Navneet Alang has learned to love his totally awesome chest hair: “In the time I was busy developing complexes about how I was an impossibly unattractive yeti, Bollywood had hopped on the “ripped, hairless chests” bandwagon.”
Read MorePassing, Or Something Like It: Paul Aguirre-Livington on realizing that despite being a son of an immigrant father whose first language isn't English, the actual colour of his actual skin still makes him "white."
Read MoreBlack envy, or black in a past life? Lisan Jutras in Jesus Saves: "When I heard “Mary Don’t You Weep,” on Aretha’s gospel album, I’d picture myself running super fast, or maybe even floating, with a pushing feeling inside my chest, and I’d find myself crying."
Read MoreKath Halloran on white privilege in Finding My Canadian Self in Ireland: "The woman beside you on the streetcar lived in Canada her whole life and some people will always assume she got off the boat yesterday."
Read MoreDo only WASPs get to be white? Nina Boccia, in To Be Italian: "Many people are apparently shocked that I don’t have the olive skin that once so blatantly marked hundreds of thousands of Italian immigrants as not truly “white” and continues to racialize their descendants."
Read More"One day we were visiting my mom’s best friend and one of her kids was wearing a “stop racism” pin. I wasn’t sure what “racism” was. I was twelve:" Sarah Nicole Prickett is simultaneously Not Guilty, Not Innocent.
Read MoreJohn Michael McGrath would like to share his 8 Simple Rules for Marrying a Chinese Woman except "it turns out there’s no one Chinese Girl TM out there to date and marry. They’re all different! My wife Vicki is even totally different from her sisters! It’s weird."
Read MoreRemember Carlton Banks? Jesse Kinos-Goodin traces a line from the Fresh Prince of Bel Air to swag-popping Boston hip hop cover band Karmin and argues (sort of) that White Rap is Just Wrong.
Read MoreThen, Jonathan Robson on his Rosedale-bred White Issue(s): "Rabbit stew takeaway from Arlequin at Ave and Dav was probably as close to a multicultural experience as I ever came to back then. Maybe that Gipsy Kings album; maybe Julio Iglesias."
Read MoreNavneet Alang on why we decided to do such an issue: "Far too often, whiteness is a kind of assumed norm without a name—something neatly encapsulated by the fact that no-one ever calls grilled cheese or steak “ethnic food”."
Read MoreIndian food is the best kind of food.
These aren’t my words but those of my mother. All my life, as I substituted salads for her cooking in an attempt to lose weight, she’d convince everyone at the table that I would never achieve my desired results until I started eating Indian food for every meal, every day. So, I rebelled, completely ditching my diet. I asked my dad, who was more open to a multicultural palette, if we could eat somewhere non-Indian.
I took my parents to eat some Thai, which has slightly similar flavours to Indian. My mum said she could make it at home. I took my parents to Chili’s to have some nachos. My mum said she could make it at home. I took my parents out for pasta at the best Italian restaurant in town. My mum said she could make it at home. I snapped. I challenged my mum to forego her regular schedule of cooking daal and rice to baking a batch of nachos. What happened next blew my mind.
Read MoreI have an unabashed love of Christmas. I love the lights, the decorations, and the decked-out trees. I love buying gifts and the artery-clogging holiday dinners. I love Christmas music (everything from “Little Saint Nick” to “Silent Night”), Christmas specials, and the excitement that surrounds this time of year. I love that it brings my family together and gives them a chance to appreciate and love each other. Oh, and I’ve never grown tired of that story about the birth of Jesus and the wise men and the salvation of mankind.
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Also in is Navneet Alang. He’s going to kick back and enjoy a white Christmas. “Mad rushing to get presents? Check. Grand Christmas feast with a turkey and all the trimmings? Check. Indulging in icewine and gorgonzola in front of the fire like they do on those Food TV specials?Super-gluttonous, you-best-believe-it check. Yeah, when it comes to late December, we are the Christmasiest Punjabis this side of a… Gurdwara at the North Pole?”
Read MoreRenee Sylvestre-Williams demonstrates how to make a Trinidadian treat, pastelles.
Read MoreDenise Balkissoon wishes she wasn’t so tortured about Christmas, but she is. “My Muslim relatives began to make the religious pilgrimage to Mecca. They became much more devout, and there went half my presents. Meanwhile, my Christian, Hindu and agnostic relatives realized that the size of our family was bankrupting everyone. There went the other half….Soon, putting up the (fake) tree just seemed like work. One year, we decorated a plant in the hallway instead.”
