#filipino american
monolith: a comic for aapi heritage month 2022
Handsome Asian Megan Young is a Filipino-American TV host and actress. She is the older sister of other Handsome Asian Lauren Young.
Post link
Handsome Asian Lauren Young is a Filipino-American actress. She is the sister of other Handsome Asian Megan Young.
Post link
Congrats to Far East Movement for charting on Billboard with their new album, Identity, now available on iTunes,Spotify,Google PlayandAmazon.
THANK U!! our first indie release thru our own company @transparentfeedon@billboard
viaTwitter@fareastmovement
Pop/R&B artist Matt Almodiel releases his first online single, “Cheers to Us.” Produced by DionLeon, the track is currently up on CD Baby will soon be available on all other online retailers.
Support Almodiel in creating his debut EP by joining his just-launched Indie Gogo campaign.
There’s a PR push to celebrate the new romance between Chelsea Handler and Filipino American comedian Jo Koy. But Handler has a history of being racist and using her dating life with men of color as a shield from facing repercussions—and Koy seems happy to let her do it again.
Handler used this tactic in the Black community. Her response to backlash was to create content that talks around her racism without truly addressing it—and still profit from it. Ironically her “acknowledgement” of anti-Black racism is how I got exposed to her anti-Asian racism.
In 2016’s Chelsea Does Racism, Handler claims to be “egalitarian” with her jokes about race. But it’s clear she’s made choices on which groups to appear empathetic to and which groups she feels safe to dismiss with a laugh—such as Asian men. And she’s unapologetic about it.
Fast forward to Handler and Koy’s media tour touting themselves as a power couple. This matters because Jo Koy is currently being celebrated as major Fil-Am rep with his soon-to-be released studio film, Easter Sunday. Proudly pairing with an anti-Asian racist sends a message.
Jo Koy was not only the most frequent guest on her past show over the years (meaning he knows who she is), but invited her to play a role in Easter Sunday. This serves to rehabilitate her image, bring her into Fil-Am/AsAm spaces and let her profit from it.
Handler’s recent IG video says it all: She wants a Kardashian empire, where Filipinos are swapped in for Black people as accessories to her whiteness. She’s talking like a textbook sexpat yet repeatedly describes Filipinos and Black people as infiltrators.
Jo Koy’s decision to partner with Handler makes more sense knowing he’s guilty of peddling anti-Asian stereotypes too. In one special, Koy publicly body shames his son—ignoring his pleas not to. This is the same special that got Steven Spielberg to greenlight Easter Sunday.
You can guess the elevator pitch for Easter Sunday: “Think Crazy Rich Asians, but take out the rich so they’re just crazy.” White-mixed Asians like Jo Koy are granted more humanity than monoracial Fil-Ams due to the legacy of colonization, and Koy seems to be leaning into that.
Jo Koy is hardly the only example of an Asian with media power choosing whiteness over the AsAm community. Far more often, the pattern consists of white men partnered with Asian women (a legacy of racist U.S. policies like the Mixed Marriage Policy)
For ex, AsAm Chloe Bennet—who’s half-white like Jo Koy—proudly defended Logan Paul after he mocked and exploited a dead Japanese man. Yet Bennet is centered in campaigns about anti-Asian hate. Asians who hurt their community aren’t punished by white Hollywood—they’re rewarded.
The legacy of the MMP is so strong that white men feel entitled to speak on Asian issues in AsAm spaces—and Asians with media power let them. This causes severe harm, as seen by the erasure of AAPI men from hate crime data and narratives.
Back to the film Easter Sunday, there are no Fil-Ams credited on the creative team. I’m all for pan-Asian progress, but not at the expense of specific ethnic groups. It’s the first studio film to center on a Filipino American family. This pattern of erasing Fil-Ams in AsAm spaces needs to stop too.
Overall, Easter Sunday is supposed to be a “first,” but with so much racism embedded in its creation, I don’t feel like celebrating. The idea of seeing either Jo Koy or Chelsea Handler on a red carpet for a major Fil-Am milestone is awful. It’s a win for them—not us.
If you enjoy my work, please pledge to my Patreon or donate to my Paypal. I lost my publisher for trying to publish these kinds of essays, so your support keeps me going until I can find a new publisher/lit agenthttps://twitter.com/Joshua_Luna/status/1134522555744866304https://patreon.com/joshualunahttps://www.paypal.com/paypalme2/JoshuaLunaComics
Happy#AAPIHeritageMonth! This self-care kit for Asian Americans applies all year round (and maybe even for years to come).
