Sunday, September 24, 2017
Arab mothers and grandmothers in Bay Ridge discover that in a new country, there are new ways to care for their families, their community, and themselves.
Rather than fly to China to visit their departed loved ones, a growing number of Chinese Americans are opting to bring their family members’ remains to the U.S.
Arab mothers and grandmothers in Bay Ridge speak out and fight back.
Two contending schools of thought on rezoning continue to divide Chinatown. And the neighborhood might be running out of time.
They are not non-college, white, working-class men, but they campaigned and voted for Trump.
Cooking provides a familiar focus, even a break, and the possibility to recreate culture and share it in a part of the world that finds her, and people like her, distasteful.
“Surviving Surveillance, Catering to America”: A mother copes with the unjust arrest and incarceration of her son.
Several Chinese workers who helped build the Central Pacific Railroad found refuge in Belleville, NJ.
Why Donald Trump is so wrong about comparing his planned U.S. border wall with the Great Wall of China.
An art installation in Jackson Heights speaks about how immigrant communities in the neighborhood are experiencing policing and displacement.
Two Bangladeshi New Yorkers share their culture with their city and empower their community through their new street food pop-up.
Community organizers have created a walking tour of Jackson Heights that focuses on the experiences of the immigrants who live in the neighborhood.
How many terrorism cases against Muslim Americans were filed by the NYPD as a result of its snooping on Muslim mosques, organizations and coffee shops?
Do you want to know your future? Do you want to know when is a good time to move to a new house or to shift to a new career? These ladies may have the answers.
A night in the life of nocturnal street artists and art vendors who, every midnight, take over the New York City neighborhood that literally doesn’t sleep.
Yue saos and postpartum meal services are helping new Chinese mothers in Brooklyn cope with the no-shower, no-cold-drink, no-going-out demands of ‘sitting the month.’
Young Bangladeshi theater troupe uses traditional folk theater to confront trauma in the community.
An undocu-Korean’s quest to remain and his fight for millions like him.
For Chung Hwa regulars and Flushing residents, the closing of the 30-year old bookshop meant the demise of a community resource center.
One former detainee brings to light the struggle of many asylum‐seekers who are languishing in detention centers and facing deadly deportation to the countries they fled from.
Carrying songs across oceans, these musicians create home and community in New York City.
From sufism to reggae, from construction work to driving taxis, it has been a colorful ride for one of the co-founders of a taxi drivers union in New York.
Three Chinese American women, who are very successful in their fields, are considered failures for one single reason — for staying single past the age of 25.
Tenants of rent-regulated apartments in Chinatown fought back and won a settlement with their landlord, who now must provide safe and decent living condition and stop harassing them.
She migrated from China to the United States, hoping to find a better life. She ended up working in a massage parlor, providing sex to customers.
The Brooklyn DA wants no jail term for NYPD cop Peter Liang, but several Asian American groups demand accountability for Liang and justice for all victims of police violence.
For the women who dance together at a Chinatown park, every gesture brings them closer together and every step leads them away from the dangers of depression.
Amid the sea of Chinese characters in Sunset Park’s Eighth Avenue, an Irish pub has held its ground despite waves of inward and outward migration.
Who owns public space? Young South Asian women in Brooklyn struggle with the culture that dictates that women have no business outside the home.
The difference between tea and life back home and over here, according to a Guyanese-American family in South Ozone Park.
The current debate over the conviction of NYPD officer Peter Liang is actually a good sign, heralding the growing political maturity of the Chinese American community.
Cha, chai or te? A Richmond Hill family’s multiple ways of preparing what Chinese philosopher Lao Tzu called “the elixir of life.”
Unwanted in their mothers’ country and unwelcome in their fathers’ homeland, Filipino Amerasians are still in search of a home.
As Pearl River Mart prepares to close its doors, why the store’s godchild doesn’t want it to be “saved”
Red is believed to be a lucky color and everyone wants to carry good luck with them. But that symbol of good fortune may soon carry something else: a 10-cent charge.
