The Making of a Gay Asian Community: An Oral History of Pre-AIDS Los Angeles (review)

On March 23, 2002, a group of Asian Americans gathered at the Stone, a Los Angeles bar formerly known as Mugi's, on Hollywood and Kingsley. In the midst of food and drinks, attendants celebrated the publication of Eric Wat's The Making of a Gay Asian Community. As scholars, artists, activists, and friends filled the small bar, narrators from Wat's oral history took center stage. Andre Ting, Roy Kawasaki, June Lagmay, David Hong, and many others from Wat's book made the launch a notable celebration. Indeed, the gathering reflected the very aims of Wat's work—to record responsible community history told by those who lived it themselves. Rowman and Littlefield has touted The Making of a Gay Asian Community as the first history of gay Asians in Los Angeles.

Through the accounts of twenty-five individuals, called narrators, Wat traces the formation of a gay Asian collective identity from the 1970s until the 1990s. In Los Angeles during this period, many Asian American gays ceased being isolated individuals and became members of organized networks that provided social support and community activism—initially the A/PLG (Asian Pacific Lesbians and Gays) and later the GAPSN (Gay Asian Pacific Support Network). In the course of his account, Wat addresses issues of community, race, desire, and activism, carefully contextualizing his interviews within the theoretical paradigms of a variety of disciplines, including history, sociology, psychoanalysis, anthropology, and literary criticism. Wat articulates a coming-of-age not of predictable progressivism but of complicated depth. From often contradictory testimony, he has crafted a cohesive account that gives legitimacy to all of his narrators.

The strength of this book lies in Wat's ability to present convincing, unambiguous, and fluid accounts of desire and community. Rather than forcing definitive arguments onto slippery realities, Wat presents nuanced interpretations that allow for the difficult nature of human emotions. While critics might argue that Asian men who dated white men had little ethnic or racial self-esteem, Wat shows how in fact these men negotiated their strong sense of Asian identity with their daily trials as an American racial minority. Virgil Vang noted that "it's easy to condemn the Asian[,] to say they buy into [racist stereotypes]" when in fact being with white men proved to be good strategy for economically and socially disadvantaged Asian men (89). Ernest Wada did not see himself as "just another Asian person trying to be white," but "back then, whether we realized it or not, . . . we followed the standards of whites" (52). Stanley Rebultan explained his attraction to the "Nordic type" in two different ways. Growing up in the Philippines, he perceived blue-eyed blond men as an exotic fantasy. In the same breath he also attributed his neglect of "Asian-Asian love" to desiring the white majority in the United States (40). Though these perspectives are notably different from one another, Wat's compilation of them makes perfect sense. People's desires grow from complicated self-perceptions of exclusion and inclusion, shame as well as pride. After all, in the same bars where Asian men competed against one another for the attention of white men, ethnically diverse Asian men were motivated to band together as a group.

In tracing the formation of a gay Asian identity, Wat discusses the A/PLG, an organization that grew despite long-standing internal conflicts over membership and mission. Struggles arose over the role of whites in the organization and the nature of its social activities. Paul Bautista believed that A/PLG's strength was its inclusive policy, allowing whites and Asians to join for whatever reason (155). Andre Ting valued the cultural activities such as cooking and brush painting, for they spurred in him a...