Was anyone else thrown off by the fact that not a single mention of Buddha was made in My America?

So after reading through all the posts here, it seems that My America has thoroughly proved to all of us that the term "Asian-American" is a lexical nightmare capable of inducing bouts of soul-searching and internal conflict. It reminded me of when I was little and would repeatedly ask myself "Why am I me?" ('cept in Chinese) until I reached a point of existential singularity that was ... completely beside the point of anything.

Let's first make it clear that I really liked the movie. It even made me tear up, which is quite something for this old no-nonsense heart of mine (I think a friend once called me completely devoid of romanticism... I wanted to kick that friend, but it probably would've confirmed something to her). ANYWAY, now I'm going to sound like a spoil-sport and say that I don't really think the point of it was to make everyone think "what IS Asian?" but just as a way of showing the possibilities of such a nebulous concept as the Asian-American.

RTP (lazytalk for Renee Tajima-Pena) began trying to figure out what being Asian-American meant and how it fit into the US. By the end, it seems the answers to those are (respectively) "gee, that's a tough one" and "it may blow your mind, but they are all over the place and do not plan on leaving." And then RTP got married and moved on, which I think begets a pretty important point: The big, philosophical question wasn't the most important thing, in the end. The stories of all these different Asian-American people (RTP's included) are what make up Asian-America (or a tiny portion of it, at least).

So I walked away from the film with the idea that more people need to know more about Asian-Americans... and boy, ain't that the truth.

Oh, and just for kicks, here's a definition of an Asian American care of Google:

Honk if You Love Reneé Tajima-Peña

I saw Reneé Tajima-Peña when she came to Brown to speak at the opening event for Asian/Asian-American History Month. It was so inspirational to hear her story and see her work, a welcome contrast to the usual images of Asian-Americans who have "made it"-- actors, businessmen, scientists, the occasional Amy Tan. I started thinking that night about the difference between navigating the preexisting notions about one's ethnicity and defining it on one's own terms. Attempting to do the latter takes more courage, I think, but is also pretty problematic. Isn't a conscious rebellion against a stereotype in itself a recognition of that stereotype?

More than anything, watching "My America" made me itch to take a huge road trip across the U.S. The title's spot-on; this is my America as much as it is anyone else's. And, as limited exposure as Asian have gotten in mass media, there *is* a definite Asian-American presence in this country (how awesome is Yuri Kochiyami??). Reminds me of something an Asian spoken word poet (was it Beau Sia?) said once: "This, too, is what American English sounds like."

Watching the film made me realize how narrow my definition of Asian-American is (second-generation, middle class, East Asian). I hope this class will help me broaden that perspective.

--franny

My America: Response

Like many of my classmates, I too was surprised by the two Filipino women who so unabashedly declared that they were white and had always been considered as such. It was such an interesting moment in the film, because I had just finished reading Galang's discussion of the history of racism Filipino people have encountered in this country and here were two women of Filipino descent claiming to never have been seen or considered themselves as anything but white. For me, it really reinforced the idea that there is no single or unified Asian American experience--an idea that seems to have been highlighted throughout the film as a whole, structured as it is as a series of interviews with Asian Americans from many different backgrounds with a diverse array of experiences.

That being said, I think that there were moments in the film where commonality could be seen in the experiences of Asian Americans from even the most dissimilar backgrounds. One thing I noticed, for instance, was the way several different people (including the Seoul Brothers and the recent Hmong immigrant) mentioned being called Chinese by ignorant white Americans not culturally sensitive enough to realize that China is just one nation in Asia. Not being of Asian descent myself, I had not realized how universal this experience seems to be for Asian Americans, even in this day and age. Moments like this in the film suggested that there are in fact some factors that unite Asian Americans, although many of these factors seemed to have more to do with the way Asian Americans have historically been treated as a group by white Americans than with cultural similarities.

Finally, and on an unrelated note, something that I got out of this film that I had not really been exposed to was a sense of the reality of what it meant to have put Japanese Americans in internment camps during WWII. Of course, I had heard about it growing up in history classes, and I had always found the idea of imprisoning American people in camps reprehensible, but something about hearing the Kochiyamas talk about how they met while he was a GI and she was living in an internment camp brought the reality of the internment camps home for me in a way it had never been before. I was horrified and I still can't help but wonder why this injustice has never received the attention in classrooms and in the mainstream media (at least in my experience) as slavery and the Holocaust and other atrocities have.

