Thursday, January 27, 2005

Asian American Poets of Mixed Race - Hapas

In the introduction to Asian-American Poetry: The Next Generation, editor Victoria Chang points out that many poets in the anthology are of mixed race: Brenda Shaughnessy, Pimone Triplett, Lee Ann Roripaugh, Brian Komei Dempster, Paisley Rekdal, Monica Rekdal, Monica Ferrell, and C. Dale Young. From the older generation, one might add Mei-Mei Berssenbrugge, John Yau, and others that escape my mind at the moment.

Chang poses the question: "What percentage of Asian ethnicity qualifies a poet as Asian-American?" (This is a challenging and interesting question.) And she answers it by asserting, "Self-identification has become the rule, rather than any arbitrary designation of a minimum percentage."

I think it is an excellent question, even if I'm skeptical of the answer. First, we must give props to Chang for raising the question in the first place: I've never come across any piece on Asian-American poetry that deals with the issue of mixed race Asian-American poets. For some reason, it has always been sort of a taboo for anyone to point out that Asian-American poets of mixed race are of mixed race.

Second, Chang's answer is problematic, because, I believe, self-identification has always been the rule in counting a poet as Asian-American. The answer implies that there has been some "arbitrary designation of a minimum percentage" by people in general (and perhaps by editors of Asian-American poetry anthologies) in the past, which is not the case, to the best of my knowledge. I've never read any scholarly works showing that the leaders of the Asian-American civil rights movement of the 1960s and 1970s argued that Asian-Americans of mixed race aren't Asian-American and blatantly tried to exclude Asian-Americans of mixed race who wanted to self-identify as Asian-American. So if a claim that there has been an evolution towards self-designation is to be made, there needs to be some showing that self-designation was not acceptable in the past.

Of course, the larger issue is whether we want self-identification to be the rule. It is not that "self-identification has become the rule," but whether we want it to be the rule. Here I definitely agree with Chang that self-designation should be the rule. But why? Why do we believe so? We could theoretically have come up with a rule that excludes Asian-American poets of mixed race. We could call them white, if they are part-white. Plus, there are some poets of Asian-American mixed race, like Ai, who do not choose to self-identify as Asian-American. But I think that exclusion is the wrong way to go for many reasons, which may overlap:

(1) I believe in maximizing inclusivity in the classification of "Asian-American poetry," (2) I view exclusion on the basis of race with some skepticism even if it may be necessary in some contexts, (3) excluding Asian-American poets of mixed race would foreclose some wonderful possibilities for "Asian-American poetry," (4) it would be unduly harsh, arbitrary, and unfriendly to exclude Asian-American poets of mixed race, (5) inclusion of Asian-American poets of mixed race would help enrich the defining and negotiating of "Asian-American poetry."

Still, whether self-identification should be the rule is open to debate -- if self-identification is the rule, would there be any reason to stop the Yasusada hoax, for example? In other words, would there be any reason to exclude a non-Asian-American poet from "falsely" adopting an Asian-American pseudonym and/or persona and submitting to, say, the Asian Pacific American Journal for publication under that name? As readers of this blog know, methinks that is a difficult question.

I wonder if Asian American poets of mixed race encounter separate perils and privileges and how that translates into the poetry. There has been more work done on light-skinned blacks vs. dark-skinned blacks and the perils and privileges of biracalism in the African-American context, though probably not enough work there as well. But I expect the narratives to be different for Asian-Americans, if only because Asian-Americans have had a different history from African-Americans and other racial and ethnic groups. The subject of Asian American poets of mixed race seems like it would make for an interesting masters thesis.

1 Comments:

Blogger Roger Pao said...

Hello Neil, thanks a lot for your thoughts! Yes, I actually thought of you and the poet Lee Herrick as I was completing my post.

You raise an excellent point about how an editor of Asian-American poetry, or even just a regular reader, may not identify North American Asians of mixed race as "Asian-Americans" or "Asian-Canadians" simply by virtue of their last name. On the other hand, HAPAs with Asian-sounding last names tend to be identified as such.

I think I have much more to say about this interesting topic, so I'm going to continue my thoughts in another post now...

10:54 PM  

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