A short documentary on Better Luck Tomorrow and Finishing the Game

For those of you who don't know, I really like Better Luck Tomorrow. And Justin Lin's new movie is coming out in New York next week. The documentary has three parts. Watch the first one here.

The Deliverymen's Uprising

Thanks to angryasianman, I read this interesting article in the NYT about Chinese deliverymen in New York, and how groups of them are suing restaurants for mistreatment, and being underpaid. I've heard a lot of stories of deliverymen getting beaten and killed, thanks of course to Angry Asian Man.

The article is a pretty good one, as far as I can tell. It's clearly quite sympathetic to the deliverymen, while at the same time telling one of the owner's side of the story. Both owners and deliverymen are Asian immigrants, the owner in question being a refugee from Cambodia, and the deliverymen are Chinese immigrants, in large part from Fujian, and some undocumented.

I don't know if uprising is the best word. The author uses words like uprising and revolt, to describe the deliverymen's actions. I'm not sure if they're accurate or not, they are loaded with meaning though.

Another thing I found interesting was that Mexican deliverymen to a nearby restaurant have also filed a lawsuit against another restaurant. Kai Chang among others, has made the case that undocumented immigration is an area in which Asian Americans and Latinos can work together. This article seems to indicate something similar.

God hates Asian Americans

apparently or he/she/it would not allow Bai freakin' Ling to star in a movie adaptation of Shanghai freakin' Baby.

For those of you who are unaware of Shanghai Baby (I can't imagine that you could be unaware of Bai Ling) it's about a beautiful Chinese woman, caught between her drug addict (addicted to an opiate, no less) impotent, childlike Chinese boyfriend, and a barbaric, hypersexual German guy. Also the sex scenes are truly hilariously written and sometimes offensive.

There is nothing on earth that could possibly induce me to watch this film.

For some reason, I wrote my junior qualifying exam on this book, so I'm fairly familiar with it. Many people asked me why I didn't choose to write on a good book, and also why I traded David Bordwell's book on Hong Kong cinema for a copy. (I had gotten rid of my class copy, and I didn't really want to support her by paying for another one.) I can't even blame that one on pot.

American Born Chinese

by Gene Yang

So the first thing I bought since I've been back in America is American Born Chinese, the graphic novel by Gene Yang. Odds are you've probably heard of this, I mean it was nominated for a National Book Award.

The set-up is basically this, the story is made up of three strands, the first one is the story of the Monkey King, or rather, a sort of prequel to the Monkey King's doings in Journey to the West, how he came to be the hero he became to be, the second is the story of Jin Wang, a boy whose family moves him to an all-white school in a small town, and finally the story of a white teenager Danny, who has a cousin Chin-kee, who comes to town every year and wreaks havoc on his life by embodying every Chinese stereotype known to man. And somehow, Gene Yang manages to weave these stories into a coherent whole, with meaning and stuff. And eventually you see how these stories come together. Their relationship becomes a lot clearer in the rereading, but the comic is pretty light on words, so it makes for a fairly easy read.

There are a lot of things I liked about the book. The Monkey King is a famous trickster hero, but Yang puts an interesting spin on the story, making the Monkey King a stand in for the subaltern, and in particular, the Asian American subaltern, who, despite his accomplishments and achievements, never gets invited to the party because he's a monkey. And the Monkey King's desire to wreak havoc stems directly from a desire to prove himself as more than a monkey.

Jin Wang's story, which is a fairly typical one in Asian American literature, complete with racial self-hatred and a desire to be white, appealed less to me. And honestly, this story has already been done millions of times. However this narrative is complicated by Jin Wang's relationship to Taiwanese FOB, Wei-chen Sun, his friend and "brother." Wei-chen, although he also experiences the same racism as Jin is far more comfortable with his Asian identity, and serves as a foil for Jin's self-hatred.

