In America, Asians are “Asian-American,” Black people are “African-American,” and Indigenous people are “Native American.” White people, though, are just “Americans.” These labels pervade every social aspect of American life, from basic everyday interactions to the news and social media. I am constantly reminded of my Asianness, even though I never think about the Whiteness of people around me. These racial labels—and my personal experiences—are not chance events or isolated instances; they are symptoms of an underlying societal norm: Whiteness as the status quo and Asianness as eternally foreign. We see this perspective manifested in the discriminatory laws of Western empires, the treatment of narratives, and the unconscious biases of people.

Western empires have systemically separated Asians from Whites, creating hierarchies enforced by law. Firstly, there are policies such as America’s Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 and Canada’s policy of excluding South Asians (through the continuous journey regulation) in 1908, both effectively banning immigration from the appointed regions. This exclusion was rooted in the inherent cultural and behavioral differences that the Whites disliked, in addition to Asian laborers being competition in the labor market that drove wages down. The message that these acts sent were simple: these countries did not want, nor “benefit” from, these foreigners. Aside from preventing their existence in countries, empires also did what they could to take power away from Asians. Britain separated its colonies into two tiers: colonies in the “temperate” such as Canada and South Africa, and colonies in the “tropical” zones such as India and Pacific islands. White settlers in the “temperate” zones were given rights to form governments, while the native people of “tropical” zones were deemed incapable of self-government. Even within its empire, Britain essentially created two tiers of citizens: Whites and everyone else. In order to preserve their power and the power of Whites, empires weaponized policies to undermine Asians. 

In addition to systemic racism we see a descendant type of discrimination – the control of narratives. We can see this happening in the past, like in 1897, when the Natal government made immigrants pass a literacy test of a European language to weed out “undesirable immigrants” from Asia. This clearly defines European culture as “desirable”, while also implying Asian culture as “undesirable.” Now, whenever White writers write, their works are deemed by everyone, including Asians, as “universally legible [with] graciously apolitical soulfulness.” However, when minority writers write, their works are seen as “little more than [ethnographies].” As Filipino-American writer Elaine Castillo states, “This was just the inherited status quo of consumption and interpretation that came with a twenty-four hour cycle of saturation in hite-centered imaginative, intellectual, and moral narrative life.” The White precedent conditions society to submit to its narrative, which, in turn, creates more White content and further reinforces the White precedent as the universal precedent. 

Lastly, there are the conscious and unconscious biases of people that point out the differences of Asians every day. There is the classic anecdote: Whenever someone asks me where I’m from and I reply “Princeton, New Jersey,” there’s often an explicit or implicit question asking for more – Where are you really from? Yet, I have never seen that same question posed to a White peer. I get the sense that when people see me, they see an Asian first, before my actions or personality. Yet, White people are labeled veterans, grandparents, or middle-class before they are labeled “White”. As Professor of Ethnic Studies Catherine Ceniza Choy says, “No matter how hard Asian Americans work to assimilate and demonstrate our patriotism, we find ourselves outside of the American experience looking in.” This is because in a 70% White country, being Asian is an exception. 

Perpetuated by history, White people are the status quo of America and other Western empires, as they are viewed as the rightful holders of power and inhabitants of the land; Asians are simply existent, but they do not “belong.” Historically, anyone who is a threat to that order, including activists and authors, or anyone else who tries to obtain more rights, is a foreigner who should be silenced and deterred from destroying that hierarchy. In today’s society, though there is less blatant racism, that Othering permeates society unconsciously, viewing Asians as out-of-place challengers of the White spaces they inhabit. Even we Asians accept Whiteness as the standard, but it is time we reexamine the history of White jurisdiction and our conscious and unconscious views of belonging. As Choy says, “What is good—as in those ‘good ol’ days’—depends on who is telling the story.”

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RRR, an Indian movie made in the Telugu language about the harms of colonization, made history at the 2023 Oscars. This movie is set in the 1920s, featuring two men who leave their families to fight against British oppression, one of which is fighting to save a little girl who was kidnapped by the British because of her musical talent. Throughout the film, we see her forced to sing for the British against her will.

Considering the themes of this film, the outrage caused by the lack of Indian dancers at RRR’s Oscar performance is unsurprising. Many were extremely excited to see a musical number performed at the Oscars. It was an opportunity to increase representation and share Indian culture. However, many of the dancers who performed were White, and none were of Indian descent. It seems that the Oscars may have overlooked the meaning behind the upbeat song. 

Originally, the two lead actors and dancers in the movie, N.T Rama Rao and Ram Charan, were asked to perform at the Oscars. However, according to the LA Times, both actors declined due to time constraints. The Oscars were originally planning to have at least two Indian actors in the performance. However, after Rama Rao and Charan declined, there was not an effort to find talented Indian dancers, of which there are many, to dance in the performance.

