Arts and Culture

What Asian American Oscar Victories Mean for All of Us

After the Oscars, when Asian Americans were everywhere on the winners list, from actors, writers, directors, but also makeup artists, and not just in “Everything Everywhere All at Once,” but also in movies like “The Whale,” I turn to the Oakland playwright Ishmael Reed who must be wondering will Asian Americans now go for the Whiteness Prize?

Published

3 years ago

March 16, 2023

Oakland Post

Michelle Yeoh is the first Asian actress to win an Academy Award.

By Emil Guillermo

(I consider Asian American to be a generic term, indicating people of Asian descent either living or working not necessarily indicative of their citizenship status.)

I’m in New York as an actor in “The Conductor,” the latest Reed production now off-Broadway (get your in-person or live-streamed tickets here: https://theaterforthenewcity.net/shows/the-conductor-2023/).

I play a brown-skinned Tucker Carlson-type on a faux Fox, and very conservative news network.

That’s how good an actor I am!

As an Asian American sometime-actor, I’m gratified to see Asian American creatives take their historic star turn at the Oscars. Asians have won the Academy Award for best supporting actor before, but never has there been a best actor/actress winner until the Malaysia-born, Hollywood-based Michelle Yeoh last weekend.

There’s something about being a “first.” A “never before.”

But what’s next?

And that’s where Reed’s play got me thinking.

In Reed’s “The Conductor,” Blacks start a new underground railroad to help Indian Americans — not American Indians, but those from the continent of India — escape a wave of xenophobia that is forcing them to flee to Canada.

The main character, columnist Warren Chipp is Reed’s alter ego. When a conservative Indian seeks refuge and asks Chipp why the liberal Chipp is being so nice to him, Chipp reveals his grasp of irony.

“Minorities make alliances with us (Blacks) until their admission to the white club is accepted. This happened to the Jews, the Japanese, the Irish, the Italians and now you guys (Asian Indians).”

It’s just one of the provocative asides in the play, but the historical examples are there.

Says Chipp/Reed: “These groups come running to us when the white man decides to sic mobs on them because of some geopolitical conflict or culture war. Begging us to hide them and save them. And then, when they get an ‘all-clear’ sign, they return to auditioning for whiteness again. Lining up and trampling over each other, asking white people to ‘choose me!’ Some of them even change their names to go Anglo.”

Reed says it’s the root of “Afro-Pessimism.”

What’s that?

It’s a term by Frank Wilderson, as Reed explains, that means Blacks can’t depend upon Blacks’ “junior allies.” Wilderson calls B.S. on intersectionality and says that Blacks “must go it alone.”

After rehearsals and the first four performances, the passages from the play haunt me.

Especially last Sunday. When the Asian Americans were preparing for their Oscar turn, I was off-Broadway living Reed’s play.

Is the Model Minority now back to auditioning for whiteness again?

I hope not. I get what Reed’s saying in his play. But I see the Oscar victory as a win for not just Asian Americans but all BIPOC communities in all their unique narratives.

AAPI stories have a kind of heat now. An independent film about a family with a laundromat dealing with the IRS and the multiverse where people have hotdogs as fingers puts us in a whole new ballgame.

We aren’t so weird after all. We’re of immigrant descent, sure. We’re different, yes. But we’re of the modern world and our stories deal in universal truths.

People flocked to “Everything Everywhere All at Once,” which gave it some cache as an indie project that was making money. Not like “Top Gun” money, but enough to satisfy Hollywood accountants. Once it caught the attention of the Academy looking for diversity, the film was simply recognized for its off-beat ingenuity and its creative weirdness.

I was having lunch in New York’s Chinatown with a lawyer friend of mine, a Chinese American immigrant and also a triple Harvard (College, Law School, and MBA) graduate. My friend surprised me when he said he couldn’t understand the hype about “Everything, Everywhere…”

He called it unwatchable. He liked the movie “Tar.”

I told him maybe it was generational. Just goes to show you that not everyone, not even Asian Americans are on board with “Everything, Everywhere…”

But the huge victory on Sunday makes the film like a Golden Spike in Hollywood. The track is finally connected and open for AAPI creatives bound for glory.

“Everything, Everywhere…” has put everyone in the equation on notice. We have stories to tell that sell, and that people want to see.

Stories that win Oscars.

I see the phenomenon as a rising Asian American film lifts all boats. And with AAPI at just over 6% of the population, I don’t buy the “Afro-Pessimism” idea in his play.

We can’t go it alone. We don’t have the numbers. We need each other.

Like anything worthwhile, it’s going to have to be done together.

