10 Steps to an Asian-Themed NY Times Bestseller
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Are you an Asian-American who enjoys writing fiction? Do you have dreams of being a professional writer and supporting yourself through your Art? Do you hunger to see your name at the top of American bestseller lists as you chat your way through the talk show circuit in your climb to literary stardom? Well hunger no more, my dreamy young friend, for I, Dialectic the Stealth M.C. of the Fighting 44s, have penetrated the lacquered Asian-American box of literary secrets to spill its wet, creamy contents onto the tatami mat of your mind for your prosperity and enlightenment. And what did I find inside, you may ask? Why, nothing less than an ancient Chinese 10-step recipe guaranteed to soothe your fiery hunger better than tiger balm on the chafed and crippled foot of a 19th century Chinese girl.
After conducting an exhaustive overview of the works of such modern luminaries as Amy Tan (hi Auntie Tan!), Maxine Hong Kingston, Kim Wong Keltner, and Lisa See, I have distilled the major topics and themes in their works into a definitive summary of excellence, a 10-step recipe for a rich and MSG-laden hoisin sauce of sure-fire success. So look no further, dear reader, than the list below to find out how a book cover with your name at the top can be stamped with those immortal three words, “Oprah’s Book Club.”
1. Be an Asian female.
This is a non-negotiable, absolutely fundamental requirement. Have you ever heard of Frank Chin, Terry Woo, Chang Rae Lee, Derek Kirk Kim, Gene Luen Yang, or Ted Chiang? Well neither have I, and for good reason: no one wants to listen to some pale out-of-shape computer programmer whose name sounds like he just crippled his arranged wife and drowned his newborn daughter in the village well.
But if you’re not an Asian female, fret not! That, my poor undersexed myopic friend, is what pseudonyms are for. Simply choose a non-threatening Westernized Asian female name, preferably with Cantonese roots. I, personally, have always wanted to be a “Jennifer Leung.” Let’s face it, the world loves a Jenny a lot more than it loves a Norton. If, however, you want to add a little more sass and bring out that exotic flavor, I’d recommend something along the lines of “Venus Poon” or “Winnie Yap.” If your goal is to make certain your audience feels comfortable with you, I’d recommend an East-West hyphenated surname, like perhaps “Wang-Johnson.”
You might also want to try using a racially-ambiguous last name, which might help your audience ease into their relationship with you. My favorites are “Law” and “Lamb.” Gender-ambiguous first names, however, are a no-no (I’m lookin’ at you, Terry Woo!).
Actually, thinking about this further, being an Asian female is not absolutely fundamental, as Arthur Golden deftly demonstrated in his geishiatic memoirs. It would seem that being a white male Asiaphile gives you as much, if not more, credibility in the Western market than being a confused Asian-American female. Should you choose to follow the Golden example, make certain, then, to pick a name which is distinctly Western but evokes a hint of European expatriate class. Something like “Rupert Diamond’s Sun Moon Diaries” would be a shoe-in for a Booker Prize. I smell a franchise!
And for Buddha’s sake you short smelly Hongers, no British last names as first names, please!
2. Use an exotic title.
Nothing says “read my Asian ass!” better than a title that tells your audience right off the bat that you are a demure yet take-no-shit dragon lily of the East. I recommend basing your title on a two-word Chinese phrase or four-word Chinese idiom. Something like “Melon Field, Fermented Plums” would do quite nicely, or if you’re into something less abstract, I would pick up “Sisterhood of Prosperity and Impermanence” in a fetishist heartbeat. If you’re feeling really adventurous, however, take a Chinese word and use it as a pun in a Western context. Something like, “Har Har Har Gow!” is sure to propel your meteoric rise.
3. Make your protagonist an Asian female.
Remember that Asian females, particularly young ones, are the only sympathetic people in the Asian population. If you decide to run with a young male socially-awkward engineer (redundant description, I know) or a craggly old grandpa who squats outside the laundromat as he smokes and regurgitates his unending rivers of phlegm day in and day out, your book is going to fall flatter than a poor HK girl’s chest. Make her a girl, make her free-spirited, make her oppressed, make her sassy, and make her yearn for something more. Instant geisha-bility!