RRR winning the Oscar for Best Original Song is a cause for celebration. Indian creatives were recognized for their amazing work and given the spotlight at one of the most televised events in the world. But it is questionable how far we have truly come when Indian dancers are not represented on the stage. CBS interviewed Shivani Reddy, a Telugu American film and TV critic, about the lack of Indian representation and the backlash the Oscars faced after the performance. He commented, “It just felt very exclusionary that the one race they didn’t include was the one that was supposed to be represented because of the film and where it’s from. It’s unfortunate because there are so many South Asian dancers that I know that are in the industry trying to get into those spaces that just don’t get afforded those opportunities. And for the one time that we maybe could have gotten access, we were denied.” Joya Kazi, in an interview with CBS, explained that she had been submitted for consideration to either dance in or be part of the production team for the Naatu Naatu performance, but was denied by NappyTabs, the non Indian choreographers, because they wanted to only work with dancers they had worked with before. She explains that the Oscars and the choreographers “completely failed to acknowledge the fact that they left out people of India, in trying to make this feel like it was like a global performance.”

 Cultural appropriation versus appreciation has been an important topic especially in the last decade, and the lack of Indian dancers in the Naatu Naatu performance questions whether or not Indian culture will be continued to be taken by others to use for profit. The idea of making Naatu Naatu a global performance without including the people from whom the dance originated warns against the taking of culture for the entertainment of others.

It is important to consider the historical context that has shaped this single moment in 2023. So much wealth and culture was stolen from Indians during the colonialist rule of the British Empire. This is why it was crucial to have Indian dancers on that stage, instead of having non Indian dancers perform someone else’s culture. In the future, as foreign films become more popular, it will be interesting to see who gets the credit and the profit.

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Welcomed by the zebra-patterned wallpaper background of novelist Zaina Arafat’s Zoom screen, I began my conversation with the renowned writer with one very pressing question: “If you could be the face of any brand, what brand would you choose?” 

My witty question (at least, I thought so), earned a quick chuckle from the author and a murmur of approval before she went silent for several minutes, fully in deliberation of my question. She closed her eyes for a few moments, before confiding in me that the question had been harder than she’d expected. Yet, not one to give up, she finally landed on an endorsement deal with her local bookstore, Books Are Magic, in Brooklyn NYC – a fitting one, as many copies of her book grace their shelves – and reaffirmed her belief in the power of bookstores.  

Zaina Arafat is the author of the novel, You Exist Too Much, named one of Roxanne Gay’s favorite books of 2020, and the winner of the 2021 Lambda literary award. But despite this impressive list of journalistic credentials, she didn’t mind when I bombarded her, one after the other, with questions about her novel. When asked what inspired her to take up what many consider the laborious work of writing the aforementioned novel, she said, “I think the book was something that had always been brewing inside of me. I often describe it as a six year surgery, in which a book was extracted from inside of me… But the moment I really started to write it was when I was home on New Year’s Eve, one year. I had just had a rough few months, and I was in bed, with a sprained neck, feeling down, when I woke up on new year’s day, and wrote the first sentence… and then I just went from there, and wrote the first chapter, and then just continued and continued, until I had a first draft a few months later, and then just spent the next five years editing it out until it was finished.” 

Zaina, to her credit, seems like the kind of person who’s always doing something. Having given birth just four months ago, she’s kept herself busy, traveling overseas and promoting her book through talks all across America. She even let me in on some exciting new projects she’s been working on, like a possible film adaptation for You Exist Too Much. When asked who she would cast for the roles, she reiterated her desire of having an Arab actress play the lead, and the importance of visible representation in media. She said, “There’s this actress on The L Word, who’s Iranian, and her name is Sepideh Moafi. I’ve connected with her, and it would be great if she wanted to play the role of my lead.” For some of the other characters, Zaina chose fan favorites, like Pedro Pascal, to play the role of the heroine’s Argentine lover, and a possible Peneolope Cruz casting for the role of the mother. These castings excited the avid pop-culture lover in me, and only made me more galvanized to see what is sure to be an incredible story on the silver screen. 

You Exist Too Much, while being a story about the messiness of finding your identity in a world that would rather conform its inhabitants to the expectations of society, is also a love story about a mother and a daughter. I was especially curious to learn more on how the author navigated writing about the immigrant parent-child dynamic, as most of its representation in the media is fraught with negative stereotypes that portray immigrant parents as cold-hearted and cruel, rather than nuanced and complicated. Zaina answered, “There are a lot of stereotypes, but I do think they come from somewhere. For example, my mom has an entirely different set of expectations, experiences, and cultural norms than I do, because she grew up [in Palestine], and I grew up here. So to sort of understand and communicate between the generations, requires communication, and recognizing that those differences are not necessarily a bad thing… which is why it was really important for me to have this one chapter in the book, that was told entirely from the mother’s perspective, to take away that idea of the angry, homophobic, immigrant mom, and sort of show her humanity, and her experiences of growing up under occupation, and being brought to a country she didn’t want to come to.”

Being on the cusp of May, AAPI Heritage Month, our conversation also circled around the diverse number of ethnicities within the community, and what different ways the AAPI diaspora can combat limiting stereotypes of what being an Asian American really means. In response to the topic in-hand, Zaina highlighted her experience as the Asian American Communities coordinator at the Asian Americans Writer’s workshop, where her job was to bring various writers from Asian and Middle Eastern (a group not often considered Asian American within Western media) communities together. She said, “Creating that space for the vast amount of voices in the AAPI diaspora was something that I really wanted to do as an editor, when I worked for the Asian Americans Writers Workshop. It was there that I really worked to solidify the diaspora, and create a platform to elevate those voices. So yes, I feel that there is space for many voices within the community, but I also feel that we have to collectively keep creating that space for each other.”

