I Have Chosen to Stay and Fight (5 page)

I care less about specific incidents than I do about the general disregard. The dismissal of our anger as a racial minority is worse than any slur or epithet because it undermines our ability to react to it. I would love to be a nice, happy, model minority and say that race isn't important, racism doesn't exist, but I would be lying.

white

I
would love to be white.

Not forever, but perhaps for the weekend. Don't you ever get sick of being a minority? I mean, there's the whole pride thing that a white
person doesn't get to have, because you can be anything and proud but you can't be white and proud because then you seem like you're a member of the Ku Klux Klan. Having a collective heritage that is oppressed and depressing can be a lovely way to spend time after dinner on the front porch as the sun goes down. Friendships can be forged on a legacy of loathing, and how wonderful some of those bonds can be. But sometimes, I just really get sick of fighting all the time.

I am fighting when I'm sleeping. In my dreams, I must slay the dragon of European heterosexual male society, then I wake up in the morning and must be an activist. I have to watch the news and movies about the people who I am not, then translate my struggle in order to make it palatable for those people who don't have to march but are sympathetic to my voice. This is a major part of my audience, an easy ear to bend—yet I still must bend that ear myself. I make the effort and that makes the difference, and that is what I'd like a break from. What if I didn't have to bend anyone's ear? What if the playing field really was level? I'd love to see how far I could go. What if all I had to show off were my mad skills? Wouldn't I really be able to fly then?

I have posed this question to other minority artists, and get stumped by answers like, "No, not ever have I ever wanted to be white." And I just don't buy it. Why wouldn't you want things to be easier? What if you were just you, and everything you did were taken at face value, without having to consider any minority sliding scale or affirmative action factors?

i got this part . . .

I
don't need any more people calling me up, saying, "I have this script that you're gonna love. There's this part for an ASIAN WOMAN—it's really not the lead, but it's such great part. Call me." The first thing that I do when I get a call like that is to press 3 for "Delete," because there's no way this part is gonna be anything good.

