Did you know that..

Amerie

Amerie Mi Marie Rogers (* 12. Januar 1978 in Fitchburg, Massachusetts) ist eine US-amerikanische R&B-Sängerin und Schauspielerin.

Biografie

Kindheit

Rogers kam im Januar 1978 als erste Tochter eines Afroamerikaners und einer Südkoreanerin zur Welt. Da ihr Vater Offizier in der amerikanischen Armee war, kamen sie und ihre jüngere Schwester Angela bereits im Kindesalter viel um die Welt. So wuchs sie unter anderem in Alaska, Texas und Südkorea auf; in jüngeren Jahren lebte sie sogar eine Zeit lang in Deutschland. Später bezog die Familie in Washington, D.C. einen festen Wohnsitz. Nach dem Highschool-Abschluss entschied Rogers sich zum Studium an der Georgetown University, wo sie 2000 ihren Bachelor in Englisch und Fine Arts erhielt.

Karriere

Amerie schaffte ihren großen Durchbruch im Jahr 2001 auf dem Song "Rule" zusammen mit Nas auf dessen Album Stillmatic. Danach machte Rogers als Chorusstimme auf den Alben von Ja Rule und Bow Wow auf sich aufmerksam. Zur gleichen Zeit in etwa lernte Amerie den Produzenten Rich Harrison kennen, welcher ihr im Folgejahr zu einem Plattenvertrag bei Sonys Sublabel Columbia Records verhalf. Erst 2002 erschien ihr Solodebüt All I Have. Das Album, für dessen Produktion sich allein Harrison verwantwortlich zeigte, wurde nicht zuletzt dank zweier erfolgreicher Radiohits, "Why Don't We Fall In Love" und "Talkin' To Me", ein Top 10-Hit. Bisher verkaufte die Platte allein in den USA mehr als 600.000 Einheiten.

Im Anschluss veröffentlichte Amerie mit dem Diana Ross-Cover "I'm Coming Out" den Soundtrack zur Filmkomödie Manhattan Love Story. Des Weiteren war sie sowohl mit LL Cool J und ihrem Duett "Paradise" als auch mit der DJ Kay Slay-Produktion "Too Much For Me" zwei weitere Male erfolgreich in den Charts vertreten. Anfang 2003 lehnte sie einen Moderationsjob auf dem Musikkanal BET ab, um eine Nebenrolle in der Romantikkomödie First Daughter (mit Katie Holmes und Michael Keaton) anzunehmen.

Im März 2005 steuerte Rogers mit der Single "One Thing" den Soundtrack zum Kinoerfolg Hitch – Der Date Doktor bei. Die Rich Harrison-Produktion wurde zu einem weltweiten Top 10-Hit und verhalf der Sängerin auch auf internationalem Terrain zum endgültigen Durchbruch; letztlich wurde der Song sogar mit mehreren Billboard und Soul Train Awards ausgezeichnet und auch mit einer Nominierung für den Grammy als "Bester R&B Song" bedacht. Während die nachfolgenden Solosingles nicht an den Erfolg anschließenden konnten, kehrte Amerie Ende 2005 mit Hilfe von Ricky Martin, Fat Joe und der Single "I Don't Care" noch einmal in die oberen Chartränge zurück.

Momentan beendet Amerie die Aufnahmen zu ihrem dritten Album Because I Love It, dessen Veröffentlichung für Frühjahr 2007 geplant ist. Als Produzenten agierten bisweilen Bryan Michael Cox, Tim & Bob, The Buchanans, DJ Premier, Cameron Wallace und erneut Rich Harrison. Die erste Single-Auskopplung des neuen Albums, „Take Control“, wurde von Cee-Lo Green produziert.

Did you know that..

Chop suey

Traditional Chinese:
雜碎
Simplified Chinese:
杂碎
Mandarin
Hanyu Pinyin:
zá suì
Cantonese
Jyutping:
zaap6 seoi3
Yale:
jaāhp seui
Literal meaning:
mixed pieces

Chop suey (Chinese 'mixed pieces') is a American-Chinese dish consisting of meats (often chicken, beef, shrimp or pork), cooked quickly with vegetables such as bean sprouts, cabbage, and celery and bound in a starch-thickened sauce. It is typically served with rice but can become the Chinese-American form of chow mein with the addition of deep-fried noodles.
Chop suey is part of American Chinese cuisine, Canadian Chinese cuisine, and, more recently, Indian Chinese cuisine.

Origin
There are various colorful stories about the origin of Chop Suey. It is alleged to have been invented by Chinese immigrant cooks working on the United States Transcontinental railway in the 19th century and has also been cited in New York City's Chinatown restaurants since the 1880s. Other sources say that a Chinese dignitary's cook, visiting the United States invented it.

