iPrince: The Monarchy Of A Multi-Culti Mind

Welcome back to Watermelon Sushi World! Please enter the portal to our universe of mixed-ness where cultures cross and ethnicities blend. Kick back and make yourself at home, Hip Hapa Homeez.

This week, Your Hip Hapa profiles one of several Watermelon Sushi Associate Producers located around the globe. What’s a Watermelon Sushi Associate Producer? Watermelon Sushi is our feature film, which our Associate Producers are dedicated to producing and bringing to the silver screen for you. The worldly Mr. Richard Todd Smith, better known as iPrince, explains. Above is his face, below his thoughts.

Q: What makes you a Hip Hapa Homee?

A: I'm African American and live in the inner city of Detroit Michigan. We’re internationally known as the Motor City and where the Motown musical legends came from.

But last year in 2008, I lived in Phoenix where I worked with the Latino population. As a youth and community developer, I partnered with the downtown, centrally located, YMCA. I established youth enrichment programs, summer camp programs, basketball and soccer tournaments, swim teams, Friday night jams, and parties with local radio stations. The YMCA has different partnerships, like with Arizona State University. Youth At Risk is another organization that we worked with; and, also six local high schools and four elementary schools in the district. There were over 100 participants in our program.

Not only was I able to eat great Latino meals in Phoenix, but I also learned the culture of the population, which is centered on food and family. Besides the hot weather, I was also exposed to bilingual speaking and learned some Spanish. I ate hot tamales, quesadillas and soft tacos with sun-dried tomatoes and jalapenos all day long, as well as lots of fresh fruits—apples, oranges, bananas and plantains; a Latino staple.

Q: What's your role in the Watermelon Sushi film--past and future?

A: My thing is outreach. I enjoy reaching out to multiethnic communities and sharing with them even as I learn more about their histories. I’m interested in teaching others about cross-cultural agendas and mixed-race people, and the message and motivation of Watermelon Sushi. I plan to approach diverse cultures and expose them not only to the producers behind the film project, but the project itself. I want to inform younger generations, teenagers, and my peer group--the 30 somethings, the Gen Xers—and reach out to educate them about crossing cultures and what it means to be multiethnic. I want to speak to an international audience. This project is an international project, and I want to teach about it globally. 

As a project for this summer, I’m also working on sponsoring a basketball team to buy Hapa*Teez t-shirts which advertise and finance the Watermelon Sushi film. We’ll approach, say, a local grocery store and ask them to donate a number of shirts to our team. 10% of the funds raised will be donated to the film’s production. This will give us the spin of outreach. I want to sponsor those ball players and take photos of them to be part of the film. I'm looking forward to doing my part. I plan to showcase these types of activities to potential financiers, especially in an urban setting.

I’m also researching film credits, incentives and tax breaks offered by the Michigan Film Office. Soon, I’ll be contacting some key players in that organization to see how we can work together on Watermelon Sushi. To quote Joe Biden, this is a big blankety-blank deal!

Q: What else do you do?

A: I'm a part-time student at Wayne State University where I study urban development and political science. I also work in the field of fine art and antiques; primarily 20th Century American furniture. I also read a lot to stay informed; mostly magazines like Architectural Digest, Fine Wine, Forbes, and Your Hip Hapa’s cousin’s, Oprah's, publication—O.

Q: How did you grow up?

A: I was born and raised on the east side of Detroit. My family is middle-class and, as business owners, gave me the incentive to be entrepreneurial. My folks owned re-sell shops, a gas station and a local Dairy Queen. The majority of my time was spent being involved in after-school programs, and sports for exercise and staying healthy.

Growing up, I attended a private Catholic school, St. David, where we had mixed populations with both black and white roots. Any mixed-race students were predominantly black and white although some had Asian mothers and black fathers. In Detroit, we have a Chinatown, so our family would go there to eat out. We also have a Mexicantown and Africantown--where West Africans from Ghana display their dance culture.

