gloves. Not even Principal Vernon, with his confusing I love rock-n-roll but the next time I have to come in here I’m cracking skulls hand gestures could stop this force of nature.

Yes, that is what I’ll keep telling myself. It was the gloves.

Categories church, family, just grinning

Remembering Dr. King’s Legacy

January 22, 2008 //

Our daughter, like many other four and a half year olds, has lots of questions. For example, why didn’t she have school yesterday, even though it was a Monday – and doesn’t she go to school on the day after church? We explained that it was because we were remembering Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and everything he had done for us. Her eyes lit up and she smiled, asking, “He was a king?”

We began to explain to her who Dr. King was and why he was so important, especially for us as Asian Americans. I don’t want to talk down to my daughter, as if she cannot understand anything simply because she is a child, or try to gloss over the problems our world faces. But, at the same time, systemic racism is a weighty and difficult discussion for anyone to have, at any age.

While we were eating Pho on Sunday night, CNN was showing a retrospective of Dr. King’s life and legacy. We didn’t realize this, though, until our daughter asked us what those people were doing with the hoses and the “puppies.” We tried our best to explain how people who were African American were mistreated and abused in our country, and can you believe that someone would try to hurt others with firehoses and attack dogs? Our daughter was horrified — she explained indignantly that hoses are supposed to be used to help people by putting out fires and that we shouldn’t use puppies to hurt others.

We told her how Dr. King believed that God created and loves everyone, and that we should treat everyone the way that God wants us to, with dignity and respect. We explained that even though Dr. King shared this message peacefully, without fighting or hurting people, he was still put in jail. At this point, it was almost too much for our daughter to bear. Extremely frustrated, she said, “No — those people should have been put in jail because they were hurting people and being mean!”

My wife explained that, today, our daughter can go to school and be friends with everyone because of what Dr. King had done. While we hope to sit down with her one day and share, in the words of Dr. King, “…the arc of the moral universe is long but it bends toward justice” we were glad to have this small chance to remember Dr. King’s legacy together as a family.

Categories asian american, communication, community, faith, family, race, reconciliation