Firstly, a status update about this blog: For awhile, I was toying with the idea of making this blog more public, and now that it's been more than month since I first changed the blog url and essentially erased Heart & Crossbones from the face of the Internet, I've decided I actually prefer this newly recovered anonymity. Also, Blogger now has an interesting stats section on the dashboard, leading me to realize that almost nobody reads this blog anymore -- which means I have even greater freedom to spout out whatever I feel like. Which means I will probably write in a jumbled diary style more often now.
Woohoo!
Now onto the messy stuff:
In addition to two biology classes, I'm taking two English classes -- primarily for my own enjoyment, but also to get some GE requirements out of the way. One is on Jane Austen's novels; the other is on Asian-American Lit. I'm not enjoying the Jane Austen class as much as I expected, but I have to say Asian-American Lit is definitely changing the way I think.
I read a lot of YA writing blogs in my spare time, and one of the things that really interests me is the general outcry by bloggers asking for more diversity in YA books. To start off, let's just get it out there if you haven't figure it out already: I am an Asian-American. I intentionally make my ethnicity ambiguous on this blog, due to certain experiences I've had as an Asian-American.
As a child, I never really felt like part of a minority -- I grew up in a fairly wealthy area in Northern California with a significant number of Asians in my neighborhood. Interestingly, the first time I noticed the "whiteness" of YA fiction was on fictionpress. Back when I was in middle school, fictionpress became somewhat popular with some of my friends, who began posting poems and stories online. T, an Asian girl who I had many mutual friends with but with whom I never quite developed a relationship beyond acquaintances, posted a high-school romance story that I began to follow online. Her story was the typical fluff prevalent in the romance section of fictionpress, but what really struck me when I read her story was that all of her characters were of Asian descent. At first, I didn't think too much of it -- considering the fact that most of my friends were Asian-Americans, I didn't see anything weird about having a story on Asian-American high school students. If she hadn't explicitly given them last names like "Wong" or "Chang", you probably wouldn't have been able to tell anyway. Yet the more I thought about it, her story with Asian-American characters stuck out like neon sign against the cast of mainly white characters in almost every fictionpress story I'd encountered thus far.
I think ever since that revelation, I've been very aware of how I portray my online persona. The original cast of EP -- save Rory -- was pretty much entirely white -- mainly because I'd assumed that once you read a story with a non-white protagonist, you automatically think the writer is of that particular race. The last name I use online -- "Lee" -- was specifically chosen due to the ambiguity of its origin, as you could easily have a white, black, or Asian background with that last name. It's not that I'm ashamed of my ethnicity. My decision to make my ethnicity ambiguous stemmed from the desire to prevent my background from coloring people's perception of my writing. Whether we acknowledge it or not, people have certain perceptions of what a particular race is like -- and as a writer, I didn't want race to be a factor in how my stories were perceived.
But race shouldn't matter, right?
I'm only into my third week of classes so far, but my Asian-American Literature class is changing the way I identify myself with my "Asian-Americaness". We've read a couple of works where the writer impersonates a particular persona for commercial reasons-- for instance, a Canadian-Chinese writer from the early 1900s wrote and marketed her books as written by an authentic Japanese, complete with a pseudo-Japanese pen name -- Onoto Watanna. Obviously, she was not really Japanese at all. Another author from the same time period, Yone Noguchi, wrote The American Diary of a Japanese Girl -- despite the fact that he's a man. For a more contemporary example, you can think of Arthur Golden, who wrote Memoirs of a Geisha. In a sense, all of these books were written from a commercial angle, targeting the recurring trends in America for "exotic" Asian things. As much as we want to say that race doesn't mean anything, it does. As an example not in race but gender, if you are a girl and you read The American Diary of a Japanese Girl with the knowledge that the author is a man, your impression of the book is going to be very affected by the nagging reminder that a man is writing what he thinks a girl would write about in her diary.
But what about the reverse? Is the fact that one of my lead characters is white significant? Is the fact that I write from an ethnically ambiguous perspective also a calculated commercial tactic?
