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Last month, a San Francisco tour guide was caught in a racist rant about the city’s Chinatown, berating residents for “eating turtles and frogs” and for not assimilating into American culture.

There’s an irony to these grievances, considering that Chinatowns in the U.S. sprang up in large part because of anti-Chinese racism, and because of legal barriers that prevented assimilation.

At their height, there were dozens of Chinatowns, in big metro areas like Los Angeles and Chicago and in smaller cities like Cleveland and Oklahoma City. You might think of these neighborhoods as places to eat dim sum and buy knickknacks, but the reasons they initially formed are much more complex — and political.

Chinatown, San Francisco, late 19th century.

Chinese immigrants congregated together in part because of intense anti-Chinese attacks.

Seeking economic opportunity during the Gold Rush and the building of the transcontinental railroad, the first wave of Chinese immigrants arrived in the U.S. in the mid-1800s. The first Chinatowns sprang up on the West Coast and were, at the start, much like ethnic settlements founded by European immigrant groups.

These immigrants were paid lower wages than white workers, who then blamed Chinese laborers for driving down pay and taking away jobs. After the railroad was completed and white laborers in other industries began to fear for their jobs, anti-Chinese attacks increased, including beatings, arson and murder.

In Rock Springs, Wyoming, 150 armed white miners drove Chinese immigrants out of town in 1885 by setting fire to their homes and businesses and murdering 28 people. No one was charged in the massacre. It was hardly an isolated incident; 153 anti-Chinese riots erupted throughout the American West in the 1870s and 1880s, with some of the worst episodes of violence in Denver, Los Angeles, Seattle and Tacoma, Washington.

Many Chinese immigrants moved east to escape the attacks, explains Beatrice Chen, public programs director for the Museum of Chinese in America, located in New York. “That’s really how Chinatowns on the East Coast got their start,” she tells HuffPost. At the same time, Chinese immigrants who remained on the West Coast sought safety in numbers in the Chinatowns there.

More here

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I wanted to come undone like gold thread, like a tent full of birds.

Sandra Cisneros, from “One Holy Night,” Woman Hollering Creek (via lifeinpoetry)

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Artist: Pola Lopez

"Mujer Indigena"

[not my art. Please do not remove credit]

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Leaving is not enough. You must stay gone. Train your heart like a dog. Change the locks even on the house he’s never visited. You lucky, lucky girl. You have an apartment just your size. A bathtub full of tea. A heart the size of Arizona, but not nearly so arid. Don’t wish away your cracked past, your crooked toes, your problems are papier mache puppets you made or bought because the vendor at the market was so compelling you just had to have them. You had to have him. And you did. And now you pull down the bridge between your houses, you make him call before he visits, you take a lover for granted, you take a lover who looks at you like maybe you are magic. Make the first bottle you consume in this place a relic. Place it on whatever altar you fashion with a knife and five cranberries. Don’t lose too much weight. Stupid girls are always trying to disappear as revenge. And you are not stupid. You loved a man with more hands than a parade of beggars, and here you stand. Heart like a four-poster bed. Heart like a canvas. Heart leaking something so strong they can smell it in the street.

Frida Kahlo

(the most relevant quote of all time. so relevant i want to cry.)

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princess lupita

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Chalk Art by David Zinn

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If you’re going to try, go all the way. Otherwise, don’t even start. This could mean losing girlfriends, wives, relatives and maybe even your mind. It could mean not eating for three or four days. It could mean freezing on a park bench. It could mean jail. It could mean derision. It could mean mockery—isolation. Isolation is the gift. All the others are a test of your endurance, of how much you really want to do it. And, you’ll do it, despite rejection and the worst odds. And it will be better than anything else you can imagine. If you’re going to try, go all the way. There is no other feeling like that. You will be alone with the gods, and the nights will flame with fire. You will ride life straight to perfect laughter. It’s the only good fight there is.

Charles Bukowski (via aklemba)

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You think too much for someone starving for feeling.

Hokan (via nezua)

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maybe i forget things from time to time maybe i remember everything

eye in the sky (via houseofnezua)

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BLASTING THIS

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LAMESA FILIPINO KITCHEN

2012 MURAL COMMISSION

Created in collaboration with CHRISTINE MANGOSING

5.5’ x 18.5’ wall mounted matte vinyl print

Love to Les, Rudy, Manny & the team

DEDICATED TO THE VILLAGE & ALL YOU GIVE

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Beautiful, customizable Mama's Day ecards. Not your standard greeting cards--check them out and share with your loved ones!

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Gpa Chats

Me: You've worked your whole life. You don't ever say you are tired. You are still working even today. You've sacrificed everything, your whole life. How?

Grandpa: The thing is, you always keep something for yourself. Don't give it all away. Keep something for only you.

Conversation Ended

...I can only imagine all the other words he kept to himself.

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Twenty years before NWA screamed “Fuck tha Police” Marsha P. Johnson was in the streets of New York throwing shoes at them (so the story goes). Marsha P. Johnson (June 27, 1944 – July 6, 1992) aka “the Saint of Christopher Street” was an iconic trans* rights activist. She was a leader in the resistance against police harassment in what we know as the Stonewall Riots. She also was the cofounder of Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries (S.T.A.R.)

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La Gran Rigoberta Menchu, Valencia St. San Francisco

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Ensenada, Mexico | April 2014