The confluence of the following that resulted in my termination.

For the full view of my EEOC case: http://eeoccase.blogspot.com/

Tuan Nguyen and his countrymen instigated defamation of “no one wanted her; no one liked her; etc” the first month we were on the job with classmates in the Training Academy (I didn't know anyone in the DC metro.  Asian males don't like to work with women, especially Americanized Asian women who could do the job they could not.).  Shawn Joseph then spread to other Training Classes, where they spread to the rest of the Patent and Trademark Office. The USPTO employee and Tuan Nguyen's countrymen/women spread to their families, friends, neighbors and neighborhoods such as the Arlington, VA. As the result, I can't secure a job while being sexually harassed, abused, physical harm, and rape threats that resulted in the slit of my throat that was meant to kill me such this EEOC case would go away.

The likes of Tuan Nguyen and his countrymen set a bad precedent of defaming me that followed by Shawn Joseph, Randy Shaffer, Reza Nabi, and other Lab 2 classmates, which is the source of a cesspool. No one notice me prior to Tuan Nguyen and his countrymen defamations of me, as well Shawn Joseph’s defamation of me.

As time progresses, defamations such as Paul Rodriguez, the SPE Trainer played favoritism toward women, and only liked to talk and help women; or that good looking woman had it easy because guys like to help them, etc., beginning to promulgate the class; in reference to me talked to Paul about patent cases; to which I had to keep a distance such not to create resentment toward either one of us. If I didn’t stop talking to Paul, the next slander would be to accuse Paul and I having an affair. I knew this because similar accusations had been made toward me when I worked in the Silicon Valley, by people-from-Asia; just like America in the Dark Age when witch-hunt was practiced.  

My officemate Hung Havan and his cabal Nathan Hillery, Michele Choi, Susanne Lo and her friends from India actively defaming me after Hung Havan learned via my docket that I was already doing 3 cases per biweek at the beginning of June, 2011; like all Asian males, they don't like women who could do the job they could not. Also, Nathan Hillery, Hung Havan and Michele Choi had elbowed my chest deliberately in the Patent and Trademark Office. On my last day, Hung Havan stretched out his arm deliberately hit my breast and stopped me from saying good-bye to Erica in front of her, also blocked the hallway so I couldn't go say good-bye to other coworkers. When I went back to my office, Michele Choi had already stolen most of my office supply, and elbowed me on the chest to push me out of her way. Nathan Hillery deliberately elbowed me on his way home in May/June 2011. All these people had defamed me and set me up to be sexually harassed, abused, termination, physical harm and rape that resulted in the slit of my throat that was met to kill me, are still working in the Patent and Trademark Office. How safe are people working with them?

Someone may had saw Nathan Hillery elbowed my breast/chest and reported him to authority, that's why he set me up for termination as retaliation thinking that I was the one reported him.  This was why I didn't report for fear of retaliation as I was a probationary employee that can be fired for anything.

My SPE (supervisor) Paul Rodriguez notified me on Aug, 10, 2011 that I was going to be terminated and my last day will be on Aug. 12, 2011. I asked Mr. Rodriguez why, he said I had low performance, I said my performance was at 93%, he then said it was from management. Others had given a 2 weeks notice, I was terminated in a hurry. As soon I got back to my office, I sat down and still tried to finish a patent case. That’s how sudden this news was, how entrench I was in my patent examining job, and how crazy my working condition was. I hadn’t seen daylight for months after I started this job. I only had time to visit my family once in NYC. I requested for vacation to move my belongings from NYC, but only approved for one day.

Mr. Rodriguez had been setting me up to be terminated from the get-go by impose stringent requirements on me but not of my peers, also deliberately put difficult and complex COPA cases in my docket to ensure I couldn't meet the requirements, amount many other such underhanded tactics deployed to ensure I would be terminated. I met every stringent requirements and then some, also an airtight first case that was known to many SPEs and the then Undersecretary and Director of USPTO Mr. David Kappos. I may be the first woman to have an airtight first case. I was also one of the most qualified candidates with extensive industry experience in the Patent class 703 field, also a Master's in EE, as an adjunct and an Applied Physics searcher with published paper.

Dwin Criag initiated my termination process after he heard the defamation of Susanne Lo's boyfriend Bill and I will be married soon announced by Susanne Lo and her friends from India.  Dwin had certain resentments toward Asian women, and he might not like the likes of Susanne Lo and Michele Choi.  Additionally,  my office-mate Hung Havan and Nathan Hillery also misled people into thinking I am just like Susanne Lo and Michele Choi. Dwin Craig also held a grudge against Bill, so when he heard Susanne Lo in the Party said Bill and I was going to be married soon, he started the process of terminated me.

