Author Archives: Xingtong Zhou

Min Hyoung Song, the writer of this article “How Good It Is to Be a Monkey: Comics, Racial Formation, an American Born Chinese”, as shown in the title, mainly talks about how the comics like “American Born Chinese” help the society knows how the racism was like back in the 18th & 19th centuries and  understands that race is part of our everyday lives which have been defined by both realist narratives and genre conventions.

Most of the examples Song uses in his article are from “American Born Chinese”. One of the most impressive examples Song uses in his/her article is the Wei-Chen(Chinese America) and Jin’s (Japanese American) story. The song specifically talks about this examples many times and the Wei-Chen’s keep-going exploring of self-identify. The change on this character might heartbroken some of the readers but it’s not surprising the readers as well when considering about how the every-day-exist racism can change a person. “When Jin confronts Wei-Chen for the first time after their falling out, Wei-Chen appears behind the wheel of his rice rocket, large sunglasses covering half his face and his eyes, earring dangling from both ears, …He is far from the unassuming boy that originally befriended Jin(90)”. Wei-Chen was then shown as a small, fragile, emotionally vulnerable monkey. As Song concludes, “in its absence what is revealed is a history of racial representation that remains very much a part of how Wei-Chen must continue to define himself (90)”. The big change in this character shows readers the racism makes people doing things like this, and it should never be forgotten.

One of the key-term being largely used in this article which is also connected with the example I just mentioned is “subhuman”, means less than human. It refers that only Chinese, Japanese, and Filipinos were compared to animals like monkey and ape. It helps readers understand how serious the racism was like in the 18th and 19th centuries and which exactly kind of racism Song is talking about in this article.

At page 84, Song mentions the word ” Asian American masculinity” which is also connected with the Wei-Chen character and the word was valueless to the older American society. This reminds me of the earlier article we read in this class–“Who Am I? Creating an Asian American Identity and Culture”. This article also mentions about the 18th&19th – century American society tends to portrayed Asian men as a lake of masculinity or even impotent while Asian women were “reduced to “exotic” sex objects (51)”. The purpose of both of these two authors mentioning these is trying to help people image how the American-society racism was like during that time.

Benjamin Pimentel mainly argues about the Asian English-language publicans, the founders’ background, purpose, and experiences; the hard time the publicans took through before they showed up in front of the public; the benefit(for the most time) and shortness the publicans bring to their target Asian American community; the significant and influences of these publicans.

Almost all the examples Pimentel gives mentions about how the publicans struggle between the young and older-generation readers, mainly about how to balance the distribution between this two generation, which are the older- immigration generation and the younger-American-born generation. To people who don’t really know about the backgrounds’ and values’ differences exist between these two generations, James Ryu’s (the editor-in-chief of the KoreAm Journal) example would show readers how the struggles were mainly about. In Ryu’s example, Pimentel states that the older immigrate generation are more interested in socio-historical issues while the younger ones care more about the pop culture and the youth issues. Pimentel reminds that most of Ryu’s staffs were the younger second-generation Korean Americans. Pimentel shows us the gap between the generations by giving the example as the following: “When he(Ryu) assigned a staff member to write a profile on a Korean American preacher who helped set up a university in China, the writer turned in an uninspired piece of work. Most contributors would rather do stories on Korean American personalities on MTV or the top-ten nightclubs (51)”. This example shows us the gap between the two generations vividly and helps readers to image how struggling it could be for the publicans to balance between the two groups of readers.

Just like what I wrote in the former paragraph, Pimentel goes through the struggles brought about by the differences between the generations almost in every Asian-English-language publican’s example he gives. He uses many different terms to describe the American-born, younger generations who are more Americanized comparing to their parents’ generation. For example: “MTV generation(49)” in the AsianWeek example; “second-generation Korean Americans (50)” in the KoreAm Journal example; “the second generation (52) “, and “intergenerational(53)” in the India-West example. All of these terms implicate the children of the immigrant generation who are more Americanized than their parents, and it helps complete readers understand better.

In Pimentel’s article, there was an unforgettable sentence at the end of this article which was said by Yuchengco, the Filipinas Magazine’s founder, “I do this because I love the community (the Filipino Americans) and it’s my way of giving back.” This shows the ingrained connections between different Asian-American groups, we hear facts about how they help each other and unit together all the time. This reminds me about our former reading “Success Story of One Minority Group In U.S” from U.S News and World Report, December 26, 1966. Although the report is a little bit idealistic and segmentary, part of its theme is similar to Pimentel was trying to show in his article, which is the ingrained connection between different Asian-American groups. In this report, it state:” A sizable number of Chinese-Americans who would move out if they wanted to are staying in the NewYork’s Chinatown–not because of fears of discrimination on the outside, but because they prefer their own people and culture (8, U.S News and World Report).” This shows that most of the Asian American group are not just seeing themselves as simply Americans but Americans who have root culture in other countries and just like what both stated in Pimentel’s article and this 1966’s report, Asian Americans have such an ingrained feeling of connection with each other and their root culture.