4. Set your novel between the 13th to 19th centuries
Make sure to minimize your book’s relevance to modern-day life and maximize the probability of your protagonist running up against crippling social conditions (physically and metaphorically!). Emphasize pastoral beauty and freedom in contrast with severe class and gender brutality. The more restrictive your protagonist’s social surroundings, the more money the movie adaptation will make! After all, even though your story is set in the ancient past, the themes and emotions you explore are timeless.
To further distance your heroine from her (male) surroundings, make your male background characters as cold, avaricious, and manipulative as possible to the point that they cannot be recognized as human. While you must place great emphasis on the alien nature of the men, make sure to employ the same general technique with the culture. James Clavell’s “The Chinese have no word for ‘love’” is a brilliant example of this method of de-humanization, and you can, like the dead Clavell, obsess over ancient Chinese texts on warfare that have almost no applicability today and start every phrase of an Ah Mah’s interior monologue with “Eee!” or “Aiyah!” Note, however, that some of these techniques have fallen out of favor in recent times, but if you can convince your audience that you’re employing these devices ironically, they’ll give you a starred review in Publisher’s Weekly at the very least.
If you simply must set your novel in the 20th century or beyond, refer to Tiananmen Square at least twice, litter your text with references to the Communist rise and the Cultural Revolution and, preferably, have part of your novel actually take place in politically-repressive China. A spy or photojournalist thriller is always compelling, but make certain that your character is capable of performing a believable, if harrowing, escape.
5. Include foot-binding.
What can I say? A novel sans foot-binding will reduce your sales by at least the same amount as I would have reduced your foot mobility back when we still had dynasties.
6. Include hungry ghosts.
I’m going to be honest here and tell you that I don’t even know what the fuck a hungry ghost is. Why the fuck would a ghost be hungry? Hunger is an evolved sensation produced by the secretion of certain hormones and the firing of certain brain synapses through which your body tells you to increase your caloric intake before you die. Not only are ghosts already dead, but they don’t have bodies. Let us not, however, let science and rational thinking get in the way of our success, particularly when it conflicts with an exploitable superstition from our centuries-old culture. At any rate, given the Chinese penchant for always relating things back to food, I’m not surprised a bunch of hungry Chinese ghosts are floating around out there haunting dim sum carts and bribe-refusing health inspectors.
7. Include some exotic and mysterious artifact with emotional resonance.
An actor can be greatly inspired by the presence of a detailed and meaningful prop. A writer and her protagonist would also do well to have an emotionally-evocative accessory. Objects such as feathers, paper fans, joss sticks, or jade pendants are essential to creating a believable and concrete world filled with suppressed feelings and delicate emotional catalysts. References to appropriately foreign fruits, blossoms, and ancient herbal remedies are a must for establishing credibility with the Western reader obsessed with historical research and authenticity.
8. Discuss Gold Mountain and the railroads.
If Great Uncle Ho doesn’t die destitute and wifeless in a nitroglycerin blast, kiss your 10-hour adapted-for-TV miniseries goodbye. Also, make certain he can’t properly pronounce “San Francisco.”
9. Include an Asian male antagonist
Make certain that this “man” is scum. Make him insecure, hateful, greedy, abusive, misogynistic, cowardly, callous, or just plain absent (as long as he still has an ominous background presence). For best effect, give him an appropriately foreign and guttural-sounding name like “Shiu Yik” or “Goon Fat.” Consider that he would make an especially good foil if he were, say, a Number One Son. You might wish to describe his small and flaccid penis. If you’re inclined to include some statement on gayness/ lesbianess/ bisexuality/ transsexuality, feel free to hint that he may be a homosexual and channel his repressed sexual drive into cruelty towards women. Mentioning some sort of rape act will only strengthen your characterization. If your heroine happens to have lesbianic leanings, describe her activities with her lover in great but tasteful detail, and emphasize their relationship’s sensitive, caring, female-empowering, and unifying characteristics.
10. Include a white male romantic interest
The audience’s attraction to him is a given. This is simply a case of “just don’t fuck it up.” Give him a good wholesome American name like Tom Walters, make him blonde or, if you must, dirty-blonde, give him jeans which emphasize his perfectly-curved behind, and describe his masculine sensitivity, sympathy for women in cross-cultural conflicts, and adorable ignorance of Asian cultural norms which only serve to endear him to the reader and our breathless protagonist. Pouring soy sauce all over the dish in front of her parents never gets old!
