> Rui’s story fails precisely because it represents a normal person trying to be a little bit more insane than they truly are
Reminds me of John Waters, who said he loves crazy people who think they're normal, and Baltimore is full of people like that. He also lived in NYC and thinks NYC is full of people who think they're crazy, but they're actually completely normal.
I see a lot people trying to be crazy and normal at the same time, and I think most of them are in that latter, NYC category.
The good news is that there are earlier layers of the genre to draw from, where the stakes really are higher. No No Boy is a great example: shattered Nisei veterans who are PTSD wrecks, divided loyalties and wartime infidelity, ostracism from both a national community and a cultural-communal one.
Another somewhat more recent example is Shadow of the Dragon, which could be said to be in the YA genre; the main character is a Vietnamese American HS athlete in Texas in love with an Anglo-American cheerleader while being caught between her white supremacist brother and his own cousin in a Vietnamese American gang.
I think the sauce is still out there, and to some degree it’s in these comments. I want to +1 No-No Boy; the first few chapters are as angry and ragefilled as anything I’ve ever read. And then, in terms of GET WEIRDER (which I totally agree with), what about Karen Tei Yamashita? Through the Arc of the Rain Forest (1990) is a proto-Brazilian soap opera that follows a Japanese guy with a magic ball that hovers in front of his face, a three-armed American businessman who ends up marrying a three-breasted woman, an indigenous guy with magical healing feathers, and so on. But then Sansei and Sensibility (2020) is Yamashita’s reimagining of Jane Austen’s novels from a Japanese-American perspective. Or then there’s Yoon Ha Lee, who is weird (and I mean that as a compliment) even for sf (check out “The Empty Gun” or Ninefox Gambit).
I guess my point is that the weirdness is out there. I’m an illogical person so I don’t know how to phrase this, but it feels slightly misplaced to look at mainstream fiction and ask why it isn’t weirder, especially when so much good weird stuff exists!
This Asian American issue is that of cognitive dissonance induced by a mismatch between one's internal operating system which is ostensibly based in Western cultural heritage and values (Hence, the whole "Where are you really from?" fiasco involving the female Asian American hiker in the early pandemic years.) and the Asian American's distinctly non western physical and facial features.
They are mainly, to use common parlance, bananas. Yellow on the outside white on the inside. Hence, all they have to hold on to viz. their "Asian-ness" are their physical features, some food, the FOB relative they like to dunk on, and maybe the cultural costumes that they gleefully put on special occasions like the Lunar New Year. Beyond that, there is nothing Asian about them. They've ingested, through the education system, the entire western canon. They call upon Plato and not Confucius.
I've always found it strange that Asian Americans insist that they do not see anyone who looks like them represented on screen. However, what they actually mean is they do not see anyone who looks like them represented on WESTERN screens. Because, if they really wanted to see someone like them representing them on screen, all they have to do is watch Japanese, Hong Kong, Korean, or Chinese cinema. Jet Li, Gong Li, Faye Wong, Maggie Cheung, Tony Leung, Jackie Chan, K-Pop stars, Bruce Lee, Mifune, and a plethora of other Asian entertainers, have always been there.
What they want to see is a Western person who physically looks Asian and can call upon Asian parentage to be on screen. How different, for eg, can the life of a Japanese American from an upper middle class Japanese American from Manhattan be so different from a "White" American from the same class in Manhattan? They go to the same kindergartens and same prep schools. They aspire to attend the same Ivy Leagues for university. They've read the same classics -Joyce, Updike, Melville, Salinger, Hemingway- in high school English class. They've grown up as teenagers in the same pop cultural milieu of music, comics(Maybe an occasional and distinct manga or anime.), and movies. Beyond maybe eating Japanese cuisine regularly, if that, at home, Cherry Blossom festival celebration, and an occasional trip to Japan to meet some relatives, their lives are essentially indistinguishable from that of a generic American of the same class. Moreover, they could even be Christian, an ostensibly western religion despite its origins in West Asia.