Read MoreA half-Jewish Jew, Justine Purcell Cowell just wants in. “How I marveled at the sweaters and make-up that emerged from their magical trees. (And oh, how I borrowed those sweaters, how I shared in the joy of that make-up!)….Hanukkah is not Christmas. It’s the compensatory holiday that Jewish parents give to their children. “
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By Denise Balkissoon
Launching at the Gladstone this Tuesday, December 6, is One Millionth Tower, the latest installment of Highrise, the NFB's webstravaganza (wait, I hate made-up words. Sorry). If you haven't seen the site yet, you know nothing about Toronto, since the Emmy-award winning project is the best bit of storytelling yet produced about the 1,000 highrise towers in Toronto's outer suburbs, and the ten of thousands of people who live there.
Luckily, director Katarina Cizek has been doing a cracking job. The first installment, The Thousandth Tower, took us into the lives of six Torontonians who live in these vertical communities. Since then, she's led planners, architects, musicians and many, many enthusiastic residents in putting together a next-level web project that looks at towers all over the world.
The new segment, One Millionth Tower, re-imagines what life could be like for the residents of two adjacent towers on Kipling Ave. It's fun and energizing to walk through the virtual landscape - and Owen Pallet and Jim Guthrie helped with the soundtrack. In inspiring the hundreds of people who live here to imagine life with a vegetable garden or a dance studio, Highrise has helped instigate actual change: last summer, residents and a local charity got together to build a playground to replace a desolate and decrepit basketball court.
This is a global issue - the Highrise site points out that over a billion people worldwide live in mid-century apartment buildings that are starting to develop serious repair issues. As much as Toronto's brown 1970s towers might be eyesores, it's unrealistic to talk of tearing them down and replacing the majority of the city's affordable rental housing stock (and, you know, condescending to the people that live there). But we do have to figure something out - as the United Way's Vertical Poverty report points out, these complexes are troubled, structurally and economically. Many are out in the outer suburbs, where new immigrants and low-income communities become increasingly isolated as public transit gets increasingly crappy.
So far, Mayor Rob Ford hasn't made an official statement about the future of the Tower Renewal project. Let's hope that no news is good news.
By Denise Balkissoon
Something about YouTube How-To videos really cracks me up. Once I watched a 12-minute video on making a t-shirt into a tank top, which involved a really made-up blond American teenager paaiiiiinfully explain to me how to cut the sleeves off a t-shirt. It's kind of ballsy that people presents themselves as experts on any given topic that they're currently into, and cringe-inducing when they are so, so far from experts at...anything.
So, I thought I'd gather the Tube's best videos on learning or unlearning accents. Next, I'll make a How-To video on culling YouTube videos. Meta.
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3BBtS1ir4tA&w=560&h=315] Informative video from Mikey Bustos of Canadian Idol fame: "It's worth noting that the Pilipino language lacks 'he' and 'she' pronouns. That is why many Pilipinos get 'he' and 'she' mixed up - 'I like Ricky Martin, her music is berry good.'"
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cfVD117KgmA&w=420&h=315] YouTube girls seem to think Edwin Chang is hot. I think he should regret this three-year-old video on doing a Chinese accent: "What you gotta do is like go to local shops or whatever...over time by listening to the way they speak, you can sort of catch it."
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GvWRIHS8xag&w=420&h=315] The first of 10 (!) instructional videos on how to speak with a Glasgow accent. See, this is the kind of thing that kills me - if I were inviting the whole world into my home, I'd personally put away my laundry.
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O_IPwCXJAlQ&w=560&h=315] This tracksuit-wearing Greek accent instructor is way intense. Best comment: "way to talk about greek accent when you actually speak greek with an american accent...."
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AuKAwGoV8BY&w=560&h=315] Warm up exercises for accent reduction. Start off with a nice ho-hum to really open up the throat.
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H-ikZdbSAfc&w=420&h=315] Spazzed out GTA teens attempt to teach West Indian accents. "Allyuh? See allyuh deh?" Alas, their sound is almost as bad as their "badass" attitudes.
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ey62b5Xqe0&w=560&h=315] Reverse racism! Tokyo boy speaks in "redneck." What is wrong with people? Technology sucks.
The Wellness Issue