In Richmond Hill, a neighborhood’s safety concerns are pitted against a city’s effort to bring youth offenders closer to home. And the residents are up in arms.
The Nepalese and Tibetan communities in Jackson Heights mix tradition with modern to keep their heritage alive.
In Kensington, young Bangladeshi activists fight against apathy and inaction in the local community by organizing around the murder of a 13-year-old boy in Bangladesh earlier this summer.
How Asian small business owners are negotiating community and commerce in Baltimore
Many of the neighborhood’s roti shops are located just steps from the A train. For Richmond Hill residents, gyaffing and hot doubles can remedy anything the MTA throws at them.
“…I’d see non-Sikhs…be scared because there were so many turbans around them. I want to end that,” Amrinder Singh explained.
A “goddaughter” of one of Chinatown’s oldest and most storied emporiums remembers the store’s Red origins and high-low appeal.
Barriers to Banking Push Queens Immigrants Towards Alternative, Financial Services
Roti is everyday food in Punjabi homes. At the gurdwara, it takes on a new name and becomes a symbol of service.
A mysterious black poster sends one Columbia University student down a transnational college application rabbit hole.
A momo evangelist introduces foodies to a lesser known dumpling and to the Tibetans and Nepalese who love them.
Time traveling with a drink find in Chinatown
Community organizing can be lonely work when you’re battling ghosts from a violent past
In neighborhoods where Asian American voters lack English fluency, poll workers are the overlooked links to electoral participation.
Buddhist “mercy releases” have long set animals free in ways that may harm them. Parks and animal protection organizations are working to make it better.
Worker-owned cooperatives gain immigrant women more than income. They give them a cure for the “tensions” that harm their physical and mental health.
Urbanist Tarry Hum’s new book on Sunset Park looks at the economic, cultural and land use shifts in the waterfront Brooklyn neighborhood.
I traveled to the heart of the epidemic one day in July to find out for myself what kind of peril we’re in.
They tasted like a vanilla pudding—sweet and light. I’d long wondered if these berries were safe to eat, but Chin seemed to be nibbling without worry…
I quickly learn this view has cost this business a lot. Irina remembers all the people who left after hurricane Sandy struck in the fall of 2012. “They lost so much, their homes…and then with the businesses closed, they had no work to stay for.”
A Queens couple tries to put down roots in their own community and discovers the unwritten discriminatory rules of real estate.
We journeyed over two-hundred miles to play indoor volleyball in sweat-inducing temperatures. That draining, exhausting heat is as much a part of the game as are the unique rules of 9-man volleyball.
“Our samosas are different because we use fresh vegetables and olive oil,” says Saleha Parveen…“We use long bean, cauliflower, cabbage, potato and carrot. Most restaurants just use old oil and potatoes.”
I remember the medicine wafting through the apartment–a distinct scent, a heavy, earthy, musky odor that smelled like bark, dirt and dampened roots. The minute the pot would go on, I would retreat to my room where I paced back and forth, in anticipation of a stand-off with my mother.
Finntown in the 1920s and 30s was a bit like a leftist fantasy mixed with a touch of “Portlandia”…
When poet and First Lady Chirlane McCray (aka “FLONYC”) chose spoken word artist Ramya Ramana to perform at her husband’s inauguration, it took the ceremony—and Ramya’s poetry—to a whole new level.
Alex is a skinny teenager with shaggy black hair – almost like a Beatles cut. He comes here all the time, just to play this game.
…Hispanics and Asians are living in neighborhoods together nearly three times as much as they did ten years ago. But how integrated they truly are is a matter of debate…
Council District 38, which includes the heavily Asian and Latino Sunset Park, is a testing ground to see whether an experiment in direct democracy can meet its lofty goals…
No showering, no going outside, no drinking cold water–for an entire month. Many women in mainland China observe these rules as part of a traditional health care practice following childbirth.
About a decade ago, the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene (DOH) began to puzzle over a strange and disturbing sight: whole, roasted ducks, hanging by their necks in the windows of Manhattan’s Chinatown.