Weeks before my termination and around the time an AU2123 Examiner (the only Asian and an Engineering Professor THANGAVELU KANDASAMY (?)) gave a party on becoming a Primary; where Susanne Lo’s friends-from-India were invited, along with Dwin Craig, Paul Rodrigues and Jason Procter, as well me. Also the day AU 2123 got our laptop (an i7 CPU!! Finally something decent to work with), and Jason Procter came to pick up his new laptop. I believed this is when Susanne Lo’s friends-from-India learned Dwin Craig and Paul Rodrigues were my Primary and SPE and defamed me with them to incite them to terminate me, which Dwin and Paul already prone to do so as explained before. (Aside from asking Paul and Dwin what Susanne Lo and friends-from-India said about me in this party, also ask Jason Procter and others in the party.) Days after this party, Hung Havan suddenly asked me how long will I last here, meaning when I will be terminated. I said depends on the kind of people we have here; if there are more good people then bad people, I will last; otherwise I won’t last. He knew then I was in the process of being terminated. Hung Havan also said romantic relationship is prohibited in the office, I said “yeah, most companies have this policy”. Days before the party, I overheard Hung Havan told Susanne Lo that Bill (in charge of COPA, also Susanne Lo's boyfriend) and I were going to be married when Susanne Lo inquired about house purchasing with Hung, which was strange to me as I knew Susanne Lo was Bill’s girlfriend, and I told Hung Havan I already have a boyfriend; so I didn’t think much of it, surely nobody is going to believe something as asinine as this, or at least do some fact checking, unless nefarious individuals use this as an excuse to terminate me. But this is just one example of Hung Havan’s defamation of me, the result of deep-seated hatred toward women outperform him.

This party may sealed the faint of my termination as I left early to work on my patent cases as I had to meet 3 cases per bi-week quota. A few hours later, I brought Michele Choi to the party room to pick up leftover food where we ran into Dwin Craig, he looked mad when he saw me and Michele Choi. I knew he and Michele Choi had some sort of dispute. Dwin may think I am a friend of Michele Choi, and believed the continuous character assassination of me by Nathan Hillery, Michele Choi, Hung Havan and Susanne Lo’s friends-from-India, as well many others as the result of the vilification of me; also held a grudge again Bill (in charge of COPA) who Nathan’s coterie misled people into believing Bill and I had some sort of relationship, whom I spoken to only a few times; in addition to Dwin’s bigotry/discrimination toward Chinese women, finally set in the process of terminated me with the help of Nathan, via the top level woman management, with the consensus of the TC2100 management as the result of misled information mostly from Nathan Hillery, Hung Havan and Michele Choi (all with questionable character and psychologically unstable). Finalized after spoken to Hung and believed his defamation of me. Again, I worked nearly 24/7 that resulted in 93% Productivity, hardly leave my office nor did I have the time to talk to anyone.

Dwin Craig looked mad and screamed at me in front of Michele Choi.  Which Michele Choi may had reported Dwin Craig to an authority, and he initiated the process of terminating me out of retaliation.

One wondered why management (mainly TC2100) took part in terminated me keep misleading the fact that I was terminated due to “no one liked her; no one wanted her; etc” while I didn't know anyone and worked 24/7 as evidenced by my computer log time and my accomplishments; but true for many such as Michele Choi who was at the verge of termination all the time. They were not fired. Or “will be married soon with Bill” when Bill and Susanne Lo been dating for years and was known to many. We also see them together all the time and went home together all the time when I was there. They were talking about marriage. I only spoken to Bill a few times and still don't know his last name. Susanne Lo was not fired.

These management, mostly SPEs from GUI (patent class 715), heard from Michele Choi who went around saying “if Mona could do 3 cases per biweek, GUI must be easy, I wanted to transfer into GUI too”.  When the GUI group heard this, one said “the jig is up”. The GUI group been enjoying as the top performer, they don't want this to change, so by pushing to fired me with low performance even though it was well known that I was already doing 3 cases per biweek and were COPA cases, in addition to an airtight first case; by fired me with low performance would certainly disputed that "GUI must be easy" as well ensure the continuation of bonuses. (It should be note that the whole "examining time" needs a complete overhaul such not being a sweatshop, as well management need to understand what it takes to do the job)

To terminated me, they had to have an excuse as I am not in their GUI group, which they conveniently use the defamation of “no one wanted her; no one liked her; etc” that's been instigated by Tuan Nguyen and his countrymen the first month on the job. Additionally, the GUI SPEs convinced other management Susanne Lo's boyfriend Bill and I were involved in a romantic relationship, with the helps of Bill's close associate Nathan Hillery – a Union Rep, my officemate Hung Havan, Susanne Lo, Dwin Craig my Primary who held a grudge against Bill for a reason I don't know, and Michele Choi who Dwin thought was my friend. Where Hung Havan also told them I am just like Michele Choi, who has been hated everywhere.

