Yellow Power, Yellow Soul: The Radical Art of Fred Ho

9. “That’s Why the WorkIs What It Is”

9 “That’s why the work is what it is” An Interview with Fred Ho miYoShi SmiTh It had been some time since I had sat down and talked with Fred Ho. I conducted this interview one week after his first week of chemoradiation treatment . He was amazed at how much he had needed to sleep during this process : 10–16 hours a day after the treatments. This was the first day he said that he had enough energy to sit up for some time. He looked good: toned, wearing his confidence, and rather peaceful despite the week of intense dosing. miyoshi: What are your first memories about yourself as a child, as it relates to music? fRed: I don’t have really any memories as it relates to music, because I never expected to become a musician. Probably about my teenage years, I thought I was going to become some type of radical activist. I was politicized by three different kinds of experiences growing up: • Racism and racist violence, • Domestic violence and the oppression of my mother, and • The advantages my mother gave to me at a very young age, which in many ways prepared me to deal with the first two constant experiences . One of the earliest experiences I can ever recall was racism. I was in preschool, either three or four years old—and I’ve told this story before—but my sandbox was segregated. I went to an all-white preschool ; I was the only person who wasn’t white. And I remember the teacher distinctly telling all of the other kids not to play with me 192 miyoshi smiTh because I am Chinese. And on one hand I felt the alienation of being estranged or singled out, on the other hand I enjoyed having my own sandbox and it became a metaphor for the rest of my life. The estrangement and the attempted marginalization of me only fueled my own efforts at self-reliance and self-determination. And I grew up facing constant racism in the Amherst community. It was a community in transition from rural farming background of about 100 years in the Connecticut River Valley, into a major educational hub. In fact, by the late ’60s, education became the principal industry of Amherst, Massachusetts. And there was a lot of liberalism , but it clashed with a lot of the old rural narrow backgrounds of the longtime residents. And I grew up with both kinds of kids. So there were a lot of racist insults and jeers and taunting, and a lot of racist violence when I played sports. Opposing teams would deliberately try to injure me. I would have sprained ankles every basketball season because they would consciously step on my feet as I was about to do a lay-up or jump shot. I faced domestic violence constantly as well, from a very young age. My father inflicted terror upon all of us, not only my mother, but also my sisters and myself. miyoshi: Excuse me. Just to interject here, I want to ask you about the memories of growing up with your father. Could you also include how you felt about him, as well? FRED: Well, my father was a self-made man in the United States. And the story my mother tells is that he was raised very badly. His mother beat him and his sisters were prostitutes. He left home at a very young age and made himself. But he harbored a lot of patriarchal and oppressive ideas and behaviors towards women. The dominating impact of my father was that he was someone to fear, someone who intimidated us considerably—and motivated us to do things out of fear of reprisal. Extremely authoritarian. Not generous at all. In fact my mother was arrested when I was very young for shoplifting, because he had her on allowance. I think it started at 75 cents per week and finally I think it increased to about $2 per week. So she couldn’t even afford to buy her own sanitary napkins, and she stole them from a local department store and was arrested. And her name was in the local newspaper and it was a great embarrassment to her. Not so much to myself, because I understood the motivation of my mother. I never saw her as a criminal or anything 193 An Interview with Fred Ho like that. She...