nineteen sixty nine: an ethnic studies journal (vol 1 no 1 - 2012) by nineteen sixty nine

nineteen sixty annine ethnic studies journal

the future(s) of ethnic studies

nineteen sixty annine ethnic studies journal 2011 - 2012 Editorial Board Executive Editor Jason U. Kim

Associate Editors Kira A. Donnell John J. Dougherty Joina Hsiao Kristen Sun

Layout Editing, Typesetting & Design Jason U. Kim Hannah Smith

Undergraduate Editors Gabriela Monico Hannah Smith

Article Editors Olivia Chilcote Jeffrey Yamashita

Webmaster Jason U. Kim

Faculty Consultants Tom Biolsi Keith Feldman

the future(s) of ethnic studies

Contents

Derelict Visions: An Introduction Jason U. Kim

Articles 9 The Future(s) of Ethnic Studies is in its Past(s)… and in the Surrounding Possibilities

Badass, Motherfucker, and Meat-Eater: Kit Yan’s Trans of Color Slammin’ Critique and the Archives of Possibilities

Ethnicity in Wounded Spaces: Instrumentalism and the Making of Africa in Brazil

Stories of Identity, Race, and Transnational Experience in the Lives of Asian Latinos in the United States

The Americanization of a Filipina U.S. Navy Wife

From Past to Present

Visual Media

Xamuel Bañales

Bo Luengsuraswat

Amanda Kearney

Julia Shu

Joseph Ryan Wee

Elizabeth Heather Mullins

Pocho 84 Interview by Jason U. Kim

Bo Luengsuraswat

Interview by Kristen Sun

Tejida Nostalgia

101

Literary & Creative Works

109

Kim Ayu (Come Over Here)

110

The Jaguar Moon Has Risen

127

From My Home to Yours, From Your Home to Mine

144

Claudia D. Hernández

José Hernández Díaz

Tria Andrews & Tala Khanmalek

Contributors 170

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Derelict Visions: An Introduction Jason U. Kim

t is with great honor that I welcome you to the inaugural issue of nineteen sixty nine. As I greet you, however, I find myself in the unenviable position of having to simultaneously introduce this journal as an intellectual project and the theme of this issue. Fortunately, these two things are connected, and it is the goal of this introduction to make these connections transparent. In writing this introduction, I echo Fanon’s opening remarks in Black Skin White Masks. Fanon begins Black Skin White Masks with a critique of the tradition of introducing academic works. He writes, “It is good form to introduce a work in psychology with a statement of its methodological point of view. I shall be derelict. I leave methods to the botanists and the mathematicians. There is a point at which methods devour themselves.”1 It is important here to not take the sentiment expressed by Fanon in these opening lines as being antiintellectual or even anti-method in intention. Rather, Fanon continues his introduction with an impassioned overview of his decolonial methodology, providing the reader with the tools necessary to understand the critical truth that is to follow.2 Likewise, we will also be derelict in this introduction. First, I must speak a bit about the genesis of this project. The journal’s name refers to the year in which Ethnic Studies was established at the University of California, Berkeley (UCB) as a direct result of student activism through the Third World Liberation Front in the 1960s and ‘70s.3 Thus, nineteen sixty nine simultaneously reminds us of our origins and gestures towards the critical possibilities of Ethnic Studies for the present and the future. The idea for starting a student-led Ethnic Studies journal was first conceived during various feedback sessions held between students and the Department of Ethnic Studies at UCB

kim| derelict visions: an introduction

during the 2009-2010 academic year. Due to student interest, the Department appointed yours truly to head this initiative in 2010 and the journal officially began operations in late 2011. The theme of the inaugural issue, “the future(s) of Ethnic Studies,” prompted contributors by asking the following questions: How has the field of Ethnic Studies transformed within the last 40 years? What are some current examples of innovative and emerging work within the field? How do you envision the future of Ethnic Studies for the 21st century? Our questions attracted a wide array of responses from different segments of the activist, creative, and scholarly communities, and so each and every work contained in this issue represents a unique perspective on the above questions. In including these differing perspectives, we hope that this issue is emblematic of how Ethnic Studies critically redefines what it means to study race, and how the field engages with and is enriched by the multiplicity of knowledge-makers that work within it. After all, if we are to take the production of critical knowledge seriously, we must begin with reconsidering what is permitted to be published in an academic, peer-reviewed journal in the first place. In short, we feel that each work featured in this issue challenges how both the academy and the general public engage with issues of race, gender, and class oppression. But on the whole, what do the many visions represented in this volume mean? Read collectively, the works contained in this volume suggest that there are many possible future(s) for Ethnic Studies. Though each of the works are quite different in their envisioning of and engagement with the field, there are convergences in the analyses that suggest a coherent and vibrant Ethnic Studies methodology. Central to this methodology is the concept of relationality, where social, political, economic, and emotive relations – and the meanings attached to and informing such relations – are thought about as being in constant flux and mutually constitutive. There are four ways in which the featured works engage in this critical, relational thinking. First, we in Ethnic Studies think relationally through interdisciplinarity. We do not privilege any particular discipline’s methods, or the knowledge that such disciplines produce. Barthes said that: Interdisciplinary work, so much discussed these days, is not about confronting already constituted disciplines (none of which, in fact, is willing to let itself go). To do something interdisciplinary it’s not enough to choose a “subject” (a theme) and gather around it two or three sciences. Interdisciplinarity consists in creating a new object that belongs to no one.4 Elaborating on this idea, for us in Ethnic Studies, interdisciplinarity is more than just the creation of an elusive object as Barthes suggests, but an ethical and epistemological position. It is the idea that the “object” of study is always/also a subject that generates its own knowledge(s), and in doing so, transforms and shakes the very boundaries of our ideas. This is why we have consciously chosen to include literary, creative, and visual works in the journal, in addition to scholarly articles. Second, we think relationally though intersectionality. Many of the works contained herein assume that subjects are complex and multiple in their subjectivities, that people are

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multiply imbricated through race, gender, sexuality, class, and other social markers, and that such imbrications create highly specific conditions and experiences of oppression and resistance. Third, we think relationally by comparing across and between racialized groups. We know that race and racism is deeply relational – for example, that whiteness is always articulated in relation to and against other racial categories. We also know that colonialism, racism, patriarchy, homophobia, etc. diminishes all of our shared humanity. Last, we think relationally by being sensitive to the linkages, circuits, and movements of people, ideas, capital, and feelings across various times and spaces. We know that borders are not containers for these things, nor are the past, present, and future. Thus, the critical methodology of Ethnic Studies is not simply derived from the haphazard nailing together of different kinds of wooden planks to form some kind of coherent framework. Rather, when taken together, these axes of relational thinking operate as if peering through a prism – several refractions occur and what is revealed continually changes as one changes the angle. And changing the angle produces no definitive Truth, but only differing sets of refractions each time. Thus, in articulating the many possible future(s) of Ethnic Studies, it is hoped that this volume creates an opening for you to participate in producing and thinking about what these refractions might mean.

Acknowledgements I would like to publicly thank the journal staff and our anonymous readers for putting so much of themselves in this undertaking. I am particularly grateful for John J. Dougherty’s feedback on this introduction, Hannah Smith’s assistance with typesetting, and Kristen Sun’s work on the Visual Media section. I would also like to thank our contributors for entrusting us with their precious work.

Notes 1. 2. 3. 4.

Frantz Fanon, Black Skin White Masks, trans. Charles Lam Markmann (New York: Grove Press, 1967), 12. For an extended discussion of this passage, see Nelson Maldonado-Torres, Against War: Views from the Underside of Modernity (Durham: Duke University Press, 2008), 99. A more detailed account of this history is provided by Xamuel Bañales in this volume. Roland Barthes, “Juenes chercheurs” in Le Bruissement de la langue (Paris: Le Seuil, 1984), 97-103. Quoted in Avery Gordon, Ghostly Matters: Haunting and the Sociological Imagination (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1997), 7.

Articles

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The Future(s) of Ethnic Studies is in its Past(s)… and in the Surrounding Possibilities Xamuel Bañales

Abstract: According to Walter D. Mignolo, unlike the speakers of modern European languages where the future is “in front” of the person, for the Quichua or Aymara people of Ecuador the future is “behind” as it cannot be seen. That is, because the past can be remembered and therefore “seen,” it is for this reason that it is “in front” of you. From this perspective, it’s imperative—if we are to consider the future(s) of Ethnic Studies—to look, carefully examine, and reflect on the field’s past(s).

Introduction

ccording to Walter D. Mignolo, unlike the speakers of modern European languages where the future is “in front” of the person, for the Quichua or Aymara people of Ecuador the future is “behind” as it cannot be seen. That is, because the past can be remembered and therefore “seen,” it is for this reason that it is “in front” of you.1 From this perspective, it’s imperative—if we are to consider the future(s) of Ethnic Studies—to look, carefully examine, and reflect on the field’s past(s). Moreover, if the past can be remembered and therefore “seen in front” of you, then it should follow that the “present” is always already a portal of infinite possibilities and opportunities. By fusing these perspectives, this article has two goals. The first one is to call attention to the activist origins of Ethnic Studies. Having its foundation in a decolonizing praxis, I argue that activism and community orga-

bañales| the future(s) of ethnic studies is in its past(s)…and in the surrounding possibilities

nizing always should be central to the field. From the perspective that Ethnic Studies should be attuned to the openings that the current context of activism is providing, the second goal is to highlight my participation in recent campus and community centered organizing in the San Francisco Bay Area. The reason for this is that, if Ethnic Studies intends to remain relevant to the current historical contours and communities, the field and its activist underpinnings must be aligned with current social change happening on the ground.

The Decolonizing Activist Foundation of Ethnic Studies Although providing a comprehensive account (and transformations) of the history of Ethnic Studies as well as its numerous contributions is beyond the scope of this essay, I revisit the field’s origin(s) to highlight the imperative that often gets overlooked or dismissed in academia: that knowledge production and community organizing are not mutually exclusive endeavors. In doing so, my point is not to romanticize the past or to revisit it for the sake of nostalgia but rather, as Otis L. Scott underscores, to remind us to refocus on the normative ideals shaping the formation of Ethnic Studies and to address the fundamental conditions the field currently faces.2 This is important given that the history of the struggle for Ethnic Studies for space and place in predominantly white institutions is not commonly known, but is often taken for granted or commonly assumed. As someone who has taken countless formal Ethnic Studies courses in at least three colleges in California, both at the undergraduate and graduate level, more often than not, the activist past(s) of the field—let alone the imperative connection between community organizing and ensuing knowledge production—is not central or seriously talked about. As former TWLF activist and current Asian-American Studies professor at UC Berkeley (UCB) Harvey Dong states, “I think there is also a need for the new professors to actually learn about the history of the TWLF and to learn about the history of student engagement in terms of the formation of the department[s] and how students and professors could actually work together.”3 Ethnic Studies emerged as an academic discipline during an intensified socio-political context that included urban violence, anti-Vietnam War protests, Civil Rights activism, and the radical black, brown, red, yellow, feminist, and gay power movements.4 Particular to the San Francisco Bay Area in 1968-69, a majority of students from African American, Chicano, Asian American, Native American backgrounds organized campus coalitions known as the Third World Liberation Front (TWLF). Along with informational picketing, blocking of campus entrances, mass rallies, and teach-ins, The TWLF led the longest student strike in the US at the time. Hundreds of students were arrested and the National Guard were eventually stationed at UCB. The TWLF demanded the establishment of Third World Colleges that would be comprised of departments of Asian American, African American, Chicano, and Native American Studies. Particular to San Francisco State University, the demands included having a School of Ethnic Studies that not only would appoint 50 faculty positions but would have the authority and control of the hiring and retention of any faculty member, director, and administrator, as well as the curriculum in a specific area of study.5 At UCB, the proposal for a college of Third World College was not met, the term “ethnic” studies was eventually adopted. As Jack D. Forbes explains, “ethnic” was used, “in part because university administrators found it more acceptable, perhaps more manageable politically,

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than the Third World concept.”6 Other Ethnic Studies (and related) university programs or departments, though established decades after those of the San Francisco Bay Area, have their own particular histories, many also based on activist struggle. The department of Ethnic Studies at the University of Colorado at Boulder is one example. In 1988, the Center for Studies of Ethnicity and Race in America (CSERA) was established, which incorporated the Black Studies and Chicano Studies programs that had been constituted in the late 1960s and early 1970s and added American Indian and Asian American programs as areas of concentration. In August of 1993, CSERA submitted to Arts and Sciences a proposal to create an Ethnic Studies major and a department. On March 31, 1994, the Student Coalition for the Advancement of Ethnic Plurality (SCAEP) issued their demands for the creation of an Ethnic Studies major and minor and Masters and PhD programs. Student groups including SCAEP, Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlán, and United Mexican American Students formed an alliance to address these and other diversity issues. They addressed them in many forms, including holding a student rally, mass student protest, and a hunger strike that lasted six days. These actions resulted in the signing of the “Declaration of Diversity” on April 25, 1994 by the President of the University of Colorado system.7 As Ottis L. Scott points out, the “protest dynamic was the context and the catalyst for the formation of ethnic studies programs…. These programs were carved out of the dreams and aspirations of countless activists influenced by the spirit of social change emanating from the people movements of the 1960s.”8 However, not all Ethnic Studies programs and departments have been established due to activist demands that connect to the late 1960s-early 1970s. Others have been created in recent times with different purposes, such as responding to particular (most likely demographic) needs of the respective universities.9 Because not all Ethnic Studies programs have similar histories of activist struggle, it does not mean they do not face many challenges. Despite the origins of each particular Ethnic Studies program or department, they generally face various difficulties in being part of the academy that relate to structural and environmental factors. It is common that institutionalized practices and attitudes that range from patronizing to overtly hostile shape the context that Ethnic Studies has had to operate. Although there are exceptions to the rule, other common challenges that Ethnic Studies departments and programs generally face includes—but certainly not limited to—reduced budget allocations, lack of autonomy, reactionary politics, public policy measures and laws, and prevailing racist ideologies.10 These unwelcoming conditionings that include not only attacks from many sides but sometimes even from within generally place the field under constant siege. This dynamic, along with the activism and/or constant struggle that are a commonly an endemic part of the existence of Ethnic Studies, lends to an ongoing commitment to social change that is consequently inseparable from the field. Despite the unfinished project of establishing a Third World College (at UCB), the disparate histories and formations of Ethnic Studies programs and departments, and the varying challenges and struggles they face, one principal goal of the creation of the field was to decolonize knowledge and power. This has included challenging institutions of higher education, opposing racist practices/epistemologies within traditional disciplines, expanding the curriculum to incorporate diverse perspective and historical experiences, and contending the meaning and purpose of research itself. As Otis L. Scott underscores, “the institu-

bañales| the future(s) of ethnic studies is in its past(s)…and in the surrounding possibilities

tional context within which people of color existed simply had to be changed from being discriminatory, alienation, and de-humanizing to one based on principles and practices recognizing the dignity and worth of human beings.”11 Moreover, there are several characteristics that distinguish Ethnic Studies research form traditional disciplines. One is the focus on the community that broke down the artificial barrier between researchers and the public. Another hallmark is the reinterpretation of highly problematic and stereotypic—often harmful—research agendas. Ethnic Studies research has also been generative by contrasting positivist social science research approaches by questioning objectivity and neutrality. Last but not least, by challenging the academic power structure and colonizing prevailing approaches to knowledge at the time, one of the most important distinguishing characteristics of Ethnic Studies research is its intention for contributing to broader social change.12 Without the struggles for Ethnic Studies, “we would not have the interdisciplinary sites that we do have—as restricted and small as they are—they would not have existed at all.”13 As Johnnella E. Butler argues, Ethnic Studies “pioneered interdisciplinarity in the mainstream disciplines of the academy” and that it is a catalyst to not only the Humanities and the Social Sciences but also the “common good.”14 Furthermore, what makes the field of Ethnic Studies particularly unique is that it is out of result of decolonizing activism coming from below. Thus, decolonizing community organizing and knowledge production was and should always be central to the field. If this is not, it may point to how administrators, faculty, or students have drifted away, wittingly or unwittingly, from this imperative, signaling how they have lost sight of the future(s) Ethnic Studies—in other words, of its past(s). Not forgetting the past of Ethnic Studies, but reflecting upon it and “seeing” it, can therefore place us “in front” to where the field should be. Accordingly, if the “present” is always already a surrounding threshold of possibilities and opportunities, where is Ethnic Studies now? For an answer, along with the passing of Arizona’s recent anti-immigration law SB1070, one can look to the same state’s HB 2281 law (commonly referred to as a measure to ban Ethnic Studies programs in Tucson’s Unified District High Schools) that passed by the conservative state legislature at the request of then-School Superintendent (and now Attorney General-elect) Tom Horne that took effect in January 1, 2011. Similar to the origin(s) of Ethnic Studies, community youth activists and students have organized and held a series of decolonizing demonstrations in response to their epistemological racism and oppression.15 Like the intensified socio-political racist context that gave birth to Ethnic Studies, the activism in response to its banning in Arizona high schools is operating in a similarly (albeit different) dramatic global context of struggle that includes social movements in places like Tunisia, Egypt, Syria, Libya, Palestine, and elsewhere in the US. The situation of Arizona is not only an opportunity to “save Ethnic Studies”—that is, return to the status quo—but to go beyond this and demand for more. For the remainder of this essay, rather than looking at the Arizona struggle, I focus on the “Occupy”/”Decolonize” movements locally in the San Francisco Bay Area since, this is not only the same geographical place where Ethnic Studies was created, but it is where I am in the “present,” surrounded by infinite possibilities. To elaborate, the “Occupy”/”Decolonize” movement of the San Francisco Bay Area is the environment where I and other Ethnic Studies scholars literally do our work. It is in this social and political climate, as Otis L. Scott notes, “wherein we teach our students to be critical observers of society and urge them to

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become involved on some level, giving back to the communities from which they come or that they identify with.”16 Arguing that a coloniality of organizing—that is, activism that reflects a colonizing logic—is currently (and again) taking place, I call attention to the larger global context of activism that is providing current openings to Ethnic Studies practitioners— meaning scholars, activists, and artists alike. In highlighting this, my point is to stress that, if the field intends to remain relevant to current struggles—whether it’s through scholarly, activist, or creative efforts—and if it intends to go beyond the status quo, the activist foundations of Ethnic Studies must be aligned with current decolonizing social change happening all around in order to continue to produce work that is derived from the political coalitions, labor, and organizing happening on the ground.

The Coloniality of Organizing: A Challenge and/or Opening? On November 2nd, 2009, I helped organize the event entitled “Activism from Below” which took place at the Multicultural Community Center (MCC), UCB. Along with commemorating the Mexican indigenous-based holiday El Día de los Muertos with a spiritual blessing, the event included spoken word performances and a multi-ethnic/gender/sexuality, inter-generational panel. This panel featured scholar-activists representing the 1968-69 Third World Liberation Front, the anti-apartheid student movement of the mid 1980s, the post-affirmative action activism at UCB that included the hunger strike of 1999 in favor of Ethnic Studies, and current organizing efforts at UCB known as the “Save the University” (SU) movement which had formed in Summer of 2009 in response to the many layoffs, university fee hikes, budget cuts and overall de-investment of public education across California colleges. Representing the latter, I gave a controversial speech entitled “The coloniality of organizing” which, among many things, provided a racial assessment of the student organizing of the SU movement that was generally comprised by a majority of privileged people.17 Based on my initial participation in the SU movement, I spoke about the countless frustrating moments of opposition I and others experienced as we pushed for a racial/raceconsciousness politics to be central to the organizing. In the speech, I also advocated for creating a movement around public education that would have people of color and a decolonizing politic central to the organizing. In particular, I argued that the SU movement comprised of a majority of white middle-class folks that, whether conscious or unconscious, embodied colonizing politics in their organizing efforts. I claimed that the colonizing politics of the SU movement revealed themselves in many ways through the organizing. Examples of this included the general dismissal/erasure of current and past movements/activist efforts of people of color at UCB and beyond, the refusal to address questions of race/racism within current organizing efforts, the appropriation of spaces like the MCC, and the overwhelming wave of problematic discourse that was produced around the movement that, among many things, bled with white middle class privilege. Several people from the SU movement disagreed with my critiques while the concerns of others—particularly students of color that were part of long-term/sustained organizing efforts at UCB—were validated as my speech reflected a growing frustration that many campus activists felt. In fact, the speech and the event, in part, were created as a direct response to the “Save the University” movement—as a way of highlighting and making visible the histories of racism in society/the university

bañales| the future(s) of ethnic studies is in its past(s)…and in the surrounding possibilities

and of people of color social movements/activist efforts. Beyond this, however, one of the purposes of the speech and event was to also remind people that—as long-term/sustained politicized activist of colors—we did not need to seek inclusion into the problematic SU movement but could continue organizing on our terms with decolonizing politics instead. Onward from this event, I concentrated my energy in shaping the decolonizing activism at UCB and decided to only participate in the SU movement in a role of solidarity—often biting my tongue when confronted with many ideological problems of the movement. What followed after November 2nd until the end of the spring of 2010 was a series of SU protests and decolonizing forms of activism that generally happened simultaneously but separately, with some people participating in both. In the former, the primary concerns were with defending/saving the university and with “the crisis” of the university. One example of activism from the SU movement includes the “Occupation of Wheeler Hall”—which was in protest of the UC Regents vote to increase student fees by 32 percent (from $7,788 to $10,302 the following fall). The “occupation” happened on November 20, 2009, was around eleven hours long, and resulted in 40 protesters in being arrested.18 Another example of SU activism was the March 4, 2010 “strike and day of action to defend public education.” At UCB, this day included a noon rally on Sproul Plaza that eventually turned into a march down Telegraph Avenue. The march ended in downtown Oakland at the Frank Ogawa plaza where a series of speeches and spoken word performances followed. In turn, the activism based on decolonizing politics focused on transforming/decolonizing the university and on the problem(s) of colonization/modernity itself. From this perspective, burning questions were asked: why should we “save” the university when it has always been, among many things, a racist institution that historically was not made for marginalized people? “Crisis” for whom and since when? One example of decolonizing activism at UCB included the February 27-28, 2010 conference commemorating the 40th anniversary of the campus’ Ethnic Studies Department entitled “Decolonizing the University: Fulfilling the Dream of the Third World College.”19 For this conference, hundreds of people across California—including former TWLF activists and current students of color from UC San Diego that had recently experienced “racial terror” at their campus20—gathered at UCB to participate in cross-generational, multi-ethnic/gender/sexuality dialogues, panels, and workshops that related to art, activism, spirituality, and/or scholarship. Another example of decolonizing activism was the hunger strike in May, 2011 at UCB by primarily Xican@/ Latin@ students.21 The ten day strike of almost 20 students resulted in many gains, including the chancellor publicly denouncing Arizona’s anti-immigrant SB1070 bill and eventually granting the Center for Latino Policy Research a quarter of a million dollars.22 Because of my experience with “Save the University,” when I heard about the “Occupy Wall Street” (OWS) protest movement that began on September 17, 2011 in Zuccotti Park (located in New York City’s Wall Street financial district), I had my doubts. From the beginning of OWS (and since the “Occupation of Wheeler Hall”), I found the use of the word “occupy” problematic. Although the word “occupy” had been used in people of color movements and protests before—such as in the occupation of Alcatraz Island by the American Indian Movement in 1969 and in the occupation of UCB’s campanile clock tower by Xicana students in 1996—the term was used with decolonizing intentions, including raising awareness on the structural, racist conditions in the community and the university.23

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Given the current context of “the War on Terror” and the several US violent and militaristic occupations abroad, like in Iraq, I was suspicious of the use of the word “occupy” in OWS. Based on news articles (including alternative press), and livestream videos that circulated on the internet, and speaking with contacts I had in the area, OWS seemed to operate on an organizing logic with colonizing undertones similar to what I experienced in the SU movement. Although OWS was generative for protesting against social and economic inequality, political corruption, and corporate greed, it seemed that the movement had a narrow view of capitalism as it did not address other forms of colonizing power. Moreover, while the slogan “we are the 99%” was strategic as it addressed the growing income inequality and wealth distribution between the 1% and the rest of the population, I was suspicious that the motto was more of a homogenizing and colonizing move from a majority white middle class that, deliberately or unknowingly, erased/dismissed those from below rather than build meaningful solidarity with them. When “Occupy Oakland” (OO) was initiated on October 10, 2012—along with the many other demonstrations and occupations that started all over the country—my doubts and suspicions were confirmed. After OO began, I was amazed by the potential of community organizing that I witnessed at the Frank H. Ogawa plaza.24 A protest encampment was created that included, among many things, feeding, housing, and providing other resources to the community, such as many homeless folks. It was great to see people come together and have people engage in important conversations on a large scale, such as discussing the problems of capitalism and the political system of the US. It was as if many had collectively “come out” of a political closet of repression and were raising long-overdue critical questions and conversations in public. On October 25, the encampment was cleared out by several law enforcement agencies and the night eventually resulted in various injuries and around 100 people being arrested.25 This happened because protesters tried to reclaim the encampment site, and I was present when police tear-gassed the public multiple times. The smell of violence penetrated my clothes and nostrils as the multiple grenades exploded around us. The poisonous gas produced a sensation of asphyxiation that invaded my throat and lungs, and it seemed like the contaminated air would swallow me whole in an instant. Additionally, as an act of biological resistance to the toxic clouds, my body forced me to shed incontrollable tears that failed to alleviate the thousand-like invisible stings that burned my eyes. As I stumbled away from the smoke-covered downtown, I fortunately ran into some strangers at a near-by corner that had liquid antacid and water with them of which they poured into my eyes, relieving me of the pain. Despite this, I was participating in the OO because—like many in the movement—I was tired of the many oppressive conditions produced by capitalism. However, because the general analysis and understanding of oppression in OO focused on the problems of capitalism in a narrow way—as disconnected from other systems of power, like racism and hetero-patriarchy—I knew that my participation in the movement would be partial. From the beginning of my involvement with OO, one of the main problems I found was that—like the SU movement—it was also operating under a colonizing logic of organizing. For example, although the encampment and protests were relatively diverse in comparison to others across the country, the majority of the people seemed to be nevertheless white and middle class, not from Oakland, and were often blinded by their privilege(s). As a result,

bañales| the future(s) of ethnic studies is in its past(s)…and in the surrounding possibilities

several articulations of racism, classism, sexism, heterosexism and other forms of bigotry— some that were blatant others more inconspicuous—were often left unchecked in OO, such the constant denial that racism and sexism, etc., are non-existent in the movement. Another example of the coloniality of organizing was the use of the voting structure of outdoor “General Assemblies” (GA)—where those present make decisions based on consensus. Along with seeing familiar faces from the SU movement at OO, I was not surprised that the GA system (familiar to the SU movement) was also used in OO. Many praised the GA model for (supposedly) allowing the public to “truly” represent themselves in “authentic” democratic fashion. Decisions like the Oakland general strike of November 2nd and the shutdown of the port of Oakland on December 12 were made through the GA format.26 Although these actions were productive on several levels, few questioned how the GA was problematic in numerous ways, such as how many that did not have the privilege (like time, money, and health) to spend hours in the cold of the evening/night were excluded from the process to eventually vote, or that making decisions by reaching consensus with a majority of white middle class non-Oakland folks (in a city where the majority of the population consists of African-Americans and Latin@s, many which are disenfranchised) did not reflect democracy as much as the colonization of space and time (again).

Decolonizing Possibilities The coloniality of organizing was not particular to OWS or OO but to the Occupy movement in general. This was evident in the critiques from members of marginalized communities that emerged after several occupy encampments sprouted across the country, including Seattle, Albuquerque, Portland, and Sedona.27 Critiques of heteronormative male privilege surfaced, formal anti-racist statements were made, and proposals to change the name from “occupy” to “de-occupy” or “decolonize” materialized.28 Particular to OO, one example was the Queer/People of Color affinity group that was immediately formed when a Transgendered African-American publicly disclosed the lack of safety in the encampment—this person had been threatened with a knife and called racial slurs by an aggressive (intoxicated) white male the night before. Another example is the collaboration of indigenous and local activist-scholars that drafted a memorandum of solidarity with indigenous people and presented it to the GA of OO on October 28.29 Among many things, this memorandum proposed that those participating in OO would seek the genuine and respectful involvement of indigenous peoples in the rebuilding of a new society on their ancestral lands, and to declare (in light of colonialist language of occupation) that OO “aspires to ‘Decolonize Oakland’—to ‘Decolonize Wall Street.’” Although I did not participate in drafting the memorandum, I participated in presenting it publicly at the GA. Foreseeing that questions and concerns would arise regarding the word “decolonize,” one of my friends that was part of the collaboration asked me to be present. Given that I have familiarity and experience with theories and actions surrounding the concept, I agreed. Indeed, the concept of “decolonize” raised concerns as some expressed apprehension to the term, especially when some mistakenly understood the memorandum as a proposal to change the name from OO to “Decolonize Oakland.” Although the memorandum passed after several clarifications and conversations, having to explain “decolonize” as well as justification for it to a majority of

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white middle class folks felt like déjà vu of being in the SU movement all over again. There were some efforts to work through the tensions that haunted the organizing and ideological foundations of OO. However, the majority in the movement, including those in leadership position—even though the movement claimed to not have any—were generally dismissive of the concerns coming from below, instead of seriously addressing the issues. Like in the SU movement, many in OO expressed indifference, impatience, and frustration with proposals and discussions that attempted to work through the problems that were important to members of marginalized communities. Eventually the tensions culminated on the chilly evening of December 4 at the Frank H. Ogawa plaza when the proposal was brought to the GA to formally change the name from Occupy to Decolonize. In the many hours of the heated debate, I heard a range of perspectives—from those wanting to use “decolonize” as a way to open the movement to greater participation of marginalized people to those wishing to keep “occupy” as this would “prevent divisiveness” in the movement. In the end, over 300 people were present and the proposal only received 68 per cent of approval and not the 90 per cent that it needed to pass.30 Like the Nov. 2nd event and speech that marked the formal “decolonizing” separation from the SU movement at UCB, the refusal of the OO’s GA to pass the name change served as a similar catalyst for those that were in favor of a decolonizing politic and perspective. As a result, Decolonize Oakland now functions as its own entity and separately from OO.31 But the coloniality of organizing not only surfaced in OO but also at UCB once again when “Occupy CAL” (OC) took place on November 9, 2011. Allied with OWS and OO, OC brought attention to many issues concerning students, including recent and continuing exaggerated fee increases and budget cuts. That day, along with community members, students, staff, and professors at UCB participated in a series of “teach-outs” on campus that followed with a rally and march at noon. Over 1,000 demonstrators attended the days’ events and tents were eventually set-up in front of Sproul Hall. By late afternoon, law enforcement officials, including UCB Police and Alameda County Sheriffs, arrived in riot gear to remove the tents. Protestors formed a human chain in front of the tents as a way to prevent officers from undoing the encampment, but police used violent force as they jabbed many with their riot batons and dragged some by the hair before being arrested.32 A week later on November 18, Occupy UC Davis (OD) gained international attention after a video on YouTube showed university police pepper-spraying a group of demonstrators as they were seated on a paved path in the campus quad.33 Both OC and OD caused much scandal at the respective universities and beyond as many could not believe that police would be “so violent” with “innocent,” “non-threatening,” “peaceful” students. Soon thereafter, raceclass-gendered critiques and analysis emerged, such as pointing to how police violence is something historical and common to communities of color that are systemically criminalized, how the concern for police violence at the protest was connected to how the majority in the movement were of white and middle class backgrounds, and how these movements privileged class at the expense of eclipsing other, interrelated set of social problems.34 In other words, like with the SU movement, many from underrepresented backgrounds—although they did not diminish the overall importance of the movement—saw how colonizing politics, wittingly or unwittingly, played out in the OC and OD movements. Although several activists were ignited through the OC, the protests also created a lot

bañales| the future(s) of ethnic studies is in its past(s)…and in the surrounding possibilities

of confusion for many, particularly sustained, long-term underrepresented organizers. Many were unclear as to how they could be part of a movement that was problematic in numerous ways. Some opposed involvement while others felt an urge to nevertheless be supportive somehow. Having already faced similar dilemmas with the SU movement, three UCB radical Latino/Xicana student groups MECHxA, ¡YQUÉ!, and Xinaxtli (MechxYQUEnaxtli)— representing decolonizing politics that challenge the inherited colonial hierarchies, such as those of race, class, gender, and sexuality—came together as a coalition before the first protest to decide on how to proceed.35 When OC took place on November 9, 2011, we decided to have a “teach out” for the larger Raza community at UCB. The purpose was to provide a space to talk about the significance of the occupy phenomena, to highlight the contradictions within the movement, and to discuss the imperative of decolonization. Although we respected the OC efforts and participated in solidarity, we took advantage of the momentum and aperture to galvanize the Latin@ students on campus and have important discussions from a decolonizing perspective. What does all of this have to do with Ethnic Studies? Everything. The current social change dynamic I write about frames the “present” and this should compel Ethnic Studies to not only respond to the challenges facing communities of color and those at the margins but also to face the activist history of the project—in other words, its future(s). The subjection of Ethnic Studies, as is happening in Arizona, is likely to continue—if not increase—and attempts to marginalize the project as well as those that practice its vision remain. However, if the socio-political-economic colonizing context of the “present” is understood as an opportunity, Ethnic Studies, then, is surrounded with many possibilities. For example, Ethnic Studies can strengthen its commitment to activism by moving away from seeing social change thinkable only through research and by liberating itself from the conducts of traditional disciplines and institutionalizations. The field can continue doing this by strengthening the commitment to being involved in the current issues affecting marginalized people and society, building and serving as a bridge to the community, and shaping and contributing the conceptual work necessary for decolonization. Although it may be easier said than done, I believe that fear should never determine the limits of Ethnic Studies praxis, knowledge, and ideology. On the contrary, the “present” is always already perfect with potential to further finish the project of decolonization—this and much more.

