Words Matter

Introduction

My work as an activist . . . is inextricable from what I write. —Janice Mirikitani The whole enterprise of writing for me is spiritual. —Li-Young Lee You write because you have no choice. —Wendy Law-Yone What does it mean to be an Asian American writer? Is it the same as being a writer of Asian descent? Or just a writer? As the epigraphs to this introduction demonstrate, the authors interviewed in this collection have remarkably different literary compulsions. Even more varied are their styles, their sensibilities , and the settings of their stories, which include Burma, Brazil, England, India, Japan, Korea, the Philippines, Sudan, Thailand, and Vietnam as well as California, Hawai‘i, Kansas, and New York. Yet in this country these authors are all designated as Asian American writers by academics, publishers , the media—and in this volume. Like most artists of color, authors of Asian ancestry in the Introduction K I N G - K O K C H E U N G United States often face a host of assumptions and expectations . Because their number is still relatively small, those who draw inspiration from their experiences as members of a minority are often seen as speaking for their ethnic groups. Because their work is frequently treated as ethnography by mainstream reviewers, many in the Asian American communities hold them accountable for an authentic “representation .” They also confront persistent stereotypes suggesting that Asian Americans may make top-notch engineers or kung fu fighters but surely not poets, playwrights, or novelists. Even writers whose works are widely read may feel ghettoized as second-class citizens in the publishing marketplace, which may accept them as good Asian American writers but still not regard them as good writers, period. At a time when literature is largely defined by the marketplace , the popular media, academe, and various ethnic communities , Words Matter invites twenty authors to comment on how they would like their works to be read. They are asked to speak openly about their aesthetics, their politics, and the difficulties they have encountered in pursuing a writing career: disapproval of parents who press them to engage in more practical pursuits; cultural prohibition against exposing oneself or one’s family; the absence of literary predecessors; self-contempt associated with race, poverty, gender, or sexuality ; or the toll exacted by the ravages of war, exclusion, and internment. They address, among other issues, the expectations attached to the label Asian American writer, the burden of representation shouldered by the ethnic artist, and the different demands of “mainstream” and ethnic audiences. This project started as an experiment on my part to bridge research and teaching, to narrow the gap between theory and lived experience, and to connect literary scholarship—a discourse that can sometimes wax abstruse and impersonal— with what my students find compelling about the literature. With the exception of Zainab Ali’s dialogue with Meena 2 King-Kok Cheung Alexander, my exchange with Paul Stephen Lim, and my conversation with Hisaye Yamamoto and Wakako Yamauchi, the interviews were conducted by graduate students from the English Department and the Asian American Studies Center of the University of California, Los Angeles. Space limitations have meant that only a small proportion of the growing number of Asian American writers have been interviewed. For the most part the selection was made by the graduate students themselves and was governed by their own lines of inquiry. I merely ensured that the volume contain a mix of poets, playwrights , and fiction writers and include immigrant and American-born authors of different ethnic origins. Time and cost of travel account for the preponderance of subjects who reside in California. We hope that future volumes can make up for the imbalance. The special relationship between interviewer and interviewee is a distinctive feature of this collection. The graduate students are thoroughly familiar with the works of the writers interviewed and are therefore capable of asking informed questions and eliciting precious comments on specific texts. Because most of these students are considerably younger than the writers whom they are interviewing, the interviews at times come across as a probing dialogue between generations. Thus, the collection not only offers the writers an opportunity to intervene in academic debates but also gives voice to the students, whose insights inform their introduction of the individual authors and most of the questions. Many of the student interviewers are aspiring writers or literary scholars in part...