what should my kid read?

so in texas, there's been an uproar because the board of education's administered a list of recommended reading with only four books by hispanic authors. kinda typical sadly. but what's worse is how the board chairman Don McLeroy responded to criticism:

However, McLeroy said he directed a group of experts to add examples of "good literature" to the list. He said students should spend their time in English class learning English and reading literature that will help prepare them for college.

"What good does it do to put a Chinese story in an English book?" he said. "You learn all these Chinese words, OK. That's not going to help you master ... English. So you really don't want Chinese books with a bunch of crazy Chinese words in them. Why should you take a child's time trying to learn a word that they'll never ever use again?"

He added that some words — such as chow mein — might be useful.

Thank you, sir for your wise words. You're a great example for my children of a mature respectful adult.

I particularly like a quotation they included from the great poet, Sandra Cisneros:

Tyroff said missing from the list is local author Sandra Cisneros' book "House on Mango Street." However, Cisneros said Friday she doesn't think there should be a recommended list at all. Instead, educators should choose books to which students can relate.

"I feel it's just important that we select books that might speak to young people at whatever age that reader is," Cisneros said. "A lot of times, people who aren't used to books aren't going to read ... books that they find intimidating."

Anyway, just thought i'd post that (saw it on angry asian man) since we were talking about "canon" and what is considered "greatest hits," etc. I think this up what the Board feels is the purpose of education.

"Heroism or Feminism?"

Carol's presentation today brought up the really interesting issue of racial/ethnic/national stereotypes in The Woman Warrior. This point relates directly to Professor Suh's precaution of not making sweeping generalizations about cultures or people based on the texts [because, as we can see, sometimes the representation isn't always very flattering], which is a truth that we may only be hearing because of the classroom setting. After all, Elaine H. Kim introduces her critical analysis of Asian American Literature (aptly titled Asian American Literature) by telling a story about a Chinese American friend of hers who, after The Woman Warrior came out, had friends from other backgrounds telling her that, because they read the book, they "understand" her better.

This matter of how people read ethnic literature brings up an old question that Asian American Studies scholars have grappled with for decades: do readers and writers have to choose between ethnic heroism or feminism? Think about the question with Murayama's and Okada's problematic portrayal of women on the one side and Yamamoto's "Seventeen Syllables"/"Yoneko's Earthquake" and Kingston's more troubling depictions of characters who live in the intersection of race and gender struggles on the other.

So, finish reading Woman Warrior, read "Come All Ye Asian American Writers of the Real and the Fake" this weekend, and, for a special pat on the back, read Chin's less academic version of his Kingston critique (http://www.chintalks.blogspot.com/) and let me know your thoughts. (Chin's blog entry on Kingston is based on an interview with her, so you can get a sense of what she has to say about her telling of the Fa Mu Lan tale.) I'm curious to see what you all think.

Let's talk about poetry for a bit

I really dig the poems that we've been reading in class. Two Tuesdays ago, we had a really in-depth discussion about "Reminiscing About a Chinese Restaurant" and "Without Tongue" and I was wondering if anyone wanted to share their insights about the other poems.

Since there seemed to be a general agreement with Mary Rose's suggestion about relating the issues of the texts to contemporary issues in Asian America, I'm particularly interested in what you have to say about Janice Mirikitani's "Doreen" (and how it seems like a 1987 premonition of calf lengthening, double-lid surgery, colored contacts, and other transfigurations of the Asian body - P.S., I can't seem to make my hair stay black for very long) and Sun Yung Shin's series of poems (and their relationship to or disavowal of Western fascination with all things "Asian" - know any anime fans who have said disturbing things about "Asian" culture?).

Any and all comments welcomed. Discuss.