Bonus ingredients
While the following tropes may not have such broad appeal, liberal American audiences do enjoy being at least introduced to deeper themes of identity conflict and intra-family strife, as it enables them to develop self-images of worldliness and cross-cultural compassion. The ability to engender these feelings in them at will is essential to establishing a long-term readership.
11. Rag on your mother, and mention your father only in passing.
While the exploration of the Asian mother-daughter relationship may be growing repetitive to a regular core audience, inserting at least some reference to a conflict-ridden childhood and adolescence, a zealous concern for “face,” a period of heightened and tumultuous emotional chaos, and a subsequent reconciliation leading to a deeper understanding and appreciation for one another will give your work the extra stratum of emotional depth needed to catapult it above the cliche-ridden competition. I’d discuss how to deal with the father, but I’d be breaking my own rule.
12. Display identity confusion
Speaking of repetitive themes, there is no Asian-American literary ground more trodden than that of the identity dichotomy. Introducing a conflict in self-identity such as “Am I Chinese, or am I American?! I CAN’T TELL!!!” may induce a few rolled eyes, I admit. For every reader lost, however, there ought to be at least 10 other white readers who have yet to be introduced to this fascinating and alien phenomenon, and who better to induct them into the hallowed halls of the Asian immigrant experience than you, who have explored these themes and sounded these depths with far more vigor and insight than the typical culturally-exploitative Asian American writer?
And there you have it, my young cicadas. Heed the advice of the old and wizened Stealth M.C., and you shall know riches and fame and immortality the likes of which you have not yet conceived in your embryonic literary careers. If anyone has the audacity to question why you and your fellow writers keep re-visiting these same topics and themes again and again and again, simply and repeatedly insist that you’re “writing what you know.” Be prepared to condescendingly dismiss any assertions that writers of fiction ought to continually expand the perspectives they can take and the world of what they know with a wave of your Korean-manicured hand. Follow this 10(+2) step recipe, distilled from the soy saucy brine of eons of ancestral wisdom, and nothing in this world, not misdirected feng shui energies, not blocked chi meridian lines, not even cursed ginseng from the blood-stained soil of Nanking, will stop you from achieving the success you deserve.
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JadeDragon
10:37 am | Aug 19, 2007When I finally write that novel about a poor, misguided Chinese girl in South-east Asia looking for a white chump to rescue her from the padi fields, I’ll be sure to take your advice and out in all those plot devices, oh wise and wizened D. Including the extra-spicy chicken feet made by the tired and worn fingers of the crazy old grandma for the dimsum carts in the big city, and the dreamy musings of the heroine on how the blond of Tom Walter’s hair against her raven locks reminds her of the yin-yang symbol she had tattooed on her left butt cheek when she was 14.
Scowl
12:12 pm | Aug 19, 2007“Am I Chinese, or am I American?! I CAN’T TELL!!!”
“…the dreamy musings of the heroine on how the blond of Tom Walter’s hair against her raven locks reminds her of the yin-yang symbol she had tattooed on her left butt cheek when she was 14″
Haha, you guys are too much.
If I ever have the time, I just might try out those 10 steps. We could even have a writing contest on it.
ampha
12:20 pm | Aug 19, 2007Great skewering. To rise above bestseller pulp and reach “literature” status, the literary criticism crowd needs to be satisfied with layers of symbols that represent multiple things.
Mei’s mother chose Shiu Yik for an arranged marriage, but Mei has found love in the arms of Tom Walter. As a gift, Shiu Yik gives her a vacuum cleaner, while Tom gives her a brush with a beautiful jade handle. One night Shiu Yik performs his usual quickie routine, leaving Mei unsatisfied. Later, a frustrated and lonely Mei gets off using the brush handle, longing for Tom.
The 10-step guide works!
AfroIndo
1:09 pm | Aug 19, 2007The 10+2 step guide insinuates that the mentioned authors have compromised their talent. I’ve read two books thus far by Amy Tan, The Joy Luck Club and Bonesetter’s Daughter and find this hardly likey.
True talent and drive needs not a restrictive guideline. A real artist would reject these outlines unless fame and fortune were the driving factors.
ampha writes: “The 10-step guide works!”
I say: “The 10+2 step guide sucks hairy donkey balls!”
nightshade
2:27 pm | Aug 19, 2007Heh, every time I see the cover of a Lisa See novel, I want to roll on the ground laughing.
