Jeff Yang

Yesterday's spirited defense of brutal police actions toward UC-Davis protesters by Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly is threatening to launch a fresh meme, already spilling out of a thread on Gawker into the free-range web.

Perry is working on his statesmanlike gestures. And he seems to have reduced the dosage on his nerve tonic.

Legal experts think PETA's suit seeking to define animal captivity as slavery is unlikely to succeed. But what if it does?

Last week, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals once again made headlines — it's what they do — by filing suit in federal court on ...

Contributor to It's A Free Country and one of the editors of Secret Identities: The Asian American Superhero Anthology, Jeff Yang, talks about his most recent column on how comic books and politics mix, and who he thinks various superheroes would endorse in the 2012 election.

→ Read Jeff's Piece, Add Your Comments, and Listen at It's A Free Country

Each Thursday this month we explore New York's "New Littles" - ethnic communities that are changing or you may not know about.

Andrew Beveridge professor of sociology at Queens College, the CUNY Graduate Center, and the man behind Social Explorer helps kick off the project. And Jeff Yang, "Asian Pop" columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle, discusses his new project Our Chinatown and where Chinatown really is these days.

It's Memorial Day weekend, and for many people that means a visit to see whatever is playing at the local movie theater. Certainly the most heavily advertised option is sequel "The Hangover Part II," the bro-tastic comedy flick featuring Ed Helms, Bradley Cooper and Zach Galifianakis. But some people, like San Francisco Chronicle columnist Jeff Yang, aren't happy about the way Asians are portrayed in the film. Yang and producer Kristen Meinzer join us to talk about the film.

Do you play video games? If so, what color is your avatar? Does it look like you? Or someone or something else entirely? Do you make presumptions about the identities of other players? Do they make them about you? In short, how does identity and race play out in our virtual worlds? Jeff Yang, organized a panel on this topic last week at South By Southwest called "E-Race: Avatars, Anonymity and the Virtualization of Identity." Jeff Yang also writes the Asian Pop column for the San Francisco Chronicle.

Last Friday, while Japan was being shattered by the largest earthquake in its history, I was asleep in my Brooklyn bed, oblivious to the tragedy occurring on the opposite side of the globe.

When I woke up the next morning and turned the spigots on my many digital pipelines — email, Facebook, Twitter — the first thing I saw, even before I read the news itself, was a flood of reassuring messages from friends and family in Japan: "shaken, but safe"; "terrified, but all present and accounted for."

While Japan is dealing with a rising death toll, massive destruction and a nuclear crisis in the wake of a devastating 9.0 earthquake and tsunami, some prominent media personalities, athletes and celebrities in the United States have found themselves apologizing for making insensitive comments about the tragedy. Jeff Yang, pop culture columnist, discusses the cultural implications of such remarks.

Jeff Yang, "Asian Pop" columnist for SFGate.com and trend forecaster for market research firm Iconoculture, weighs in on the debate over so-called Tiger Mothers, or what he refers to as "Crazy Asian Mom parenting," and relates it to Chinese president Hu's recent visit to the White House.

“The Last Airbender” is the live-action feature film based on the highly successful animated series on Nickelodeon. It’s also the center of a growing controversy about casting and race. The series features Asian settings, costumes, architecture, and character and location names that incorporate Chinese, Japanese and Southeast Asian phonemes — such as “Aang,” “Fong” and “Sing.” And yet, when casting the motion picture, the studio chose four white actors to play the leads. When one of the actors dropped out, he was replaced by Dev Patel of “Slumdog Millionaire” fame, but it’s still the case that three of the four leading actors are white.

 

Angelo Falcón, chair of the Census Advisory Committee on the Hispanic Population, and Jeff Yang, the "Asian Pop" columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle and a consumer strategist for Iconoculture, discuss questions 8 and 9 on the U.S. Census form and the complexities around ...

"Avatar," James Cameron's highly anticipated 3-D, computer animated, sci-fi film with a $237 million price tag, goes out to wide release this weekend.We're joined by T...

Disney’s first movie to feature a black princess, “The Princess and The Frog,” opens this week in select cities, and nationwide on December 11. Jeff Yang, trend foreca...

The words “comic convention” can conjure up images of full grown men dressed as Jedi knights angling for a chance to get an autograph from William Shatner. While that might have bee...

Jeff Yang, "Asian Pop" columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle and one of the editors of Secret Identities: The Asian American Superhero Anthology (New Press, 2009), Asian Americans are well represented among the writers, artists and readers of contemporary comics, now they have a place among the superheroes.

New York, NY —

Blood, gore, guts, and fancy martial arts moves: just a typical night at the New York Asian Film Festival, which kicks off later this week. It’s the biggest festival to date: 51 films, plus a host of special guests. But parts of the Asian film ...

Comic books have always been a place to explore brave new worlds. Be that out outer space, inner space, or the frontiers of race and gender. Yeah, we're talking about Wolverine, but w...

Jeff Yang, "Asian Pop" columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle and one of the editors of Secret Identities: The Asian American Superhero Anthology (New Press, 2009), Asian Americans are well represented among the writers, artists and readers of contemporary comics, now they have a place among the superheroes.