My conversation with the incredibly intelligent and eloquent Zaina Arafat was a forty minute lesson in navigating difficult topics, through understanding and humor. Before Zaina left the cozy box of my Zoom window, I asked her one final question: “Are there any projects you’ve been working on?” Lucky for all of us, she revealed that she was working on a second novel that explores Arab immigrant communities that live in France. She said, “There’s a lot of anti-immigrant sentiment [in France], so I’ve been exploring this fictional family that’s living there, that is originally Palestinian, and what their experience living there is like, in the height of such… tensions.” 

You can find all things Zaina Arafat at zainaarafat.com. You Exist Too Much is on sale at Amazon, and anywhere you can find books. 

Zaina Arafat | Barnard College. https://barnard.edu/profiles/zaina-arafat. Accessed 30 Apr. 2023.

The post Zaina Arafat: A conversation about Stereotypes, Asianess, and Everything in Between first appeared on Hear Our Voices Magazine.

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Last Night at the Telegraph Club by Malinda Lo is a heartwarming novel that takes place in the 1950s. The story follows the experiences of Lily Hu, a 17-year-old girl who undergoes self-discovery and acceptance, despite living in a period of time that was significantly less accepting in terms of identity. As she begins to struggle more with her identity, Lily finds herself enraptured by a nightclub called the Telegraph Club.

The plot starts with Lily encountering a fellow classmate – Kath, who she realizes she is attracted to. Through struggling with the feelings she has for Kath, Lily undergoes and attempts to explore her identity further as an individual living in an unaccepting society. When her friend, Shirley, suggests to Lily that she stay away from Kath, she realizes the biases and expectations of the society around her. While trying to navigate her identity as a person that is a part of the LGBTQ+ community, Lily must also face the expectations set for her by her Chinese family. When Shirley witnesses Lily leaving the Telegraph Club, both she and Lily’s mother believe that it is a mere mistake and that Lily’s sexuality is something that can be “fixed.” 

As she dives deeper into the world of social justice, she comes to realize the discrimination she encounters and how it affects members of the community. After Lily’s father refuses to say that one of his patients is a Communist, his citizenship is revoked by the FBI. Later on in the novel, Kath is arrested after being seen in the Telegraph Club. Both of these situations highlight the horrifying lengths and effects societal pressures can have on a person, which reflects the novel’s emphasis on stereotypes towards marginalized groups of people. Lily’s identity as a lesbian Chinese woman highlights the intersectionality of identity, and how that creates a unique experience of oppression as a queer person of color.

Lo successfully executes a beautiful, yet adventurous story through her usage of imagery, as well as thoughtful diction to describe each and every intricate moment that Lily experiences. To see the exploration of her resistance in a heterosexual-dominated world is inspiring and interesting to read. By providing an introspective and insightful perspective to her writing, Lo centers on the complex journey behind discovering and finding oneself both culturally and in society. While on her path of discovering herself, she weaves her way through the stigma placed on LGBTQ+ people and at the same time, balance conforming to the “norm.”  

Lily’s experience demonstrates something that many queer people, especially queer youth, go through – navigating identity and coming to terms with self-awareness and self-acceptance. Diving deeper into Last Night at the Telegraph Club, readers may come to realize the harsh, yet accurate reality Lily lives in. As the novel continues, she goes farther into a world she has never experienced – one filled with fear, but also a surprising feeling of belonging. 

The post Last Night At The Telegraph Club: A Doorway To the 20th Century first appeared on Hear Our Voices Magazine.

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Due to the way that society, specifically White men, perceives my ethnic identity, I feel like a foreign creature who does not belong in my predominantly White community. People are more likely to be stereotyped, oppressed, and defined, based on not just one, but the combination of multiple aspects of their identity. Women of color do not have the privilege of being just a woman or just a person of color. In the workplace and in social settings, women of color are more susceptible to sexual and racial harassment due to a legacy of fetishization and misrepresentation. Our experiences entail being underpaid, taken advantage of, abused, and demeaned physically and emotionally. This harassment isolates us from the rest of society and causes deep discomfort. 

Asian women endure certain stereotypes that provide a clear link to violence and harassment. Between 2020 and 2021, Stop AAPI Hate, a database created to track anti-Asian violence, received 3,795 reports of anti-Asian discrimination. The most striking statistic is that Asian women reported these hate incidents 2.3 times more often than men. This plague of violence results from common stereotypes of Asian women including being quiet, slender, exotic, and docile. Asian women are seen as objects of desire, wielding a dangerous foreign sexuality. Through various historical precedents from immigration restrictions and United States military presence in Asia to Hollywood films and the model minority myth, Asian women are simultaneously hated and desired. 