The final story, involving Chin-kee, is potentially offensive. Chin-kee is intentionally an exaggeration of the Chinaman stereotype. This was actually the story I enjoyed the most, in part because it felt to me the freshest of the three. Like I said before, in the short annals of Asian American literature, the Monkey King has been done, and so has the whole "I'm the only Asian American in my town and I hate myself" thing. There's something gleeful and somewhat cathartic in the way that Chin-kee causes chaos at the school. Something in me thought that Gene Yang got the whole stereotype thing spot on, from the eating cat-heads and innards, peeing in someone's Coke, knowing the answer to every question in school, while consistently confusing the l's with r's every single time. Chin-kee is a remarkably well written well thought out embodiment of the spectre of the Chinaman/FOB. Yang also pokes some fun at current events having Chin-kee belting out "She Bangs" in the school library. Up until then, it was pretty unclear what the time period was, but the "She Bangs" part, coupled with Wei-chen's transformation into rice rocket driving, bling wearing gangsta FOB kept the ending fairly fresh for me.

Over all, it was a well-written well put together book. However, the story just didn't resonate for me personally. In some ways it illustrates the generation gap for me. I think I've mentioned this about 87 times before, but I really don't feel that the "I'm the only Asian American kid in my town and I hate myself"TM is the story of my generation of Asian Americans. I really don't. That just isn't the world I grew up in. I can sympathize, but in the end I just can't relate. Incidentally, I have theories that this type of story is the type that white critics and reviewers just eat up. That said, it is a very well crafted story, well drawn, well put together, well plotted the works. And I'm not sorry I shelled out 16 bucks to pay for the thing, not one bit.

Interestingly, Gene Yang is buddies with Derek Kirk Kim, whose story Same Difference, to me epitomizes the new stories of Asian America. Between these two, and the largely Asian American contributors to the Flight anthologies, whether or not Adrian Tomine gets around to completing his White on Rice trilogy, the comics scene is definitely looking up in Asian America.

The FOB part 2

So I've talked about FOBs a little bit before. And the aversion Asian Americans have for them. However, I think recently, they've become a bit more acceptable. My friend has a sister who had a crush on some guy who was a FOB, and so her sister (who's second gen/third gen, it's kind of complicated) wanted to become more FOB-like in order to pursue him.

Having lived in Asia for a couple of years, I have definitely found myself becoming more FOB-like. I listen to Mandarin pop and I like it, which usually invokes some kind of distain, well, from some of my white friends anyway. I will probably hang my clothes out on a line to dry if housing codes will let me. Those housing codes strike me as somewhat classist, but hey.

Like I said before, the FOB can be the dark mirror of assimilation. The FOB can become the specter of nonconformity, and also the impossibility of assimilation. No matter how assimilated you are, it is impossible to thoroughly blend in. However, I think for many Asian Americans the FOB can come to represent Asia. Although many Asian American kids these days, particularly the wealthy ones, are able to go back to Asia, to go back "home" many of us have never been. I had never been to Asia before I moved to Taiwan, so for us the FOB can come to represent that kind of society. And I think these days, as there are more and more Asian Americans and more and more cultural exchange back and forth, FOBism, or Asian culture, is starting to become ok. Something kids are interested in.

I think for some of us, the FOB tends to also represent authenticity. Many of us, when we're growing up, particularly those of us who do not speak our "mother tongue" pick up pretty quickly that we are not the "real deal." Our FOB cousins, friends, or classmates, are pretty clearly "the real deal." And so I think there's kind of fascination, besides the revulsion or discomfort that comes with interacting with FOBs.

I find the fact that people are becoming not necessarily Asian or American, but transnational somewhat exciting. I think I've noted in previous rants, (I'd link, but the browser I'm on won't let me) that there are a lot of Asian Americans who go back to Asia to become singers and actors, rather than trying to cut it in the States, because they know that they can't cut it. So there's also the movement of Asian Americans returning "home" back to Asia. I find this all quite interesting.

So how about those Asians?

Man Asians sure are getting a lot of press coverage these days. In weird ways. I'm sure everyone has already heard about the two Stanford "students" already. Considering that they're both Asian American, it is kind of interesting to speculate about why they did what they did and how being Asian affects that. Particularly with Azia Kim, there might be all that family expectation which caused her to do it.

Azia Kim was similarly described as a "quiet Asian kid" much like other recent Asian American newsmakers. Whereas Elizabeth Okazaki was described as being loud and a nuisance, bringing herself to other people's attention. (Honestly she sounds like she needs some mental help.) And when people were asked about her, their comments really did reflect back the vibe of a quiet but forgettable Asian girl. There didn't seem to be much more in the comments than that she was a fairly nice girl and rather smart. The only thing missing is that her name isn't Grace Lee and as far as I know she doesn't play the violin. But does that have anything to do with anything? It's intriguing to think that it does. And the good old model minority myth is something us middle class Asians always like to pound our chests about. But at the same time I don't want to go there, because I'm just not sure if there is a connection.

