not sure of the context, but Yuri Kochiyama posing with hella stuffed animals makes me feel better about my life.
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@goldbookclub
not sure of the context, but Yuri Kochiyama posing with hella stuffed animals makes me feel better about my life.
K-Bears!
Struggles
Dearest friends,
Struggles with our bookclub yo! I've bought more books than I've posted (5, specifically. Ok 4 not counting Life of Pi which I got at East Wind Books and is A/PI but not feminist). I promise that after this week when I'm back in Sacramento and FUNemployed that I'll finished Yuri's memoir and post lots and lots. For now, I leave you all with GLB's quote from Hyphen (you two have probably already read it because you're cool like that) :
We are no longer drifting toward catastrophe. All over the world and especially in the US, people are reimagining what it means to be a human being and how we know reality, evolution, work and education. It is a wonderful time to be alive! ~ Grace Lee Boggs
Positivity and love!
Also, negatively related.. I've been moseying around some other tumblrs lately (specifically "ThisisnotJapan" and "ewwhitegirls") and reading the horrible comments that anonymous people leave has been so upsetting. What is pretty incredible though is the fact that these anonymouses are spitting their hatred into the spaces created by POC & WOC specifically to fight back. Interesting times.
But anyways, let's get dinner in SF! I'm moving out of East Bay tomorrow (Wednesday) and I'll be in Sunnyvale visiting my sister for a day or so. I can definitely stop back in the City before going back to Sac, juuuuust sayin.
This expectation for Asian American artists to represent one’s community “positively” at the expense of an expansive and complicated portrayal — the “burden of representation” — is something that Parreñas-Shimizu feels strongly about. “The demand to make films that represent your community does an injustice to the actual work the filmmakers are trying to do,” Parreñas-Shimizu says. “You can’t film an idea. You have to film very concrete things, a very concrete person who’s going through some kind of dilemma. This person may not be a positive person. I’m thinking of the work of Quentin Lee’s Ethan Mao, which features a character who’s bullied and silenced by his own father for his sexuality, and then wields a gun against his own family. I think it’s a story worth telling. But once you make the demands of, ‘Is this the kind of visibility we want?’ it can be unfair to the goals of the filmmaker, which is to tell stories that help make spaces for these people.” At the same time, Parreñas-Shimizu understands and feels the importance of Asian Americans wanting to see themselves in a way that hasn’t been seen before. This is why she was instantly mesmerized by the breakout of NBA player Jeremy Lin, whose sudden emergence was coined “Linsanity.” “It’s interesting to watch all the cameras look for Asians in the audience, but Asians have always been there,” insists Parreñas-Shimizu, a long-time fan of sports teams from her hometown of Boston. “Participation in sports is itself an assertion of citizenship and belonging. For me, being a Filipina immigrant in Boston and just loving the Celtics and basketball, I remember loving that school was canceled because the Celtics won the NBA championship and you’re part of that group in the subway going to the celebration…But yeah, you see that hunger. I know that hunger. It’s painful.” But the medicine that so many Asian American men use to heal that pain — what Parreñas-Shimizu calls a “phallic masculinity,” or what other scholars call a “hegemonic masculinity” — only hurts others in the process. “I think it’s very easy to define masculinity in terms of the hero who saves the day and beats everyone up and sleeps with a ton of women. So if you define masculinity in that way, the Asian American man has to fall short. You’re still proposing a straitjacketed definition of what is gender and sexuality for Asian American men,” says Parreñas-Shimizu. “I want to open up a world where someone like William Hung can be sexy! And the thing is, people did find him sexy! He got marriage proposals! So if we look at masculinity, and what people want from it, it reveals that there’s something very limited in that kind of phallic masculinity. It’s not really good for people.” That tension between the desire for national recognition and the danger in subscribing to a phallic masculinity (which undergirds the nation) is what drove Parreñas-Shimizu to unearth the vast filmic repertoire of Asian American masculinities. “After I toured for two years for my first book, people kept asking, ‘Now that you’ve proven the hypersexuality of Asian American women, what do you have to say about the asexuality of Asian American men?’ I thought, “We have to historicize it and see if that’s really what’s going on. Because if it’s true that Asian American men have only been seen as asexual and effeminate, then how do you make sense of Sessue Hayakawa or James Shigeta? These huge heartthrobs from almost 100 years ago, fifty years ago? So many women fainted at the sight of their sexiness and beauty. So we have to be very careful about creating that blanket statement.”
Terry K. Park’s interview with Dr. Celine Parreñas-Shimizu about her creative life, her scholarship, and her latest book, Straitjacket Sexualities: Unbinding Asian American Manhoods in the Movies on the R today. (via racialicious)
YO. Kinda want to add this to our growing list too!
New favorite site? I think so!
Next, Next, Next, Next
Ladies! Just so we can keep track, here are the books we're thinking of reading next. Of course the order can change!
