05/08/2025
IN CELEBRATION OF Asian & Pacific American Heritage Month, on the weekend of May 16-18, we are posting a free link to Stolen Ground. https://stirfryseminars.com/lgr-series-stolen-ground/
I would never have thought when I premiered Stolen Ground, a documentary about racism towards Asians in 1993, that more than 30 years later we would still be mired in so much fear and hatred of those who are underrepresented and non-white. Yet, today, not a day goes by that we don’t read about another story of immigrants being arrested, caged, or sent to prisons in El Salvador and other countries. Even American citizens, women and children as young as four years old, are not exempt.
It has now been over thirty-five years I have been a filmmaker, author and community therapist working on discriminatory issues such as racism, sexism, gay issues and so many others. In 1985 I was one of the first therapists to have two groups: an Asian Men’s Group and a Multicultural Men’s Group specifically talking about racism, anger and leadership. Amazingly, the original Asian Men’s Group is still meeting even today.
Stolen Ground is about eight Asian men, all who were in my Asian Men’s group which met once a week for two hours, fifty weeks a year. Almost from the very beginning, the men were sharing one story after another about how it felt to not only be Asian, but how their childhood experiences that were both painful and traumatic affected them even today. Stories such going out for a family vacation and having a carload of white children squinting their eyes to mimic Asian eyes, being ostracized as the “model minority”, or watching how their father’s spirit slowly diminished because of racism. But, this film isn’t just how it feels to be Asian, it is also about what they, as Asian men, need from white America to feel seen, to be understood, to be embraced and fully appreciated.
At the Premiere in 1994, John Oda lamented about how hard it was to be Asian because he always thought that there was something “wrong” with him and how he wished his father had told him that it was not him, but this country’s problem. With tears in his eyes, his father stood up from the audience and shared how sorry he felt that he didn’t talk to him about racism because he always thought, like so many other Asians of his generation and those who were interned, that if they didn’t talk about racism and what they had gone through, that it would just go away.
Isn’t that what so many of our so-called leaders are trying to convince us of? That if we don’t talk about all these painful issues, that they will just simply go away. As someone once shared: The truth is always there. Saying it out loud that’s the hard part.
In celebration of Asian & Pacific American Heritage Month, On the weekend of May 16-18, we will post a free link to Stolen Ground for all those wishing to share this film with their friends and neighbors. Let us all say to this government and to this president: We will not be silenced. We cannot be silenced. The conversation continues…
–For more information contact [email protected] or visit the Let's Get Real Film Series Info page. https://stirfryseminars.com/lets-get-real-film-series/
