"To be yellow... is to be weak and small. Yellow is to be chicken. I am not yellow... When the yellow chicks grow up they turn white."

 - Naomi (Obasan)

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Binaries are forever woven into our literature, whether in classical antiquity and mythological archetypes or contemporary fiction and the fairy tales of our childhood. As Hegel posits, this binary relationship is more than often “unequal and opposed… one is the independent consciousness… the other is the dependent consciousness whose essential nature is simply to live or to be for another” (544). This lord/bondsman (master/slave) relationship in turn mirrors the other significant binaries found in society – good/evil, white/black, man/woman, etc – in which one side is always favored above the other.

But what about West/East?

Post-colonial theory states that the East is a fabricated construct of the West, that is, what defines Asia, its inhabitants and culture is what the West believes or deems it to be. Following this line of argument, it is clear that the West holds considerable power and influence over the East. The West is the master, the East its slave. Edward Said argues in “Orientalism” that in addition to being a cultural hub, “the Oriental has helped to define Europe (or the West) as its contrasting image, idea, personality, experience… The Oriental is an integral part of European material civilization and culture” (1866). Even more importantly, Said argues that by “setting [European culture] against the Orient as a sort of surrogate and even underground self,” it grabbed the reins of control and authority (1868). The combination of European colonizing much of the Asian continent/Pacific islands and viewing the native people as something uncivilized and in dire need of cultural edification allowed the White Man to tip the scale of balance between the two parts of the world. Classic literature is filled with stories of power struggles and the fear of the “Other” – for example, Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, or even Shelley’s Frankenstein.

 

(Larger version found here )

 

This semester, I took Asian American Fiction with Professor Turnmeyer. I signed up for the class for my last general education credits, not really expecting much self-discovery. I guess I figured that since I was Asian American, the class would be “easy” – or at the least, interesting and relevant to me. Part of what I had to come to terms with – aside from considerations about my own identity as half Japanese/half white and confronting the horrible reality of my grandparent’s internment during WWII – is that the East really is modeled and controlled by the West. At least, that’s what I got from the fiction we read. So instead of applying the theory to a single text, I’m going to show how it appears in works by several Asian American authors.

Throughout three works of fiction that we read in class – Don Lee’s Yellow, Joy Kogawa’s Obasan and Jessica Hagedorn’s Dogeaters – there was the overwhelming sense that most of the characters were struggling to define themselves against the stereotypes and assumptions that surround the distinction of “Asian” and more importantly, “Asian American.” Coming from backgrounds of Korean, Japanese, and the Pilipino ethnicities – respectively – the stories address the schism between being one race and having another nationality (for example, being Japanese by genetics but American by place of birth). Lee and Hagedorn were born in Asia and subsequently moved the United States later in their lives. Kogawa is an exception, as she was born in Vancouver, Canada, but perhaps her story is much harder to stomach: the internment of Japanese-Canadians during WWII saw Canadian citizens stripped of their nationality simply because of their Japanese ancestry.

Characters in Lee’s short stories (Yellow) often note times and places when they have heard or been confronted with Asian stereotypes. In the story “Yellow”, the character Danny Kim notes that a woman he used to date had the peculiar habit of mocking people, and “eventually her stereotypes about Asians became a source for her romantic repartee… ‘Your manhood,’ she said slyly, glancing down at his cock. ‘If I could find it.’” (Lee 197). Two woman poets – one Korean, the other Chinese – in “The Price of Eggs in China” are deemed the “Oriental Hair Poets, The Braids of the East and the New Asian Poe-tresses” by literary critics who “couldn’t resist reviewing them together” (Lee 20) as if those of Asian descent are interchangeable and not viewed as individuals. Obasan’s narrator Naomi describes a game called The Yellow Peril, ironically made in China, in which “to be yellow in the Yellow Peril game is to be weak and small. Yellow is to be chicken… When the yellow chicks grow up they turn white” (Kogawa 181).

