Book Review: “Asian American Dreams” by Helen Zia
Apologies for a semester of no posts… it’s hard to feel da yellow rage when the humdrum tedium of life makes you focus on the little picture, the day-by-day.
Now that it’s winter break, I’ve gotten a chance to finally read “Asian American Dreams” by Helen Zia, a book given to me during my participation in Penn’s APALI (Asian Pacific American Leadership Initiative) program. I’m sure there are a lot of great, comprehensive reviews out there, so I just wanted to relay my impressions of the book.
First of all, Ms. Zia is an amazing woman. She spoke at Penn’s East Coast Asian American Student Union (ECAASU) conference last year (March 2010), and it was not the first conference she’s spoken at. Unfortunately, due to a combination of changing times and changing political attitude, I’m sure her speech left a slightly different impact than what she would have experienced ten or even five years ago. To people familiar with the community’s issues, she stops as nothing short of inspirational. Having dropped out of med school to become a community organizer, and having spent time in journalism, construction, factory work, and a variety of legal battles, she’s clearly dedicated her life to fighting for rights most of my college age peers probably don’t realize have been fought for.
I said “unfortunately” earlier, because I think the magnitude of her words may be beginning to lose its impact on people who don’t realize the full historical context of Asian American rights. One of my Asian American friends, a Chinese American born in a mostly rural small town in western Pennsylvania, was flat out terrified by her fervor. Having largely grown up around Caucasian Americans and only recently making Asian American acquaintances, he found her far too overbearing and criticized her for shaking up the accepted peacefulness of his life. The situation is, by blending in, playing along with the few stereotypical Asian jokes, and generally making light of the situation, there have not been enough tensions in his life to warrant standing up and fighting against the system. Due to the work of previous Asian American rights activists, we are in an environment where we can get by and even live great lives, as long as we don’t disturb the system too much. We’ve actually been afforded a lot of rights and opportunities in a relatively short amount of time. So he wonders why Ms. Zia is continuing to fight and rile people up, when we can just keep our heads down and be American like immigrants are supposed to be.
So that’s the context of the college-aged reader today: where do we stand in the “Asian American activism” spectrum? And it’s with those thoughts that I started reading the book.
Coverage: Rather than being a comprehensive introduction to all Asian American history ever, or even going very far in depth with the kinds of issues Asian Americans face, Ms. Zia’s book instead focuses on the history of the activist movement. In this way, she does a good job of pulling in personal narratives, historical contexts, prevailing social attitudes, urban studies and demography, legal and constitutional battles, and “homeland politics” together to illustrate a few case studies of more dramatic points in Asian American activism. The cases she focuses heavily on are early immigrant rights and restrictions leading up to the Chinese Exclusion Act, Japanese internment, the rights of Alaskan cannery workers (especially Filipino), sexual identity and ethnic identity, model minority myth and the negative impacts on economically disadvantaged Asian Americans (esp. Hmong, Cambodian, and Vietnamese refugees), a lot of Afro-Korean relations (centered around grocery stores), the dichotomy/wealth gap in South Asian immigrants, and also the possibility of a pan-Asian support system (via Vincent Chin and other instances). She covers a broad variety of topics, though she devotes two chapters to the Afro-Korean grocer situation, both in NY and LA.
Presentation: The presentation of each case was similar: the underlying reasons for the conflict were presented, the stakeholders were introduced, and in each case, the APAs lost some battles but won the war, or vice versa, in which at least they left behind a new generation of activists. The chapters tended to end on an encouraging note, but it’s hard not to get disappointed from reading about the multiple frustrations and restrictions in “working with the system.” Any frustrations I had were really frustrations with history. Seeing the compilation of lost battles for equal rights was disheartening, though after the fact, it evokes a lot of appreciation for the rights we are afforded now. Any event in history, told from the perspective of the losers, is presented this way. A lot of lives and livelihoods were lost in pursuit of equality, but at least, they left behind inspiration for future generations.
Takeaways: The problem is, this message falls upon a generation that probably won’t pick up the call to “activism’ as readily. In a lot of ways, that’s really not a problem. Society adapts with the necessities of the era, though usually a generation late. (We’re like antibiotics to a virus — by the time the cure is ready, the strain has evolved. Not to compare anybody to a virus or anything, I’m just saying reacting takes time, like a generation.) In a few more generations, I’m fairly confident that a lot of the problems addressed in this book will be just history, and not an ongoing struggle like some of the chapters alluded to. So, this book wasn’t as fulfilling as I hoped it would be. It gave me a really comprehensive, detailed, and in many ways, inspiring history of the Asian American activist movement, but a book that would mean more at this present time is one that addresses the issues we face going forward. There are a lot of topics mentioned that I think merit further exploration: model minority myth (read: affirmative action), homeland politics (read: the ever wavering relations with Asian countries), language barriers, high-tech/low-tech immigrants, and more. I also would have liked to hear more suggestions on how she can realistically see this change being implemented. Rather than just issuing a blanket call to action and activism, the path forward is often one of compromises, trading one right for another depending on the political situation at hand. So, because this book isn’t as forward-looking as I hoped, it wasn’t exactly the panacea I imagined it would be for all Asian American issues, ever. However, as a vital primer in APA history and activism, it’s definitely a worthwhile read. It will probably have the most impact on people who already care about the community issues, and for people who are faintly aware and would love to learn more.
Nice read! Thorough thoughts worth sharing.