Susanne Lo's boyfriend Bill may have contributed to such beliefs to cover their affair to protect Susanne Lo from his enemy, as well to make her jealous; while his close associates Hung Havan, Nathan Hillery and Michele Choi, as well his girlfriend Susanne Lo and her friend from India had used this to get me fired. They called Bill their frenemy. Bill had helped all these people and their friends from being terminated; he had never helped me in any way or form. I am terminated with all my accomplishments.  If this Bill continue to involve me, it only means he and Susanne Lo are still dating and may have married. I had not seen Susanne Lo's boyfriend Bill since my termination August 10, 2011.

How did Michele Choi know I had done 3 cases per biweek? No one knew this except me, and I certainly didn't say anything and was still staying low key as I knew what Asians would do to a woman who could do a job better than the males, as they did to me when I was in the Silicon Valley where I had to abscond from due to physical harm threats by an Asian coworker and an Asian gang.  Hung Havan had been checking my progress, he knew my information as he and his cabal Nathan Hillery had shown me how to access my Production Performance around June 2011 when Wendy Gerber and Paul Rodrigues had our first meeting.  I asked Nathan Hillery(a Union Rep) what was the performance norm for probationary employees at their 6th month  evaluation?   Hung Havan also start defaming me after learning I was doing 3 cases per week in June, 2011.

Michele Choi also went around saying inflammatory things about what I said to my SPE she read from my Office Action, which sounds as if I was intransigent when it was just a disagreement.  I am not the only one she had said inflammatory things about, her Training academy classmates had been avoiding her as well.  

Michele Choi and Hung Havan used their smartphone to set me up to incite sexual harassment, abuses, termination, rape, and now the slit of my throat that almost killed me such this EEOC case would go away.  

Both Hung Havan and Michele Choi, amount many from Asia knew I hated being sexually harassed and deemed those who did as lowlife, as well I would reported them to the EEO. So to enforce the notion of I checked out Hung Havan as a way to further the sexual harassment and abuses toward me by lowlifes which I would report to the EEOC, he tried to set me up such I come across as if I was checking him up. For example, he would show me clips of his son on is smartphone placed on the desktop while he stood on the other end of the edge of the desk, someone such as his partner in crime Michele Choi would use her smartphone and recorded from afar as if I was checking Hung when he talked to me and I looked up, for the unsuspected simpleton eyes. Hung Havan and Michele Choi’s intention was to have every single lowlife to sexually harass and abuse me, a woman who is outperformed them, to finally get me terminated.

The slit of my throat happened on June 1, 2013, days before my Appeal deadline.  I was in the hospital for days.  Luckily, a friend helped me out and sent my Appeal in on time.  If I die, this EEOC case would go away.  I was specifically targeted.  I didn't know anyone in the DC metro, some of the people had shown such viciousness toward me are people from the Patent and Trademark Office such as Hung Havan, Nathan Hillery, Michele Choi, Susanne Lo and her friends from India, Tuan Nguyen and his countrymen.

And finally, if I am white, I wouldn't have been fired without any consideration.  Management knew that there's no ramification for their wrong doing to an Asian woman.  The whole system is rigged against minorities as evidenced by the ruling of the EEOC AJ Nancy Graham of New Orleans against me with overwhelming evidenced to support my case, and the "stand your ground killings", where murders such as Geroge Zimmerman  and Michael Dunn got away with murder just because the victims were 2 African - American kids.

Because of the defamation, particularly by Tuan Nguyen's countrymen of people from Asia, I've been subjected to sexual harassment, abuses, termination, not able to secure a job, physical harm, rape and now they also had slit my throat that was meant to kill me. Please help me to clear my name.

I was targeted in similar manner as soon as I arrived in the Silicon Valley /San Francisco Bay area in the 1990s, by people from Asia, who I had never met in my life; and had to abscond due to physical harm threats by an Asian coworker and an Asain gang.

 Not just the Asian transients have aversion toward 2nd generation Americanized Asians, but this is true for other recent immigrants from Africa, Eastern Europe, South America, Middle East, etc., toward their Americanized 2nd generation as well.  Some Middle East fathers honored killed their daughter because she was dating a White boy or wants to live a life of a typical American teenager.  Even my father had discouraged me from going to college and vehemently against me pursuing a PhD.

This is from speaking with immigrants from other parts of the world.  They all understood when I told them what happened to me as a 2nd generation Asian, and that the new immigrants from Asia had been attacking me.  Another word, this is well understood phenomena amount immigrants of that some new immigrants' aversion toward Americanized 2nd generation.  Most of them just want to make money here and move back to their homeland, a transient.

