Pulitzer Prize-winning photographer announces his retirement

Nick Ut with the photo that impacted Americans' view of the Vietnam War.

Reprinted from AsAm News
AFTER 51 years with the Associated Press, Nick Ut says he will retire in March of next year, reports Ahn Do of the Los Angeles Times.

Ut, 66, is best known for his Pulitzer Prize-winning 1972 photograph of a naked Vietnamese girl running in terror after being badly burned by napalm.

Today Ut is a fixture at many of Los Angeles’ biggest stories including the Michael Jackson, OJ Simpson and Night Stalker trials.

“I’m a lucky guy,” said Ut. “They knew my picture and they welcomed me. That picture gave me respect and allowed me to keep doing my job.” After 51 years with the Associated Press, Nick Ut says he will retire in March of next year, reports the L.A. Times.

Today Ut is a fixture at many of Los Angeles’ biggest stories including the Michael Jackson, OJ Simpson and Night Stalker trials.

Nick Ut/Associated Press

Nick Ut's famous photo showing Kim Phuc Phan  and other children running away from a napalm attack.

“I’m a lucky guy,” said Ut. “They knew my picture and they welcomed me. That picture gave me respect and allowed me to keep doing my job.”

The napalm girl was later identified as Kim Phuc Phan. The two remain friends to this day. It was Ut who took her and some of the other children to the hospital before he ran back to AP to develop his photos.

“Kim’s picture continue making me famous,” he said.

“That photograph is more powerful than bombs,” Phuc said this summer at a Los Angeles Press Club gala, presenting a career achievement award to her “Uncle Ut.”

After the fall of Saigon in 1975, Ut was assigned to Tokyo where he remained until his arrival in the United States two years later.

(Views from the Edge contributed to this report.)

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Viet refugee wins White House honor for her environmental work in the U.S.

A VIETNAMESE/AMERICAN woman was honored last week with the White House Champions of Change for Climate Equity Award for her work to end environmental racism and empower communities of color to join the fight against climate change.

“Winning this award is a great honor, and validates all the work we are doing to end environmental racism and prioritize solutions in frontline communities that are hit first and worst by pollution and climate change,” said Vien Truong, director of Green For All, a non-profit organization dedicated to creating an inclusive green economy strong enough to lift people out of poverty.

Vien Truong

One of her landmark accomplishments is the passing of Senate Bill 535, a community reinvestment bill in California that created a polluters pay fund, which created the largest fund in history for low income communities to green up and to create economic revitalization for residents. In the last two years, it has directed over $900 million into the poorest and most polluted communities in California.

Truong grew up the youngest of 11 kids to a refugee family that fled from war-torn Vietnam. Her parents worked in the pesticide-ridden fields of Oregon picking strawberries. Later they worked at sweatshops, where she grew up in the heavily polluted region of Oakland, California, known as the “toxic triangle.” It is through these life experiences that Truong grew to understand the inequality and marginalization endured by disadvantaged communities.

“I’m privileged to be leading Green For All to create national programs that will prioritize low income communities and communities of color in the crafting of policy across the country,” said Truong.

The award comes as Truong continues to lead in climate equity efforts in collaboration with a coalition called the Clean Power for All Collaborative, which is mobilizing to make sure that the EPA’s first national initiative to regulate greenhouse gases is used as an opportunity to clean up and reinvest in polluted communities.

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For more news about Asian/Americans & Pacific Islanders, read AsAm News.

Survivor contestant loses but wins with the fans

Tai Trang, left, is introduced to Sia by Survivor host Jeff Probst.

AS A FAN of Survivor, I was rooting for Vietnamese/American contestant Tai Trang to win the million dollar prize of the reality show. He made it to the final three but failed to win a single vote from the jury of deposed contestants.

Trang, a 51-year-old gardener  from San Francisco, was a fan-favorite on this season of Survivor, which had its finale last Wednesday (May 28).  As host Jeff Probst said, Trang was one of the most unique individuals they ever had on the show.

While filming the show in Cambodia, the Buddhist said he had respect for all living things and somehow talked his hungry castmates from eating a pet chicken, that he named Mark. 

In the end, though, the title of Sole Survivor went to Michele Fitzgerald, an underdog contestant with a great social game. 

While interviewing Trang, a voice shouted from the audience. Prost introduced pop singer Sia, whose trademark is wearing a wig backwards so it covers her face. Apparently, she was rooting for Trang too and loved his devotion to living things. She gave him $50,000 and another $50,000 to donate to an animal charity of his choice.

The surprised Trang said, "I'm speechless," as he hugged Sia who sounded just as excited meeting Trang - it was hard to tell since her face was hidden behind her blond wig.

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For more news about Asian/Americans & Pacific Islanders, read AsAm News.

Relatively unknown Vietnamese/American actress wins major Star Wars role

The casting of Kelly Marie Tran might shatter a few barriers in the new Star Wars movie.

Reprinted from AsAm News

JOHN BOYEGA, the African/American storm trooper who debuted in Star Wars: The Force Awakens, has confirmed to Dark Side of the Force that the first Asian to play a major Star Wars character has been picked out of a very competitive audition -- Kelly Marie Tran.

Who? 