This is demonstrated in two dominant tropes of Asian women: the Dragon Lady and the Lotus Blossom. The Lotus Blossom depicts Asian women as submissive, sexually subservient, feminine, and meek. An example is Anna Mae Wong, the first Chinese American film star in Hollywood who was always cast as a disposable Asian love interest. In contrast, the Dragon Lady trope paints Asian women as deceitful, villainous, and cunning, using their sexuality as a means to manipulate others. Lucy Liu, a more modern Hollywood example, plays masculine, deceitful and violent roles. Misogyny, xenophobia and racism deeply intertwine to impact our real lives. 

My personal estrangement has been exacerbated by being not only brown and Asian but also a woman. According to societal standards, I am a submissive, sexual, and exotic woman. As a result, I live my life absorbing unwarranted, microaggressive comments from complete and total strangers. Examples include: “I have never seen anyone like you before,” and “You can not be from here,” and “Where are you really from.” It seems like they never end. 

Since I was fourteen, I have been working in the service industry, in restaurants and ice cream shops. Sometimes I reflect on what this “service” actually entails. I take the phone calls, clean the floors, wait on tables, yet there always seems to be something more that I have to sacrifice. Am I supposed to giggle when I hand you your food and you grab my hand, just to feel my skin? Am I supposed to blush when men old enough to be my grandfathers tell me they wish I was older? Am I supposed to be grateful for the extra tips when I smile and bat my eyelashes like an object of your desires? 

In these moments, I want to be tiny, I wish myself into extinction, hoping to disappear little by little. I envy my male and/or White counterparts, who blend in so easily. I remember how I once aspired to have attention from men like that too. I thought I wanted to be admired, but admiration does not equal love. There is nothing loving about being admired by White men, as their affections are a product of colonialism, occupation, and a bloody history of sexual violence towards Asian women. 

Exotic is not a compliment. 

I do not want to be the desired object of control, to be dominated, to possess no power. 

When I was younger, the only representation of people who looked like me on television and in the media were Disney princesses. I relied on representation, not of my Indian identity and heritage, but simply of someone with brown skin. I found comfort in Jasmine (the Middle Eastern princess), Tiana (the Black princess), Pochahontas (the Native American princess), and eventually Moana (the Polynesian princess). This was my entire hometown’s only exposure to women of color. Because this community had no grasp on my culture, I was always compared to these princesses. When people discussed my ethnicity, it was always which one of these princesses I looked like, because these were the only ways they knew how to categorize and understand me. Asian women are more vulnerable to violence and oppression, due to stereotypes and false ideas constricting our complex identities. 

We, Asian women, will not be denied our humanity, and deserve to be seen as individuals with our own hopes and dreams. It exhausts me to fight against these stereotypes and assert my own identity. And though I can not control how other people view me, I venture forward using my voice and story to fight the silencing of Asian women. 

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When I was in 6th grade, I had two seat partners in my table group. We were all acquaintances, but I found myself teased by them more often than not — though, as a naive 11 year old, I couldn’t really recognize that. One day during class they tapped my shoulder and told me they’d come up with a new nickname for me — I thought it harmless and wanted to hear. “Kim Jong Un,” they’d said, giggling. At the time I had no idea who that was, and figured that it was just another “joke,” akin to the attempts others had made in the past to speak the language I spoke at home, akin to the attempts others made to simulate my smaller eyes and crooked front teeth.

I often leave it at this and tell this story as an innocent, funny thing, but it also serves as a great opportunity for opening a larger can of worms. It’s hard to equate a microaggression to someone calling you a slur or physically assaulting you for your race, but it all largely comes from the same place.

Why were White kids pulling their eyes back and saying “ching chong” in the first place? At school, in the playground? Why did they hold their noses when I took out dumplings from my lunchbox? Why did they say they didn’t want to play with “people like me?” I mentioned that “as a naive 11 year old, I couldn’t really recognize [that I was being teased].” The same logic applied to the offenders. The idea of blaming age for misgivings and equating youth to irresponsibility and insensitivity is a passing thought for most — because children grow up, right?

When we’re younger we don’t truly understand the weight of our actions. I used that as an excuse for the longest time. Yet, even when my laughter started to die down, the stereotyping, the name-calling, the microaggressions didn’t — they evolved to something bigger, something larger than the schoolyard, something seemingly larger than myself. Suddenly instead of finding myself the butt of “all Asians are smart” jokes, instead of witnessing my classmates perpetuating a poorly executed racist caricature of my mother with an accent she didn’t have, I was watching the news of a new racially-motivated attack in New York, Chicago, Georgia,Monterey Park , listening to Fox News make fun of Asian elders in interviews they couldn’t understand, hearing  another wayward White politician demonizing my ethnicity, calling us “bat eaters” and “enemies of America.”

No longer could I use the excuse of being too young in congruence to accept the seeming faultlessness of those that had made passes at my race. I was left with the gaping question: why does this happen?

Before I dive too deep, I want to ask you, the reader, a couple of questions about some historical events. Count on your fingers how many of these listed events and facts you know in some detail. Do you know about the Revolutionary War? Can you name at least five presidents from 1789 to 2009 and what they did? Does the Enlightenment sound familiar? The Industrial Revolution? The moon landing? Can you name at least three names on the Declaration of Independence? Do you know who wrote the Bill of Rights? Does Robert McNamara ring a bell? William Westmooreland?

