Sacramento hires Hmong COVID tracers + Disney’s ‘Raya and the Last Dragon’: Your AAPI newsletter
It is Thursday, Sept. 3, and this is The Sacramento Bee’s AAPI weekly newsletter.
Here’s a recap of the stories I’ve recently covered and issues I’m following:
Sacramento County hired five Hmong-language COVID contact tracers and case investigators in August, with plans to hire more. These contact tracers do more than translate English medical terms into Hmong, however. They’re also counselors, community advocates and the only source of connection for some elderly Hmong folks.
“Some of them are actually really struggling, but they don’t want to talk about it, even to their family members,” said George Yang, one of the Hmong-language contact tracers. “You’re there to provide that support.”
Many Hmong families in Sacramento are still in the dark about essential information related to COVID-19, according to Mai Yang Thor, executive director of HYPU. And it’s sometimes been difficult to explain to some Hmong residents how serious the pandemic is, she said, especially for those who said they needed to see it with their own eyes to believe its existence.
“There’s not a lot of in-language information that’s available for our community,” Thor said. “This is one of the first steps in how to directly support these individuals.”
One person Yang spoke with was living with an entire household full of people who had COVID-19. Another was an elderly man who lived alone. He didn’t have a lot of close contacts and wasn’t a high-risk priority case, but Yang could tell that he “needed that call.”
“Every call like that gives me hope that our community can get through this together,” Yang said.
In other news
Sacramento Municipal Utility District names veteran employee Paul Lau as its new CEO [The Sacramento Bee]
Sacramento judge offers Chinese researcher ‘huge break,’ allows her release from jail [The Sacramento Bee]
- Kamala Harris’ candidacy gives Tamil Americans a moment in the spotlight [The Orange County Register]
- How a 100-year-old marathon runner inspired the first Sikh-centered children’s book [The Orange County Register]
- To survive the pandemic SF Chinatown has to adapt — again [San Francisco Chronicle]
- A Syracuse University professor was placed on leave after labeling coronavirus as ‘Chinese Communist Party Virus’ in course syllabus [Insider]
- Tony Pham, new interim ICE director and Vietnamese refugee, draws criticism from Asian groups [NBC News]
- With largest share of migrant nurses, entire U.S. Filipino community hit hard by COVID-19 [NBC News]
- Vietnamese nail salon workers, the backbone of the industry, face a triple COVID-19 toll after being left behind in reopening [NBC News]
- Lane Hirabayashi, scholar who refused to let Japanese American prison camps be forgotten, dies at 67 [Los Angeles Times]
- At a Cambodian restaurant in Lowell, perseverance is the main ingredient [The Boston Globe]
- Some women business owners say they’ve felt neglected by the Hmong Chamber of Commerce. Yao Yang is determined to change that. [Sahan Journal]
- Longtime local journalist launches new bilingual newspaper reporting on the Chinese community [San Francisco Examiner]
- David Chang on the Momofuku Empire’s Disastrous Beginning [Wall Street Journal Magazine]
- Listening to immigrant and indigenous Pacific Islander voices [MIT News]
- America’s long history of scapegoating its Asian citizens [National Geographic]
This week in AAPI pop culture
Kelly Marie Tran, the Vietnamese American actress who rose to fame for her role as Rose Tico in “Star Wars,” has been cast as the lead in Disney’s upcoming “Raya and the Last Dragon.” This is the studio’s first film inspired by Southeast Asia, and Tran is the first Southeast Asian actress to lead a film from Disney Animation.
The film is set in a fictional land called Kumandra and follows part-princess, part-warrior Raya as she seeks to find the last dragon and save her home from evil forces. Along the way, she’s joined by a water dragon in human form named Sisu, voiced by Awkwafina.
The script was written by Qui Nguyen, a Vietnamese American playwright, and Adele Lim, a Malaysian-born American who was one of the screenwriters for “Crazy Rich Asians.” Entertainment Weekly released an exclusive first look image from the film last Thursday depicting Raya with her trusted steed Tuk Tuk, a creature the film’s director Don Hall described to EW as part bear and part “insect version of an armadillo.”
To do the cultures behind the story justice, filmmakers traveled to multiple countries in Southeast Asia to conduct research, including Laos, Vietnam, Thailand, Cambodia and Indonesia. They also collaborated with a Lao visual anthropologist who signed off on every design before it was finalized, as well as linguists, dancers, and Gamelan musicians from Indonesia.
All that work behind the scenes paid off onscreen, Tran told EW in an interview.
“I remember having this experience of recognizing some of the words and recognizing some of the names and the locations and even certain characters and our job descriptions of what influenced them to be a certain way,” Tran said in the EW interview. “I felt so seen, and it was such a blissful feeling. I don’t know if I can even explain it, but it was this surprise. I’ve worked on some things before which obviously weren’t as culturally specific as this, and I don’t think that I knew that I needed that.”
The film’s animation is 50 percent complete and aiming for a March 12, 2021 premiere date. Kelly Marie Tran squad, rise up!
Got a story suggestion? Please reach out to me at awong@sacbee.com.
That’s it for this week’s newsletter. Please stay safe and be careful this Labor Day weekend as Sacramento starts to open up again. Mask up, bring hand sanitizer and avoid large gatherings. If we want to avoid another spike, we have to work together. Thanks for reading, and see you next week!
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