There are so many Asian American/Asian Canadian dude writers I’d rather read. And there are many AA/AC female writers who don’t bow down to the pressure of writing their experience in a totally Orientalist way, but they are not bestsellers.
Oh, man, I’m getting depressed just thinking about all of this because writing/publishing is what I do for a living.
Anyhow, reading novels about girls with lotus flower beauty, footbinding, abusive Asian males, and being saved by “American” culture always felt so oppressive to me. It makes me so angry that a certain sort of writer is being rewarded for this garbage.
minhternet
7:33 pm | Aug 19, 2007I don’t read books. Too many pointless sentences, sometimes whole pointless chapters.
That being said, even I’ve heard of Haruki Murakami:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haruki_Murakami
In fact a blonde white girl told me about him.
CJF
8:14 pm | Aug 19, 2007Here’s what I wrote a month ago on mixedasians.com on typical archetypes you find in AA Lit
“How about we name some archetypes from asian american/hapa
Damsel in distress (hero/heroin of novel):
The hero, usually a female since most writers who get published by sleeping with white publishers are female, is an emo woman. She feels inferior to everybody because of the beliefs evil Asian parents or one of the parents put into her. Being Asian or hapa is horrible because you are treated differently form the whites you loathe to be.
They bitch constantly about how it’s unfair that they aren’t white. Parents strict.
If Hapa, they complain about not being accepted by both sides, even though all their friends are white.
Domineering parent:
The domineering parent or parents is in every novel. It is usually the male parent. The parents have overly high expectations for their kid to succeed. This pressure for wanting their kids to succeed and live the life of a successful individual is the root of all evil in the world. They want the hero to major in math? It’s an artistic holocaust and the domineering Asian parent/s are the storm troopers carrying out the evil duty of Asian ideology.
The evil male parents begins the Asian heroines hatred for Asian men in her life.
Wise and helpful guide:
The wise and helpful guide for the Asian heroin is often times another Asian. Sometimes the wise and helpful guide (lets just say Wizard) is another Asian woman who was in a similar position as the heroin early in her life. Sometimes the wizard is one who had never solved her own problem but learned from there and her purpose on earth is to mentor heroes into not making the same mistake again.
Either way, the message is the same. White man/woman good, yellow man/woman bad. Asian culture hinders creativity, and forces you to major in something useful like math, pre-med, nursing, etc. White culture is by far more liberal, allowing you to major in something useless like TS Elliot or Art History.
Asian men will beat you and you will be their submissive slave. White men don’t have such fantasies, they don’t have fetishes of submissive slaves, and they are their as your liberators. They are doing you a huge favor in not picking a more qualified white woman over their poor and feeble souls.
White Knight:
Your parents are bitching at you.
You have an abusive Asian boyfriend.
You are not sure whether you should be Asian or white.
You eat Asian food with forks (non-Hong Kong of course) because you are embarassed of something as lowly as chopsticks.
You are taking anti-psychotic prescription pills because of all the stress and are on the verge of mental collapse.
Who is there to save you from misery?
The white knight, or what we know as white man. The white man judges nobody. He loves you for who you are. He doesn’t fetishize your race. He doesn’t come with any cultural pressure. Unlike Asian men, he will see that lame European film with you. He will save you from Chinese food and those mean waitors in Chinatown and take you to those fancy restaurants where waitors lick you ass for a tip. He will give you hapa children…but to you it doesn’t matter that they are hapa, but that they are less Asian than you. He tells you to pick your white side if you are hapa.
Thank god for the white knight. Without him the story is incomplete.
I’ll think of more, you guys are more than welcome to come up with Asian American lit archetypes. Neoguy should come up with the best since he’s the English wiz around here.”
Dialectic
9:41 pm | Aug 19, 2007Jade D, I never considered the racial symbolism of the Ying Yang until now! You’ve opened up new vistas of understanding. But would our heroine’s hair be raven in all probability, or more likely some shade of brown with gold highlights?
