Tom moved to New York, finding a job designing campaigns for movie releases.

By ‘63, he was an MGM art director, where he designed the iconic Gone With the Wind poster.

By the ‘70s, Tom had become known as the film industry’s go-to guy: handling everything from initial concepts to illustrating logos and poster designs. Every weekend, his work was on billboards and theaters across nations - Apocalypse Now, Dr. Zhivago, Super Fly.

In ‘77, Lucasfilm approached Jung for their newest project. George Lucas and Fox executives had seen his work and wanted him to design the Star Wars theatrical poster. They gave him set photos and movie stills and asked him to illustrate “Good Over Evil.”

Jung went to work, using his son and wife to pose as references for Luke and Leia. His poster was instantly iconic, with a not-so-subtle cross invoking religious themes and a new logo based on the film’s opening crawl.

Jung continued to work with Lucasfilm on Empire Strikes Back, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Return of the Jedi, and the Thrawn Trilogy. He also designed the Lord of the Rings animated poster. After retiring from poster design in the ‘90s, he stayed active as a storyboard artist for Looney Tunes, Scooby-Doo, and Blades of Glory.

This Wednesday night, BOOK CLUB. is meeting to discuss Erika Lee’s The Making of Asian America: A History.

Join us at 6 PM Pacific (9 PM Eastern) on Discord to talk about the book - no matter how much of it you have (or haven’t) gotten through!

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Keep your heads up, family <3

Songkran is celebrated by a million Thai, Lao, Khmer, and other Asian Americans from April 13-15. And we can’t talk about it without discussing why these communities are here to begin with.

Between ‘64 and ‘73, America conducted a Secret War in Laos. Under Operation Barrel Roll, the U.S. dropped over two million tons of ordnance—a full plane of bombs every 8 minutes, 24 hours a day, for nine years. It made Laos the most heavily-bombed country in history.

At the same time, in Cambodia, America launched Operation Menu, a clandestine carpet-bombing campaign aiming to a disrupt North Vietnamese supply lines. Kept hidden from voters - and even Congress - these bombings displaced hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians. They destabilized the country, creating a power vacuum and driving the rise of the genocidal Khmer Rouge.

By 1975, America was retreating from Southeast Asia, leaving millions of our allies behind.

Vietnamese, Hmong and Lao who’d fought alongside the CIA were targeted for persecution. Thousands of families made the perilous Meking River crossing, entering Thailand to live in refugee camps. 1.2 million eventually made it to the U.S., resettling under the 1980 Refugee Act.

During Songkran, celebrants take part in public water fights as a ritual cleansing. It’s loud, bright, and joyous, but it’s not just a party. It’s a time of cleansing and renewal for communities that survived a decade of secret carpet bombing and came to America to build a new home.

This month in BOOK CLUB. we’re going through Erika Lee’s The Making of Asian America: A History. It’s a wide-ranging history of the people, communities - and laws - that made Asian America what, and who, we are today.

“This book is a bunch of bad things that happened” - Ted

“How many towns were asians run out of, multiple times? let’s count!” - Kana

BOOK CLUB. meets biweekly on Discord to discuss books & society. If you’re not already a member - come hang out :)

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At the time, eyewear was a stagnant product category with flat, repetitive designs. Oakley brought Peter in, a fresh graduate from ArtCenter, to reimagine eyewear.

In his first year, Peter created the iconic “O” logo, inspired by innovation and performance-driven design.

He created Advance Concept Review, an internal thinktank that used “unconventional manufacturing” to create impossible items. Peter directed ACR to envision products from 5, 10, and 20 years into the future, drawing inspiration from industrial design, racecars and fighter jets

His bets on technofuturism quickly paid off. In ‘94, Peter’s Eye Jacket, the first eyeglass frame fully designed in CAD, became Michael Jordan’s favorites.

In 2000, his Overthetop glasses - wrapping over the skull instead of around the ears - debuted at the Olympics on Trinidadian sprinter Ato Boldon. They became an iconic image of the Sydney games.