The Next American Revolution - Grace Lee Boggs
Asian American Dreams - Helen Zia
Yellow: Race In America Beyond Black & White - Frank Wu
Samurai Among Panthers - Diane C. Fujino
Am I missing anything?
Mothers, Daughters, Movements
I just finished the memoir too! Some quotes/thoughts that I found especially interesting/intriguing and would love to hear what you two think too!
I really enjoyed reading about her advocacy work with political prisoners. I knew about some of them, but not about most of them. It just shows how much of past and current history we still haven't learned about, no matter how "conscious" we are.
In the chapter about the Asian American Movement, I really liked the quote,
"Although the 1960s and 1970s were the spawning years of the Asian American movements, when seeds of political substance were sown, we will begin to see the new harvesting of the movement that is coming of age. I hope that the movement becomes more intertwined in working with other people of color and progressive whites. I also hope that the Asian American movements, with its many mutual objectives, becomes more international and supports liberation struggles around the world. We must be clear what we are struggling for and what we are struggling against. We must see that the struggle consists of both race and class, and work in concert with all those who are fighting for a more humane and just world. Long live the Asian American movement! Love live the Third World unity! Long live internationalism!"
In Appendix 8, in Yuri's article "Mother and Daughters," I thought it was interesting how she deals with "feminism" and Asian American women without specifically talking about "feminism". I found the last two paragraphs especially moving,
"As Asian women we have history we can be proud of. Our mothers and grandmothers were pioneers. They crossed an ocean, learned a foreign language, adjusted to a new culture. THey worked side by side with their husbands on plantations and farms; restaurants and laundries; sweatshops and vegetable stands; in fish canneries and domestic work. They helped create Chinatowns, Japantowns, Manilatowns, and now Koreatowns and Southeast Asian communities. Their children's education and children's future were their priority. They gave birth to a genration of Asian Americans.
The ball is now in the hands of the third, fourth, and fifth generation Asian Americans. Some may not have the physical characteristics of their foreparents, but some knowledge of their heritage is important. And as someone quoted as an advice to parents and teachers: "There are two things you can give to your children - roots and wings." ... a wise advice for mothers and daughters - Asian or otherwise. But the most important, I feel, is sowing the seeds of love and justice in fertile minds that its regenration can extinguish the continuous fires of greed and imperialist wars. Mothers and daughters united - may make a qualitative difference in this world of mushrooming uncertainties."
Have y'all heard of Pharrell's new YouTube channel "I AM OTHER"?? So in love with Pharrell and his trying to make new outlets for people of color and other people who don't "fit in" to mainstream media.
Anyway, this is one of the new features on the channel where Ryan Hall interviews random people on the streets of New York about "controversial" topics in American current events.
I am so in love with the approach, even though it still has its problems. But what do you think?
http://iamother.com/manifesto
How To Be A Reverse-Racist: An Actual Step by Step List For Oppressing White People
by A.D Song and Mia McKenzie
White people who are confronted with their white privilege and the white supremacist acts they perpetuate have been known to cry, “You’re being a reverse-racist!” That is completely true: people of color have the power and control to create, perpetuate, and maintain brutal systematic reverse-racism that oppresses white people every day. As such, we have created this handy list on how to continue this oppression.
1. Enslave their bodies.
Ship them from Germany, Sweden, and other exotic countries. Force them to build entire cities, roads, bridges. Force them to plant and harvest all the food everyone eats. Let an entire economic system be built on their backs, with their blood and sweat. Later, deny them access to the system they have been used to build, and accuse them of being extremely lazy.
2. Steal their land.
If they were here before you, steal their land. This is essential. Basically, just go in there and take it. If you have to kill some of them to get it…no worries. If you have to kill almost all of them to get it…shit, no worries. After you steal their land, make sure you create laws to keep them from ever returning to it. If they try to return anyway, build fences, and let bands of POC vigilantes patrol the borders with guns. If they somehow get past the borders and into your country, no worries, you can always just deport them.
3. Enslave their minds.
From these systems, build a long lasting institution of reverse-racism until all the violence and microaggressions make many white people into suspicious people with a lot of internalized self-hatred, health problems, and mental illnesses. Then deny them access to adequate mental health care. Or, adequate health care of any kind, while you’re at it. Cause, you know, fuck ‘em.
4. Wipe out and/or appropriate their customs.
Since many of their customs are savage and unworthy of preserving, wipe out their traditions of eating mashed potatoes and meatloaf, playing miniature golf, buying khakis at Banana Republic, and sleeping with thousand-count Egyptian cotton sheets. For the customs you think are kinda cool, culturally appropriate from them. Sometimes wear a beret and lederhosen, because Swedish culture is really exotic even though it’s inferior to ours.
5. Break their espresso machines.
With baseball bats or large hammers. Or, you know, just unplug them all.
