2018 has been a wonderful year for Asian representation (2018 Winter Olympics, BTS, Crazy Rich Asians, etc.) and I was looking forward to what perspectives this book had to offer. Rosenblum very clearly tries to integrate characters of color, as seen through naming practices (Huang, Koi, etc.) and geographic references- New Taipei, Guangzhou, etc.- but I continually found myself asking: for what purpose? Now, I agree that there doesn’t always need to be a strict purpose for diversity- this risks limiting stories of color (and people of color) to be strictly defined by their race and its accompanying struggles (see: caricatures of “black pain” and characters that aren’t “Asian enough”) - but as an Asian American a lot of these attempts at inclusiveness felt added in without any real meaning or logic.
Representation is about being able to see yourself in media; because of all the cliches and inaccuracies I don’t see any semblance of myself in this work, even though I, like Ahni, am “an unselected mix of Taiwan aboriginal, Han Chinese” (3). As the book went on I became so distracted by the Asian misconceptions that I couldn’t even focus on the plot or the blog post and was reading just to find the next gem of ignorance, including:
Rosenblum’s lack of awareness regarding how people of color really feel is also apparent in the quote “Casually, race no longer mattered. Deep down, it did” (159). Mary Rosenblum is a white author; as us people of color know, if race matters “deep down” (ie systematically [which is the definition of racism]) then race matters casually too. To believe that race would not matter casually in an otherwise inherently racist society is wishful thinking by someone who has not personally experienced racism. It also makes it even more difficult to buy into Rosenbaum's central argument of genetics being a deciding factor in identity. So why did Rosenblum as a white author take it upon herself to write a novel in which race relations, ethnic construction, and identity politics ae such integral themes? Other lingering questions that I have:
2 Comments
Sophia Rossetti
12/10/2018 11:52:17 am
Kate,
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Kate
12/10/2018 01:34:17 pm
Hi Sophia,
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KateHi, I'm Kate! I'm from Madison, WI and am planning on majoring in SIS focusing on East-Asia China. I like practicing kung fu, listening to music, and drinking bubble tea. Archives
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