Silence in The Woman Warrior

I wrote this post before class this morning, but it turns out to be very relevant to Carol’s presentation this afternoon, especially in regard to the silencing of Asian females. Silence and voice emerge as major themes throughout Hong Kingston’s memoir. The book’s opening line, a quote from Hong Kingston’s mother, reads, “You must not tell anyone…what I am about to tell you” (3). Indeed, the author has been instructed since youth to be silent; some words and topics remained simply unspeakable in her household. Hong Kingston explains that Brave Orchid “never explained anything that was really important,” leading Hong Kingston to loath “the secrecy of the Chinese” (121, 183). However, this silence is not something attributable to Chinese culture—Hong Kingston makes clear that the Chinese have “loud voices, unmodulated to American tones,” and she is unable to “stop [her] mother’s screams in public libraries or over telephones” (11). This silence is instead particular to Chinese Americans. Hong Kingston writes, “Normal Chinese women’s voices are strong and bossy. We American-Chinese girls had to whisper to make ourselves American-feminine” (172). Perhaps, then, the silence Hong Kingston experienced in her household and her community was the result of the Chinese American immigrant experience (specifically marginalization and racialization) as opposed to some fault or negative aspect of Chinese culture itself. Moreover, the constant interplay between race and gender can be seen here in this quote and elsewhere; Hong Kingston is silent because she is Chinese and a girl. Hong Kingston explains, “The other Chinese girls did not talk either, so I knew the silence had to do with being a Chinese girl” (166). Also, Brave Orchid cuts Hong Kingston’s tongue, for “the Chinese say ‘a ready tongue is an evil’” (164). However, the very silence around this cutting of the tongue, an act Hong Kingston interprets as a silencing of her own voice and self, causes misunderstanding and animosity between Hong Kingston and her mother. Brave Orchid believes that she cut her daughter’s tongue so that she “would not be tongue-tied. [Her] tongue would be able to move in any language,” but Hong Kingston has trouble understanding this act, especially since her mother did not cut any of her other children’s tongues (164). Brave Orchid, however, refuses to offer any more explanation, furthering the silence in the household.

Hong Kingston, however, defies the rule of silence and uses both her voice and her words. She is a rule-breaker, a transgressor, rejecting the silence both her household and her community perpetuate. In this way, she challenges and even breaks the stereotype of the silenced Asian female. Vengeance plays a significant role in Hong Kingston’s breaking of silence. Interestingly, in White Tigers, the author mentions that a god rides before her: Kuan Kung, the god of war and literature (38). The fact that one god represents both war and the written word reveals a connection between the two; perhaps literature, words, and the breaking of silence are in fact a form of revenge, a way to fight back against something. In many ways, this may be the function of Hong Kingston’s book—to avenge or seek revenge via telling or the written word. Indeed, the author expresses the connection she feels to the swordswoman with the word revenge carved on her back:

What we have in common are the words at our backs. The idioms for revenge are “report a crime” and “report to five families.” The reporting is the vengeance—not the beheading, not the gutting, but the words. (53)

Hong Kingston’s novel breaks the silence surrounding her past, her culture, and her family and therefore functions as a tool for revenge. Hong Kingston directly counters the opening line of the novel (“You must not tell anyone,” my mother said, “what I am about to tell you” (3)) when she declares at the beginning of the memoir’s final section, “I would’ve told. If I was his wife, I would’ve told…” (163). Her ultimate rebellion against the culture of silence, however, is the scene in which she tortures the young girl in her class who will not speak unless asked to read aloud by the teacher. Hong Kingston is so desperate to break the silence in her world that she torments the girl she views as representing that culture of silence. In a way, however, Hong Kingston’s outburst seems a rejection of not only silence but traditional femininity as well. She declares, “I hated fragility…I wanted a stout neck…Her neatness bothered me…I hated pastels…I hated her fingers. I could snap them like breadsticks” (176, 177). Here the author seems to rebel against something more than just silence; she defies the conventional role of women as meek, submissive, and dainty, desiring instead to be strong and stout—in fact, more like the tough, enduring, powerful Brave Orchid.

While the memoir itself functions as a breaker of silence, Hong Kingston breaks her own silence inside the book as well. Significantly, she chooses her mother as the listener, someone who has perpetuated the silence surrounding her childhood. Hong Kingston experiences a physical need to tell, to use her voice—“the throat pain always returns, though, unless I tell what I really think” (205). However, when she finally expresses to Brave Orchid what she has kept silent for years, Hong Kingston finds that her mother “acted as if she hadn’t heard…’Mm,’ she said, nodded, and kept dipping and squeezing” (199, 200). Hong Kingston’s telling seems therefore more something she had to do for herself as opposed to something her mother needed to hear. Because the author truly finds her voice at the end of the memoir (and in the form of the memoir itself) and experiences real growth, change, and understanding, it might be considered a bildungsroman in many ways.