Now, I want you to start over and count if you’ve heard of these events — no details needed, if you’ve either heard of them or just know them from passing conversation, I want you to count. Who knows about the Japanese internment camps during World War II? What about the ban on interracial marriage between Chinese and White Americans? What about the Chinese Exclusion Act? What about People v. Hall? Or the Alien Land Act? Does the name Vincent Chin ring a bell? The Delano Grape Strike? The Bellingham Riots? Who was Yuri Kochiyama? Ajay Bhatt? Chien Shung Wu?

I conducted a poll specifically targeting communities in which Asians were not the majority to better reflect the ratio of people of color versus white people in the United States. Over the course of three months I selected a sample of 100 students from my old school, a predominantly White institution, and interviewed them about Asian American historical events.

Out of the selected population, 97 knew about the Japanese internment camps that were held during World War II, the best statistic by miles. Only 23 knew of the ban on interracial marriage between Chinese people and White Americans during 1850 until 1950; 20 recognized the Chinese Exclusion Act, prohibiting the recruitment of laborers from “China, Japan or any Oriental country” who were not brought to the United States of their own will or who were brought for “lewd and immoral purposes”; 4 vaguely recognized People v. Hall, a defining court case in 1854 which ruled that Chinese people couldn’t testify against white defendants, and 2 could loosely recall California’s Alien Land Act, a bill passed in 1913 that prohibited Japanese Americans from owning agricultural land and limited their lease term to three years.

What scared me the most about this census was that nobody knew of the killing of Vincent Chin in 1982, a testament to the consequence-free killing of Asians during this time. Not a single person had heard of the Delano Grape Strike, a predominantly Filipino workers’ strike for better wages and more rights, or the Bellingham Riots, when the predominantly white Asiatic Exclusion League attacked the homes of South Asian Indian immigrants in an effort to drive them from the workforce. And Yuri Kochiyama, a revolutionary Japanese American activist that fought tirelessly for the rights of minorities within the U.S. following World War II, Ajay Bhatt, an Indian American computer scientist who helped develop the USB among other modern technological advances, and Chien Shung Wu, a Chinese physicist who was instrumental in the Manhattan Project — they might as well have been the names of strangers.

And of the 100 people I interviewed, two of them were the same classmates that had called me “Kim Jong Un” in 6th grade, and still recognized me by that moniker when I approached them nearly 6 years later. Both White boys, they didn’t recognize any of the aforementioned events, save for the internment of Japanese people during World War II, to which they responded with a casual “Oh yeah, that,” and “I guess,” and didn’t elaborate further when I asked them if they knew any details.

This doesn’t even begin to scratch the surface of the damage done. Beyond stereotypes, beyond violence, a more personal issue that many Asian people experience as a result of this lack of information about ourselves in society is displacement, that feeling of not belonging as ourselves, as Americans that so happen to be Asian. 

Cathy Park Hong best describes the effects of a lack of history about Asian American people in her book Minor Feelings. She dissects the imbalance between the presence of Asian American history versus White history in the U.S., and in turn how it affects the relationship between these people in society. 

Patiently educating a clueless white person about race is draining. It takes all your powers of persuasion. Because it’s more than a chat about race. It’s ontological. It’s like explaining to a person why you exist, or why you feel pain, or why your reality is distinct from their reality. Except it’s even trickier than that. Because the person has all of Western history, politics, literature, and mass culture on their side, proving that you don’t exist. (Park Hong, 153)

And this is no new thing — even on a systemic level, we have long been the target of harmful stereotypes that curate an image of us that panders to what people want to see. It didn’t stop at the Chinese Exclusion Act, a ten year moratorium on Chinese migrants put into law because of the insinuation that the only other purpose for our immigration other than being brought over not of our own will was sex work.We were also called the Yellow Peril, a wave of immigrants deemed unfit to live in the country because we were “dirty.” And in the early 20th century, American officials in the Philippines, then a formal colony of the U.S., denigrated Filipinos for their supposedly unclean and uncivilized bodies. Colonial officers and doctors identified two enemies: Filipino insurgents against American rule, and the“tropical diseases” festering in their native bodies with no evidence behind the accusation. By pointing to Filipinos’ supposed political and medical unruliness, these officials justified continued U.S. colonial rule in the islands. This ruling’s message spread to San Francisco, a place with a dense Filipino population, and the rate of violent hate crimes against Asians spiked in the area.

So when Asian Americans in the present are faced with a lack of information about the truth in our history, and when Western society dictates what we should be — when we are surrounded by a setting that forces us to conform to some stereotype — this pressures us to fall in place under  some paradigm to be accepted. And that feeds the fire for others to create more false images of our race — that we’re subservient and nice and submissive under the hand of a “mightier” White society, that we’re the “best” of minorities because we take what is thrown at us. 

These interpretations of us place targets on our backs. But even after all this, we find that we can’t fight back. Because there is no middle ground for us to stand on — there is no history of Asian Americans, only the history of Asians, and the history of White Americans. So we’re faced with the question of what we would rather do: assimilate, take the stereotypes that are shoved down our throats,  embody the image of what America wants us to be? r be Asian in America, a symbol of defiance against the system, and take the inevitable punches as they roll?