I have never had any desire to play a maid, a liquor store owner kicking a black person out of my store, a rude and harried waitress, a worldly-wise acupuncturist, an early-rising, loose black cotton pants-wearing elderly woman practicing tai chi in the park, a manicurist, a prostitute, a student in an English as a Second Language course, a purveyor of exotic mushrooms and ginseng, an exchange student, a newscaster covering gang warfare in Chinatown, a woman drowning my newborn baby in a bowl, a daughter crying with my mom over our constant battle between East and West yet finally coming together over a particularly intense game of mah-jongg, a queen sitting on her throne in the Forbidden City being served a bowl of turtle soup by a eunuch, a peasant carrying a yoke on my shoulders like a yak trudging up Gold Mountain delivering precious water to my village, a young girl being raped and killed by GIs in the Killing Fields, a woman balancing a basket of any kind on my head, being the second wife and committing suicide to avenge the first wife by coming back as a ghost and scaring the shit out of everyone, or, alternately,
committing suicide because my white lover did not come back to Japan after the war, or having him come back for me and fooling him successfully for years and years into thinking I am a woman when really I'm a dude, as if my race castrates me so much that this deception is completely feasible, or a girl, barely out of grammar school, playing violin for the president in a long, black velvet dress, or a mother, out of nowhere, screaming and then sullenly freezing out my children in an effort to terrorize them into getting better grades in school, especially in math and science, through emotional blackmail and coercion, or a teenager, figure-skating in the Olympics and winning the Gold but never getting a major endorsement contract because even though I fucking won that goddamn medal for America I will never be considered the hero that I truly am because, no matter what anybody says, this is still a racist country, or a woman giving birth to the Dalai Lama, or holding my breath for over three minutes while diving for pearls, or arguing with Elaine from
Seinfeld
about her dry cleaning, or saying, "Welcome to Japan, Mr. Bond," or being a hired assassin and flinging a ninja star, or sword-fighting up a tree, or writing my Geisha memoirs because playing weird musical instruments and powdering my neck is so fucking memorable I need to write a book about it, which actually wasn't even me writing, just some old white guy who wanted to turn my life of exploitation and prostitution into some "
Pretty Woman
During the Heien Period" fantasy, or brushing up on those concubine skills, or going anywhere with a chicken under my arm, or traveling all the way around the world to meet my birth mother for the very first time, or eating dog
for lunch, or being mail-ordered for marriage to some way-out-of-my-league computer geek I have never met, or getting shot down and then rolled over by a tank in Tiananmen Square, or walking on some Jim Belushi–looking dude's back, or balancing with five other family members on a bicycle, or being knee-deep and pointy-hatted in a rice paddy, or graduating magna cum laude from Stanford, or wearing a lab coat and goggles and holding that beaker a safe distance from my body with tongs, or cooking with a wok after speedily cutting all my vegetables vertically, or binding my feet because that's what all the girls are doing this year, or wearing my long, silky black hair on one side of my head and a big flower on the other side, or doing a dance that requires me to jump over a sword, or getting off a tour bus and taking numerous photographs, or bowing, banging a gong or getting it on, or considering Pearl Harbor some kind of triumph for "my people," or making the best of being in an internment camp by starting a theater company and staging a production of
Anne Frank
, or taking all my white friends out to a Benihana and ordering for all of them, making sure nothing is too spicy, because they all think I know what to get, or dramatically escaping from Red China with none other than Richard Gere, or arranging flowers or pruning a bonsai tree, or being a "teenager" in pink lipstick and a
HELLO KITTY
T-shirt and miniskirt, or acting like I am five years old and pressing my knees together while making a big
O
shape with my mouth in a display of cuteness that is really just another expression of the denial of my strength as a woman, which we all know is another way I keep myself from my own power, remaining a safe and ineffectual sexual stereo
type, pleasing to the status quo (see the third
Austin Powers
, the characters Fook Mi and Fook Yu), or breaking boards with my forehead, or being a prisoner of war or a spy of any kind, but obviously not a very good one or my character would be played by a white man, or explaining the mysteries of the Far East to Richard Chamberlain or to Chris Tucker—or to anyone, for that matter—because the Far East is just as much a mystery to me as it is to them, or letting anybody say, "What do I know . . . I'm just a ROUND EYES!," because that statement is condescending to me and yet so true, in that, yes, you don't know shit, and don't act like acknowledging your own ignorance excuses it, and nobody cares if you can "tell us apart" because we are not doughnuts that you need to first identify to decide if you want to eat us or not.

There is no reason to tell us apart because I don't wish to be classified, as if that makes me more human to you, or makes me more identifiable to you, as if you can understand me better, as if the country my parents came from has affected my life so much that it makes me an exotic and rare bird.

In short, don't call me about your script. I know it's going to be one of those parts, and I don't have time to be reminded once again that my story is never going to be told by anyone but me. All these characters are not who I am. They don't speak for me. They don't speak for all Asian Americans. Perhaps they speak for some, but I don't give a shit. If you have a story, tell it. But don't expect me to tell it for you. What you think I am is not who I am. What you think I want to be is so wrong I want to pop your head. If you have a script
that lets me come over to your office and pop your head, then we can talk.

asian jokes?

D
uring a recent question-and-answer session at a university, a bright, enthusiastic Asian American student asked, "The political stuff was great, but what about the Asian jokes?" This question was met with a gleeful response from the audience, and I had no real solid reply. It kind of took me aback, because the only answer I could come up with was, me being an Asian American goes without saying, and therefore, by the nature of who I am, everything I do is Asian American. I am my own perspective, and that's all. I assume that my ethnic identity is not separate from my words or my message. Perhaps that's taking too much for granted, society accepting minority opinions. I'm not sure.

I hope that people see me as having a right to debate issues that are not exclusive to Asian Americans without casting me as a "banana": yellow on the outside, white on the inside. When listening to Peter Jennings, did we think that he was actively avoiding his Canadian roots? Is Jay Leno ever held up as a spokesperson for his own ethnicity, which I actually don't know? Why don't I know? Because I have never heard him talk about it. I assume that he is European, since he's white, and therefore kind of socially "neutral," deftly able to
comment on and make fun of the culture as a whole by virtue of his own socially sanctioned neutrality.

