Background of The Asian Americans in the 1970s

Although multi-racial coalitions between different immigrant groups had long played an important part in campaigns for civil rights on the West Coast, it wasn't until the 1960s and 1970s that diverse communities with different histories began to self-consciously unite as "Asian Americans."

The Asian American movement that promoted this new identity-- which initially united Japanese, Chinese, and Filipino Americans, and then expanded to include Koreans, Southeast and South Asians, and Pacific Islanders-- was driven largely by student activists radicalized by anti-Vietnam war and black power movements. Challenging stereotypes about Asian "passivity", and rejecting the exoticism and racism of "oriental" labels, Asian American activists mobilized this new consciousness to demand an end to racist hiring practices, biased school curricula, demeaning media stereotypes, residential discrimination, and the gentrification of historically Asian American neighborhoods. And though it was primarily a youth movement, and never completely spoke for all the communities it sought to represent, the Asian American movement arguably transformed older community institutions, created new ones, and dramatically advanced the development of Asian American power in American urban politics.

An Overview of the History of the Asian Americans- Film "A Family Affair"

A history of Asians and Asian Americans in Seattle since the late 19th century, this 19 minute film moves from the anti-Chinese ethnic cleansing campaigns to Japanese internment and Phillipine trade-unionism. It covers the strategies of resistance and assimilation by Asians turned Asian Americans in the mid-20th Century, and culminates in a surging review of the successful fight to save the International District in the 1970s. "A Family Affair" is a collaborative effort narrated by Leslie Kwon, photographed by Chris Grunder, scored by Joshua Shadlen and Industrial Revelation, and produced by Shaun Scott.

Clock here to see the film: http://depts.washington.edu/civilr/vid/film-family1m.wmx

Asian American Identity – Part I

Racial Prejudice



Asian Americans were hurting from the effects of racial prejudice. They reluctantly acknowledged that thought they felt like Americans, behaved like Americans, and shared the prevailing cultural values and norms, the majority of their fellow countrymen treated them, including those born and raised in the United States, as unwelcome foreigners. Excluded by mainstream society, they were in American culture, but not of it.



Some of them had tried so frustratingly to transform themselves physically into European Americans. Amy Tan, the well-known novelist, recalled that as a youngster she had placed a clothes pin on her nose, presumably to make it more like the aquiline noses of her European American friends. Edward Iwata, one of Asian American journalists, confessed to having had an “eye and nose job” in an ill-advised attempt to make himself look more European American; afterward, he realized that it was “psychic surgery, an act of mutilation, a symbolic suicide.”

Asian American Identity – Part II

Yellow Identity



An early effort to develop an Asian American identity and culture was the “Asian American Experience in America – Yellow Identity” conference held on II January 1969 at the University of California, Berkeley. An estimated nine hundred Asian Americans, mainly Chinese and Japanese Americans from the West Coast, participated in this extraordinary event to learn about “Asian American history and destiny, ant the need to express Asian American solidarity in a predominately white society.”

The conference did make Asian Americans realize that it would take more than a single event to achieve ethnic solidarity. Indeed, it eventually took myriad meetings by small groups of Asian Americans across the county to develop a collective consciousness. Without a self-defined identity, they realized, they were vulnerable psychologically and politically. They therefore consciously set out to develop “a new identity by integrating their past experiences with their present conditions” and to raise “group esteem and pride, for it was only through collective action that society’s perception of the Asian-American could be efficiently altered.” Asian Americans soon began to gather together in consciousness-raising groups to address the issue of identity.