Peter’s designs were worn in every Olympics, from ‘96 until he left Oakley in 2018.

During those 25 years with the company, Peter registered over 100 patents. The “Bio-minimalist” aesthetic he pioneered has recently resurfaced with the Y2K aesthetic renaissance, inspiring homages from Balenciaga to Travis Scott and beyond.

Today, Peter runs his design firm PYD, while regularly dropping OG Oakley design gems on his Instagram.

Join us tomorrow night from 6-730 PM PST for our second BOOK CLUB. discussion of Erika Lee’s The Making of Asian America: A History!

We meet biweekly on Discord to discuss books & society together. If you’re not already a member - click below to

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Be good to yourselves and kind to others.

Will the Supreme Court let Trump take it away?

In 1873, Wong Kim Ark was born in San Francisco, to Cantonese immigrants who ran a general store.

In ‘95, returning from a trip to China, San Francisco customs detained Kim Ark. They argued he couldn’t legally enter the country: despite him having been born on US soil, his parents weren’t US citizens. Chinese were excluded from becoming American.

Now, birthright citizenship was a century-old practice in the US… for Whites.

Only in ‘68 did the 14th Amendment extend that to the native-born children of enslaved Africans, whom the law had categorized as property, not citizens. It proclaimed “all persons born in the US... are citizens of the US.” But that Amendment had never been tested in court by the US-born child of foreign citizens.

After three years of legal battles, in ‘98, the Supreme Court affirmed Kim Ark’s US citizenship: “Wong Kim Ark acquired [citizenship] by birth within the US.” That meant citizenship was everyone’s birthright - regardless of their race.

That’s stood for 130 years as the law of the land. Then last year, President Trump issued an Executive Order contradicting the case law. Yesterday, in the same room that landmark ruling was issued, the Court heard arguments from the ACLU’s Cecilia Wang, defending Kim Ark’s legal precedent.

A ruling is expected this summer. Meanwhile, Trump tweeted: “We are the only Country in the World STUPID enough to allow ‘Birthright’ Citizenship!”

Nearly 3 dozen countries around the world have birthright citizenship laws.

Right now in BOOK CLUB., we’re reading Erika Lee’s The Making of Asian America: A History.

Want to learn more about Kim Ark - and the other men and women who shaped Asian America over the centuries? Join us on Discord to read & discuss together:

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Remember to drink water <3

At the time, Filipinos were a backbone of California agriculture. Thanks to social, cultural, and legal discrimination, they were underpaid and often exploited by the industry.

Larry’d left school at a young age to start work - but he always dreamed of pursuing law or politics. As he migrated up and down the West Coast, Larry began organizing workers in canneries and fields.

After World War II, he settled in Stockton. There, he led the Filipino Farm Labor Union and organized an asparagus strike with other Filipino leaders. By his 50s, Larry was leading the AFL-CIO’s Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee.

In ‘65, the AWOC - led by Larry and other Filipino workers like Philip Vera Cruz and Peter Gines Velasco - called a strike against California grape growers in Delano. One week later, the National Farm Workers Association, the Mexican union led by Dolores Huerta and Cesar Chavez, joined them.

It was the first time Mexican and Filipino unions worked together. After 5 years of organizing, the combined United Farm Workers won a new agreement with the grape industry.

But Larry was disappointed with Chavez and his leadership of the UFW. Just a year after their victory, he resigned from the union, saying it was neglecting the Filipinos who’d launched and led the strikes.

Larry spent his last years fighting for those Pinoys - building a retirement facility, lobbying with the FilAm Political Association, and planning a strike against Safeway - before passing from Lou Gehrig’s disease in the city he and his beloved manongs had won their victory.

In BOOK CLUB., we’re starting to read Erika Lee’s The Making of Asian America: A History.