This post is already really long, but I also think the picture of gender roles and relations in Hong Kingston’s memoir is quite interesting. The author’s farther is notably absent throughout the majority of the book, and when he enters the story, he is often referred to as Brave Orchid’s husband as opposed to father or my father. Brave Orchid is clearly the one in charge; she tells Hong Kingston, “I shouldn’t have left [China], but your father couldn’t have supported you without me. I’m the one with the big muscles” (104). The father figures in both Milton Murayama’s All I Askin’ for is My Body and John Okada’s No-No Boy bear a striking resemblance to Hong Kingston’s fairly silent, largely absent (figuratively, not literally) father. The husbands in all three of these families are the weak, subordinate ones; it is the wives who seem to truly run the family. Perhaps these men are reflective of the racialized feminization of Asian American males. Indeed, when Brave Orchid suggests that Moon Orchid “do the hand-finishing on the shirts when they came off the machines,” Hong Kingston recalls that “this was usually Brave Orchid’s husband’s job. He had such graceful fingers, so good for folding shirts…” (136).

Self-reproducing systems / The question of "America"

I had some lingering thoughts about the class discussion that Tom led two weeks ago. Specifically, I wanted to futher explore his concluding question apropos of an apparent ambiguity at the end of No-No Boy: Was the text working to retrospectively redeem the notional content of the socio-political signifier "America" (i.e., the merits of individual will, prosperity via liberal/modern conceptions of "free enterprise," the constitutive importance of cultural plurality, etc.)? Or was it, instead, articulating a foundational critique of that very content—so as to complicate a field of political discourse that, despite myriad empirical inadequacies in the post-modern / post-colonial world, still sought (and still seeks) to conceptualize the world within the bounds of liberal ideology (which is, in essence, and beyond any particular claim, what the signifier "America" stands for contemporarily)? In other words, does No-No Boy claim that the "project of America"—and the various sensibilities of freedom, autonomy, and equality entailed thereby—failed in some particular context (e.g., of Japanese internment, or perhaps of WWII-era and post-WWII-era race relations more generally)? Or does it claim, rather more forcefully, that the project was doomed from the outset?

I think Tom was right to emphasize the comparative radicality of the second claim as compared to the first. If No-No Boy merely highlights one or more instances in which "America" fails to live up to its overdetermined ideological promise, it's not so far from dominant historical narratives that attempt to mitigate and legitimize present conditions by depicting grandiosely horrific past-situations (along the lines of, e.g., "Look how mean and imperial the explorers were toward native peoples [thankfully we have the opportunity to learn from their mistakes—and more to the point, we've already learned from their mistakes]"). Indeed, No-No Boy can be construed as radical only insofar as it attempts to genuinely transform the socio-symbolic coordinates of "America," by rejecting, in other words, the very liberal/modern foundations on which all dominant conceptions of "America" are founded. Yet what if this dichotomy is already illegitimate? Perhaps a space for contestation/ transformation is built into the discursive fabric of "America" and therefore it's impossible—or at least analytically misleading—to differentiate between a) the legitimation and b) the transformation of "America." That is to say, what if "America" refers, ideologically speaking, to the project of continual transformation itself? Indeed, is this not precisely the message of traditional "melting pot" / "salad bowl" / etc. narratives? As Barack Obama articulated it in his recent "race" speech, only in America could a story like his—son of an African man and a white women (and becoming president to boot!)—have come to pass. Which is to say, America is wonderful precisely because it allows for internal transformation of its symbolic content (here, in terms of the demographics of its polity).

This question—whether transformation is an integral part of America's ideological-symbolic content—overlaps interestingly with another strand of class discussion re: the "post-" prefix and its legitimate deployment. Tom—citing Seung Hye's question, if I remember correctly—asked whether or not the Black Eyes Peas could be construed as an example of "post-hip-hop." There's always an ambiguity in the "post-" prefix: Does it designate a legitimate end, or merely a space of potential redemption after something has gone awry? Consider the term "postmodernity." If we've moved beyond the modern, is it a) because modernity, as a set of truth-claims and political impulses, was flawed from the start, or b) because the (ultimately valuable) project of modernity got corrupted somewhere along the way (e.g., in fascism), and the space of postmodernity thus offers an opportunity to restore the "true" principles of modernity? In terms of the hip-hop / post-hip-hop question: Are the Black Eyed Peas (assuming we do, in fact, understand their music as "post-hip-hop") attempting to produce an entirely new musical form, or rather, are they trying to revivify the original impetus of hip-hop (which has since become corrupted by commercialization etc.)?