Conclusion As part of the 27th Annual Empowering Women of Color Conference at UCB on March 2nd, 2012, revolutionary activist-scholars Angela Y. Davis and Grace Lee Boggs spoke and shared their thoughts on many topics, including activism and the Occupy phenomena.36 Angela Y. Davis stated that the latter is important but not a solution; rather, that it serves as an opening. Boggs followed with the question, “how do we take advantage of the opening?” Although MechxYQUEnaxtli took advantage of the opening by working beside OC, our decolonizing efforts also stand before this and also go beyond as our collaboration began years ago and continues until now. Moreover, while taking advantage of openings is useful, one must also work to be the opening itself, just like the Third World Liberation Front was in 1968-69 when it led the longest student strike in the US at the time. Their de-

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colonizing activism challenged epistemological and institutional racism, eventually paving the way for Ethnic Studies Departments across the world. As Boggs advocates, there must be a balance between theory (philosophy) and practice (activism), that we must imagine new ways of creating society, and, perhaps most importantly, that we must change the way we see change and revolution itself. Along this line, we must also change the way we see the future(s) of Ethnic Studies as something yet to come but as something that has already been set in motion and must be completed—like the unfinished project of decolonization that, among many needs, includes fulfilling the dream of creating a Third World College at UCB (and elsewhere). In other words, as decolonizing activism and subsequent knowledge production are the foundation of Ethnic Studies so too is its future—and right now is always already the perfect opportunity to continue building upon this. Although this is an ongoing project, along with imagination, change, and determination, I hope that decolonizing love is central to the process.

Notes 1. 2. 3. 4.

5. 6. 7.

8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14.

Walter D. Mignolo, “Globalization and the Geopolitics of Knowledge: The Role of the Humanities in the Corporate University,” Nepantla: Views from the South, 4.1, (2003), 114. See Otis L. Scott, “Ethnic Studies: Preparing for the Future,” in Ethnic Studies Research: Approaches and Perspectives, ed. by Timothy P. Fong (New York: Altamira Press, 2008), 17. Harvey Dong, Decolonizing the University: Fulfilling the Dream of the Third World College [Web video], Mattie Harper (producer) and John Hamilton (Video Camera and Post-production), (2010), http://vimeo.com/15729523 (accessed May 15, 2012). For a detailed account of the separations of these movements, see Trinity A. Ordona, “Coming Out Together: An Ethnohistory of the Asian and Pacific Islander Queer Women’s and Transgendered People’s Movement of San Francisco” (PhD diss., University of California, Santa Cruz, 2000). See Asian Community Center Archive Group, Stand Up: An Archive Collection of the Bay Area Asian American Movement 1968-1974 (Berkeley: East Wind Books, 2009), 43-45. See Jack D. Forbes, “Ethnic or World Studies: A Historian’s Path of Discovery,” in Ethnic Studies Research: Approaches and Perspectives, ed. by Timothy P. Fong (New York: Altamira Press, 2008), 87. University of Colorado at Boulder’s Ethnic Studies Department Website, http://ethnicstudies.colorado.edu/history (accessed March 21, 2012). The César E. Chávez Chicana/o Studies Department at the University of California at Los Angeles is another example. See http://www.chavez. ucla.edu/history (accessed March 21, 2012). Scott, 18 & 20. Two recent examples include the Ethnic Studies Departments at the University of California at San Diego and at Riverside. For more on this, see Scott, 22-25. Ibid., 20. See Timothy P. Fong, “Introduction,” in Ethnic Studies Research: Approaches and Perspectives, ed. by same author (New York: Altamira Press, 2008), 1-5. Paola Bacchetta, Decolonizing the University: Fulfilling the Dream of the Third World College [Web video], Mattie Harper (producer) and John Hamilton (Video Camera and Post-production), (2010), http://vimeo.com/15729523 (accessed May 15, 2012). See Johnnella E. Butler, “Ethnic Studies and Interdisciplinarity,” in Ethnic Studies Research: Approaches and Perspectives, ed. by Timothy P. Fong (New York: Altamira Press, 2008), 253, and

bañales| the future(s) of ethnic studies is in its past(s)…and in the surrounding possibilities

15.

16. 17.

18. 19. 20.

21. 22. 23. 24.

25. 26. 27.

“Ethnic Studies as a Matrix for the Humanities, the Social Sciences, and the Common Good,” in Color-Line to Borderlands: The Matrix of American Ethnic Studies, ed. by same author, (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2001). For an account of anti-HB 2281 youth protests, see Lydia R. Otero and Julio Cammarota, “Notes from the Ethnic Studies home front: student protests, texting, and subtexts of oppression,” International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, Vol. 24, No. 5 (September-October 2011), 639-648; “Voices from the AZ Struggle,” Pan Left Productions, http://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=xW63q_qgsRc, and “Fight Back – the Battle to Save Ethnic Studies,” http://www.panleft.net/vlog/fight-back-the-battle-to-save-ethnic-studies/ (both accessed March 21, 2012). Scott, 25. “The Coloniality of Organizing: November 2nd Speech” was published in La Voz (UC Berkeley, Spring 2010) and in Impaction, No. 173, (Fall 2010). For more on the idea of coloniality, see Walter D. Mignolo, The Idea of Latin America (MA: Blackwell Publishing, 2005); Nelson Maldonado-Torres, “On the Coloniality of Being: Contributions to the Development of a Concept,” in Cultural Studies, Vol 21, Nos. 2-3, March/May 2007; Aníbal Quijano, “Coloniality of Power, Eurocentrism, and Latin America” in Nepantla: Views from South, vol. 1, no. 3, 533-80. Justin Berton, Joe Garofoli, and Nanette Asimov, “Occupation of Wheeler Hall nears an end,” SFGate, November 21, 2009. See Decolonizing the University: Fulfilling the Dream of the Third World College, [Web video], Mattie Harper (producer) and John Hamilton (Video Camera and Post-production), 2010, http:// vimeo.com/15729523 (accessed May 15, 2012). Racially charged incidents at the University of California at San Diego escalated during February 2010. These included the party described as a “Compton Cookout” that was held off-campus by a fraternity that relied upon and promoted racist/misogynist stereotypes and the hanging of a rope noose from a campus library bookcase that served as a symbol of lynching for African Americans. For more on this, see Larry Gordon, “Noose ignites more protests at UC San Diego,” The Los Angeles Times (February 27, 2010). UCSD’s Ethnic Studies Professor Yen L. Espiritu wrote an open letter asking the chancellor to declare a state of emergency and close down the campus. To see this letter and videos of student activism in response to the racism, see http:// stopracismucsd.wordpress.com/2010/02/26/racial-intimidation-at-ucsd-escalates-noose-foundat-geisel-library/ (accessed May 15, 2012). Other hate crimes included homophobic and other racially charged incidents in other campus including at the University of California at Davis. See David Greenwald, “Swastika Carved into Jewish Student’s Door Among Two Incidents Investigated as Hate Crimes,” The People’s Vanguard of Davis (February 28, 2010). No author, “Cal Hunger Strike Ends After Ten Days,” KTVU.COM (May 12, 2012). The center had received no funding the year before. For more on the hunger strike, see “Chancellor Birgeneau denounces Arizona immigration bill,” UC Berkeley News Center (May 7, 2010). See Troy Johnson, “the Occupation of Alcatraz Island: Roots of American Indian Activism,” Wicazo Sa Review, Vol. 10, No. 2 (Autumn, 1994), 63-79; Jennie Marie Luna, “U.C. Berkeley Students Protest Vote to End Affirmative Action,” Z Magazine (March 1997). This was renamed by the OO as the Oscar Grant plaza in memory of the young African-American male from the San Francisco Bay Area that was unarmed and shot in the back by a Bay Area Rapid Transit police officer in 2009. For more on the shooting, see Matthew B. Stannard and Demian Bulwa, “BART shooting captured on video,” SFGate (January 7, 2009). Ali Winston, “The Police Raid on Occupy Oakland Was Nothing New For This City,” Colorlines: News for Action (October 28, 2011). For more on the strike, see Lisa Leff, (November 02, 2011), “Occupy Oakland General Strike: City Prepares to be Movement’s Epicenter,” retrieved from http://www.huffingtonpost.com. See Queena Kim, “Campaign to Decolonize Oakland: Native Americans Say ‘Occupy’ Terminology is Offensive,” Truthout, December 28, 2011. As recent as April 2, 2012, a statement and principles on decolonization passes at the general assembly of “Occupy Toronto.” See http:// occupyto.org/2012/04/statement-and-principles-on-decolonization-passes-at-new-ga/ (accessed

28. 29. 30.

31. 32. 33. 34. 35.

36.

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April 6th, 2012). For a Feminist Queer of color critique of Occupy Oakland, see Andreana Clay, “Solidarity, White (Male) Privilege and Occupation,” Blog (November 29, 2011), http://queerblackfeminist. blogspot.com/2011/11/solidarity-white-male-privilege-and.html (accessed May 21, 2012). For a copy of the memorandum, see Joanne Barker, “The memorandum of Solidarity with Indigenous Peoples,” http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2011/10/29/18695950.php (accessed March 22, 2012). See Davey D., “To Occupy or Decolonize? That is the Question…Is there an Easy Answer?” (December 8th, 2011), http://hiphopandpolitics.com/2011/12/08/to-occupy-or-decolonizethat-is-the-question-is-there-an-easy-answer/ (accessed March 22, 2012); Also see, “Open Letter to The ‘Occupy’ Movement: The Decolonization Proposal,” (video) http://www.youtube.com/ watch?feature=player_embedded&v=r_s3X0uW9Ec (accessed March 22, 2012). See http://decolonizeoakland.org (accessed March 22, 2012). For more on this, see Nancy Scheper-Hughes, “The Crisis of the Public University,” The Chronicle of Higher Education (December 19, 2011). For more on this, see “UC Davis Student Describes Pepper Spray Attack on Occupy Campus Protesters,” Democracy Now! (November 21, 2011). See Breeze Harper, “UC Davis and Racialized Politics of Sentimentality,” (video), http://www. youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=x0qTJH55y1o (accessed March 22, 2010). Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano/Xicana de Aztlán (MECHxA) is a student group which seeks to create a space for Xicana/Latino students at UCB that promotes higher education, culture, and history that was founded on the principles of self-determination for the liberation of people. Young Queers United for Empowerment (¡YQUÉ!) is a UCB student group for those who identify as jotería (Queer Latin@). This group primarily focuses on providing a safe space to dialogue about the simultaneous oppression relating to race and sexuality, on creating a social environment to build community, and on being politically active on campus and beyond. Xinaxtli is a student group at UCB that is grounded in various indigenous, feminist, and social justice politix and philosophies. Xinaxtli’s goals include providing a safe space for the empowerment of Xican@/Latin@ communities, to be politically active, to strengthen spirituality, and to engage with the campus and larger community. For more information on this event, see https://ewocc.wordpress.com (accessed March 22, 2012).

Badass, Motherfucker, and Meat-Eater: Kit Yan’s Trans of Color Slammin’ Critique and the Archives of Possibilities Bo Luengsuraswat

Abstract: This article examines Badass, a spoken word performance by Chinese

American female-to-male transgender slam poet Kit Yan. Performed live on stage across the country and disseminated online via YouTube, Yan’s intense, fast-paced articulation of contradictory masculinities in Badass provides a powerful insight into the construction of gender, identity, and community through a trans of color perspective.

…yo, i may not be a badass in this life but last night, i fucking fucked the shit out of your mother

– Kit Yan, Badass

The clear understanding, then, that Asian American male subjectivity is the hybrid result of internalized ideals and lived material contradictions that were once external allows us a compelling qualification to historical debates about authenticity—realness and fakeness—in Asian American studies. – David Eng, Racial Castration: Managing Masculinity in Asian America1

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Badass

t the height of the heat wave in early August 2009, I met Kit Yan and the Good Asian Drivers crew at the Café Club Fais Do Do in Los Angeles (Figure 1). As featured performers of the night, spoken word artist Yan, songwriter Melissa Li, and musician Ashley Bayer transformed the cozy space of the Café into a lively activist scene through their thought-provoking, radical queer-feminist lyrics and songs. Both Yan and Li, together in this performance group they co-founded in 2007, performed solo and collaborative pieces with the topics ranging from their cross-country road trip, to the politics of inclusion in the queer community, to a transfeminist take on women’s issues. In their last set of performances that night, Yan slammed an intense solo piece that seemed to shatter his “nice-guy,” feminist-ally façade. Among all of Yan’s work, this piece stood out the most in terms of strong language, imagery, and sexually explicit content. Nevertheless, the feelings of anxiety, frustration, and anger that Yan expressed through his magnificent spoken word performance captivated me. This is precisely where I want to begin tracing the connections between rebellious adolescent masculinity, Asian American male body, and transgender identity. Later on, I learned that it was the night of heartbreak when Yan whipped up this motherfucking poem entitled Badass. Written with the feeling of angst, Badass marks the time when Yan came out as transgender, began expressing his masculinity through clothing and hairstyle, and experienced rejection from his former girlfriend as a consequence of his gender identity.2 Soon after the poem was completed in 2005, Yan started performing it on stage across the country in various settings, from mainstream venues (i.e., college campuses) to subcultural spaces (i.e., queer events and bars). Along with Yan’s masculinizing appearance and spirit, Badass is another route through which Yan expresses his transgender maleness. Yan’s expression of masculinity in Badass is, however, neither a simple reclamation of dominant maleness nor a straight-up resistance against it. Rather, the multiple, contradictory types of masculinity that Yan articulates throughout the piece point to the fact that masculinity is an idealized construction that is impossible to uphold. As a collage of multiple masculinities— such as rebellious adolescent, consumerist middle-class, racialized, mainstream gay, and punk-rock—Badass represents Yan’s embodiment of male anxiety around the cultivation of normative masculinity due to the presence of contradictory masculine standards. Yan’s performance of multiplicity thus brings to attention the impracticality for male-identified people, in general, and Asian American men, in particular, to simply conform to the norms of masculinity in order to be recognized as “male enough,” since there is no such a thing as a singular, authentic masculine ideal in which one can easily draw upon. Moreover, most importantly, Badass is an incisive critique of Asian American nationalist and Asian settler colonialist attempts to recuperate Asian American male subjectivity through gender conformity and sexual disciplining. By attempting to embody all kinds of masculinities that exist in the American cultural landscape, Yan pokes fun at the meaning of assimilation. What does “assimilation” mean in the age of diversity? To what extent can one “claim” national and/ or global citizenship?

luengsuraswat| badass, motherfucker, and meat-eater

Asian American Nationalism, Asian Settler Colonialism, and the Racialization of Masculinity Born and raised in Hawai’i, Chinese American slam poet Kit Yan calls into question the promise of gender and sexual conformity as a prerequisite for cultural citizenship in Asian American nationalist and Asian settler colonialist imaginaries through his multilayered spoken word performance. As I illustrate in this article, Badass deals explicitly with the processes of racialization and gendering, particularly as they converge in the bodies of Asian American men. In order to better comprehend Yan’s performance, it is necessary to understand his work in light of the history of Asian immigration to the United States, Asian settler colonialism in Hawai’i, and the racialization of Asian American men. In providing a conceptual ground specific to Yan’s work, I will mainly focus on the ethnic Chinese immigrant population and examine the relationship between the construction of the Asian American subject on the continent and the production of Asian “local” subjectivity in the colonial context of Hawai’i. Asian American male subjectivity has historically been constructed as feminine and queer. On the mainland United States, discriminatory immigration laws—particularly the Page Act of 1875, which barred the immigration of Chinese and other Asian women on the ground of prostitution; anti-miscegenation laws, which prohibited interracial marriage; and the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, which effectively curbed Chinese immigration on the basis of class and profession—simultaneously functioned to disallow working-class Chinese immigrant men, who constituted the majority of Chinese/ Asian immigrants at the time, from forming normative nuclear households.3 Due to the absence of Chinese women, the prohibition of interracial marriage, racial segregation, and economic discrimination, Chinese immigrant men were obliged to live together under one roof, forming nonheteronormative households known as “bachelor society.”4 Hence, in the eye of the American public, Chinese immigrant men were assumed to be sexually deviant due to their “queer” living arrangements. Racial and economic discrimination also limited the opportunities for Chinese immigrant men on the mainland, forcing them into traditionally feminine occupations, such as laundromat service and domestic work, after decades of working on the transcontinental railroad.5 Up until the mid-20th century when the exclusion laws were still in effect, the feminization and queering of Chinese immigrant men further justified their exclusion from the American cultural sphere on the ground that their existence threatened American family norms. Although Asian immigrant labor had been vital to the construction of the nation, Asian immigrants had consistently been denied citizenship rights and constructed as “surplus” population. The denial of family wage to Chinese immigrant men not only made it difficult for them to build and sustain their families, but also forced Chinese women to work outside of home (“working women”: non-male-dominant household) and oftentimes bring their work back to domestic spaces (the multi-usage of space: the immigrant home as a site of labor exploitation).6 Overall, these immigration and economic measures distanced mainland Asian immigrants from the idea of “good life”—in other words, constructing them as antithesis to the monogamous, heteronormative family ideal upon which the American national identity is based. The repeal of the Chinese Exclusion Act in 1944 and the passage of the Immigration

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and Nationality Act in 1965, also known as the “immigration reform,” marked the transition in the perception of Asian immigrants as “undesirable aliens” to “respectable citizens.”7 In the Cold War era, the United States, deeply invested in its democratic political ideals and eagerly constituted itself as an anti-communist nation, lifted various race-based immigration measures and exclusion laws in order to demonstrate its commitment to social equality and present itself as the land of freedom, in contrast to the Soviet Union and its communist allies.8 One of the most profound shifts in U.S. immigration law during this period is the creation of the “family reunification” program, which permits immigration through blood ties and the formation of normative nuclear families. This immigration measure consequently helped the U.S. nation-state transform the image of immigrant communities of color, in general, and Asian immigrant communities, in particular, from “undesirable aliens,” who threaten the norms of gender, sexuality, and American national identity, into “respectable citizens,” who conform to the heteronormative family ideal and embody American cultural essence.9 Along with the creation of the family reunification program, the establishment of work visa requirements (i.e., H-1B visas), which allows for immigration on the basis of class and profession, profoundly affected the demographics of Asian immigrant communities and contributed to the post-1965 representation of Asian Americans as “model minorities.” This transformation in U.S. immigration law did not merely coincide with globalization and the emergence of neoliberalism in the early 1970s. In fact, the changes in immigration law corresponded to the shifts in global economy and the flows of transnational labor. No longer did the poor and working-class population constitute the majority of Asian immigrants after the immigration reform in 1965. The emergence of the affluent, global professional class, on the other hand, was facilitated by the work visa requirements that cleverly curtail the immigrant population according to the demands of capital. Under neoliberal governmentality, the U.S. nation-state constantly deploys the image of hard-working, well-todo Asian immigrants to justify the dismantling of the welfare state and the intense regulation of other immigrant populations, particularly Latino and black. The progressive narrative of immigrant success undeniably haunts Asian Americans and foregrounds their acceptance into American society. The formation of heteronormative nuclear households, which is predicated upon gender and sexual conformity, importantly serves in the Asian American nationalist imagination as a marker of one’s success in becoming American. In the colonial context of Hawai’i, however, Asian immigrant family formation can be traced back beyond the 1965 immigration reform. Due to the rise of the sugar plantation industry in the mid-19th century, haole investors encouraged migration of Asian families to Hawai’i for the purposes of labor extraction.10 Unlike seasonal agricultural workers on the U.S. mainland who constituted an itinerant labor force, plantation workers in Hawai’i were conceived as a permanent labor force, since sugar plantation was a year-round activity.11 Women and children, even though constituted a smaller portion of plantation labor, were crucial to the maintenance of the plantation system. Most haole planters preferred hiring families to single bachelors because, in that sense, they could better stabilize the workforce.12 From the mid-19th century to the early 20th century, family cottages dominated the plantation landscape of Hawai’i. The long-term establishment of Chinese, Japanese, Filipino, and Korean immigrant families on the islands through the plantation regime ultimately led to Asian settler colonialism.

luengsuraswat| badass, motherfucker, and meat-eater

According to Haunani-Kay Trask, Hawaiian nationalist scholar and activist, the history of colonization in Hawai’i is a “twice-told tale, first of discovery and settlement by European and American businessmen and missionaries, then of the plantation Japanese, Chinese and eventually Filipino rise to dominance in the islands.”13 Trask highlights the often-overlooked fact that Asian immigrants also participate in the United States’ colonization of Hawai’i. By reinforcing the immigrant hegemony, Asian settlers unwittingly obscure Native Hawaiians’ claims to land and human rights. The belief that economic success, upward mobility, and the embodiment of middle-class virtues lead to the acceptance of Asian immigrants into American society relies precisely on the fundamental misrecognition of Hawai’i as part of the United States. In “Arguing that Asians, too, have a nation in Hawai’i,” Trask continues, “the ‘local’ identity tag blurs the history of Hawai’i’s only indigenous people while staking a settler claim. Any complicity in the subjugation of Hawaiians is denied by the assertion that Asians, too, constitute a ‘nation.’”14 As Trask mentions, Asian settlers’ claim of the “local” identity in Hawai’i violently replaces the concerns of Native dispossession with that of immigrant success, thus providing a further justification for the U.S. nation-state’s inhumane treatment of indigenous people. The United States’ annexation of Hawai’i in 1898 signifies the official moment of Native dispossession.15 Up until the present moment, Native Hawaiians have severely suffered from the U.S. governmental regulation of their land and natural resources, the intensification of class stratification resulting from economic exploitation, the creation of a racialized system of incarceration, and the epistemological erasure of indigenous cultural identities and practices, many of which are the effects of Asian settlers’ desire for upward mobility and immigrant success. The encounter between Native Hawaiians and Asian immigrants brings to attention the violence of settler colonialism and nationalism. The formation of heteronormative households, whether through the plantation regime (U.S. capitalization of indigenous resources) or the liberal immigration reform, serves as an important marker of success on part of Asian immigrants in developing a sense of belonging to the U.S. nation-state and hegemonic American culture. On the one hand, family formation through the plantation regime was a means to incorporate Asian immigrants into the operation of U.S. imperialist economy. On the other hand, family reunification in the post-1965 era functions to domesticate Asian immigrants as docile subjects of the nation. Here, gender and sexual conformity is where Asian settler colonialist and Asian American nationalist positionalities intersect. The immigrant hegemony unites Asian settlers in Hawai’i and Asian Americans on the mainland via the desire for recognition as American national subjects.16 This construction of Asian settler colonialist/ Asian American nationalist desire for cultural citizenship through gender and sexual conformity is precisely what Yan’s work, Badass, critiques. Yan’s creative inhabitation of the prevailing standards of masculinity powerfully exaggerates the Asian American nationalist desire for recognition as legitimate subjects via gender and sexual conformity. Yan’s work suggests that even though Asian Americans and immigrants nowadays are, in many respects, entitled to the rights that were once denied to their ancestors on this continent, they are nonetheless intensely regulated by the norms of gender and sexuality. As a collage of multiple, contradictory manifestations of masculinity, Badass not only illustrates a hysterical neoliberal landscape that contributes to Asian American men’s feelings of alienation and loss, but also calls into question the existence of

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an idealized construction of masculinity central to Asian American nationalist imaginations of belonging. The Asian American literary canon is an appropriate site to examine the construction of Asian American nationalism and the version of masculinity it advocates. In the first chapter of Racial Castration: Managing Masculinity in Asian America, David Eng briefly discusses the antagonistic tension between Maxine Hong Kingston and Frank Chin over the representation of Asian American male identity and Asian American writers’ responsibilities to their ethnic communities.17 Since her publication of The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts in 1976, Kingston has been the target of accusation by Chin due to her depiction of Chinese men as “publicly passive and effeminate, yet privately abusive and patriarchal.”18 Chin and his fellow editors of The Big Aiiieeeee! An Anthology of Chinese American and Japanese American Literature—Jeffrey Paul Chan, Lawson Fusao Inada, and Shawn Wong—all condemned Kingston for reinforcing the Orientalist stereotypes of Asian men: “The China and Chinese America portrayed in these works are the products of white racist imagination, not fact, not Chinese culture, and not Chinese American literature.”19 These Chinese American and Japanese American male writers express an urgent need to recuperate their maleness that has been disavowed within the context of the U.S. mainstream culture. For them, gender authenticity is understood as a remedy for racism. Chin, in particular, has often been known to embody and promote the version of masculinity that is misogynistic and homophobic.20 In Badass, this idealized construction of masculinity is flipped upside down, torn apart, and revealed to be a product of Asian American nationalist anxiety around identity and belonging. In the climate of liberal multiculturalism and neoliberal globalization, where the multiplicity of identities and flexible accumulation are highly privileged, Asian Americans and immigrants are most likely to experience a significant transformation in the ideas of community, identity, and belonging. No longer can home be defined in terms of a fixed geographical location, nor community in terms of traditions and nostalgia. Badass highlights the very impossibility of forming a community through reclaiming gender authenticity, because the idealized construction of masculinity is merely a myth of origin.

Slam, Spoken Word, and the Performances of Identity The notion of authenticity and the fantasy of idealized masculinity are fundamentally what the medium of Yan’s performance seeks to challenge. Coming from the competitive slam background, a profession that is popularly associated with male braggadocios and performance of aggression, Yan delivers Badass with an aggressive, competitive impulse, typical of the genre. Formerly a Lizard Lounge National Slam Team member and an Individual World Poetry Slam winner, Yan is now a spoken word artist and poet whose work pays much homage to the genealogy of slam.21 As discussed below, Yan’s performance of identity, particularly when it is construed as an articulation of difference in the context of slam, functions to disrupt and transform the dominant constructions of race, gender, and masculinity. According to Susan Somers-Willett in The Cultural Politics of Slam Poetry: Race, Identity, and the Performance of Popular Verse in America, “Slams are places where all types of

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marginalized identities are celebrated and expressed.”22 Originally emerged within white working-class culture as an attempt to make poetry accessible to those outside of the academy, slam competitions encourage the articulations of identities that are marginalized within high literary traditions and dominant culture.23 Building on Somers-Willett’s understanding of slams as spaces that foster the articulations of difference, I contend that slam competitions are the sites where the meanings of masculinity are both produced and contested. Slam poets—youth and adult, white and of color, straight and queer, conventionally gendered and gender-variant alike—actively participate in the production of masculinities, thereby creating a web of heterogeneous gender expressions and identities. The diversity of masculinities within the competitive context of slam demonstrates that it is impossible to identify any articulation of masculinity as predominant. Yan’s Badass, in this sense, contributes to the archive of multiple, contradictory masculinities that the slam genre provides a ground for. The heterogeneity of gender expressions is also evident when comparing Yan’s own performances of Badass in different contexts. Although spoken word performances, like slam competitions, allow for the willful production and articulation of identity, the essence of each performance depends largely on the setting and audience. The fact that every spoken word performance of the same poem is different implies that there is no original version, or a more “accurate” articulation, of Badass; every expression of masculinity is neither authentic nor derivative. Yan’s performance of Badass at Swarthmore College in June 2008 is observably distinct from his performance at PhaseFest, an annual queer music and arts festival in Washington, D.C., in September of the same year. At Swarthmore, Yan dresses formally (a monotone sweater over a white buttoned up shirt and a pair of dark slacks), delivers the lines clearly in an almost non-sarcastic tone, and performs moderately descriptive gestures.24 In contrast, at PhaseFest, Yan wears a casual outfit (a slightly unbuttoned black shirt, a pair of black jeans, and sneakers), dramatically stresses certain curse words and lines, performs highly graphic gestures, and playfully eyes the audience.25 Yan’s distinct, and almost contradictory, performances of Badass in these two contexts—a heteronormative educational setting and a queer subcultural space—suggest that environmental constraints have a significant impact on one’s embodiment and articulation of identity. Gender expressions and identities are by all means relative; each person is capable of expressing their gender identity differently depending on the context. Therefore, any construction of masculinity, whether dominant or minoritarian, is an impossible ideal to achieve, because virtually nobody can articulate their gender identity in the exact same manner throughout all social contexts. The inevitable inconsistency of the expressions of masculinity in Badass owes partly to the multiple interpretive possibilities of the piece. According to Yan, the audience’s reading of his performance varies.26 On the one hand, those who approach Badass with a strict gender binary framework have often read Yan’s performance of “excessive” masculinity as an affirmation of heteropatriarchy and a further association of masculinity with violence. On the other hand, those who approach Yan’s work with alternative visions of gender politics generally perceive violence and female objectification that Yan’s piece addresses not as essential characteristics of masculinity and maleness, but as intrinsically part of the production of the gender binary that Badass, in turn, criticizes. That Yan’s performance allows for multiple interpretations and is subject to different reading practices suggests that masculinity

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is by no means a singular, coherent construction, but a malleable, inconsistent, and contradictory cultural sign. Yet, it is crucial to keep in mind that the enforcement of particular masculine norms has very concrete and violent effects.

Inhabiting Multiplicity The concept of masculinity as a non-singular, inconsistent, and context-dependent articulation of identity underlies the entire narrative of Badass. Turning from the medium of performance to the content of the piece, I will provide a brief overview of Badass’ narrative. Badass is a four-minute performance piece. In the first three minutes (three-quarters into the piece), Yan expresses his desire to embody masculinity, yet constantly articulates his inability to do so through the refrain “in my next life.” In the alternate reality that he conceptualizes, Yan sees himself as a “bad boy” who is not only physically attractive and popular with girls, but also academically exceptional and unafraid of authorities. Yan goes on to express his wish to completely immerse himself in material culture, such as eating meat, driving a car, making a fashion statement, and becoming popular. A significant portion of Badass focuses on Yan’s sexual desire. He paints himself as a sex god who aggressively fucks women and gives them “the best sex of [their lives].” Towards the end of the poem, however, the tone drastically shifts when Yan realizes that he cannot, and does not necessarily have to, become something that he is not. In this portion of the piece, Yan at first seems to undermine the norms of masculinity that he previously tried to achieve and instead formulates his own version of maleness—his new gender subjectivity. He now perceives love, not sex, as an expression of masculinity; expresses empathy towards animals and embraces the vegan lifestyle; and acknowledges his insecurities around sexual inadequacy, rather than denying them. Nevertheless, Yan immediately subverts this humble, loving, vulnerable persona that he just took on and ends the poem with the last line that references the braggadocio in the first part of his performance. A series of reversals that Yan performs at the end of the piece effectively undermines the very idea of a stable, valorizable gender formation.