In my eyes, it’s the definitive book on the real Asian America - not only “where we come from”, but more importantly, why we came and what we became in this country.

If you haven’t joined our online discussions - this would be a perfect time to jump in. Here’s our Discord link:

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Come say hi <3

For centuries, the Bay’s been different. In 1848, Chinese coolies founded the country’s first Chinatown - joined later by Japanese and Filipino migrant workers, and Black families arriving in the Second Great Migration.

In October ‘66, Bobby Seale and Huey P. Newton founded the Black Panther Party at Oakland’s Merritt College. Sick of police brutalizing Black communities, they began armed neighborhood patrols, open-carrying weapons while monitoring cops.

Across the Bay, the Panthers’ message resonated with a group of young Chinese Americans.

Growing up in the country’s oldest Chinatown, kids like Alex Hing had seen the city repeatedly ignore their community - rampant poverty, overcrowded slum conditions, and the country’s highest rates of tuberculosis. Gathering in a pool hall, they named themselves the “Red Guards” - inspired by the Panthers, Malcolm X, and socialist writings.

Based on the Panthers’ 10-point plan, they put together demands including housing, education, medical care, and an end to police brutality, the prison system, and the draft. They got the attention of Bobby Seale and David Hilliard, who invited them to study together.

Their movement achieved some successes - meals for the elderly, keeping a tuberculosis center open - but fell apart due to internal dissensions.

Still, today, when America’s newest Olympic champ is a Chinese girl from Oakland who grew up going to “climate stuff… Black Lives Matter, Stop Asian Hate, ICE protests” - it makes me think of the Red Guards, the Black Panther Party, and the Bay’s legacy of radical politics.

TOMORROW NIGHT at 6-730 PM PST, BOOK CLUB. wraps up our discussion of Jill Damatac’s Dirty Kitchen: A Memoir of Food and Family.

Come tap in with us to hear more about the book or share your own thoughts!

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We’ll also be selecting our next book - and the choices are between Erika Lee’s The Making of Asian America and Jeff Chang’s Water Mirror Echo: Bruce Lee and the Making of Asian America.

Come say hi <3

Born in 1947 to a proud Irish Catholic family, Bernadette Devlin was raised by her parents to yearn for independence from their British colonizers. Losing them at an early age, she spent her university years parenting her siblings while also conducting her studies and a budding public activism.

Shortly before her Queen’s University finals, she was expelled for her vocal support of Irish independence. But people saw something in her. At just 21, Devlin ran for Parliament in a special election. She won, and was sworn in as the youngest female Member of Parliament the day before her 22nd birthday.

The Great American Disconnect

Shortly after her swearing-in, Bernadette joined her constituents in the streets, protesting in the Battle of Bogside, which saw Irish republican neighborhoods assaulted by loyalist mobs.

Her public witness gave her an international platform. After the tensions subsided, she traveled to the US to raise awareness for the Irish cause. She expected to find natural allies there - after all, in Bernadette’s eyes, the fight for Irish independence was driven by the same moral imperative as the Black Civil Rights movement.

But the realities of race in the US left her frustrated. In cities like Philadelphia and New York, she was met with a jarring contradiction: the Irish-American establishment welcomed her as a hero, even as those same crowds booed and disrespected Black attendees night after night.

Devlin realized that many of her Irish-American supporters were happy to champion freedom abroad - while upholding systemic inequality at home.

“Return What is Rightfully Theirs”

Toward the end of her US tour, Devlin was scheduled to receive the Key to New York City, a prestigious honor usually reserved for heads of state and cultural icons. But she was tired of the country’s ubiquitous racial hypocrisy.

Instead of attending the ceremony, Devlin took an early flight home. Fellow revolutionary Eamonn McCann went in her place, accepting the key and later bestowing it upon the Harlem chapter of the Black Panther Party.

Along with the key, Bernadette sent a blistering statement of solidarity:

“To all these people, to whom this city and country belong, I return what is rightfully theirs, this symbol of the freedom of New York.”