The issue with Asian American writing is that of a very small literary sandbox that cannot expand beyond "stinky-lunch slop and my-white-boyfriend-slop and my-traditional-parents-slop" because that's all there is about being an Asian American, and because to expand their literary sandbox beyond those topics would mean that their literature will be just American. These shallow and surface level distinguishing socio-cultural features are insufficient for a full fledged, potent, and distinct literary tradition.
Asian American literature, or for that matter literature of any assimilated "POC" American identity groups, is unfortunately, skin deep. They are all Americans and they tend to see that as tragic. They are hollow and devoid of their Asian-ness.
Now, the immigrant literature of recent immigrants is another matter.
Gu has a point about old tropes but his misreading of the "rock star" line and misdiagnosis of why "Hatchling" lacks dramatic conflict, etc. leads me to suspect some longstanding annoyance is messing with his clarity of vision on how those tropes are deployed in the piece. If we're stuck repeating the same old Asian Am lit discourse, part of the blame lies with readings that are stuck repeating the same old talking points.
Similarly but as more of a cautionary tale. I'm not seeing a woman striving for white adjacency but one who's achieved it... or gotten as far as she could and it's not what she thought. She's living in the aftermath of bad choices and can almost see the bars of the neolib-PMC-striver-tokenism etc. cage but can't or won't fully confront them yet. She is a complicit fool in dissociative surrender, not a hero, and the author might 'pity' her but I don't think valorization is the intent or effect.
Not for a character who wants only "...to fit myself in the indentation of my favorite couch and rest," who thwarts dramatic conflict by never rising to the occasion, etc. the whole checklist of being a Shitty Asian.
So, yes, another 'identity' story but the angle of approach is a little different, more critical, for me, than what others might be clocking.
Asian-Americans, it seems to me, are 9 parts American and 1 part Asian for the most part.
The inanity of bringing Yukio Mishima and Shusaku Endo into a piece on 21st C American selfie lit, of whatever hyphenated ethnicity, is almost hilarious.
> Rui’s story fails precisely because it represents a normal person trying to be a little bit more insane than they truly are
Reminds me of John Waters, who said he loves crazy people who think they're normal, and Baltimore is full of people like that. He also lived in NYC and thinks NYC is full of people who think they're crazy, but they're actually completely normal.
I see a lot people trying to be crazy and normal at the same time, and I think most of them are in that latter, NYC category.
The general imperative to GET WEIRDER has never been more important for artists. This is an exciting argument and I appreciate it.
If it is any consolation, European American literature is not much better off these days
The good news is that there are earlier layers of the genre to draw from, where the stakes really are higher. No No Boy is a great example: shattered Nisei veterans who are PTSD wrecks, divided loyalties and wartime infidelity, ostracism from both a national community and a cultural-communal one.
Another somewhat more recent example is Shadow of the Dragon, which could be said to be in the YA genre; the main character is a Vietnamese American HS athlete in Texas in love with an Anglo-American cheerleader while being caught between her white supremacist brother and his own cousin in a Vietnamese American gang.
*Edit, the author is apparently a white woman lol
I think the sauce is still out there, and to some degree it’s in these comments. I want to +1 No-No Boy; the first few chapters are as angry and ragefilled as anything I’ve ever read. And then, in terms of GET WEIRDER (which I totally agree with), what about Karen Tei Yamashita? Through the Arc of the Rain Forest (1990) is a proto-Brazilian soap opera that follows a Japanese guy with a magic ball that hovers in front of his face, a three-armed American businessman who ends up marrying a three-breasted woman, an indigenous guy with magical healing feathers, and so on. But then Sansei and Sensibility (2020) is Yamashita’s reimagining of Jane Austen’s novels from a Japanese-American perspective. Or then there’s Yoon Ha Lee, who is weird (and I mean that as a compliment) even for sf (check out “The Empty Gun” or Ninefox Gambit).
I guess my point is that the weirdness is out there. I’m an illogical person so I don’t know how to phrase this, but it feels slightly misplaced to look at mainstream fiction and ask why it isn’t weirder, especially when so much good weird stuff exists!
