The Woman Warrior and the complexity of Chinese American identity | Malinda Lo
For those of us who occupy the spaces between identities — because of our personalities or because we have a foot in more than one subgroup — finding representation anywhere, in any form of media, can be extremely rare. It can be tempting to hand a person a book and say, “This is where you fit in,” but in many, many cases, that won’t be true. It may end up alienating the person more than making them feel welcome.
this is some spot-on commentary.
my high school English teacher who was also Asian American herself gave me a copy of Woman Warrior to read. while I liked what I read and if I had to pick right now I’d pick Maxine Hong Kingston over Amy Tan, what’s frustrating was that in high school I felt like these were my only two options in terms of being represented as a Chinese American in Literature with a capital L. I read other books like Snow Flower and the Secret Fan (which, despite some pretty terrible purple prose and holy shit orientalist stereotypes, I enjoyed because of the relationship between these two girls who loved each other so much) and Memoirs of a Geisha (wow barf). this was super frustrating.
a little later into my high school career though our local library hired two really awesome, socially aware librarians who kickstarted the “teen” section and made sure to include a lot of really diverse novels and graphic novels and even a lot of manga. it was there I was introduced to folks like Gene Yang and a poetry anthology called Yellow Gurl where all the writers were Asian American teens which was super cool. also Street Magic by Tamora Pierce, which was the first time I had ever seen an Asian character in a high fantasy setting who was a badass and a mage. I saw myself more in those characters than I ever did in anything else I’d read up until then.
granted, I also read all of these books with a divided attitude because I was also somewhat resentful, like, “wow you’re only recommending me this because I’m Asian”, which is an attitude I’m still struggling to unlearn. it depends on the day, but sometimes when people ask “oh have you read this it has an Asian main character” half the time I’m like oh cool! I have to check that out!!! but sometimes I get ornery like…why are you expecting me to be some kind of authority on Asian American identity when I just want to draw my comics and I don’t speak for anyone but myself?
I think the only way to combat this box that we all get stuffed into because of x y and z is to keep making art to not necessarily INTENTIONALLY break all of the stereotypes but to let as many people’s voices be heard in whatever way they want to be.