Asian American Identity – Part III

Asian American Identity Problem: Stereotypes



Stereotypes are learned at an early age and disseminated through children’s books and the elementary school curriculum. Whatever information about Asian Americans they include is usually distorted and misleading. Instead of conveying accurate knowledge about Asian Americans, books and curricula more often than not promote misconceptions about them. According to the Asian American Children’s Books Project, which had been organized by the Council on Interracial Books for Children, an examination of sixty-six children’s books published between 1945 and 1975 revealed that, with one or perhaps two exception, they were, “racist, sexist, and elitist.” The eleven Asian American reviewers in the project concluded that “a succinct definition of the image presented would be: Asian Americans are foreigners who all look alike and choose to live together in quaint communities in the midst of large cities and cling to ‘outworn,’ alien customs” and criticized the books for failing “to depict Asian American culture as distinct from Asian culture or some ‘Oriental’ stereotype of it, or on the other hand, as distinct from the culture of white America.”

Among social scientists the question of whether stereotypes have a deleterious effect on people is an open one; among Asian Americans it is generally believed that they have had a profound psychic impact on them. Asian Americans have long known that stereotypes are detrimental: demeaning their dignity by denying them individually, undermining their identity by limiting their self-expression and self-development, engendering ambivalent feelings by instilling self-hatred. For a generation of Asian Americans, Ronald Tanaka’s poem “I Hate My Wife for Her Flat Yellow Face” (1969), captured the anguish of self-contempt stemming from humiliating self-images:

I hate my wife for her flat yellow face
and her fat cucumber legs, but mostly
for her lack of elegance and lack of
intelligence to judith gluck.

Writers- Maxine Hong Kingston

Maxine Hong Kingston
In 1940, she was born in Stockton, California and the first generation Chinese immigrants. There are eight children in her family and she is the third. She started to write in very young age and had had an essay “I Am an American” in Girl Scout Magazine. In 1962, she married an actor, Earl Kingston and was teaching in high school. After moving to Hawaii, she completed and published her first novel “The Woman Warrior”, which reflected culture heritage. In 1976, she was awarded for The Woman Warrior. After that, she had some famous such as Chinese Men, Tripmaster Monkey, Talking story, and so on. In addition to the famous works, she also was awarded by other honors such as National Humanities Medal, Northern California Book Award. However, she was arrested in Washington in 2003 because of crossing the police line during a protest against the war in Iraq. She also put her antiwar thoughts into her works. In fact, she was influence by many writers such as Virginia Woolf, Walt Whitman, and William Carlos Williams to make her shape her analysis of gender studies. As for her topics of works, she focused on Chinese American lives as well as self-identity, problems of generation, and women’s status as well as thoughts.
We can realize how she influences people in American and in China.
1940: born in Stockton, California and first generation Chinese immigrants
1962: graduates from the University of California, Berkeley
1962: marries Earll Kingston, a classmate at Berkeley
1964: gives birth to son, Joseph Lawrence Chung Mei
1965: earns a teaching certificate and begins teaching high school
1967: moves to Hawaii
1976: The Woman Warrior: Memoires of a Girlhood Among Ghosts
begins teaching English at the University of Hawaii in Honolulu
1980: China Men
1981: receives Guggenheim Fellowship
begins teaching at University of California, Berkeley
1989: Tripmaster Monkey: His Fake Book
1990:Talking Story (paying particular attention to her commentary on cultural heritage and both sexual and racial oppression)
2003: She was arrested in Washington, D.C., for crossing a police line during a protest against the war in Iraq.
· 2005: she was honored as a 175th Speaker Series writer at Emma Willard School in September 2005.

The Woman Warrior Plot Summary

The Woman Warrior

Plot Summary:
The Woman Warrior is divided into 5 sections, and each section is individual story. Maxine Hong Kingston uses this skill to present diverse adversity that Chinese women face. Through the writing of women’s stories, Maxine Hong Kingston not only explores her own cultural history. As the first generation of Chinese immigrants, Maxine Hong Kingston writes the book to arouse the Chinese self-identity question of reconciling Chinese tradition with the emerging sense as American.