It is more pronounced in my case because there is such overwhelming recent Asian immigrants where Americans have little to no understanding of their 3rd world culture, and only a few 2nd or later generation of Asians in America; while people from Asia using Social Media from emails to mitbbs.com to spread their hate on their targets such as me.

The conflicts between the first generation immigrant and the Americanized 2nd generation has been going on since the late 1880s when Europeans were the mass immigrants, then followed by the Hispanic/Latino who my neighbor taught me the word "Americanized".  Asian is today's mass immigrants.  

"I will give you a job" by a SPE of the USPTO.

If you failed to understand I am fully qualified for the job and then some, but instead thinking of doing me a favor and give me a job;

I wonder why you are giving me a job and what would I have to do to keep the job, what will the Patent and Trademark Office going to do to me as the USPTO has been acting like the sweatshop that is worst then Foxconn; a tyrant/Hilter with the help of the EEOC and probably the Federal Court as well, which the USPTO employees who had set me up and got me terminated and now slit my throat as well.

These USPTO management has a such imperious attitude toward people.....

Akin to Michael Jordan didn't select for a H.S. all white basketball team

at the peek of his talent; this is what it means when I was NOT hired for emulation by mostly people from India who had never heard of Emulation prior to the job such as the time when I was interviwing with Intel many years in a roll.

Or my termination from the Patent and Trademark Office akin to Micheal Jordan kicked out of a just formed High School basketball team.

Most males from Asia do not like to work with women, and they even say so

Landlords in Virginia

First landlord told his live in girlfriend that he and I will be married soon, stalked me and peeked when I took my shower.  When I told to stop stalking me, he evited me.

Second lanlord asked me to be his girlfriend while he has two live in girlfriedns in the house.  After months of refusing him, he used the excused that I locked the front and basement doors after my slit of throat as I was suffering from PTSD and evited me.

Current landlord told me how much he likes me the first time we meet and wanted to know if I would go have coffee with him after I told him I already have a boyfriend.  I said don't you have a wife already?  He said no.  His wife came by a few times to this rental property

"she's a looker" means good-looking

but the Fresh Off the Boat 3rd World Asians intrepreted as - she checks man out.

If you are talking to Fresh off the boat Asians, please be careful what you say and what they say.  You are talking to the people came from a place very much that of Vera Bates of the "Downton Abby"

From the previous article from Helen Wan

This part of the article stood out as  I wondered if this is how those the Fresh off the Boat 3rd World Asians see me as well.


All listen raptly to Chapter Five, where Ingrid compares herself to a young, white woman at the firm:

“I was jealous of her confidence and her utter unself-consciousness. What would it be like, I marveled, to go through life so utterly unwary? So wholly certain of your belonging to a place that it was never necessary to consider how your next move would be perceived? Making partner at Parsons Valentine felt like a big final exam to which a select few held the answer key. While the rest of us schmucks had to study.”

Helen Wan on the ‘bamboo ceiling’

Author, N. Va. native Helen Wan on the ‘bamboo ceiling’

By Krissah Thompson, Published: February 13

André Chung For The Washington Post Novelist Helen Wan, center, speaks with employees at Mayer Brown and AlixPartners in Washington while on tour for her book “The Partner Track.”
Ingrid Yung is a made-up character, but her story seems to resonate with the real-life Asian American lawyers gathered for a book reading in the Washington offices of the corporate law firm Wiley Rein. Ingrid, a minority and a woman, is a “two-fer” in the parlance of her fictional firm, where her impatience with its clumsy approach to diversity threatens her promising career.
“We didn’t need [expletive] Dumpling Day in the firm cafeteria,” Ingrid fumes in the new novel “The Partner Track,” published by St. Martin’s Press. “We needed decoder rings for all of the unwritten rules of survival here.”
Ingrid’s creator is lawyer and novelist Helen Wan, who grew up in the Northern Virginia suburb of Burke. Her debut book, a witty yet pointed exploration of the difficulties Asian Americans have advancing in corporate culture, has clearly exposed a nerve. The eager response from readers sent it back for a second printing after an initialrun of 50,000 in September, a rare achievement for a first-time author. A Wall Street Journal reviewer called the book engaging and suspenseful and praised Wan’s realistic depiction of law firm culture. Law firms and law schools across the country have invited Wan to speak to groups such as the one at Wiley Rein, organized by the D.C. chapter of the Asian Pacific American Bar Association.
Like her character, Wan, 40, is a lawyer navigating the top echelons of the profession (in Wan’s case, as an associate general counsel at Time Inc.) and she’s also an “ABC”: American-born Chinese. She was raised by parents who sent her to Chinese school on Sundays and to a science and technology-focused high school, and who often offered counsel in what her family now calls the “old Asian” way: Don’t rock the boat. The nail that pokes out is hammered down. Work harder and you will get ahead.



Read more stories and features at WP Magazine.