The gate, the window guards (all seven of them), the railings leading up to the door, the door itself — all bright stainless steel, and sparkling even on this cloudy day.
“When times are good, people might go for the Absolut, when they’re bad it’s Smirnoff or Georgi,” says Anil, who runs 1-2-3 Liquors on Jamaica Avenue…
The drummers were dressed in black and white tunics with colorful sashes and played traditional instruments…
It’s Sunday morning and there’s a debate underway at the Richmond Hill Flea Market in Queens. At issue: a pair of bejeweled, costume earrings made of faux diamonds and rubies.
In 2012, over half a million stop and frisks took place citywide. Half of these involved persons of color—young men like Nilesh, who are constantly on the lookout for patrolling officers.
“He could’ve walked into Harlem and everybody knew ‘im. He could walk into Spanish Harlem, everybody knew him. The gangsters knew him and respected him because he stood up to them…”
…there was one piece of equipment that made it all possible: a SONY tape player that kept them in operation as if they were 24-hour newsroom. The machine would play ten cassettes one after the other.
Visitors to the address would have found an entirely different scene ten or fifteen years ago. Before it was a fashion headquarters, the building was a garment factory…
“…the union guys were really worried. They were literally pissing in their pants…15 minutes later, it seemed like 15,000 women came out of the woodwork. Literally. From the buildings in Soho. They just couldn’t believe it.”
…incoming donations were piled up two and three boxes deep on the sidewalk.
“The typhoon really hit me hard,” she said. “I live in New York, but I’m still Filipino.”
“Once we printed Chinese upside-down and nobody knew it. That was embarrassing!”
A set of wind chimes hangs on a thin board, a short-wave radio emits bursts of Morse code, thin sheets of metal rustle on a crate.
We set up a table with hot cider to stave off the chill, and little by little, over the course of three hours, 20 participants came by to strut their stuff…
“We are not known to the mainstream disabled communities. We’ve been here for 20 years.”
When working with the 12 to 19 year old set, she goes by two simple rules: 1.) Don’t disrespect them and 2.) Stand your ground.
In the center of the plaza stands a bronze, 15-foot statue of the Chinese sage…In its shadow, a woman with a visor and clipboard is selling shuttle tickets to Foxwoods Casino.
In the same way that K-Town serves as a rough rendition of Seoul, these plastic replicas dutifully represent their edible counterparts.
Amid a national conversation about preschool and poverty, low-income New Yorkers are fighting for dignified welfare-to-work and and child care. But will they succeed?
Lynne Sachs talks about her film on immigrant experiences in Chinatown shift-bed houses.
“81 Bowery is their home and their only choice for a place to live.”
There are 42,000 cab drivers in New York City–and 82% of them are immigrants. Many from them from white collars jobs back in their home country.
Writer Katie Salisbury goes on a quest to Mission Chinese to check out the monster success of Asian hipster cuisine.
There are lists of some slave uprisings in the late 1600s. There were gallows next to Beaver Pond.
A river of dark, red fluids frothed and pooled over drains. Men in green T-shirts scrubbed the floor with brooms as wave after wave of water washed away the sacrificial blood.
Carolyn Sun explores the journey of how kimchi has found its place in America at the tables of Koreans and non-Koreans alike.
Part one of a two-part series on local Asian-American engagement in electoral politics in New York City.
The Basement Bhangra deejay revisits the neighborhood of a legendary Hollis nightclub that flourished in the 90s.
The costs of ‘hecho en China.’
Sisters Deanna Fei and Jessica Fei capture the many faces of Flushing: a home, a place of transit, a new territory.
Formed in Iran—and influenced by Joy Division—the indie band had to high-tail out of the Islamic Republic for fear of reprisals. Why the band wound up in Brooklyn.
After the family saw this photo, ‘they couldn’t sleep.’
I recall the monkey god’s gaze at the Ganapati Temple and my own impulsive desire to offer him a coconut.
An illustrated dispatch.