Emil Guillermo is a journalist and commentator. See his vlog on www.amok.com And see “The Conductor” in person or live-streamed tickets here: https://theaterforthenewcity.net/shows/the-conductor-2023/

Oakland Post

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Lower Bottom Playaz Presents Lee Blessing’s ‘Going to St. Ives’

Played by Dr. ayodele nzinga, May N’Kame, the mother of a deadly African dictator, travels to England to see Dr. Cora Gage (Teresa Foss) about medical treatment for her failing eyesight. But what she really wants is a poison to assassinate her son. Gage is then put in a personal dilemma to either uphold her vow to ‘do no harm,’ or help put an end to the atrocities the dictator visits on his people.

Published

3 weeks ago

July 5, 2026

Oakland Post

Oakland’s oldest North American African theater company presents a story of race, women, violence, and empire.

By Cat Brooks, Special to The Post

The Lower Bottom Playaz 27^th season will kick off on July 9 with “Going to St. Ives,” a play by Lee Blessing.

Directed by playwright, actress, and community advocate Cat Brooks, the play by Lee Blessing is the story of two impressive women brought together by the personal and divided by the political, as both seek to accomplish the greatest good.

“While the Empire’s location is fictional, a very real genocide is happening in the Congo right now that many of us are ignoring,” Brooks observed. “We set this play there in hopes of utilizing theater to make audiences aware of injustices moving in places and amongst people that mainstream media omits from its headlines.

“In these times, it is more important than ever that theater do more than just entertain. It must tell tales that ignite us into action.”

Also explored in Going to St. Ives are themes of motherhood and sacrifice. What does it cost mothers to raise sons only to lose them to the violence of the world? What experiences are shared amongst mothers across race, class, and country?

“Going to St. Ives examines the weight of privilege against the cost of ‘being responsible’ in a world carved by colonialism, greed, and loss in a high-stakes chess game between two women with only one thing in common,” said nzinga who is also the artistic director of Lower Bottom Playaz.

The play was first performed in 1997 in Seattle, eventually enjoying a highly praised off-Broadway run in New York in 2005.

For this production, Lower Bottom Playaz is partnering with non-government organizations that focus on raising awareness and providing support to displaced refugees across the diaspora, emphasizing community solidarity and collective action.

“Going to St. Ives” premieres on July 9 at BAM House in the Sister Thea Theater, 1540 Broadway, Oakland, CA 94612. All performances are scheduled through July 26 on Friday and Saturday at 8 p.m. and matinees on Saturday and Sunday at 2 p.m. For tickets and more information, please visit http://www.lowerbottomplayaz.com/. Reservations: 510 332-1319, leave a message.

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Activism

‘The Oakland Street Academy Saved My Life’

The first time a teacher pulled up a chair to sit next to me to help me out, I panicked because no adult had ever sat so close to me in any kind of a caring or helping way. My English teacher, Kitty (Epstein), would make the biggest impact in my life. I didn’t know then what it meant to have a teacher who would care about me enough to spend her precious time with me even through all of my frustration about learning and thinking the whole time I couldn’t learn anything because I thought I was stupid.

Published

3 weeks ago

July 5, 2026

Oakland Post

Mural at the Emiliano Zapata Oakland Street Academy, an alternative high school in the Oakland Unified School District, located at 417 29th St. in Oakland. Phone: (510) 874-3630.

By Ze Segundo, Special to The Post

This is an autobiographical statement by a former Street Academy student who overcame many obstacles in the1970s, attended S.F. State University, and built a successful life for herself.

I was born and raised in Oakland, living in a household with a single mother and eight children. My life was chaotic: I never felt loved, never hearing the words, “I love you.”

I was 4 years old when all of us were sent to foster homes. There, my little sister and I were tortured. I believe we were there a little over a year.

When we finally returned home to our mother, she had a new husband who was very abusive to all of us including my mother.

I and my other sisters were sexually abused by two uncles and my big brother. I remember my uncle choking me and telling me if I told anyone, he would kill me and my little brother – so I didn’t tell. I was terrified of him. I tried to stay away from him as much as possible, but that’s kind of hard to do when a sexual predator lives with you.

My mother would have parties on the weekends where there would be many people drinking and fighting. The police were often at my home. I hated Sunday mornings because my mother would make us kids clean up after the parties. The house had the stench of cigarettes and booze.

Having to clean up other people’s vomit made me sick to my stomach. This is when I started to drink myself. Taking sips of leftover alcohol in glasses and beer cans. That would be the start of my alcoholism.

I started cutting myself when I was 11 years old and didn’t know why. I think it was because it made me feel something different and somehow made whatever I was feeling go away for the moment.

I didn’t have many friends and didn’t have any social skills. I was very shy and withdrawn. In my early teen I couldn’t look people in the eyes. If I was walking down the street and someone was walking towards me, I would purposely cross the street, so I didn’t have to have contact with them.