While I haven't touched fictionpress in almost a year, I have been tinkering with the story incessantly in the past year. One of the changes I made that has not appeared on fictionpress is Rory's ethnicity. Originally half Japanese half Portugeuse, I changed it to half Taiwanese half Brazilian. On the surface, it sounds like a minor change, but for me it's significant -- my family is Taiwanese, and I have distant relatives who immigrated from Taiwan to Brazil. Though I haven't met any of them, I do have distant half-Taiwanese half-Brazilian cousins out there and in fact, apparently one of my distant aunts or someone is actually a prominent judge in Brazil. The main reason behind this change is that I can write with more authority as an American of Taiwanese descent -- ideally, I should have a better understanding of Rory's mother and what kind of household Layla and Rory grew up in.
OLIVIA, the inspiration for RoryRory herself poses an interesting dilemma for me. Am I exploiting a Eurasian fetish by using her as one of my lead characters? How much authority do I have to write from a half-Asian perspective? The second question is easier for me to answer; having spent two years with a half Taiwanese half American piano teacher who grew up in Taiwan and thus was far more Taiwanese than American in her mannerisms, I really do feel that it depends on where/how you were brought up, not what you look like. This is why I barely blinked an eye when I read T's story -- T and I might be Asian, but we act like any other "American" teenager. We go to the same classes, deal with the same drama, get tangled in the same romance plots. As for the first question, I have a more critical response to that -- but that would require me revealing more of the storyline I have in mind, which I don't intend to reveal at the moment.
I've come to wonder if I have an obligation to represent my ethnic background, especially in an area where Asians are so underrepresented. I found myself toying with the thought -- should I make my characters more diverse? I'd already changed Patrick's background to Spanish before I ever took this class, but since I've taken this class I've started thinking about my main characters. Charlotte? Her blondness and last name is essential to my story, so that idea was immediately shot down.
Rhys? This is where it gets interesting. I love literary books, but I am also very fascinated by the commercial side of literature -- in essence, what sells. And I must frankly say that at this point in time, I do not think an Asian male lead at this point in time will reach the same leading man status as, say Edward Cullen. If Rhys was of Asian descent (which, with a few changes, I could easily make possible), like a rock version of my beloved T.O.P. (who, by the way, has heavily influenced how I characterize Rhys), would readers still accept my depiction of Rhys as the most sought-after guy at Rosecrans High? Considering the stereotype of Asian guys as lacking sex appeal, I find that hurdle very difficult to overcome.
An Asian guy oozing with sex appeal? NO WAY!"But Sophelia!" you might say. "Look what Stephenie Meyer did for Native Americans, i.e. Taylor Lautner and Boo Boo Stewart!" However, I think the Asian stereotype is much more ingrained in our nation's consciousness than the Native American stereotype. People still think of Asians as nerds and gamers and geeks. Perhaps one day, it won't be so unbelievable to have an Asian male lead characterized as the school heartthrob.
One of my favorite YA blogs, Forever Young Adult, recently wrote a post about what they'd like to see more of in YA fiction. Number one on the list is diversity. I agree completely, but I take that wish with a grain of salt. I may be wrong, but I think none of the FYA contributors are of minority descent -- and while I'm sure they are much more open-minded about the ethnic backgrounds of YA protagonists and love interests, if you consider how often publishing companies whitewash their book covers, I don't think the readership is ready just yet. In any case, I don't have the luxury of tinkering with EP in the next few months, as my workload is beginning to increase exponentially. However, I think it's quite fascinating how race adds a whole other dimension to the discussion of commercial YA fiction.
Think about it. If your favorite protagonists weren't white -- Harry Potter was Chinese or Bella Swan was Persian -- what do you think would happen? Not only would some people snub the book with comments like, "I don't read about Muslims" or "I don't give a shit about chinky-eyed Asians," but people would analyze the crap out of these stories because in the end, our society really does care about race. They'd wonder if Bella's dependence on Edward is commentary on female oppression in the Middle East; they'd ask if Harry's rise to greatness is somehow an allegory to the rise of the Chinese superpower. I'm just making bullshit up at this point, but really -- would the world still be so fond of Harry Potter and Bella Swan if they hadn't been white?
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