A Legacy of Defiance

Bernadette Devlin’s life didn’t get easier after that moment of defiance. Back in Ireland, she survived an assassination attempt, shot nine times in front of her children.

She didn’t waiver. To this day, Devlin - now Bernadette Devlin McAliskey - remains an outspoken advocate for socialist causes, migrant workers, and Irish independence.

This month, BOOK CLUB. is reading Jill Damatac’s Dirty Kitchen: A Memoir of Food and Family.

It’s a beautiful, haunting, lyrically written memoir reflecting on food, Pinoy culture, immigration trauma, and more. Join us on Discord, where we’re chatting about the book:

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Overheard at BOOK CLUB:

• “Human beings are fragile, and can break, and they often do”

• “I matter, too. I’m not just a product of the things eldest daughters of immigrants have to do. I get to be a whole human.”

After UCSD, Bobby wound up at Law School - where he realized he didn’t want to do law. Instead, he and his classmate Ben started screenprinting tees and launched a website. They called themselves The Hundreds.

In ‘04, The Hundreds went viral - for the first time, of many. In ‘08, they dropped a Disney collab, reimagining their crew as the Lost Boys from Peter Pan.

Now, today, everyone has a streetwear collab - from LEGO to Louboutin. But this was a different time, when family-friendly brands were suspicious of the subculture and its ties to weed, porn stars, and street rappers. But The Hundreds pitched Disney with passion - pointing to the nods to Skull Rock in their store buildouts - and managed to get corporate to approve a collection.

In 2025, after a 20 year run, Bobby left The Hundreds. He became a VP at Disney, designing merch sold in parks and stores around the world.

As one of his first moves at the company, he reached out to BLACKPINK’s team, mashing up their signature colors with Mickey and Minnie. Their capsule dropped last week on Complex - a platform that first featured The Hundreds 20 years ago, in print.

Streetwear isn’t about product - it’s about cultures. And in 30 years, Bobby Kim went from a Korean kid adopted by skate and punk, to ushering Korean culture through the doors of the largest pop culture company in the world.

This Wednesday join us for BOOK CLUB., discussing the first half of Jill Damatac’s Dirty Kitchen: A Memoir of Food and Family.

We’ll be talking through the book on our private Discord server - register now to join us:

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Take heart.

But they started 400 years ago in Japan.

In the 17th century, Japanese began playing a game called menko. Players would take turns throwing pieces of molded clay on the ground, trying to flip the other player’s piece. As technology improved, gamemakers replaced clay with thick pieces of cardboard, printed with colorful pictures.

In the 1800s, Japan began providing workers to the Kingdom of Hawai’i. By 1920, there were over 110,000 Japanese in Hawai’i. They brought menko with them, playing it with milk bottle caps.

By the ‘50s, cardboard milk and juice containers replaced glass bottles. But bottle caps continued as a popular - if old-fashioned - game. In ‘71, Haleakala Dairy’s special run of caps promoting their new Pineapple, Orange, Guava juice led to a mini-resurgence.

In ‘91, a Hawaiian teacher - Blossom Galbiso - began using bottle caps as a classroom activity. She’d played “pogs” with her friends in the ‘70s, and thought her students might enjoy it too. The game went absolutely viral - spreading from the North Shore throughout Hawai’i, the West Coast, Texas, and the world.

A company licensed the word “Pog” and started the World Pog Federation. Star Wars “Caps”. Marvel “Hero Caps”. Then, as quickly as pogs blew up, they died out. By ‘97, it was over. And today, Pogs - like Beanie Babies - live on in a million attics and eBay listings.

This month, BOOK CLUB. is reading Jill Damatac’s Dirty Kitchen: A Memoir of Food and Family.

After two decades of being undocumented in the US, Damatac self-deported to the UK in 2015. There, she began cooking Filipino dishes to heal & understand her experiences as an undocumented immigrant.