Should we wait for another hate crime to be inflicted upon us, another shooting, another slur, another wave of anti-Asian sentiment to wash over our communities when a new variant of Covid is announced in the news? Should I wait for these two boys from my old school, just on the cusp of being adults, to one day magically wake up and realize that I’m not even Korean, never mind that calling me the name of a genocidal dictator is beyond insensitive? Should I forget what connects me to the country where I can see and speak with people that love me as I am, just to be  accepted in a society that has no concern for me as a person, only valuing me as an ideal, an image, a paradigm?

Even now, I wonder when the peril will end, if the so-called “justice” of earning the respect that we intrinsically deserve as people will ever come. Change is happening, that I know, but the situation leaves much room to speculate if any action my community takes in reform will ever be enough.

The post The Asian in America: a Paradigm Social Construct first appeared on Hear Our Voices Magazine.

The post The Asian in America: a Paradigm Social Construct appeared first on Hear Our Voices Magazine.

Context

The Southern Pacific Railroad began construction in 1869, entering the Arizona border in 1877. The railroad years saw the highest population of Arizona Chinese in the late 19^th century. From an initial interpretation of American race relations, it appears that the Chinese escaped overt racist treatment in this region by uniting their communities and finding success in certain businesses which eventually dominated the local economy. A closer look reveals that the Chinese only advanced in a narrow, nonthreatening field that almost entirely benefitted the White community, questioning the coincidences of Chinese employment. When Chinese sought higher paying, widely desired careers in mining, they faced exclusion and were eventually pushed out from the industry to leave jobs for Whites. I argue that the Chinese did not flourish in their niche market of restaurants, groceries, and laundromats in spite of discrimination, but rather that Whites forced them into those careers, which simultaneously benefitted White Arizonans and protected White employment.

Immigration to Arizona

Many of the first Chinese in the Southwest were sojourners: men who immigrated for solely economic opportunity, not for permanent settlement in the U.S. They came alone, saving their money to eventually return to China and support families there. This identity was crucial to their reception and treatment throughout their history in Arizona, which we will examine later in the context of Arizona race relations.

Chinese relationships were crucial to immigration patterns; they determined settlement locations and ensured economic support for Chinese-owned businesses. When the first Chinese businesses opened, they were almost exclusively patronized by other Chinese. These businesses were frequently farms, grocery stores, and restaurants; Chinese farmers dealt in primarily produce – fresh harvest. Before the Chinese, most American farmers were grain farmers, so the emergence of vegetable farms was a welcome development in the Southwest. However, the tolerance, even eagerness, of White Arizonans to support Chinese agricultural commerce despite their own inactivity in the market foreshadows a long-term manipulation of Chinese labor for Whites’ benefit. Chinese dominance in these industries is not a product of their luck in a random career, but rather the effect of deliberate White attempts to protect the most lucrative jobs for themselves.

The White Response

As historian Beth Lew-Williams argues in her seminal novel, The Chinese Must Go: The Making of the Alien in America, “When we use Black oppression and Indian extermination to define racial violence, Chinese expulsions seem [un]significant, or even more accurately, they appear not to be violence at all.” And while this is true – White Americans have always prioritized the suppression of Black and Native communities – the difference in treatment of Chinese Americans highlights nuances to their motivations and methods of removing Chinese from American society.

There are multiple examples of the explicit violence endured by the Chinese American community; White mobs seized by frenzy frequently went on mass lynchings of Chinese. In 1871, a Los Angeles massacre left 18 dead, while in 1880, angry Whites destroyed almost every Chinese house and business in the Denver area. However, Brent Campney’s thesis, Anti-Chinese Violence and International Diplomacy in the American West, argues that more often than not, Whites targeted Chinese through “subtler forces of coercion, harassment, and intimidation.” This was not a coincidence, though — Whites were not simply ignoring the Chinese in favor of targeting other minority communities. There was undoubtedly an underlying cause which encouraged Americans to avoid such distinct violence: trade relations with China. Beginning in 1899, the “open door” policy of equal trading rights with China between Japan, the United States, and several European powers marked a new age of commerce with the East. The United States hoped to utilize this new market for its full potential for export profit.

Foreign governments possessed a large influence over incidents of violence against Chinese Americans, putting pressure on American officials to constrain their citizens. Campney explains that America’s desire to remain favorable to the Chinese government was so public that even “’ordinary whites’ understood, at least in some vague sense, the importance of international trade with a weak but immense China.” The Chinese government was also active in ensuring their citizens would not be attacked without consequence. Whites understood that Chinese leaders could investigate acts of brutality against their nationals and covertly retaliate, putting the security of the U.S. government at risk. Therefore, Chinese diplomatic interference stifled a significant amount of anti-Chinese mob violence and “forced [Whites] to ‘choose’ the ‘subtler’ acts of violence against this minority rather than those employed against others.” In fact, the opinion of the U.S. government can be summarized in the following excerpt from an 1886 issue of The Tombstone Daily Epitaph.

It will need the best efforts of our greatest minds to pilot us safely through the dangers that now threaten. Meantime, it will be well for communities throughout the country, to act with caution and avoid throwing unnecessary difficulties in the way of the national government.