Chan is Missing

Although I loved watching cute, little, old, and wise Jo interact with everyone in the movie, Chan is Missing, he didn’t seem to play that big of a role displaying Chinese-American identity because he was so mild-spoken. I really liked the character Steve because although he talked like he knew it all, he said a lot of stupid things. I especially liked it when Steve said adamantly, “That’s a bunch of bullshit man. That identity shit, man-that’s old news, man, that happened ten years ago.” Then he goes on to tell a story about a Vietnamese guy who shot at his own people during the war and Steve accidentally almost refers to the Vietnamese as his own people showing how he does still struggle with his identity even after being in America so long. Peter Feng in his book, Screening Asian Americans, also refers to this part and comments that “Steve’s identity begins to evaporate, as if the increasing indeterminacy of Chan’s identity undermines everyone else’s identity”(201). It seems that the movie dissected Chan’s identity so much to the point that it was saying that there is no such thing as identity. Another way I took the situation with Steve is that even though Steve is the “assimilated” Chinese-American putting down Chan for being too Chinese, it seems that Steve is the one with the identity problem and that Chan knows who he is and that is the reason he is not conforming to other people’s expectation. In the scene where Steve makes fun of Chan for being a FOB and his unwillingness to acculturate himself leads to him not being able to understand a joke and we find out later from Jo that the joke was actually on Steve because Chan played up being a FOB to make Steve mad, we get the impression that Steve is the one being ignorant and unaware of himself. I think that even Wayne Wang, the director of the film, could’ve been saying that Chan knew his identity when he has Presco in the movie say, “look in the puddle to answer your question.” Was he saying that if Jo and Steve knew themselves like Chan knew himself they would understand Chan’s motives?

Asian America

As an Asian American who grew up ten minutes from San Francisco and now attends Brown, I thought that my years of attending Asian American classes and panels, working on an Asian/Asian-American publication team and interning for Asian Health non-profits would be enough. I believed that endless conversations with peers in various "open" environments had allowed me to cover all the pressing issues in Asian American culture: generational gaps, refugee plights, new material culture and stereotypical media portrayals. The list goes on. I accepted Asian Americans as having a firm place in American society, though this position is at times challenged.

After watching "My America" and reading the introductions to this course's texts, I realize that while my opportunities to explore my Asian American identity have been rich, there are many other dimensions to Asian America that I simply have not had access to. I was baffled by the Filipina women who identified as "white" in New Orleans and extremely proud to witness activism among Asian Americans of the Civil Rights era (confirming that taking up causes is not simply a luxury of my second-generation Asian American peers). The lack of Asian exposure experienced by Asian American children living in rural pockets is a whole additional facet of "Asian America" that I had not considered. Aware that studying Asian American culture is much more than a vehicle for gaining self-awareness, I look forward to better understanding this culture's nuances of the sake of others and myself.

My America

I feel that when the "Seoul Dad" said, "You have to support violence, in order to achieve justice," he conveyed an idea similar to what Asian Americans have had to follow in recent times. In Asian Americans' struggle to feel comfortable living in America and not like the alien, they've had to accept some exploitation in order to achieve acceptance. It seems that in Renee's parents' generation, and possibly some of our own parents' generation, Asians defined the lines between Chinese, Korean, Japanese, etc much more clearly and prided themselves in being separate from the rest of America. Now more recently, as more second, third, and fourth generation Asians are raised in America, Asians have fought for acceptance from the rest of society. In order to to do so, Asians have had to accept blurring the lines between different types of Asians, generalizing everyone into one typical "Asian" American group. Items also originally brought from Asia, have been taken and distorted to fit into American culture. These things didn't sit very well with me while I was watching the video, but at the same time, I'm not really sure that they could've been done differently or if they really could've been avoided.

My America/Class Discussion

From the class discussion today, what I took away as a question to ask myself was: there may be doubts as to whether what we have here in America is “authentic Asian,” but what about the second half of the term “Asian-American?” Can we say that what we have is also “authentic American?” (This also brings up the question of what exactly American culture itself is….) What apart from the geographical distance from the mainland makes Asian-Americans “Asian-Americans?” 

There were people in class who spoke of the distorted media portrayal of Asian-ness, and yet even in Korean, for example, I would think that the way in which especially younger generations perceive of and understand their own culture is greatly influenced by what is portrayed as being “Korean” by the media. In the same way, the popular representation of what is “Asian-American” by the US media may admittedly be a form of greedy commercialization and/or simplistic stereotyping, but it can also provide a means by which Asian America defines itself - as something to work with or to fight against vehemently. This may even play a role in the identity of Asian-Americans as a minority group banded together against the exploitation and mishandling by the dominantly white media.

The main difference in the commercialization in Asia and America is that in the US, those who do the portraying are white, or at least not Asian-Americans. This is where Renee’s “My America” comes in. It appears to me that a large part of being an active, or socially and politically conscious, Asian-American is to recognize the minority status of Asian-Americans in the vast background of white America. At least, that seemed to be implied with the focus on several activists and one of whom worked closely with Malcolm X. So it would be interesting to study exactly how the Asian/American cultural fusion and the Asian-Americans’ rejection of the white majority simultaneously have been and will continue to work out to maintain a delicate equilibrium of Asian-American identity.