The first section, “No Name Warrior,” tells the story of Kingston’s aunt of her father side. The story is presented by dialogue between her mother Brave Orchid and Kingston. This aunt, whom is be called No Name Woman because her real name is never spoken by the whole family. The reason why the Chinese family wants to bury her name consciously is that the aunt becomes pregnant by a man who is not her husband. For the reason of adultery, she is viewed as the shame of the family and disdained by the Chinese village. When No Name Woman can not hide her pregnancy from her family and villagers, bearing the punishment of adultery, she finally commits suicide and kills the baby by drowning in the family well.

The section two is the chapter of “White Tigers,” which is based on another talk-story. The story is about Chinese mythical female warrior Fa Mu Lan, who leads people to victory in wars. By pretending to be a man herself, Fa Mu Lan is successfully against the forces of corrupt emperor. After her battles are over, Fa Mu Lan returns home to be a good wife. Kingston describes the story of this mythical female role through her young mind, which contracts with her own life in America. The story of Fa Mu Lan also reveals Kingston’s adversity of American racism, and the realization of Kingston herself that her weapons are her words.

The third section is the story about Kingston’s mother. The chapter “Shaman” relates the story of her mother, Brave Orchid, whose extraordinary medical career as a midwife in China. Though her mother is a successful healer, she can not practice medicine in America as an immigrant. After all, she and her husband just open the laundry business in America.

Next chapter is “At the Western Palace,” which refers other talk-stories of her mother. The story is about emperor owning four wives. Besides the story of emperor, Maxine also writes story, the analogy for her sister Mon Orchid’s situation. Moon Orchid’s husband is a successful doctor in Los Angles. However, her husband left Moon in china behind and remarried in America. After many years, her sister still remained in Hong Kong waiting for her husband to send for her. Brave Orchid, Kingston’s mother confronts the irresponsible man and sends Kingston’s sister to immigrate to America. But when Moon Orchid faces her husband, she was again rejected by him for the excuse of disrupting his life and doctor career. In the end of the story, Moon Orchid consequently gets mad, ending her rest life in an insane asylum.

The final story in The Women Warrior begins with Kingston’s story depicting her emotional experiences and conflicts she felt growing up in a Chinese household in America. She describes the difficulty of finding the suitable identity of voice, instead of traditional identity of silence. Originally Kingston herself is not so appreciate her mother, but with the series of her mother’s talk-stories, Kingston and her mother start to realize each other. And Kingston herself in the end of the book finds the harmony between Chinese tradition identity and American immigrant identity. She combines different worlds and cultures as create the balance of her own.

The Woman Warrior Significance and Analysis

The Women Warrior

Significance and Analysis:
In Maxine Hong Kingston’s book, The Women Warrior, men characters are intentionally absent. Obviously, the book, The Woman Warrior, is focus on female characters. Compared with other Asian American writers, Maxine Hong Kingston’s writing works put more emphasis on Chinese women figures. Diverse Chinese female character presented in myth, history, talk-stories, or biography shapes the Kingston’s self culture identity about both Chinese and American figures. Though the depicting of different women, the stories in the book presents one theme about Chinese women’s struggling in traditional society.

The first story, No Name Woman, presents the small conservative village with strict manners. The woman, who is not intentional to be pregnant, faces the punishment from not only her family but also the whole village. Those serious condemnations cause her death indirectly. The more significance of this story is that her family tends to hide the woman’s name just because of her shameful behavior. This story, No Name’s Woman symbolizes silent denouncement against the pitiless of Chinese traditional society.

The story of Fa Mu Lan, apparently it can be seen as a peaceful story with a successful ending. However, essentially the story is ironical to Chinese patriarchal tradition. The question why Mu Lan needs to pretend as a man that she can be accepted by the society reveals disdain for Chinese women.

The third story of Kingston’s mother, Brave Orchid, presents the issue of disadvantages women faces. In addition, it also reveals the marginalization of being immigrants. The disadvantage of gender and the marginalization of immigrants push her mother, though she is the successful doctor, into the predicament.