Davidson (1999) characterizes these stories as "culinary mythology", citing Anderson (1988), who traces it to a dish of Taishan, the homeland of many Chinese immigrants.

Varieties
Chop Suey may be prepared in a variety of styles, such as chicken, beef, pork, king prawn, plain and special. Plain, or vegetable chop suey, is often one of the few traditional Chinese American take-out dishes offered without meat at many restaurants.

American Chop Suey
A completely different dish altogether, American Chop Suey is a pasta dish consisting of pasta noodles (macaroni, ziti, et cetera) mixed with a tomato-based sauce, ground beef, and often sauteed onion and peppers. While an Italian-American cuisine inspired dish, it is often seen on public school lunch menus under the name American Chop Suey. Other names for this dish are Chili-Macaroni, Chili-Mac, or simply Macaroni. American Chop Suey resembles a dish known as 'Johnny Marzetti', which was created in the 1920's by the brother of the owner of the Marzetti Restaurant in Columbus, Ohio.

17 things I learned about Asian Americans

17 things I learned about Asian Americans

1.An Asian American is generally defined as a person of Asian ancestry who was born in or an immigrant to the US.

2.Stereotype:
- Belief about a group of people
- Picture in our head
- oversimplified opinion

3.Institutionalized Racism is racial discrimination by governments or companies through laws, rules, policies and regulation.


4.Racism: belief in superiority of our race.

5.They are 1.2 Millions Chinese Americans in the US. This is the biggest group of Asian American in the US.

6.Filipino were the only Asian group that could legally immigrate because they were American nationals.

7.1880: Anti-Miscegenation laws prohibited mixed marriage.

8.1882: Chinese Exclusion Act prohibited the entry of Chinese labours.

9.1913: Alien and Law prohibited all Asian immigrants from owning land or prosperity.

10.1924: Quota Act limited the annual number of immigrants.

11.1942: Japanese American Internment: After the bomb attack in Pearl Harbour in 1941, President Roosevelt signed the E.O. authorizing the removal and incarceration of over 110000 J.A.

12.The J.A.I was not justified because it has been proved that the government had their own evidence that J.A. posed no military threat.

13.Name of five I.C. Tule Lake, Minidoka, Manzanar, Topaz, Heart Mountain

14.The loyalty questionnaire was the application for leave clearance during the J.A.I. and it provoked the greatest upheaval within the camps.

15.No-No boy was someone who answered no-no to questions no.27 and 28 of the loyalty questionnaire during the J.A.I.


16.Vincent Chin was a Chinese American mistaken as a Japanese American and killed by two whites. But the manslaughters had only paid $ 3700 for it.

17.In 2002 many Filipino screeners were dismissed because of their religion and national origin.

American knees by Shawn Wong

Shawn Wong's "american knees" is a contemporary novel about a forty year-old, divorced,Chinese-American man named Raymond Ding. Throughout the novel Raymond must deal with his own prejudices and stereotypes of Asian-Americans, especially Asian-American women. He has to decide whether he loves Aurora Crane, the twenty-something Japanese/Irish-American
photographer, because she is half Japanese or because she is half white. It takes Raymond awhile to realize that these are inconsequential reasons. He loves Aurora, not her heritage.

In the midst of this romantic revelation, Raymond must also deal with co-workers, his pro-Asian
friends, Aurora's pushy best friend, and his widowed father (who decides that he wants a Chinese
picture bride). His ex-wife also stops by from time to time, just to remind Raymond and the reader
that he is no longer the "perfect Chinese son."

His whole world is turned upside down after his initial break-up with Aurora. Raymond starts to
date a Vietnamese co-worker with her own set of emotional baggage.

Betty, a refugee, left an abusive husband and a child behind when she moved to the Bay Area from
Texas. The scars left by her first marriage are deep and permanent. Raymond is afraid to hurt her,
feeling that she has suffered enough. It is during this relationship the we finally see Raymond grow
and rise as a person. The relationship with Betty forces Raymond to re-examine his life and what is truly important.

Shawn Wong does a beautiful job of blending high emotion with humor and simplicity. He doesn't focus on these characters as Asian-American, bitter against the white world for years of racism. Even though they do discuss race issues frequently, it is only of minimal importance to the story. The race is unimportant. The issues discussed are there only to reming us that these characters happen to be of Asian descent, but everything else in the story serves to remind us that they are human - no better, no worse. They are simply Americans.

The whole book is a search for identity. It is the identity that goes beyond race and other superficial factors. Raymond tries to find trues identity, as an individual. He finds the identity of the soul, where all these factors - race, community, family, career, relationships - come together and define who we are.

Unfortunately, the critics did not completely agree with me. I found two reviews of "american knees", one in Publisher's Weekly and the other in Entertainment Weekly.

Both critics agreed that the book was a humorous romantic comedy, but both failed to see it as anything more. They each mentioned that the dialogue advanced the plot but didn't say much for the characters speaking the lines.

