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 Takeaway film contributor Rafer Guzman, film critic for Newsday, and Jeff Yang, trend forecaster for market research firm Iconoculture and columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle, who tell us whether the wait was all worth it…

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 forecaster for market research firm Iconoculture and columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle, talks with us about the challenges of marketing a film to both a wide audience and niche segments. And Latoya Peterson, who’s been tracking the black community’s reaction to a princess who spends most of the movie as a frog, relays what she’s been hearing on the ground.

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 been the case a dozen years ago, now Comic Con is the pop culture event of the year. Next week The 'Con opens in San Diego, but it's been sold out for weeks. Luckily, Jeff Yang, the Asian Pop columnist for the SF Chronicle and Secret Identities: The Asian American Superhero Anthology found himself a ticket. Also joining the conversation is Elisabeth Rappe, blogger for Cinematical.com.

Here's the trailer for Astro Boy:

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.

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 bubble are actually bursting. Culture ...

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 we're also talking about Dora the Explorer. That compact, bobble-headed, bilingual tot boldly went where no cartoon had gone before and actually changed the world of pop culture by introducing her life, her adventures, and her abuela to the under three feet set. So what's next? To help us explore the expanding multicultural pop culture world is Jeff Yang. He writes the Asian Pop column at SFGate.com and is the editor of a new book, Secret Identities: The Asian American Superhero Anthology.

Since we won't go so far as to put Dora the Explorer on the site, let's see how Disney has done on race before. Here's their journey to China in Mulan:



And here is Pocahontas:

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.

It is now known that organizers used doctored graphics and had a young girl lip-synch during the Olympics opening ceremony. But how much of that can be explained by "cultural differences?" Jeff Yang, columnist at the San Francisco Chronicle weighs in on whether it's particularly Chinese to try and keep ...

The U.S. Department of Education is investigating whether a top-scoring Asian American student was denied admission to Princeton because of his race. San Francisco Chronicle columnist Jeff Yang weighs in on the issue.

Father's Day is almost upon us. Pop culture critic and dad Jeff Yang shares his thoughts on the holiday.

Official Lunar New Year Celebrations are wrapping up, and the year of the pig is underway. Pop culture writer Jeff Yang explains why this is a particularly high-stakes year for a lot of Asian American parents.