Author Archives: Winnie Chang

1. In Rachel Rubin’s “Cyberspace Y2K,” she talks about how the Asian American community uses magazines, or what was commonly known as “zines” at the time, to spread awareness of the Asian American community as well as debunk Asian stereotypes that other have.
2. One of the popular zines at the time was Bamboo Girl, which was created by Sabrina Margarita Alcantara-Tan in 1995. Many zines, were used by many young Asian Americans (especially females), to express themselves outside of what most people thought of them. The content in Bamboo Girl challenges ideas of racism, sexism, and homophobia from the perspective of a feminist Filipino/Asian Pacific Islander, which Tan herself identifies with. The tone of her zine is very casual, humorous, and unfiltered. One thing she did was having a “Stupid Stereotype” page dedicated to debunking Asian stereotypes, such as “Filipinas are sluts” (Bamboo Girl, Issue #2, pg.40). She then goes to explain how that may be true for some, but often times these women did it because unfortunately they were poor and this was a source of income for them.
3. One of the main terms that Rubin uses is “zine,” which is basically another word for magazine, but magazine is more commonly seen and used. A magazine is like one giant compilation of zines published by a big company, and a zine is like a smaller work by one person.
4. There is one section where Rubin talks about what makes someone Asian American and the color of hair, and how Asians were known to have long black hair. The question of how hairstyle and hair color affected others’ interpretation of the Asian body has crossed my mind before. Nowadays, it is a trend among many Asians to dye their hair blonde or brown or even a silver platinum color. I questioned whether, maybe subconsciously, Asians like this trend because of their perceptions of Caucasians or Westerners, how stereotypically white people are portrayed with blonde or light colored hair.

1. In Margaret Cho’s memoir I’m The One That I Want, she describes what it was like to be a part of the first Asian American sitcoms to air on American television and the struggles that came with it, specifically about Asian women beauty standards set by non-Asian women and also about trying to find her identity. Was she Asian or was she American? For her, it felt like she had to choose one or the other.
2. Cho experiences many struggles in her journey to become an actress. It starts with her strict, traditional, Korean family, in which she lived in the basement of her household because her father couldn’t stand the sight of her (105). Stereotypically speaking, Cho may not have been her father’s “ideal” child since Asian people were supposed to be smart and get “good jobs.” Cho was unemployed and addicted to drugs at the time when she got the offer to be in All-American Girl. Cho puts her trust in the producers because “[she] thought they all knew what they were doing” (106). After her screening, she gets a call from the producer, who basically tells Cho that her face was too big and that she needed to lose weight in order to be in the show. So they put her on a ridiculously extreme exercise regimen and diet, causing her to lose 30 pounds within 2 weeks, which eventually led to kidney failure. Clearly, this was not good for her health or well-being.
3. Cho mentions that she often checked the tabloid, which are like smaller versions of newspapers usually talking about some headline or sensational story. Throughout the memoir, Cho describes times when she was bombarded by reporters. One of them even asked if it was true that the network asked her to lose weight to play the role of herself. The fact that Cho was asked about such a sensitive topic was already distressing enough, but one of the producers answered the question for her before she could say anything and lied to the press that it wasn’t true.
4. I think the struggle that Margaret Cho went through regarding living up to beauty standards and trying to find her identity is not something unfamiliar to Asians as well as Asian Americans today. In the Korean music industry, many female idols are pressured into maintaining a certain weight and having a slim figure and pale skin because that’s what people are attracted to.

1. Margaret Hillenbrand first lays out the issues that arise when Asian American males are portrayed on screen in her article “Of Myths and Men: Better Luck Tomorrow and the Mainstreaming of Asian America Cinema.” She characterizes the representation of Asian American men in cinema with three different categories:
   close-focus empiricism, political grandstanding of one kind or another, and art house avant-gardism. She then uses specific films such as Wayne Wang’s Eat a Bowl of Tea and Better Luck Tomorrow to provide examples of the different representations of Asian American men in cinema.
2. Hillenbrand uses the film Eat a Bowl of Tea as an example of a film that portrayed Asian American men using close-focus empiricism. In the film, there is a particular scene in which the bachelors have a party for a young Asian newlywed couple. One of them claims this as a “historical” moment. This claim in addition to the lack of female characters in this scene is meant to emphasize how many of these bachelors left their wives and children back home during the war, and due to the Chinese Exclusion Act and the anti-miscegenation laws. As Rachel Moon mentions in her blog post, many Asian American films attempt to enlighten its audiences; however, often times these audiences are not the target audience. Films such as Better Luck Tomorrow use common cinematic genres to portray Asian American men in a way that strides away from the stereotypical “model minority” character. Perhaps ironically, the Asian American male protagonists in this film who are supposed to be the smart and good students are feared by the white/Caucasian characters who are the jocks and the cool kids at school.
3. One word that comes up in Hillenbrand’s article is ‘metacinema,’ which is a term used by a film to inform the audience that the film they are watching is fictional. I find this interesting and a little ironic because these so-called metacinema films are used to convey messages pertaining to real social issues regarding Asian American culture, struggles, and representations of men.
4. Another metacinema film that I was reminded of while watching Better Luck Tomorrow is a Thai movie called Bad Genius. The female protagonist starts out as an extremely smart student (or at least she is good at studying). She portrays a very stereotypical character of an obedient Asian child who listens to her parents. However, after a series of events, she decides to help her classmates cheat on exams as far as to travelling abroad to Australia to help them cheat on the SAT, breaking the stereotype of the ‘good Asian student.’ I think the catch to this is that she was trying to earn money to help lift some of the burden from her single dad. In a sense, she still demonstrated filial piety but in the wrong way.

1.In Lisa Sun-Hee Park’s article “Assimilation,” Park focuses on the idea of assimilation and its complexities regarding how Asian Americans are affected by this process and the ‘model minority’ myth that has been imposed on Asian Americans. Asian Americans were characterized as ‘low-skilled, low wage laborers’ (pg. 16), but have been shown to made tremendous growth from the past. Park brings out different perspectives of the term ‘assimilation,’ but she ultimately argues that it is not simple or natural even though it is seen as a common phenomenon in society.

2.Park states a dictionary definition of the term ‘assimilation’ as “take in (information, ideas, or culture) and understand fully” and “absorb and integrate.” She also points out the paradox that Asian Americans are simultaneously being included and excluded due to the issue that assimilation is necessary in order for non-Americans to hold U.S. citizenship. However, Asian Americans are perceived as outsiders who need help and need to be saved and educated. It is a contradiction that Asian Americans need to be foreigners in order to be included in the United States.

3.Park uses different concepts of assimilation from a variety of sources. In the beginning of her article, she talks about W.E.B. Du Bois’ perspective on assimilation and how he thought assimilation was not needed because he did not perceive the differences in cultures as the problem between races. It was the perception that one race was superior or inferior to another that was the issue.

4.I think the concept of assimilation is not something only applicable to Asian Americans. Assimilation is something that already started happening way back during the times of the Incan empire. The Incan empires vastness was mainly due to all the acquisitions of land they achieved through conquering smaller nations, each with culture unique to themselves. In order to manage ruling over so many different people with different dialects, the Inca tried to assimilate everyone under one language (quechua). However, in doing so, it was like taking away part of someone’s culture.