Just like what John Fong states in his article, “Having a film in a theater doesn’t necessarily mean people will be sitting there watching it”, one of the hardest parts for the Asian American filmmakers is to earn more audiences. In this article, Fong mainly argues the methods did/do the Asian American filmmakers used for getting more potential audiences, which are mainly the Asian American grassroots community, how these brought Asian American films to where it is today, and the reason of why the filmmakers are doing it in these ways which is mainly because of the limited resources and money they have.

Fong uses many Asian American films as his support evidence, the most impressive one to me is how the film The Debut using a good timing at the “Closing Night of the San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival as a kick off (Fong 6)”, the immense meetings presentations to the target audiences (the Filipinos), the massive email advertising, film stars meeting with audiences…and so on. It’s not hard to imagine how these were like when Fong listing the specific methods the filmmakers used for letting more target audiences know about their film before it released. Fong indicates:”Amidst calls to rally around the historic moment of a Filipino American film being released in the US, and a genuine interest in individuals wanting to be a part of something, something special did happen, and the rest is history (Fong 6)”. After giving all the examples, this analysis strongly persuades readers why and how the advertising methods worked so successfully which brought filmmakers “over $1 million in the box office”.

The key term Fong uses in his article is the “big first weekend”, derived from another key term — “APA First Weekend Club”, email newsletters inform target audiences about the releasing time of Asian American films. “Big first weekend” means to earn a huge box office on the film’s first weekend of release, so that it can ensure they have enough money to hold more releases of this movie in the future.

The strategies Fong argues remind me a recent movie — “Crazy Rich Asians”. The method the “Crazy-Rich-Asian” filmmakers used to reach the target audiences is very similar to what Fong writes in his article. For example, the actress Michelle Yeoh who participate in one of the main roles in this film is a Chinese Malaysian who is very well-known in Chinese film markets while other actors/actresses are not. As the growth of globalization, films are not only earning box office from one country but to all the courses where it could earn a lot. China as a country with a large population, most people in China have money and time to watch movies as many as they like to. So the movie was introduced by many famous bloggers on Weibo, which is a very popular Chinese social media like the Twitter to the U.S. a long time ago before it’s going to release. The bloggers mainly mentioned the participant of Michelle Yeoh to gain people’s attention. I’m a Chinese and I knew this film from Weibo since the end of the April.

In this article, Lisa Sun-Hee Park mainly introduces 3 changes on the definition of the word “assimilation” and analysis factors and the shortnesses behind them, and at last gives her own view on “assimilation” which is that the meaning behind this word and the purpose of using it, is a complex on-going changing process which contains different rules and multiple powers’ forces’ effects.

To show readers how the “assimilation” complex, Park uses Asian Americans as a whole group to show readers the paradox behind this word. First, Park indicates the myths the American society have on the Asian American group by using the Pew report researched by P. Taylor in 2010 as an example. In this report, it states that the Asian Americans are the group who” most likely of any major racial or ethnic group in America to live in mixed neighborhoods and to marry across racial lines (Park 16)”. To supports that the Pew report was a myth, Park indicates that the truth about the Asian American is that “today’s Asian Americans represent a dramatically bifurcated immigration system (16)”, and mentions Park and Park 2005 and Hing 1993 as a checklist for readers to learn detailed discussions of immigration policy.

Park’s article is mainly about the word “Assimilation” and I have mentioned the view she provides at the beginning of my blog. However, there are also many other key terms Park uses to help us understand her thesis. For example, Park indicates that it was the racism but not the racial difference caused the marginalizes African Americans became a problem. “Racism” means treat people in different race unfairly and violence against them just because of their different race. It is a term separates from “racial difference”. One is a social phenomenon, one is a natural phenomenon.

This reminds me about a textbook in my former class which called “The Origins of the Modern World”, wrote by Robbert B. Marks, 3rd edition, published by Rowman  & Littlefield in 2015. The book was mainly about why the there are concepts of “the rise of the European; how they rosed, and why we should see the rising process as inevitable. Marx talks about how the eurocentrism formed and discovers many myths the Europeans had on both themselves and the rest of the world. For example, for the eurocentrism they think they are born with some kind of good conditions and they are always better than the rest of the world. Marx uses the Indian Ocean trade as an example to show how the Europeans were limited by the Ottoman Empire and broke the well running trade by bringing forces while the old European historians are telling fake, different stories. The reason I’m talking about this book is that both Park and Marx emphasized that the societies, state (or empires in the past) affect people’s aspect of things. A word or an object can be understood very differently due to the viewers are observing it from different aspects and the meaning of an object keep changing due to the viewers’ are affecting by the on-going changed societies’ values.