Takaki, Ronald - Strangers from a Different Shore: A History of Asian Americans

[oyceter]

It's very odd for me to read a history of the US and think, "Yes! That's me! That's my family! This fits with the stories my parents tell!"

Ronald Takaki tells the history of Asian-Americans in America: how they got there, who they were, and how they changed. He covers most of the large ethnic groups, thankfully including Filipinos, Asian-Indians, Vietnamese, Cambodians, and Koreans, and not just the usual Chinese and Japanese. And his history goes from the mid-1800s to the 1980s (the book was published in 1989. Really, the only thing I would complain about with regard to the scope is that it hasn't been revised for the present-day, but that's hardly Takaki's fault.

It's so interesting to see how similar the experiences of Asian immigrants are -- Takaki highlights changes in legislation that affect most of the Asians, including quotas and laws to keep out anyone of the "Mongoloid" race. And yet, the book draws clear distinctions among the groups as well, pointing out that the Filipino experience of being a colony of Spain made them more inclined to intermarry with Mexican immigrants, or that the experience of the Vietnamese and the Cambodians, who were fleeing from war instead of making a choice to move for financial reasons, would necessarily be more difficult and wrenching.

The book was also extremely helpful because Takaki would continue to return to each ethnic group at different periods in time so you could see not just how each ethnic group's experience was similar or different to others', but also how all the experiences changed over the decades in response to changes in immigration policy, colonialism in Asia, WWII and economic development.

I found it fascinating to read about all the different second-generation Asian-Americans, how similar their expereinces were no matter what group they were from or what decade they grew up in. Of course, I am probably conflating many of the differences because I personally liked knowing that people not of my generation had the same problems with generational differences + cultural differences with their parents, how they all struggled with issues of identity and where they belonged and what their relationship was to their Asian heritage and their American citizenship.

There were also times I wanted to stand up and yell at people for all the racism through the decades, for their inability to distinguish between "Chinks" and "Japs" and how that affected different ethnicities, how quickly public opinion could change (anti-Japanese during WWII versus anti-Chinese during the Cold War). I keep wanting to generalize and say that so many of the ethnic groups were treated alike by the government: first the scares about California not being white and the Asians overrunning everything, then the immigration laws being tightened, then wars in which certain Asian nations were seen as the enemy (Vietnam, Japan, China, Korea) and the inevitable grouping of all Asians into those enemy groups.

It brought home that "I can't tell Asians apart" isn't always a harmless statement facilitated by poor facial recognition (for people already firing up their commenting engines: I know it often is poor facial recognition. I personally suck at it. But because of the effects of this aspect of poor facial recognition coupled with racism, you have Filipinos and Koreans being mistaken for the Japanese during WWII, when being mistaken for being Japanese could be very harmful.

There's so much in this book that angers me -- not the writing, but the actual historical events. It is so frustrating and hurtful to read about a good century or so of racism, particularly because I didn't know about most of the things in this book, aside from the internment of Japanese Americans during WWII.

I like the interspersal of personal narratives, history and poetry written by Asian Americans; it made the book flow much faster. Highly recommended.

Comments

[littlebutfierce]

Have you ever read Helen Zia's Asian American Dreams? I read it shortly after the Takaki a few years ago, so some of the general history she wrote about was repetitive to me, but her book takes more of a personal view on a lot of the stuff that was interesting (for example, her involvement in the Vincent Chin case). Another good one.

[oracne.livejournal.com]

Ooh, that sounds interesting.

[vom-marlowe.livejournal.com]

That sounds very interesting and apropros for our sekrit project. I will find a copy. We didn't cover much in my history classes. I learned a lot more Asian immigration history when I visited a tiny historical museum in Astoria, a Northwest port that was a destination for a lot of Asian shipping.

[mystickeeper.livejournal.com]

I haven't yet read 'Strangers in a Strange Land,' but we read 'A Different Mirror: A History of Multicultural America' in an ethnic studies class that I took here in college, and I would recommend this book as well. I would imagine, though, that the chapters on Asian Americans are similar to what you've already read.