Tran is not a household name now but all that might change dramatically when she debuts in Star Wars, Episode VIII. Details of the role is shrouded in mystery so very little about her role has been revealed.

The relatively unknown actress co-starred in a few Internet shorts including The Rising Cost of Cosmetics, (2011) and Untouchable (2011)

“I love her. I love her,” said Boyega, who took part in the auditions for the character Tran was picked for. “I think she’s fantastic. It’s a friendship thing in the sense of you meet someone and you’re just like, I vibe with you. I feel like I’ve known you for years.' And that’s a very, very good thing.”

Editors Note: From Nerds of Color: Some of the BIG names who reportedly auditioned for the part included names like Tatiana Maslany, Olivia Cooke, Anna Kendrick and Gina Rodriguez so Tran's selection is no small feat.

According to Entertainment Weekly, Tran is a graduate of UCLA, got her start in local theater and trained with several improv groups including Second City.

Tran is not your typical Hollywood ingenue or starlet and that's what #OscarsSoWhite is all about, right? We want to break that institutional and inbred bias that has prevented actors of color from getting the big roles.

Here she is in a funny YouTube skit from College Humor: Are You Asian Enough?

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Vietnamese/American's debut novel about Vietnam War's impact on his immigrant community wins Pulitzer Prize

Pulitzer Prize winner in fiction, author Viet Thanh Nguyen.

VIET THANH NGUYEN came to the United States from Vietnam as a 4-year old refugee in 1975 with his family.

Forty years later, he is the winner for the Pulitzer Prize in fiction for his debut novel "The Sympathizer," reported the Los Angeles Times yesterday (April 18).

Nguyen, a professor at the University of Southern California, is still getting over the shock of winning the highly prestigious and internationally recognized award.

“They say that 'The Sympathizer' really did win the Pulitzer Prize. Unless this is some cosmic virtual reality trick. I’m stunned.”

Here's how the Pulitzer committee described his novel:

A profound, startling, and beautifully crafted debut novel, The Sympathizer is the story of a man of two minds, someone whose political beliefs clash with his individual loyalties. In dialogue with but diametrically opposed to the narratives of the Vietnam War that have preceded it, this novel offers an important and unfamiliar new perspective on the war: that of a conflicted communist sympathizer.

 It is April 1975, and Saigon is in chaos. At his villa, a general of the South Vietnamese army is drinking whiskey and, with the help of his trusted captain, drawing up a list of those who will be given passage aboard the last flights out of the country. The general and his compatriots start a new life in Los Angeles, unaware that one among their number, the captain, is secretly observing and reporting on the group to a higher-up in the Viet Cong. The Sympathizer is the story of this captain: a man brought up by an absent French father and a poor Vietnamese mother, a man who went to university in America, but returned to Vietnam to fight for the Communist cause.

Viet Thanh Nguyen’s astonishing novel takes us inside the mind of this double agent, a man whose lofty ideals necessitate his betrayal of the people closest to him. A gripping spy novel, an astute exploration of extreme politics, and a moving love story, The Sympathizer explores a life between two worlds and examines the legacy of the Vietnam War in literature, film, and the wars we fight today.

“I’ve been thinking about the Vietnam War all my life,” Nguyen told a reporter last year. “I started watching things like Apocalypse Now and reading books about the war when I was 10 or 11.”

When his agent encouraged him to write a novel, he knew exactly what he was going to write about.

“I knew immediately that I wanted to write a novel about a spy because I thought a spy story would be a good way to tell this history in an entertaining way. Much of this novel is based on things that really happened, so it was a matter of finding the character that would allow me to string together these events in the plot,” Nguyen said.

From his Facebook page, Nguyen, gives a shout-out to University of California, Berkeley's Ethnic Studies Department in this message he posted upon hearing the news that he had won the Pulitzer:

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Vietnamese/Americans condemn dog-eating remarks by Oregon Senate candidate

Reprinted from AsAm News

A Lane County Commissioner running for U.S. Senate out of Oregon has apologized for remarks that were offensive to some Vietnamese Americans, reports The Register-Guard.

Faye Stewart

During a candidate’s forum last month in Newberg in a response to a question about Syrian refugees, Faye Stewart made comparisons to the influx of Vietnamese refugees in the 1970s.

He said the Vietnamese refugees “created a huge problem because their culture and their lifestyle didn’t mix with ours…when they needed something to eat, they went to their natural ways of doing it by harvesting people’s dogs and cats, their pets.”

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“Sure, there was a lot to get used to and there was a lot to learn about,” said Duy Chi Nguyen who works with Vietnamese American student groups on ten campuses in Oregon and Washington. “Just to make a claim that we didn’t know anything and we’re going out and hunting dogs and cats, that’s ludicrous, that’s absurd and that’s incredibly insulting.”

Nhu Le of the Asian Pacific American Student Union at the University of Oregon agreed.

“The fact he’s a representative for Lane County is disgraceful,” she said. “He’s a very public figure and a role model to many in this community, and the fact that he said that is really disheartening.”

Stewart admits he made a mistake and has apologized. He says his remarks were taken out of context.

“I’m sick over this, to be completely honest with you because that’s not who I am. … I’m a leader of inclusiveness and helping people.”

Stewart, a Republican, is running to unseat incumbent Democrat, Sen. Ron Wyden.