Also, I’ve made some revisions and added a bit of new material to this piece. I just can’t stop the flood of inspiration!
maloy
11:46 pm | Aug 19, 2007there’s a variation to this which is particular to asian women writing in asia.
the plot goes:
take one asian chick who was born and raised in asia, but she wants MORE for herself, and so she takes off on a “sabrina”-esque journey to a western city (preferably somewhere considered sophisticated like paris, but anywhere far from her backwater, 3rd world country full of old dudes spitting betel nut is fine).
she comes back because of some random family problem — so typical of asians to have such complex family politics — and meets her childhood friend, chad, who happens to be a gweilo who was raised in asia, and is “more asian than asian.” chad speaks better (insert x asian language) than she doees, is beloved by all locals around him who see him as ONE OF THEIR OWN, despite his golden hair, masculine chest ruff and piercing blue eyes, which our asian chick has forgotten all about.
however! our asian chick, with her banker boyfriend back in her new home, looks down on chad for being “too asian,” unlike her banker boyfriend, who is gweilo to the extreme, to quote vanilla ice.
alas, the current family crisis (perhaps a nasty uncle is trying to sell off the family farm, which, coincidentally, chad has grown from a doo-doo fertilized small business to a full-fledged organic farm that feeds both starving orphans and pretentious american yuppies) forces our asian chick to be in close proximity to chad all the time.
finally, after many clashes during which chad accuses her, “you’ve CHANGED. you need to FIND YOUR TRUE SELF. you’re NOT HAPPY.” and lectures her on AZN PRIDE, baby, at one point, our asian chick storms out and gets stuck in a flood only to be rescued by chad. she then has an epiphany: “YES, i should be proud to be asian, my ROOTS are what made me who i am, and i love myself. and…gasp…i love chad! he is my asian prince in gweilo armour!”
by the way, i’m not joking about this plot. i’ve read at least 2 books more or less like this while waiting in a doctor’s office.
afroindo: no one is saying that these writers aren’t talented, but if you are in any way familiar with asian american literature (or even cinema), you’ll find that the most popular works follow the themes that dialectic laid out. it says more about the readers than the writers.
also, um…SATIRE?
CJF
11:58 pm | Aug 19, 2007WTF, my bad, my comment got cut short
But it was Disney with Brenda Song (half Hmong half Chinese I believe) and it ws called something Wendy Wu, and she ended up hooking up with the Chinese monk in the end…
She was ashamed of her heritage and ended up appreciating it. It still had some of the themes…the ancient symbol, and the retarded grandma that kept on talking about her mooncakes but she was cool, but it was different and I kinda liked it.
Brenda Song will be my date when she turns 18…lol j/k
CJF
12:00 am | Aug 20, 2007The white knight saving the heroine from another white knight? I’m so fucking confused! Great stuff Maloy.
awong
12:25 am | Aug 20, 2007using a ghostwriter with an af is probably the only way to get any sort of critical accliam for a guy to write. muahaha
Dialectic
2:24 am | Aug 20, 2007Hi Minh, I’ve actually read Haruki Murakami; I loved Kafka on the Shore. Tell me, is he Asian American?
(Because that’s what this little piece was about ….)
minhternet
2:44 am | Aug 20, 2007Haha I’m retarded and apologize. I assumed he was. I will quietly bow out of this discussion.
JadeDragon
8:25 am | Aug 20, 2007“Jade D, I never considered the racial symbolism of the Ying Yang until now! You’ve opened up new vistas of understanding. But would our heroine’s hair be raven in all probability, or more likely some shade of brown with gold highlights?” - Dialectic
Hah, she’d be rocking the raven locks fo’ sho! I mean, how much more exotic can you get? Besides, the undyed virgin hair would be a metaphor for her untouched sexuality, which will soon bloom “like a lotus blossom” under the experienced and wordly tutelage of Tom Walters. And then, there’ll be about three pages of “exotic” sex scenes, with terms like “jade flute”, “manroot” and “golden gate”. Don’t forget that the Asian chick was also given a pillow book by crazy old grandma, so she suddenly develops the sexual repertoire of a Bangkok bargirl.
Man, all those trashy novels I read as a teen are coming in handy.
JadeDragon
9:56 am | Aug 20, 2007“there’s a variation to this which is particular to asian women writing in asia.” - Maloy
Ah, yes, effing Catherine Lim. She sets a bunch of her stories during pre-colonial and colonial times too, and there’s always some awkward Chinese girl trying to escape traditional Chinese society in Singapore by having an affair with a gweilo or another similar plot device. If she’s not, then all the dirty old Asian men in her village want to have sex with her because she’s a hott virgin. You guys have Auntie Tan, we got Grandmother Lim of the SPGs.