[loligo.livejournal.com]

for people already firing up their commenting engines: I know it often is poor facial recognition

You're letting people take the easy way out today *g*, so I'll be the hard-ass and argue that there is a huge racial component to this, though not necessarily a malicious one.

The area of social psychology that deals with how we process information about other people is called (not surprisingly) social cognition, and the number one, most generalizable result of all kinds of social cognition research is that our brains are lazy. We take cognitive shortcuts wherever and whenever possible, and rarely are these shortcuts something that we're consciously aware of.

When we meet new people, we put in the least amount of effort needed to yield a useful identification. Because people of color are numerically less common, people can get away with "the Asian one" or "the black one" without ever looking closer, and they'll still have a reasonable chance of recognizing that person in that context again. Throw someone in a context where most people are Asian (*or* a context where there are immediate negative consequences to misidentifying the Asians who are there, e.g. the Asians are in positions of power), and you can be sure that Asians will stop looking "all alike" pretty darn quickly. People will have to make the effort to notice other cues.

I was amazed at how quickly this happened to me when I spent three weeks in China. I mean, I never cognitively believed that all Asians looked alike, but my brain is as lazy as anyone else's and I'd never been in a situation before where I had to pay immediate attention to the differences if I wanted to navigate the social world. By the end of the trip, the hundreds of differences in facial features, skin color, hair color & texture, etc., jumped out at me as being huge, obvious, and meaningful. It was kind of like learning to read a different language.

[yeloson.livejournal.com]

There's definitely this interesting narrative of racism with regards to asians that gets smoothed over a lot in general history. The sheer number of people getting run out of town, lynched, etc. is something you don't hear about.

There's this interesting re-writing of the narrative- where suddenly (lighter skin) asians are held up as the model minority against darker, browner folks, in order to enlist them as allies in oppression. It doesn't help to remind them that they have been, and can be, lynched just like the rest of the colored folk...

[oyceter]

I own it and I started reading the first few chapters maybe back in 2004 or 2005, and then I probably got distracted by some other shiny object. But I'm going to dig it back up again, thanks for the rec!

[oyceter]

It is! I particularly like how he tries to cover all Asian-American groups -- I mean, he's probably still not getting most of them, but I'm just so happy that it goes beyond Chinese and Japanese.

[oyceter]

Indeed, I picked it up for Sekrit Project! It's really fascinating.

[oyceter]

Oh cool, thanks for the rec! Information on non-Asian races/ethnicities in the US (and elsewhere, of course) is always good.

[oyceter]

Oh, all that is very interesting! The shortcuts make a lot of sense, as do penalties making you subconsciously or consciously work harder at trying to recognize people.

I'm never quite sure what to say when I get mistaken for another Asian -- there were three other Asian women in my group at work, and all of us are approximately the same height, with around the same length hair, and two of us have heavy-framed glasses, and we were mixed together all the time.

On the one hand, I can see all the factors aside from race (height, hair length, glasses) making it confusing. On the other, there's always that niggling thought in the back of your head wondering if it could be something else.

Anyway, got off track, really meant to say thank you for the info!

[oracne.livejournal.com]

I was just able to mooch a copy of the book, too--good AND free!

[oyceter]

Very much so! I knew maybe 5% of the info in the book, and only had a strong impression of the Japanese internment camps prior to reading it.

Takaki also spends a chapter on the model minority myth and how it's a) not true, b) damages race relations on a whole, and c) only applies to certain Asians (usually East Asians) and disregards others. Also, what you mentioned about lighter-skinned folk being held up as a model is so true and what I hate the most about the "But POC are racist too!" speak.

[rachelmanija.livejournal.com]

Have you read Anne Fadiman's The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down? It's about one particular incident involving a Hmong family in Fresno, but there's a lot of background about the Hmong immigrant ecxperience in the US in general. (Racism, severe culture shock on the part of the Hmong, more culture shock on the part of Americans, and a tragic lack of flexibility in various American organizations.)