The story of her sister, Moon Orchid, reflects the helpless of Chinese women. Though her sister’s has the patience and loyalty to her husband, the final response of her husband is just the indifferent rejection. The context of peremptory of Chinese men and helpless of Chinese women in the immigrant society highlights the story without talkative words.

The final section is from Kingston’s recollection to her releasing mind. Actually this part can be seen as Chinese women’s elasticity for fixing themselves to the Chinese tradition and the immigrant society.

The Women Warrior punished in 1975 not just inspirits feminism of Chinese women but also help Chinese American find their cultural identity. The connection between past and present, legend and reality, or story and biography colors Kingston’s literature work. However, this technique of writing also accentuates the themes in the book. The introspection on Chinese women not merely arise the feminism for generation but bring the recollection for immigrant Chinese. To make a conclusion, Maxine Hong Kingston’s The Woman Warrior is the significant literature work in Asian American history.

Writers-David Henry Hwang

David Henry Hwang

1957	He is the son of immigrant Chinese American parents and Born on August 11 in Los Angeles, California.
1975-1979	Attends Stanford University, graduates with a B.A. in English.
1978	First play, FOB, produced at Stanford.( Growing up in California as a Chinese American made him politically conscious during his college years in the late 1970s; this interest in his Chinese roots is evident in the central conflicts of FOB, which focuses on a Chinese immigrant’s relationship with two Chinese American students he meets in Los Angeles.)
1979	Teaches at a high school in Menlo Park, California.
1980-1981	Attends Yale University School of Drama.
1980	Wins Obie Award for FOB.
1981	The Dance and the Railroad and Family Devotions (Chinese American life) produced in New York City.
1983	The House of Sleeping Beauties and The Sound of a Voice (tales of Chinese American immigrants and themes of race and assimilation to stories about tragic love based on Japanese materials)produced off-Broadway; publishes Broken Promises: Four Plays; awarded Rockefeller Fellowship.
1984	Awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship.
1985	Awarded a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship.
1986	Rich Relations produced off-Broadway; As the Crow Flies produced in Los Angeles.
1987	My American Son, a television drama, airs on Home Box Office.
1988	M. Butterfly produced on Broadway and wins the Outer Critics Circle Award, Drama Desk Award, John Gassner Award, and Tony Award; establishes the American Playwrights Project; 1000 Airplanes on the Roof produced in Vienna, Austria.
1989	Publishes 1000 Airplanes on the Roof.
1990	Publishes FOB and Other Plays.
1991	Bondage produced.
1992	Face Value and The Voyage (libretto for opera) produced.
1997	Seven Years in Tibet (screenplay for film).

M.Butterfly by David Henry Hwang

M.Butterfly by David Henry Hwang

The background of the story was from 1960 to 1980. The story had happened in real lives. David Henry Hwang directed the movie according to Giacomo Puccini’s famous opera “Madame Butterfly”. The French diplomat, Rene Gallimard,who went to see the opera “Madame Butterfly” and the important role was acted by Song Liling, who was actually a man masquerading as a woman. And he fell in love with Song. In fact, Song was a spy from Chinese and he wanted to get some information from Rene. When they were having sex, Song always took Chinese tradition for an excuse to deceive Rene for fear that he, in fact, is a man. In others words, Rene had never seen Song’s naked body and Song even lied that he was pregnant. And then, he divorced his wife Helga because he loved Song so much. After that since Rene has been sent back to France, Song was no longer useful to the Chinese government and was put in a reeducation camp for being an artist. Song came to France and reunioned with Rene. Song used their son for an excuse, so Rene had no choice but to be a spy. Finally, Rene was convicted of treason and imprisoned. At that time, Rene found the woman he loved was actually a man. He was not able to accept the truth and eventually committed suicide in jail.