The United States’ foreign relations at this time draws a similarity to its inhabitants’ view of Chinese Americans. The U.S. feared China and its capacity to complicate policy in the case of violence against Chinese Americans, yet still hoped to use China for its ability to bolster American markets. Likewise, White Americans feared Chinese immigrants who had integrated into society – for stealing their jobs, for threatening White homogeneity, simply for being unknown. But that fear did not stop Whites from exploiting Chinese businesses and benefiting greatly from their labor.

For early Arizona Territory, there were few industries as profitable and competitive as mining. Before colonization of the area, Native Hohokam, Ancestral Puebloan, and Mogollon peoples mined copper and silver, turquoise, and other gems and metals. In the 1880s, as construction of the two transcontinental railroads finished, thousands of rich silver mines were discovered throughout the territory, sparking a huge boom of exploration and migration to mine the deposits. 

Evidently, mining held a unique potential for wealth. Chinese Arizonans, newly unemployed after the completion of both the Union Pacific and Central Pacific railroads, faced strong exclusion when attempting to find work in the mines. Those who did saw segregated labor, relegating the least favorable tasks to nonwhite miners. Companies placed the Chinese in positions where they would complete work “even Mexicans cannot be got to do,” allowing only their workers of color to suffer through the worst conditions. They became “muckers,” removing debris on the floor of the mines as White workers broke the rocks overhead. Others cleaned out the latrines. Eventually, most Chinese left for better treatment, but just as in the mining industry, when Chinese sought jobs in other sectors of the economy, the only work they could find was in labor that Whites could exploit.

The most popular Chinese-owned businesses in Arizona were restaurants. The cuisines varied by location, but most served American-style food to cater to the larger Arizonan population. These businesses faced little white competition, and “despite racial prejudices, most people found the best restaurants were always Chinese-owned.32” While complaints and threats were frequent, Chinese restaurant owners experienced nowhere near the levels of open disdain, humiliation, and near abuse Whites directed at Chinese miners. Indeed, “The Phoenix Gazette frequently bemoaned the fact that the Chinese controlled the laundry, restaurant, and vegetable gardening businesses, but no one apparently cared to open competing businesses” (Murray and Solliday).

It can be inferred that the primary reason for White “indifference” toward these domestic industries was the realization that Whites could take advantage of immigrant shops. Often, prices were cheaper at Chinese-owned stores, and Chinese shopkeepers did not question their White patrons. Chinese businesses were beneficial to Whites; there was little motivation to run them out of town. Also, “meek” Chinese jobs dealing in food and clothing services did not threaten the employment and wages of Whites, who did not seek work in these fields.

While the Chinese could not break into more competitive industries, they could find employment in businesses that enforced the economic and racial hierarchies of Arizona. Whites disguised their exploitation of Chinese families as encouragement for domestic careers, but in reality, they simply did not want Chinese to “take” their jobs. We often think of Chinese groceries, laundromats, and restaurants as symbols of resistance against discrimination and exclusion. But they are not — they are symbols of white supremacy in effect.

Conclusion

For Chinese Arizonans, the experience of racism could have undoubtedly been much worse. Compared to the extreme hostility and open violence the Chinese experienced in Mexico, the subtler forms of ostracism in Arizona — excluding Chinese from better pay, closing Chinese businesses, frequent journalistic attacks on the community — question the motivations behind American “restraint.”

The commodity of Chinese labor limited the productivity of explicit violence, or even murder. Chinese were most acceptable when they were serving Whites, no matter if it was the cheap diner food Chinese Americans readily offered to Whites or the potential to grow the United States’ global influence through foreign trade with China itself. Sojourners were so disliked because they showed little reverence for White American society. These were the Chinese who dared to use the American economy for their own benefit with no intent of adopting Whiteness or American tradition.

Perhaps it was White insecurity or fear which incentivized them to corral the Chinese into a non threatening sphere of “docile domestic [servitude]” (Bloch and Ortoll), or perhaps entitlement and a long-standing tradition of nativism. Regardless, it is important that we reexamine the lens through which we analyze early Chinese conduct in the U.S. We must account for the societal power that White Americans possessed, despite their immense self-control in not executing mass killings of Chinese. The so-called tolerance for the Chinese was a strategic choice, one which kept the Chinese in a permanent position of subservience and Whites in a position to further exploit.

The post A History of Early Chinese Immigration in 19th Century Arizona first appeared on Hear Our Voices Magazine.

The post A History of Early Chinese Immigration in 19th Century Arizona appeared first on Hear Our Voices Magazine.

Education has never been a simple social process; it has never been just about sending one’s kids to school for the day, or picking up the skills to make one good at work. Education has always been about self-affirmation and enlightenment through the proliferation of new ideas and cultures. 

         This year, as we celebrate the 31st Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month since its establishment in 1992, we must remember the great struggles of Asians in America. They have been marginalized, discriminated against, and ignored. Yet despite the odds, the Asian-American community finds itself stronger than ever. Asian-Americans are now found at the highest peaks of political, economic, and cultural power across the country. I believe there is no better time than now for Asian-American youth to affirm themselves by having the study of Asian-American history officially codified in an AP Asian-American Studies class in our high schools.