However, of the fictional works we read, Hagedorn’s Dogeaters is the most critical look at the effects of post-colonialism found in a disjointed, un-linear and fragmented account of the citizens of Manila. In fact, the chaotic and uneven description can also be prescribed to all the characters, from The President and The First Lady (obvious caricatures of real-life corrupt Philippine president Ferdinand Marcos and his wife Imelda) to Joey, a gay, drug-addicted prostitute, to Rio, the young narrator – the citizens of Manila are touched in some way by the idea of Western cultural supremacy. The book opens in 1956 with young Rio and her cousin Pucha coming out of an air-conditioned theater after seeing the film All That Heaven Allows. The first page itself makes direct references to Technicolor, Rock Hudson and other film stars, Hollywood, Christmas, “perfect picture-book American tableau,” and the fact that the theater shows “English Movies Only!” (Hagedorn 3). It’s not until the second page where code-switching (switching between languages) appears, a reference to drinking “TruCola” is made and the fact arises that the girls are accompanied by a servant that the reader begins to get the idea that this story isn’t set in the United States. As such, throughout the rest of the book are references to other “Americanized” consumer products like SPORTEX, a sort of Pilipino Wal-Mart, where Rio’s mother buys Miracle Whip and Kraft Mayonnaise along with “local items [like] patis, kalamansi and shrimp bagoong” (Hagedorn 234). There is also a beauty contest in “a nation betrayed and then united only by our hungry for glamour and our Hollywood dreams” (Hagedorn 101).

If Said is correct in saying that “the relationship between the Occident and Orient is a relationship of power, of domination, of varying degrees of a complex hegemony” (1870) then it is obvious that the power and domination lies in the hands of the West. Unable to escape the cultural expectation that “West is best,” all three authors are forced to forgo their cultural identities to align themselves with what or who’s in power. Lee’s characters in Yellow battle cultural stereotypes by acting “white” - most of his Asian male characters don’t speak another language other than English and participate in “white” sports like surfing and golf, instead of something “Asian” like karate or Tai-Chi – while Obasan’s narrator Naomi chooses to remain silent about her feelings on her family’s internment during the war in contrast with her Aunt Emily’s more vocal insurgence. And at the close of Dogeaters, the reader finds out that Rio moves to the United States – just like the author Hagedorn did – shortly after the events that unfold over the course of the story. When she returns to Manila, Rio finds herself “anxious and restless, at home only in airports” (Hagedorn 247). This fragmented, incoherent existence perfectly sums up the experience of being Asian American, of having to embody and satisfy two separate identities and somehow make them one. However, this struggle may be in vain, for in a binary relationship, one side must tip the scale and hold the power.

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Hagedorn, Jessica. Dogeaters. New York: Penguin Group, 1990. Print.

Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich. “Phenomenology of Spirit” The Norton Anthology of Theory & Criticism, 2^nd. Ed. Vincent B. Leitch. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2010. 544. Print.

Kogawa, Joy. Obasan. New York: Anchor Books, a Division of Random House, Inc., 1994. Print.

Lee, Don. Yellow: Stories. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., 2001. Print.

Said, Edward. “Orientalism.” The Norton Anthology of Theory & Criticism, 2^nd. Ed. Vincent B. Leitch. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2010.1866-1888. Print.

"She learns that to be happy, she has to be loved; to be loved, she has to await love...

...Woman is Sleeping Beauty, Cinderella, Snow White, the one who receives and endures. In songs and tales, the young man sets off to seek the woman; he fights against dragons, he combats giants; she is locked up in a tower, a palace, a garden, a cave, chained to a rock, captive, put to sleep: she is waiting…”

- Simone de Beauvoir (The Second Sex)

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Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own is often touted as one of the greatest feminist manifestos ever written. In it, she inspires woman to develop and wield their creativity and, through their written work, subvert the patriarchal domination of the fictional (and real) world. She argues that women need a room of one’s own, as well as financial freedom, in order to write fiction. Her plea is inspiring and revolutionary, yes, but Woolf neglects to address one major issue: women of less fortune and opportunities as the ones given to her as a white woman living in contemporary times.

And, unfortunately, women of these less-than-auspicious backgrounds and circumstances particularly abound in literature.

