Racial Ambiguity in Asian American Culture by Jennifer Ann Ho (review)

In Racial Ambiguity in Asian American Culture, Ho aims to explore the different modes of racial ambiguity embodied, encountered, and undertaken by Asian Americans. In doing so, Ho contributes to a body of work that attempts to de-essentialize the Asian American subject and to destabilize notions of race as a whole. By presenting five separate cases that oscillate between historical, cultural, and literary analysis, Ho’s work both articulates and embodies different manifestations of this ambiguity that marks (though, as she mentions, is not unique to) Asian American experiences (14). In doing so, Ho foregrounds the need for a nuanced understanding of race as we embark on actively antiracist work.

Ho’s work is divided into five separate sections, each of which centers on a different subject and illuminates a different aspect of racial ambiguity. While each chapter might be read as its own separate essay, collectively the chapters provide a rounded perspective of Asian American identity. Chapter 1 discusses the unique case of Yoshiko deLeon, a Japanese woman who was able to resist internment during World War II through the Mixed Marriage Policy of 1942. Drawing on family interviews and military correspondence around the Mixed Marriage Policy, Ho simultaneously chronicles deLeon’s life as well as the historical events that surrounded her and illustrates the mutability of race and its implications on her life and on policy. Chapter 2 discusses how Asian adoptees have begun to utilize blogging communities in order to both explore and create their identities. By citing the blogs of a handful of adoptees, Ho characterizes their racial ambiguity both within their ability to navigate their ambiguous positions and within their ability to craft these identities in an ongoing fashion. Chapter 3 looks at Tiger Woods as a racially ambiguous subject. It construes him as the sum of a multitude of narratives that have fed his identity. In particular, the chapter aims to recenter his multiraciality in relation to his Asian American mother Tida Woods and contrast this against his often more visible blackness. In doing so, Ho presents Tiger’s Asian American racial ambiguity as an attempt to resist monolithic racial definitions.

Chapter 4 most clearly falls into Ho’s stated wheelhouse of literary analysis. In this chapter, Ho expands on notions of “passing” by detailing the ways that authors Paisley Redkal and Ruth Ozeki blur the lines between autobiography and fiction in their respective works. In addition to exploring each author’s literary technique of “passing” between genres, Ho discusses how the characters work and reclaim their racial ambiguity as a form of passing for an identity that they actually have. Ho construes this action, like Tiger Woods claiming his multiraciality, as a form of Asian American ambiguity as well as resistance against essentialized racial categories as a whole. Finally, chapter 5 continues the idea of overturning traditional racial ideas by asking the reader to consider what the canon of Asian American literature might look like if not tethered exclusively to the bodies of Asian Americans. Ho asserts that transgressive texts written by authors who are not Asian American may appropriately be added to the canon of Asian American literature. In doing so, Ho claims we may arrive at a deeper and more understanding of the racial ambiguity of Asian Americans.

In addition to thematically visiting themes of racial ambiguity among different Asian American subjects, Ho seamlessly modulates between different analytical methods and different theories in order to craft her analysis. Ho weaves between historical recollection, literary analysis, current events, critical race theory, cultural studies, as well as her own personal experience in a way that mirrors the ambiguity of the subjects she discusses.

Ho’s work is adept at exploring the various facets of racial ambiguity within Asian American culture. Her work inspires a several opportunities for continued analysis. Her chapter that discusses Tiger Woods, for example, touches upon the counterpoint of antiblackness as...