Dear friend,
At the time of this writing, Mattel U.S.A. has recalled
tens and thousands of toys made in China. A few months
ago, we found out that the shooter in Virginia Tech was an Asian immigrant.
And most recently, in a show rerun, Oprah was visited by a thirteen
year old medical student from
India, apparently the smartest boy on the planet. These are the images
we see in popular culture about Asians. Most Americans build their
interest and ideas about Asians from what they see and hear on TV.
Our culture is now being built on stereotypes about people compounded
by fear of terrorism of all kinds. In Germany, a few Muslim converts
were caught plotting a terrorist attack against Americans. Suddenly,
the idea of a terrorist being blond and blue-eyed is sending shockwaves
to our xenophobic consciousness. We all think that securing the border
down South will hinder possible future terrorist attacks. Very few
realize that such fulminating calls for border tightening has much
to do with trying to get illegal aliens out of the country than protecting
its
populace
against terrorism. There is simply prodigious information out there
that it has become difficult to discern which ones are true and
which ones are specious.
Where I work as an adult educator, many of the teachers are Filipinos and the students, Dominicans. For many Latinos from the islands, Asians are simply—Chinos. My adult learners use this word—Chino—impassively and infelicitously. In my class, addressing the use of such word is a quotidian lesson on race, politics, class and intraculture bigotry.
We live in a world that is shrinking rapidly. The last popular news about the Philippines was not the Wall Street Journal article about how the “sick old man of Asia” is making an economic rebound, but on how some prisoners wearing orange uniforms in Cebu were dancing to the tune of an old Michael Jackson hit. The youtube phenomenon, accredited by the virtue of appearance on CNN and other major news networks, is apparently “good” for the image of the developing country (one father/convict noted that his son was finally “proud’ of him). From my Filipino eyes, I see the newscasters shaking their heads and chuckling after the ridiculousness of the report. While I see both sides, the images from youtube was another opportunity to distance the American ego from and above the underlying misery and malnourishment of this third world spectator sport.
Writing in the U.S., Asian Americans are faced with the same dilemma. Who is looking at you and how you are perceived very much play in the publication of your own literary works. Only the coolest, the hottest and the most relevant ethnics are let in the door. Yet, nobody ever questions why we are all waiting outside to be let in, and who is deciding what is relevant in this world?
In trying to understand supply and demand economics in publishing Asian Americans, I can’t help but think which came first the chicken or the egg. We are often told that there are demands for Indian American writing or Chinese American writing without presenting us the rationale behind such demands. Did the market create the demand first or is their demand influenced by the enticing packaging of the product? In other words, are literary readers really thinking We want more Indian writers because they are so cool, or are they simply mesmerized by the glitters thrown at their faces? Who is ultimately to judge who should get published? Is it essentially correct to say that a Filipino editor should be interested in publishing Filipino writers, as in Hollywood, is there a relationship between a highly Jewish-operated industry to a seemingly endless flow of actors of Jewish descent?
There are many issues I wish to cover on this part of this (inchoate) website. I am calling it, Asian + America and the Color Politics because I want to cover as much ground as I can when it comes to the issues affecting communities of color in the U.S. With special emphasis on literature, I will try to create a world within and outside the writing societies to see how the growing American xenophobia affects the trends in literary publishing. I will also link here articles and publishing efforts that are relevant to the discourse.
The image you clicked to come here is an anthology I edited for The Asian American Writers Workshop and Temple University Press, The NuyorAsian Anthology, and with R. Reiko Rizzuto and Kendal Henry. The anthology was awarded a PEN Open Book Award in 2000.
This dynamic collection of prose and poetry maps life in New York City
as writers attempt to decipher its ever-elusive meanings. With work by
Jose Garcia Villa, Maxine Hong Kingston, Vijay Seshadri, Wang Ping and
many others.
The anthology is available at the Asian
American Writers Workshop and online
on Amazon. Ecampus has synopis and table of contents on
here.
For listeners of WQHT/Hot 97 early last year, exposure to the South Asian tidal wave included “The Tsunami Song,” a jingle of kabooming ignorance and empty-headed lyrics like “screaming chinks” and “little Chinamen.” Never mind that mainland China borders a completely different ocean than the one that produced the surge that killed an estimated 118,000 people—none of them Chinese, unless of course they were on vacation. The broadcast illustrated what many Asians already know: their inner diversity is reduced by the outside world to crude stereotypes and gross generalities. Tony Dokoupil. Finding the Face of Asian New York. New York Press. More Soon.
Thank so much for visiting. I hope I am able to be of help. If there is more I can do, please reach me at binoarealuyo@gmail.com. I would also like to know if this information is helpful to you.
It means so much to me that you have visited. Live in the most authentic way possible. Maraming Salamat. Good luck on your voyage.
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