Joseph Olshan of Entertainment Weekly had this to say: "Though Wong paints a careful portrait of his characters in their romantic plight, his novel is very short on narrative drive and, sadly, long on an anticlimatic series of conversational go-rounds..."

The critic in Publisher's Weekly also mentioned that the dialogue, "tends to advance the plot without adding much momentum or insight into the characters mouthing it... its [the story's] power is dissipated by the disembodied telephone debates over hyphenated identity."

Diary of a Nisei

Diary of a Nisei

Kyoko Yoroshima

January 3. 1943

Snow

I’m still trembling because of fear, terrible fear of everything that happened and things which are still awaiting me. My life fell down into hell, since police stood in front of our house and attempted to put all of us into a big truck- The only sentence I understood was: it’s for you own good. We were put into the truck and someone told me that we were driving to an assembly centre.

The nightmares have begun with these barbed wire fences and armed guard towers with guns facing toward us, and then the gate shut. I really doubt that we’ve done something wrong so that we should be put in such a prison. I always try to look out of the gate, but the military police won’t get out of my line of vision, and their rifles make me so terrified and sick. The freedom, the beautiful life, my school, my friends, everything seems to be so far away. I really feel alone. Okaasan carries my little brother in her arm. I can see tears drying on her face and despair in the dark brown eyes, she doesn’t dare to cry loud, but I do.

How should I describe our situation right now… maybe miserable? Oh well, our hair freezes and our fingers stick to metal door knobs, but we have to live in overcrowded single rooms in a barracks with terribly harsh living conditions: unsanitary and without privacy. I would never have imaged that I would live someday like that. Father can only sleep in a horse stall and he has to work in the camp office for 44 hours a week. I don’t have the heart to look at his tired face which has become so much older in a short time.

Now, I feel nothing but hostility towards all the whites here who deprive us of our basic civil liberties, who force us to stand in line for everything including meals that are definitely nutritionally inadequate, including latrines, supplies… They will laugh at you and think it must be a joke if you ask for help; they make fun of our suffering from this great injustice. It’s a shocking feeling that human beings are behind this fence like animals. How could it be good for us?

Otoosan is coming back from his work; he seems to have finished, well, just like any other day. It’s time to stop writing into my diary and take care of him. Nobody knows how long it will go on, we might be waiting forever.

A letter of a Filipino citizen

A letter of a Filipino citizen

Dear Sir or Madame,

My name is Maceio Ubane.

I’m an employee who has worked at Oakland airport for more than 10 years and was dismissed several days ago. I can not describe how frustrated we are. It doesn’t count how many letters of commendation I’ve reserved and how hard I’ve toiled in such a low-wage situation, I was fired. On Monday I took part in the protest in Oakland international airport condemning the discrimination against immigrant workers and all the ethnic minorities. Nobody can accept the reasons for our dismissing, just because of our national origin, because we are Filipino citizens, but not white? I didn’t pass the employment assessment and they classified me unqualified, though I’m able to speak, read and write English well enough and worked hard. The TSH required screeners to be U.S citizens. For us, this is apparently a racist act!

In fact, more than 80% of the security workers at these three Bay Area airports are ethnic minorities, including us- Filipino citizens. I have to make them clearly known how terrible the consequence could be. Of course I can understand the fear of the governments based on the terrorist attack on September 11^th, as soon as I heard of the bad new, I did really feel sorry. Well, but it’s completely another case, because we have nothing to do with terrorism, we didn’t kidnap the airplanes to destroy the World Trade centres. How absurd and unreasonable their decisions are! Don’t attempt to hide the truth that we are the victims of the institutionalized racism and prevent as if they are contributing to the national Aviation and Transportation Security.

How can they only forget the blunders made by their people in the last 60 years: the bloody history of the Japanese American Internment in 1942? What’s different here? Why can they have a little more confidence in us and respect the equality of all the peoples? We are human, we are the same.

One of other thousands instances: the tragedy of Vincent Chin, who mistaken for a J.A. and killed by two whites. The manslaughters have only paid 3700 instead of being arrested in prison for 15 years. Has a life only value of 3700? The ringleader is the institutionalized racism. Don’t they notice how a grievous mistake they‘re making right now? I do really hope that somebody can take it seriously and think about it. Thanks for reading.

Sincerely!

Maceio Ubane

Intressting points about the videos...

1) Even all the Japanese Americans were shocking as soon as they heard of the bombattack in the pearl habour and also felt sorry about it.
2) Children in the interments were even allowed to habe education, for example they went to school, made friends and so on. Just like a normal life.
3) The J.A. were made to go to strip and were sprayed with some kind of chemical powder like DDT.
4) It was all uncertain and hard for the J.A, most of them thought they would become farm labours or be shot.