Subversion of Identities: The Uncertainty of Masculinity and the Inconsistency of Desire Through the repetition of the phrase “in my next life,” Yan begins his performance by framing his desire to become a “badass” as an impossibility. In so doing, Yan points to the myriad ways in which he is positioned as an outsider to adolescent male socialization, particularly as being female-assigned at birth and Asian American. In the post-1965 United States, Asian racialization has been organized around the Model Minority myth—the image of rule-abiding, hard-working individuals who successfully overcome racial, cultural, and economic barriers. Under this condition of racialization, Asian American youth are bound to negotiate with the dominant representation of themselves as studious, obedient, and dutiful immigrant subjects. In this sense, if “badness,” “delinquency,” and “disobedience” are coded as markers of the normative development of male gender identity within the American cultural sphere, then Asian American adolescent male subjectivity is discursively situated beyond the normative trajectory of masculine development. While the discursive representation of Asian American adolescent male subjects as obe-

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dient and hard-working renders them as deviant in the context of youth culture, academic success is still nonetheless understood as desirable and is, in fact, expected from Asian immigrant youth. A series of contradictory statements that Yan articulates here—to “[not] ever gonna go to class but…gonna pass with honors” and to “walk with [one’s] chest out at graduation and then streak”—demonstrates that Asian American adolescent male identity is rather an internally contradictory and unstable subject position. Yan’s brief embodiment of the “golden boy” persona—a young man who is both “socially competent” (meaning “cool” in the eye of other adolescents) and academically exceptional—is the performance of ambivalence that highlights the inconsistencies and conflicts underlying the production of racialized gendered subjectivity, in general, and Asian American male identity, in particular. Besides youth culture and education, Asian American men also struggle to develop a sense of belonging to hegemonic American culture, and a transnational capitalist culture, through consumption and consumerism. The consumption of meat and the possession of a car, particularly a “black hummer SUV,” connote excessive masculinity. On the one hand, meat-eating metaphorically implies the meat market, or sexual consumption and participation in a heterosexist economy. On the other hand, the “black Hummer SUV”—a dark, slick, gigantic, tough-looking four-wheel drive vehicle—is a grand emblem of male potency; more precisely, it signifies a gigantic “oil-dependent” cock. As a military-converted vehicle, the Hummer primarily stands in for excessive, white, nationalist, militaristic masculinity and the occupying U.S. army in non-Western territories. The exaggerated consumption of meat and the possession of a “pimped-out” Hummer, hence, produce the consumerist subject as overtly nationalist, anxiously heteronormative, and excessively masculine. When Yan says, “hell i wanna eat meat while driving my pimped out rimmed out black hummer suv,” he holds his left fist close to his mouth in the gesture of eating and stretches his right arm outward as if he is driving. While articulating this line, Yan moves his right fist slightly up and down in the gesture of masturbation, triggering audience laughter. In rendering himself a meat-eating driver of a black Hummer SUV, Yan temporarily embodies heteronormative white American masculinity. However, Yan’s performance of white masculinity is by no means a faithful mimicry, but an exaggeration of what appears to be natural. By simultaneously making the gestures of SUV-driving, meat-eating, and masturbation, in addition to his verbal articulation of male aggressiveness, Yan produces white masculinity as excess and surplus, transforming it into an object of ridicule. Conversely, the “black Hummer SUV” can also be alternatively interpreted as a signifier of black masculinity. As a military-converted truck, the black Hummer SUV carries the connotation of the incorporation of black male subjects into the U.S. national culture, such as, quite literally, the recruitment of black men into the U.S. military. In a way, this black militaryconverted truck is not exclusively a symbol of racist white masculinity, but also a signifier of deviant masculinities—precisely the racialized, the hypermasculine, and the queer. The “über-macho” quality of the black Hummer SUV possibly invokes associations with black hip-hop artists, athletes, and down-low-ers. Yan’s embodiment of black masculinity on stage at this moment not only interrogates the process of racial signification, but also exaggerates the undesirability of brown “male” bodies by layering one set of racial stereotypes (verbal: black) over another (visual: Asian). Most importantly, the fact that Yan’s performance generates multiple possibilities of interpretation, even in one particular instance, suggests

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that Badass is in and of itself a rich site for the production, contestation, and subversion of masculinity. In certain moments, Yan explicitly combines multiple, conflicting images of masculinity together. For example, over the next few lines of the poem, he simultaneously renders himself as a “big-and-buff, 6-foot-2, 210-pound” man, a “fucking-pierced-up-tattooed” man, a man wearing “big bling diamond earrings and tight ass muscle tees,” and a man who is “on tv with a different celebrity each week.” Here, it is difficult for the audience to imagine all these divergent expressions of gender being embodied by the same person.27 This collage of “mis-matched” masculinities points to the fact that it is impossible to embody the so-called “normative” masculinity at all, since all manifestations of maleness presented here are culturally valid and functioning as normalizing regimes. In the logic of Yan’s performance, if becoming assimilated means conforming to dominant masculine norms, then a successful assimilation implies internalizing a hodgepodge of contradictory masculinities. Even though the types of masculinity that a man wearing “big bling diamond earrings and tight ass muscle tees” and a man who is “fucking pierced up tattooed voodoo god knows what” embody are coded as marginal—the former possibly being a class-privileged gay man and the latter being a subcultural producer—they are nonetheless granted some degree of cultural currency, such that they do function as markers of subjectivity. Sex undeniably functions as a marker of subjectivity in Badass, as a significant portion of the piece, the next minute and a half that follows, focuses on the expressions of hypersexuality. At the first glance, Yan’s expression of “bad boy” masculinity in this part of the performance might appear to debunk the myth of desexualized Asian American men through reinforcing the heteronormative social order. When taking a closer look, however, we can see that Yan expresses an incestuous desire and articulates the specificity of his transmale body by saying, “in my next life i wanna be a motherfucker/ literally/ i wanna bang a soccer mom who secretly has pussy sucking lips/ i wanna pull her hips into me as my strap-on hits her hard and deep.” Yan’s expression of incestuous desire here serves to undermine the institution of family that not only reproduces racial, class, and gender hierarchies, but also disciplines Asian immigrants in the post-1965 era into proper subjects of the U.S. nation-state and global transnational capital. Thus, the desire to “bang a soccer mom who secretly has pussy sucking lips” is an act of hierarchical reversal, whereby constructing white domesticity as fundamentally queer. Furthermore, by setting up this intense sex scene as essentially queer and “motherfucking,” Yan encourages the audience to perceive the seemingly heteronormative actions that follow under the rhetoric of subversion. In this sense, we can come to understand that Yan values the moments of female agency (“i want female ejaculation”), denounces conventional heterosexual courting routines (“no more straight up flirting”), and seeks alternative modes of communication (“go to bars instead of talking”). Taken metaphorically, these endeavors— the subversion of sexism through acknowledging female sexual autonomy, the critical reevaluation of heteronormative concepts of intimacy, and the creation of alternative systems of interpellation that allow for nuanced processes of subject formation to take place—are particularly important to the survival of trans and queer people of color in general. In the last portion of Badass, Yan performs not just one, but a series of reversals. In the first set of reversals, Yan, realizing the impossibility of conforming to the prevailing norms

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of masculinity and becoming something that he is not, opts instead to transform the qualities that he previously thought of as antithesis to the dominant articulations of maleness into part of his “new” male identity. He now chooses emotional intimacy over sexual gratification (“i’d rather have a big soul hug than a good fuck”), expresses kindness towards other living beings and leads a vegan lifestyle (“no thanks on the meat cuz dead baby chicks well they make me wanna cry”), and practices conscious consumerism and self-care (“if i had money, i’d rather buy organic, i have no interest in anything remotely satanic”). But then, Yan goes on to subvert and complicate the “sensitive” version of masculinity that he just articulated. In the second set of reversals, Yan insists that he is not always humble, loving, and considerate, “because everybody’s got that secret side hiding beneath the definition of other.” Exposing the mechanism of identification, Yan demonstrates that the self is constituted against other things, and these “other things” that serve as a backdrop against which the self constitutes itself are implicitly part of one’s identity. Noting that he might still “think about eating meat” and “cut off an old person in the street,” Yan undermines the possibility of formulating a coherent model of masculinity. Like other forms of masculinity that Yan articulates throughout the poem, this “sensitive” masculinity also functions as a regulatory ideal. The power of any regulatory ideal lies in its unattainability. According to Judith Butler in Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of “Sex,” the idea of “gender performativity” implies that gender is constituted through the repeated approximation of norms, the desire to identify with the bodily ideal that grants one’s entry into the realm of cultural intelligibility, to become a subject.28 Performativity is the process of citing the conventions of authority, the compulsive reiteration of norms to the extent that it produces an appearance of substance—that gender is something that naturally exists. When Yan says, “but you know when nobody’s looking, i totally scratch my ass,” this moment of his performance reveals that gender expression is not simply an externalization of the “inner self,” or some kind of coherent substance, but is also, to a certain extent, shaped through disciplinary processes, whether by the self or society. In the absence of the disciplining gaze (“when nobody’s looking”), Yan relaxes (“i totally scratch my ass”). At this juncture in his performance of reversals, Yan points to the degree of effort it takes to uphold the version of masculinity that he desires to embody and the inevitable rupture in the compulsive repetition of norms. Revealing the impossibility of coherence of any type of masculinity, Yan holds out the “sensitive” masculinity as a possibility under the premise of inconsistency. He immediately undermines and reverses himself, too, so that this alternative form of masculinity does not then itself become a kind of normative and disciplining formation. After Yan insightfully critiques the discourse of identity and conceptualizes an alternative method to embody masculinity, however, he ends the poem with the last two lines that brings back the braggadocio of the first three-fourths of the piece: “and yo, i may not be a badass in this life/ but last night, i fucking fucked the shit out of your mother.” Disrupting the critical tone of the previous few lines, this ending highlights an on-going tension between the conscious subversion of identity, or the critical interrogation of visibility, and the desire to be seen and recognized as subject. Taken altogether, these multiple reversals in the last part of Yan’s performance illustrate the lived contradictions inherent in the construction of gender and complicate the very meaning of resistance.

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The Archives of Possibilities Yan’s spoken word performance compellingly suggests that there is no such a thing as an idealized construction of masculinity in which male-identified people, in general, and Asian American men, in particular, can simply conform to. As a collage of multiple, contradictory, and inconsistent manifestations of masculinity, Badass is a performance of possibilities— whether it be Yan’s embodiment of a “fucking-pierced-up-tattooed” “big-and-buff, 6-foot-2, 210-pound” man wearing “big bling diamond earrings and tight ass muscle tees”; the multiple interpretive potentials of a “black Hummer SUV”; the production of heterogeneous masculinities through the medium of spoken word; or the ambivalent subversion of masculine norms at the end of the poem. Yan’s creative articulation of possibilities most importantly illuminates the consequences of the dominant paradigm of identity, particularly as conveyed through the discourses of Asian American nationalism and Asian settler colonialism. The idea that social subjects must continuously perform and exhibit coherent markers of identity in order to prove their fitness for a particular social category—whether it be the U.S. nation-state, the Asian American community, or the male gender identity—is a disciplining act that violently eradicates expressions of difference and condemns inevitable moments of uncertainty. In conceptualizing an alternative understanding of identity, it is crucial that we situate movements, changes, and unpredictable ruptures as central to the development of subjectivity. Let us, for the moment, consider Yan’s changing body as he has begun performing Badass in 2005, prior to his hormonal transition.29 From being read as a masculine femalebodied person on stage to passing as a man in real life, Yan’s shifting physical embodiment, from then through the present, could have potentially affected the meaning of the performance itself and the audience’s perception and reception of the piece. What does it mean for a transitioning Asian American transman to express uncertainty towards the embodiment of masculinity? Can Yan’s changing body signify the impossibility of conceptualizing a coherent modality of maleness? By revealing the multiplicity of “being”—that is, the possibility of inhabiting multiple social locations—Yan’s work precisely signals the need for such badass, motherfucking, meat-eating performance.

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Kit Yan, Badass (2007) in my next life, i’m gonna be a badass i’m gonna lose my virginity at sweet 16 with the homecoming queen 2 years older than me, i’m gonna smoke weed and cigarettes in the bathroom skip homeroom, flip off my high school teachers and then make out with my college professors and i ain’t ever gonna go to class but i’m gonna pass with honors cuz i’m gonna pay my way to summa cum laude walk with my chest out at graduation and then streak in my next life, i’m gonna eat meat drive a pimped out rimmed out black hummer suv hell i wanna eat meat while driving my pimped out rimmed out black hummer suv you’ll see my face on tv with a different celebrity each week and i’m gonna be big and buff 6 foot 2, 210 pounds, and tougher than tough wear big bling diamond earrings and tight ass muscle tees hell i still don’t think you understand me i’m talking fucking pierced up tattooed voodoo god knows what in my next life i wanna be a slut nugget make every girl wet when i touch her in my next life i wanna be a motherfucker literally i wanna bang a soccer mom who secretly has pussy sucking lips i wanna pull her hips into me as my strap-on hits her hard and deep and i wanna be a freak in bed instead of making love, i wanna have sex no, i wanna fuck no more tucking myself in neatly, no more nuzzling necks discreetly no more whispering in ears, i wanna have sex so hard i wanna taste tears and slap ass all night long i wanna try every position in kama sutra and then some i wanna fuck from the back, fuck upside down, fuck you on your knees face down on the ground and make you cum so many times that you lose count i want masturbation, i want female ejaculation in my reincarnation, i’m gonna be a porn star sensation be dirty, no more straight up flirting i’m just gonna command girls to bed, go to bars and instead of talking i’m just gonna tell them that you’ll be walking home with me tonight and i’m gonna show you the best sex of your life and in the morning i’m sorry but you gotta walk back cuz i’m gonna be tired and i’m gonna wanna sleep in and you can show yourself out, thank you

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and oh, don’t bother leaving me your number cuz i’ll never call you back in fact, what’s the name of that cute girl you were with last night yeah, why don’t you tell her to give me a call but that wouldn’t be me at all see, i ain’t no badass, just a dumbass trying to be something that i know i’m not, dreaming of ways to be hot when hell, i’m already hot because sometimes you get lost in that dream of anything but and i’ll never be a slut and i do believe in love and if given a choice, i’d rather have a big soul hug than a good fuck and no thanks on the meat cuz dead baby chicks well they make me wanna cry and if i had money, i’d rather buy organic,i have no interest in anything remotely satanic but you know when nobody’s looking, i totally scratch my ass i’ll drink soy milk from the box i might shop online for a bigger cock and then cut off an old person in the street and yes, sometimes i still think about eating meat because everybody’s got that secret side hiding beneath the definition of other and yo, i may not be a badass in this life but last night, i fucking fucked the shit out of your mother

Figure 1. Kit Yan and the Good Asian Drivers at Café Club Fais Do Do, Los Angeles, 2009. Photograph by author.

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Acknowledgements Special thanks to Kit Yan, Melissa Li, Grace Kyungwon Hong, Victor Bascara, Purnima Mankekar, and my colleagues for their support of the project. This research was funded by the Institute of American Cultures and the Asian American Studies Center at the University of California, Los Angeles.

Notes 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19.

20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25.

David L. Eng, Racial Castration: Managing Masculinity in Asian America (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2001), 25. Kit Yan, telephone interview by author, October 30, 2009. Nayan Shah, Contagious Divides: Epidemics and Race in San Francisco’s Chinatown (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2001), 77-104. Ibid., 77-79. Lisa Lowe, Immigrant Acts: On Asian American Cultural Politics (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1996), 11. Judy Yung, Unbound Feet: A Social History of Chinese Women in San Francisco (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1995), 188-198. Erika Lee, At America’s Gates: Chinese Immigration During the Exclusion Era, 1882-1943 (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2003), 245-251. Mae M. Ngai, Impossible Subjects: Illegal Aliens and the Making of Modern America (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2004), 227-8, 245. Chandan Reddy, “Asian Diasporas, Neoliberalism, and Family: Reviewing the Case for Homosexual Asylum in the Context of Family Rights,” Social Text 23, no. 3-4 84-85 (Fall-Winter 2005): 110. Gary Y. Okihiro, Cane Fires: The Anti-Japanese Movement in Hawaii, 1865-1945 (Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 1991), 16. Ibid., 61. Ronald Takaki, Raising Cane: The World of Plantation Hawaii (New York, NY: Chelsea House Publishers, 1994), 74. Haunani-Kay Trask, “Settlers of Color and ‘Immigrant’ Hegemony: ‘Locals’ in Hawai’i,” in Asian Settler Colonialism: From Local Governance to the Habits of Everyday Life in Hawai’i, ed. Candace Fujikane and Jonathan Y. Okamura (Honolulu, HI: University of Hawai’i Press, 2008), 47. Ibid., 48. Ibid., 46. See Robert M. Lee and Chinese Chamber of Commerce in Hawaii, eds., The Chinese in Hawaii: A Historical Sketch (Honolulu, HI: Advertiser Publishing Company, 1961). Eng, 90. Ibid. Jeffery Paul Chan and others, eds., The Big Aiiieeeee! An Anthology of Chinese American and Japanese American Literature (New York, NY: Meridian, 1991), xii, quoted in David L. Eng, Racial Castration: Managing Masculinity in Asian America (Durham, NC: Duke University Press 2001), 90. Eng, 102. “Good Asian Drivers Tour,” MySpace, http://www.myspace.com/goodasiandriverstour. Susan B. A. Somers-Willett, The Cultural Politics of Slam Poetry: Race, Identity, and the Performance of Popular Verse in America (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2009), 8. Somers-Willett, 3-7. Good Asian Drivers, “Badass – Kit Yan at Swarthmore,” YouTube, June 25, 2008, http://www. youtube.com/watch?v=3d6Ovqqbl00. Good Asian Drivers, “Badass – Good Asian Drivers @ PhaseFest,” YouTube, September 28,

26. 27.

28. 29.

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2008, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GoIrIqHBmK4. Yan, telephone interview by author. However, a possible framework to consider in this instance is the concept of the dissociative identity disorder (also known as the multiple personality disorder), where “the presence of two or more distinct identities or personality states…recurrently takes control of [one’s] behavior.” See American Psychiatric Association, Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fourth Edition, Text Revision (DSM-IV-TR) (Arlington, VA: American Psychiatric Publishing, Inc., 2000), 526-529. Yan’s performance of multiplicity astutely challenges the ableist discourses of normativity that rely on singular, recognizable expressions of identity for successful social circulation, as well as the notion of assimilation that subscribes to ability and cognitive privileges. Judith Butler, Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of “Sex” (New York, NY: Routledge, 1993), 12-15. Yan, telephone interview by author.

Ethnicity in Wounded Spaces: Instrumentalism and the Making of Africa in Brazil Amanda Kearney

Abstract: The shaping of ethnic citizenry is embedded in complicated processes of

engagement with ancestry, self and group formation, metaphors for belonging, and cultural shift. I argue that at the core of all ethnic citizenry is a complicated relationship with social memory. I demonstrate this by examining memory, kinship, and ethnicity amongst Afro-descendants in Brazil, where the reinvention of Blackness and a cultural resonance with Africa represent powerful steps to assert ethnicity as an instrument to combat social injustice and racial disparity.

Introduction

he shaping of ethnic citizenry, as a process of claiming membership to a politically defined community, is embedded in complicated processes of engagement with kinship, self and group formation, metaphors for belonging, and cultural shift. I argue that at the core of all ethnic citizenry is a complicated relationship with social memory. This manifests in a negotiated encounter with aspects of oneâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s ancestry in order to facilitate the ongoing construction of self, moving forward into an aspirational future. Long understood as intimately linked, ethnicity and memory facilitate stages of identity formation and enactment. From the perspective of this research, the future of ethnic studies is found in an increasingly strong bond with memory studies and a rethinking of the relationship between

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kinship and social memory. Kinship is a powerful social referent for belonging in moments where ethnic identities are claimed, challenged, or reconfigured for present day political, social, and economic purposes. This is what makes ethnicity so often a work in progress: a construction or instrument. The constructed quality of ethnicity is what enables it to become instrumental. Once chosen and crafted, individuals and collectives come to appreciate the manner in which their ethnic citizenry might be utilized throughout the life-course to shape a certain experience of the world. Ethnic loyalties are formed amidst complicated conditions for remembering and forgetting, thus they often manifest most creatively and powerfully in those instances where they affect the personal and political dimensions of difficult lives. Ethnic studies has generated several approaches to the study of ethnicity and therefore the unpacking of processes essential to identity politics. The legacy of this intellectual heritage is important for the future of ethnic studies and for rethinking the powerful links between memory and ethnicity. The most prominent models for understanding have been primordialist, constructionist, and instrumentalist approaches. For the primordialists, memory is intrinsic in the project of ethnic identification; one is born an ethnic citizen as an extension of biological kinship.1 For the constructionists, memory is negotiable as part of a wider project of self-realization and actualization over the life-course.2 An instrumentalist view of ethnicity is one in which memories are chosen and denied, realized according to processes of decision-making and the weighing up of the costs and benefits of certain narratives and normative views of ethnic citizenry.3 Revisiting these existing frameworks within ethnic studies ensures the discipline’s capacity to build on an already strong intellectual heritage. I argue that this heritage, in its very formulation, embodies some of the historical realities of ethnic citizenry, the contexts in which they have been studied, and the capacity for ethnic studies to contribute to and influence public debate and discourse around this particular aspect of identity politics. In this discussion, I engage each approach in an effort to find a suitable methodology for engaging with ethnicity in wounded spaces. These spaces represent instances where ethnic identity is a political project prefaced on collective and social memory that attests to difficult or traumatic histories and contemporary inequities. “Wounded spaces” are the terrains across which “geographical space...has been torn and fractured by violence and exile,”4 shaping a geographical and social reality which reflects in the loss of life, rights, cultural expressions, and surety in ethnic identity and rights to belong. Such realities are often the backdrop to the foreground of emerging ethnicity. By working to reveal the ethnic scapes born of difficult histories, it is my vision that one part of the future of ethnic studies is found in its capacity to contribute to reconciliatory politics within spaces of past and present wounding. States of newness, emergence, and politicization within contexts of globalized identity politics are a resounding theme in the social sciences today. Following this, ethnic studies concerned with emergence, genesis, and revival of ethnic identities generate frameworks for understanding and appreciating identity politics more broadly. I invoke one part of this, namely the bridging of ethnic and memory studies, by turning my attention to memory, kinship, and ethnicity amongst Afro-descendants in Brazil, where the reinvention of Blackness and a cultural resonance with Africa represent powerful steps to assert ethnicity as an instrument to combat social injustice and racial disparity. I create a dialogue here between ethnicity, choice, social justice, and positive ethnic identifi-

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cations. This creates new frames for working with ethnicity, and I argue that it is the present, and not the past, which informs and substantiates ethnic identity.

Methodology I position memory and kinship as central to an understanding of ethnicity as a process and ethnic identity as an arrival point. By undertaking ethnographic research with Indigenous families in Australia (since 2000) and Afro-descendant groups in Brazil (since 2008), I have witnessed the emergence of ethnic states that involve processes of remembering, and commemoration of a loyalty built around what is remembered and channelled into a politicocreative project. Together, these contexts have provided the space in which to consider ethnicity, and in turn the future directions in ethnic studies, which facilitate the consideration of ethnic identities born of socially and politically ruptured spaces such as in post-colonial and post-imperial nations. In wounded spaces like Australia and Brazil, the capacity to “remain the same” ethnically has been profoundly compromised and threatened by colonial and imperial processes and their wounding. However, the expectation to “remain the same” persists powerfully in measures of authenticity and tradition as valuable. This means that groups and individuals deemed to be “non-traditional,” young, inter-culturally influenced, living in urban centers, educated, and politically engaged are judged by policy and populace to be somewhat “less” ethnically distinct and by default “less” legitimate. An unwillingness to accept the un-fixed nature of culture, and therefore ethnic identity, renders certain ethnic identities questionable and problematic for those who assess them, such as governments and those who validate them, and the collective majority. Ethnicity is often scrutinized in terms of its authenticity: according to attributes of deep ancestry, linguistic particularity, and geographical territoriality.5 In wounded spaces, where these three attributes are the most likely to be assaulted and fragmented, the satisfying of all these criteria can represent a deeply challenging process for those seeking to assert or legitimate particular ethnic identities. In such cases, the perceived legitimacy of an ethnic identity may be dependent on one’s or a group’s ability to meet all the criteria, irrespective of historical events or contemporary political, social, and economic realities. Such conditions can create inequity in the capacity to express an identity along ethnic lines. This inequity is born of the fact that colonial and imperial nations require acts of de-signification and resignification to justify their existence.6 This includes designification of existing social, political, and economic realities and resignification through overlaying of new meanings in place through political and economic action (such as slavery and labor relations). Designfication involves the weakening and undercutting of territoriality and any claims to cultural exclusivity or traces articulated around an identity in a social, political, ideological, and economic sense.7 Resignification demands a redrawing of reality — an inscription of new meanings which can be overlaid onto places and nations, individuals and groups, history and social memory, often becoming the normative power in terms of how people are defined and relate to one another. Historically, these processes have taken the form of coercive and assimilative acts which see the removal of people from their territories, the reallocation of rights and

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renaming of places, enslavement, imprisonment, and many other forms of control over ethnicized or politicized bodies, and the introduction of new languages and ideologies. Tensions arise when ethnic identities are born of these political contexts. In some cases, the ethnic scapes that remain look remarkably different to what has come before, or might shape themselves according to a distant ancestry or socially prescribed kinship with nonbiological affiliates. The latter is characteristic of identity politics articulated around African descent in Brazil, whereby deep ancestry is less a requirement in defining Afro-descent than is a political discourse born of a historical experience of slavery and its lasting labor and social relations. The tensions that manifest in Brazil primarily concern public debate around affirmative action and Afro-descent. Initiatives over the last decade, such as higher education racial quotas for Afro-descendants and the enshrining of law on teaching African history in education programs, have been widely critiqued according to the ethnic legitimacy and authenticity of Afro-descendants as a collective disconnected from African and slavery for generations. This has spawned questions around who is black in Brazil? When is one black enough? How is blackness defined and what constitutes black culture?8 These questions betray a strange relationship with ideas of kinship, memory, nationalism, and identity. Therefore, I argue that what is needed in politically complicated contexts of ethnic conflict and struggle is a framework for understanding the mediated role between memory, kinship, and ethnicity. To develop this framework further, I craft a methodology that rethinks how memories are utilized in the process of self-actualization and what role remembered histories have within the context of present lives. In Brazil, ethnicity is a powerful element of local and national history and is likely to have arrived at its present state as something that is not merely a maintenance of what is remembered or drawn from social memory, nor is it exclusively a metaphor of unity drawn from ancestral connection and innateness. Quite the opposite, ethnicity in Brazil is a negotiated terrain, a work in progress, in which individuals and collectives seek to distinguish the character of their ethnic loyalty in relation to contemporary politics around rights and equity, color, and nationalism.9 I apply an anthropological lens to the experience of Afro-descendants within the prevailing narrative of Brazilian nationalism and the state myth of social homogeneity — “sameness despite difference.” This is achieved by focusing on the implementation of Law 10.639, the Law on Education of Racial-Ethnic Relations in the Brazilian educational system. By examining the role of collective and social memory in the crafting and implementation of this Law, I argue that memory and kinship are instrumental when the project of ethnicity is constructed. I accept the prevailing model of ethnicity as constructed and ask what might be the benefit to claiming an ethnic identity that has been marginalized historically or which encounters vulnerability in the present?10 The key to approaching this question lies in viewing ethnic identity as an instrument, designed to bring about certain benefits and returns which varyingly manifest in forms of a “good” and/ or politicized life. How this instrument is crafted is directly influenced by social memory.

Memory, Kinship, and Ethnicity Memory is human and subjective, and constructs reality rather than represents it. Classically understood as a retrieval of the past in the present, I move beyond this temporal schema

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and have developed the notion of “present memory” in order to articulate a wider vision of memory.11 Present memories work within a temporal framework that is not dependant on a referral to the past, but instead are intimately linked to the present and what lies ahead. It is a present construction of ideas subject to what the individual or group knows now (including what they have learnt already) and what they wish to know in the future. In a manner of words, memory is knowledge. In this configuration, the past as something that is fixed and retrievable is not essential to the construction of present memories. What is essential is the present — the social world occupied now that generates the frameworks for understanding the self and collective identity. These frameworks delineate what matters, what is needed, and even what is absent in the world the individual or group occupies.12 Once people establish what is present (or absent in the present), a process of decision-making begins and what is known is brought to bear on current lives. These decisions are often underscored by visions of an aspirational future that determines our present action of constructing and choosing memory. This establishes memory as an organic and relational experience, which comes to take its form in our present lives because we recognise and localise certain narratives.13 Teasing out the relationship between memory and history has long been an enterprise in memory studies, resulting in many configurations of temporality and historiography.14 For Olick and Robbins, human experience is “always embedded in and occurs through narrative frames… there is no primal, unmediated experience that can be recovered.”15 Experience, being very much a part of memory, is always constructed in and through its present narration. Similarly, if we reconfigure our understanding of kinship, to envision it as a present narration of ancestry, we see it freed from biases rooted in assumptions about biology and the “past.” Cut free of its moorings to biology and inheritance, we return to kinship as a cultural construction made up of “social relations predicated upon cultural conceptions that specify the processes by which an individual comes into being and develops into a complete social person.”16 As an extension of this, “ethnicity consists of social and cultural processes that are associated with a constructed group identity.”17 It is a relational construct which relies heavily on present conditions which establish the possibilities of an ethnic identity and which varyingly enables individuals and groups to make choices around how they might articulate this identity.18 Thus, it is possible to view kinship, memory, and ethnicity, as social constructions which are directly influenced by the present contexts in which social lives and beings are shaped and enacted. In combination, memory, kinship, and ethnicity become the lightning rods to approaching how persons define the bases on which they construct a sense of social and moral worth.19 For Glazer and Moynihan, as a new social category, it is ethnicity that facilitates the “pronounced and sudden increase in tendencies by peoples in many countries and in many circumstances to insist on the significance of their group distinctiveness and identity and on new rights that derive from this group character.”20 Its value as an interpretive tool for sociality is highlighted through the realization that “ethnicity and ethnic identity can be extremely powerful and influential forces, sparking the development of pseudo-histories, claims of political autonomy and sovereignty or a propensity for social relativism.”21 It is the subjective loyalty of ethnic belonging as crafted in a present political and social reality that is witnessed in wounded spaces. These subjectivities are what sustain platforms for self-determination, politics of exclusion and inclusion, nationalist political

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agendas, and racial violence.22 In common usage, ethnicity is attributed to those groups who are located as a demographic or cultural minority within a majority state. Decolonizing methodologies and Critical Whiteness Studies led the charge in deconstructing this notion, leveling critique at the normative power attributed to certain human groups (largely white) as a result of historical processes. Once imbued with normative power, all other identity positions deemed nonwhite are classified “ethnic,” despite the fact that to identify as “white” is itself entirely an ethnic distinction.23 What the process of ethnicity generates is a set of social parameters and conditions, which in turn are variously labeled as some form of ethnic identity. Ethnic identities may be referred to as wider categories such as Indigenous and non-Indigenous, white, or black, Brazilian, or Afro-Brazilian. There is no limit to the range of possible ethnic identities that exist at any moment in time, and these labels and their parameters can be renamed, redrawn, or removed. This is by nature the quality of ethnicity as a process, not a fixed entity. Appreciating the intellectual heritage of ethnic studies, in reaching this insight, from primordialist to constructivist and recent instrumentalist approaches gives depth of field to any argument for the future directions of ethnic studies. Each approach offers a valuable entry point into discussions of ethnic specificities over time and space, creating the conditions for a selective and integrated approach that begins to unpack the complexities born of ethnic identities which are defendable along simultaneous lines of inherentness and flexibility; contradictions which can inform debate concerning who qualifies as a particular ethnic identity and how this identity might be embodied and enacted over the life-course.

