likes, dislikes, and hidden dimensions of the asian-american cultural experience

this morning I woke up swallowed by dislikes. everything felt off since the moment I was shaken awake from my unconscious dream state by the penetrating sound of construction at seven thirty in the morning. the color of the sky was off, air quality muggy, and as I stepped outside it reeked of strong smell of fried food. 

it is fascinating how the face of a city can change so much with and without the presence of blue skies, sunshine, and clear air. anyways, I ran some errands and returned home, immediately switching my clothes back into my father’s “vintage” baggy faded black t shirt that unironically states “high definition” across the center in a font reminiscient of 90s cybernetica, shedding my contact lenses for huge glasses spanning the length of half my face, and winding my hair up into a loose bun. ahhhh much better. with a cup of sencha, I feel a little less chaos in my body. with a second cup of sencha, I feel grounded and back to normal state of sanity.

I really am a sensitive person, and sometimes it astounds me when I look at other people and realize how much time I need to spend in my day to day tending to my senses relative to others. it is as if my senses are tuned up to a level where nothing can surpass my awareness… and I somehow take the inputs of my sense so seriously. or rather, my body reacts to them quite fully. therefore, I spend much of my energy and time finding and creating the right sensory space for myself where I can feel comfortable. maybe it is the plight and gift of the artist to feel everything to the core…

 I recently finished reading hua hsu’s “stay true.” it was an interesting story for me personally, purely on the premise of the shared experiences with the author growing up in the same city, attending the same high school, being formed by cultural forces so similar, yet having these experiences decades apart. disseminated across time and space. in my reading of it, some things were familiar, and others were not. overall, it felt as if it had the style, tone, and content of an asian-american person who seems to identify with their american-ness more than their asian-ness. which is ultimately the mainsteam modality of existence for asians in america so far, privileging the american experience over the asian experience, holding it higher up in esteem. yes, there were fascinating and beautiful aspects to the book that I could relate with, and I still appreciated that someone who is asian-american wrote this as their form of authentic expression, but it had the taste and translucent privileged stylistic touches of a white east coaster, which makes sense considering that the writer now lives in new york and writes for the new yorker. I didn’t think the work was so radically good that it deserved the pulitzer prize, but rather that it was digestible enough for the american gaze, yet “foreign” and “flavored” enough, just ever so slightly, to taunt the imagination of the largely white jury members who decided who receives the pulitzer prize. 

I am definitely frustrated at the ways in which asian-american existence is portrayed and sanctioned in the public consciousness. everything is magnetically drawn to canons, and what about the narratives that don’t fit neatly into preconceived notions for public consumption? I felt similarly about the play I recently watched at the asian-american focused theater in little tokyo. superficial banter, crude sex related jokes, only a sliver of a deep message here and there. 

even though I was born in america, maybe I’m just one of those rare types that seems to identify more with the asian in me than the american. or rather, my imagination of the asian identity based on my relatively limited experiences living in different parts of asia, being connected to different lineages in asia, and engaged with asian culture through music, film, books, and other forms of culture.