Analysis:

We think that Song can completely realize Rene’s mental desire, so he can deceive Rene and made him fell in love with “her”. In other words, western men want their women to be obedient to them and take their husbands’ needs for the most important one. For western men, eastern women are mysterious, conservative and traditional. These are the reason why Song can deceive Rene for so long time. Actually, Rene loved the image of Chinese they thought rather than Song. In cultural aspects, men always took the role of women in Chinese operas. Apparently, Rene did not understand Chinese culture. In the end, the reason why Rene committed suicide is that he was totally mental disorders about genders and frustrated him because of his thought – men were everything for women. However, the “perfect woman” he devoted and loved was a man.

Gallimard’s confession

There are two scenes in the end of the film that expressed Gallimard’s dilemma. One is after the judgment on Gallimard and Song, Song said he was still Gallimard’s Butterfly and asked Gallimard to say that he loves him. However, Gallimard said he didn’t love Song, what he really loved was the illusion of eastern imagination. Another is Gallimard dressed him self into Madama Butterfly in the jail. Although he had said that he didn’t love Song, he confessed that he gave all his love to the Asian illusion. Gallimard committed suicide due to his ridiculous passion toward the mysterious illusion of eastern women. It may not just feel ashamed, also Gallimard refused to believe his illusion was wrong. In Gallimard’s mind, the relationship with Song might be the best moment of his lie. Once his belief had been destroyed, he felt worthless of his entire life. While other people could not understand his love, he rather chose to die with dignity in order to protect his belief.

Who is the real M. Butterfly?

In the first conversation between Gallimard and Song, Gallimard said Madame Butterfly was a pure sacrifice. Song said that because it is an oriental woman kills her self for a white man then Gallimard found it beautiful. If it was a blond western woman killed her self for a short Japanese businessman, he would say she was an idiot. It is a contrast with Gallimard’s death. The truth is, Gallimard is the butterfly who killed him self instead of the Asian woman in Madame Butterfly version. When Gallimard realized who he had deeply loved was a man, his self identification was totally destroyed. Gallimard could not stand what he had loved was not he imagined, and then he chose not to face the truth forever. However, Song did not kill him self in the film. Hwang has reversed the stereotype of races and genders in the story and also showed prejudice in favor of Asian people. It could be considered as Hwang’s expression of Asian American’s self-identification. When the second generation of Asian American fell into a dilemma of self-identification, it might be the same situation with Gallimard. In M. Butterfly, Hwang may imply his self-identification that his Asian identity is more valuable than American.

Asian American Cinema

Definition of Asian American Cinema

Broadly Defined:

All films and videos produced by filmmakers who are Asian descents in the United States

Narrowly defined:

Independently produced films that evince an Asian American sensibility (perspective) and/or Asian American subject matter.

History of Asian American Cinema

The very beginning of Asian American Cinema can be traced back to early twenty centuries. Before that, most of the movies made non-Asians performed the oriental concepts by using racialized make-up, settings, and costumes. The film productions in early times, most Asian-American actors’ roles were limited to the background and in offensive roles. Not until 1920s there are two actresses- Anna May Wong and Sessue Hayakawa became veritable superstars. However, in the dominance of Hollywood, many Asian origins were frustrated because there were still very few works available in American films or they can only play supporting roles for white people in yellow face.

In 1960s, little had changed. Asian-American theaters started to prosper and its growth in the 1970s coinciding with the decline of the Hollywood studio system, all that began to change with the rebirth of Asia-American Cinema. The first socially aware Asian-American theatre company, East West Players, was founded in 1965. And then in 1970, Visual Communications was established, which is the oldest community-based media arts center in the US today. This organization held Los Angeles Asian Pacific Film Festival annually after 1983. Frank Chin founded the Asian American Theater Workshop in San Francisco in 1972 to encourage plays focused on the lives of Asian Americans. Two of Chin’s movies- Chickencoop Chinaman (1972) and Year of the Dragon (1974) are the first Chinese American produced movies that focused on the complexities of Asian identity in America.

