As I mentioned in the previous blog, I’ve developed some young friends – who are they? I thought I would provide a few snapshots.
Katja is Finnish(Swedish-speaking)-American, a protégé, a mother of three (4-14), an ex-Division I tennis player, and now an NIH-funded clinical scientist who is not only carrying on my Cyclic Vomiting Syndrome Program yet independently pursuing novel vagal neuromodulation therapy. She is Superwoman – she walked across the Atlantic – uphill both ways! Her children speak Swedish, Croatian and English, and her eldest a girl is a top point guard whom I’ve watched hit 3-pointer after 3-pointer. She is such a highly motivated, organized researcher, efficient writer and critical thinker from which we accrue bidirectional benefits, and clearly has shown she can outdo her mentor. Special.
Fanny is Cantonese-Canadian acrylic and mixed media artist, and fellow Tai Chi student. Her early years were spent on a Pacific Island, then Hong Kong for elementary school, then Canada for high school and college, and then the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing for a Master’s. She’s trying to make it as an independent artist while teaching private art students. She did a hand-painted replica of an exquisite ‘blue moon’ Boddhisatva that I saw on a trip to the Silk Road in 2016 and I have since collected/commissioned several other pieces. Last year, she drew me into the Vancouver International Film Festival where she saw 40+ films and I first saw the later-named NY Times top 10 film ‘Drive my car’ from Japan.
Donna is Vietnamese-American woman who is the current President of APAMSA (Asian American medical student organization I began in 1995) and is like a daughter who sends me unexpected greetings, asks me to do things for APAMSA, and requests umpteen letters of recommendation. She shared her family story – also in a TEDx talk – that inspired her intentions to focus on public mental health in Asian Americans combining an MPH and psychiatry residency. Yesterday she asked for help on a presentation on APAMSA for the Health Equity Subcommittee of the White House AANHPI Commission. Today she wrote “My helpful mantra is ‘What Would Dr. B Li Do?’” Awwww.
Quintin is Shanghainese-South African who grew up as the only Asian (no sibs) in his South African town – not unlike my upbringing in Iowa City. After his undergraduate degree there, he moved to Norway for nine years to set up a company to develop a new interactive, non-violent video game. Feeling a bit out of place socially, he screened the world for a landing spot and without foreknowledge, moved to downtown Vancouver. He is a thinker with global perspective and game designer who is also a cinephile and we’ve shared a number of repasts and watched a number of movies together. And his girlfriend is from Ukraine and finally on her way. Just where in the world is Carmen San Quintin?
A moment of silence for Jeff Perry
Jeff Perry (spouse of Becky) passed away this past Saturday. He is aptly self-described as an ‘independent, working-class scholar’ who was educated at Princeton several years ahead of me followed by a PhD in history from Columbia. Yet for 50+ years he was active working-class postal worker eventually serving as the union shop steward. Meanwhile, he was continuously involved in social justice issues ranging from affirmative action, worker’s, women’s, tenants’, Black, Latino and Asian rights, anti-war and anti-imperialist work.
Yet on top of his job, family and proactivity and, outside of academia, he became an independent respected scholar focusing on ‘the role of white supremacy as retardant to progressive social change and on the centrality of the struggle against them to progressive social change efforts.’ As part of this passion, he completed a two-volume biography (second nominated for the Pulitzer prize) on Hubert Harrison (1917), the Father of Harlem Radicalism and founder of the militant ‘New Negro Movement’. And he felt Mr. Harrison’s analysis laid the groundwork for that of Jeff’s mentor Theodore Allen’s two-volume “The Invention of the White Race” 1994, 1997.
What a remarkable, impactful life for this proactive autodidact who dedicated his inexhaustible efforts to social justice in life and in academics – an old-school life that ran on all 8 cylinders!
https://www.jeffreybperry.net
No comments:
Post a Comment