Primordialism According to Levine, “the primordial approach situates ethnicity in the psyche, so deeply that society and culture are bent to its will. Ethnic identities and hatreds naturally draw people into persistent identities and antagonisms.”24 This approach has formulated an “understanding of ethnicity as rooted in deep-seated or ‘primordial’ attachments and sentiment.”25 Primordialism differs from instrumental approaches to ethnic identity because it suggests inability to shift according to economic and political circumstances. Primordial attachments are born of the “givens” or the assumed “givens” of social existence.26 Whether manifest as deep-seated passions that merit no explanation, or limited scope for a social existence beyond that which is circumscribed unto the individual and collective, memory and very particular styles of remembrance can work to create psychological essentialism around ethnic identity.27 Treating ethnic identity as primordial requires therelationship between the past and present to be enshrined in the sense of one’s self as an individual and member of a collective. This is a relationship of processual understanding in which memories, along with kinship, are fixed, inherited, and then used as governing structures for how the individual and collective are “to be.” Both memories and kinship relations are seen as factual, historical archives of accumulated events that have persisted and are knowable, and manifest in the form of a particular ethnic identity. Infused with a primordial sentiment themselves, kinship and memory are understood to be the originary snapshots of an agreed-to past reality which can be named, stored, and recalled to inform present life and future direction.

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Acts of remembrance, which are also agreed to, ritually re-embed knowledge of a certain ethnic narrative into the consciousness of the collective. Memory and kinship in this case are what forge ethnic identity as an external given, and even at times, a coercive social bond. Brownlie argues, “it is not possible to distil some kind of ‘essence’ that would be the ‘memory’ or ‘mnemonic processes’ of a population.”28 Essentialized memory supports a type of primordial self that can be retrieved from the deep past in an almost archaeological quest for parameters of belonging. Thus, a primordialist approach to ethnicity allows us to consider how deeply held and subjective loyalties come be mandated and often powerfully defended. Although naturalizing of ethnic identities does occur through psychological essentialism, on behalf of those who claim a certain identity or by external entities that effect their presence, there is nothing primordial about the process of ethnicity itself. Change cannot be precluded from a discussion of the ways and means that collectives arrive at an essentialized ethnic identity. Whilst the ethnic arrival point may be claimed as primordial (in that it allegedly replicates what has always been), the journey taken to this destination is open to change as a result of historical particularities and contemporary conditions affecting the way things are remembered. “In this sense, the relativity of memory is just a consequence of its historicity, because it is directly connected with how much of the past is available in a certain historical context.”29

Constructivism In the 1920s, Halbwachs sought to reframe ethnicity as a social phenomenon. The success of his project is seen in the prevailing view of ethnicity as being socially constructed.30 As an extension of constructed identity, ethnic boundaries are flexible or changeable. In line with this dynamism, I argue that temporality is secondary in understanding the role of memory in the process of ethnicity. What is primary is the context of the individual’s or groups’ present life. What has greatest influence is the matrix that supports the individual and/or the group, such as their socio-political, economic, intellectual, and spiritual frames of reference. For the constructivist, these are the conditions that support the enterprising moment in which identities are made. Whether memory be attributed to the distant or recent past (vague temporal measures at best) is irrelevant to the place of remembrance in the construction of a particular ethnic identity. Distant memory and historical continuity with the distant past are utilized in the construction and reconstruction of ethnic identities, yet ethnic particularities can also be born of recent histories and particularly fractured and deeply politicized spaces. Whether from a proclaimed primordial and distant past, a recent traumatic past, or emerging sense of past and present (with the sudden assertion of an ethnic specificity), it remains that memory is an act of making meaning; meaning which may or may not be based on invention, desirable loyalty, and insider understandings of what is valued. In this vision of ethnicity, the process is linked to existing socio-political structures and human agency. This is not dissimilar to the conditions required for the construction of memory and the activation of certain acts of remembrance. Ethnic identity becomes the product of actions undertaken by groups as they shape and reshape their self-identification, often actions set against a background of external social, economic, and political processes.31 In sum, the process of ethnicity is highly relational and rarely fixed, hence its association with

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social or chosen kindred which support one’s self and community throughout the life course of an ethnic identity. The present delimits what we know, and therefore how we understand our position in the world relative to group and individual identity. Once we establish what is present (or absent in the present), a process of decision-making begins and what is known is brought to bear on our current lives.

Instrumentalism More recent instrumentalist perspectives on ethnicity, drawn heavily from the work of Sarna, emphasize the social construction of ethnicity, and its annexation as an instrument for gaining resources32. This view is underscored by the proposition that costs and benefits associated with ethnic group membership partly determine ethnic affiliation33. According to an instrumentalist position when an ethnic choice becomes available, the costs and benefits of it play a pivotal role in determining the options. Alternative assertions of ethnic identity become possible only when an ethnic status quo is challenged and superseded and from this is born something distinct, not altogether new, but distinct from an earlier form. According to this view not all ethnic choices are rational and materialistic. Some people choose an ethnic affiliation not for material gains, rewards, or access to resources and services, but for emotional, intellectual and political satisfaction, which includes states of wellbeing, social attachment or recreational pleasure34. Comaroff and Comaroff point to ‘looseness’ as a definitive quality of ethnicity as an organisational category or mechanism of affiliation for human groups in today’s world35. Ethnicity as a “labile repertoire of signs by means of which relations are constructed and communicated; through which a collective consciousness of cultural likeness is rendered sensible; with reference to which shared sentiment is made substantial” captures a fuller suite of ethnic loyalties36. I contend that swinging the pendulum so far that ethnicity becomes a loose organizational structure may render it meaningless (or more tragically powerless) as a means to distinguish cultural specificity born of challenging circumstances as, for example, found in Brazil. For human groups that occupy marginal spaces and for those groups whose cultural specificity is born of a political project based upon wounding and reclamation, the capacity to create and emerge in ethnic form remains an essential component of survival. When modelling memory on similar instrumentalist terms, we encounter a strong body of comprehending literature built around the inventing enterprise. Imagination, repression and selection are central to an understanding of the relationship between memory and ethnicity as a process governed by principles of meaningful choice. According to this framework, memory involves deliberate and thoughtful choices as to what is remembered and what is forgotten. The subjective and contested loyalties that may be born of ethnicity as an instrumental process require an understanding of memory that acknowledges it plasticity. What is remembered and what is forgotten are subject to the weighing up of costs and benefits in light of material and emotional wellbeing. The complexity involved in this process is at the core of important work in memory studies, such as Connerton’s work on the seven types of forgetting, including repressive erasure; prescriptive forgetting; forgetting that is constitutive in the formation of a new identity; structural amnesia; forgetting as annulment; forgetting as planned obsolescence; forgetting as humiliated silence37. If indeed ethnicity is the ultimate

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memory project. Thus, the need for a methodology that charters the subjectivity of personal and political lives is emphasized. It is to this that I now turn my discussion, bringing to bear an approach to memory and ethnicity in Brazil that combines a constructivist approach to ethnicity and an instrumentalist approach to memory.

Instrumentalism and the Making of Africa in Brazil In Brazil, many social and structural conditions have functioned as catalysts for ethnic consciousness. We see the full complexity of ethnic identity assertion for people living oftendifficult lives. Kinship, self-interest, and the larger economic, political, and social structures all underlie the social construction of Afro-descendant identity in northern Brazil. The Brazilian Census of 2009 provided five options for self-declared “race” along color lines. There is a history of documented color/ethnic classifications in Brazil. Wolfe remarks on Harris’ identification of 490 such classifications.38 He states that while these classifications are not all in contemporary or wide usage throughout Brazil, they reveal a complexity of social classification and stratification in a post-imperial era. These include, preto (black), branco (white), pardo (brown), amarelo (yellow), and indigena (Indigenous).39 These color declarations, and that of indigena can be seen to represent five general ethnic identities. Color declarations reveal a subtle conflation of racial (biological) and ethnic (social) identities, in that skin color is taken as a measure of difference along social, economi,c and political lines.40 This is, in part, smoothed over by a general sense of nationalism and “being Brazilian,” but then reinforced by noted social differences and inequities in life experience along lines of skin color. In 2009, 6.9 percent of the Brazilian population self-identified as preto (black).41 For many who identify as such, life is framed by “deep disparities in income, education and employment between lighter and darker-skinned Brazilians,” and these “have prompted civil rights movements advocating equal treatment.”42 Making up a considerable proportion of the total population, Afro-descendants constitute a majority of the nation’s poor. The declaration of one’s self as black sits in relationship to declarations of ethnic identity such as Afro-descendant and Afro-Brazilian. The differences or similarities between these monikers require attention, but this goes beyond the depth and breadth of this article. In this discussion, I refer to Afro-descendant as the ethnic identity which collectively holds those who self-declare an identity which is linked to an African heritage through social and biological kinship and African cultural expressions. What is key here is self-declaration, as many individuals who indeed have African ancestry do not identify themselves as Afro-descendant in Brazil, with individuals instead opting to identify as either branco or pardo (or a range of other self-declared classificatory terms). Discussions of ethnicity in Brazil are inflected by the historical particularity of a population with ancestral connections to a cross-Atlantic slave trade that brought generations of African descendants into Brazil. Today, many Brazilians identify as Afro-descendant, yet the manner in which they do so is highly contingent and dependent on a range of complex variables ranging from individual choice (self-declaration), family history, socio-economic status, location of residence, and imposed categories used in demographic data collection by national bodies. For the purpose of this discussion, I draw attention to this African

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heritage, traced through a history of slavery in Brazil set to the rhythm of imperialism and nation building. Beginning in the mid-1500s, the Portuguese brought enslaved Africans to Brazil, a practice which would continue until its official abolishment in 1888 with the passing of the Lei Áurea (Golden Law), and for some time after that through illegal channels of human enslavement and trading.43 According to Baranov, the decree involved “abolishing the slave while simultaneously failing to emancipate the African,” which led to the emergence of a multiracial order along color lines, and the entrenchment of particular capital and labor relations in post-slavery Brazil.44 This racial order positioned Africans and their descendants within a social reality that created the conditions for ethnic identities and inter-ethnic relations, which are still heavily negotiated in contemporary Brazil. The majority of Africans enslaved and brought to Brazil were from West and West Central Africa, Angola, the Congo, and Mozambique.45 While slavery became the mainstay of the economy throughout all parts of Brazil, the northern regions are particularly known for having a kinship with African influences and cultural expressions as a result of a rich history of African cultural presence. As Wolfe notes, slavery was not homogenous in Brazil; in fact, different types of slavery occurred in different parts of Brazil (Bahia, Minas Gerais, Rio de Janeiro) in relation to different industries (sugar, mining, coffee, domestic slavery).46 The nature of wounding from this political reality across Brazil thus varies according to regional histories and this manifests in varied social memories which document place-based narratives of slavery and its contemporary legacy for Afro-descendants. More generally, the history of African slavery in Brazil figures prominently, if not uncomfortably, in contemporary narratives of nationhood and cultural origins. In many respects, this is the nature of wounded spaces, in which difficult histories must be reconciled. This reconciliation sits in an undeniable relationship with Brazilian nationalism. Historically, nationalism has been prefaced on the notion of “sameness,” and the blurring of ethnic distinctions in preference of a singular loyalty in the form of “being Brazilian.” The beating heart of Brazilian nationalism was prefaced on the myth of social homogeneity (“sameness despite difference”), long held as the lynchpin for racial democracy.47 Today, assertions of racial plurality, “difference amidst claims to sameness,” have taken flight in an era of burgeoning affirmative action. Critiquing the narrative of social homogeneity, Ramos writes: The Brazilian nation has been constructed on the basis of two main premises: one is its territorial and linguistic unity; the other is its purported social homogeneity resulting from the combination of three “races” – Indians, Blacks and Europeans. While the first premise, especially regarding territoriality, has been empirically sustained, the second is a clearly mystifying ideology.48 The desire to find the essence of Brazilian identity is fraught, and brings about inevitably varied and inconclusive results over time and space. What masks as harmonious ethnic encounters or “social memory” of accommodation and assimilation in the annals of Imperial history, is for Ramos best understood as a process of creating “a recipe for homogenous nationality,” “an amalgam of whitened races with a unique and uniform national flavour.”49

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“Rather than having differences sorted out in a separate-but-equal ideological pattern, one would have a mixed-though-unequal national design.”50 The singularity of Brazil has been a point of national reflection since the Declaration of Independence in 1822 and the founding of the Republic in 1889. With this reflexivity enshrined, this has prompted what has come to be a perpetual evolution of a nation’s ethnic citizenry, ever in need of reappraisal.51 In 2003, the Brazilian government implemented Federal Law 10.639, which positioned cultural plurality as a transversal theme.52 This was the result of activism for black rights and efforts to bring the issue of racism to the minds of educational policy makers. The Law establishes “guidelines for national curriculum for teaching ethno-racial relations and AfroBrazilian and African history and culture.”53 It extends to elementary and middle school levels as well as higher education. It includes a curriculum that covers the Atlantic slave trade, sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth century African history, and studies of contemporary Africa. The text also establishes the need for teachers to be trained in these subjects.54 Initiatives of intervention in school curricula and in the classroom have also been carried out by nongovernmental organizations and black movement organizations for some time now.55 These include “Afro-Brazilian religious communities, and cultural groups like the Afro-Reggae Cultural Group in Rio de Janeiro and the Olodum and Ilê Aiyê Blocos in Salvador, Bahia.”56 Much of this has sparked concern as to the impact that increased recognition and the valorization of ethnic diversity within Brazil might have on Brazilian nationalism and interethnic relations.57 The Centro Cultural Orunmilá, a nonprofit Black Rights organization which declares its function as “the elevation of the human condition through the promotion of citizenship, the search for elements of the socio-cultural identity, the regaining of dignity and self-esteem of black people in particular” has raised the following questions of Law 10.639: “Who will teach black culture?” “What form of pedagogy will be adopted?” and “Who is trained/qualified to transmit black culture?” Such queries provide rich terrain to examine ethnic identity within a wounded space and the role memory plays in its construction. The emergence of an Afro-descendant ethnic particularity, shaped through processes of social memory, and the politics of affirmative action, involves collective coordination of kinship, agreed-to social memories, and contemporary events. What contextualizes the need for this coordination are present injustices and expanding opportunities for the effective exercise of citizenship and human rights.58 As Nascimento establishes, “identity takes on a political dimension: it constitutes power,” and in this moment, it works to stimulate positive identifications for African Brazilians.59 In particular, it mobilizes to redress situations of inequity in representation of Afro-descendants in education sectors and political arenas, elicit acknowledgement of the history of slavery, to challenge and remove the stigma, stereotypes, and discrimination felt in everyday life. In many respects ,this politicizing of an ethnic identity brings into focus the pursuit of social justice and an equitable share in the benefits of a good life. This, in part, rests in the hands of collectives and their shaping of an Afro-descendant social memory, but it may also be taken up by government agencies and organizations with a vested interest in memory work as reparative and aspirational for a wider audience. If the aim of educational initiatives is to strengthen the “African identity,” and its associated memories and cultural expressions, then there has to be agreement over a normative view of African identity and culture in Brazil. This requires a suite of memories and narra-

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tives be identified that might best inform the construction of this normativity. It is the constructed part of this process that is most complicated and interesting. The instrumental logic behind both Law 10.639 and more general black rights movements in Brazil involves the weighing up of the costs and benefits involved in certain aspects of being Afro-descendant. Commonly seen in the streets of major cities like Salvador, Bahia, are Afro-Brazilian cultural symbols such as capoeira, Candomble, samba, and Carnaval blocos (groups), each aimed at crafting and also embodying the personality of Afro-Brazilian ethnic identity and generating positive identifications for this ethnic group.60 For Pinho, “reinventions of Africa have been tremendously important for black communities in the diaspora and have frequently spurred black resistance.”61 Simultaneously, they corroborate pre-established notions of blackness; keeping Africa alive though memory projects which require the enactment of songs, music, literature, foods, dance forms, and myths and the embodiment of an aesthetic linked to African-inspired fashion, beauty, and style.62 There are those who agree to and accept these symbols and terms of identifying, thus claiming social kindred and kinship and those who do not. Self-declaration is central and suggests it is individual decision-making (as sanctioned by the collective) that leads to the embodiment of elements of African descent — the choice to subscribe to an ethnic identity with full knowledge of the politics and aesthetics this implies. Even outsiders participate in the process of setting the limits to what being an Afro-descendant might involve. Judgments of what constitutes a black person, or a brown or white person for that matter, are keenly debated in Brazil. The decision to move towards the teaching of black culture in Brazilian schools involves the construction of a pan-African diaspora, history, and subsequent identity. This overlooks the specificities of ethnic group experiences in Africa, a diversity of experiences matched by the diverse ethnic representation found among those enslaved and brought to Brazil. It does however, instrumentally, create unity in shared social kinship made of a pastiche of different historical experiences and specific cultural identities. What I argue is that this is entirely reasonable, as memory can only be understood at the very moment of its construction, the instance in which a choice is made regarding what and how to remember and therefore “how to go on.” In the crafting of African and Afro-Brazilian history, we see in action what is known in the present and what is desired into the future. In this configuration, the past is not essential to the construction of present memories. What is essential is the presence of a population within Brazil that asserts a connection to Africa through kinship and cultural expression, and the reality of documented inequity and disadvantage for this collective. Kinship is governing here, but in a more complicated way than biological connectedness or direct and traceable ancestry. Inspired by Da Costa’s63 work on “ancestralidade,” I see social kinship at the heart of instrumental ethnicity, prefaced upon: • Recognition of historical experiences, and engagement with how a particular remembered past engenders present situations. • The creation and recreation of institutions and practices that aid struggles for self-determination within contexts of ongoing discrimination. • A critical political practice directed towards social transformation.

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As such, the social world, which is occupied now, generates the frameworks for understanding what being black, Afro-descendant, or Afro-Brazilian might mean. In the case of Afrodescendant interventions into social and political realities in Brazil, we see a deliberate project to assert a collective identity along ethnic lines, with the goal of creating a space within the national consciousness and the deliverance of rights. The decision of what constitutes an Afro-descendant in this moment is underscored by visions of an aspirational future of equity and rights. This is what influences memory and prompts the call for black autonomy over who teaches African and Afro-Brazilian history. Education and the delivery of a master narrative of African history works to set a form or shape to the character of Afro-descent. In this act lies power and the capacity to shape an ethnic reality that is at once arguably inherent in its widely agreed to terms, and yet also flexible in its capacity to be constructed and reconstructed along purposeful lines for present motivations. This is captured in the following statement: There is no guarantee whatsoever that the transmission of black knowledge and culture will be the responsibility of the black community. This is the permanence of exclusion. The “training and qualification” cannot be acquired through courses on the Internet, nor in the school curricula that historically segregated, lied, stigmatized and discriminated black people and culture. The essence of black culture is not learned in books and in the academy.64 If this is the case, then can it be that the essence of black culture lies in the mind, the body, the spirit; the elements that constitute identity politics and the construction of our “selves” in reference to an agreed to set of memories, values, and expressions? Self-declaration becomes a form of self-conscription. For educational interventions to meet the need for respect and the valorization of black and Afro-Brazilian culture and to combat racism, the vision of what constitutes the history to be taught must be generated by social memory agreed to by collectives within this ethnic group. What these social memories reflect is the need to redress normative narratives born of the Brazilian nation concerning inter-ethnic relations and social justice. For Afro-descendants, there is a powerful role to be found in present memories in constructing their ethnic identity. Thus, Cavalleiro declares, “Knowledge is the weapon that we have available in struggling to defend our history, our existence, as well as the future of our sons and daughters.”65 That knowledge is the sum of present memories.

Overview & Conclusion In this discussion, I have revisited the relationship between memory, kinship, and ethnicity. I have explored the conventions around which ethnic identities have been understood. I have identified a methodology that best suits the needs of working with ethnicity in wounded spaces – in particular, in contemporary Brazil. The key to understanding Afro-descendant ethnic identity as an emerging and powerfully articulated social position has been in adopting an instrumentalist approach. The resulting methodology is one in which I argue that memory and kinship are both instrumentalist when the project of ethnicity is underway and politically charged. As instruments — kinship as more broadly defined, memory as socially

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constructed and reflective of current circumstance, and ethnicity as chosen, agreed to, and enacted through varied levels of bodily, intellectual, and political performance — combine to ensure the emergence and vigor of certain ethnic expressions. They also work to resist delegitimization and threat. They become tools for claiming space as an ethnic identity and collective amidst the complex conditions of citizenry in wounded spaces. In moments where blackness is denigrated or devalued in Brazil, whether in day-to-day instances of racism on the street, or through inequitable representation of Afro-descendant young people in secondary and higher education, or higher rates of infant mortality, affirmative action articulated around blackness and African ancestry, social kinship and cultural expression will be found. This remains the case for individuals and their families, for non-government organizations, policy makers, educators, and even the United Nations, and revisits the very terms of ethnicity as instrumental as outlined in this discussion whereby assertions of ethnic identity become possible when an ethnic position is challenged.66 The value of instrumental ethnic identities is found not in their truth or the truth of their origins, but in their success as formations that speak to aspirations of belonging and their capacity to form and be reformed. Thus, I argue there is no way to dilute their power, nor render them false or illegitimate. The past, while entirely relevant to our present states (albeit in more complicated ways than we think), is as Lowenthal states, “a foreign country.”67 The present is our home, and present memories are what we make and remake in the act of establishing an ethnic identity. This means that states of emergence in identity politics do not diminish the value and importance of certain ethnic identities, however much they might challenge the status quo, or appear to be “born overnight” or opportunistically engaged for some form of benefit. Critiques of affirmative action and identity politics around Afrodescent often cite its emergent quality and perceived opportunism as an argument against the rise and vigor of a black rights movement in Brazil. Viewing political action around ethnic identity as “trouble making,” as often witnessed in media and political debate around certain ethnic identities and their “privileges,” or threatening the stability of national identity is flawed, not only because it is racist, but simply because it disregards the current state of play in any given country or region. The state of play is what is “present,” and for many Afro-descendants in Brazil, this is inequity and disadvantage, and the desire to redress this situation through modes of legislative advocacy (using policy and governing structures to seek equity) and positive identifications for Afro-descendants (in public and private arenas of body and cultural performance). The reality of disadvantage and inequity brings about vulnerabilities in the form of higher rates of unemployment and under-employment, higher rates of disease and infant mortality, lower levels of education, lower wages, and shorter life spans for Afro-descendants.68 It is the present and its form as a persistent memory that needs addressing in wounded spaces, in addition to the strength people harness in the form of powerfully articulated and resistant ethnic identities. Appreciating this brings us closer to understanding the social and political motivations that underscore ethnicity and identity politics more generally. A future ethnic studies which takes the lead in identifying the strengths and vulnerabilities of “new or emerging ethnicities” in wounded spaces, offers a great deal to understanding their experiences and the socio-political conditions in which they might co-exist with a range of other

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ethnic identities. At the center of this are future streams within ethnic studies that may offer intellectual insight into the human conditions of relatedness and belonging, sameness and difference, whilst also contributing directly to academic and public discourse concerning ethnic conflict, social justice debates, affirmative action, and multiculturalism.

Notes 1. 2.

4. 5.

6. 7. 8. 9.

10. 11. 12.

13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19.

Francisco Gil-White, “How Thick Is Blood? The Plot Thickens,” Ethnic and Racial Studies 22 (1999): 789-820; Pierra Van den Berghe, The Ethnic Phenomenon (New York: Elsevier, 1981). William Yancey et al., “Emergent Ethnicity,” American Sociological Review 41 (1976): 391403; Stuart Hall, “New Ethnicities,” in Identities, ed. Linda Martin Alcoff and Eduardo Mendieta (Oxford: Blackwell, 2003), 90-95; Joane Nagel, “Constructing Ethnicity,” Social Problems 41(1) (1994). John Comaroff and Jean Comaroff, Ethnicity Inc. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009); Orlando Patterson, “Context and Choice in Ethnic Allegiance,” in Ethnicity: Theory and Experience, ed. Nathan Glazer and Daniel Moynihan (Cambridge: Harvard University, 1975); Anthony Smith, “Culture, Community and Territory,” International Affairs 72(1996): 445-458. Deborah Bird Rose, Reports from a Wild Country (Sydney: UNSW Press, 2004), 34. Jeremy Beckett, “The Past in the Present,” in Past and Present, ed. Jeremy Beckett (Canberra: Aboriginal Studies Press, 1988); Anita Heiss. Am I Black Enough For You? (Sydney: Random House, 2012); Lynette Russell, Savage Imaginings (Melbourne: Australian Scholarly Publishing, 2001); Yuriko Yamanouchi, “Kinship, Organisations and ‘Wannabes’,” Oceania 80(2010): 216-228; Yuriko Yamanouchi, “Exploring Ambiguity,” Environment and Planning 42(2010): 285-299. See Ghazi Falah, “The 1948 Israeli-Palestinian War and its Aftermath,” Annals of the Association of American Geographers 86 (1996): 256-285 for an extended discussion of the implications of designification and resignification. Ibid., 257, 281. Rosana Zabaki and Leoleli Camargo, “Raças não existe,” Veja 6th June 2007, http://veja.abril. com.br/060607/p_082.shtml (accessed December 5, 2011). Michael Baran, “Girl you are Not Morena: We are Negras,” Ethos 35(2007); Stanley Bailey, Legacies of Race (Stanford: Stanford University, 2009); Michael Hanchard, Racial Politics in Contemporary Brazil (Durham: Duke University, 1999); Livio Sansone, Blackness Without Ethnicity (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003). Nagel, 1994; Philip Yang, Ethnic Studies (New York: State University of New York, 2000). Amanda Kearney, “Present Memories: Indigenous memory constructs and cross-generational knowledge exchange in northern Australia,” in Time in Modernity, ed. Emily Keightley and Michael Pickering (Hampshire: Macmillan, in press). Peter Connerton, How Societies Remember (Cambridge: Cambridge University, 1989); Peter Connerton, “Seven Types of Forgetting,” Memory Studies 1 (2008): 59-71; Michael Rothberg, Multi-directional Memory (Stanford: Stanford University, 2009); Gwendolyn Midolo Hall, Slavery and African Ethnicities in the Americas (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina, 2005). Maurice Halbwachs, On Collective Memory (Chicago: University of Chicago,1992). Jeffrey Olick and Joyce Robbins, “Social Memory Studies,” Annual Review of Sociology 24 (1998): 105-140. Ibid., 110. Raymond Kelly, Constructing Inequality (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press), 521-22. Timothy Scott, “It’s all Alemannic to me! Ethnicity as an interpretive tool for cultural transformations,” Journal of the Australian Early Medieval Association 4 (2008): 175. Ibid., 175. Brackette Williams, “A Class Act: Anthropology and the race to nation across ethnic terms,” An-

20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39.

40. 41. 42. 43. 44. 45. 46. 47. 48. 49. 50. 51. 52.

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nual Review of Anthropology 18 (1989): 401-444. Nathan Glazer and David Moynihan, Ethnicity (Cambridge: Harvard University, 1975), 2. Scott, 175. Ibid. Douglas Hartman et al., “An Empirical Assessment of Whiteness Theory,” Social Problems 56 (2009: 403-424; Monica McDermott and Frank Samson, “White Racial and Ethnicity Identity in the United States,” Annual Review of Sociology 31 (2005): 245-261. Hal Levine, “Reconstructing Ethnicity,” The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 5(2) (1999): 166. Rogers Brubaker et al. “Ethnicity as Cognition,” Theory and Society 33(1) (2004): 49. Ibid. Levine, 166. Siobhan Brownlie, “Does memory of the distant past matter?” Memory Studies (2011): 2, http:// mss.sagepub.com/content/early/2011/12/06/1750698011426358.full.pdf+html (accessed February 12, 2012). Ana Ramos, “The Good Memory of this Land,” Memory Studies 3(1) (2010): 60. Yang, 42-47. Nagel, 152. Jonathan Sarna, “From Immigrants to Ethnics,” Ethnicity 5 (1978); Comaroff and Comaroff. Yang, 46-47. Ibid., 47. Comaroff and Comaroff, 38. Ibid. Connerton, 2008, 59. Patrick Wolfe, “Land, Labor and Difference: Elementary Structures of Race,” The American Historical Review 106(3) (2001): 895; Marvin Harris “Referential Ambiguity in the Calculus of Brazilian Racial Identity,” Southwesetern Journal of Anthropology 26 (1970). Instituto Brasileiro de Geografia e Estatística (IBGE) Table 1.3.1, População residente, por cor ou raça, segundo o sexo e os grupos de idade, http://www.ibge.gov.br/home/estatistica/populacao/censo2010/caracteristicas_da_populacao/caracteristicas_da_populacao_tab_brasil_zip. shtm (accessed February 15, 2012). Farida Fozdar et al., Race and Ethnic Relations (Sydney: Oxford University, 2009). Instituto Brasileiro de Geografia e Estatística. Wideangle, Black and White Brazil: Introducing Affirmative Action in Brazil (2007), http://www. pbs.org/wnet/wideangle/episodes/brazil-in-black-and-white/introduction/965/ (accessed January 20, 2012). Herbert Klein and Francisco Luna, Slavery in Brazil (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009). David Baranov, The Abolition of Slavery in Brazil (Westport: Greenwood, 2000) cited in Wolfe, 901. Hall, 2005; Mary Karasc, Slave Life in Rio de Janeiro (Princeton: Princeton University, 1987). Wolfe, 895. Luisa Farah Schwartzman, “Does Money Whiten? Intergenerational Changes in Racial Classification in Brazil,” American Sociologist 72 (2007); Wolfe. Alcida Rita Ramos, “The Predicament of Brazil’s Pluralism,” Beyond the Boundaries of the Old Geographies Conference (2001), 2. Available online at http://vsites.unb.br/ics/dan/Serie303empdf.pdf (accessed November 12, 2011). Ramos, 3. Ibid. Ludwig Lauerhass, “Introduction,” in Brazil in the Making, ed. Carmen Nava and Ludwig Lauerhauss (Oxford: Rowman and Littlefield, 2006), 1. Presidência da República, Brasil, “LEI No 10.639,” (2003) https://www.planalto.gov.br/cciv-

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53. 54. 55. 56. 57. 58. 59. 60. 61. 62. 63. 64. 65. 66.

67. 68.

il_03/leis/2003/l10.639.htm (accessed February 15, 2012). UNESCO, “Brazil-Africa: Crossed histories programme,” http://www.unesco.org/new/en/brasilia/special-themes/ethnic-and-racial-relations-in-brazil/brazil-africa-project/ (accessed February 13, 2012). Elisa Larkin Nascimento, The Sorcery of Color: Identity, Race and Gender in Brazil (Philadelphia: Temple University, 2007), 239. Ibid., 236. Ibid. Centro Cultural Orunmilá, “ Centro Cultural Orunmilá and Law 10.639,” http://www.orunmila. org.br/blog/?p=28 (accessed February 15, 2012). Nascimento, 227. Ibid. Mieko Nishida, Slavery and Identity (Indianaopolis: Indiana University, 2003), Patricia de Santana Pinho, Mama Africa: Reinventing Blackness in Bahia (Durham: Duke University Press, 2010). Pinho, 1. Ibid. Alexandre Emboaba Da Costa, “Afro-Brazilian Ancestralidade: Critical Perspectives on Knowledge and Development,” Third World Quarterly 31(4) (2010). Centro Cultural Orunmilá. Elaine Cavalleiro, “Africa: Brazil – Afro-descendants Celebrated While Racist Schoolbook Distributed,” Pambazuka News, All Africa Website, http://allafrica.com/stories/201012141295.html (accessed February 15, 2012). The United Nations promotes the recognition of the importance of the African-Brazilian history intersection, through its Brazil-Africa: Crossed Histories Programme, orchestrated by the United Nations Office in Brasilia and established by UNESCO. The Programme is aimed at revamping “the relation between different racial groups living in the country” and has three strategic goals: to monitor the implementation of Law 10.639, to produce and disseminate information on the history of Africa and of the African Brazilian people, and advising on public policy concerning such themes (see UNESCO, Brazil-Africa: Crossed Histories Programme, nd.). David Lowenthal, The Past is a Foreign Country (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985). Robin Sheriff, “Exposing Silence and Cultural Sensorship,” American Anthropologist 102 (2000): 116.