Lucian Perkins
For The Washington Post
Also this week: Native American performance artist Gregg Deal takes “The Last American Indian on Earth” to the streets of Washington and New York.




Wan interned with lawyers and judges who often saw an American-born law student as Asian first. “I’ve always thought your people were very bright,” one judge said. And she spent time at a large New York litigation firm that felt like “another planet,” where squeaky wheels, not those that rolled along quietly, were the ones that got promoted.
Those experiences helped Wan infuse Ingrid’s story with the authentic sense of cultural dissonance that her readers are responding to.
On the night Wan reads at Wiley Rein, many of the gathered Asian American lawyers are still wearing their power suits. There are men and women, most between 25 and 45. A handful are first-generation immigrants. A few black lawyers and one of the firm’s white male partners are on hand.
All listen raptly to Chapter Five, where Ingrid compares herself to a young, white woman at the firm:
“I was jealous of her confidence and her utter unself-consciousness. What would it be like, I marveled, to go through life so utterly unwary? So wholly certain of your belonging to a place that it was never necessary to consider how your next move would be perceived? Making partner at Parsons Valentine felt like a big final exam to which a select few held the answer key. While the rest of us schmucks had to study.”
A few heads nod, and after Wan’s reading the conversation turns to stalled ambition and the presumption that Asian Americans are happy worker bees.
“What do you do when you know you’ve been picked to be on the team because they want you to be this quiet, hardworking Asian?” one young woman asks.
In the annals of American employment discrimination, “quiet” and “hardworking” may not seem like the worst way to be characterized, Wan acknowledges. But such seemingly benign stereotypes, much like the term “model minority,” mask a less benign truth backed by reams of research: Members of the country’s most highly educated racial group are among the least likely to make it to the top in corporate America.
Lei Lai, an assistant professor at Tulane University, wrapped up the findings in a report last year: In both public and private sectors, Asian Americans have the lowest probability to be promoted to managerial positions among all racial minorities; they have a lower ratio of managers to professionals, compared with whites; they deal with perceptions that they lack social skills; and some face discrimination because of accents.
The studies and Wan pointed to stereotypes of Asian Americans as passive, poor communicators, techies or not “real” Americans.
“I do not think it is in any way intentional or systematic, but still it is happening,” Wan says. “Subconsciously, there is still a perception that the Asian American in the room is really smart, is a really hard worker and sometimes even is a good people person but — this is a big ‘but’ — is probably a better sort of technical or behind-the-scenes thinker and not a leader.”
That pile of career-compromising assumptions has a name: the bamboo ceiling.


André Chung
For The Washington Post
Wan, left and Jessie K. Liu, a partner at Jenner and Block joke after sitting on a panel together at a National Asian Pacific American Bar Association event in Washington.