Ike
11:40 am | Aug 20, 2007“But it was Disney with Brenda Song (half Hmong half Chinese I believe) and it ws called something Wendy Wu, and she ended up hooking up with the Chinese monk in the end…” -CJF
She hooked up with a monk? That’s… wrong.
jaehwan
12:24 pm | Aug 20, 2007Guys, I’m shocked and offended by this.
1. Maxine Hong Kingston has no hyphen in her name. It’s not “Hong-Kingston;” it’s “Hong Kingston.” Can’t you guys get the hyphens right? To put a hyphen where one doesn’t exist is to do the greatest disservice to a great woman whose trailblazing legacy brought us Auntie Tan and David Henry Hwang. I think I read somewhere else that Hong Kingston (notice the lack of a hyphen) singlehandedly ended footbinding in China. The hyphenated name is a form of sexist oppression. But hyphenating her, you are saying that she is half a part of two different cultures, rather that two parts that together make her superior to people who only have one culture.
You guys need a lesson in race and gender sensitivity. Man, I wish atlasien were back. This sexism has got to stop.
2. With regards to your point number one above: you don’t have to be an Asian female author or write about Asian women in order to get ahead. Look at David Henry Hwang. He wrote a play about an Asian man who dresses like a woman in order to trick a white guy into sleeping with him. In fact, I don’t think there’s an Asian female in the entire play. If that’s not empowerment, then…then…then…you’re just not thinking outside the box.
3. White man as a romantic interest? Why do you Asian militants always target the white man? That’s racist. It’s sooo hard to be a white man in today’s society. That character can’t help it if he was born white. Maybe the fictional Asian female just HAPPENED TO fall in love with the fictional white man. Society is so fragmented that even fictional white men dating fictional Asian women face fictional reverse racism.
[/sarcasm]
minbo
3:43 pm | Aug 20, 2007I was talking to some Desi friends, and they had a similar list for South Asians,they included such lovely tidbits as always include a period of time in the Monsoon season. Emphasize that the character is in a different country by writing about eating exotic fresh papayas. For the young/hip crowd talk about the characters favorite Chaiwallah.
CJF
3:47 pm | Aug 20, 2007What about:
Old mythical pot head Asian- If there is ever a good Asian, it’s some old man or woman, who is out of it in the head but seems to know all the facts of life. Sort of like the medallion.
Anyways, some mysterious symbol, maybe one of these heroines can have a yin yang bleached on her anus. “What can this symbol on my anus represent about me? Why is it there? Who put it there? Why do I keep asking questions about myself? Why do I like it when this 70 year old white guy is starring at me?”
Dialectic
4:35 pm | Aug 20, 2007With regard to MHK’s name, duly noted, the hyphen has been removed!
theme
5:53 pm | Aug 20, 2007Rohinton Mistry is probably my favorite ‘Asian’ author at the moment.
jaehwan
9:59 pm | Aug 20, 2007“With regard to MHK’s name, duly noted, the hyphen has been removed!”
Haha. I saw MHK, and for some reason, I thought of MLK. Haha, I had to stop to think about that one. Quite a difference between Maxine Hong Kingston and Martin Luther King, though whom they married makes no difference since love conquers all. (Haha…for most Asian activists, I don’t care whom they marry, but for Hong Kingston who writes soft porn about Asian men as a form of empowerment, I hold her to a higher standard, ironically one that she set for herself.)
Ahem…”Wong-Keltner” also isn’t a hyphenated hyphen. Nor is Cathy Bao Bean, or Betty Bao Lord, or the “dim sum of many” others of these types.
Jae-Hwan (sarcasm overload)
Dialectic
11:17 am | Aug 21, 2007The Keltner hyphen has been removed as well. Does anyone get the feeling that these people actually have hyphens in their names but remove them for the books because it looks better on the cover? But I digress.
Ike
12:14 pm | Aug 21, 2007I actually don’t think they have hyphenated names, because that would mean they wanted to keep their maiden name and just tack on their husband’s name. I think they changed their last names to the “white American” one and are using their maiden name as a sort of middle name for “authenticity”. So MHK is really just Maxine Kingston in the phone book.
Dialectic
1:01 pm | Aug 22, 2007Hm, I hadn’t even though of that, which I should have. So cynical for one so young ….
wendimuse
12:16 pm | Sep 21, 2007hilarious…but sadly, so true
elliott20
3:06 pm | Sep 26, 2007oh my god I can’t stop laughing. This is just too much.
