Berkeley’s gas ban & the international dining scene + Our businesswomen series: The AAPI newsletter

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It is Wednesday, Dec. 11, and this is The Sacramento Bee’s AAPI weekly newsletter, brought to you by yours truly.

Here’s a recap on the stories I recently covered and issues I’m following:

Berkeley’s first-in-the-nation ban on natural gas in new construction to reduce the city’s carbon emissions goes into effect in January.

It goes in line with the state’s ambitious goal of obtaining all of its electricity from clean energy sources by 2045, under legislation signed by former Gov. Jerry Brown last year, to fight against global warming.

The California Restaurant Association charges that the natural gas ban will hit Berkeley restaurateurs and consumers in the kitchen. The suit contends the ban’s impact will fall heavily on Berkeley’s international dining scenes where natural gas is life blood, affecting every aspect of cooking from the speed and manner with which dishes are prepared to how they look and taste on the dining table.

Finding balance is key to running a business, says an Elk Grove preschool owner. For this week’s Asian and Pacific Islander businesswomen series, we spoke with Sarah Anwar, owner and operator of Golden Valley Academy, a preschool in Elk Grove. She bought the 35-year-old schooling center from another woman in 2002 and has been running it since.

Anwar, a Muslim, said she runs her business based on her values because of her religion. Her role model is Khadjia, the wife of the Prophet Muhammad, a successful businesswoman 1,400 years ago who supported the prophet financially and emotionally.

In other news, Asian Americans face high risk of displacement are now mobilizing to fight back, NBC News reports. In recent years, tenants in California, Oregon and Massachusetts have each came together to advocate for issues such as rent control and just-cause eviction policies.

Funerals for the four Californian men of Hmong descent killed at a mass shooting in Fresno last month have begun last week, according to The Fresno Bee. The report includes individual fundraising pages. Another fundraising campaign for the victims’ families created by Fresno City Councilman Miguel Arias can be found on GoFundMe. The gunmen remain unidentified, and a $15,000 reward is being offered.

Xiyue Wang, a graduate student at Princeton who was sentenced on two charges of espionage the U.S. officials have referred to as “groundless,” has been released, The New York Times reports. The release is a result of swapping a Iranian scientist, jailed in Atlanta on charges of “violating American trade sanctions against Iran.” Wang, having been imprisoned in Tehran for more than three years, is to be reunited with his wife and son at home in Princeton, N.J. At least four other Americans remain in custody in Iran. Officials have called their release “a top priority.”

Pakistani-American journalist Amna Nawaz of PBS News Hour is to co-moderate the sixth presidential debate on Dec. 19 at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, Dawn reports.

Controversial New York City restaurant Lucky Lee, self-described by owner Arielle Haspel to sell “clean Chinese food” and sparked an uproar on social media, closed its doors Friday eight months after its opening, NBC News reports. The New York Times story chronicled the controversy.

Let’s shift gears to entertainment and representation.

Read Time Magazine’s profile and interview with Eric Nam, K-pop star who grew up in Atlanta, took up the opportunity in Korea because he did not think “major labels in the U.S. would have given him a chance.” He now comes back to the U.S. for his career, partly to push for Asian and Asian American representation.

Following that, this NBC News story focuses on Indonesian-born rapper Brian Imanuel, known as Rich Brian, another rising, if not already famous musician who learned English through YouTube and made a successful debut in the U.S. market. His new music grapples with Asian identity and immigration experience. An excerpt of the experience I felt journalist Kimmy Yam has so accurately captured is as follows:

“In some ways, Rich Brian’s relationship with his heritage largely mirrors the path that so many Asian Americans are familiar with — an initial yearning to be part of a mainstream culture that largely excludes them, a negotiating of different parts of identity, then the eventual arrival at the reclamation of heritage.”

What better than spending time on books in the Californian winter? I just finished reading “The Buddha in the Attic,” a fictional novel by Julie Otsuka that tells the story of a group of young women, bought from Japan to San Francisco as “picture brides” nearly a century ago, on their immigrant experience under the Exclusion Acts and later the forceful uprooting to relocate to internment camps in World War II. A powerful, lyrical must-read on history that should not be forgotten.

Finally: What do you want to read about on Sacramento or California’s AAPI population or newsletter? Send your thoughts to me at tyu@sacbee.com.

That’s it for this week’s newsletter. Thank you for reading!

Theodora Yu covers Asian American and Pacific Islander communities in California for The Sacramento Bee. She is a member of Report for America’s 2019 corps of journalists.