Wan’s novel is among the latest works exploring the tensions Asian Americans face in the corporate world. Jane Hyun, an executive coach based in New York, is the author of “Flex,” a book about managing across differences, following up on her 2005 release, “Breaking the Bamboo Ceiling: Career Strategies for Asians,” in which she helped coin the term.
A century ago, most Asian Americans were low-skilled, low-wage laborers who farmed, mined and built railroads. Today they are among America’s highest-earning and best-educated workers, according to a recent study by the Pew Research Center. Nearly half have a college degree, compared with 28 percent of all U.S. adults.
With a median income of $66,000, Asian Americans earn $16,200 more than the U.S. average, though Pew points out that that figure doesn’t acknowledge the diversity of experience within the demographic. (Korean Americans, Vietnamese Americans and Chinese Americans have higher than average rates of poverty, while Indian Americans, Japanese Americans and Filipino Americans have lower rates.)
Despite higher educational attainment, however, Asian Americans fare as poorly as other minority groups when it comes to the top jobs at the nation’s 500 largest companies. Only eight of those companies are led by Asian Americans, and only 2.6 percent of the seats on the corporate boards of Fortune 500 companies are held by Asian Americans, according to research by Diversity­Inc. and the think tank Catalyst. (Six African Americans are Fortune 500 CEOs, and 7.4 percent hold corporate board seats; eight Hispanics are Fortune 500 CEOs, and 3.3 percent hold corporate board seats. Nearly 87 percent of corporate board seats at the companies are held by white men.)
Similarly, in the federal government Asian Americans make up 6 percent of the workforce but only 3 percent of the senior executive service.
Asian Americans have been called the “ ‘model minority,’ but this community seems to be the ‘forgotten minority,’ ” wrote a group reporting in 2008 to the chair of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission in assessing the difficulty of moving to senior ranks in the federal government.
“When I first moved to the public sector, I was shocked at the diversity. It was so refreshing and different from what I had come from and what I had seen. But I noticed at the top ... they were still primarily Caucasian and male,” Betty Chung, a deputy assistant general counsel at the U.S. Agency for International Development, says after Wan’s reading.
Even well-meaning colleagues commit faux pas, says Chung, who has been asked more than once whether she is related to the former newscaster Connie Chung — of course she is not. (Connie Chung is of Taiwanese descent. Betty’s heritage is Korean.)
“We have about six female Asian American attorneys, [and] we have all been called by each others’ names,” Betty Chung says. “We are various sizes and do not look alike.”
Chung says she and her colleagues usually laugh it off, but one in five Asian Americans surveyed by Pew said “they have personally been treated unfairly in the past year because they are Asian,” and one in 10 have been called an offensive name.
Between 2010 and 2012, the federal government brought 3,288 cases on behalf of workers of Asian descent who alleged they were discriminated against in the workplace, the EEOC reported. An acute-care hospital in California agreed to pay $975,000 to settle a lawsuit by Filipino American hospital workers, who alleged they were harassed when speaking Tagalog or Ilocano. A Houston-based concrete company agreed to pay $135,000 to settle a lawsuit by a Thai American employee who alleged he was called “Jap” and demoted from his sales position to a job driving trucks because he is Asian.
Julie Chen, the talk show host and former news anchor, confessed last year to dealing with workplace discrimination by having plastic surgery at age 25 to make her eyes look bigger. “You will never be on this anchor desk, because you’re Chinese,” she had been told.
Once a client for whom Wan was negotiating a publishing deal asked her whose side she was on — his or the publisher’s. “What are you, the Manchurian Candidate?” he said. She has also encountered the offensive “ching chong” accent ploy, where those gibberish words are used to mock Asians.
More often in the workplace, Asian Americans “who don’t speak a syllable of Asian dialect report being mistaken as foreigners or expatriates in the workplace,” Jane Hyun says. This “perpetual foreigner” stereotype is reinforced by pop culture, where for decades Asians were relegated to kung fu caricatures and antisocial geeks.
A documentary about NBA player Jeremy Lin, who famously was not picked for the NBA draft, explores not just his enthusiastic welcome by Asian Americans happy to have “some kind of role model that wasn’t embarrassing,” as Hyun says, but also the prejudice he has faced.



On the cover of Helen Wan’s book, the ethnicity of the Asian American main character is ambiguous.










“You Chink! Can you even open your eyes to see the scoreboard?” fans of opposing Ivy League teams once taunted.
Wan wrote her novel in part to expose stereotypes, but that was no protection from them during the publishing process. One agent asked Wan to rewrite the book to make Ingrid white. And an early mockup of the book jacket featured a stock photo of a blond woman.
“Ironically, our cover faced many of the same challenges that Helen’s protagonist did: how to be true to a certain identity without being bound by that identity,” says Wan’s editor at St. Martin’s, Brenda Copeland.
On the final cover, Ingrid’s ethnicity is ambiguous.
All along, Wan has faced what she calls “the bucket problem.” Her main character wasn’t some confused editorial assistant, so the book did not qualify as chick-lit. There was no trip to China, where the protagonist met relatives from her parents’ homeland, so it was not a traditionally ethnic story. The book’s law firm setting gave it elements of a legal novel, but the main character was a Chinese American woman. No one had seen that before, Wan says.
She likes to say that publishers know what to do with Amy Tan, the famed author of “The Joy Luck Club.” They know what to do with John Grisham, whose legal thrillers sell millions. They understand how to sell Lauren Weisberger’s books, which include “The Devil Wears Prada.”
“They don’t know what to do with Amy Tan Grisham Weisberger,” Wan says, describing her book as a merging of genres — kind of like her life.


André Chung
For The Washington Post
Wan has lunch with parents Catherine and Peter Wan at Tysons Cornerr while in town on book tour.
André Chung
For The Washington Post
Wan and her parents at the foot of the Washington Monument when she was about 5 years old.