Man, it’s like the token romantic Gweilo interest is some fantasy romantic superhero of pornographic proportions.
PhantomS
2:10 am | Sep 29, 2007For some reason I can’t disagree with it heheh
Xian
10:17 am | Sep 29, 2007I don’t understand why Lisa See is entering the discussion. Isn’t she WHITE WHITE WHITE?
I understand the irony of a half-breed calling a quarter “White”, but I was forced to teach the most popular high school history text which uses a video by See as its main voice for Chinese immigration. It’s done gratuitously with her telling of her family’s struggles, white-washing Angel Island internment, saying how it wasn’t so bad, talking assimilationism and then jumping on to screen and shouting, “GOTCHA YOU RACISTS! WHITE PEOPLE CAN BE CHINESE TOO!”
One of my students actually blurted out, “Why is that cracker on the screen talking about being Chinese?”
She lived the pathological American Dream: If you try hard enough, one day your children will come out white.
And that’s really not much of an exaggeration. I hold her no personal illwill–she’s ridden the white ventriloquist arm up her back all the way to the bank while easing her own identity issues. (To be fair, I think she was raised among Chinese Americans). But sorry, she’s lost her yellow card.
Xian
10:18 am | Sep 29, 2007P.S.
http://poetsandwriters.okstate.edu/celebration/images/memoirlarge.jpg
jaehwan
12:00 pm | Sep 29, 2007“I don’t understand why Lisa See is entering the discussion. Isn’t she WHITE WHITE WHITE?.”
Well,if you look at the back of her book “Snow Flower,” she’s got recommendations from BOTH Amy Tan AND Maxine Hong Kingston. The only one she’s missing is David Henry Hwang, who must’ve been busy selling his soul to someone else since he would have jumped at the opportunity to promote a book like hers.
So even though she may have “lost her yellow card,” she’s still got two prominent yellow tokens.
Xian
3:39 pm | Sep 29, 2007“Snow Flower”? Fuck!
It will tough for me to one up that with my first book. I’ll have to name it “Exotic Slanty-Eyed Chinky Chink Chinks with Slanted Pussies and Little Dicks…in Love”
It will be the greatest literary work in American History.
Dialectic
6:05 am | Sep 30, 2007Hahaha, wow, I just went to lisasee.com. Wow.
jaehwan
2:34 pm | Sep 30, 2007Xian,
Well, there is always room for improvement. The full title is “Snow Flower and the Secret Fan.” She could’ve improved it by naming it “Snow Flower and the Hundred Secret Fans of the Kitchen God.” That would’ve been really appealing to the ‘philes.
D,
I just visited that lisasee.com site. That is some hella crazy shit. From her bio:
“While collecting the details for On Gold Mountain, she developed the idea for her first novel, Flower Net (1997), which was a national bestseller, a New York Times Notable Book, and on the Los Angeles Times Best Books List for 1997. Flower Net was also nominated for an Edgar award for best first novel. This was followed by two more mystery-thrillers, The Interior (2000) and Dragon Bones (2003), which once again featured the characters of Liu Hulan and David Stark.”
How the hell do you do research on your family’s history and somehow come up with a romantic story about a Chinese woman and a White guy shacking up and fighting evil Chinese triads? Oh yeah, that’s right, she was trying to write an Asian-themed NY Times bestseller. I guess she already had the secret formula.
So I guess it seems that even the Asian American female authors who look white are into the whole White guy for a hero/ Asian heroine type of thing. If I didn’t know she was part Asian, I’d be screaming racism. But then again, further down:
“She was honored as National Woman of the Year by the Organization of Chinese American Women in 2001 and was the recipient of the Chinese American Museum’s History Makers Award in Fall 2003.”
Still no yellow card, but if she could exchange all those yellow tokens supporting her for some Chuck E. Cheese tokens, she could earn herself enough prize tickets to buy a fridge.
elliott20
5:00 pm | Oct 01, 2007all we need now is a superhero who is clearly white but is like, somehow the progeny of some great Chinese oriental mystical arts, valiantly fighting against the oppressive culture that it once came.
oh wait
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Dragon
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lady_Shiva
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karate_Kid_%28comics%29
for the villain side
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chang_Tzu
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ming_the_Merciless
well then, nevermind.