Q: What impact do you think Obama's presidency has made on multiethnic agendas?

A: I don't think he’s made an impact directly, but indirectly by his image because those communities benefit from his having an image of color. By us having a multiethnic president, it sends a hopeful message to multiracial people of color.

Q: Do you have a recipe for The Official Watermelon Sushi Cookbook?

A: You better believe it! It's going to be my caveat to being a part of the project. I'm not much of a cook though. I have sisters, so I eat and wash the dishes. Yes, that sounds sexist, but we role-play. I stay in my lane and they stay in theirs. I'm a willing participant of it. Even if I cook, my sisters taste the food and are like, “Well…” And, then, they may not wash the dishes, so I'll be stuck washing dishes and cooking, too.

Having said that, I may consider submitting a recipe for a fruit salad with watermelons, cherries, strawberries and apple slices. And, I’ll use hummus and olives rolled in rice and seaweed for what I’ll call “Middle Eastern Sushi.” It sounds terrible, but it is catchy.

Q: What do you see in Watermelon Sushi’s future?

A: Not only will it be a film, but a brand--a household name. It will be in your library as a novel, in your kitchen as a cookbook, in your den on a DVD, in your child’s room as a paper doll, and even in your home as houseware like china and linens. It will be in all kinds of homes of all different races as a constant reminder of what it takes to work together in the world. We live to learn about each other so what is it going to take for us to exist together? I see Watermelon Sushi educating the world about the ways and principals of how to relate and understand other ethnic groups and other cultures. 

Wow! No wonder Watermelon Sushi is growing so successfully—thanks to Associate Producers like iPrince. btw, HAPA birthday, iPrince! (Friday, April 9)

To contact Richard Todd Smith:

Email him at iprincesmitty@gmail.com or mrtsmitty@hotmail.com

Friend him on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/iPrinceSmitty

Follow him on Twitter at http://twitter.com/mrtsmitty

Stay tuned, Hip Hapa Homeez, as we continue to present Watermelon Sushi Associate Producers from around the planet along with regular profiles in the coming weeks. We’ll also be developing The Official Watermelon Sushi Cookbook where your vegan recipes will be published along with your photo and story. For more info about the cookbook, email yourhiphapa@me.com

Now, here’s a shout-out to our Hapa*Teez supporters. Remember, if you make a purchase, contact us at hapateez@me.com for your rear crawl credit. This week’s featured Hip Hapa Homee in Hapa*Teez t-shirt is British beauty Sogba Bruce Jaja. Looking good, girl!

And, here’s an announcement from Andrew Grant-Thomas, Deputy Director of the Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity (Ohio State University). Andrew is soliciting a wide range of views on the subject of future race relations and besides tapping advocates, researchers and other professionals, he’s also looking for “bloggers, poets, writers of speculative fiction, futurists, young and old, immigrants, poor and working class people of color and just plain folk.” Get more info at this link:

http://www.race-talk.org/?page_id=3512

Speaking of Obama, this week’s featured Amazon product is Watermelon Sushi Associate Producer Pearl, Jr.’s on-demand video titled Barack Obama: The Power of Change.

Let’s end with a BIG UP to all you Hip Hapa Homeez Group members and Watermelon Sushi Fans on Facebook, and to you tweeting Twitterers. Anyone can join us, so please do. And, keep your comments and emails coming. Like iPrince, above, we love it when you reach out. Soon we’ll meet again, and until then, I am

Your Hip Hapa,

Yayoi

Writing, Then Reading

During the past week, I've been spring cleaning my huge storehouse of published writing. Tossing out multiple drafts of some stories while organizing voluminous clips, I was surprised to discover that I had penned so many articles in my 11 years as a freelance journalist. Although I started out writing nightclub reviews in 1997 for a Los Angeles publication called No Cover Magazine, I've ended up focused on issues of concern to communities of color and other underrepresented sectors of society.