The post in this link analyzes how Asian men are being hidden in anti-Asian hate crime data. It’s unbelievable that this is even happening and allowed to continue.
Thisnext post analyzes how journalists are part of the problem (including Asian journalists who uphold and defend racist white-controlled platforms/institutions).
(Please don’t repost or edit my art. Reblogs are always appreciated.)
If you enjoy my comics, please pledge to my Patreon or donate to my Paypal. I lost my publisher for trying to publish these strips, so your support keeps me going until I can find a new publisher/lit agenthttps://twitter.com/Joshua_Luna/status/1134522555744866304
https://patreon.com/joshualuna
https://www.paypal.com/paypalme2/JoshuaLunaComics
Post link
We’re told the play Hamilton is progressive because of its racial diversity. So I wondered, what other white male historical figures will benefit from such revisionist storytelling?
When it comes to race, liberals and conservatives have a good cop/bad cop dynamic. Even though they show it differently, both are racist and use the same tactic of weaponizing POC as tokens. Hamilton is a perfect example of the insidious ways bigotry functions in liberal spaces. Whereas POC tokens on the right espouse obvious bigotry, tokens on the left will mask their self-hate by appearing to push back on racism. Instead, they perpetuate racism through more “acceptable” means, such as colorism, colorblind casting, classism, exceptionalism, etc.
As many in the Black community have pointed out, the so-called progressive casting of Hamilton and its hip-hop infused storytelling turned Black characters into slave owners and villains to the lighter-skinned heroes. But none of that criticism mattered because liberals loved it. Once liberals love something, it feeds an impenetrable ouroboros-esque media ecosystem—from who gets cast, which platforms write about it, who goes viral for praising it, etc. They push white-worshipping narratives into the mainstream to say to POC “this is how you do it.”
A few years ago, most of the complaints about Asian representation is that there wasn’t any. Since then, we’ve made progress in getting more Asian faces on screen. However, many of the narratives for this newfound Asian rep is still white at their core—the same way Hamilton is.
Darren Criss is a good example of what white-worshipping media liberalism looks like in action for AsAms. He once said “I always say one of my favorite things about myself is that I’m half-Filipino, but I don’t look like it. I just look like a Caucasian guy, which is nice.” Criss refused to apologize or acknowledge he (and other white-mixed Asians) benefit from the colorism he blatantly gushed about. Everything he said afterward was clearly damage control and revisionist. But here’s the most frustrating part: he’s still touted as positive Fil-Am rep.
Darren Criss is hardly the only example. Media like To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before or Raya and the Last Dragon have been touted as progress, but they’re just Asian faces on white stories. White people—especially white men—still control the purse strings and decide what gets approved.
Where does that leave creators of color who truly challenge white supremacy? They get left behind, while the ones who mold themselves into tokens—to keep the system in place—get boosted to the top with resources and accolades because they don’t want to “throw away their shot.”
(Please don’t repost or edit my art. Reblogs are always appreciated.)
If you enjoy my comics, please pledge to my Patreon or donate to my Paypal. I lost my publisher for trying to publish these strips, so your support keeps me going until I can find a new publisher/lit agent
https://twitter.com/Joshua_Luna/status/1134522555744866304
https://patreon.com/joshualuna
https://www.paypal.com/paypalme2/JoshuaLunaComics
Post link
Make America Mask Again (even though it barely did to begin with).
Unlike Asia, the West associates wearing masks with weakness and fascism, rather than a civic duty to protect themselves and others. As if forcing sick individuals to work or be in situations that can literally kill—just to keep the capitalist machine running—isn’t tyrannical.
Asians are triply targeted in this pandemic. We are potential COVID victims like anyone else, yet also get blamed for the pandemic, and then get treated as “dirty” carriers of the disease even more when we wear a mask. This leads to violent anti-Asian hate crimes against us.
It isn’t Asian to care about others and mask up. It’s basic empathy and hygiene—which many Americans lack. To my fellow Asians out there who’ve been masking from the start and never stopped even though it added another target to your back, I see you. Hang in there.
(Please don’t repost or edit my art. Reblogs are always appreciated.)
