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Growing up Asian-American
Amid steaming plates of chicken yellow curry, saag paneer, and beef bulgogi at BC's third annual APAHM (Asian Pacific American Heritage Month) dinner, talk among students at one table turned to "twinkies"—to the identity problem, the risk of becoming yellow-on-the-outside-and-white-on-the-inside, of assimilating to the point of self-abnegation. Every Asian-American at the table acknowledged it as one of the hazards they face in negotiating two cultures.
"You're American in the eyes of Asians. You're Asian in the eyes of Americans. You're both, but neither," said Jina Moon '06. "You're in limbo."
The challenges of dual identity and cultural straddling echoed in discussions throughout Gasson 100 that early April evening among more than 150 students and faculty. "You can be rejected by Americans for not being white enough. You can be rejected by your own cultural group for not being ethnic enough," said author Arar Han '03, who gave the dinner's keynote address, on the expression of Asian-American identity through art. Han returned to the BC campus from across the river in Cambridge, where she works as a research associate at the Harvard Business School.
The mostly undergraduate, Asian-American audience may not have read every essay in Han's
Asian American X: An Intersection of 21st Century Asian American Voices
(2004), the book that she, as co-editor, began in her first year at Boston College. But they seemed familiar enough with the material. Around the room, heads nodded as Han recounted remarks often born of racial stereotyping—observations about "excellent" English skills, presumptions about SAT scores, inquiries about where one is "really" from—the insinuations of "otherness" that Han says accumulate "and affect people like us who are educated and socialized in the United States, who think of ourselves as American, but are somehow not accepted as Americans."
The immigration policies of the last century and the current demographics of Asian-America, Han said, have conspired to produce "a new sociopolitical moment," marked by an unprecedented cohort of young, educated Asian-Americans seeking to define their identity collectively as well as individually. "If we are not what the stereotypes depict, then who are we?" she asked her audience. It's a question Han began pondering after reading, in 2001, a controversial article published in the
Harvard Crimson
that upbraided Asian-Americans for reinforcing stereotypes of passivity. Her quest for an answer led to the collection of autobiographical essays by young Asian-Americans that she and John Hsu, a friend at Harvard, co-edited and published through the University of Michigan Press. Han hopes the book will spark "a nationwide dialogue" and encourage more Asian-Americans to explore their identity through what she termed autoethnographic art—expressions that are part autobiography, part social critique.
Surveying the history of social discrimination against Asians in the United States, Han traced the various Asian-American stereotypes, from industrious immigrant to wartime threat to model minority. She showed images in PowerPoint of 19th-century magazine covers, 20th-century photographs, and 21st-century billboards and T-shirts that cast Asians in well-worn and confining molds. She also incriminated recent affronts such as the "Tsunami Song," a music mix played on a New York radio station that mocked the drowning of "screaming chinks" in last year's disaster.
The students in the audience, who were there in part to raise funds for victims of the tsunami, recounted in small group discussions their own experiences with epithets: Being called a "nigger" in an all-white kindergarten classroom in Maine. A "twinkie" in a middle-school hallway in Atlanta. "Foreigner" or "chink" on the sidewalks of Commonwealth Avenue and the campus of Boston College. "BC is not as diverse and not always as tolerant as people like to think," said Romeo Ymalay '06.
AUTOETHNOGRAPHY has been a constant form in American literature, according to Associate English Professor Min Song, who teaches a course on Asian-American literature. The first Asian-American memoir was probably "Leaves from the Mental Portfolio of an Eurasian," by Sui Sin Far (pen name of the half-Chinese Edith Maud Eaton), published in the magazine
Independent
in 1909. The form, Song says, is a particularly challenging one for young "Double-A's."
"It's a persistent struggle for Asian-Americans to write as Americans," says Song. "The Asian-American is seen as the perennial foreigner, who can never quite prove his identity as an American." The 35 essays in Han's
Asian American X,
written by a cross section of Asian-American university students (including one graduate of Boston College, Duncan Zheng '02), bear this out. They are often defiant, angst-driven explorations of a self under construction and in many ways under siege. Though the essays chronicle struggles that are deeply personal and frequently idiosyncratic, each illumines a journey of self-discovery that is both distinctly Asian-American and distinctly American. In his welcoming remarks at the APAHM dinner, University President William P. Leahy, SJ, cited
Asian American X
as "a record of experience and aspirations" and described it as "a teaching tool." And, indeed, the text has begun appearing on syllabi at BC and other universities, Han reports.
The essays in
Asian American X
advance a discourse on collective identity that Han hopes will transcend disparate heritages and historical enmities, as well as political skepticism about her dream of unity. As Jina Moon observed, "The term 'Asian-American' may itself be a social construct. But it does unite us. We do share something. Maybe not the same languages or nuances of culture, but our experience of how we are perceived by American culture is the same."
Professor Song situates the voices in
Asian American X
within a contemporary "wave" of young Asian-American authors such as the novelists Chang-rae Lee
(Native Speaker)
and Susan Choi
(The Foreign Student)
and the filmmakers Justin Lin and Rea Tajiri. He sees their meditations on identity as part of a subgenre within the "flowering" of Asian-American literature. Han believes the essayists make common cause with popular artists—the rapper Jin, the comedian Margaret Cho, the cartoonist Lela Lee—and with bloggers such as Angry Asian Man, in the formation of an artistic resistance. All, she said, express "frustration and anger at the images portrayed in commercial art and at the statements of 'otherness' that we confront in the culture."
After the evening's formal remarks, students were invited to discuss the issues raised in individual chapters of Han's book. Essays entitled "Thin Enough to Be Asian," "Label Us Angry," "Out and About: Coming of Age in a Straight White World," among others, became springboards for small group discussion. At one table, students considered "A Little Too Asian and Not Enough White." In high school, recalled Gina Kim '07, "If you hung around with too many white kids, Asians thought you were whitewashed." "But you had to be careful not to slip into an Asian clique, either," added Clara Namkoong '08. The tension wasn't instantly resolved upon graduation to a university campus. Winson Liu '07 said he still contends with it: "I have my white friends, my Korean friends, my mixed Asian friends. I can't always figure out which group I belong to. Sometimes I feel like I'm just floating between all of them."
Anne Murphy
Anne Murphy is a freelance writer in the Boston area.
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