Of course, while working, I was compelled to read through most of my old articles. Heh, heh. After comparing some of the drafts to the finished pieces, I realized what was published didn't always turn out well due to heavy-handed editors. Still, other pieces benefitted from intuitive editors that offered helpful suggestions without allowing their opinions to overwhelm my flavor.

Besides the countless film reviews, interviews with celebrities and filmmakers, and film festival coverage I'd written, I'd also contributed hundreds of Astrology columns--both the Asian animal and so-called Western style. But in 1999, I began writing features for Northwest Asian Weekly newspaper in Seattle. Soon after, I interviewed several AfroAsians for Mavin

magazine--a publication for the mixed-race community. My article titled Chopsticks and Chitlins was a turning point that led me to seek more "serious" assignments, heavy on interviews. So it was very timely to be invited onboard Asian American Village at http://www.IMDiversity.com as a contributing editor right around that same time.

Writing for all three publications led me straight to the door of the Asian Pacific American community--a group that I'd previously had little contact with. Because my mother and I are technically issei (first generation Japanese), and because she married an American soldier, we didn't grow up in a neighborhood with Asians who'd been in America for several generations. My first in-depth experiences with APA's as a group happened after I began writing for publications with a heavy Asian readership. Learning first-hand about their experiences was enlightening, and probably more educational than taking Asian Studies.

For instance, some of the subjects I wrote about concerned: a hate-crime against two Vietnamese American brothers that resulted in murder; where in America Asians felt the safest living; the cause of rampant AIDS in Cambodia; author Iris Chang's suicide; and, the rapidly aging former detainees of Angel Island portrayed in a photo exhibit.

Those experiences helped me when I later wrote for AsianAvenue.com--stories like: Southesast Asian gangs; interracial relationships; why Asian kids feel the need to achieve; Asians and the political process; why so few teachers of yoga, an Asian discipline, are of Asian descent; and, what constitutes beauty in America (being non-Asian, of course).

Although I've been nominated several times for journalism awards, I've never actually won any. However, one article I wrote about white actors portraying Asian characters, titled Yellowface, is cited on Wikipedia.

During that period of intense writing, I also tried to connect with African American publications--constantly pitching to magazines like Essence and Ebony. But only two Los Angeles based-magazines with a black focus ever asked me to contribute anything.

Otherwise, the bulk of my work has been read in Asian publications and, no surprise here, more mainstream (read: white) periodicals. Naturally, there's far more of them. Besides, I write a lot about the film industry and there's seldom color involved. Still, I've had my share of covering controversial topics for mainstream newspapers like the now-defunct Seattle Press. In a single year, I wrote about: the difficulty of renting in Seattle; racial profiling in that city; political volunteers during the Nader-Gore-Bush elections, a highway overpass littered with used hypodermic needles; several homeless people including a 19-year old girl; a Nepalese sherpa restaurant owner; and, an older white couple who adopted a black crack baby.

Lest you think that only Seattle fields serious problems, I also wrote some pretty heady stuff for Malibu Times newspaper and magazine. Consider: a mother, because her son died suddenly, starting a non-profit to help poor families with funerals who lost children unexpectedly; a Malibu couple visiting Jamaica who helped rescue Haitian refugees when their boat sank; and, an art teacher who hosted a safehouse for indigenous children of the Northern Territories because of their high suicide rate. That's right, Malibu. That beach-y place with all those surfer dudes, dude.

Now that I'm moving in another direction career-wise, I can look back at my body of work without emotional attachment--which was never the case when I was deep into an assignment and fighting to maintain my voice. Nowadays, I write to write.

Question of the Week: How do you feel about Jackie Chan carrying the Olympic Torch? Does he seem to be out of step with some opinions that China is a human rights abuser and, therefore, should be shamed while the rest of the world is watching? Or, do you think that Chan is simply trying to get beyond the politics that's overtaken the Olympics and making it just a sporting event again?

Hit me!

Your Hip Hapa,

Yayoi

P.S. HAPA birthday, Pearl, Jr.!