If you enjoy my comics, please pledge to my Patreon or donate to my Paypal. I lost my publisher, so your support keeps me going until I can find a new publisher/lit agent.
https://twitter.com/Joshua_Luna/status/1134522555744866304
https://patreon.com/joshualuna
https://www.paypal.com/paypalme2/JoshuaLunaComics
Post link
Holy manananggal, Batman! Since #FilipinoAmericanHistoryMonth coincides with both #Batober and #Halloween, I thought it’d be fun to re-imagine Batman and Batwoman as Fil-Ams.
Bruce Waynaldo wasn’t born to extremely wealthy parents who were killed by a petty thief. Instead, his parents were struggling immigrants, who spent years laboring in inhumane working conditions in U.S. factories and were ultimately killed by the corporate thieves running them.
He dons the Batsuit to steal from corrupt elites to not only give back to Fil-Ams and other communities of color, but also finance his campaign of vengeance against his powerful enemies. He’s aided by his tito Alfred, who gathers intel on the rich as a housekeeper for hire.
Kate Kanalan enlisted in the U.S. Marine Corps to make her military family proud, only to later realize she was just a pawn for the U.S. empire and its colonization of Asia and the Pacific. She retires and becomes Batwoman instead, protecting civilians from police brutality.
Openly gay, she uses her media visibility as Batwoman to campaign for equal rights and better legislative protections—striking fear in homophobes and awe in the ladies. Inspired by Bruce Waynaldo’s example, she donates her pension to homeless veterans and LGBTQ youth organizations.
While re-imagining white superheroes as people of color isn’t a perfect panacea, it’s one way to improve a lack of Fil-Am representation in comics and other media. So if DC wants a Fil-Am creator to write a Fil-Am Bat family, they know where to point those Bat-Signal lips.
(Please don’t repost or edit my art. Reblogs are always appreciated.)
If you enjoy my comics, please pledge to my Patreon or donate to my Paypal. I lost my publisher for trying to publish these strips, so your support keeps me going until I can find a new publisher/lit agent
https://twitter.com/Joshua_Luna/status/1134522555744866304
https://patreon.com/joshualuna
https://www.paypal.com/paypalme2/JoshuaLunaComics
Post link
Although I majored in Sequential Art (comics) in college, I also took acting classes as electives because—like many—it was a childhood dream. But what a professor said to me was a wake-up call.
Obviously, it wasn’t just one moment or individual that deterred me from pursuing acting. It ultimately wasn’t my calling—comics were. But I highlight this moment because it’s a symptom of how Asians are viewed and portrayed on a larger societal and institutional level.
SCAD was majority-white, so there were few Asians and other POC on campus. I remember being shocked seeing a Filipino guy perform in the play HAIR, and at the time, a lot of Hollywood productions were being filmed in Savannah. So this environment inspired me to try out acting.
For the most part, I realized breaking in required two things: knowing martial arts, and serving up Asianness for laughs. This isn’t to knock martial arts because it’s part of our culture and we should be proud of it. The problem is Asians are rarely depicted as full human beings.
In every kind of media, Asians have been and continue to be used as props for a non-Asian gaze, restricted from the full spectrum of the human experience. For Asian men, this means kung fu masters, nameless goons, or Ken Jeong-types whose sole purpose is to self-denigrate.
It says a lot that to this day, 42% of Americans can’t name a single famous Asian American. When asked to name one, the top response was “don’t know,” followed by actor Jackie Chan in 2nd—who is not a U.S. citizen—and deceased actor Bruce Lee in 3rd.
The worst part is Asians are blamed for our own oppression. We’re fed myths about how we lack personalities, marketability, good looks, etc. Usually, Asians are perceived as likeable only if there’s white heritage—which is why half-white Asians tend to get more opportunities.
Although I entered the comic book industry as a writer and artist, I ended up in Hollywood spaces anyway via the TV/film adaptation process. From there I learned it doesn’t matter if Asians are in front of or behind the camera—the stereotypes hold us back no matter where we are.
This is why Asians need to be in control of our own stories, and we need Asian creators who don’t cater to a non-Asian gaze. For more of my thoughts on this subject: https://twitter.com/Joshua_Luna/status/1305941251393544193
(Please don’t repost or edit my art. Reblogs are always appreciated.)If you enjoy my comics, please pledge to my Patreon or donate to my Paypal. I lost my publisher for trying to publish these strips, so your support keeps me going until I can find a new publisher/lit agenthttps://twitter.com/Joshua_Luna/status/1134522555744866304
https://patreon.com/joshualuna
https://www.paypal.com/paypalme2/JoshuaLunaComics
Post link
White supremacy benefits from the low voter turnout of Asian-Americans. Why? Because when we do vote, we have the potential to make up the winning margin.