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Stories of Identity, Race, and Transnational Experience in the Lives of Asian Latinos in the United States Julia Shu

Abstract: This article examines the lives of Asians and Asian Latinos who came to the United States after living in Latin America. It focuses on the questions of experience and identity for these individuals and their families, at an intersection of places and cultures. In particular, this essay attempts to compare the relative experiences of Asian Latinos as an ethnic minority in two different social situations: the Latin American country to which their family emigrated from Asia and the United States.

Introduction

he field of Ethnic Studies is one of inherent change and evolution. After all, no matter the topic, the work of our scholars revolves around the lives of working, moving, growing human beings. Diaspora studies – the study of the spread and movement of a group of people through time and space – and its related topics of transnationalism and mixed race studies – are often neglected and overlooked, yet recent academic trends show that they are increasingly becoming prominent in university classrooms.1 I first became interested in Asian diaspora studies while studying abroad in Mexico and Spain. In particular, Chinese immigration in Spain is a relatively new and undeveloped phenomenon, and provides an intriguing perspective on Asian immigration and the minority experience in a modern European nation – perhaps a topic for another paper. My experiences

shu| stories of identity, race, and transnational experience in the lives of asian latinos

in other countries prompted me to consider the comparative experiences of immigrants and minority community development around the world. More specifically, this paper focuses on the communities of Asian immigrants within Latin America, and the move made by some of these individuals to the United States. My interest here is partly personal – when I graduated from high school, my father’s sister presented me with my grandmother’s amethyst ring. She told me it had been purchased on my family’s last day in Brazil, where they had lived in the process of moving from China, to Japan, to the United States. Surprised, I felt like I had uncovered a hidden part of my father’s and my family’s history. Indeed, for many people it is an unknown fact that immigration from Asian countries such as Japan, China, and Korea has created large communities in many Latin American countries, including Mexico, Panama, Peru, and Brazil. Increasingly, scholarship and research around this area seems to be a necessary pursuit not only for the sake of Ethnic Studies, but also for the sake of a country that bears so many misconceptions about Latin America and its inhabitants. Additionally, I believe this topic is critical for rethinking the ways in which we2 understand immigration, racial identity, and transnationalism. Those Asians and Asian Latinos who have relocated to the United States from Latin America carry a fantastically diverse background; not only have they and/or their families undergone unique experiences as immigrants both in Latin America and in the United States, but they embody a mixing of cultures and identities. Asian Latin American migration to the United States also raises some very interesting questions. How do their experiences in the United States relate to or compare with their experiences in Latin America? How do Asian Latinos here navigate around issues of conflicted identity or culture? Through these questions, we may better appreciate the diversity and growth that stems from a single family or person’s decision to leave their native country and create a new home in unknown lands.

Literature Review & Historical Background As noted previously, the scholarship surrounding the Asian diaspora in Latin America remains fairly limited, and thus the scholarship concerning Asian Latinos in the United States is even more so. However, enough information exists to give a substantial and interesting base off of which we may pursue further inquiry. To root our research in knowledge of the past, Evelyn Hu-DeHart writes about the historical role of Chinese laborers and entrepreneurs in Mexico and Peru in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Her article explains the various factors which drew Chinese workers to Mexico in the 1800s – notably, proximity to the United States and the opportunities for small businesses, such as shops or markets. In the northern states of Mexico, the presence of the Chinese constituted the “petit bourgeois” class. Resentment from native Mexicans grew, until an expulsion movement in the early half of the 20th century pushed many out, forcing them to find other homes and employment.3 Like many groups of immigrants, this early Asian population in Latin America faced discrimination and racism, perhaps a result of attitudes originating in the United States. In 1881, the Mexican consul in Tucson, territory of Arizona, warned the state of Sonora, “The Chinese are considered in this nation [the U.S.]... to be harmful and dangerous, because they take work away from the natives of the land, encourage prostitution of various kinds, and contrib-

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ute nothing to local commerce or industry.”4 In addition, the idea of unassimilability, which has long plagued Asian Americans north of the border, was present in Mexico as well. “The Chinese and the westerner are essentially different,” one Mexican politician opined. “Thus we have to agree that any idea to assimilate the Chinese or to dominate them in a way that forces them to leave behind their way of being, is absurd.”5 Therefore, from Hu-Dehart’s work it is evident that in early Asian immigration to Latin America, the themes of racism and unassimilibility were established as critical factors. It is necessary to keep these components in mind as we follow other groups of immigrants in Brazil and Panama through history. Another scholar, Jeffrey Lesser, specializes on the ethnic and racial dynamics of Brazil. Lesser writes that “Brazilian interest in Chinese labor can be found as early as 1807,” a proposition which makes Brazil perhaps one of the first Latin American countries to import Asian labor.6 As racism and anti-Chinese sentiment grew in Mexico, so too did it in Brazil in the 1800s, eventually diminishing the possibility of a significant Chinese population. However, the question of the Chinese brought into play the idea of a group neither white nor black, neither African nor European.7 The problem of defining race, always a socially and legally ambiguous ground, would deepen in complexity as time went on. Lesser’s more recent work focuses on the Nikkei in São Paulo, Brazil, the Japanese Brazilian descendants of immigrants, during the 1960s and 70s. Lesser investigates “ethnic militancy” as it is expressed by Nikkei activists, guerilla fighters, militants, and actors and actresses. He proposes that in an effort to assert their Brazilian identity, the Nikkei produced the opposite effect, emphasizing their minority status. The idea of unassimiliability emerges again as Lesser describes in his words “a discontented diaspora,” suggesting that many people in Brazil erroneously assume that Nikkei feel “Japanese” and thus have an emotional attachment to Japan as an irrefutable homeland. While Japanese Brazilians rarely see themselves as diasporic in this classic sense, the strong imprint from the majority has had an impact on their identity construction.”8 The trap of being seen as a perpetual outsider creates many problems for Japanese Brazilians. One actress describes the identity conflict this creates: “Among the Brazilians I am Japanese and among ‘descendants’ [other Japanese Brazilians] I am considered Brazilian. I am discriminated against from both sides: from one when I want to get a part in a film, from the other because I am an actress.”9 This discord in self-identification and the social pressures that are its source are vital factors for my study. Not only do Asians in Latin America navigate around issues of racial exclusion and acceptance with other non-Asians, but divisions within the immigrant community itself exist as well. Lok Siu’s article on the diasporic Chinese in Panama explores the rifts between recent and older groups of immigrants. This separation has evolved into more than a simple chronological or generational difference. As one Chinese Panamanian tells Siu, “These immigrants are a different kind of Chinese altogether,” which “impl[ies] that it was not a matter of learning cultural behaviors and practices, but that the recent immigrants could never become like them, that their difference is much more profound, perhaps even unchangeable.”10 Siu suggests that Chinese Panamanians seeks to distance themselves from recent immigrants in an effort to disassociate themselves from the negative stereotypes of Chinese immigrants, namely, that they are “rude, ignorant, dirty, disrespectful, and dishonest.”11 This coping technique exists as an understandable response to the outside pressures of xenophobia and racism, yet poses challenging questions for immigrants seeking acceptance and a

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sense of belonging. Finally, an article from Kyeyoung Park addresses the Korean diaspora in Latin America and the United States. Parkâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s work is unique in that it addresses the United States as both an influential component and an affected result in this transnational equation. Park observes that the impact of Korean Argentineans in the Korean American community brings together Latino and Korean groups in unnoticed, yet significant, ways. For example, Korean Argentineans may translate English, Spanish, and Korean in their multiethnic Southern California communities. In another example in New York, Korean Argentineans take up fruit and vegetable businesses which serve Latino populations.12 Park concludes that the effect of having three different countries, cultures, and homes creates â&#x20AC;&#x153;rootlessnessâ&#x20AC;? in these immigrant communities: Because they have three different backgrounds, their relationship to the world has irrevocably changed. The more rootless and cosmopolitan, the less rooted. This is because rootedness provides comfort and security, particularly during times of crisis. These Korean tri-migrants might have three positions - Korean, South American, and North American - to interpret their reality, but they are not anchored in any of these worlds.13 This theory of rootedness and rootlessness poses interesting questions for the future study of Asians and Asian Latinos in the United States and how they might view themselves and their role in society. Indeed, overall, the literature and scholarship reviewed herein seems to necessitate more research into the comparative experiences of re-migrants and the selfidentification processes they undergo during the course of their multiple migrations.

Methodology In order to learn more about the personal stories and struggles of Asian Latinos in the United States, I employed qualitative research methods and searched for interview subjects in and around the University of California, Berkeley campus community. Finding potential subjects proved slightly difficult, as there are no officially established social groups, clubs, or community groups for persons or families of backgrounds in both Asia and Latin America. For this reason, I kept the parameters of my search wide, not limiting factors such as age, place of birth, family circumstance, or countries of residence. Through the personal recommendations of classmates, professors, friends, and the subjects themselves, I was able to arrange interviews with four participants. Communication with these participants took place primarily through emails, occasionally over the phone, or in person. Only one interviewee was a previous acquaintance, while the rest I met for the first time during our interviews. One interview, for reasons of geographical distance, was held over a video and teleconferencing service by which we were able to both hear and see one another. Two were held on the Berkeley campus and another at a shopping mall convenient to both my interviewee and myself. All participants were of roughly the same age bracket, the youngest being 22 and the oldest 32, with three females and one male. For my own notes and reference, I recorded each interview with a handheld digital voice recorder. Each interview lasted approximately 35 to 48 minutes, although I spent a longer time talking with one interviewee after the of-

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ficial interview. Because I interviewed a wide range of subjects with very different experiences, it may be initially unclear what generalizations can be made from the data. After all, with two subjects from Brazil, one from Bolivia, and one from Panama, how can this information have wide application to the study of the Asian diaspora, immigrant experiences, or racial identification? But in the discussion of the findings, important convergences emerge: factors that influenced the lives of the interviewees, trends in the ways in which they see themselves, and specific examples of experiences which shape self-identification. These convergences, while they did not apply equally to all individuals, provide the key thematic points through which we may analyze the research and data. Although I believe interviews served as a useful method for obtaining personal stories and information impossible to find in a chart or survey, it also had several limitations. The most obvious difficulty came in finding interviewees with which to speak. With a very specific population in mind and no easy social groups to follow for it, relying on word of mouth became the best option. As a result, two of my subjects themselves are currently and directly engaged in scholarship on the Asian diaspora in Latin America. A third subject, while not an Ethnic Studies academic, was nevertheless familiar with the topics I presented to her. This detail brings both positive and negative effects: for the most part, my subjects understood my questions and the meanings I meant to imply. For them, thinking about race, identity, and their own experiences was familiar ground, and they seemed genuinely interested in the interview. But because of this, not until my last interview was I forced to rephrase my questions into terminology and forms more recognizable to a person unfamiliar with Ethnic Studies work (for example, terms like “mixed race” or “racialization” or even “discrimination” often called for further explanation). The disadvantage of gathering data from a rather specialized intellectual world may lessen the applicability of these findings. Given a second project in the future, it would be an intriguing challenge to find more interviewees who are relatively unaware of Ethnic Studies or diaspora studies.

Data Analysis and Discussion 1. Comparative Experiences of Race For each interviewee, life in Latin America brought up different memories and associations; surprisingly, these memories gave contradicting visions of social situations and racial awareness. One interviewee, Mimi,14 recounted growing up in Brazil in a Korean family and feeling content, unaware of racial divides or ethnic rifts. Her contact with other Korean Brazilians came in the form of a wide family network and many cousins of the same age. She also made many Brazilian friends as a child and says she “got used to being in a diverse environment.” When Mimi moved to California at the age of ten, she instantly felt uncomfortable with racial divisions in school. “I immediately became aware that I was Asian, because school seemed very cliquey. …I felt out of place, I didn’t know who to be friends with.” Mimi first identified with other Latino students, feeling unfamiliar with the Korean and Asian cultural background of her Korean American and Asian American peers.15 This experience of race sharply contrasts with that of another interviewee. Jessica was born in Taiwan, and moved to Brazil with her parents at the age of two. She recounts

shu| stories of identity, race, and transnational experience in the lives of asian latinos

a childhood spent in constant awareness of her difference and outsider status. Very few Asians attended her school, and this fact weighed heavily on her experience there. “When I was in second grade, the students were being very rowdy and the teacher said, ‘Why can’t you be like the little Japanese girl right there? Because she just stays quiet and doesn’t do anything.’ Then everyone turned around and stared at me.” This incident clearly made an impact on her, as she described the horror of being pointed out in class, and the desire to simply blend in with the crowd. When she and her parents moved to the San Gabriel Valley, Jessica was eleven. “I was really surprised… there were so many Asian Americans!” With the enormous population of Asian Americans in the San Gabriel Valley, in Southern California, and later, at the universities Jessica attended, she felt that blending in by identifying as Chinese or Taiwanese was easy.16 Why such disparate reports of experiences? One possibility lies in the fact that Jessica was born in Taiwan, or it could be due to the difference between being Taiwanese and being Korean in Brazil. In any case, the difference between Mimi and Jessica’s experiences demonstrates the wide range of possibilities for a young Asian person growing up in Latin America.

2. Social Misidentification A common story for interviewees involved being misidentified by others as of the wrong Asian origin. When growing up in Brazil, most people assumed that Jessica was Japanese (as seen in the anecdote from grade school). Of Asian groups in Brazil, the Japanese community is the largest and one of the most prominent. “I always knew I was different… it’s different in Brazil. So if you’re Asian, if you look phenotypically Asian, they just, the mainstream community, they just assume you’re Japanese. I’ve been called Japanese many times,” she says. This fact did not seem to bother her, rather, it was an accepted fact of life in Brazil. “Everywhere I go, I’m misidentified,” she says, adding that when visiting Taiwan, people often mistake her for Southeast Asian.17 For James, being Korean in Bolivia presented a similar problem. “In Bolivian thinking, all Asians are Chinese, because they have small eyes. That’s the first stereotype. The second is – all Asian people have restaurants. When I walk out, they ask me ‘Chino! Chino!’ — like ‘Chinese.’ That’s racist,” he told me, half laughing. The fact that most Bolivians made assumptions about his invented Chinese heritage did not seem to bother James at first. He noted that sometimes “Chino” was more than a label – Bolivians would use it instead of using an Asian person’s name, and that even a person’s protestations over his identity could not convince a Bolivian that he was not Chinese. After a while, he said that it became annoying. “The pronunciation was annoying. It was not favorable,” he explained.18 I interpreted this to mean that James had experienced the type of racial teasing that so often borders on offensive name calling. The story of misidentification is an interesting detail in the stories of those who carry complex and evolving identities already. To have most people around you believe a false statement about your heritage seems another destabilizing element in the process of constructing one’s own racial identity.

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3. Perpetual Race A strong theme for all interviewees was a belief or underlying feeling of the perpetuality of otherness, specifically, the unchanging fact of being Asian. Alison, the daughter of Chinese parents, was born in Panama City and moved to San Francisco at the age of eleven with her sister to live with relatives. Her mother stayed behind in Panama to work, a decision that she says was difficult to adjust to, but worked out for her in the end. Given a paper survey, Alison reports that she would mark “Chinese” before any other option. If second choices were allowed, she would include her Panamanian identity, but only if the survey allowed for multiple races and ethnicities.19 Similarly, James states, “I’m Korean, that’s number one, I cannot forget about it.”20 “If you’re going to assume that I look Asian anyways, there’s no point in trying to complicate things,” Jessica pointed out, “Brazilian, you can be different shades of color….but when you’re Asian…you can’t really integrate as easily.”21 This type of social thinking seems to be the legacy of centuries of Asians being cast as the unassimilable, the perpetual foreigner. Another explanation relates to the concept of diaspora. Jessica describes it as thus: “It goes back to the diaspora…regardless of where you go settle, you’re Chinese…That’s almost like an essentialist way of thinking….you can move to Africa, or anywhere, you’d still identify as Chinese instead of Brazilian, Guatemalan, or Nicaraguan.”22 Whether the phenomenon of Asians somehow staying Asian no matter what is a result of age-old racism and xenophobia, the product of strong belief in biologically deterministic notions of race, or an unconscious sense of cultural and physical belonging (quite probably it is a combination of these factors and more), it remains true that for each interviewee, their Asian identity was predominant. However, that has not stopped the development and adoption of unique identities influenced by their lives in Latin America.

4. Language One of the most critical steps in adopting a culture and learning to live in a new place is often learning to speak the native language. For my interviewees, language was not only a method of communicating in a new place, but a cultural signifier and a lasting imprint of their Latino cultural upbringing. For the three women who moved to California as children, the process of English as a Second Language (ESL) classes and working with language tutors became an important factor in what groups of students they came to befriend first. Alison told me that her first strong group of friends in the United States came from her group in ESL classes. “I felt really close to them,” she said, acknowledging the bonds of friendship that grew between young Spanish speakers in an English speaking world.23 In contrast, Jessica, who was offered Mandarin or Spanish options in school, opted for Mandarin. Her identification with Asian Americans and other Asian immigrants was in part related to this choice.24 Mimi recalled identifying initially with other Latino students through the commonality of language; she felt distant from Korean American students because of a perceived cultural gap.25 Therefore, language appears to transcend the rules of perpetual race and unchangeable identity. Language is both strongly inclusive and exclusive: you are either in, or you are not, depending on what you speak. James, who moved to Bolivia from Korea at the age of 16 with the goal of learning Spanish, saw language as the basis of experiencing cultural identity.

shu| stories of identity, race, and transnational experience in the lives of asian latinos

He continues to use Spanish here, just as Alison does.26 Indeed, language may be the only way these multinationals maintain certain parts of their cultural past. In her interview with me, Alison realized that she makes a very conscious effort to use Spanish with other Spanish speakers. “When I see that someone speaks Spanish, I’m very inclined to speak Spanish with them. I make myself available…when they see we have something in common…we feel more comfortable,” she points out. “But when I meet someone who is Asian, I use English… [and not Chinese] Maybe because we look similar, we don’t need that.”27 Mimi also felt that she made a conscious effort in using Portuguese. Her effort comes from the assertion that she maintains her Brazilian identity, but must prove this fact to others, through language and other demonstrations of “insider” cultural knowledge.28 Language then creates both a pathway for cultural acceptance and learning, but offers a way to preserve that cultural identity after a person migrates.

5. Self-Identification For the interviewees in this project, self-identification is both a simple and complex idea. According to Alison, questions like “Where are you from?” are taken in a straight-forward manner – although her answer may change depending on the curiosity of the interlocutor, it causes no troubling dilemmas or soul-searching.29 For Jessica, the answer has changed over time. During the years she wished to blend in with other Asians and Asian Americans, she would sometimes neglect to mention her Brazilian past. Now, it is a part of her identity she recognizes more publicly.30 James, traveling from Korea to Bolivia to the United States on a journey of language learning, sees himself as Korean, “but some part, some little part is Latino….and a little bit American” – parts that grow the longer he resides in a country.31 Each interviewee recognized a lack of social space, academic discourse, and awareness surrounding Asian Latinos, but Mimi’s response to this problem is the most active. “I am Korean Brazilian, but that’s confusing to people,” she laughs. (Each other interviewee laughs too upon describing the reaction they get when detailing their diverse past. Confusion, surprise, amazement, shock. As Jessica wryly pointed out, being of many cultures can be seen as trendy or cool). Mimi strives to bring awareness to others by asserting her Brazilian identity. A doctoral student in the Spanish and Portuguese Department, she must work to convince professors of her cultural authority. “The solution [is to] inform people, let them know I grew up in Brazil and here, and they need to acknowledge that.” Her current academic work explores the lives of Koreans in Brazil and seeks to establish a terminology and academic theory that appreciates the dual identity of Korean Brazilians (a term so far used only by her).32 In answer to the research question regarding how Asians and Asian Latinos navigate the twisty paths of self-identification, I believe the answer can only be a myriad of individual stories that map the many influences and turns of each life. From these stories, we begin to see the ways in which these multinational citizens are carving out their own spaces, their own explanations, and their own ways to be at home.

Conclusion It is quite likely that this research project creates more questions than it does provide answers. I am woefully aware of the number of topical intersections that remain unaddressed –

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for example, an examination into the role of gender and gender norms in determining such things as self-identification. However, looking back to initial literature review conducted, this project introduces new and potentially helpful insights. For example, the use of language to maintain and prove cultural knowledge, the experiences of misidentification, and the ways in which each individual defines a distinct and changing racial identity. With current scholarship only beginning to touch on the connections between the United States, Latin America, and Asian immigrants, I hope that this project and others like it will further open the doors to seeing identity, human migration, culture, and race as components in an interconnected and evolving web.

Acknowledgements Many thanks to Professor Robert Allen and Kristen Sun, and all my interviewees for helping me so much in this project; it was wonderful to work with you.

Notes 1.

2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20.

For example, see the description of the Asian American and Asian Diaspora Studies Program at UC Berkeley, which “is now increasingly attentive to issues of transnationality and diaspora.” “About,” Asian American and Asian Diaspora Studies, http://www.aaads.berkeley.edu/about/ (accessed May 20, 2012). Throughout this paper, the words “we” and “our” are used, with the intent of implying an audience of scholars and students of Ethnic Studies, Asian Diaspora Studies, as well as others interested in transnational identity studies coming from other fields or from personal interest. Evelyn Hu-DeHart, “Coolies, Shopkeeper, Pioneers: The Chinese of Mexico and Peru (18491930),” Amerasia Journal 15, no. 2 (1989): 9. Evelyn Hu-DeHart. “Racism and Anti-Chinese Persecution in Sonora, Mexico 1876-1932,” Amerasia Journal 9, no. 2 (1982): 3. Ibid., 5. Jeffrey Lesser, Negotiating National Identity: Immigrants, Minorities, and the Struggle for Ethnicity in Brazil (Durham: Duke University Press, 2007), 15. Ibid., 38. Jeffrey Lesser, A Discontented Diaspora (Durham: Duke University Press, 2007), xxi. Ibid., 53. Lok Siu, “Cultural Citizenship of Diasporic Chinese in Panama,” Amerasia Journal 28, no. 2 (2002): 183. Ibid. Kyeyoung Park, “”I Am Floating in the Air,” positions: asia critique 7, no. 3 (1999): 669. Ibid., 692. All interviewee names have been altered to protect their privacy. Mimi, in conversation with author, Nov. 6, 2011. Jessica, in conversation with author, Oct. 31, 2011. Ibid. James, in conversation with author, Nov. 15, 2011. Alison, in conversation with author, Nov. 9, 2011. James, Nov. 15, 2011.

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21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32.

Jessica, Oct. 31, 2011. Ibid. Alison, Nov. 9, 2011. Jessica, Oct. 31, 2011. Mimi, Nov. 6, 2011. James, Nov. 15, 2011. Alison, Nov. 9, 2011. Mimi, Nov. 6, 2011. Alison, Nov. 9, 2011. Jessica, Oct. 31, 2011. James, Nov. 15, 2011. Mimi, Nov. 6, 2011.

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The Americanization of a Filipina U.S. Navy Wife Joseph Ryan Wee

Abstract: This essay places a biography in the context of history. It describes the life

of a Filipina immigrant to the United States during the Civil Rights Movement and the Cold War in the context of U.S.-Philippine international relations and the boom of the aerospace industry.

y aunt, Sharon Baker1 (whose real name is not used to preserve her privacy), is a first generation Filipina immigrant who had never in her childhood years imagined coming to the United States. Mrs. Baker was born in 1952 to a Chinese-Filipino family in the Philippines. While working at Subic Naval Base, located along the Manila Bay, she met her husband, Mitchell Baker, a U.S. Navy officer, whom she married in 1977. Shortly after, she migrated to the United States and began a decades-long process of Americanization, or cultural assimilation: the process by which she learned and adopted the cultures and traditions of the United States. Her Americanization occurred economically and socioculturally. Her integration into the American workforce as well as its customs occurred during her employment with General Dynamics, a defense contractor, while her social and cultural assimilation occurred largely with the help of her husband, her in-laws, and later, her friends. Mrs. Baker discusses her overwhelmingly positive experience in the sociocultural aspect of her Americanization, providing a stark contrast to her experience of career stagnation and possible discrimination in the workplace. The positive and negative aspects

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of her life, especially with respect to her Americanization, can be traced to, compared to, and analyzed in the context of the U.S. colonization of the Philippines, the Cold War, and American society. To fully understand the context of my aunt’s immigration to the United States and her subsequent cultural assimilation, one must understand the history of the Philippines with respect to U.S. colonization. In her dissertation Gender, Family Labor, and the United States Navy: The Post-World War II San Diego Filipina/o-American Immigrant Navy Community, Jocelyn Agustin Pacleb discusses how the Spanish American War of 1898 ended Spanish colonialism in the Philippines and began an era of U.S. colonialism. For the next several decades, the U.S. military became a powerful presence in Asia, especially in the Philippines, engaging in military campaigns and benevolent assimilation efforts.2 In 1946, after a lengthy delay due to World War II, the Philippines was granted independence from the United States, but still maintained “strong economic and military ties” with the United States.3 A year later, in 1947, the United States and the Philippines signed the Military Bases Agreements Act. This act allowed the United States to establish military bases in the Philippines, such as Subic Naval Base, where my aunt later met her future husband. My aunt was born in 1952, less than a decade after the Military Bases Agreement Act was signed. Before she was ever introduced to the United States Navy, she grew up in a strict and slightly impoverished Chinese-Filipino family. With a Chinese father and Filipina mother, Mrs. Baker became accustomed to reconciling multiple distinct cultures early in her life. She reflected on the fact that she attended both Buddhist temples and Catholic churches. Her dual Filipina-Chinese identity made her feel somewhat isolated, but she soon associated much more with her Chinese side than her Filipina side, due to what she perceived as “more compassion” coming from the Chinese community. With the help of a Chinese charity association, she was able to attend Chinese school and graduated at the age of 17 in 1969. She went to work at Subic Naval Base in Manila Bay that same year. Eight years later, she met her husband, Mitchell Baker. My aunt went to Subic Naval Base for a simple reason: she became the family breadwinner, and had to work to support her family. Mr. Baker, her future husband, was there on different terms. The U.S. military bases in the Philippines served as military launching grounds during the Vietnam War and throughout the Cold War.4 AsPacleb, citing Schirmer and Shalom, writes, “U.S. naval and air force bases in the Philippines enabled the U.S. to keep a close eye on communist activities in neighboring countries such as China, Korea, and other parts of Southeast Asia, as well as Russia.”5 As a U.S. Navy officer, Mr. Baker was stationed in Subic Naval Base in 1977, where he met my aunt. Thus, my aunt and uncle were brought together from opposite ends of the world by a global ideological conflict between the capitalist nations, led by the U.S., and the socialist nations, led by the USSR. U.S. colonialism in the Philippines and the economic and military ties that the United States developed with the Philippines made Mr. and Mrs. Baker’s meeting, marriage, and life together possible. After she married Mr. Baker, my aunt began her immigration to the United States. Her immigration process was significantly influenced by changes in U.S. immigration laws over a decade before. While the United States hoped to present itself as a nation of equality and liberty to improve the image of American democracy during the Cold War6, the Civil Rights

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Movement gained strength in the 1950s and 1960s, and much attention was directed at the discriminatory nature of U.S. immigration policies.7 Ronald Takaki writes that the Civil Rights Movement had begun to “awaken the moral conscience of America, condemning racism in all of its forms, including immigration policies.”8 In response, the Immigration Act of 1965 was passed, thus eliminating national-origins quotas, increasing the annual admission thresholds from all parts of the world, and exempting family members, spouses, minor children, and the parents of U.S. citizens from any quotas.9 After the Immigration Act of 1965 was passed, marriage to U.S. citizens, especially military members, became a popular path of immigration to the United States.10 Before she met Mr. Baker, my aunt never planned to immigrate to the United States. Prior to arriving in the United States my aunt perceived the U.S. as a , powerful nation incapable of possessing major faults. She believed that the United States was an unreachable place that produced the best of everything and stood for everything good in the world. Historically speaking, her positive views on the United States can be attributed to the extensive involvement of the U.S. in Filipino society in the late 19th century and most of the 20th century through militarization projects, modernization programs and the establishment of U.S.-modeled schools,, which promised economic and social upward mobility consistent with the American dream.11 Following her marriage to Mr. Baker, she entered the United States as the spouse of a U.S. Navy officer. After arriving in the United States, many of her initial perceptions had changed. Though she still viewed the United States in a positive light, she noticed several significant differences from the Philippines. She remembered thinking that “in the Philippines everyone knows everybody, but here, it seems like people don’t have time to stop and say hello. Everyone was going different ways. I feel like people don’t have time to relax. I mean they’re always going places.” Prior to immigrating, she had also thought that “everyone [in the U.S.] was good looking.” Upon arriving however, she was disappointed to see that not everyone in the United States was as flawless and gorgeous as Hollywood had portrayed them to be. She commented: “you watch the movies and every time the Americans were winning, sports, everything.” Furthermore, much to her disappointment, she had realized that the United States was not the only country in the world that produced high-quality products. She arrived to find everything from “telephones, to cars, to electronics, [and] televisions” made in Japan. When I asked her why she heard so much about the United States, she said that “America was very popular in the Philippines. Even at school, you study about their history.” Her perceptions of the United States not only reflect the power of the United States military in affecting Filipino culture, but also the strength of the globalizing U.S. influence on Filipino views regarding the “ideal” United States. My aunt spent her first six months in the United States living with Mr. Baker’s parents, who contributed significantly to her cultural assimilation. “I learned how to cook,” she mentioned, from her in-laws, who were “family oriented people.” Still, her Americanization was a slow and sometimes painful process. “It’s very, very lonely. I get homesick,” she mentions. She added: “I cried. I did, I cried almost every night because my husband left because, being in the military, he had to go back on the ship and go on deployment.” Certain common aspects of American family life were foreign to her: “Something that I was not used to is to have a dog. You know, Asians are not… accustomed to having dogs in the house as part of the family.” When he was not deployed, Mr. Baker also helped my aunt to Americanize.