The particular story she focuses on reminded me a lot of the culture clashes that went on at the ashram between the Ahmednagar farmers and other blue-collar worker, the ashram's upper-class Indians who were not from Ahmednagar, and the ashram's Americans. And also of the history of AIDS education.

I don't know if Takaki gets into the Hmong experience in depth, but I found their story really interesting, and (despite some similarities) different in some substantial ways from that of other Asian immigrant experiences I've read about.

[oyceter]

I haven't! I was a bit turned off by her in Ex Libris, which I didn't really like that much.

Takaki alas doesn't go into the Hmong experience at length, but they do get a chapter, and it's very interesting and very different from the usual East Asian immigrant experience.

[yeloson.livejournal.com]

"But POC are racist too!" speak.

The counterpoint I usually offer is this- does this mean it's ok to lynch white people? After all, "White people lynched folks too!"...

[littlebutfierce]

Heh, that's exactly why I haven't finished Yellow yet, though it's been sitting on my bookcase for a while.

[hesychasm]

I just noticed this review. I will check this book out -- it sounds like Zinn's People's History, but for Asians. (g) And I'll check out the Zia, too.

[oyceter]

It is quite excellent, and thankfully very readable as well!

I need to move the Zia up a little on the to-be-read pile.

[smillaraaq.livejournal.com]

Along with all of the various other factors coming into play, I think that one thing that can come up a lot with this sort of misidentification is people simply see what they EXPECT to see -- and if your appearance doesn't conform very very obviously to the expected stereotype, and/or you're from a particularly small minority that they may not have had a lot of personal exposure to, they just aren't expecting to encounter someone like you in the first place.

My mother's experiences in different parts of the US give a pretty good example of this phenomenon. She's nearly full-blooded (well, at least so far as generations within recent genealogical memory go, but considering how much intermarriage has gone on there for centuries I would not at all be surprised if there was more mixing far enough back that it's not even remembered any more.) Anyway, she LOOKS very Indian, but not in that tall-sculpted-willowy Hollywood Indian sort of way; she's short and round, her hair is black-brown rather than jet black, wavy rather than poker-straight. If she's back in the small towns nearest the rez, non-Indian folks have no trouble telling she's Indian; they've seen plenty of other older ladies who look just like her, so their personal experiences give them more of a mental map to work with than stuff like Disney's Pocahontas...and there's the expectation that here in this place, close to the rez, run into someone who looks like that and they probably are native.

But get away from the rez, and suddenly you're around folks who may not have met other Indian folks before. And in those settings, she'd get taken for whatever dark-haired, tan-skinned ethnicity was regionally prevalent. In the islands, folks usually thought she was Native Hawaiian, or maybe Portuguese. In California, folks thought she was Mexican. In New York City, folks thought she was Puerto Rican.

So along with lack of attention to detail, I think that folks often just don't feel the need to look all that closely because they tend to sort of go on autopilot based on their usual expectations; they spot something obvious like skin color or eye shape, and then instantly slot that person into the category of whatever group they're used to associating that appearance with. If you're Indian, depending on your appearance you'll tend to get tagged as white if you're light enough, black if you're dark enough and/or have kinkier hair, and whatever the most common local brown minority is if your appearance in between. Perhaps this phenomenon comes into play with some instances of misidentification of specific Asian groups too?

[oyceter]

*nods* That does make sense.

Though now, I'm a little more leery of the "they all look the same" argument, even though I have difficulty telling Asians apart as well, if there are no dress/hair/clothes cues. After learning about Vincent Chin and Balbir Singh Sodhi, both killed for being mistaken for people of other ethnicities. Because... it would be harmless, if it weren't for the possible real-life consequences.

Eep, now I am depressing myself.

[smillaraaq.livejournal.com]

And Sodhi's case, and the other Sikh men getting harassed post-9/11, there were actual clothing cues, and those were misread too. Depressing all around...

On the native side, the misidentification can be downright surreal at points. A Tsalagi friend of mine has actually had bigots use the "why don't you go back where you came from" line on him. o_O What, the INS deports people to North Carolina now?