We use our private Discord server for ongoing book chats & biweekly video meetings. Click below to join us:

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Hope to see you there!

In 1940, Liú Liángmó - a Christian Communist - was in exile in New York when he befriended Paul Robeson.

A Black actor, singer, and activist, Robeson saw similarities between the Black struggle in America and the Chinese fight against Western colonizers and Japanese imperialists. Liu taught Robeson March of the Volunteers, which he sang in Chinese at a stadium concert later that year.

With Tián Hàn’s help, Liu and Robeson translated the song into English, releasing Chee Lai! (Arise!) on vinyl, with proceeds going to Chinese resistance fighters. Robeson and Liu toured together, singing the song at arenas around America. As World War 2 escalated, allied radio stations around the world regularly played Robeson’s Chee Lai. The Air Force orchestra even covered it.

After the end of war, March of the Volunteers became the official national anthem for the new People’s Republic of China. Liú Liángmó became an influential Chinese politician, helping navigate tensions between his beloved country and Christian faith. Tián Hàn became a victim of the Cultural Revolution, dying in prison in ‘68. And Robeson continued singing Chee Lai, sending its royalties to Tián’s family in China.

Join us tomorrow night for our biweekly BOOK CLUB. meeting, where we’ll be continuing with our discussion of Omar El Akkad’s One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This.

We meet from 6-730 PM PST on our private Discord server - click below to sign up:

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We’ll also be announcing what we’re reading next - either Jill Damatac’s Dirty Kitchen or Jose Antonio Vargas’s Dear America: Notes of an Undocumented Citizen.

For the last 15 years, the hallyu wave has had a generational run. But rewind 70 years, and you get The Kim Sisters - a family act that conquered the Las Vegas Strip and American TV screens.

From a black market to Vegas lights

Lee Nan-young was one of Korea’s most famous singers and actresses in the ‘30s. When her husband was killed during the Korean War, Nan-young was left to provide for her family. She came up with a unique solution: starting a girl group consisting of her daughters, Kim Suk-ja (“Sue”) and Kim Ae-ja (“Aija”), and her adopted niece, Kim Min-ja (“Mia”).

The girls learned American pop songs listening to records Nan-young purchased at a local black market. Under her management, the girls began performing in bars and clubs across Korea that catered to American troops.

They quickly blew up in the postwar scene. An American producer, Tom Ball, caught wind of the act and flew to Korea to check them out. He signed The Kim Sisters to a life-changing record deal.

The Ed Sullivan Show

In 1958, The Kim Sisters arrived in Las Vegas to a residency at the Thunderbird. They performed in hanboks while delivering covers of contemporary pop songs.

There, they met legends like Louis Armstrong and caught the eye of the most important man in television: Ed Sullivan.

In September 1959, The Kim Sisters made their U.S. television debut on The Ed Sullivan Show—half a decade before “Beatlemania” would take over that very same stage.

The audience fell in love. The Kim Sisters were invited back to the show a staggering 21 times, including performances with their mom - and The Kim Brothers.

Kpop’s First “Boy Band”?

Seeing her daughters’ stratospheric success, Nan-young sent for her three sons. She envisioned them as the male counterpart to the girls—essentially creating the blueprint for the first K-pop boy band.

While The Kim Brothers appeared on Ed Sullivan and toured with their sisters, they never quite reached the same level of mainstream breakthrough as the women in the family.

The Sisters’ Legacy

After disbanding in 1975, the Kim sisters moved into different, separate chapters of their lives.

• Ae-ja passed away in 1987.

• Mia moved to Hungary with her husband.

• Sue remained in the heart of the action, performing in Las Vegas until the mid-90s.

In 2014, Sue Kim’s contributions to the industry were officially cemented when she became the first Korean American inducted into the Nevada Entertainer’s Hall of Fame.

Long before today’s 5th- and 4th-wave Kpop groups, The Kim Sisters were the OGs proving that Korean talent couldn’t only compete in the US - but shine here.