This Asian American issue is that of cognitive dissonance induced by a mismatch between one's internal operating system which is ostensibly based in Western cultural heritage and values (Hence, the whole "Where are you really from?" fiasco involving the female Asian American hiker in the early pandemic years.) and the Asian American's distinctly non western physical and facial features.
They are mainly, to use common parlance, bananas. Yellow on the outside white on the inside. Hence, all they have to hold on to viz. their "Asian-ness" are their physical features, some food, the FOB relative they like to dunk on, and maybe the cultural costumes that they gleefully put on special occasions like the Lunar New Year. Beyond that, there is nothing Asian about them. They've ingested, through the education system, the entire western canon. They call upon Plato and not Confucius.
I've always found it strange that Asian Americans insist that they do not see anyone who looks like them represented on screen. However, what they actually mean is they do not see anyone who looks like them represented on WESTERN screens. Because, if they really wanted to see someone like them representing them on screen, all they have to do is watch Japanese, Hong Kong, Korean, or Chinese cinema. Jet Li, Gong Li, Faye Wong, Maggie Cheung, Tony Leung, Jackie Chan, K-Pop stars, Bruce Lee, Mifune, and a plethora of other Asian entertainers, have always been there.
What they want to see is a Western person who physically looks Asian and can call upon Asian parentage to be on screen. How different, for eg, can the life of a Japanese American from an upper middle class Japanese American from Manhattan be so different from a "White" American from the same class in Manhattan? They go to the same kindergartens and same prep schools. They aspire to attend the same Ivy Leagues for university. They've read the same classics -Joyce, Updike, Melville, Salinger, Hemingway- in high school English class. They've grown up as teenagers in the same pop cultural milieu of music, comics(Maybe an occasional and distinct manga or anime.), and movies. Beyond maybe eating Japanese cuisine regularly, if that, at home, Cherry Blossom festival celebration, and an occasional trip to Japan to meet some relatives, their lives are essentially indistinguishable from that of a generic American of the same class. Moreover, they could even be Christian, an ostensibly western religion despite its origins in West Asia.
The issue with Asian American writing is that of a very small literary sandbox that cannot expand beyond "stinky-lunch slop and my-white-boyfriend-slop and my-traditional-parents-slop" because that's all there is about being an Asian American, and because to expand their literary sandbox beyond those topics would mean that their literature will be just American. These shallow and surface level distinguishing socio-cultural features are insufficient for a full fledged, potent, and distinct literary tradition.
Asian American literature, or for that matter literature of any assimilated "POC" American identity groups, is unfortunately, skin deep. They are all Americans and they tend to see that as tragic. They are hollow and devoid of their Asian-ness.
Now, the immigrant literature of recent immigrants is another matter.
I was going to say something about the solution being trashy lowbrow fiction about banging women but your way is fine too
Schizo-maxxing is the solution for everything in our modern world
Gu has a point about old tropes but his misreading of the "rock star" line and misdiagnosis of why "Hatchling" lacks dramatic conflict, etc. leads me to suspect some longstanding annoyance is messing with his clarity of vision on how those tropes are deployed in the piece. If we're stuck repeating the same old Asian Am lit discourse, part of the blame lies with readings that are stuck repeating the same old talking points.
Interesting... how do you read the 'Hatchling' piece?
Similarly but as more of a cautionary tale. I'm not seeing a woman striving for white adjacency but one who's achieved it... or gotten as far as she could and it's not what she thought. She's living in the aftermath of bad choices and can almost see the bars of the neolib-PMC-striver-tokenism etc. cage but can't or won't fully confront them yet. She is a complicit fool in dissociative surrender, not a hero, and the author might 'pity' her but I don't think valorization is the intent or effect.
Not for a character who wants only "...to fit myself in the indentation of my favorite couch and rest," who thwarts dramatic conflict by never rising to the occasion, etc. the whole checklist of being a Shitty Asian.
So, yes, another 'identity' story but the angle of approach is a little different, more critical, for me, than what others might be clocking.
Asian-Americans, it seems to me, are 9 parts American and 1 part Asian for the most part.
The inanity of bringing Yukio Mishima and Shusaku Endo into a piece on 21st C American selfie lit, of whatever hyphenated ethnicity, is almost hilarious.