Chinese American WWII veteran honored + Filipinos and Christmas boxes: Your AAPI newsletter

It is Thursday, Dec. 17, and this is The Sacramento Bee’s AAPI weekly newsletter.

Here’s a recap of the stories I’ve covered and ones I’m following:

Kenneth Mar, a Chinese American World War II veteran from Sacramento, was honored with a Congressional Gold Medal last week. The Congressional Gold Medal is one of the highest honors the United States Congress can award civilians, and often goes to military veterans.

Mar, 95, was one of 10 people during the online ceremony to receive a special Congressional Gold Medal for Chinese American WWII veterans. During an interview with The Sacramento Bee, Mar hefted the heavy gold disc in his hands, carved with the faces of Chinese American soldiers.

“I’m just honored,” Mar said. “I didn’t expect it. They still remember me, (after) all these years.”

He remembers how narrowly death missed him on the first day he saw action in France. It was in a hill camp overlooking Brest in 1944, and he was down in his freshly dug foxhole to make sure it was big enough to fit him.

Suddenly, his company was showered by German mortar shells. His friend had been standing right next to him, halfway into his own foxhole. Mar watched shrapnel rip through his friend’s back, and his friend died the next day.

“It hit almost into my foxhole, but not quite,” Mar said. “You could hear the sound of the shrapnel versus the shells … That’s the most narrow escape.”

Filipinos have been using balikbayan boxes for decades to send gifts and connect with family and friends back in the Philippines. This year, for many Filipinos in Sacramento, the boxes have become a more bittersweet symbol.

Sending balikbayan boxes is a year-round Filipino tradition — over 7 million were sent in 2016 alone, according to some estimates. The number spikes dramatically at Christmas, as celebrations start in September in the Philippines and are drawn out for four elaborate, extravagant months.

“You cannot go home and not have pasalubong (Tagalog for gifts or souvenirs),” said Christy Serrato, founder of Pair Anything. “To me, that balikbayan box is like a symbol of that pasalubong. You can’t go home without it.”

But the historical roots of these boxes are much more complicated. They’re a direct result of state-sponsored labor export policies of the 1970s, which flung thousands of Filipino workers out across the world in an effort to combat high unemployment rates in the Philippines.

And during a year that’s seen the Philippines hit particularly hard by the COVID-19 pandemic and a harsh typhoon season, the gift boxes have taken on new meaning for many Filipino Americans in Sacramento. While there’s a limit to the relief balikbayan boxes can offer, many said they’re using their boxes not just as gifts, but also as aid packages for community members struggling to make ends meet.

“Even through struggles, even though distance … it’s a long history of us being scrappy and fighting for what we can get, and making sure we can share the wealth,” said Wayne Jopanda, UC Davis Bulosan Center associate director.

In other news

• Watch: Hear from new City Council member Mai Vang in English and Hmong as she’s sworn in [The Sacramento Bee]

• How Pacific Islanders have been left to fend for themselves in the pandemic [Vox]

• The Collection of Cecilia Chiang, Who Revolutionized Chinese American Cuisine, Is Going Up for Auction [Architectural Digest]
• Tony Pham, interim director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, to step down [NBC News]
• A year of loss, heartache, looming eviction — and rescuing itself — for Chinatown [NBC News]
• How Asian American 1st-time voters who helped flip GOP district are mobilizing for Georgia runoff [NBC News]
• South Bay Vietnamese Americans wrestle with COVID-19, lack of information [San Jose Spotlight]
• In Reality Show House of Ho, a Fat Inheritance Comes at a Price [Vulture]
• Opinion: What the Asian-American Coalition Can Teach the Democrats [The New York Times]

In memoriam

Anthony Veasna So, a Cambodian American author on the brink of runaway success, died on Dec. 8 in his San Francisco home. He was 28.

A fiction writer, So’s stories often grappled with Cambodian American generational clash and queer identity. So described himself on his website as “a queer boy,” “a failed computer scientist” and “a grotesque parody of the model minority.” He also tried standup comedy, during which he “made too many jokes about eating too many Jack in the Box tacos.”

So was the author of a highly anticipated short story collection called “Afterparties,” set to be published by Ecco Books next August. The book, So’s first, sketches the lives of Cambodian Americans navigating the inherited trauma from their parents after fleeing the Khmer Rouge genocide.

To write the stories, So drew inspiration from his own family’s experiences during the Khmer Rouge regime and his personal struggles with sexual and cultural identity. So’s collection was the subject of a fierce bidding war, won by Ecco in a mid-six figures two-book deal, according to Publishers Weekly.

So is survived by his parents, his sister and his partner, Alex Torres. No cause of death has been given, but Torres told The New York Times that it was “sudden and unexpected.”

Writers took to social media to mourn So’s death, with author Elizabeth McCracken remembering his New Yorker story as “one of the most extraordinary, complicated, funny, strange stories I’ve read in ages.”

“He was a brilliant light, both off and on the page, and I wish I could hear his laugh again,” Tin House Workshop director Lance Cleland wrote on Twitter. “He would passionately defend a piece he cared for, asking us to see past what was there towards what it might become. ... That same type of generosity and care was always present in his writing, which never failed to make me smile.”

So was born in Stockton to Cambodian refugees Sienghay and Ravy So on Feb. 20, 1992. After graduating from Stanford University, So taught literature and writing at the Urban School of San Francisco and the nonprofit Next Generation Scholars. He also taught at the Center for Empowering Refugees and Immigrants in Oakland.

So had recently graduated with a Masters of Fine Arts degree in creative writing from Syracuse University. His writing has appeared in The New Yorker, n+1, Granta and ZYZZYVA, and he received several prominent awards and fellowships including a Kundiman Fellowship, a Tin House Scholarship and the Joyce Carol Oates Award in Fiction.

“This is no place to grieve or be sad to the fullest. ... Light the way for him to cross over,” said poet Monica Sok on Twitter. “We were writing the future together. We were only beginning to raise the next generation of Cambodian writers.”

Two GoFundMe sites have been set up to help fund a scholarship in So’s honor and to support So’s partner.

Got a story suggestion? Please reach out to me at awong@sacbee.com.

That’s it for this week’s newsletter. Thanks for reading, and see you next week!

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