6. Call them “cracker”.
As people of color, we have been rightfully accused of being racist to white people, especially when we call them “cracker”. As we all know, calling them “cracker” is egregiously offensive and horribly shocking because of this long, violent, reverse-racist history.
7. Just keep being terrible to them.
Do everything you can think of to make it so that white people make less money; their children are shot by cops; white women are at higher risk for assault and they are exotified until they no longer seem human; white men are beaten and thrown into jails because they look “suspicious” and “threatening”; they are racially profiled everywhere they go.
8. Make sure most representations of them in the media are negative.
They should almost always be portrayed as pasty, stringy-haired, rhythm-less, sexless, uptight, and booooring. Also, there should be very few representations of them and when they’re portrayed at all, they should always only be the comic relief, the silent exotic sex object, the Debbie Downer, or the incompetent sidekick. They are only allowed to be easily forgettable, one-dimensional character. Sometimes use POC actors in white-face to portray these white people. By presenting this ONE image of them all the time, you will be able to convince the rest of the population that all white people are like this, thus ensuring a widespread belief in their inferiority.
9. Keep telling them how beautiful they are not.
White people know they will never be beautiful with their boring sour cream complexions and blonde hair (that was actually caused because of mutations). Plaster people of color on every magazine, show them in every television show and movie, and praise them as the most beautiful. When white people cry at these injustices, bottle their tears and sell them as health creams for people of color. Nothing like a soothing lotion made from the pain of white folks!
10. Finally, force them underground to become even whiter, albino people while you laugh manically like the cruel, bloodthirsty, oppressive person of color you are. Take their thousand-count Egyptian cotton sheets to make POC-supremacist flags and hoods and march through the streets, spreading fear and terror. Every time a white person thinks your behavior is unfair or wrong, tell them that they should stop being so sensitive. We live in a post-reverse-racial society now. Jeez.
*Digging this blog? Support it and queer, trans*, and gender-non-conforming writers of color! We need you! Please go HERE!!
A.D Song was voted “most likely to be a bitter old cat queen who capitalizes on punching people in the face”. They is a glitter, floral, black pleather-wearing androgyne who experiences repeated hair woes. Ze are really into vegan food, DIY, glitter, combat boots. She is not interested in your racist, anti-trans*/anti-queer, transmisogynistic, white supremacist ideas; He is a highly allergic & will bite your head off. Fear the yellow peril.
*
Mia McKenzie is a writer and a smart, scrappy Philadelphian with a deep love of vegan pomegranate ice cream and fake fur collars. She is a black feminist and a freaking queer, facts that are often reflected in her writings, which have won her some awards and grants, such as the Astraea Foundation’s Writers Fund Award and the Leeway Foundation’s Transformation Award. She just finished a novel and has a short story forthcoming in The Kenyon Review. She is a nerd, and the creator of Black Girl Dangerous, a revolutionary blog.
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so much yes.
SLASH
my library still didn't get grace lee boggs book yet, so i am reading asian american dreams by helen zia for my next book! (i got it at the bookstore next to cafe de leche before finals and never got a chance to read it. UNTIL NOW.)
lemme know if you two wanna read too!
HEY FRIENDS!
so i am done with passing it on, and really really enjoyed the book! there was just one thing that i disagreed with. or maybe just don't see the same way she does? Yuri writes in, "My Creed...22," in the introduction of the book,
"To never harbor a feeling that someone has been unfair to me, but rather to feel in such a case, that I deserved it..."
i find it hard to agree with this statement because i don't think that i deserve racist comments or sexist attacks. i don't think that anyone does! and for us to feel that we deserve it, simply fosters a sense of internalized oppression.
i can see how she might believe this so as to prevent hate towards anyone, but i think too that the incidents in which i have been treated unfairly or even oppressed have been life changing moments that have driven me to fight for social justice. it is this anger that i have towards injustice that motivates me to become an activist.
i really want to know what you two thought when reading this line! am i totally wrong in being triggered by this quote?
Just picked up the book and I got so excited to see this picture! Our leading ladies! :)
"First and foremost, you do not have to live up to or emulate the lives of any of your predecessors. But at the very least, you should know about them. You will have your own life, interests, and ideas of what you want or do not want in life. Do what you enjoy doing. Be honest with yourself and others. Don't think of satisfying anyone: your elders, peers, government, religion, or children who will come after you. Develop meaningful ideals, and become conscious of others, their existence, and their lives."
Yuri Kochiyama, Passing It On — A Memoir
Closing of the Jerome Relocation Center, Denson, Arkansas. A typical truck load of Jerome residents waiting to be put on the train for transfer to the Gila River Center. 06/13/1944
Charles E. Mace, photographer. From the Central Photographic File of the War Relocation Authority
In 1942, the Jerome Relocation Center was the last camp to be opened and it was the first to be closed on June 30, 1944.
First Books?