In Lisa See’s novel Snow Flower and the Secret Fan, two young Chinese girls, Lily and Snow Flower, paired together as laotongs, which means “old same.” This bond, created by the parents of the two girls, “[lasts] their entire lives… To have a laotong was very special indeed” (See 22). These matches are made to ensure not only a female support system for the young girls, but also for families to achieve higher societal standings. As such, Lily’s family agrees to match their daughter with Snow Flower, after hearing the other family comes from a much better social background than their own. Girls are used as commodities throughout the entire novel, “a means to make a profit” (See 23).

In the novel, a great deal of focus is put in the process of footbinding, a cruel but culturally-tolerated procedure of binding a young girl’s foot in order to achieve a perfect “lily flower”, a pair of beautiful and tiny feet which were greatly admired and desired in China. Lily explains the novel that “the poorest girls don’t have their feet bound at all. We know how they end up… sold as servants…” (See 17). The more perfect the feet, the better the chances of marrying into a respectable, wealthy family. During the lengthy process, in which toes are broken and curled into the foot, the girls are forced to reside solely in an upstairs room. Here they wait until their feet become completely “set” and there they stay until they are married off, never traveling much outside their own home. Lily speaks about this confinement when she says “I knew that men rarely entered the women’s chamber… Whether you are rich or poor, emperor or slave, the domestic sphere is for women and the outside sphere is for men. Women should not pass beyond the inner chambers in their thoughts or in their actions” (See 24).

While footbinding is not practiced today – it was outlawed in 1912, even though some survivors of the practice are still alive today (Lim 1) – the social and sexual restrictions placed on women remain much the same. Only the bindings have changed. Women today aren’t breaking and binding their feet, but they are breaking their bank accounts and binding themselves to a rigid ideal of what is “hot” or “normal” through the use of cosmetics, plastic surgery, gym equipment, diet fads, weight-loss pills, tanning salons, etc, etc. Susan Bordo speaks about this idea in “Unbearable Weight,” arguing that “our bodies are trained, shaped, and impressed with the stamp of prevailing historical forms of selfhood, desire, masculinity, femininity” (2240). While we as Westerns may regard the Eastern practice of footbinding as cruel, unnatural and highly grotesque, it may be wise to turn that critical eye on what women are doing to their bodies today. One look at some of the Playboy models or adult-film stars – even just opening up a copy of People magazine – shows us that the processes may change, but the ideology behind it remains the same: “our contemporary aesthetic ideal for women, an ideal whose obsessive pursuit has become the central torment of many women’s lives” (Bordo 2241).

Girls are taught from a young age – whether it’s directly from a parent or through immersion into today’s sexually-charged media – that they should aspire to occupy a particular role: namely, that of a wife. As de Beauvoir says “…the supreme necessity for woman is to charm a masculine heart; this is the recompense all heroines aspire to, even if they are intrepid, adventuresome; and only their beauty is asked of them in most cases” (305). Lily and Snow Flower, intelligent, daring and resourceful young women, are desired only for their beauty (or rather the beauty of their feet) and for their ability to produce children (or more specifically, male children). They suffer through the anguish of footbinding. They wait until a marriage match is made for them, with the family’s social standing the most important concern, with no regard to how they feel themselves. They produce children and sit quietly until they die, becoming “a totally other-oriented emotional economy” (Bordo 2245). While Lily enjoys a relatively happy marriage with her husband later in her life, Snow Flower is abused, mistreated and emotionally neglected at the hands of her husband and in-laws. But neither girl escapes the confines, whether physical or emotional, that bind women in a patriarchal society.

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de Beauvoir, Simone. The Second Sex. Ed. Constance Borde and Shelia Malovany-Chevallier. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc., 2009. 305. Google Book Search. Web. 16 May 2011. 

Bordo, Susan. “Unbearable Weight: Feminism, Western Culture, and the Body.” The Norton Anthology of Theory & Criticism, 2^nd. Ed. Vincent B. Leitch. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2010. 2240-2254. Print.

Lim, Louisa. “Painful Memories for China’s Footbinding Survivors.” NPR.org. NPR, 19 March 2007. Web. 16 May 2011.

See, Lisa. Snow Flower and the Secret Fan. New York: Random House, Inc. 2009. Print.