Where Are You From?

An Asian-American Anthology.

Last year I received an e-mail from Byron Wong - owner of the bigWOWO blog - who offered me the opportunity to take part in an anthology that his activist (Thymos) group was putting together. The idea was to gather together Asian-Americans from different walks of life, with different perspectives, and ideas, and to allow them to "let loose", if you will, with their creative potential and contribute a piece of written work on a subject of their choice. I liaised with Byron's co-activist and writer Val Katagiri who had taken note of a couple of blog posts I had written as part of a dialogue with Simon Tam of rock group, The Slants. 

In brief, Tam had asked for community support for his band's efforts to trademark their band name - "The Slants". Tam's position was that words only have offensive power if we allow them to and, thus, by making racial slurs commonplace - like African-Americans have done with "N"-word - they lose their power to offend. As such, trademarking their name is a step in this direction of diminishing the offensive power of this particular slur. My position was (and continues to be) that racial slurs are not intended to offend and that if we are merely offended by racial slurs, then we miss the point of their purpose, and even worse, the opportunity to meaningfully address the profound, centuries-old, casual, and comfortable, foundation of anti-Asian prejudice. In the Western world, slurs of all kinds, but especially racial slurs, serve as a means to dehumanize individuals by assigning derogatory characteristics and qualities to the entire group which can then be distilled down to a single word that represents all of these negative characteristics. 

Thus, "slant", or "chink", or "gook" are not commentaries on the shape of Asian people's eyes, they serve as a means of putting Asians people "in their place" by reminding us and the people using them, that we are not humans who deserve respect and dignity, but creatures of a lower order whose actual individual names are not even worth knowing. Racial slurs serve as a record of the injustices inflicted on people of colour throughout America's history, and to be a slant meant that you were subject to oppression, abuse, and violence. So, being offended by racial slurs is a childish response to name-calling, because it is far more than childish name-calling. To truly see the absurdity of Tam's position, consider this; spitting in someone's face serves the same purpose as using a racial slur. Spitting on someone means that you have so little respect for them, and so little regard for their humanity that they are only worthy to receive your spit. With this in mind, should we also spit on ourselves to remove the "offensive" power of it?

With this in mind, my participation in the anthology is included as part of the dialogue between Tam and myself. You can read the general gist of the dialogue in these two posts, but the anthology contains pieces by both of us that greatly expand on the opinions expressed on this blog. So far Tam's efforts have been (and continue to be) denied on the grounds that the term "slant" is considered derogatory by Americans of Asian descent - it is a racial slur, after all. So in short, casually using a derogatory word does not challenge the profound underlying prejudices that enable the word to exist or the culture of racism that produces it. By coincidence I came upon this hilarious video of Russell Peters talking about how the word "Mondays" is (according to him) being used by white people as a devious way of referring to black people. It illustrates my point - the N-word isn't openly used by most white people but the underlying culture of racism obviously thrives and is finding more creative ways to express itself. In short, my position is that it is fundamentally a bad idea to try to persuade a government agency to take derogatory terms and make legitimize them. 

It is also worth remembering that the N-word is as "offensive" now as it ever was despite having been re-appropriated by African-Americans and becoming common usage amongst them. If you do not believe me, then I invite disbelievers to go up to the next African-American you see and address him with the N-word. Let us know what happens - my guess is that you will cause offence.

The anthology was published last year, but due to postal difficulties (things tend to get lost in the post, or might sometimes take weeks or even months to arrive), I only received my copy a few weeks back - hence my tardiness in mentioning it. The work is a collection pieces, including poetry, personal testimonials, essays, as well as intellectual pieces, all contributed by both men and women with backgrounds from all over Asia. This book is self-published and, perhaps, represents the beginning of a new avenue for Asian voices to be heard in print media that is free of the limitations, self-recrimination, and requirements of exotica, so often required of Asian-American writers hoping for publication in the mainstream. It was nice to read something from both Asian men and women that didn't lapse into the tired "pay attention to me mainstream America" cultural contrition characteristic of some works that cater to mainstream America.

The highlights, for me, were Byron Wongs' (author of the bigWOWO blog) essay on Asian-American masculinity, a piece by Sapna Cheryan on the effects of the perpetual foreigner stereotype on the Asian psyche, Robert Francis Flor's piece on his "manong" heroes, and Val Katagiri's touching piece called "Hikabusha" in which she describes her close connection with her grandmother. These are just the highlights -  the whole book was a joy to read and I thank Thymos, Byron, and Val, for including me and kudos for the idea to bring together diverse voices and opinions. The list of writers includes published authors and poets, activists, academics, and even no-bodies like me! My piece is called "What a Difference A Word Makes".

You can find the book on Amazon......Buy it! Now!!