Once again, however, we're faced with the same illegitimate dichotomy—a dichotomy that only holds if we ignore the possibility that both alternatives can be simultaneously true: what if modernity became corrupted because its internal flaw was precisely that it was destined to become corrupted? In other words, what if, in going awry, modernity actually came to full fruition? Practically speaking, this implies that something like fascism represents a corruption of modernity—but it's an internal corruption, a corruptioin that was unavoidable by virtue of modernity's own, self-corrupting impulse. We should note how this re-formulation undermines both previous positions: now, it is not simply that modernity either a) became corrupted, or b) was flawed to begin with, but rather, that so long as we understand the modern impulse to be one of self-overcoming, both claims amount to exactly the same. To tie this back to the discussion above, if "America" is able to self-revolutionize by incorporating its own discursive contestation in this way, then traditional forms of political resistance (textual or otherwise) lose their efficacy. When we consider the differences between contesting and affirming the concept of "America" (the ambiguity offered by Tom), is not the proper response that neither is more radical than the other, precisely because they coalesce: in the context of "America," to contest is to affirm—to affirm a conceptual matrix based on contestation. So, where does this leave us, praxis-wise? The only way to disrupt the reproduction of "America"—a political project worthy of our deliberation, I think—is to insist on the absolute, static, meta-historical value of terms like Freedom, Community, and Success (those paradigmatic signifiers of "America"). We must develop a political framework that makes "America" neither its affirmative nor oppositional starting point, but rather, articulates a universality distinct unto itself. We should strive to reach the point at which it becomes possible to say: We are uninterested in America's symbolic hegemony one way or another—the new political community will be realized regardless.

Elizabeth's February post

Elizabeth Downing

Professor Suh

Asian American Lit/Crit

February 28, 2008

Making it just in time

Of our discussions, I have been most intrigued by the conflict and dynamic between first and second generation Asian Americans. More specifically, I am interested in the interaction of a more traditional outlook on life, self-comportment and the individual’s role in society (usually presented by the immigrated parent,) and the more individualist US¹ attitude and behavior that we see in some of the first generation offspring Asian Americans in the texts. The interaction of the two sides is made even more interesting and, in my view, challenging for these first generation youths by virtue of the generally large discrepancy between the two cultural understandings of the world. Most poignant is the emotional strife that these characters often go through when the collectivist cultural ideals of their parents (often involving filial piety and a generally authoritarian/patriarchal household) clash with the reality of living in a country that is at once more individualistic (e.g. one in which the parents support the children in their goals) and more community oriented (e.g. one in which it may be more important for an entire socioeconomic class to gain leverage/power rather than just the ethnic group to which one belongs.) It is especially rough on these characters since the tenants of their parent’s beliefs with which they were raised directly conflict with what the media, their US education and their non-traditional friends tell them they should value.

On an entirely different topic, the experience of Sui Sin Far as a biracial woman in Europe and the US is something that I cannot help but mention, because of its unique views as well as its personal pertinence to myself. Generally I have found that hapa accounts, when addressing the topic of race, tend to emphasize the Asian portion of the individuals heritage rather than the non-Asian half. This I suppose is logical since within race studies it is the “ethnic” portion of an individual that is focused on rather than the “non-ethnic” portion, even though by definition a biracial individual is equal portions of each and his or her experience may not necessarily be greatly influenced by one race half or the other. Ms. Far’s account of being able to “pass” for an ethnic background not her own (i.e. being able to pass for half Japanese, or simple going unquestioned about her race which would suggest an unmarked ethnic appearance,) as well as the peculiar scrutiny to which she is subjected when people discover the reality of her heritage both illustrate to me just how ambiguous race and the racialized experience can be, even as people often address race as something cross culturally uniformed in appearance and significance. Her desire to reconnect with her Chinese half after a childhood of identifying as predominantly white, expresses an almost opposite experience as characters such as Kiyo and Itchiro, which may simply be a desire to deviate from one’s up bringing.

