Category Archives: essay

In all things, be the student

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Here is a post where Jeannie will come off sounding Yoda-like, but Jeannie can’t help it. For instance, she’s already referring to herself in the third person. 🙂

I came across this post by Aliette de Bodard with Presenting the Cultural Imperialism Bingo Card which displays an array of comments from discussions on the internet that show the idea of paternalistic idea of “West is best” is still alive and well. I don’t present this to rant or be angry or roll my eyes. I’m not linking this so I can say, “Ha! See…who are you to tell me my stories aren’t Asian enough?” I present this because it’s an eye-opener for me. I’m very much a Westerner. I’m also very much Vietnamese, with parents who came from a land that was continually colonized. Our culture, even our language, is a mix of Eastern and Western influences.  This makes me always aware of both halves..the left brain checking in on the right brain…hello!

It led me to thinking, what is the “right” attitude if you’re trying to explore issues of culture, either through activism or academic discussion or even just through the plain act of pleasure reading a piece of fiction?

This question then made me think of Buddhist monks. When we go to temple, we call the monks “teacher”. But Mother never asked any questions of the monks. Yet they were always respected. But do we believe they know more? I don’t think so. You wouldn’t expect them to counsel you on marriage or your job stress when they’re neither married or traditionally employed. I think the sense of respect for these “teachers” comes from the understanding that they think about life and existence.  And they think of it in an open way that we from outside the temple try to follow.

This leads me to the one time I heard the Dalai Lama speak and someone asked him how can the average person become more enlightened? His answer was that he wakes up early in the morning and he thinks a lot. He didn’t say how to think or what to think or that he meditates in a certain way. Just think more about things. About anything.That answer has always stuck with me.

From there my mind went to a Harlequin craft chat I did yesterday on Deep Point of View where I was the host and the supposed expert. There were other published authors in there too and really it was a sharing of ideas. As the “teacher” in that situation, I was simply one person who had thought a lot about these issues and thus could add to the conversation. I didn’t feel as if I was instructing and I learned a lot from the other participants of the chat.

So in discussions about East and West and imperialism, I have been the oppressor. I have been the oppressed. How do you come to such a conversation in the “right” way?

My answer to myself: What you’ve experienced is valid. What you’ve studied is valid. But who is the expert? And what good is being an expert if it places you above the conversation with no room or need to take in anything new? And this is true whether you identify as part of the culture being discussed or if you are from outside it. A depth of experience or learning may make you the “teacher”, but in all things, be the student.

In search of dragons…

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I attended the kick-off of the Diversity in YA tour this Saturday. Diversity in YA is the brain-child of two talented YA authors, Cindy Pon and Malinda Lo, and is a celebration of the portrayal of diverse cultures in young adult fiction. This Saturday’s event was focused on Asian American authors (Malinda Lo, Cindy Pon, Gene Luen Yang, and J.A. Yang), though the entire tour features books from a wider range of ethnicities and cultures.  I’ll post a write-up of the topics discussed in the panel, but to start things off, one question from the audience made me reflect upon my early reading habits.

The question was regarding what each of the authors read growing up and almost every single author, with the exception of Gene, spoke about not reading any book with Asian characters. Cindy Pon mentioned that she was writing the books with the adventures she never got to read. Malindo Lo remarked that a teacher passed her Maxine Hong Kingston’s Warrior Woman and she wasn’t able to connect with the book at all! J.A. expressed that he similarly didn’t read books with Asian characters growing up because he liked books with warriors and protagonists that were quite different from him. Only Gene, with his background of comic book reading and early childhood growing up in Asia (I forget where, sorry Gene), had a wide range of Asian stories available.

This made me realize that I have always been in search of dragons. I would literally, look for covers with Asian looking art or titles that sounded Asian. Perhaps this is why I ended up reading so much fantasy because the dragons I usually found were from those books.

I don’t know if it was necessarily because I wanted protagonists that I could identify with. I felt I identified with all the Caucasian protagonists I was reading just fine. I shared their adventures and felt all their angst. Reading about Japan or China (never Vietnam unless it was about the War!) felt like reading about a foreign and exotic place for me too, so it was as more my desire for vicarious exploration and adventure than my need to read about characters with similar backgrounds as me.

When I read Amy Tan’s Joy Luck Club, I was very deeply moved. I mean, yes, they were deeply emotional stories, but they struck a chord with me, not only because they expressed some very core elements of being Asian American that I hadn’t seen in writing in this way before, but because I knew that other people were reading it too. Non-Asians were reading it. My high school friends were reading it.

Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon gets knocked by a lot of wuxia purists because they say it’s a poor example of the genre. That it was watered-down for mainstream audiences. I don’t agree at all. And when I saw the trailer for that movie, I became so incredibly excited and showed it to everyone. It was a wuxia film like the ones I grew up with, but it was being shown to mainstream audiences. It was the absolute joy that something I loved could finally be shared with other people who had never seen a Jin Yong film. And it could be shared in a way that I couldn’t explain with words.

So I’ve always been in search of dragons, but not only for myself. Not to find Asian heroines that look like me, but to find something that could be shown to people who don’t look like me. Who have no idea about the stories that I enjoyed.

I remember Taye Diggs once corrected a reporter who called one of his films a “Black film”. He said it’s not a Black film, it’s a film with Black actors. And people didn’t seem to understand what the big deal is. I believe Enrique Iglesias has made similar comments about his music not being Latino music, but music with Latino influence. They’re not rejecting their own race or getting nitpicky — I get it now.

Media is about connecting to a wider audience. It’s about reaching out to people who have never been somewhere, experienced something, thought of life in this particular way. When a work becomes marginalized as an Asian work for Asian people, it feels to the artist that they’re being dragged two steps back from their real goal.

So, I’m rather tickled pink that after searching for “Dragon” books for so long, I have my own Dragon title coming out in September: The Dragon and the Pearl. Ha, ha — stereotypical Asian title. Whatever. I’m so proud that maybe someone in search of dragons will find my book and be pleased that it’s not about Western fantasy dragons or Vlad Tepes or European warriors. I do hope that Asian women will read the story and identify and fall in love with the romance, but I’m also hoping many of those people searching don’t look a thing like me, or come from a similar place that I do, at all. And I hope they’ll identify just as much with the characters.