I don't know what to think about this, honestly. Does their being Asian have anything to do with it? Does it have any influence on their behavior whatsoever? With Kim's story, I would argue that perhaps it does, at least some of the people who let her live in the building seemed to just sort of see her as the stereotype of the "quiet Asian girl" and let's be honest, how many people can tell them apart. But that's more of an effect on the people around her. Not so much on the girl, even if she (may or may not have) consciously exploited it. There are ways in which being invisible can have it's advantages. I know this myself from personal experience. (Actually Chang Rae Lee talks about this phenomenon in his book Native Speaker, but I'm nerding out here).

Anyway, does their ethnicity have anything to do with anything? It seems slightly less clear to me than Seung Hui Cho's ethnicity influencing his behavior (that would be a resounding NO, although I would argue that class may have played a role in the whole thing). Azia Kim did move into the Okada Asian American dorm. To me that says something, I'm not sure exactly what though.

Depressed Asians

Probably as a result of both API history month and V Tech, we have news stories reporting on an old statistic. That Asian American women 15-24 are the most likely of any ethnicity in that age group to commit suicide. I say this is an old statistic, I've written about it before. However, it is startling statistic nonetheless. I'm at the very very outside of this age group. So maybe this means it hits a little closer to home for me.

The author of the article Angry Asian Man links to seems to want to put the blame to Asian culture. I thought the prof that they quoted was actually a bit better, in that she admitted that they don't really know for sure. Could be Asian culture, could be the pressure of the model minority stereotype, could be genetic, they don't really know.

There are times when I feel like being the invisible minority is not so bad, given the demonization of other ethnic groups. At least they don't say bad things about us, right? But it's times like these when I feel how much invisibility really hurts us. How many young Asian American women know themselves to be at risk? How many of our well intentioned white mental health practitioners know that Asian American women are at risk?

I don't know that I buy that the the self-imposition of the model minority stereotype is what causes young women to want to kill themselves. Could be those family expectations, but I'm inclined to think that those are a different animal entirely. The model minority stereotype is most pernicious, I think, not among Asian Americans, but among other people. That the quiet Asian kid is quiet, not because there's something wrong, but because that's just the way Asians are.

West 32nd

So Mike Kang's new movie, starring John Cho premieres in New York this week. Apparently it's some kind of gangster movie. Although I prefer Kal Penn to John Cho, I'm pretty excited.

I've been unlucky enough to be out of the country for the last two years which have also been an extremely (and arguably unprecedentedly) productive time for Asian American cinema. Honestly, when I see a movie, I want to see something I have not seen before. Asian American films guarantee me that I will see something I haven't seen before. Or at the very least, Asians who aren't stereotypes. Unless of course this is one of those wacky ethnic family comedies, (Saving Face and Red Doors, I'm looking at you,) but the less said about them the better.

That said, the fact that there are over 10 movies made in the last 2 years, that I want to see is pretty exciting.

It's about to get heavy again

since I'm in major endorphin free-fall, I washed my mp3 player (long time readers may recall the times I washed my wallet, twice, and washed a cell phone) and found a cockroach in my refrigerator. It's been that kind of day.

So for those who have been keeping track, an Asian American gunned down 32 people, slightly before that, an Indian exchange student stabbed his prof , an Asian American with Asperger's made an ass of himself on TV and in the newspaper. Before that, I remember a spate of Asian fathers killing their families and then killing themselves. In addition, I remember earlier statistics which tell me that Asian American women quite likely to kill themselves. Clearly the state of Denmark is not entirely sound.

It reminds me of something a friend of mine said. We were talking about families, and how both of ours were pretty passive-aggressive, and she said "I think most Asian families are." It kind of clicked for me then. Living in Taiwan, I've noticed most people tend to deal with things fairly passive aggressively. It's better, I think, than getting angry loudly and causing everyone to lose face. At the time it was something of a revelation, passive-aggression is generally seen as fairly negative, and immature behavior in the States. I guess I had never thought that it could actually be a cultural difference. So how does this relate to the stuff I mentioned above? I guess perhaps subjective proof that Asian people, even Asian Americans react to situations in a different way than white people. Both my friend and I come from pretty Americanized families, her mom is 1.5, her dad is 2nd generation, both of my parents are 3rd. However, looking at things now, I can see how we deal with things in a different way.