¹ By US I do not necessarily mean Caucasian or white, but rather the attitudes and customs accepted by the US mainstream that have formed over the past few centuries of US existence, which are by no means “white” in their entirety. Though the assertion that said customs and attitudes are generally controlled by the dominant white majority is valid, I am reluctant to ignore the substantial contribution that this country’s ethnic minorities have made to mainstream culture.

Jenna's February post

This post is from Jenna:
Kyung-Jin Lee’s Asian Americans piece sheds light onto the intent of Okada’s novel, and through it draws out even more questions pertaining to the Asain American culture in America. As illustrated in the novel, the “state-sanctioned vulnerabilities” stemming from the internment experience, which was little more than a political exercise of racial subjugation by the threatened dominant race, forced Japanese Americans to abandon a part of their cultural identity and assimilate into the national culture(176 Lee). However, as Lee explains, only vertical assimilation into the socially powerful dominant races was catalyzed, and horizontal assimilation into other minority groups was inhibited further by the general practice of Japanese American disidentification with anything but white America. No-no Boy is an embodiment of this assimilation. At the time of publication in 1957, Okada could not have known that by 1966 Asian Americans would embody the “model minority” schema that America had created. Although the relationship between the identities of “yellow peril” and “model minority” is strongly linked to economic standings, the transformation between the two schemas was initiated by active conformation to American standards and values. However, Okada senses that conformity is the only method by which Japanese Americans could possibly survive, and reflects this belief in the symbolic nature of his characters.

The two key deaths in the novel symbolize drastically different ideas. Ichiro’s mother’s suicide was plainly representative of the necessity for Japanese Americans to ‘kill’ the part of them that linked them to Japan. Her astute and dislikable character already pitted her against Okada’s mainstream audience, and he cleverly conceives her faults as stemming solely from her Japanese roots. The embodiment of Japanese culture and fanatical loyalty, the mother’s suicide comes at a time when, in reality, hording these traits publicly would have resulted in immitigable persecution by the hands of America and the internal community. While her death mimics the cultural suicide committed by most Japanese Americans at the time, Kenji’s death represents the impossibility of an ideal America where democratic law is fully replicated in societal constructs. Kenji dreams of existing in a place free of “Japs or Chinks or Jews or Poles…” but instead inhabited solely of people(165). Far ahead of the time, Kenji’s colorblind ideal world is presented as a dying man’s bumbling words, not to be taken seriously but as wishful thinking. True to their nature, the words that construct the ideal world that, even today, cannot come into being without intensive struggle to overcome multiple social, cultural, and economical barriers, die with the loyal American Kenji.

By setting boundaries with mortality, Okada stipulates that Americanism must be embraced without question, and with it the American structurally founded practice of racism. He further enforces this solution with Emi and Mr. Carrick’s characters. Emi’s arguments with Ichiro seem manufactured to such a degree that the fakeness aids in drawing attention to the subliminal message that the Japanese American community must undertake the “often unspoken complicity with an Americanism which requires assent to white supremacy in order to survive” (177 Lee). The other solution she offers Ichiro, one of isolation and comfort in her arms, shows its own failure in solving anything from its total lack of means with which improvement of life can be attained. Ichiro, repenting for his lack of assimilation, struggles to take Emi’s words to heart, but he too realizes that assimilation is necessary in order to proceed in life. He firmly believes that a veteran that proved his worth and loyalty was better suited than he for Mr. Carrick’s offer, for no other reason than his own failure to cut himself free from his mother, his Japanese culture, in time to assimilate into the dominant race of America. Additionally, Ichiro subtly understands that Mr. Carrick represents an ideal that is much too good to be true, one where race, background, and social standing mean nothing. This is seen through Mr. Carrick’s construction of a snowplow that will never be put to use – the plow and his ideology may function perfectly, but both are inconsequential in changing the face of the world outside.

In the larger picture, Okada represents countless other Asian American authors that exploit the Asian American experience and transform it in such a way that Americanism is celebrated. Whether to get mainstream approval for the work itself, or to provide a way for Asian Americans to relate to the dominant culture, the embracement of American culture seems to be the only solution to so many problems. However, as seen in this book, the problem can never be truly resolved, for racism is ingrained into every fiber of this nation’s structure.