While in Washington for her book tour, Wan stops at a Tysons Corner cafe for lunch with her parents, Peter and Catherine Wan, who met in Taiwan and immigrated in the 1960s.
Peter worked for the Defense Language Institute for 38 years. Catherine took time off to stay home with Helen and younger daughter Linda, then worked about 15 years for the government teaching computer skills.
Though both parents couldn’t be prouder of their children, the generational divides are evident. Helen often shares in book readings that one of the first pieces of advice her father gave her when she told him her book would finally be published was: “Whatever you do, don’t tell anyone about it, because no one likes a braggart.”
During lunch, her father says he found her novel instructive. “I didn’t realize until I read Helen’s book that they go through a lot, as well,” Peter says of his daughter’s generation. “Maybe not as much as our generation, but it’s there.” He was insulated from discrimination for much of his career, he says, because he often worked most closely with other Asian Americans who, like him, were teaching Asian languages to U.S. government employees. But his daughter’s novel brought to mind an awkward encounter when his agency’s legal office called him in to ask for a chat.
“How does an Asian person feel working for the U.S. government?” the gentleman asked Peter. He didn’t realize it then, but Peter now looks back on that conversation as a muddled attempt at inclusion.
Helen’s mother, who describes herself as having been a bit of a Tiger Mom — forcing piano lessons and Chinese school on her daughter — says she also liked Helen’s book because it showed that “we have to work hard. Do your best, and you can stand it.”
Helen, who is talking to someone else at the moment and doesn’t catch her mother’s summary, makes clear later that “you can stand it” is not the takeaway she had in mind. Helen sees her book as a novelistic primer on corporate America that could have benefited her younger self — well-educated but unprepared for the real world.
In some ways, the novel is an act of defiance that began more than two decades ago. She attended Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology because her parents wanted her to go to the best school in the county, not because she had a love of science and technology. Wan finally sat her parents down to tell them not to force her to be like all the Asian kids who were pressured to go to medical school or study engineering.
“I always loved to write,” she says.
Yet, after graduating from Amherst with a degree in English and political science she opted to attend the University of Virginia Law School as a respectable alternative to the writing life, describing herself as “a reluctant law student.”
“When part of your family’s origin story is, ‘I gave up everything for you to come here,’ you just don’t feel the freedom to say, ‘I’m going to major in art history so I can curate at Sotheby’s’ or go to New York to become a novelist,” she says.


André Chung
For The Washington Post
In recent weeks, Wan has come to a decision about her career.

It’s not a plot spoiler to say that Helen Wan’s character Ingrid finds her own way through the bamboo ceiling. But not before making telling choices to fit in with the old boys.
At one point, Ingrid pretends not to know Chinese. “I was passing,” the character says. Wan lived a similar moment as a young lawyer when, on the subway with a big group of colleagues, she acted as if she couldn’t understand a Chinese woman who was trying to speak to her in Mandarin. Wan has matured and would react differently now, she says.
When she was a young lawyer, Wan says, she would have spoken up more. She would have given the partners a better sense of her personality and creative interests.
After Wan’s book was published, she heard from lots of colleagues who were surprised to learn she was a novelist.
“I think a lot of people who looked at me saw ‘Oh, hardworking Chinese attorney,’ ” she says. “It’s true, but that’s not all.”
After months of agonizing, she told her bosses late last month that she would leave the company in mid-March to become a full-time author.
“They were very, very surprised,” she says.
For Wan, the decision involved reexamining the issue of the bamboo ceiling and concluding that she needed to shift her definition of success: from reaching the senior executive suites to following her childhood ambition.
After months of traveling the country and speaking to Asian Americans in corporate fields about “taking risks in order to achieve our dreams,” she had come to a realization, she says. “I was not taking my own advice!”

Krissah Thompson is a Style reporter for The Washington Post. To comment on this story, e-mail wpmagazine@ washpost.com or visitwashingtonpost.com/magazine.

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A Farewell Message by USPTO Commissioner for Patents Bob Stoll

Monday Dec 19, 2011

A Farewell Message

Guest blog by USPTO Commissioner for Patents Bob Stoll 

Earlier this month, with a mixture of excitement and sadness, I submitted my letter of resignation as Commissioner for Patents, effective Dec. 31. I can say without reservation that it was an honor to serve as Commissioner for the past two years and at the USPTO for the bulk of my career. During my tenure leading the Patents organization we achieved some lofty goals, including the reduction of our patent backlog to less than 670,000, in spite of a five percent increase in filings, and we are on a trajectory to eliminate unacceptable backlogs in the future.

But the achievement that cheers me the most is the major culture shift we nurtured in the USPTO toward a more collaborative environment—supervisors mentoring examiners, examiners helping applicants, and the technical support folks helping move applications through the system. Through training, educating, establishing joint work efforts, and undertaking listening campaigns we have created a truly 21st-century agency that is lauded for its service and highly praised by applicants, bloggers, unions and the public at large. The USPTO is now regarded as a top employer, listed 19th in the annual ranking ofBest Places to Work in the Federal Government.

The bi-partisan passage of the America Invents Act was a seminal event in patent history, the culmination of many years of discussion within the diverse patent community. Together we created a patent system that provides inventors with more certainty that they will reap the benefits of their labors while at the same time providing more information and products to the citizens of the world. This new patent framework will aid in the creation of new jobs and the recovery of our economy, and I am very proud to have been a part of its enactment and implementation.

I want to acknowledge the contributions of my mentor, boss and friend, Director Kappos, to my success as Commissioner for Patents. His leadership and vision are unparalleled in government service. He encourages thoughtful risk-taking and creative solutions to cure the ills of the agency. I will truly miss the almost hourly discussions, including weekends and holidays, about ways to improve the USPTO.