The growth of Asian-American theaters provided an amount of film works for Asian Pacific American Actors. As a result, Asian-Americans started to appear on TV and films in increasing numbers, playing roles that occasionally challenged the stereotypes and bit parts they'd been relegated to in mainstream America.

At the same time, in 1970s, more than 130,000 refugees arrived to America from Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam, drastically changing the make-up of the Asian-American population, challenging the mid '60s-born concept of Asians as "the model minority. The next 30 years, the number of Asian American continued increasing gradually.

With those efforts and factors, Asian American cinema has been budding since then. It took off in 1980s, and by the '90s, the scope of Asian-American Cinema broadened considerably. This trend still continued in the 2000s.

Year of the Dragon

<Brief information about Frank Chin, the writer ofYear of the Dragon>

Background

During 1970s, Frank Chin is one of most influencial theatric writers. He has two well-known movies: Chickencoop Chinaman (1972) and Year of the Dragon (1974) which pushed people focusing on the lives of Aisan American. After examing the two plays, we have more interested in Year of the Dragon.

About the writer

According to Oxford Encyclopedia Theatre and Performance, Frank Chin founded the Asian American Theater Workshop in San Francisco in 1972. Two years later the workshop became the Asian American Theater Company, the first theatre dedicated exclusively to the production of plays by and about Asian America. Besides, Chin's early workshops received encouragement from San Francisco's American Conservatory Theatre, and the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles sponsored Chay Yew's Asian Theatre Workshop. At the end of the twentieth century Asian-American theatre companies could be found in virtually every urban centre in the United States.

About the story

The play tells the story of Fred Eng, 30-something tour guide who lives at home in Chinatown with his parents and younger brother, Johnny. Fred is frustrated because ten years earlier he had given up his dreams of being a writer to help his cancer-stricken father run the tour guide business. Yet, not only is his father still alive, he also has no respect for Fred's desire to be a writer and mocks Fred for dropping out of college, even though Fred did so to help him. Fred also hates working as a tour guide, as he must act out the white tourists' fantasy of what Chinese people are like, unable to make them understand that Chinatown is not China and that its residents are Americans too. Fred is also frustrated that his brother Johnny, in addition to running with a bad crowd, is not interested in leaving Chinatown for a better life, but wants to become part of the family business.

The conflict of the play centers around a Chinese New Year celebration when Fred's sister, Sissy, comes to visit with her sinophile white husband, Ross. Sissy has been on tour promoting a Chinese cookbook that she and Fred have written; the indignity of being reduced to writing food porn as his only marketable outlet for writing further upsets Fred. On the same day that Sissy and Ross arrive, Pa's first wife (and Fred's biological mother) arrives from China, thanks to the new immigration laws that allowed Chinese women to immigrate to the USA to join their husbands. The arrival of "China Mama" creates conflict between Pa and his current wife, Hyacinth, who feels betrayed by his decision to bring his first wife over after he had promised not to and by the fact that she herself had risked losing her citizenship by marrying Pa. It also becomes clear that Pa wants to split the family in two as he nears the end of his life, favoring his "Chinese" family over his "American" one.(cited from wikipedia)

Review

From The New York Times, the critics wrote "The year of the Dragon barges through comfortable stereotypes of the Asian American— the quiet, hardworking contented character who keeps to himself, rarely bothering white community. It is not an ‘easy’ play. The language is frequently strong, and the bitterness, even when wrapped in some very funny comedy, is unrelenting. … But as a portrait of Asian American’s furious struggle for identity, the play is a searing statement, a powerful cry. ”

More Information

http://books.google.com.tw/books?id=vwgBrkxLfv4C&printsec=frontcover&dq=Chickencoop+Chinaman&source=bl&ots=xT_FkbOfHR&sig=lAzIE9ZPHwsDXCVlHoH2c6oQRgI&hl=zh-TW&ei=_rDyS63xONGHkAXN7Y3KDQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=2&ved=0CCIQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q&f=false