ASIA MEDIA INTERNATIONAL PRESENTS – A limited series by AMI Video Anchor Janelynne Galera and Senior Editor and Professor Andrea Plate to introduce the concept of article writing for publication. This series aligns with our mission, which aims to help deepen LMU’s overall institutional understanding of – and relationship with…
ANDREA PLATE WRITES – Donald Trump may have cheapened the phrase “witch hunt,” but American history is rich and notorious with sad sagas of domestic persecution: the Salem Witch Trials of colonial Massachusetts, immortalized by playwright Arthur Miller in 1953’s “The Crucible;” the pursuit, persecution and internment of “enemy” Japanese…
ANDREA PLATE WRITES – The outpouring of grief that followed the death this week of actor Dwayne Hickman at age 87, star of the smash 1959-1963 CBS TV series “The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis,” came as no surprise. Yes, he was just an actor in a role: a clean-cut,…
ANDREA PLATE WRITES — American women know well the indignity of being defined, and best-known, by the men they marry. But Huma Abedin, author of the utterly readable, just published memoir And/Both: A Life in Many Worlds (Scribner), is no ordinary woman; nor did she marry a nice ordinary man,…
ANDREA PLATE WRITES — Robert McDonald, US Secretary of Veterans Affairs under President Obama, struck deep into the hearts of mental healthcare workers at the West Los Angeles Department of Veterans Affairs, albeit unintentionally, when he told them this: The effects of any war can be felt forty years after…
ANDREA PLATE WRITES — “Everyone needs to have access both to grandparents and grandchildren in order to be a full human being.” So wrote cultural anthropologist Margaret Mead, at least a half-century prior to the release of “Minari,” awarded “Best Foreign Film” by the Hollywood Foreign Press Association at the…
ANDREA PLATE WRITES — Imagine watching your mother and grandmother being stabbed to death in a random attack on Christmas Eve, and showing no emotion. This is Yunjae, the protagonist of Sohn Won-Pyung’s Almond (HarperVia), first published in 2017 and translated into English this May. Why the title Almond? First, because the human brain…
(This is the sixth in an original series about new wave feminist writers in Korea whose work has started to reach English language readers via superb translations.) ANDREA PLATE WRITES — Imagine this book as a movie: “Silence of the Lambs” meets “Thelma and Louise.” The Law of Lines (Arcade…
(This is the fifth in an original series about new wave feminist writers in Korea whose work has started to reach English language readers via superb translations.) ANDREA PLATE WRITES — Thirty-eight years. That’s how long it took for the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea to approve, for publication in…
(This is the fourth in an original series about new wave feminist writers in Korea whose work has started to reach English language readers via superb translations.) ANDREA PLATE WRITES — “Fitting into middle class society is getting harder and harder for the younger generation.” So says Kim Sagwa, author…
ANDREA PLATE WRITES — (This is the third in an original series about new wave feminist writers in Korea.) Why, for the past fifteen years, has literary icon Bae Suah — author of at least twelve sensationally popular surrealist novels, several short story collections, winner of two Korean literary prizes…
(This is the second in an original series about new wave feminist writers in Korea) ANDREA PLATE WRITES — Is this the face of modern-day feminism in Seoul? If I Had Your Face, Frances Cha’s debut novel (Ballantine Books), tells the story of four young women struggling to succeed in…
ANDREA PLATE WRITES — I met Joaquin Phoenix when he was eight years old. This was in 1984. “Sometimes you think they like you,” he told me, “and then you don’t get the part so you feel kind of lousy. Once a casting director told me, ‘The money’s on you.…
ANDREA PLATE WRITES — Imagine how it feels. A young American male sees this cell phone text: “You’ve been marked eligible and must come to the nearest branch in the area for immediate departure to Iran.” That actually happened, this past week, to draft-age men across America. The text was…
ANDREA PLATE WRITES – It was Christmas Eve, the final performance of a three-week “Nutcracker Ballet” series at the University of California, Irvine’s Barclay Theater. “Are there, like, a ton of Asians around, or is it my imagination?” someone in the crowd mumbled to his friend. But of course! How…
Andrea Plate Writes — I just concluded a three-year run teaching “Gender and the Military” at a major Southern California university. For three years, I thought I knew what I was talking about. Fifteen years as a licensed clinical social worker at the Department of Veterans Affairs; author of ‘Madness’,…