As I move on to other opportunities, I will also miss the rest of my friends at the USPTO and Department of Commerce, but I will still be a strong proponent of the great work being done here and a vocal participant in the patent dialogue as we continue to improve this system for the benefit of all.

Good luck to you all, and thank you for your great work and friendship.

Posted at 12:18PM Dec 19, 2011 in USPTO  |  Comments[2]

resignation of David Kappos on February 1, 2013.^[1]

Teresa Stanek Rea  assumed the dual roles of Acting Undersecretary and Acting Director after the resignation of David Kappos on February 1, 2013.^[1]Rea resigned from the USPTO on November 21, 2013.^[5] Upon Rea's resignation, Commissioner for Patents Margaret A. (Peggy) Focarino began performing the functions and duties of the Under Secretary/Director and Deputy Under Secretary/Deputy Director of the USPTO

New housemate is a 3rd world Asian

I just can't get a break.

From all these 3rd world Asians that started slandered and maligned me since the 1990s when I just arrived in the Silicon Valley/San Francisco Bay Area, NYC, the first month I started the job with the Patent and Trademark Office, in the 1000 N. Arlington Mill Dr. by a Philipino name  that stabbed me in the back, I wonder how long it takes for this guy to start slandering me.

Only when people accept the fact that 3rd Worlders practiced 3rd world culture, no matter where they are.  Like the European, Asians also discriminated against each in the most premitive and worst possible way just as the KKK/Redneck/Nazi, and treated women just as the Isamic Extremists, they even slit my throat just as the Islamic Extremists did to Malala Yousayfasi - killed educated women.  Worst, most Asian countries had been anti-west and anti-america for decades.  North Korea is model after China.

I just can't get any peace.

People been slandered and maligned others should not be trusted

Nothing they said is worth believing.  These people deliberately out to ruined my life and slit my throat, and I had never met most of these people in my life. Most of them were from Asia, and I grew up here in the States.

I will continue to pursue my case until I get my justice

Until the Patent and Trademark Office clearly acknowledged I was wrongfully terminated due to the defamations, mainly by Tuan Nguyen and his countrymen/women, Hung Havan, Michele Choi, Nathan Hillery, Susanne Lo and her friends from India.

I will use every mean, particularly social media to get my case out.

I want my reputation restored!

As the result of defamation , I've the target of sexual harassment, abuses, termination, physical harm and rape.

I still can't get a job due to the defamation done to me by the Patent and Trademark Office.

To make me go away from pursuing the Patent and Trademark Office wrongful termination case further,  my throat been slit that was meant to kill me.

If I used my looks to get ahead, I would've been very successful

But instead, those males either fired me or ruined me, with many women participants.

I should get very far just based on merit and hard work, but instead I was targeted for "she is too smart" by mostly 3rd world males in the engineering field, and now the slit of my throat.  How different are we in the society of Isamic Extremists where Malala Yousafysai got shot to the head meant to kill her because she advocated education for girls/women?

There are plenty of smart males who went to MIT

Stanford and other Ivy Leagues, and they were not targeted.  I went to a City College, yet the Fresh off the Boat 3rd World Asians use this excuse" she is smart" to target me.

The real reason is becuase I am a woman who could do the job better  then them.  As a 3rd worlder, it is the equvailent of slapping on the face.  In addition to being well-liked by none Asians (hence the "no one liked her; on one wnated her", the antithesis of the truth - a typical tactic used by FOB) which is intrepreted as part of being Americanized - a traitor in their view.  And so they make me into an American effigy and came after me as such

When people said "we don't know why..."

ie "we don't know why they don't like her"; they are saying "yeah, we think it is discrimination".

This Asian guy in the Interviewing Workshop/bootcamp

keep staring at me, so I stared back in an annoy and I-don't-like-being-stair-at manner.  He stopped.

In my experiences, if he is Fresh off the Boat (FOB) 3rd world Asian male, he would start slanders and maligns me by saying I was checking him out, and/or I was crazy about him and need a man, etc

People took the defamation at face value on women

by Fresh off the Boat (FOB) 3rd world Asians that are mostly illegal immigrants and shared the same view toward women with the Islamic Extremists.

The Silicon Valley, the Tech Industry and the Patent and Trademark Office in term fired me or not hired me because of these people's dislike toward women, and now the Patent and Trademark Office is harboring attempted murders who had shown malicious intention and the incentive to slit my throat.

Most of these people are a thug at best, and are as anti-America as North Korea, where most of these FOB 3rd Worlders came from countries shared the same anti-America sentiments.  Yet for the life of me, I don't understand why people took these FOB 3rd world Asians' defamation at face value while I worked nearly 24/7 with outstanding accomplishments throughout my life.