Next week in BOOK CLUB, we’re discussing Omar El Akkad’s One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This.

Join our Discord server to hear our thoughts on the book and vote on what we’ll be reading next! We’re choosing between Jill Damatac’s Dirty Kitchen and Jose Antonio Vargas’s Dear America: Notes of an Undocumented Citizen

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Our Discord is a chill private server for folks to chat, talk about breaking news, and socialize away from algorithm-driven social media. Come hang out with us <3

When she was 11, Executive Order 9066 was issued. Over 100,000 Japanese Americans, including Pat, were sent to concentration camps, despite Naval Intelligence reports that they posed “no credible threat”.

After the war, Pat studied education, but didn’t want to be a teacher. Running out of money, she joined a theater company and toured the country, singing in nightclubs on the side. She wound up becoming a celebrity in Seattle.

Seattle’s Jazz scene dates to the early 1900s. Black families migrated to the Pacific Northwest fleeing the Jim Crow south. In deeply-segregated Seattle, they joined Japanese, Chinese, and Filipinos in the “International District.”

Those transplants built a Jazz scene at spots like the Black & Tan Club, where Ray Charles, Aretha Franklin, and other legends played for diverse Black, Asian, and White crowds.

In ‘55, Pat was supposed to be passing through Seattle. She wound up there for a 3-year residency, with over 2000 consecutive performances at The Colony Club. One of those nights, Bing Crosby dropped in. Impressed, he arranged a record deal for her, leading to early TV appearances.

Pat became a Broadway star in Rodgers & Hammerstein’s Flower Drum Song. She was on the cover of Time in ‘58 and GRAMMY-nominated in 1960. The next year, she performed with Frank Sinatra at JFK’s inaugural ball.

Pat’s stayed active through the 2010s, performing at the Lincoln Center and speaking up for Asian Americans, using the voice she found decades ago in a multicultural jazz scene built by Black migrants and Asian immigrants.

This week in BOOK CLUB, we’re finishing Omar El Akkad’s One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This. and choosing the next book to read.

Join our Discord server to chat and vote on the next book poll - we’re deciding between Jill Damatac’s Dirty Kitchen and Jose Antonio Vargas’s Dear America: Notes of an Undocumented Citizen.

Join us here

From our last meeting: “…how many people here go to a workplace where we get called resources, not humans?"“

There, he studied graphic design - and got his hands on an early version of D&D. Mike loved rolling dice with his friends, but wasn’t a fan of swords-and-sorcery fantasy tropes. In ‘77, playing Traveller, a sci-fi RPG, he started dreaming of a game that paired a gritty sci-fi setting with a robust game engine.

Working as a graphic designer and typesetter for video games including Ultima, Pondsmith started tinkering with game design. In ‘88, after experimenting with releases like Teenagers from Outer Space, he dropped Cyberpunk: The Roleplaying Game of the Dark Future…

set in 2013.

The game’s gritty, dystopian setting was a drastic juxtaposition to other RPGs, with systems that let players hack VR networks, lose their humanity to internet addiction, and become soulless tech execs.

It was rough around the edges, but became a cult classic, popular enough that Mike released updated versions in 1990, then in 2005. In ‘96 - shortly after launching Magic: The Gathering - Wizards of the Coast released Netrunner, based on the Cyberpunk license.

Cyberpunk 2077 came out in 2020 with massive hype - and bigger bugs. But CD Projekt Red, founded by Polish Cyberpunk fans, kept fixing it with critical updates, ultimately selling over 35 million copies.

In the game, players interact with Johnny Silverhand - played by Keanu Reeves - and listen to Morro Rock Radio’s DJ Maximum Mike - voiced by Mike Pondsmith himself.

This month in BOOK CLUB, we’re reading Omar El Akkad’s One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This.

