It’s been one year and my niece and her friends’ news startup is going strong! They reached two-thirds circulation of their class and are now reviewing their costs (copying machines and staples) and distribution (reading period is a good time for news) while still serving their classmates. I’ve spent a lot of the last year […]
Posts in the Los Angeles category:
Hollywood is a white boy’s club, says one report. Here’s an antidote.
Meena Ramamurthy is a filmmaker and storyteller. A colleague, another writer of color, once told her: “Don’t write a pilot with two people of color.” “It doesn’t come from a bad place,” Ramamurthy says. “It just comes from experience.” If you’ve watched “Master of None” (the “Indians on Television” episode), this probably sounds familiar. Studios, […]
Publication Day for Chinese Characters
Today is publication day for Chinese Characters! The first shipments via Amazon have reached readers and the book is now easily available to anyone. We’ve got a lot going on, including East (New York City) and West (Los Angeles) Coast book launches and talks and seminars in China, Boston, Philadelphia and around Southern California. Please do […]
Global and Underground
Here’s how classes work: Holakou Rahmanian turns on his computer early in the morning or late at night. He goes to a website whose address is known only to students, faculty and administrators of his university. Sometimes he’s in his pajamas when he logs in. Sometimes, he guesses, his professors are also in their pajamas. […]
Haute Hijabis
Marwa Atik needs five pieces of trim, the kind embellished with pearls and black jewels. At a store in downtown L.A.’s Fashion District, boxes of trimmings line the walls from floor to ceiling, but Atik scans quickly and zeroes in on what she wants. At her direction, a clerk climbs a tall, wooden ladder and […]
Ai-jen Poo: The Rock Star of Community Organizing
At a conference about social movements in Los Angeles last month, all it took was the mention of her name and the crowd erupted in applause. In the world of community organizing, Ai-jen Poo, the director of the National Domestic Workers Alliance, is a rock star. As the crowd sat, though, Poo asked the women to […]
Bollywood in L.A.
Growing up in Kashmir, Raj Singh loved going to the theater. “In Kashmir, I was watching two movies in a day,” Singh recalls. “Here, I have no time to see movies.” Movies, instead, are Singh’s job. As general manager of the Naz 8 cinema in Artesia, which is northeast of Long Beach, he runs an […]
Tina’s Mouth: A Graphic Novel That Gives Indian-American Stereotypes the Finger
Tina Malhotra’s journey through a high school existential crisis was difficult. Bringing her world to life was just as wrenching. Author Keshni Kashyap and illustrator Mari Araki spent four years working on the graphic novel Tina’s Mouth: An Existential Diary, which was published in January. Kashyap was trained as a filmmaker and Araki is a […]
A man of faith
The offices of L.A. Voice, where Umar Hakim is in residency, are on the third floor of the First Baptist Church of Los Angeles. So when it comes time for Hakim to offer his daily prayers, he finds a quiet room, faces Mecca and turns his thoughts to God. “Most people don’t object to prayer,” […]
Health care reform, diabesity and the language of health journalism
Since Sunday evening this week, I’ve been spending time with National Health Journalism Fellows in downtown Los Angeles. We’ve visited slum housing, debated the terminology used in news reports about domestic violence, spent an evening at the ER, and dissected the legislative debates surrounding health care reform. You can read my live-blogging from the seminar […]