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.