Kat Chow
Kat Chow is a reporter with NPR and a founding member of the Code Switch team. She is currently on sabbatical, working on her first book (forthcoming from Grand Central Publishing/Hachette). It's a memoir that digs into the questions about grief, race and identity that her mother's sudden death triggered when Kat was young.
For NPR, she's reported on what defines Native American identity, gentrification in New York City's Chinatown, and the aftermath of a violent hate crime. Her cultural criticism has led her on explorations of racial representation in TV, film, and theater; the post-election crisis that diversity trainers face; race and beauty standards; and gaslighting. She's an occasional fourth chair on Pop Culture Happy Hour, as well as a guest host on Slate's podcast The Waves. Her work has garnered her a national award from the Asian American Journalists Association, and she was an inaugural recipient of the Yi Dae Up fellowship at the Jack Jones Literary Arts Retreat. She has led master classes and spoken about her reporting in Amsterdam, Minneapolis, Valparaiso, Louisville, Boston and Seattle.
She's drawn to stories about race, gender and generational differences
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Tough parents and tough kids often struggle to express love without, well, saying it aloud. Here are two stories about trying to break emotional barriers.
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We share some stories on our radar: A Chicago restaurateur administers a knockout-inducing kick to the face to stop a thief; a California school chants A-R-A-B-S to honor its mascot; an Iranian band meets tragedy in New York City; hospitals must deal with patient requests that might be discriminatory. -
Pedro Quezada sent $57 million of his $338 million lottery winnings to the Dominican Republic. It's a high-profile example of an everyday phenomenon where immigrants to the U.S. send billions back to their home country. -
The author of Forgotten Country went from crunching numbers to writing, though she says words were always her first love. Her novel explores the tenuous lines between freedom and selfishness. -
Halloween is — uh, how do you say? — high season for writing about race. Each year, like clockwork, you can count on images of people sporting racist costumes. -
The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office won't approve a trademark for the band's name on the grounds that it's a disparaging term for people of Asian descent. So the band is taking the fight to federal court.
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Social media was abuzz this week with the images of photographer Hannah Price, whose project documents men she encountered on the streets of Philadelphia. In an interview, she talks about the choices and intentions behind the project. -
Folks often wonder how best to celebrate heritage months. Companies often sponsor scholarships targeted at certain groups. But sometimes, corporations 'commemorate' the month with a twist.
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Social practices train us to see and experience race in certain ways, regardless of whether we are sighted or not, according to a professor from the University of California, Hastings College of the Law. -
This year's class of MacArthur fellows was announced Wednesday. Ramón Gutiérrez, a leading historian in Chicano studies, was a fellow in 1983. He shares the research in his field fascinates him most.