wee| the americanization of a filipina u.s. navy wife

He taught her how to drive and to be independent, which she views as the most important factor in her Americanization. Mrs. Baker’s being able to drive gave her a greater sense of independence, as she was able to go where she wanted when she wanted, rather than being bound at home. During the Cold war, especially between 1950 and 1986, the aerospace and defense industries had grown rapidly.12 By the time Mr. and Mrs. Baker had moved into their new home in Chula Vista in 1978, my aunt had already began working as a file clerk for the defense contractor General Dynamics. “I got promoted as a data entrier,” she later mentioned. Her experience at General Dynamics introduced her to the American labor force, but the Americanization she experienced there was purely professional: “I did have one friend, but she was an acquaintance more than a friend.” Despite the minimal social interaction, she was initially content with her work at General Dynamics. “It’s not hard work,” she says. “You just sit and enter data. [It is] better than being a waitress in the Philippines.” Her job was far from ideal, however. She felt that people looked at her differently because she was Asian, “especially if your co-workers are mostly white.” Furthermore, she was never promoted beyond the position of a data entry assistant. When I asked why, she responded: “Even if you do the work, they cannot promote you because you don’t have the degree. I got discriminated against because I didn’t have a college degree.” Despite this, she continued to train new employees, who were promoted and later surpassed her, since they held college degrees. She considers her treatment discrimination because of the fact that she was fully capable of doing the work and training others to do the work, but could never get promoted herself. To her, the lack of a college degree was the only important factor in the stagnation of her career. “They thought I was incompetent sometimes; maybe because I was Asian,” she says, but maintains that she did not believe any racial discrimination took place. In Glass Ceilings and Asian Americans, Deborah Woo explores the artificial barriers, or “glass ceilings” that prevented Asian Americans from upward career mobility, especially in the aerospace, defense, and technology industries.13 Woo observed an aerospace/ defense company, much like General Dynamics, and noted several examples of a “glass ceiling.” Though Asian Americans were viewed as a “model minority,” they still faced obstacles in upward mobility.14 Research conducted in 1979 suggested that Asian Americans, including those who were well-educated, were mostly in jobs that were segregated by “racial prejudice, lower salary schedules, and restricted upward mobility.” In addition, though education generally leads to upward mobility, evidence suggests that education brought lower returns to Asian Americans than for other groups.15 Also, European Americans who had English-language difficulties were viewed more favorably than Asian Americans with similarly imperfect English skills.16 Due to their social isolation, Asian Americans also did not have the same networking opportunities with management and thus did not have access to the “old boy network.”17 Without access to the “old boy network,” Asian Americans were not as able to stand out in the eyes of management, and were thus often overlooked for promotion.18 This lack of social connections also deprived Asian Americans of mentorship opportunities that could have helped them advance. Perhaps most importantly, however, is the fact that regardless of the qualifications of Asian Americans, they would not be promoted if the company’s manage-

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ment did not want them to be promoted. Woo writes that “the rationales ran the gamut, from one’s lacking management training or certain degree requirements, to the appropriateness of one’s age.”19 Examining the larger picture, as described in Woo’s book, provides multiple examples of racism in the defense industry, which my aunt claims that she did not experience. Despite the larger context of racial discrimination described by Woo, my aunt’s belief still holds firm. Thus, what is true in general for society as a whole may not apply strongly to a single individual. There are multiple possible explanations for my aunt’s view. First, my aunt was undergoing a process of cultural Americanization with her husband and her husband’s family, which makes it incredibly likely that she believed strongly in the “American Dream.” As Woo writes, “the concept of artificial barriers is significant because it strikes directly at the heart of the powerful ideological view that the American Dream is available to all who would simply ‘work hard.’”20 Second, Asian Americans who were frustrated with career stagnation often attributed their stagnation to personal deficits and personal failures, rather than to external problems imposed by a prejudiced corporate management team.21 This attribution of career stagnation to personal problems is exhibited by my aunt’s firm belief that her lack of a college degree was the only factor preventing her from receiving a promotion. Third, Asian Americans are generally less aggressive and less self-promoting, contrary to what is favored by corporate culture. Corporate culture strongly favored those who were “willing to step on each other’s toes, be selfish, and disparage others’ ideas to promote their own in order to stand out,”22 which contradicted Asian cultural values of modesty, exhibited by my aunt. Her modesty may have prevented her from even considering the fact that she did not fit management culture due to a lack of arrogance. Finally, she never had the chance to actually experience overt racism in the workplace or at home before, which means that she would not have been able to easily recognize it in the first place. Because she did not have a college degree, management did not need any other excuse to withhold a promotion from her. Woo mentions that in other companies, management would provide a series of rationales to avoid promoting Asian Americans.23 However, if the only justification used against Mrs. Baker was her lack of a college degree, then it is perfectly reasonable that she does not consider racial discrimination a factor because it would seem irrelevant to her situation, at least on the surface. My aunt’s life with her Caucasian husband and his in-laws may have also played a significant role in her minimal perception to racism. She mentioned that she felt “blessed” with her in-laws because they were very accommodating and accepting of her. Since she had spent so much time with such accepting Caucasians, she may have been influenced to believe that racism was rare or a nonissue in the United States and thus, inapplicable to her situation. In 1986, Mr. and Mrs. Baker moved to Rancho Peñasquitos, in northern San Diego, where Mrs. Baker was finally able to meet friends and complete her sociocultural Americanization. She “started meeting friends in church and through the tennis club” and got in touch with “friends from the Philippines who got married to American military men and came to San Diego.” My aunt met a wide variety of people from various ethnic and cultural backgrounds. “We learned from each other the differences between [our] customs and our ways,” she said. “I learned to accept their culture and respect their culture, in the same way that they respect my culture and values.” She maintains many of these friendships today, as

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part of a multi-ethnic and multi-cultural network of fellow tennis players and churchgoers. I asked Mrs. Baker what she believed was the most important factor in helping her adapt to the United States. She believes it was all about being independent: “Being independent, you have to be strong, you have to be able to make up your own decisions, [and] you have to be able to do things for yourself. It was about being independent, being able to adapt a lot of American culture, which is different from my culture. I learned to adapt the American culture even though it was different from my own.” Despite her Americanization, however, she still continues to retain her Chinese-Filipina-American identity. She does so by passing Filipino customs and values on to the “younger generation:” her son, her nieces, and her nephews. “You know, traditions like respect for your elders and things like that, I always remind you guys,” she said. While she retains her Chinese-Filipina identity, she ultimately sees herself as a “part of the American way” because of her marriage to an American and her extensive exposure to and absorption of American culture. Mrs. Baker does not feel like her Americanization has diluted her Filipina identity in any way. In fact, Mrs. Baker claims that her Americanization added to who she was, because she is now able to “see between the two customs, which made [her] life that much better.” The story of my aunt’s life is intertwined with international historical events, many of which occurred before she was even born. Her life cannot be fully understood without the context of U.S. colonialism in the Philippines, continued U.S. military involvement in the Philippines during the Cold War, the globalization of the U.S. economy and entertainment industry, changes in U.S. immigration laws, and the boom of the aerospace and defense industry during the Cold War. Yet her life is not fully defined by history alone. Like an individual brush stroke on an impressionist painting, she is both defined by, and contributes to, the broader historical and social context around her. She ultimately succeeded in her journey of Americanization, and in doing so was shaped by history and has shaped history itself.

Notes 1.

3. 4. 5. 6. 7.

I want to thank my aunt for the constant love and support she has shown me throughout my life. She taught me the independence, self-confidence, and interpersonal skills that make me who I am today. I would also like to thank her for her patience and support during the interview process. Without her, this work would never have been possible. Jocelyn Agustin Pacleb, “Gender, Family Labor, and the United States Navy: The Post-World War II San Diego Filipina/o-American Immigrant Navy Community,” Dissertation Abstracts International, A: The Humanities and Social Sciences 64, no. 10 (Apr 2004, 2004): 46 Daniel B. Schirmer and Stephen Rosskamm Shalom, eds. The Philippines Reader: A History of Colonialism, Neocolonialism, Dictatorship, and Resistance (Boston: South End Press, 1987), 96-100. Cynthia Enloe, Does Khaki Become You? The Militarisation of Women’s Lives (Boston, MA: South End Press, 1983), 37-42. Schirmer and Shalom, 87. Ellen D. Wu,“’America’s Chinese’: Anti-Communism, Citizenship, and Cultural Diplomacy during the Cold War,” Pacific Historical Review 77, no. 3 (August, 2008): 391. Ronald Takaki, Strangers from a Different Shore: A History of Asian Americans (New York: Brown

8. 9. 10.

11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23.

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and Company: Little, 1998), 418. Ibid., 418. Ibid., 419. Danielle Antoinette Hidalgo and Carl L. Bankston, “Military Brides and Refugees: Vietnamese American Wives and Shifting Links to the Military, 1980 – 2000,” International Migration 46, no. 2 (05, 2008): 168. Pacleb, 58. Lawrence A. Herzog, Where the North Meets South: Cities, Space, and Politics on the U.S.-Mexico Border (Austin: Center for Mexican American Studies, University of Texas at Austin, 1990), 115. Deborah Woo, Glass Ceilings and Asian Americans: The New Face of Workplace Barriers (Walnut Creek: AltaMira Press, 2000), 13. Ibid., 33. Ibid., 59-62. Ibid., 151. Ibid., 174. Ibid., 67. Ibid., 172-174. Ibid., 45. Ibid., 72. Ibid., 157. Ibid., 174.

From Past to Present Elizabeth Heather Mullins

Abstract: This paper surveys the life of Alice Yang, a 30 year-old second generation Chinese-American woman. In doing so, I attempt to place Yang’s experiences within the broader contexts of the various social and historical conditions affecting Chinese-Americans at the time.

ur understanding of a person and his or her life drastically changes when we attempt to look at that person’s life from a different viewpoint. I discovered this in interviewing a family friend of mine, Alicia Yang.1 I have talked to Yang several times and have thus learned a little bit about her life, but until recently we never delved into her family history – we tended to focus on other topics. Because of this and the fact that Yang seemed to have typical American mannerisms, it never occurred to me that she would have a different experience growing up than I would just because she was of a different ethnicity. Consequently, I interpreted everything that I learned about her assuming that she had the same background as myself, a fourth generation white woman. Once I started focusing on her life as a second generation Chinese-American woman, however, I found that Yang’s life story was significantly deeper and more complex than I imagined. Yang’s story began with her parents’. Her mother, Mei, was born in 1944 in Toison (a village near Guangzhou City), and her father, Fa, came from nearby. Fa used to help Mei’s family around the house, and years after the two met, they married and had Yang’s older

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siblings (Kimberly, Vanessa, George, and Emma) in the 60s and 70s. Mei and Fa left China due to several common push and pull factors. In the mid 1900s, Toison was a large village (with about 200,000 people in it) but also rural, mostly made up of farmland. After 1965, the US immigration policies favored immigrants that received more education and had more white collar jobs in their home country, due to the current demand for such workers in the existing service and technology-based US economy.2 Mei and Fa, unlike other second-wave immigrants, did not have such backgrounds, having emigrated from a rural and thus poorer area. Because their qualifications did not match the demand in the economy, Mei and Fa faced limited job prospects in California. This made upward mobility less likely for their children, as they would receive less economic support from their parents, and thus would have less access to various resources that could help them succeed in life. Conversely, Mei and Fa still heard about opportunities in America; to them, America was “a place with gold leaves on the trees – it’s the land of opportunities.”3 With four children already born, educational opportunities and a calmer political environment attracted them as well. Specifically, free public education and evasion from communism in China most likely pulled them as it did others.4 Moreover, Mei’s mother was already in California by the 1970s. The 1965 Hart-Cellar Act (which let citizens sponsor a relative to immigrate)5 allowed Yang’s family to gradually immigrate to the US through “chain immigration,” like the majority of Asian immigrants at the time.6 But, this also forced Yang’s family to come over in stages, temporarily splitting them up. Vanessa and her father stayed in Hong Kong for a couple of years before arriving in the US around 1977, and “the rest came over about two years following” in 1979.7 Mei and Fa followed and diverged from common Chinese migration patterns. Leaving from Hong Kong rather than the mainland resembles refugee migration (necessary movement to avoid immediate threats to one’s personal safety), as refugees typically left China indirectly from nearby territories under foreign rule, such as Hong Kong or Taiwan.8 This further emphasizes her family’s motivation to leave for political reasons. Moreover, Yang’s father immigrated first while her mother remained in China with most of her siblings. This resembles the general first wave of migration, which took place in the 1800s, more than the second wave after 1965, which they were actually a part of.9 First wave Asian immigrants were mostly men that saw the move to America as a temporary living situation, while second wave immigrants consisted of entire families undertaking a permanent life change.10 Yet, her father was not the typical sojourner traveling to the US alone and expecting to return to his family in China; instead he came with his daughter and intended for the rest of his family to follow (although most likely the separation still gave Mei a greater sense of responsibility and independence.) In following and breaking these patterns, Yang’s family represents the transition between these forms of migration, and the resulting shift in Chinese-American society. Her family, therefore, exemplifies the changing view of America as a new home rather than a brief source of work, and the consequent shift away from the bachelor Chinese society.11 Because Fa’s sister lived with her husband Fay in their apartment complex in San Francisco Chinatown, Yang’s family lived in one of the units upon arrival. Chinatown was a small, close-knit society, with many residents living there for over twenty years – according to Yang, “everyone knew each other.”12 Consequently, the community retained most of its culture; Yang remembers many residents eating ethnic foods and playing games such as Chi-

mullins | from past to present

nese chess and mahjong. Most residents were first-generation and only spoke Chinese; thus these enclaves most likely formed from the necessity to work in an ethnic economy where a language barrier would not be problematic for finding work. Upon arriving, Mei and Fa worked in a fast-food restaurant. This restaurant, like other Chinese-owned restaurants serving American food, exhibits immigrants’ responses to the need to conform to American culture attract a wider array of customers. Likewise, it portrays how the Chinese culture evolved in the United States, as immigrants adapted both Chinese and American customs (such as the type of cuisine served and eaten) to form a hybrid, Chinese-American culture. In 1981 Yang was born, though sadly her father passed away months later. As a girl, Yang attended school blocks away from her home in Chinatown. Interestingly, Yang could not attend this school initially; children in her area were then assigned to schools far away in the Richmond district. This policy resulted from a 1983 consent decree that limited the students from each ethnic group that could attend certain San Francisco public schools.13 In this case, the San Francisco community enacted policies to promote diversity in schools. These actions contrast with ones taken by the community less than a century earlier in 1906, when the San Francisco Board of Education decided to place Chinese, Japanese, and Korean students into a separate “Oriental school.”14 While students were placed in schools at that time to follow segregation policies, Yang was assigned to her school to promote integration. Ironically though, had Yang’s family followed the policy (they instead enrolled her in school with a fake address), it would have created similar problems for Yang by forcing her to attend an inconveniently located school. Furthermore, many ChineseAmericans could not attend certain schools even though they had higher test scores than students from other minority groups.15 Following past trends, these institutions did not treat Yang as an individual, considering her personal needs, but only took into consideration her ethnic/racial background. Even though the program’s goal was to fight segregation, it actually imposed further discrimination on Yang and other Chinese-Americans in her situation by forcing them to take greater measures to get an education than someone of another race living in the same area. This exhibits the negative effects of the “model minority”16 identity on Asian Americans – others did not factor in the detrimental way certain policies affected them due to their supposedly high-achieving nature. Yang remembers her schools having predominantly Asian populations. While one might assume that this reinforced Asian culture in Yang, most of her friends also felt “crossed tied between being Chinese or being American.”17 Because public schools emphasized American customs,18 Yang’s friends probably experienced the same opposing cultural influences that Yang did herself. Consequently, Yang’s friends made it seem normal Yang’s attitudes differed from her family’s, as they likely experienced a similar struggle in identity. Growing up, Yang noticed Chinatown transforming. While whites and Chinese were separated for a long time – “even in my early twenties it was all Chinese those few blocks” – Yang observed diversity increasing.19 While de jure residential segregation had been prohibited since Buchanan v. Warley in 1917,20 de facto segregation still existed. This hints at the long-term ways that racialized laws and other forms of exclusion have affected the Chinese community. It further explains how Chinese Americans have retained so much of the Chinese culture, as exclusionary policies and limited opportunities due to lack of English proficiency forcefully induced a close-knit community that reinforced the customs within it,

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and prevented outside influences from changing it. When Fa passed away, Mei became the sole provider for Yang and her siblings. Most likely, Mei and Fa’s separation before immigrating prepared Mei for this role, as she already had experience in providing for her children. Mei’s independence at this time most likely set an example for Yang for how women should act, explaining some of the differences in her beliefs regarding female roles compared to her older sisters. Mei’s busy schedule resulted in Kimberly and Vanessa often picking Yang up after school and, in Yang’s mind, essentially raising her. Yet, this did not detract from Yang’s relationship with her mother: “Her presence wasn’t always there, but she always made it a point to be there for my birthdays and any fieldtrips. That’s something that really stuck with me.”21 Mei’s emphasis on spending time together led to Yang maintaining a strong understanding of the importance of family. From this one can observe one of the many influences strongly affecting Yang’s beliefs, and thus her identity as a Chinese-American. While Yang was close with her family, age differences (from six to 13) between her and her siblings made Yang feel disconnected at home – not having “anyone to communicate with” made her feel isolated. As the only American-born in her family, a “lack of understanding between the different cultures” also aggravated this, as it was “difficult to understand what [her family considers] right or proper.”22 This displays the various effects of the Chinese culture’s strength within ethnic enclaves, as it allowed for first generation immigrations to retain their identity, but it also created tension between the various generations when different customs were practiced. Overall Yang thought, “nobody understood within my family how I was feeling” as a Chinese-American,23 as she held very different ideas about who was acceptable to date, the type of roles men and women had, and the importance of certain holidays or traditions (such as the Qingming Festival). These feelings led to a drastic change in 1998, when she and her boyfriend moved to Sacramento. Yang wanted change, and felt that it was time to explore somewhere else – “it could have been anywhere.”24 Yang’s desperation to leave her home highlights the lack of belonging she felt in Chinatown. As for many second-generation Chinese-Americans,25 the differences in culture were too strong to make Yang feel as if she completely belonged. There in Sacramento, Yang spent her time finishing high school and working. Yang exercised a sense of independence rare for a young woman her age, not even involving Mei in her move. Yang explained, “I wanted to be independent. I skip to my own beat and still do to this day.”26 In employing this independence, Yang helped set the precedent for the changing role of Asian American women. This was also seen with the Nisei girls (discussed by Matsumoto), who loosened gender expectations in the 1920s and 1930s by making malefemale interactions more common in their club events.27 But while the Nisei girls asserted their independence through their personal relationships, Yang did so by choosing where she lived and attended school. But after moving, Yang strongly missed San Francisco: “It’s too flat, too humid. It’s just not my pace, being more of a city girl.”28 Likewise, Yang returned home after graduation. Yang notably did not revert against her upbringing completely by permanently leaving the Bay Area. The desire to distance herself from the Chinese culture (but only partially so) exhibits her cultural identity as a mixture of Chinese and American. Once in San Francisco, Yang attended the Fashion Institute of Design & Merchandising (FIDM). For Yang, fashion was “something that’s natural to me that I gravitated towards.”

mullins | from past to present

Despite her love of fashion, Mei wanted her to do something “more stable, [like] the stereotypical lawyer, doctor [or] accountant.”29 Even so, Yang followed her heart. She attended FIDM, learning sewing, pattern draping, and other skills. After two years, she completed the program with an Associates of Art degree. In doing this, Yang once again resembles other Asian women who have pushed the boundaries set for them by society in terms of the type of occupation they were allowed to achieve, or the amount of independence they were permitted to exercise. By attending FIDM to prepare for a fashion career, Yang followed other second-generation Chinese who tried to ensure future success through higher education. This therefore propelled the trend of Chinese-Americans attempting to work outside of the low-paying economic sectors that previous generations dominated by receiving the necessary education to be qualified for higher paying, more “professional” jobs.30 Then again, Yang inadvertently magnified the “model minority”31 myth in receiving more education than other minority groups. In one of her classes during the program, Yang met her fiancé, Cody Henson. Eventually they started dating and became engaged in 2009. Yang and Henson have had some challenges as a biracial couple; for example, many people have questioned their relationship. Some acquaintances in the Chinese American community have asked Yang, “Why aren’t you dating one of your own people?”32 These questions portray the fear commonly seen among previous generations that interracial marriages will result in destruction of the Chinese heritage.33 This concern marks a notable reversal from the laws seen in the 1900s (such as the Cable Act in 1922)34 that intended to discourage such interracial unions. This attitude possibly originates as a reaction to the previous prejudices imposed on Asian Americans, as that poor treatment could give Asian Americans reason to distrust Caucasians and other ethnicities that once held similarly racist views. Yang ignores these people, arguing that they are “rude and they lack understanding.”35 Once more, Yang deviates from traditional Chinese practices, making her own path. Although her family immediately accepted Henson, Yang also notes that if he was “darker than a medium shade,” Yang’s family would see her as “dating down,” and would stop communicating with her.36 This social hierarchy follows a general trend seen with other Asian families.37 This could originate as a longterm effect from Asian people attempting to assimilate by conforming to white middle-class values, who have historically been the most privileged group in US society.38 Conversely, Nazli Kibria argues that it could also signify the gradual acceptance of certain interethnic marriages among older generation, and thus the eventual destruction of the inter-ethnic barriers. 39 This is seen in how Yang’s family has grown to accept Cody, a white man, but not men from other races. Either way, the trend takes root in Yang’s life in the most personal of ways, even affecting the men that she dates. After FDIM, Yang worked for MGC’s Harley Davidson division, overseeing their line’s production from “start to finish.”40 On the side, Yang worked as a labor contractor, using her fluency in Chinese and her Chinatown connections to arrange for seamstresses to sew her clients’ garments at low prices. This resembles the 1960s when businesses took advantage of the high Chinese-female immigrant population and their inability to speak English to obtain cheap workers in the garment industry.41 As a result, Yang was part of a larger cycle of industrializing Chinatowns through the garment business. Through her employees, Yang also helped set the trend of more Chinese women working outside the home, and thereby

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earning a more respected role in the family. Three years later in 2005, she changed her life again, procuring a job as an assistant for a hair restoration surgeon. Yang recently made some major changes in her living situation as well. While attending San Francisco community college, Yang moved back into her uncle’s Fay’s apartment complex in Chinatown. However in 2009, Yang left to visit Henson in medical school in St. Martin. During that time, Fay passed away without a will. The San Francisco courts ordered the complex to be sold and the tenants to move out, each one receiving a small sum of money as compensation. George told her that because she was away, the family would combine all of the payouts to buy a house in Chinatown (each family member a part owner) if she let them sign and collect her money. Yang agreed and waived her rights to sign the papers. Sadly, George did not keep his promise, only putting his and his wife’s name on the house’s deed. While Yang had a room in the house, she was not a part owner. “I came back resentful. He betrayed me.”42 Though Yang was upset, her family did not empathize. Vanessa already lived in San Mateo at the time, and thus was not affected by the deed, and Emma did not express an opinion. The rest of Yang’s family believed that George should own the house alone. According to Yang, her family believed that if she married Henson, his family would take care of her: “I’m part of the Henson family, I’m no longer with the Yangs.”43 This attitude carries over from the Chinese practice of a daughter moving in with her husband’s family.44 Moreover they think that George, as the only boy, “should have some power.” But to Yang, “it’s such a joke.”45 In opposing these outlooks, Yang exhibits the ways that living in the United States has changed her beliefs compared to the rest of her family who grew up in China. Consequently, she has been influenced by the broader trends for second-generation Chinese women in the United States to adapt more Western ideas regarding gender roles.46 Refusing to live with George in his new house, Yang moved into Vanessa’s house in San Mateo. Yang still does not communicate with George to this day, refusing to be around “people who don’t look out for [her] best interests … period.”47 As seen before, Yang defies the boundaries imposed on her as a woman, this time by refusing to accept the special privileges given to her brother. Recently, Yang moved to a small city in Marin County to live with Henson. Yang still visits her friends, many of which she has known since age seven or eight. Living in the small, Chinatown community has caused Yang to develop long lasting relationships similar to the ones Yang describes her mother having with her friends. The close-knit community created from the formation of ethnic enclaves48 with the first-generation has carried over to the second generation, even though they have dispersed more as a group. Most of Yang’s friends have found jobs or significant others outside of California; they have “moved on and established their own individual lives.”49 This significantly differs from the previous generation, who according to Yang still mostly reside in the San Francisco Chinatown. Yang argues that most older Chinese people have the resources to live in a nicer house somewhere else, but they choose not to, as “they’re in their element of comfort and friends.”50 Unlike other first-generation Chinese who have children born here,51 Yang’s family seems to only feel attached to Chinatown, not to the rest of the United States. Most likely this is because Yang is their only true connection to the nation, whereas other families have more children born in the country to tie them to it. One can assume that this creates more challenges for Yang as

mullins | from past to present

she attempts to branch out. In terms of culture specifically, some friends of Yang have retained more of their Chinese culture - they “are comfortable with their upbringing.”52 Conversely, others “always strived for something different.” This disparity indicates that the second generation is still determining their identity – it has not been established yet. Yang even witnesses this discovery process in herself: “I’m still learning what I like and what I don’t like everyday.”53 In this way, Yang seems to avoid the pulls from either culture by refusing to completely identify with either one. Yang may not know exactly where she fits in among other Chinese-American women, but she revels in the “adventure” of finding out. Alicia Yang’s life has been shaped by many of the broader contexts and influences in both Chinese and American society. These effects started with her very origin in the United States (resulting from the 1965 Hart-Cellar Act and other push-pull factors in China and the United States) and still work to this day, her ambiguous identity as a second-generation Chinese American influencing her beliefs and actions, and thereby shaping her relationships with her friends, family, and fiancé. Likewise, the particular factors affecting her family, such as ethnic enclaves and their identities as first-generation immigrants, have added to this dynamic as well. However, Alicia Yang’s story also demonstrates that these trends constantly change. Thus her future as an Asian American in the United States, as well as that of other people with similar backgrounds, is still widely undetermined and unpredictable.

Notes 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16.

Certain details in this paper, such as Alicia’s name, have been changed to protect Alicia’s privacy. Ronald Takaki, Strangers from a Different Shore: A History of Asian Americans (New York: Little, Brown, and Company, 1998), 420-423. Alicia Yang, in discussion with the author, October 2011. Takaki, 423-424. Xiaolan Bao, “Politicizing Motherhood: Chinese Garment Workers’ Campaign for Daycare Centers in New York City,” in Asian/Pacific Islander American Women: A Historical Anthology, ed. Shirley Hune and Gail M. Nomura (New York: New York University Press, 2003), 287. Ibid. See note 3. Takaki, 422. Ibid., 421, 423. Ibid., 423. Ibid., 254. See note 3. Ibrahim J. Gassama, “Transnational Critical Race Scholarship: Transcending Ethnic and National Chauvinism in the Era of Globalization,” Michigan Journal of Race and Law 5, no. 134 (19992000): 134. Takaki, 201. See note 3. Wilma Mankiller and Barbara Smith, The Reader’s Companion to US Women’s History (Boston:

17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40. 41. 42. 43. 44.

45. 46. 47. 48. 49. 50. 51. 52. 53.

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Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 1999), 97. See note 3. Takaki, 257. See note 3. Charles McClain, Chinese Immigrants and American Law (New York: Garland Publications 1994), 240. See note 3. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Takaki, 259 See note 3. Valerie Matsumoto, “Japanese American Girls’ Clubs in Los Angeles during the 1920s and 1930s” in Asian/Pacific Islander American Women: A Historical Anthology, ed. Shirley Hune and Gail M. Nomura (New York: New York University Press, 2003), 172-187. See note 3. Ibid. Takaki, 257. See note 3. Ibid. Helen Zia, Asian American Dreams: The Emergence of an American People (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2000), 267. See note 3. Ibid. Ibid. Nazli Kibria, Becoming Asian American: Second-generation Chinese and Korean American Identities (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 2002), 174. Birgit Zinzius, Chinese America: Stereotype and Reality: History, Present, and Future of the Chinese Americans (New York: Peter Lang Publishing Inc., 2005), 221. See note 20. See note 3. Bao, 288. See note 3. Ibid. Sucheta Mazumdar, “What Happened to the Women? Chinese and Indian Male Migration to the United States in Global Perspective” in Asian/Pacific Islander American Women: A Historical Anthology, ed. Shirley Hune and Gail M. Nomura (New York: New York University Press, 2003), 67. See note 3. Takaki, 259. See note 3. See note 5. See note 3. Ibid. Takaki, 256. See note 3. Ibid.

Visual Media Curated by Jason U. Kim and Kristen Sun

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Pocho, The Smiles of the Bay, 2009. Digital photography.

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Pocho Interview by Jason U. Kim

ocho’s “The Smiles of the Bay” was selected by the editorial staff as the winner of the 2012 cover art competition. The full-length, unedited audio version of the interview is available on our website.1 We would like to thank Pocho for taking the time to speak to us about his work. —NSN Kim: Can you tell us about your upbringing? Pocho: I was born in Santa Paula and my parents lived in Oxnard, California, and [my mother was a] union organizer for the United Farm Workers and my dad worked for the State as a negotiator, but he was on the side of the farm workers, [and] so he would give them information and totally work with the farm workers over the growers… My mom was a narrow, nationalist Chicana that thought that white people were, for real, the devil. She would be totally okay with random regular white people dying on T.V. in a car accident because she had just so much hate in her heart [since] she got beat for speaking Spanish in El Paso and stuff like that [while growing up]. Though my mom had a lot of problems [with my dad at first], through their talking and arguments, my dad showed her a class analysis – my dad was a poor white kid from Alabama and she was a poor Mexican girl from El Paso. She’d have tortillas with butter and my dad would have mayonnaise sandwiches, and so they started to connect [and] she started to see that other people of color and Caucasian people had the same experiences as her… And so they fell in love [while in the movement]. Because of me being half-Irish, half-Mexican… My last name is an Irish last name and a Mexican last name, so when they would say my name in class, I would get really embar-

rassed because people would laugh at me because in person I look pretty Mexican. Through a lot of little things like that and people bothering me about my identity – not speaking perfect Spanish… I speak Spanish like a pocho – like someone who’s from here… [as well as] growing up in the hood influenced me [in my teenage years]. I didn’t know who I was so I started to hang out with the local gangs – the Norteños. When I got jumped into my gang, everybody shut up and nobody made fun of me ever again and [I] never heard laughs in class… After I graduated high school, I got into trouble and was on probation, and had some time to think about my life. I moved to L.A. when I was 18 years old and went to Santa Monica College [and there] started my activism. I feel that I’m lucky I survived the streets since I lost around twelve acquaintances and one of my close friends got 21 years for murder… When I got away from the gangs [and into activism], I saw that the movement had the same culture of community, love, protection, and being warriors. K: On your Facebook, you say that you practice something called “liberation photography.” What is liberation photography? P: Liberation photography, I got it from liberation theology and the option for the poor… From the beginning, my whole life was looking at our people in the ‘60s and before that. I don’t take pictures of models [or images that you might see on a postcard] like Ansel Adams… There’s an intention behind my photography. There’s an intention behind using my camera as a weapon, as a tool – and that’s liberation. I want to liberate my people, all of our people, from capitalism and imperialism and the dehumanization of our people on a daily fucking basis… It’s my form of activism; it’s my form of giving back and serving the community… I think that every social movement needs a visual movement to empower it, to support it, to legitimize it, and also to [be counter-hegemonic]. For example, the government and corporate media outlets like Fox News [depict] immigrants as criminals, while my media [through] Pocho TV [on YouTube, as well as my photography] shows immigrants as empowering, creative, strong, smiling, and happy people and it’s counter-hegemonic. K: How did you come to photography specifically as the medium for your activism and creativity? P: I actually haven’t been doing this for long – people are like “where did this Pocho come from?” In fact, I’ve only been doing it seriously for a year or two. I graduated in 2008, [and by] 2007, I held every position in MEChA, and they wanted me to stay around and gave me a position as an ourstorian or historian (of course we called it ourstorian so it’s not gender biased) so I started taking pictures of our events, little marches, this and that… They gave me a real small [point-and-shoot] digital camera and I would use it to make all kinds of crazy shots and get all up in people’s faces. [I now have a $2000 zoom lens so I don’t have to do that anymore!]… I [also] majored in Chicano/a Studies and History and started to put it all together and [began to think about my photography as a historian]. K: Can you speak to us about your creative process when you’re taking a shot? How do you

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operate when you’re on the scene? P: [First], I grew up with unions and observing people my whole life; I’m a super peoplewatcher… You know when you do something so much it becomes natural? Because I’ve been watching people my whole life, I kind of know when somebody’s going to yell loudly or make an emotional statement, or a kid’s about to get up… I know how the movement works; I know the movements of the movement. [Second], I’m really interested in the faces of the movement – not just these big, broad pictures of just the march – but getting in there and [asking], “Who are these people?” Almost all my pictures are live portraits. Even if they’re looking at my camera, they’re just looking at my camera [and I never ask people to pose for me]… I [also] don’t believe in Paparazzi-ing the fucking movement. I try not to get in the middle of anything that’s going on [in order] to capture the naturalness of [the moment]. [Third], I never, ever put in colors that didn’t come from the image… I push the colors to the limits sometimes – it’s like pushing yourself almost. I push them to see what colors are there [to] capture the insides of you. You know when you get that feeling in your chest, or your hair stands up, or you get goose bumps because some woman is speaking her heart out or something? How does that feel, right? …Because in the end, this whole movement is internal [though] we express it externally a lot of the time. K: Speaking about your photograph “The Smiles of the Bay” that won our cover competition, can you tell us about the two boys that are in the picture or the context for it? P: One thing I love about the Bay Area is that there is a lot of support [and solidarity]. One thing about that image is that immigration is sometimes [just thought about as] a Latino issue, though there are huge amounts of the Asian community dealing with [it] too and are starting to [speak out] on immigrant rights… These two young brothers – I really enjoyed them because they were just so positive – I’m really tired of the “oh, poor me” [attitude]… We know that we’re oppressed, but I’m looking for solutions, and it feels good to be in the movement. It might be hard times, but we can have good lives within these hard times. They were chilling in the square in [downtown] Oakland, and I [was just walking by and] snapped it. K: You mentioned this already, but one of the reasons why we selected this image for the cover of our first issue is precisely because of the positive energy that it conveys – so much of the time when we’re talking about Ethnic Studies, or racism, patriarchy, etc., we lose sight of what we’re fighting for and the hope that exists in this world, the hope and love… We were really [refreshed] by the image because of the positivity it conveyed. Is there anything like you’d like to tell people about bridging activism and art? There are a lot of young artists, photographers, and activists that would love to do what you’re doing. What kind of advice would you offer them? P: Keep shooting… “Artivism” is essential – you can’t have a movement without art… If you’re not doing it for the betterment of humanity ([and] art is such a humanitarian thing), or to liberate themselves and the people around them, then [you] are just not going to get much

out of it… Any artist or photographer that is [doing creative work] for a cause, just keep doing it and keep following your emotions. A lot of people get annoyed by not making any money, but for me, I looked at it as something I did for the movement. But then I started to get good at it, and people started to want my services… Keep the struggle alive, don’t stop. K: To finish off the interview, can you tell us about any upcoming projects that you’re working on right now? P: We just dropped my first music video that was [shot in] the South Bronx in New York with a group called Rebel Diaz… for their new song “Soy Rebelde” (“I’m a Rebel”).2 I am also working on two books: A Dream Visualized [in which each chapter visually looks at a day in the life of a DREAMer], and the second book I’m working on with my father is called Face Capitalism, [where in the first half of the book, each page will have a full-sized image where you will] need to face capitalism and see how it destroys us, [and the second half] will be about solutions and fighting capitalism.