In poking around on the internet, I found that the model minority stereotype is blamed for Asian American depression, as well as isolation for immigrants. This might be true for some people. I guess personally, I never found this to be so. I never got depressed because I thought everyone thought I was perfect. The idea that I would be depressed because people thought of me as Madame Butterfly is laughable. I'm pretty sure most Asian American women aren't thinking about that, although you never know. (How many Asian Americans listen to Puccini anyway?)

I've been trying to think about why, I myself, once, and ever so occasionally these days, wanted to do bad crazy things to myself. And I guess I came up with an answer. It's not The Answer, however, I suspect it's a lot closer than the Madame Butterfly thing. It's comparing yourself to other people and finding yourself wanting. Comparison is both internal and external. Parents and relatives like to compare you to your siblings, cousins, family friends, or whoever. Furthermore, I suspect there's a certain amount of perfectionism in the way we're raised sometimes. Anything less than 100% is evidence that there is room for improvement. Failings, academic or social are also evidence that improvement is needed. If other children surpass you, you're not good enough. Comparison is then becomes internal. (Incidentally this is probably why I think Magnetic North are the most Asian American of Asian American rappers, they rap about being depressed and not feeling good enough.) Perfectionism, whether imposed or internalized, can lead to a variety of bad things, of course.

One solution for this, of course, is if our parents would just stop comparing us to other people's kids. That would be nice.

The other thing I think is the fact that mental health isn't really set up for Asian people, or I suspect, not set up for any sort of person who is not white. I don't know what can be done about that. Particularly since the Asian thing to do generally seems to be to just deal with it as best you can and not talk it publicly, or at all. This approach is actually pretty good if you just have problems. It does become a problem if what you have is not a problem but a sickness.

Getting back to the passive-aggressive thing, part of the reason I suspect that it wouldn't work is that many Asian families, that I know anyway, communicate about things fairly indirectly. While this communication style can often be described as unhealthy or somewhat unproductive, it's worked for billions of people for millions of years, so something about it works anyway. It seems to work well enough when everyone's playing by the same rules. It becomes more complicated when your family operates on different wavelength than the mainstream culture.

Honestly, in Asia, I have met many more Asian children and parents who are satisfied with their (or their children's) mediocrity on various levels. Perhaps the drive to have your children succeed means something different. I mean, most Americans want their children to be successful too, but perhaps we get a little more complacent, since American-born people grew up within the American social system and know it through and through. Foreign born Americans, being less familiar with the whole set up, might get more anxious, and therefore push their kids harder. That still doesn't explain my family though, or my friend's either. Dammit, I give up.

Immigration

The Fighting 44s really do make me think. This post on immigration is kind of old, but I've been mulling it over for a couple weeks. (Actually it's a reprint of an article from The Economist) Something struck me as not right from the get go, and now I think I've finally put my finger on what bothers me. I think I'm being taken for a ride.

The premise of the article seems to be calling for reform to the immigration system. Particularly in favor of high tech, highly educated Asian professionals. The article uses the film The Namesake as a reference point. As well as an illustration of the new immigrant experience, according to the author the classic American dream, 2 kids, a white collar job, and apparently a rich white girlfriend for his American born son.

Mr Ganguli is part of a huge army of immigrants who have brought their brains and enthusiasm to the United States—not just Indians and Pakistanis but also Chinese, Koreans and Europeans. America’s high-tech industries are powered by foreign brains.

He talks about a number of things. In reading it, there are several opinions which occur to me. The biggest one being not what he's talking about but what he's leaving out. The quote above lists the nationalities he's talking about. South Asians, Northeast Asians, and Europeans. It's interesting who he's leaving out, Mexicans, Haitians, Africans, Filipinos, Vietnamese, to name a few.

The model minority stereotype, which has plagued many an undergraduate Asian studies class, as well as Asian American rap CD has reared its ugly head. We're being paid a compliment here at first blush. Well those of us who are smart enough, and white collar enough, and educated enough anyway. Apparently the rest of us just don't exist. According to this author, we're getting a ticket to suburbia, complete with the white girlfriend if we buy into this whole deal. (I really just can't get over the equation of the white girlfriend to 'an American success story.' Does that mean that if Gogol takes her with him to the airport he won't get 'randomly' searched as much?)