Our first BOOK CLUB meeting was last night! Join our Discord server to finish the book with us and vote on the next book poll - we’ll be deciding between Jill Damatac’s Dirty Kitchen and Jose Antonio Vargas’s Dear America: Notes of an Undocumented Citizen

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“…the person who in self-image professes to be a rule-breaker, untamable, wild—and in the next breath sides unquestioningly with every facet of state power.
“…the bedrock of this particular identity isn’t conformity or nonconformity—it’s self-interest.”
-Omar El Akkad

Kristine Tsuya Yamaguchi was born in 1971 in the East Bay. Her mom, Carole Doi, was born during WWII in the Amache concentration camp, while her grandfather fought in the US Army in Europe, the only Japanese soldier in an all-White unit.

Born with club feet, Kristi spent her infancy in casts and braces. At 4, inspired by Peggy Fleming, she started ice skating as a form of physical therapy.

A Dual Threat

By her teens, Kristi was a dominant force in US Junior figure skating, excelling in both pairs and singles:

• Age 15: Won her first national title - taking Junior Pairs gold in the 1988 US National Figure Skating Championships with Rudy Galindo.

• Age 17: took women’s singles gold in the World Junior Championships.

By ‘92, she was the face of global figure skating. That winter, in Albertville, France, she faced a legendary field including her Team USA teammates Tonya Harding and Nancy Kerrigan and Japan’s Midori Ito. When the scores came in, Kristi made history as the first Asian American to win Winter Olympic gold.

The “Kristi Effect”

The impact of her win was immediate and massive. When she joined the ‘92 Stars on Ice tour, the demand was so overwhelming that a 30-city schedule had to be doubled to 60 performances.

She remains such a sports icon that in 2024, Mattel released an official Barbie doll modeled after her ‘92 gold-medal outfit.

A New Generation

Before Kristi, figure skating was dominated by White Americans and Europeans. After her gold, the landscape of the sport shifted.

In the decades since Albertville, a wave of Asian American athletes—from Michelle Kwan and Nathan Chen to Alysa Liu—have entered the sport. At the 2026 Milano Cortina Games, 4 of Team USA’s 16 figure skaters are Asian American.

This month in BOOK CLUB, we’re reading Omar El Akkad’s One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This.

Our first BOOK CLUB meeting is tomorrow night, 6-730 PM PST. Join our private Discord server to learn about the first half of the book and how El Akkad’s writing sheds light on all the events unfolding today.

Join us here

“The afflicted don’t need comforting, they need what the comfortable have always had.”
-Omar El Akkad

Last fall, on the press run for their first new album in 16 years, Pusha and Mal dropped an interesting fact about Malice’s favorite thing to do in Virginia:

In the early 1900s, Black neighborhoods sprang up around Virginia’s Tidewater region, drawn by new government jobs in the area. Chinese workers followed, opening laundry shops and restaurants to serve the growing Black community.

Together, the two created a unique regional dish: yock, short for yut-go-min (一个面), Chinese for “one order of noodles.” It’s a simple takeout dish, lo mein noodles soaked in ketchup and soy sauce, topped with meat, raw onions, and cayenne pepper, served messy in a takeout container.

Yock became a regional icon, cooked in backyards, churches, and carry-outs. Multiple Chinese noodle factories - yock factories - sprang up.

At the Norfolk Noodle Factory, MIT dropout Park F. Wong patented machines to cut and deep fry yock noodles. That same factory is still operating now: Fiber Foods proudly boasts of its legacy of “Yock-A-Mein since 1960s”

Today, from Mama Chan’s Chinese Takeout to Andreka Gibson, the Yock Queen of the 757, Virginians - including Malice and Pusha-T - eat boxes of fresh yock each day.

It’s a living tribute to the time Black families and Chinese immigrants came together, making something to feed their community.

This month in BOOK CLUB, we’re reading Omar El Akkad’s One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This.

The first BOOK CLUB meeting is next Wednesday night, 6-730 PM PST. On our private Discord server, we’ll be discussing the first half of the book and how El Akkad’s writing sheds light on all the events unfolding today.