Notes 1. 2.

Jason U. Kim, “Interview with Pocho, Liberation Photographer,” 11 May 2012, http://nsn.berkeley.edu/interview-with-pocho-liberation-photographer (accessed July 26, 2012). REBEL DIAZ, “Soy Rebelde” 2012 (Official (HD720) Music Video) Directed by Pocho1 Visual Movement, 2012, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wizGMIcIIws&feature=youtube_gdata_ player (accessed July 26, 2012).

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Pocho, These Walls Donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t Lie, 2009. Digital photography.

Pocho, We Care Too, 2010. Digital photography.

Pocho, Warrior Women in East Oakland, 2009. Digital photography.

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Pocho, Seeds of Resistances, 2010. Digital photography.

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Bo Luengsuraswat, Drift No.2, 2006. Acrylic on canvas, 18” x 24”.

Bo Luengsuraswat Interview by Kristen Sun

o Luengsuraswat’s Drift No.2 (seen opposite) was selected by the editorial staff as the runnerup for the 2012 cover art competition. In the artist’s own words, his work “imagines the emergent shapes and forms of futurity.” He can be reached through email at: Luengsuraswat@gmail.com. We would like to thank Bo for taking time to discuss his artistic vision and work with us. —NSN Sun: Tell us a little about yourself. Luengsuraswat: I am an interdisciplinary artist, scholar, and activist currently based in Los Angeles. I recently graduated from the Asian American Studies M.A. program at the University of California, Los Angeles and hold a B.A. in Visual Studies from California College of the Arts. For the past few years, I have been working to incorporate my artistic practice and activism into my scholarly work, and vice versa. My research interests, as well as sites of intervention, include cultural studies, ethnic studies/Asian American studies, transgender studies, queer of color critique, and disability studies. My Master’s thesis Defying the Gravities of Recognition: Conceptualizing Alternative Politics of Identity Through Cultural Productions by Asian American Female-to-Male Transgender Artists, discusses the intersection of race, masculinity, and transgender identity, and the ways in which trans/queer of color artistic production challenges the capitalist logics of representation and visibility. One of my thesis chapters is included in this issue of nineteen sixty nine. My visual, performance, and multimedia work has been exhibited at Fresh Meat in the Gallery VI: Defying Gravities, the National Queer Arts Festival 2011 (Queer It Yourself—

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Tools for Survival), and the Tenth Anniversary San Francisco Transgender Film Festival. One of my artworks was chosen as the cover image of Contemporary Asian America: A Multidisciplinary Reader, Second Edition, edited by Min Zhou and J.V. Gatewood (New York University Press, 2009). My collection of poetry and short essays has been published in Gender Outlaws: The Next Generation, edited by Kate Bornstein and S. Bear Bergman (Seal Press, 2010); Uproot: Queer Voices on Migration, Immigration, Displacement, & Diaspora (zine, forthcoming 2012); and the Anthology of Trans and Genderqueer Poetry, edited by TC Tolbert and Tim Peterson (Trace) (EOAGH Books and Nightboat Books, forthcoming 2013). S: The editorial staff really liked Drift No.2, especially the nebula-like characteristics of the piece, which we felt spoke well to the constant formations/reformations of the field of Ethnic Studies. What was the creation process like for Drift No.2? Additionally, can you also speak about your other piece, Drift No.1, which is also included in this issue? How do these pieces connect to each other? L: Thank you so much. I created both pieces, Drift No.1 and 2, together as they were part of the same process. My intention was to capture movements and repetitions, and to observe the kinds of space, texture, and ambiance they create. I worked on both paintings in layers, starting from lighter backgrounds, almost monochromatic, then working my way up to the darker tones and wider range of colors, creating a sense of depth. The movement and pace of these two paintings, as I felt during the process and in the end products, were completely opposite—No.1 was swift and unidirectional, while No.2 was slow and less predictable. But essentially these two paintings were part of the same process and they complimented each other in the end (they even embody similar color schemes). When I started working on these pieces, I had no idea how they would turn out. That was part of the excitement actually, to let this unknown process lead me. It all began with my speculative feelings, my desire to explore and articulate something—certain shapes, forms, textures, movements, spaces, etc—that were unknown and had not yet come. Most of my abstract work started out this way, unpredictable and emergent. Especially with Drift No.2, the nebular movement and texture of the piece give a sense of something moving and growing in unknown directions. It is important as well to note that certain parts of the painting were attuned to the gravity, and that these geographical shifts, drifts, and drips were affected by the natural conditions outside the painting. I believe that it is these articulations of future that transcend the consciousness of the present, yet grounded in lived material conditions, that ethnic studies and other disciplines of knowledge production must absolutely encompass. S: What are some central themes that are important to you as an artist? L: Over the years, I have learned to appreciate the work I made at different points in life, to treat them as a record of my intellectual and personal growth. At times, when I look at some of my old pieces, I would be fascinated by the relevancy of the artwork I created back then, under different living conditions and modes of consciousness, to who I am in the moment.

My immigration history and complex gender positionality have influenced much of my work, and when I come across something I made almost a decade ago when I first arrived in the United States—grappling with the overwhelmingness of cultural difference, for example—I would find myself pleasantly surprised by how accurate my artistic articulation was back in the day to my present mode of being. Although the driving force and conceptual framework behind some of these pieces may be inapplicable to my present circumstances, I still find the work themselves make sense to me, given my current interpretive archive. It may have been my own structure of feeling that translates across temporality or, more likely, the universal quality and accessibility of artistic production that allow for multiple readings, interpretations, and connections. This is definitely another instance where artistic production has the potential to transcend our consciousness in the moment and connect our being in the present to who we have yet to become. S: You describe yourself as an interdisciplinary artist, scholar, and activist. How has your work been deepened working in these various areas and being informed by different perspectives? L: To me, it is impossible to separate any of these identities and modes of being/working from one another. I feel that, on the one hand, my artistic practice and creative ways of seeing significantly help expand/deepen my research methodologies and the content of my scholarly work. On the other hand, approaching my artwork with a critical lens helps me better understand my creative processes and situate my cultural intervention in perspective. I enjoy writing about artwork and performances, as well as creating them, since cultural production, as I know intimately, is a rich site of meaning-making and transformation. Working at this intersection of critical writing and the arts makes me appreciative of the myriad ways in which communication and knowledge production take place, and this is what I perceive of as activism. S: As you mentioned, one of your Master’s thesis chapters, “Badass, Motherfucker, and Meat-Eater: Kit Yan’s Trans of Color Slammin’ Critique and the Archives of Possibilities,” will be included in this issue. You also mentioned that you situate this chapter in conversation with the fields of Asian American Studies, trans/gender studies, queer studies, and performance studies. Since the artwork that you submitted to the journal is more abstract, what are the connections among the scholarly work that you do, the academic fields that you are in conversation with, and the art that you produce? L: My written work primarily critiques the logic of visibility and challenges the capitalistic regimes of representation, and this is the intervention I continuously make within these fields of knowledge production and community activist settings. Much of what underlies our perception of reality at this temporal juncture is the kind of cultural politics that requires social subjects to establish (oftentimes impossible) proof of belonging to a particular identity/ imagined community in order to gain recognition and survive. It is this disciplining notion of recognition—our cultural failure to comprehend what is not immediately legible—that I

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also challenge through my artistic practice. My process of creating the artwork selected for this journal issue, as mentioned previously, is illustrative of the connections between my scholarly and artistic work. S: What are some current projects that you are working on? L: I have been doing a lot of creative writing latelyâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;poetry, short essays, memoir, and nonfiction genresâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;as a form of healing.

Bo Luengsuraswat, Drift No.1, 2006. Acrylic on canvas, 18” x 24”.

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Bo Luengsuraswat, Untitled (Unknown), 2006. Linocut print, 7½” x 10”.

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Tejida Nostalgia

y focus as a photographer is to try and capture the mundane moments of Latin America. I like to showcase the beauty of my culture, the vibrant colors of my people, and the rhythm of its landscape. For me, every photograph is like a poem and the titles of my pieces help compliment my vision. This series titled, “The Rhythm of Landscape,” focuses on the women of Central and South America. My main goal in this series is to highlight the importance of preserving indigenous cultures in the face of popular culture. — Claudia D. Hernández

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Claudia D. Hernรกndez, El llano y sus flores, 2011. Digital photography.

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Claudia D. Hernรกndez, La espera~The Wait, 2011. Digital photography.

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Claudia D. Hernรกndez, El ritmo de la tierra~The Rhythm of Landscape, 2011. Digital photography.

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Ziza Delgado, Marcelo Garzo, Peter Kim, Christopher Petrella & Kim Tran, Snapshots of a Movement, 2011. Digital media.

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Literary & Creative Works

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Kim Ayu (Come Over Here) Claudia D. Hernรกndez

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Rampas Inclinadas En el Este de Los Ángeles pasa un niño día entero haciendo marometas con su patineta; En su estómago vacío solo se oyen charcos de acidez: sube y baja rampas inclinadas. Al atardecer, los murales que inhala llenan sus pulmones de deseos impalpables: sube y baja rampas inclinadas. Casi siempre cae bien parado, pero ciertas magulladas que se ha dado, esas no se curan aunque deje de bajar o de subir/ las rampas inclinadas Del Este de Los Ángeles.

hernandéz | kim ayu (come over here)

Steep, Steep, Ramps In East Los Angeles, a child spends his day skateboarding, learning tricks to kill another day. An echo resonates in his empty stomach filled with acid pools: There he goes— up and down the steep, steep, ramps of East L.A. At dusk, the murals he inhales fill up his lungs with empty promises: There he goes— up and down the steep, steep, ramps of East L.A. (agile child who lands on his feet most of the time) Some of his scrapes and bruises will not heal— Even if he stops riding: the steep, steep, ramps of East L.A.

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Rifles y Frijoles Curtida, se me ha quitado el miedo de que: me desaparezcas, me tortures, de que me quemes en silencio. Fértil es mi tierra. Le da fruto solo aquel que sabe: cultivarla, cosecharla, respetarla. ¡Vacíame las balas de tu rifle! El fríjol que tú me brindas hoy no me sirve de sustento— No apacigua esta cólera que revienta en mis entrañas.

hernandéz | kim ayu (come over here)

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Rifles and Beans1 Calloused, I no longer Fear that you will: Torture me, Extinguish me, That you will burn me in silence. Fertile is my land. It bears fruit only to Those who: tend it, harvest it, respect it. Empty out your rifle bullets on me! The beans that you offer me today Are of no sustenance— They will not pacify this anger That explodes in my entrails.

Note: By July 1982, Ríos Montt had begun a new scorched earth campaign called “rifles and beans.” The slogan meant that pacified Indians would get “beans,” while all others could expect to be the target of army rifles if they didn’t comply with government officials. It was during this time that Rios Montt banned public meetings, suspended the constitution, replaced elected officials, and censored the press.

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Esta Soy Yo ¡Libertad para los indios donde quieran que estén en América y en el mundo, porque mientras vivan vivirá un brillo de esperanza y un pensar original de la vida! — Rigoberta Menchú Tum Rios Montt No ha llegado A conocer La verdadera Cólera De Rigoberta Menchú Con mi tez Pálida Con mi alma Vigorosa Tengo Rasgos de una Maya Invencible Tengo sangre De una Maya Incansable —My Mayan Veins are Invincible . . . My Aquiline Nose Has smelled The dead Pine needles In my people’s Adobe bricked Homes —He husmeado Sangre en los hogares De mi Gente . . .

hernandéz | kim ayu (come over here)

Mi mirada Me delata Mis ojos están Cansados Hinchados Han visto Demasiado —My swollen Eyes have Seen enough . . .

Tengo una Boca Con labios Forrados De un cuero Impermeable Barnizado de Sangre Que me Inspira a aullar Que me Impulsa a Denunciar Al transgresor Que nos Ha robado Que nos Ha matado Rios Montt No ha llegado A conocer La verdadera Cólera De Rigoberta Menchú —I denounce All transgressors Who have stolen From us

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Who have raped Our villages . . . My feet Have traveled Through Thorny Desolate Towns My feet Have become Calloused, Exhausted They have Bled enough —Mis pies Han sangrado Pero no han Trastrabeado . . . Este cuerpecito Con su alma Empuñada Y sus rasgos Pronunciados Se tragará, Todo aquel Que descaradamente Se aproveche De mi gente Rios Montt No ha llegado A conocer La verdadera Cólera De Rigoberta Menchú

Note: General Efrain Rios Montt, was a graduate of the School of the Americas and came to power in a 1982 coup. During his 17 month reign, Rios Montt’s cam-

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paign destroyed over 400 villages, more than 20,000 Indians were killed, and over 100,000 fled to Mexico. In December of 1999, a group of Guatemalans led by Mayan leader Rigoberta MenchĂş filed suit in the Spanish National Court against eight high ranking Guatemalan officials, including RĂos Montt.2

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Kim ayu (come over here)3 My insides contract It is my breath That escapes It goes in search Of my people I hear an echo That resonates Sweet voices Tender tongue: Kim ayu —Come over here A wind of incense Grazes my core The marimba’s keys Chime in the distance It is the moors They have come With their ancient Deer dances The clamor Of the bells From the temple Always resound That melody Can never fade I hear an echo That resonates Sweet voices Tender tongue: Kim ayu —Come over here On my flesh

hernandéz | kim ayu (come over here)

I feel a wax That burns It leaves scars That teach me To appreciate my New existence My fierce soul No longer trembles I have found My new Edén.

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Invisible Hands4 In the borderlands, Paso del Norte, (Ciudad Juárez) Invisible hands can be heard assembling products To send across the border. The women sweat, They waste away For nickels and dimes; The maquiladoras grow, they rage, everyday, more and more. In the darkness of the desert a young virgin Has disappeared/ She has stumbled Upon the beast Who stalked her down and caused her to vanish. Tomorrow, another worker will take her place; The maquiladoras grow, they rage, everyday, more and more.

hernandéz | kim ayu (come over here)

In the borderlands, Paso del Norte, (Ciudad Juárez)

The desert swallows cries that censure us— Meanwhile, The maquiladoras resound with a somnambulate echo.

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The Mill (Prose)5 That afternoon, like every afternoon at the mill, we formed a line to recount the latest rumors and scandals of the entire town. Everyone went to the mill with their bowls filled with grains of tender, freshly cooked maiz. The stinging cal did not drain from the grains of the maiz, but even so, that was how I enjoyed eating them in order to savor their salt. The noise from the motor of the mill was piercing and deafening. It forced us to yell at the top of our lungs (as if we did not have any other place to join and relate our sorrows or condemn the latest Fulanita who gave birth to a lovechild). At exactly five o’clock, the mill magically converted the maiz into a smooth, fresh, and freckled dough. Later in the evening, my aunt would prepare the tortillas by hand so that my sisters and I could eat them with salt and a little bit of lime— Eating tortillas with salt and lime was truly a privilege for us when the beans and sour cream ran out. Every day some novelty or another occurred in the infamous mill. A possessive mother dragged her daughter by the hair for taking more than the allotted time in running an errand. A lesbian slyly grazed her unsuspecting love interest’s forearm while waiting in line. And poor Doña Dolores, after yet another deportation from El Norte, once again took her place at the end of the line. I was very much aware of my surroundings and the trifles of the townspeople, but what most worried me in those moments were the five seconds that the conductor of the mill allowed us in order to scrape the trapped dough from the mouth of the grinder. That was my worst nightmare. My legs trembled every time my turn approached. Full of anxiety, we placed our fingers inside the grinder with a pressing need to scrape the dough from the blades of the motor— Although the concealed dough was often not even ours, we would discretely gather it and force it into our broken bowls. The girl in front of me thought she was quick and agile in scraping her dough from the mouth of the motor. But, in my eyes, she did not fully utilize the five seconds that the conductor allowed. “Better for me,” I thought.

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The last thing I wanted to do was steal someone else’s blood-stained dough. I did not think I had the heart to combine the dough and pretend that nothing had occurred that afternoon just to withstand the force of hunger later that evening. But, unfortunately, I did not have the option to waste those precious seconds. I had to take advantage of my time and even scavenge what the girl in front of me had left behind. That night, I had to bite my tongue in order to not reveal to those at the dinner table the reason why the tortillas—fresh from the comal—gave off a light, rosy complexion. We all ate in silence.

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Notes 1. 2. 3.

Translated from Spanish to English by José Hernández Díaz. Emily Willard, “Genocide Trial of Rios Montt,” http://indypendent.org/2012/02/09/genocidetrial-r%C3%ADos-montt (accessed February 9, 2012). Translated from Spanish to English by José Hernández Díaz. “Kim Ayu (Vení pa’ca)” was first published in Spanish in Kuikatl ~ A XicanIndio Literary & Arts Journal. See Claudia D. Hernandéz, “Kim Ayu (Vení pa´ca),” Kuitatl ~ A XicanIndio Literary & Art Journal, April 21, 2012, http://www.kuikatl.com/claudia-d-hernandez/. Translated from Spanish to English by José Hernández Díaz. “Manos Invisibles” was first published in Spanish in Kuikatl ~ A XicanIndio Literary & Arts Journal. See Claudia D. Hernandéz, “Manos Invisibles,” Kuitatl ~ A XicanIndio Literary & Art Journal, , April 21, 2012, http://www. kuikatl.com/claudia-d-hernandez/. Translated from Spanish to English by José Hernández Díaz. “El Molino” was first published in Spanish in Kuikatl ~ A XicanIndio Literary & Arts Journal. See Claudia D. Hernandéz, “El Molino,” Kuitatl ~ A XicanIndio Literary & Art Journal, April 21, 2012, http://www.kuikatl.com/ claudia-d-hernandez/.

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The Jaguar Moon Has Risen José Hernández Díaz

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These Native Scars mañana doesn’t come for he who waits —Alurista; When Raza? I hope that When I walk The Arizona Streets They see my Native face And think That I’m Illegal Because I Would consider It an insult If they said I looked American I am not a corporate dream I am not a movie screen I hope they Ask me for My green card And force me To the wall I hope they Mock my Silent tears And spit on My worn feet I will show them native scars I will claim the sky as pain

dĂaz| the jaguar moon has risen

I am not an alien I know all my history: It is now.

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I Have Never Left Every time I walk Upon this Tierra I see my Mother’s Footprints From when She walked Barefoot To the well To get Water for Her Brothers And sisters Every time I walk Upon this Tierra I feel my Father’s Heavy Hands Working En el campo Sweating Profusely And cursing The Overbearing Sun Every time I walk Upon this Tierra I hear my Abuela’s Flowers Singing to

dĂaz| the jaguar moon has risen

Her and Laughing at Her Affectionate Playful Chistes Every time I walk Upon this Tierra I smell my Abueloâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Burro Lost Without him Thirsty Without his Gentle Guidance To the Refreshing Calm Arroyo Every time I walk Upon this Tierra I find myself Broken into Sharp Pieces of Aztec Obsidian Haunted by Centuries of Spanish Colonialism Every time I walk Upon this Tierra

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I soar And float On wide wings Of memoria And vow That I will Always Siempre Return Volver; I have never left. Nunca.

díaz| the jaguar moon has risen

self-portrait of a city Riding the Metro Up Whittier Boulevard, To the East LA Library, I peer Out of the Graffiti-laced Windows And see A piñata Dangling From the Tall Branches Of a Willow Tree; I know I am East Of the Artificial River— It is Written In invisible ink On the dusty Shop windows

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Where crucifixes And Virgencitas Hang Like ornaments On concrete Trees; I know I am Eastâ&#x20AC;&#x201D; It can Be tasted Inside the Marketa Where the Aroma del Bolillo fresco Meshes With the Chisme And chatter Of the Spanglish Day. I know I am East Of the American Riverâ&#x20AC;&#x201D; It is written In my Juxtaposed Eyes,

dĂaz| the jaguar moon has risen

As I shift Perspective From Outside The window, To the forefront: Where I find Myself Immersed In the Naked city.

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The Jaguar Moon Has Risen The ocean echo Of the Azteca drum Pulsates the Concrete streets Of the Mission District In the intersection Of 24th St. and Folsom, Tonight; The slender rain Rhythmically falls From the turquoise lakes Of TenochtitlĂĄnâ&#x20AC;&#x201D; They are tears Of Quetzalcoatl; They are tears Of La Malinche. The jaguar moon Has risen; The reflection Illuminates the Bare feet of the Serpent dancers: Allowing them to soar; They are eagles in the wind. The ancient incense Slowly burns In the middle of The circle of The serpent dancers. We inhale the ancient smoke; Mountains quake

dĂaz| the jaguar moon has risen

Inside our minds; As we exhale It ascends and Pierces the flesh Of the nostalgic clouds: We are eagles in the wind. In the intersection of 24th St. and Folsom, The Azteca drum Pulsates the Concrete streets Of the Mission District: The barrio Has risen; The jaguar moon Has risen.

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Aztlán, at last what for the rush and bloody pain we’ll surely die, but then... —Alurista, Pa’ Cesar Y Corky.

At last, I’ve found A ground To walk And proudly Call my home— Las huellas de La tierra Firmes, Bronceadas, Like my own. The movement came From protest And it Reigns in Reverie— There’s action En las calles: Huelgas, Murals, Poetry. We know the Strength of Eagle warriors, And float On wings Of ash— Somos libres De Europa Y también de Uncle Sam.

díaz| the jaguar moon has risen

The force Of what Was written Now resides In what We know. The mind is but An ancient dahlia b l o o m i n g In the wind. At last, I’ve found A sky To claim And proudly Call my home— We grasp The name from Sacred sunlight: Somos de Aztlán.

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Áiac xictli in tlaltícpac (nadie es ombligo de la tierra) I am not of Hispanic D E S C E N T I am of AZTEC ascension/ I am what My ancestors Have written On the walls Of Teotihuacán: Áiac xictli in tlaltícpacNadie es ombligo de la tierra(No one is the navel of the earth). *** They have used Red paint To relay Black messages From the lips Of the fifth sun: In tlilli in tlapallEn negro, en Rojo(In Black, In Red).

dĂaz| the jaguar moon has risen

*** We are seeds Of the rain We retain What has F A L L E N In toyolloEn nuestros corazones(In our hearts).

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House of the Eagles (Templo Mayor) in brown america life keeps going and going and going and the grapes keep growing and growing and the anglos keep owning. —Andrés Montoya; in brown america. I don’t write For white Fame, I write for The brown Pride Discernible In the Street: I write for me. I’m not a false Individual, Sometimes I do Feel the Rain Collide Inside My mind, And I can’t Count the Leaves That scatter Poems Beside The window Of the moon—

díaz| the jaguar moon has risen

Then And Now: It’s all the same. Now And Then: I feel the pain. I don’t write For white Ears, I write for The brown Palms Perspiring In their Fields: I write for change.

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From My Home to Yours, From Your Home to Mine Tria Andrews & Tala Khanmalek

andrews and khanmalek| from my home to yours, from your home to mine

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Dear Tria, I stretched my right arm, and grasped energy from the Northeast. I stretched my left arm, and grasped energy from the Southwest. With my fists, I connected heaven and earth against my chest, kneading the interval like my grandmother when she sang giligilihozak. After electrifying the red, purple, and yellow triangles, we danced the movements of the Orixa for two hours. Drums played through our bodies, each sound and step so simultaneous that it became impossible to identify which led the other. Sure, the marley floor was not terreiro. This class was not ceremony. Vera Passos was not initiating us. Yet it seemed impossible to separate her as a teacher and a priestess. The studio became sacred, and my tired spirit rose to the fore immediately.

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It’s usually difficult for me to feel apart from my material being. People who take open dance classes, more often than not, think that dance is just exercise. And people who take open dance classes besides Ballet, Modern, or Jazz, think that dance is just exercise with flavor. Occasionally, people who take the latter appropriate/mimic the “Native” with such force that besides making me hot with anger, it makes me laugh. The situation is a lot more complex. To really understand the state of dance, especially of dance from non-White communities in America, necessitates quite a wide explanation. For now, though, I want to tell you about my experience the night before last. The snake: the snake bites the ankle, the waist, or the common carotid artery in the neck. Before my family (row of dancers) moved across the floor, I visualized my prey but my projection disappeared the closer I got to the mirror. The site of my self weakened my concentration. My eyes filled with tears. “Are you breathing?” Isaura asked. Yes. No. My breath was caught and my thoughts only remembered the snakes that had bitten me as a girl. I was afraid to writhe because I was afraid to show the density of my hurt, the hurt I had been storing, the hurt that had become stagnant at the bottom of my uterus in a dark pit. I cried throughout the first hour of class, and I think I was crying for my younger self with a bit of pity. I was confused. Now I hear Luisah Teish say, “the healing knowledge of ‘Our Ancestors’ is central to our survival. The veneration of our foremothers is essential to our self-respect.”1 Then what the fuck?! Why was it so hard for me to feel my powers, manifest my woman-magic, and bite? In the shift to Ochossi, my sadness turned angry. The swift pace of the hunt had me snarling with a heartbeat full of base. You see, my warrior has been trained well. I had been preparing myself for a fight since I was in the womb. I have mastered anticipation, the art of war. My sympathetic nervous system knows, senses threat from the slightest tones. But, Ochossi is a hunter and an herbalist. Ochossi is sometimes crippled himself. What kind of hunter is the one who has been hunted, and shot? The kind of hunter whose bow and arrow can turn the trick, even on the trick itself. The West African god Elegba, the divine trickster. “The white man had used trickery in procuring the slaves, therefore trickery was necessary to survive. And in this world they could barely understand, trickery was a move beyond logic.”2 In reflection, I smile cunningly at the tattoo on the inside of my injured foot; Inanna’s reed, forever reminding me of her journey to the underworld and back. Forever reminding me that she was hung naked on a meat hook to die, which she did. She died and returned home, enabling her powers to transform her into the most powerful of all. We end the class seated with Oshun. I fan my sweaty face and splash myself with fresh river water; scallops and shells fall around me. My dress tala, gold. When I lift my palm to see my radiating beauty my look is pleasure, coy and totally sure of my confidence. Perhaps we really weren’t dancing for the Orixa, but there was indeed a moment of invocation for me. I smelled Oshun’s favorite foods in my armpit funk: honey, cinnamon, orange, and pumpkin. Catching a whiff of her in my pores reminded me that masked as my prey is myself. But like Ochossi, I too am a healer, with the antidote to my own venom. Love, Tala

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Dear Tala, One of my innermost secrets is that I cannot dance. I can do many things with my body in terms of movement, grace, and strengthâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;I know thisâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;but something always prevents me from feeling the rhythm and translating it through an expression of flesh and bone that is organic, that makes sense, that says exactly what it is I want to say. When I dance, something is always lost in translation, always abstracted by my own self-consciousness. It is as if I need the practice, the structure of yoga, to make meaningful shapes with my body. Like a poet paralyzed by the prospect of free verse, I am wedded to the structure of yoga, the beat of my breath, the alignment of the asana. The confines are what make me flourish. Does any of this make sense?