It's clear that he's not unaware of some of these other groups, he does mention fence building as evidence of anti-immigrant sentiment. However, they are invisible within the larger discussion. And anti-immigrant sentiment is just an inconvenience to him, because it creates obstacles in the pipeline of immigrant talent. It seems to be the author's view that immigration has been heavily skewed towards reuniting families rather than recruiting these eager young citizens of the world.

The author mentions HB-1 Visas, I am not that familiar with this topic, although I have heard that it has been criticized as exploitative. Import a bunch of fresh-off-the-boat techs, employ them at lower wages than American workers expect. When they become experienced and uppity enough to demand a more equitable salary, their limited Visa has run out and you can ship in a fresh batch.

Which brings us to the other half of the model minority myth, which would be The Glass Ceiling. The author fails to mention the fact that Asian Americans remain the most overeducated but underpaid ethnic group. We're educated enough to be the programmer or the lab tech, but we don't make manager. This is true for American born Asian Americans, it goes doubly for immigrants whose lack of fluency in English or different cultures can make even more difficult to "network."

I'm not sure what to make of the fact that the author doesn't really talk about how non-white collar immigration fits into his world view. Perhaps it's low class of me to ask. I also feel like this is proof that the "Asians are honorary whites" meme is still out there. We're good enough, white enough, non threatening enough to be gain some of the access and benefits. But we still don't qualify for the whole deal. However, some evidence has surfaced that seems to prove that we're not the tools that everyone thinks we are. So I'm not going to waste my time wringing my hands about how some of us may buy into this. Some of us probably will, I'm going to hope that most of us are smart enough not to.

An open letter to Mako

You are, for better or for worse, one of the most famous Japanese American actors. Yessiree, Korean Americans have John Cho and Sung Kang, Jacqueline Kim, Sandra Oh, Chinese Americans have...Edison Chen...(actually he's Canadian) Perry Shen, and Bai Ling, Lucy Liu (I'd rather have Edison). South Asians have Kal Penn, Filipinos have Dante Basco (aka, that kid who played Rufio in Hook) and we have you and Pat Morita, and Gedde Watanabe. Rock on.

I still remember one of my friends in high school trying to convince me to see Pearl Harbor with her. "No, Mako is in it."
"Oh, no he's really good."
"Let me guess, he plays the Japanese gardener."
"How did you know?"
"Oh, just a feeling."

I have to admit I was actually kind of relieved when you died, because you would stop embarrassing us with appearances in movies like Pearl Harbor, and any Asian American major motion picture known to God.

However I have recently learned that before your passing you did voicework on the new Teenage Ninja Turtles movie that was released recently. I thought you would stop embarrassing us once you died.

I was wrong.

P. S. I thought you were ok in The Wash.

Whitewashed bananas

A friend of mine and I had a conversation about two schoolmates of ours. Both of them are Asian American. At some point, Person number 1 ended up jokingly referring to person number 2 as a "banana." Person number 2 reacted pretty badly to this and was quite offended.

This led to a conversation about "bananas" or "twinkies" or what have you. I myself have also been guilty of calling people bananas, and thereby seriously offending them. In talking to this friend of mine, I realized that I could easily be identified as a banana. I'm an Asian American who doesn't speak my "native tongue."

It made me realize that actually, not being able to speak an Asian language makes bananas (myself included) more insecure than our bilingual compatriots. Being able to speak your mother tongue lends you authenticity, both to white people, and also to your family or your community. It seems to me that being in possession of two languages anchors your identity more concretely in both spheres, country of ancestry and country of birth, and thus you are, as another acquaintance of mine said recently, a true transnational.

As an Asian American, in possession of an Asian appearance, there are some parts of your "culture" that remain inaccessible to you if you don't speak another language. It is also pretty central to the performance of your ethnic identity. If I was home right now, I would totally dig out Rey Chow's The Protestant Ethnic and the Spirit of Capitalism, and quote it, but alas it's at home in America.

That said, I think most languageless bananas feel more insecure in their identity, I would hazard a guess, than those who are bilingual. And therefore feel the need to present or perform their identity more aggressively (that would be me) or to deny it entirely or even feel resentful or ashamed about it.