 Forgive the name; I am well aware that many histories, cultures, and religions fall under the umbrella of “Asian-American.” It is a rudimentary framework that will expand over time, perhaps branching into “Chinese-American Studies” or “Indian-American Studies.” What such a class would look like! The lives of Hawaiians, contemporary and past; the strife and success of recent Asian-American immigrants in the 60’s; and modern Asian-American advocacy groups could all be topics of discussion. The very intent of this month, to honor those Asian-Americans who contributed to the fabric of this country, can be made whole in this class. We may remember individuals like Jeanie Jew, Norman Mineta, Spark Matsunaga, and Daniel Inouye, who made Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month a reality. Or Larry Itliong, a Filipino farm worker who unionized California farm workers and helped found the United Farm Workers union. We may remind ourselves just how integrated Asian-Americans are with the history of the United States by eulogizing John Tomney, a Chinese-American Union soldier who died at the Battle of Gettysburg in 1863.

 However, it is important to remember that this class is more than intellectual exercise, personal validation, or Asian-American self-affirmation. Sadly, hate against the Asian-American community continues to plague the country, with hate crimes against Asian-Americans spiking dramatically in recent years. Violence against Asian-Americans has many causes, among them misunderstanding, racism, and jealousy; but fortunately, these can all be mitigated through education. Research from Harvard has shown that just a 5-day civic learning seminar was enough to instill greater “tolerance for others with different views” among high schoolers. Imagine, now, what a full, 38-week semester of education could achieve.

 It is the opportunity to move toward acceptance and understanding among the budding members of our society, and the opportunity for Asian-Americans to reclaim their history, that I believe makes the idea of Asian-American Studies in American high schools such an exciting and hopeful prospect.

The post Op-Ed: It’s Time for Advanced Placement Asian American Studies first appeared on Hear Our Voices Magazine.

The post Op-Ed: It’s Time for Advanced Placement Asian American Studies appeared first on Hear Our Voices Magazine.

Rebecca F. Kuang is a Chinese American writer who has recently wowed audiences with her novels. Kuang graduated with a Mcphil in Chinese studies from Cambridge and an MSc in Contemporary Chinese Studies from Oxford. While continuing her writing, she is currently pursuing a PHD at Yale in East Asian Studies and Literature. Her newest novel, Yellowface, is set to come out on May 16th. In anticipation of Yellowface, we are taking a look at her past works.

The Poppy War Trilogy

The Poppy War Trilogy combines magical realism with the history of the Opium Wars to draw you into the characters’ adventures while also critiquing colonialism and war. The first book begins with a young girl named Fang Runin, also known as Rin, studying to gain admission to an elite boarding school against all odds. However, Rin does not get to remain a student for long. War breaks out, and Rin is forced to make devastating choices and face horrible losses as she fights for what she thinks is right.

Many in Rin’s country are addicted to opium, referencing the mid-19th century Opium Wars between China and Britain, and later France. In the 16th century, the British wanted to import many Chinese goods, but China had no interest in British exports. The British no longer wanted to abide by China’s trading rules, so they smuggled opium into China to addict the Chinese, forcing them to continue purchasing opium from Great Britain. This led to two Opium Wars, between 1839-1842 and 1856-1860.

Kuang’s Poppy War Trilogy proposes great commentary on both the physical and psychological trauma caused by warfare, the power of connecting to culture, and the dangerous and misguided thinking of colonialist powers.

I would recommend these books to anyone who loves great characters, military strategy, and cool magic in their novels. This trilogy does a great job of creating an immersive world that also incorporates historical influence!

Babel: An Arcane History

Babel: An Arcane History, is set at Oxford University in London. Robin, an orphan from Canton, is admitted to Oxford University’s translation department along with three other students, all who are fluent in two or more languages. Babel, the translation department, upholds all of London. Its infrastructure is completely powered on translation instead of electricity. 

Robin and the other main characters are forced to come to terms with the fact that they are helping to uphold a colonialist empire as they notice the cracks in the environment around them and come into contact with a rebel group. Babel is filled with rebellion, friendship, colonialist critique, and the daunting events that follow when someone chooses being complacent to an imperialist empire over the friends they love. Kuang continues her historical commentary from the Poppy War Trilogy, weaving in aspects of the Opium Wars. 

I would recommend this novel to anyone who loves magical realism, political commentary, and books set in academia. I learned a lot from Babel about the power of language and empathy.

Looking forward to Yellowface

R.F Kuang’s new novel Yellowface, departs from her previous genre of magical realism. This novel will be set in the literary sphere, in which the main character June steals her recently deceased friend Athena’s manuscript to publish herself. I am excited to see what R.F Kuang’s new satirical approach brings to Yellowface –  if it is anything like her other novels, I know it’ll be a wild ride!

You can purchase Yellowface and R. F. Kuang’s other works here.

The post Looking Forward To Yellowface by R.F Kuang first appeared on Hear Our Voices Magazine.

The post Looking Forward To Yellowface by R.F Kuang appeared first on Hear Our Voices Magazine.