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You could not breathe, you said, because of the pain. I know this feeling too. Breath choppy and short like a discontented sea. If you keep the breath shallow, high in the chest, above the heart, maybe it can’t hurt you. My yoga teacher placed his hand on my back, behind my heart, and said, Breathe here. You’re not breathing here. And I wanted his hand on my body, and I didn’t want it there. I wanted to be the creator of my own pain, muscles aching and quivering, but the creator of a superficial pain, a pain that doesn’t broach fresh wounds, scabs I can’t stop picking at, and a cartography of scars in which you can locate my own particular history. Yoga is ceremony. I do not feel holier or humbler than when I am shaky, sweaty, vulnerable, my back arched, and my arms and heart open to the sky. When Cherríe Moraga spoke to our seminar, she said, One thing I know about ceremony is that I am never comfortable. And the longer that I practice yoga, the more I enjoy discomfort, seek it out within controlled environments without sacrificing my breath. It’s what yogis call finding your edge. Where is the point where your body moans inwardly, the lion’s breath saves you, and you are calm, strong but still supple? Perhaps the question arises, how and why as women of color would we subject ourselves to more pain and claim to enjoy it? I see yoga as a means to suture the mind-body split, so that the shores of the wound unite, so that what I know in my body and soul, I also feel in my mind. Yoga is survival. At my thirtieth birthday last week, he came to dinner and left early. Ordered an Italian soda because he was anxious about being around other people who would be drinking. When friends arrived, he stood up. Had mentioned before he was going to a meeting. I could see their eyes linger on the inside of his forearm, still purple and disfigured where he had once held the flame from a lighter. I hadn’t been there for that wounding, but had been there for another. I recall someone saying that at least this time he’d had the sense to burn the other arm. I attempted to stop him by threatening to hold a lighter to my own flesh. I loved him that much. I could sacrifice myself. I would sacrifice myself. If only he could see how he was hurting us inside, out. He stepped outdoors, held the sliding glass door closed while I struggled against it and with his free hand fumbled with the lighter. I have hurt myself before like that, but never so seriously. Scratched my face, blackened my eye, and denied myself adequate food for weeks or even months. Sometimes the emotional pain was so great that hunger seemed effortless, comforting even. Yoga is about survival, Tala. About channeling pain into healthier and more helpful forms. Over the years, others have not understood. They think it’s about staying slender—as if that’s even a consideration when you cannot breathe. Why must I practice daily? Why can’t just this evening I just relax? They don’t understand that between him and myself there is only a sliding glass door, and depending on the way the light is shining, sometimes looking at him, I can see my own reflection. Love and light, Tria

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Dear Tria, There is a track on Talib Kweli’s debut solo album Reflection Eternal that begins with “an old African proverb:” if you can talk you can sing, if you can walk you can dance.3 It makes sense, but it’s not how dance is believed, taught, and learned by dancers. Dance is never a translation of music; it’s always an encounter in which neither the dance nor the music comes first but meet equally at once. What you see and hear (on stage, in class) is the interval. This is why dance is so hard, because the “structure” negates itself as “structure,” doing and undoing simultaneously. When we dance, we usually dance to live music. The bateria plays anything, using only an “empty” rhythm. Nothing pre-determined. Everything to be determined. Sometimes the drummer or the dancer will suddenly break, and it’s up to

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the other to become so tuned in that the playing/dancing continues. The challenge is to survive at this border, in total freedom yet totally unfree. Like writing, both exist together—not in opposition—even though it seems contradictory. “Free-verse” is not just “free,” because there is language. Similarly, in dance there are movements, but movements are just tools. After I injured my foot and mourned for a while, I decided to take a few drum classes. It transformed my dance and especially my hearing. Now I dance best when I face the drummer, when the energy is literally between us. And this opening of creation is what I hunger for. I remember when I quit Ballet and I began other forms of dance, it was such a struggle to erase the movements from my body. I hated it! Ballet was/is so colonizing. Kind of how you interpret yoga, but to an impossible degree. I mean, really impossible. Ballet thinks that feet should turn out in a completely horizontal line, that female dancers must dance on their toes, etc. Its essentials are all anatomically impossible! It’s no coincidence then, that ballerinas (including myself) hate and force our bodies. Force, force, force. Death. This is suffering uselessly. This is not the laboring edge that births new worlds. I arrive at your question: “how and why as women of color would we subject ourselves to more pain and claim to enjoy it?” You and I know the answer well. Sometimes I feel my foot enflame during a class. I know that if I dance through the pain it will get worse and stop me from dancing the day after. In fact, that is exactly how I was injured. I did not listen to my foot when it begged me to quit. Except sometimes my hands swell with blood because I dance so hard. I feel like passing out but I know that if I keep dancing I’ll get high instead: spirit. I was and still am him too. The more my mind, body and spirit are integrated though, the less I see my reflection in him, the less I believe that between us is only a sliding glass door. Yes, the less I believe this. The less I trust this. “Let her who is sick with sickness pass on the story...”4 I am done with binaries. I am passing that shit on. The colonizer and the colonized. We always talk about colonialism like that, falling into its very trap! I am not one nor/or the other. I am not both. I refuse to chase my tail anymore. And that, Tria, takes me to another dimension altogether, another way of being, another relationality. We are indeed similar, but no longer resemble each other. I cannot mistake his face for mine. I am my own reflection.

Love, Tala

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Dear Tala, To be met. As Cherríe Moraga concludes in her “Preface” to This Bridge Called My Back, “It is about physical and psychological struggle. It is about intimacy, a desire for life between all of us, not settling for less than freedom in the most private aspects of our lives. A total vision. I will lay my body down for that vision. This Bridge Called My Back. In the dream, I am always met at the river,” (xix).5 To be met. How to witness suffering, to suffer alongside the sufferer, but remain whole? This is the challenge.

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When Cherríe spoke to our seminar, I was just beginning to emerge from a traumatic breakup. These things are always traumatic but somehow you forget the pain and commit to loving another, even search for another to love, because the excitement of the new outweighs the fear of suffering. For weeks following the breakup, I did not want to be in my body. Could not be in my body for many days. I could not sleep, could not breathe, as I have already told you, I could not eat, because my stomach, the part of me that feels most thoroughly, was broken. A series of anxious phone calls, several a day, so I could spew stories of what could have been, what might be. I crafted these stories until I made myself sicker. Cherríe spoke to me that day, Tala, (and I could refer to my notes, but I don’t need to, some words you take in, and they never leave you), she said, Remember. If anyone gets in the way of your work, they don’t have the capacity to love you. And of course by work Cherríe did not mean grading papers and reading abstract theory that no matter how hard you try, you cannot connect with. She meant real work, dharma, your calling. She meant writing, yoga, dance, what you feel you must do, produce, give birth to, or you cannot survive. You need the hope of the vision that you have created in order to sustain you. And there is no question that this partner got into the way of my work. Near the end, there was lots of crying on my part—not sad crying as much as fierce, frustrated sobbing. You speak of binaries, borders, dichotomies. This partner, whom I once loved, had one vision of Truth. Once he said to me, are you a scholar or creative writer? A photographer or yoga teacher? And when I stood there too shocked to answer, he said, That’s your problem. You don’t know who you are. I couldn’t answer, Tala, because I am all and none of these things, which cannot be separated or categorized. I hope to lead a meaningful and useful life, and this partner fell away like he was supposed to, so that I could further cultivate my craft/s. You speak of your foot, of injury, of mourning. Injury is one my greatest teachers, because I too know how to force, to sacrifice that within me which is most sacred. But I have also learned that morning often follows mourning. Let us not suffer uselessly. Let us find morning in our mourning.

Namaste, Tria

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Dear Tria, When I was in middle school and in high school I wanted to change my name. I often called myself Violet, after a character in Francesca Lia Block’s novel Violet and Claire.6 As a child and an adolescent, I was obsessed with fairies and mermaids, especially the latter as I had/have a powerful relationship with the ocean. I was obsessed with another world that I was sure exists, and seeing crossings of time and space at which this world and ours meet. Block’s novels always play with such crossings, often using the body as the place of encounter. Anyways, I want to say that my hope for another world was really, faith. In Persian, there are also two words for hope and faith: ‫ امید‬and ‫ایمان‬. Unlike hope, faith is

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one of the three dimensions of Islam. One can have islam without ‫ایمان‬, but one cannot become or be a muslim without both. Faith signifies a trust that “to hope” is not necessarily necessary. It was/has been my faith in another world that survives me through ours. The morning in mourning. For my mourning is not manifest in injuries alone, but day-to-day life. In living, I never forget. I once shared with my partner that there are a few things I remember daily. My grandmother’s journey from Iran to America, my father’s diseases, the violences I experienced throughout childhood and adolescence...How? How do you remember? he asked. How can I forget? I answered. How can I forget when it’s in my flesh? The morning in mourning, for me Tria, must become a quotidian sunrise to give me the energies for sunset. Injuries are just densities of the grief, of memory.

1,950 mile-long open wound

dividing a pueblo, a culture, running down the length of my body,

staking fence rods in my flesh,

splits me splits me

me raja me raja

This is my home this thin edge of barbed wire.7

Later I realized that in my own name, in me, is a tool. Tala means gold in Persian, I knew that and it’s what I hated about it. But gold is the most malleable and ductile of all metals. “I am the welder. / I understand the capacity of heat / to change the shape of things. / I am suited to work /within the realm of sparks / out of control.”8 Not only am I too, all and none of the things you are, I/you/we are welders. We are infinite layers.9 We know how to be all and none at once, eagle and serpent at once, a new consciousness, a new way of being. “I am the welder. / I am taking the power / into my own hands.”10 Yet, I am scared. Although I no longer fear the morning after, the next day that cannot be the same as before offering with itself a passing and possibilities, I am scared of power. Honestly, I am scared of my power, because I know/feel how powerful I am. Once I decided to journey with myself and own my power to play with it. I quickly understood its potential and became scared; I even became scared to be alone. While I believe that part of my fear just needs teaching (about how to use my power) to transform, I believe that it is mostly symptomatic. What is my question? How Tria, do we unbecome “ghosts in the machine?”11 How do we decolonize our selves and take power into our own hands without fearing the

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significance of divesting from whiteness, maleness, heterosexuality, etc.?

Love, Tala

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Dear Tala, I did change my name. I began to go by my middle name, my great-grandmotherâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s maiden name. It happened almost by accident, because there were too many of me waiting tables in a small pizza shack in a college town. But my middle name was different. It meant that I was connected to women I would never meet, lands I have yet to see, languages I cannot yet understand. It means that I have a herstory. It also means that I have a responsibility. You sat on my bed tonight after I called you, because I needed someone, because I had been hurt deeply by a woman of color, a woman whom I thought I could trust, who pursued my friendshipâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;only to wound me.

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This woman and I had sat side by side at a women of color gathering less than an hour before. On the way there, a leaf had caught itself in her hair, and I unwound it from her locks. I know that I can never look at her or touch her in that way again. And I feel that sadness deeply. When you are committed to living a life that is healing to yourself and others, you often surround yourself with people who live likewise. But it seems to me that there is a certain danger in that, a certain vulnerability, because sometimes you are so protected that you can forget that there are others who are not like you. But it also occurs to me how privileged I am to have such a luxury. To have had the time and space to be nurtured and protected. To be disrupted as I was and to be forced to feel the suffering, which for some women of color comes without reprieve. I have faith, Tala. I have great faith in so many things. When my stomach/heart was broken, you invited me to come to Womyn’s Circle, and there happened to be an apartment next to yours for rent, the only apartment I looked at, which I recognized immediately was meant for me. I have so much faith that I don’t know where my faith ends and generosity, love, and gratitude begin. You are gold, my beautiful friend. When I asked you to come this evening to be with me, so I could tell you the story, show you where I ached, elicit your help to put the pieces back together, I also doubted you. I stopped my story, because I felt, as I admitted later, that I didn’t think I could trust you. Hurt is ugly like that; it spreads like a disease. And I don’t want to be sick. I want to be whole and transparent. I too am afraid of being alone. It is so much harder to sit with yourself and thinkfeelheal. Now I am searching for what it is I want to say, now that it is nearly 2 a.m., and you told me hours ago to take a hot shower and go to sleep. I am cold; I am shivering; I have worn myself out. To answer your question, perhaps there comes a time when you are too tired to think about divesting from Whiteness, Maleness, Heterosexuality. Perhaps things will look differently in the morning. I love you. I am thankful to you. If you vow to try your best not to hurt me, I will do the same for you.

Tria

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Dear Tria, Your email has returned me to childhood and adolescence yet again, and also here, now. I am not afraid of being alone. When I lived at home, being alone was my only peace. I recently reminisced about the many hours I passed in the bathroom between my brotherâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s room and the one my Babba slept in. The room I slept in, before my brother moved into the garage and I moved into his, had no lock. It also had a vent on the bottom of the door, and another door that opened to the garage, which had another door that opened to the driveway. My point is that even inside, I was unprotected, although my window was barredâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;my view of the park across the street always incomplete.Â During a fight my brother once taught me to lock myself in the bathroom until it ended. Was I quarantining my self or my family? The difference between me and them has become in-

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creasingly blurry since I moved away. I sat in the cold ceramic bathtub or on its ledge, either crying or reading with wild thoughts and feelings. Finally, I was safe. Babba and Mamman had threatened to force the door open once or twice. More often than not I was forgotten, and forgotten meant unintentionally freed from firsthand injuries. I agree, hurt is like a disease, unless it’s understood differently. I can follow many paths in this email. For some reason, I want to write about hurting. Well, I want to write about hurting because being alone became a habit. Not natural. A habit that has been one of the central challenges in my relationship(s). If I am hurting, I “lock myself in the bathroom.” Sometimes I lock myself in the bathroom by saying no to my partner’s love, speaking away from him/ her, or telling him/her to leave. Sometimes I do it without words, with the language of my eyes, or my body. After all, hurting/hurt is both a verb and a noun. They are so close, Tria. Unless it’s understood differently, hurt causes hurt. Whether I am hurting/hurt or hurting/ hurt I am made alone. Anzaldúa understood hurting/hurt differently, as we do. The laboring edge that births new worlds. Hurting/hurt in dance is hurting/hurt with other dancers. Quarantine is no longer sensible. In this society we quarantine hurting/hurt in hospitals, in prisons, and even in these places we re-quarantine people in rooms, in “solitary confinement.” We have places of quarantine within communities too. Healing also applies this logic, the logic of the individual. Therapy. The logic of psychological realism. No more, Tria, no more. In my family, when someone is hurting/hurt everyone migrates to the person. The logic of contagion is different. If we are hurting/hurt together, the pain spreads thin, and in turn, makes healing more powerful. The remedy is the collective. The circle. The reflection. Aloneness is not real, I learned/am learning in process. First, I am never “alone.” I am always with myself. In the bathroom, there is a mirror. And I am always with spirit, or whoever/whatever energy I invoke. Second, the other. I need these other people, and other people. Third, my brother taught me to perform surgery. Lock yourself in the bathroom: surgery. I am a surgeon in any time and space though. Being and being, otherwise. I do not need the bathroom to move from one place to another. I love you too and am thankful. I have a better promise, one that love/my partner is teaching me, one that the women in my family taught me: to be with you in hurting/hurt, to be with you in the bathroom. My Mamman and Babba hate each other with extraordinary love. When Babba had a heart attack and the doctor said that he will die soon, Mamma was there. Mamman has always been there. Mamman is still here. Mamman has never left us, even the people who violenced her. Mamman was in our home. Mamman is on Bentley Street and we are on WoodBine. Mamman is in our neighborhood. Mamman is in the food she cooks and drives over for me. Mamman was at dance class, my performances, doctor’s appointments, school. Everywhere, Mamman is everywhere. Mamman has always been there. Mamman is still here.

Love, Tala

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â&#x20AC;&#x153;In gatherings when people feel powerless, la nepantlera offers rituals to say goodbye to old way of relating; prayers to thank life for making us face loss, anger, guilt, fear, and separation; rezos to acknowledge our individual wounds; and commitments not to give up on others because they hurt us. In gathering where weâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve forgotten that the aim of conflict is peace, la nepantlera proposes spiritual techniques (mindfulness, openness, receptivity) along with activist tactics. Where before we saw only separateness, differences, and polarities, our connectionist sense of spirit recognizes nurturance and reciprocity and encourages alliances among groups working to transform communities. In gatherings where we feel our dreams have been sucked out of us, la nepantlera leads in celebrating la communidad sonada, reminding us that spirit connects the irreconcilable warring parts para que todo el mundo se haga un pais, so that the whole world may become un pueblo.â&#x20AC;?12

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Dear Tala,

I have been transformed by this project, by the seminar for which we are writing this collaboration, by Laura Pérez, our professor, and by the speakers who have shared with us their dreams, fictions, and theories, which are ways of re-envisioning and transforming the world. To call something a fiction in the Eurocentric domain of the academy is often an attempt to strip the work of its power, its Truth, and its credibility, so that we feel, as Anzaldúa writes, “our dreams have been sucked out of us.”13 But as we have seen, women such as Chela Sandoval, are not afraid to reclaim the word “fiction.” These women bravely acknowledge that their visions are born of a creativity that may be misunderstood, unrecognized—or as Andrea Smith emphasized in a recent address at Cal—considered illegible by the academy. But what, as Andrea Smith questioned, referring to the necessity of an intersectional approach, what if instead of talking about centering, we just did it? What if we possessed the bravery to give birth to our dreamsfictionstheories without feeling the need to justify or translate? In la nepantlera ceremony with Chela yesterday, we responded in free/stream of consciousness writing to passages from Gloria Anzaldúa and Cherríe Moraga. When I read aloud what I had written in the fifteen minutes that we had been allotted, Chela said that two-thirds of it could be translated into a dissertation. Chela is a very generous woman, but I need to believe her. I must believe her, because long ago I realized that I can never respond or write like my colleagues. When I write in the language of the academy, I cannot find my heart. It is only through the intersections of the personal and political that I can make theory make sense. Chela gave me a precious gift yesterday. A gift I must hold on to, that I know I will come back to and press close to my heart like a love letter to remind me that the work I do matters. That I matter and that I can make a contribution in my way, which is the only way I know how. I have felt more exhausted than I ever have these last few days. And I know it is the end of the semester, the end of the academic year, but I feel it is an emotional exhaustion that is manifesting itself physically. It is this writing, which comes quickly, but is also tremendously draining. My heart feels so full during this writing, but it also feels pressed, pressured, as if there is not enough room in my chest for its growth. My brain feels full, ever expanding, so that there is a pressure behind my eyes. These texts, these Women of Color/Third World Women Feminisms, have become my bibles. These women, Gloria Anzaldúa, Trinh Minh-ha, Laura Pérez, Cherríe Moraga, and Chela Sandoval, are my foremothers. Like my own mother, I go to them for comfort—regardless of whether we have met or will ever meet, they have left me a map of how to proceed into uncharted territory, territory that can never be taken or appropriated from us, because it is our essence, our soul. In yoga, we talk about master teachers. My dearest friends and I scrape together the money to attend their retreats, workshops, travel to L.A. to take their classes. At Cal, I recognize that I am surrounded by master teachers, who have so much wisdom. In yoga, the sacred texts are The Bhagavad Gita, The Upanishads, The Vedas. I

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supplement those texts with Borderlands, Woman, Native, Other, and This Bridge Called My Back. It is all interconnected; it is all interrelated, “so that the whole world may become un pueblo” within me. As you say, Tala, “Mamman is everywhere.” Interconnectedness is the truest fiction I know. I must return now—I feel as if we must always return no matter how difficult it may be—to the passage with which I foregrounded this email and to the healing wound inflicted by a woman whom I said I would never look at or touch in the same way again. Anzaldúa has spoken to me in the passage that I selected. She has told me that I must be brave, strong, and “[commit[ted to] not to giv[ing] up on others because they hurt us.” I do not like what she has asked of me, Tala. This is a love letter that hurts. And how do I undo hurt with more hurt? But I am committed to Anzaldúa, to this life, to the work. I am committed to self-critique and evolution. And so I will do my best to forgive, forget, and move forward, to live a life in which “the aim of conflict is peace.” And when a leaf catches again in that woman’s hair, I pray that I will have the strength to untwine it gently and with love.

Yours, Tria

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Dear Tria, There is so much I want/need to share; I feel the density of my unwritten thoughts/feelings. I tried to recover an email I wrote to my advisor about U.S. Third World Women of Color feminisms to guide me, but could not find it so I will start my narrative from scratch. From a scratch. Which scratch? There are so many. Where is the center? In Ballet we learned that the navel is the center of the body, and that every movement begins there. I have walked with a tight belly ever since. Centering commands so often threatened me, 5-7 days per week for years, that the posture became mine, any residue of my own way

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of standing gone. When I learned to listen better, I also learned that my body has many centers. Sometimes, the center is my womb. Sometimes, it is my heart. Sometimes, my injured foot. The center cannot be placed because it moves and it changes in space/time. The center is an idea. An idea that I believe, is part of the sciences. The obsession with symmetry, of equivalence in two or more directions. Later, the reasoning of phrenology, all the studies of crania to determine a hierarchy of being. Everything is created with equidistance, everything is created around a center; performances are choreographed around center-stage. But, the center cannot be “the center” without the non-center. The center is (only) because the margin, the alternative, the Other is too. If U.S. Third World Women of Color feminisms have taught us anything, it is that these binaries are a fiction. For, how can we center ourselves when we have been everywhere all along? Centering is no longer sensible. And, as Toni Morrison emphasizes, the center is full of us. Here we are, in between each line. I do not believe that our bravery lay in (re)claiming the non-center. Rather, I believe our bravery lay in divesting from the either/or, dancing outside and inside the frame at once. Borderlands, is to me, much more than a centering as it is understood. Anzaldúa et al., through their theories and practices of simultaneity are actually moving us towards a way of being (“the mestiza consciousness”) that has no center whatsoever. Translation is significant, and its losses too. La nepantlera must always translate her self to move. I think this is what we fear, losing our “center” in translation. But if we know that binaries are a fiction, we can realize that there is nothing to lose. Samba is impossible with Ballet’s posture. Sambaing necessitates imbalance, even falling. Off-center sambistas improvise the best, playing with orientation until their next step is totally unpredictable. Like you yourself say, theory is only intelligible through you. Is that not a translation? Actually, it is the kind of translation that is most de-centralizing, especially if my female and dark body is the medium. There is one more thing I want/need to say about the center: it is gendered. Have you read Lose Your Mother by Saidiya Hartman?14 She reminds me that the center, the navel, is also the umbilicus. Yet in her book, she asks us to lose mother and enter the birth/death canal of the Middle Passage or transatlantic slave route. Hartman and Anzaldúa intersect here. Home, you see? Follow me still... You recently moved into my apartment complex, which is now ours. I walk from my home to yours. You walk from your home to mine. We cross the courtyard almost every night. We sit on each others’ bed and talk, laugh, cry, longer than we expect our visit to be. We never “meet half way,” outside in the cold. Otherwise, what would be the point of the bridge?! While in your studio I see how similar we are. The colors reflect my favorites. Your cupboard of teas, like mine. And the books! Just like my stacks, and pretty much the same ones. I also see how different we are. You work in the kitchen, your laptop and notes on the round table. Whereas I prefer a desk near my bed big enough for everything I might reference. I hear Trinh T. Minh-ha in Woman Native Other: the I/i.15 These emails, exchanges really, embody the l/i. Was it your email or mine that cited Moraga’s preface to This Bridge Called My Back? I can’t remember which means the I/i is working! Anyways, I do remember that she

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says in her dreams she is always met after the crossing. I think/feel that our project has been truly practicing what U.S. Third World Women of Color feminisms theorizes. Thank you, Tria, for being at the other end of the courtyard.Â

Love (is this the first time Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve said love in this email?!), Tala

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Dear Tala, I have the pleasure and responsibility of concluding this text. And Tala, the skilled dancer that you are, you ended strong. I expected no less from you, my friend, but still, when I first read your last email, I had no words. You glided off the stage, and there I was: sprawled on the wooden floor of my apartment, cradling my laptop, straining for one last glimpse of your golden beauty. As it were, you entered my apartment then. I was composing a quick email to you that I never finished, because you appeared, so I could tell you heart to heart, face to face what I felt. We gathered on my bed then, and this part is the most important. You were tired, so you lay down. Your feet were bare, and you curved your body around

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the head of the bed, propping up your head with your hand. Your body formed a half moon. I was tired too, so I also lay down. The way you were positioned, it made the most sense to place my head near your bare feet and curl my body at the foot of the bed. Together, we formed a circle, a full moon. For me, in that moment, as we lay there, mirror images of one another, our navels parallel, there was a center. But yes, that center shifts, is always in flux. We were each other’s reflection, and we lay like that and talked until it was time for each of us to return to our work. But do we ever really disconnect from our work—our dharma—or is it the hope that the ways in which we have learned to thinkfeelbe will inform our every action? Do the ways in which we work become the ways in which we live? More and more do all of our interests, our ethics align? As you said, after years of ballet practice, “the posture became mine, any residue of my own way of standing gone.” The beauty of yoga is that the lessons that we learn on the mat serve us off the mat. We practice inversions and in doing so, shift the center of gravity upside down. We practice standing balances and recognize that we grow the most from falling. The posture that I practice in my seated meditation is the same spinal alignment that I observe while writing to you. As you said in your last email, “we never ‘meet half way,’ outside in the cold.” Tala, you are correct. We come together in the bed, meeting each other fully, in the warmest, most intimate spaces. And we come together here, because in my studio, there is simply nowhere else for both of us to sit. Spaces force us to move, think, and write in new ways. When there is nowhere else to sit, we find ourselves on the bed. When I transition from teaching yoga in a studio setting to teaching yoga at juvenile hall, I find new challenges. When I teach yoga at Womyn’s Circle and there are seven women in your small studio, we also move differently, and the practice evolves. In la nepantlera ceremony with Cherríe, I wrote this, “You speak about strengthening the muscles. These muscles must be strong and flexible. The strength is necessary for survival; the flexibility trains you to move in new ways—ways you never thought possible. But again, back to the power dynamic. Back to inserting non-violent forms of intervention into the power dynamic. Is that enough or must the body be broken apart, reshaped, transcended?” The body provides us with its own epistemologies and metaphors. The body allows us to thinkfeel the love we feelthink in our mind-soul. We have much work to do, but we have been provided with such malleable tools. We must cultivate our flexibility and our strength. Our bodies and our minds, our heart centers. This text is the personal and political: documentation of our budding friendship and our work as budding theorists. I must say that when I read what I have written over these last few weeks, many of the events that I describe seem so far removed, and yet many still seem so close. Our minds, bodies, and spirits at a particular place and time are laid out in these pages. We wrote about each other. We selected the clothing for each other in the photographs. We asked each other to pose according to our separate/united vision. And yet to

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me, the details of our love that are not centered—the homemade soup you brought to me for dinner Saturday evening, so I could continue working—are equally important. Above all, this is a text about love. As the writers in This Bridge Called My Back consistently cite their fellow contributors, we cite each other. That is love. Collaboration is love. Days before we began the editing process, we recognized the mistake in your final email, in which you conclude, “Love (is this the first time I’ve said love in this email?!).” We recalled that you had signed your first email—in fact all of your emails— “Love , Tala.” I asked you not to change what you had written, and you didn’t. Because whether we recognize it or not, love has the power to create real change. Because whether we recognize it or not, love is what we’ve been practicing all along.

I/i, your sister, Tria

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Notes 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15.

Luisah Teish, “Women’s Spirituality: A Household Act,” Home Girls: A Black Feminist Anthology, ed. Barbara Smith (New York: Kitchen Table Press: Women of Color Press, 1983), 320. Ibid., 327. Kweli Talib, Reflection Eternal (New York: Priority Records, 2000). Trinh T. Minh-ha, Woman Native Other: Writing Postcoloniality and Feminism (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1989), 2. Cherríe Moraga, “Preface,” This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color, ed. Cherríe Moraga and Gloria Anzaldúa (New York: Kitchen Table Women of Color Press, 1981), xiii-ix. Lia Francesca Block, Violet and Claire (New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 1999). Gloria Anzaldúa, Borderlands La Frontera: The New Mestiza (San Francisco: Aunt Lute Books: 1987), 24-25. . Cherríe Moraga, “The Welder,” This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color), 219. Trinh, 90. Moraga, “The Welder,” This Bridge Called My Back, 220. Toni Morrison, “Unspeakable Things Unspoken: The Afro-American Presence in AmericanLiterature,” The Black Feminist Reader, ed. Joy James and T. Denean Sharpley-Whiting (Malden: Blackwell Publishers, 2000), 35. Gloria Anzaldúa, “now let us shift . . . the path of conocimiento . . . inner work, public acts,” This Bridge We Call Home: Radical Visions for Transformation, ed. Gloria Anzaldúa and Analouise Keating (New York: Routledge, 2002), 540-578. Ibid., 568. Saidiya Hartman, Lose Your Mother: A Journey Along the Atlantic Slave Route (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2007). Trinh, 90.

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Contributors

Tria Andrews Tria Andrews is a third-year graduate student in Ethnic Studies at the University of California, Berkeley. Andrews is also a writer and has published creative works.

Xamuel Bañales Xamuel Bañales is a graduate student in Anthropology at the University of California, Berkeley.

Ziza Delgado Ziza Delgado is a graduate student in Ethnic Studies at the University of California, Berkeley whose interests/commitments include radical social movements, history of Ethnic Studies, neo-liberalization of higher education, and ideologies and discourses in education regarding issues of gender/race/class.

José Hernández Díaz José Hernández Díaz is a first-generation, Chicano poet with a BA in English Literature from the University of California, Berkeley. Díaz has been published in The Best American Nonrequired Reading Anthology 2011, La Gente Newsmagazine of UCLA, Bombay Gin Literary Journal, Contratiempo, Hinchas de Poesia, In Xochitl In Kuikatl Literary Journal, In-

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digenous Writers and Artists Collective, The Packinghouse Review, among others. Díaz has had poetry readings at The Mission Cultural Center in San Francisco, at The Museum of Latin American Art (MOLAA) in Long Beach, and at El Centro Cultural de Tijuana. Díaz is currently fulfilling an internship with Floricanto Press as a Poetry Editor. In addition, he is an active moderator of the online group, “Poets Responding to SB1070,” where he has contributed more than 30 of his own poems.

Marcelo Garzo Marcelo Garzo is a graduate student in Ethnic Studies at the University of California, Berkeley whose interests/commitments include food and healing justice.

Claudia D. Hernández Claudia D. Hernández was born and raised in Guatemala. She is a bilingual teacher in the Los Angeles area, currently working on a Masters in Multicultural Education. She writes, illustrates, and manually binds children’s books. Her photography, poetry, and prose have been published in The Indigenous Sovereignty Issue of The Peak, Hinchas de Poesía, Poets Responding to SB1070, La Bloga’s on-line Floricanto, and in the first anthology of Poetica del Colectivo Verso Activo for Poesía Latinoamericana en Español.

Amanda Kearney Amanda Kearney is a Senior Lecturer in Anthropology, in the School of Social Sciences at the University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia. She has carried out ethnographic research in northern Australian and northeastern Brazil, and published on themes of Indigenous Australian anthropology, emotional geography, emerging ethnicities and intangible cultural heritage. Most recently her work involves a comparative analysis of ethnicity in the historically and socially wounded spaces of post-colonial Australia and post-imperial Brazil. Amanda’s work is characterized by a research philosophy that brings together theory and praxis through ethnographic research with Indigenous groups in northern Australia and Afro descendent groups in north eastern Brazil. She can be reached at: a.kearney@unsw.edu.au

Tala Khanmalek Tala Khanmalek is a fourth-year graduate student in Ethnic Studies at the University of California, Berkeley. Khanmalek is also a writer and has published creative works.

Jason U. Kim Jason U. Kim is a doctoral candidate in Ethnic Studies at the University of California, Berkeley. His research interests include theories of race and intersectionality, the history of labor and immigration, Asians in the United States and Canada, and the history of technology and science. His dissertation is entitled Dirty Clothes on the Color Line: The Laboring of Race

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and Gender in the United States and Canada, which examines the ways in which technological innovation and changes to the domestic sphere in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century were enlisted in reshaping and policing the boundaries of race, gender, and class in the United States and Canada.

Peter Kim Peter Kim is a graduate student in Ethnic Studies at the University of California, Berkeley whose interests/commitments include race formation and urban theory.

Bo Luengsuraswat Bo Luengsuraswat is an independent scholar, artist, and activist. He holds a Master of Arts in Asian American Studies and a Graduate Certificate in Women’s Studies from the University of California, Los Angeles. You can read more about him in the interview included in this volume.

Elizabeth Heather Mullins Elizabeth Heather Mullins is a sophomore in Molecular and Cell Biology at the University of California, Berkeley.

Christopher Petrella Christopher Petrella examines U.S. political-economies of racialized containment and radical education as a graduate student in African American Studies at the University of California, Berkeley.

Pocho-1 Pocho-1 was born into a family of innovation, tremendous work ethic, and self-determination. Migrating from Oxnard to Santa Rosa, California as a child, his parents were union organizers for the United Farm Workers, and also organized the first all Latino fishery and factory workers’ union. He grew up feeling disgruntled about his circumstances of poverty and personal trauma. These feelings, along with a worsening identity crises [due to his mixed racial heritage] helped to cause him to join a street gang in an attempt to empower himself with unity and camaraderie. Pocho-1 soon developed a deeper love for humanity and realized that gang culture was a harsh contradiction to the progression and the uplifting of his community he began to desire. You can read more about him in the interview included in this volume.

Julia Shu Julia Shu is an undergraduate student majoring in Ethnic Studies and minoring in Geogra-

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phy at the University of California, Berkeley. Shu is originally from San Diego, and plans to graduate in May 2012.

Kristen Sun Kristen Sun is a second-year graduate student in Ethnic Studies at the University of California, Berkeley. She graduated from Northwestern University in 2011 as a Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellow with a B.A. in American Studies. Her research interests include memory studies, war, trauma, and film. Currently, she is studying Korean War and Vietnam War commemorations in the context of films, memorials, and personal objects left behind at the memorials on the National Mall in Washington, D.C.

Kim Tran Kim Tran is a graduate student in Ethnic Studies at the University of California, Berkeley whose interests/commitments include refugeehood, women of color feminisms, and queer futures.

Joseph Ryan Wee Joseph Ryan Wee is an undergraduate student at the University of California, Berkeley.