Over the years racial discrimination in the United States of America has been an issue of burning debates. Although commonly an African – American issue, Asian Americans were able to develop the rich heritage of their community in order to make themselves known. Provided that Asian Americans have been suffering suppression for many years, this proposal will reveal that American and Asian American literature are interconnected and yet unable to exist without each other due to historical and social heritage rooted in children’s Asian America.
Kim Elaine’s Definition
The Asian American Literary Review Inc. is a non-profit organization that stands for unity and community-building within the diverse population of the United States of America. It explores where the community is heading and its boundless possibilities through works of many artists and poets in its Asian American Literary Review (Winter/Spring 2011 Issue, “Counting Citizens”). Those works helped organize this proposal being reliable and informative sources of racial survival and development of the history of communities among the diverse country of America.
Directing the Korean Community Center of Oakland and Asian Women United, Kim Elaine wonderfully presents her definition of the ‘Oriental’ in her works. This is an argument of hers that supports that every nation living among other greater nations has a right to exist and evolve. Being Korean, she reflects the step-by-step map of what a community within another country undergoes in terms of social, emotional, and artistic challenges.
Showing the way the roles of Asian American women changed Kim also indicates the foremost challenge they had to face – changing opinions about themselves, meaning acknowledging themselves as Americans, too. This is a long history of integrating Asian Americans firstly as a significant backdrop and then as an inalienable part of literary legacy. Great support to this theme will be the memoirs of David Mura Turning Japanese that reflect the third-generation Japanese-American’s life and his prolonged attempts to find the racial identity. (Mura, p. 16)
Kip Fulbeck’s View
In order to support the idea of Asian American Literature integrity, it is advantageous to examine the video work of Kip Fulbeck Mixed Kids. This is a story by an author who grew multiracial in America may serve as perfect evidence of how multiracial kids are raised in America, namely the unbiased approach of them to each other and further learning of discrimination only via older generation’s attitudes. It is important to regard multiracial children living in the same society though in separate communities as an integrative part of a would-be united society under the same ethical beliefs. This will entail strong support to the thesis that the literature is going to be regarded as common though written by different raced people, because children will grow up eventually, and their attitude towards race in literature depends on the way they learn from adult society (Filbeck, n.p.).
Jose Watanabe’s Children’s Echo
AALR feature many wonderful and talented Asian American writers, among them is Jose Watanabe – Japanese Peruvian poet – who described the lives of his 4 siblings who immigrated together with parents: “The children of Japanese immigrants, we heard…that someday the whole family would return to Japan. The dream wasn’t too convincing, not even for our parents” (Watanabe, p.144) Watanabe’s overall attitude towards multiracial art was magnificent, one of such cooperations resulted in a rock CD released in 2000, Pez de fango (Mudskipper). His work for AALR gives a wonderful opportunity to find the outrageous difference between the American children’s early prospects and those from Laredo. This entails further conclusions on the difficult development of Japanese Peruvian culture, hence literature.
References
Fulbeck, Kip. Mixed: Portraits of Multiracial Kids. San Franciso: Chronicle Books. 2010. Print.
José Watanabe, ‘Elogio del refrenamiento’, in Elogio del refrenamiento: antología poética, 1971-2003 (Sevilla: Renacimiento, 2003), pp. 143-150.
Mura, David. Turning Japanese: Memoirs of a Sansei. New York: Anchor. Print.