Join us here

A Childhood Behind Barriers

Vicki Manalo was born in San Francisco to a Filipino father - a chef and musician - and an English immigrant mom. Growing up in the Bay Area, her childhood was defined by the strict “color lines” of the era.

At the time, public swimming pools were strictly segregated. Facilities only allowed “coloreds” in once a week - always scheduled for the day just before the pools were drained and cleaned for White swimmers.

The Secret of “Vicki Taylor”

When Vicki was 16, her friend Jack Lavery introduced her to coach Phil Patterson. There was just one catch: his Swimming and Diving Club trained at the Fairmont Plunge, inside Nob Hill’s prestigious Fairmont Hotel. It was the height of luxury, with a strict policy: no “colored” swimmers.

To get the coaching she needed to compete at the highest level, Vicki was forced to make a heart-wrenching choice. When she signed up for the team, she went by “Vicki Taylor” - using her mother’s maiden name.

To the World Stage

The deception worked, but it was Vicki’s talent that truly paved the way. Under Phil Patterson’s coaching, she became a standout student athlete. While in junior college, she placed third at the national AAU championships. The next year, at nationals, she met and befriended Sammy Lee, a Korean American national diving champion who understood the unique pressures of being Asian American in a segregated sport.

Sammy introduced Vicki to Lyle Draves, the man who would become her coach and, eventually, her husband. Under Lyle’s guidance, Vicki’s career skyrocketed. She went on to win five national championships.

London 1948: Making History

At the ‘48 London Olympics, Vicki Manalo dominated the competition. She won two gold medals, becoming the first Asian American to reach the top of the Olympic podium - just two days before her friend Sammy won his own gold medal.

The victory turned her into a global icon. After London, she was invited to the Philippines, appeared in the pages of Life magazine, and toured the country performing swimming and diving exhibitions with Buster Crabbe.

A Lasting Legacy

Vicky Manalo Draves passed away in 2010, but her hometown of San Francisco ensured her name would never be erased again. In 2006, the city dedicated Victoria Manalo Draves Park in her honor.

Located near her childhood home in the Mission, the two-acre park is a permanent tribute to a Bay Area legend: one acre representing each of the gold medals she won for a country that, for a long time, wanted her to hide herself.

This month in BOOK CLUB, we’re reading Omar El Akkad’s One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This.

Join our private Discord server for the first club meeting on February 11, and ongoing conversations about this & other related topics:

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Last year, the two largest private prison companies were awarded almost a billion dollars in ICE contracts. Between that and other ongoing contracts, GEO Group and CoreCivic made $4.3 billion in 2025.

They’re at the top of a vertically integrated industry that profits from every step of the way. Since 2020, nonprofit Worth Rises has been tracking & documenting the private prison industry.

In The Prison Industry: How It Works and Who Profits, they outline how contractors make money: from the tear gas used to intimidate protestors,

the body cams worn by officers,

even the contracts for food, supplies, and staffing detention centers. From the moment ICE steps on the streets to the months someone sits in detention, taxpayer money flows into their pockets.

The day after Trump won in 2024, GEO Group chairman George Zoley (pictured above) described it as an “unprecedented opportunity” to shareholders. CoreCivic’s CEO Damon Hininger (pictured below) called it “one of the most exciting periods in my career.”

Their daily calls with the Administration - and $3 million in DC lobbying - rewarded them with $170 billion allocated into their industry by the “Big Beautiful Bill”. It expanded detention centers, increased surveillance, and kept the bodies - and profits - moving.

George Zoley’s worth $100 million. Damon Hininger made $7.5M in 2025. And today, ICE holds 73,000 people in facilities around the country.

This month in BOOK CLUB, we’re reading Omar El Akkad’s One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This.

Join our private Discord server for the next club meeting on February 11, and ongoing conversations about this & other related topics:

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"When we got an HMart during the pandemic, it changed our lives”