Because I am not white, am I not qualified to comment on the state of American politics? Can I not engage in hands-on activism for hot-button issues like same-sex marriage and the death penalty? I'm not trying to be hostile, but the operative word here is
trying
. We live in trying times, and as a compassionate person, with a fierce warrior spirit and a true desire to change the world, I find that there are many causes that I wish to fight for, and many enemies I wish to conquer, for to right wrongs is my true mission in life. Is my race a factor in determining whether my war cry will be heard?

As an Asian American, I have felt the effects of racism firsthand, and therefore civil rights is vitally important to me, not wanting to have my experiences repeated in generations to come. I take what I have learned from the great leaders of the civil rights movement, as well as assorted historical figures, suffragettes, religious icons, philosophers, artists and pop stars. I want to combine my knowledge with my own suffering, piecing together a kind of quilt so that we all might benefit from the warmth of understanding. My heroes are not exclusively Asian, or Asian American, but come from everywhere, as far back as recorded history allows us to see.

The people I choose to admire are not necessarily popular, not necessarily terribly well known, but they each have something to offer me, a lesson, a cautionary tale, an idea, an inspiration. I remember them much like I hope that someone in the future remembers me, that this message in a bottle will help, which I'd say is quite the
ambition. This is how I would like to be remembered. Perhaps then I will transcend this ethnic face that I was born with, and my words will be as powerful as I wish them to be, but, frankly, I'd rather have that right now, while I'm still here.

I am admittedly insecure about my racial identity, an attitude that has much improved since my younger days when I absolutely abhorred it. Any attention paid to me being different was incredibly shameful for me because the wide and varied world, the melting pot of American life that I saw from the '70s, still didn't include me. If even this Big Blue Marble/"I'd like to buy the world a Coke" planet didn't acknowledge my existence, did I in fact exist at all? Dreaming of being a performer on top of that didn't help. I first was a dancer, but the mirrors became too much. Every time I would check my alignment, what a disappointing reality check! When I was dancing, there was no difference between the music and me. The beat has no race, the air has no divide. In motion, there was nothing to be; there was only movement. Then I would look up to see where I was in the dance, and I would stare back at myself, and my Asian eyes would betray my freedom and clip my wings, or, rather, I would realize that I did not have wings but Asian eyes instead. I could not see myself dancing because such an image did not exist before. I could see myself studying, slaving in a sweatshop, serving tea to businessmen, but never doing grand jetés across the studio's polished wooden floor.

I stopped dancing, and only recently took it up again after some thirty years of self-imposed retirement. I simply do not see the mirror
any longer, and I do not rely on the example of someone who came before me as a kind of mental permission slip.

bamboozled

I
had avoided, averted, excused myself from, promised rain checks, and procrastinated as long as I possibly could, before seeing
Bamboozled
. This brilliant Spike Lee film stars lots of heroes, friends, acquaintances and my very favorite actor/artist/activist/educator/healer/shaman, Danny Hoch, in a hilarious Tommy Hilfigerish street-fashion magnate cameo, as well as many other wonderful performers who I've admired for years. The film is tailor-made for me, despite its tragic, melancholic yet melodic ending, but the rest of it I know firsthand from when I was developing my own television sitcom some years ago and entering into the secret race war fought in this country day in and day out. I have used my experience to fuel my own "comeback, " and whole new way of working as an artist, using political and social comment to inform and educate, as opposed to following television executives around, being so certain of their rightness, possibly because of their "whiteness," although not all the players in my game were white, at least not ethnically speaking.
Bamboozled
is about a sitcom being produced by a frustrated "suit," played by Damon Wayans, the best of all the Wayans family in the way he works. He's
magical. His genius is being able to play all sides of the comedic spectrum, and when he "wears" a character he completely becomes that character. Emotional changes for him come as easily as twisting a kaleidoscope, and they are just as vibrantly unexpected, just as in life, yet something that is near impossible to capture on film.