Ethnicity/Culture/Gender

I switched to an internet browser resulting in Micro-trash throwing up various internet links on each new page before I choose a URL hoping to get me to click on the link by appealing to my apparent interest based on my browser history and other data mining procedures. 

They eventually figured out that I'm of Asian heritage and today included a number of links all addressing the Asian American experience in some way. I clicked on a few and began to itch a bit when I saw that these articles/links were written by Asian American women. The first article was about an angry Korean woman's story about how her sense of shame contributed to becoming an Asian American activist. What I find alarming was her placing all the "blame" for that shame on White America; she seems to be completely oblivious to how shame based Asian cultures are, and especially oblivious to how her own specific culture has a unique sense of shame called "han" which I will attempt to describe as the emotions generated by the belief that Korean culture/art/whatever is somehow inferior.

The second article I chose to peruse was a list of 41 "must read" books penned by Asian Americans. I got as far as the first quarter of the list and noticed that the list had only female/homosexual authors which segued to memories of when Amy Tan's The Joy Luck Club came out - and how every Asian American male I ever met just *hated* the book because every Asian male depicted was brutally dysfunctional, and the only 'happy' marriage was the result of marrying a Caucasian male - which in turn prompted me to start this particular post. I find that I need to stop and clarify the topic as well as the boundaries I'm going to need to set because books can be written on the topic and still not give all the topic the scrutiny that it merits.

<pause>

Ok.

Why are all these books chosen written by women? Does this reflect a ratio in reality in terms of Asian American authors by gender? I googled and found a similar list created by Harper's Bazaar (someone gave me a subscription and I've gotten the last two month's issues. Thank God they burn well in the fire pit while smoking a cigar in the back yard). Out of a list of 25 'must read books penned by Asian/Asian American authors, only 5 are heterosexual full blooded asian males (more on that distinction later). They include:

Kazuo Ishiguro, who has admittedly drawn both from his British upbringing and the ethnic heritage of his Japanese immigrant parents though only his first two novels explore his Japanese heritage. Otherwise his books really don't settle on Asian culture in any explicit way; he focuses more on the unreliability of human memory, a concept that seems to transcend culture.

Haruki Murakami, whose inclusion is quite ironic given that he has been criticized by Japan's literary establishment as un-Japanese, leading to Murakami's recalling that he was a "black sheep in the Japanese literary world". While his novels are set in Japan, all references to music are all western (either jazz or classical - another book he wrote was a transcription of an interview he did with Seiji Ozawa over a period of time and the breadth AND DEPTH of Murakami's knowledge of classical music blew me away).

Ken Li, who is known as a SF writer.

Kevin Kwan, known primarily for his trilogy Crazy Rich Asians, China Rich Girlfriend, and Rich People Problems draws on his upbringing amongst Singapore's definitely upper class if not elite; his great grandfather was a founding director of Singapore's oldest bank, his grandfather was knighted by Queen Elizabeth and a cousin was once Singapore's finance director. And his works are satires based on that experience.

Chang-Rae Lee, who describes his childhood as "a standard suburban American upbringing," in which he attended Phillips Exeter Academy in Exeter, New Hampshire, before earning a B.A. in English at Yale University in 1987. Hmm. I had a roommate in college who went to Exeter. Not exactly a standard American experience. Still, his works are the only ones of the author mentioned that explore themes central to the Asian American experience.  Has his unique experience in terms of education been instrumental to that?

Ok, about the distinction: white America seems to have a dichotomy in terms of how they view Asian Americans in terms of gender. Asian women in film/TV are typically portrayed as sexually desirable, and depictions of mixed marriages are common - when the Asian is female. In an episode of David Chang (of restaurant Momofuku fame)'s Ugly Delicious artist David Choe (who made $200 million drawing murals for Facebook when he got paid in stock shares) described the asian males on TV as falling into one of the following three categories:

1) 'you have to talk with an accent'
2) 'know some sort of martial art'
3) 'or you have to be homosexual'

Choe also made a big deal in a subsequent lunch scene in the same episode with Steven Yuen and compared Yuen to Rosa Parks for being the first Asian American male to have sex with a white woman on the TV show The Walking Dead. Choe goes on to detail how he got his whole family to watch the scene and even asked his mother if Steven was doing a good job portraying masculinity on screen. 

That sentiment reflects the perspective of a substantial percentage of Asian American males if not the vast majority of them; Asian males are never depicted as masculine except in some sort martial artist/cruel gangster kind of way. It's as if white male America is threatened by the idea that not only are we smarter, we'll also steal away & ravish your wives & daughters as depicted during WWII as the Yellow Peril. I recall the series "Vanishing Son" starring Russell Wong playing an Asian version of "The Fugitive" on the run across the US and having physical relationships with Caucasian women at every stop. After a few episodes the scripts were changed and the character no longer had sex with any of the Caucasian women in the episode. It was rumored that the change was made to avoid depicting an attractive Asian male easily attracting and seducing white women across middle America. The irony is that Russell Wong is only half Asian.

About 10 years after that, Jet Li made the movie "Romeo Must Die" co-starring Aaliyah (who tragically died in a place crash shortly after making that film). The original ending had Aaliyah kissing Jet Li but that ending didn't play well in "urban" neighborhoods and the scene was re-shot so that Jet Li & Aaliyah simply hug each other.

I can't help but wonder if that bias plays a part in why there don't seem to be a lot of traction for heterosexual asian males to share their perspective on the Asian Ameican experience. For some reason, I can't imagine white America wanting to read a book that discusses anything like that so publishers aren't likely to be inclined to encourage writers in this way.

Truth be told, I completely missed romantic signals sent at me over the years by a number of Caucasian women - in large part because I couldn't believe that they'd be interested in me.