I was terrified of the world around me. I didn’t even talk to my mother much because I didn’t know what kind of mood she would be in. I learned to stay silent and stay away from her.

My grandmother lived in Hayward; my sister, brother and I took a bus from Oakland to attend junior high school there. Because I didn’t have any social skills, the kids would tease me and bully me. I had to fight a lot, so much that my brother and I were kicked out; they didn’t want any of us in their schools.

After we were kicked out of the school district, I tried to attend a junior high in Oakland, but the noise in the classroom overwhelmed me. The sounds rumbled in my ears.

Again, I was bullied and teased. So, I stopped going to school. I would leave the house with my brothers and sisters but didn’t set foot into any classroom after that. I just wandered the streets until it was time to go home.

It was a very chaotic home life, and I was a severely abused child, overwhelmed with everything around me.

When I was 15, a social worker talked to my mother about sending me to Oakland Street Academy. My mother thought it was a continuation school, where the worst students went.

I didn’t want to go to Street Academy, fearful of being bullied again, but I was tired of hanging out in the street all day. I thought the Street Academy was strange, a school that took over an old furniture store building. It was an open floor plan with partitions that sectioned off classes.

During class, we could hear the buses go by and people talking as they were walking by. I was still painfully shy and withdrawn. I would show up to school early, so I didn’t have to walk past other students in the classroom. I didn’t speak to any students and barely spoke to the teachers. Even when class was going on, I would sit across the room in a small chair and table between two lockers.

I isolated myself from the rest of the class, not really knowing why, but that’s where I sat. I had a third-grade reading level at age 15 and couldn’t spell much at all.

Kitty told me that I could learn, and that there were no stupid students. I remember one time a small group of students walked to fast food restaurants just to read the menu because reading anything is better than reading nothing at all.

Kitty didn’t give up on me – so, I didn’t give up on myself.

School was difficult for me because so many things were going on at home. It was hard for me to focus, but the teachers were really patient with me. Street Academy empowered students by teaching Chicano studies and Black studies. We were learning about our own histories and cultures. Street Academy students participated in demonstrations like the United Farm Workers grape boycott of the mid-1970s. We learned that we could make a difference with our voices. It was a great self-esteem builder.

In many ways, Street Academy saved my life because I was going nowhere.
The minute I set foot into that school I knew it was something special. It took me four years to graduate because I was so far behind in my schooling, and I was dyslexic.

When I left Street Academy, I was reading college material and attended San Francisco State University. I was the first in my family to graduate high school and the first to go to college. As a 15-year-old with CPTSD (Complex Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder), I accomplished what I thought would never happen to me.

I am grateful to the school’s staff and what Street Academy stands for. Schools and teachers should treat students like human beings, care about them, spend a little extra time, believe in them, and they will believe in themselves because you never know what students are going through and what they have experienced in their past that affects their learning.

There are no stupid kids, bad kids, or lazy kids, only kids who need to be understood and loved. Street Academy gave all of that to me.

During the 1970s, Ze Segundo attended the Oakland Street Academy, an Oakland Unified School District school now known as Emiliano Zapata Street Academy located at 417 29^th St. in Oakland.

Oakland Post

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Arts and Culture

Prescott Circus Theatre Presents Free Summer Performance Series

Now in its 41st year, the Prescott Circus Theatre is a nationally recognized performing arts education program for Oakland youth. The circus offers safe environments that challenge Oakland youth, through circus arts training, to develop the skills and confidence to thrive on stage, in school, and in life.

Published

4 weeks ago

June 26, 2026

Oakland Post

Prescott Circus showcase pathways pyramid. Photo courtesy of Prescott Circus.

By Post Staff

The Prescott Circus, Oakland’s longest-running youth circus, is returning this summer with its free shows. Join the Prescott Circus’s young stars as they share their joys and talents through stilt-dancing, tumbling, juggling, and more.

At the heart of this one-hour show, which demonstrates teamwork, pride, and joy, are Oakland Unified School District students ages 8 – 17 from more than 10 different schools

This is accomplished through no-cost school and community programs for more than 300 Oakland youth each year. Performing company members from Prescott, where the program began, perform and make appearances at as many as 40 Bay Area events each year.

The summer program is funded in part by Oakland Fund for Children and Youth, California Arts Council, Port of Oakland, and the West Davis & Bergard Foundation.

Performances will be held Tuesday, July 14, 11 a.m. and 1:30 p.m. (ASL interpreted) and Wednesday, July 15, 11 a.m., at the Malonga Casquelourd Center for the Arts, 1428 Alice St., Oakland. For free reservations go to