This Election Day, Fil-Am Man wants you to #FlipTheHouse. Vote on Nov 6!
(Please don’t repost or edit my work. Reblogs are always appreciated)
In 2018, we flipped the House. In 2020, let’s keep the House, and flip the White House and the Senate.
It’s not a perfect solution, but voting is one way to use your voice and work towards something better than this nightmare. #Vote#VoteEarly
Post link
The reason America hates wearing a mask is because it prefers showing its true face.
For some, this spike in anti-Asian racism comes as a surprise, or seems like it’s the first time it’s happening. But that’s because the Model Minority Myth—created by white people—has tricked both white people and POC into thinking Asianness is a privilege. (For more info, see my comic “Asian American Monomyth” https://twitter.com/Joshua_Luna/status/1107709119992119297)
But history shows what America really thinks. The Page Act of 1875 legally codified Asian women as immoral, disease-carrying prostitutes in order to ban them from the US and extended that ban to Asian men with the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882. These sentiments have never left. This is why Asian Americans are always portrayed as the perpetual foreigner—we “don’t belong here” and can be removed on a whim via ongoing deportations or mob violence, such as the 1930 lynching of Filipino men in Watsonville and the 1871 lynching of Chinese in L.A., and the current COVID-inspired attacks.
Trump calling COVID “the Chinese virus” has the same intent—to distract from his violent negligence, stump for war with China, and put a target on Asians so we’ll bear the brunt of COVID frustrations instead of him. Over 2,500 anti-Asian incidents have been reported since March. As if anti-Asian violence weren’t enough, structural racism means COVID is more deadly to POC. For example, Filipinx nurses comprise 4% of nurses in the U.S., but make up 31.5% of all nurse deaths. Also, many Fil-Ams live in multi-generational households—which increases risk.
Trump and his supporters know COVID is deadly, but sabotage efforts to stop its spread because their goal is eugenics—the same way the U.S. infected Native Americans with smallpox, or how the Reagan administration ignored HIV since it disproportionately killed LGBTQ and Black communities.
But right-wingers aren’t the only racists. If you’re wondering how a man who wants to “Free Hong Kong" hates Asians, it’s the same reason why racists claim to support Uyghurs yet don’t care about Trump’s Muslim ban, U.S. atrocities in Iraq and Afghanistan, or oppression of Palestinians. It’s the same reason the U.S. “supports” Taiwan, South Korea, Philippines, Hawai'i, and Japan, and why U.S. soldiers took Asian wives via the 1945 War Brides Act (a loophole to anti-immigration laws). It’s not because they like Asians and Pacific Islanders—they see us/our lands as strategic assets or spoils of war.
This shows how diasporic Asian lives are always inextricably linked to the fate of Asians abroad & vice versa. US imperialism has murdered millions of Asians via war in the Philippines, Korea, Vietnam, Cambodia & Laos & left a multi-generational impact. (For more info, see my comic “Detonasian” https://twitter.com/Joshua_Luna/status/1181638490120957952)
So it isn’t enough to stop the spread of COVID—we have to stop the spread of anti-Asian racism too. That means rejecting the lies of the Model Minority, speaking out against anti-Asian COVID attacks, and acknowledging just how pervasive and deeply embedded anti-Asian racism is.
(Please don’t repost or edit my art. Reblogs are always appreciated.)
If you enjoy my comics, please pledge to my Patreon or donate to my Paypal. I lost my publisher for trying to publish these strips, so your support keeps me going until I can find a new publisher/lit agenthttps://twitter.com/Joshua_Luna/status/1134522555744866304
https://patreon.com/joshualuna
https://www.paypal.com/paypalme2/JoshuaLunaComics
Post link
Tabo, or not tabo, that is the question.
(Please don’t repost or edit my art. Reblogs are always appreciated.)
If you enjoy my comics, you can support me here:
https://patreon.com/joshualuna
https://www.paypal.com/paypalme2/JoshuaLunaComics
HappyFilipino American History Month! This FAHM it’s important to examine taboo topics like the tabo, and how our everyday lives are affected by the legacy of colonization. (I came up with this pun four years ago and I’m still proud of it!)
Post link
