酷我-北美枫

[ericcoliu]

An Accidental Success in Postethnic America?: Review of The Accidental Asian: Notes of a Native Speaker by Eric Liu

Title: The accidental Asian : notes of a native speaker.
Author: Eric Liu.
Publishing Info: New York : Random House, c1998; 206p.


In a way, I envy those who choose to become wholeheartedly Asian American: those who believe. At least they have a certain order to their existence. I, on the other hand, am an accidental Asian. Someone who has stumbled onto a sense of race; who wonders now what to do with it.
-- Eric Liu, The Accidental Asian


Published in 1998, Eric Liu’s The Accidental Asian: Notes of a Native Speaker is in part a thorough quest of one’s identity: the story of his immigrant parents, of his grandmother’s solitary life in Chinatown, of his beloved father’s death, of his own struggle to assimilate into American society and of his unease with his Chinese heritage. This memoir is also in part an essay collection, in which the author brings conversations together about race, ethnic identity and cultural politics in the context of personal experiences and the national debates about multiculturalism.

Eric Liu, the son of successful immigrants from a prestigious family in Taiwan, faces a conundrum familiar to many Asian Americans. Raised in a cocoon of comfort and security, growing up in a typically American middle-class suburb of Poughkeepsie, New York, he feels a guilt-ridden ambivalence toward the Chinese heritage he is expected to keep alive. His personality, after all, owes more to the East Coast than to the Far East, and while esteeming the traditions of his parentage, he rejects what he considers to be the sentimental espousals of “Chineseness”. A Yale-educated, former Clinton speechwriter and television commentator on MSNBC all achieved by the age of 29, he is a fervent advocate of success in the mainstream, of being a contributive member of American society, and he is not prepared to jeopardize his future by clinging to an ethnic past that was never really his own. As a result, he tends to be regarded by whites as an ”honorary white” or a representative of “a model minority” and by Asians as a “banana'” -- yellow on the outside, white on the inside. His ambitious memoir tries to conclude a century of Asian American autobiography riddled with the anxiety of national belonging.

Aside from the abovementioned not-unusual narratives of a successful Chinese immigrant family life, this memoir also contains well-argued essay collection, in which Eric Liu brings conversations together about race, assimilation and identity politics in the context of personal experiences and the national debates about multiculturalism. The unifying motif of The Accidental Asian is his painstaking quest for personal and cultural identity, aiming at defending omniculturalism and challenging the ambiguous umbrella called ‘Asian American’ in multiethnic, or postethnic in his view, America. He dismisses his biological inheritance as “accidental” while deliberately affirming his “nativity” both to the English language and the geopolitical sphere of the United States. His poignant reflection on the chance elements of one’s belonging and the transformative process of one’s becoming led some critics to proclaim The Accidental Asian “a major contribution to the literature that defines what it means to be an American”(dust jacket), and to be put onto the list of 1998 Notable Books of New York Times.

Crucial to Liu’s definition of becoming American is the resolution of a series of contradictions between the ascriptive – the biological and social givens that one inherits from one’s family and ethnic community – and the acquisitive – the individual acts of both transcending one’s birth conditions and appropriating the resources for self-invention. Though highly aware of its dialectic tension, for him, the ascription of one’s racial descent is ultimately circumstantial, while the democratic consent of one’s individual autonomy and achievement codified in the founding documents of the nation is fundamental to the making of the American. Throughout the whole book, he deliberately employs a host of vignettes and anecdotes from his own life as examples -- from the contingency and compulsion of identity formation subtly revealed in the title of his book, through “The Chinatown Idea” and “Fear of a Yellow Planet” to the designation of Asian Americans as “New Jews” – to argue that “the end product of American life is neither monoculturalism nor multiculturalism, it is omniculturalism”. With regards to omniculturalism, he articulates arguments for individual choice and against the claustrophobic, lock-step claims of ethnic and cultural traditions. Since “Every identity is a social construction, a drawing of arbitrary lines,” each generation, indeed, each individual within each generation, must establish his or her own cultural identity, drawing on traditions of the past, but ultimately deriving authenticity from the exercise of freedom. Each person has the freedom to choose the degree of one’s ethnic identity. He predicts that the forces of ethnic synthesis will prevail in this postethnic America.

The time has come, Eric Liu contends, “to conceive of assimilation as more than a series of losses …… and to recognize that what is lost is not necessarily sacred …… I often resolve to do more to preserve, to conserve, my inheritance. But have my acts of neglect thus far, my many omissions, been inherently wrong?”

As a reader, I’m not in a position to answer his question of whether he is guilty or not of his neglecting his Chinese inheritance; however, I, at least, think that there is something wrong with his apparent equation of assimilation with establishment career advancement, and wonder if his distaste for the crutch of ethnic labels would be quite as intense if his own path to achievement had been bumpier.

More importantly, although he acknowledges racial inequalities in America and Asian Americans’ contribution to social progress during the Civil Rights Movement, throughout his book, Eric Liu claims that Asian Americans no longer need the racial label because “America is white no longer, and it will never be white again.” His claim puts an emphasis solely on the demographic growth and its influence due to the changes in the immigration policy since the 1960s while neglecting deep-rooted uneven power relations among ethno-racial groups. The naivety and flaw of his claim has been totally exposed since post-911 and post-Katrina; that is, the “browning of America” does almost nothing significant to change power relations in America. The structural factors centering on American society are still along the lines of race, class, and gender. This means that the ethno-racial label, Asian American, is still strategically useful to push the advancement of social progress in America.

A swallow accidentally soaring high does not make a summer in multiethnic America. Maybe it's time for Eric Liu to re-think about: why some people choose to become wholeheartedly Asian Americans.
_________________
Time is nothing but a disquiet of the soul

[[ericcoliu]]

An Accidental Success in Postethnic America?: Review of The Accidental Asian: Notes of a Native Speaker by Eric Liu

Title: The accidental Asian : notes of a native speaker.
Author: Eric Liu.
Publishing Info: New York : Random House, c1998; 206p.


In a way, I envy those who choose to become wholeheartedly Asian American: those who believe. At least they have a certain order to their existence. I, on the other hand, am an accidental Asian. Someone who has stumbled onto a sense of race; who wonders now what to do with it.
-- Eric Liu, The Accidental Asian


Published in 1998, Eric Liu’s The Accidental Asian: Notes of a Native Speaker is in part a thorough quest of one’s identity: the story of his immigrant parents, of his grandmother’s solitary life in Chinatown, of his beloved father’s death, of his own struggle to assimilate into American society and of his unease with his Chinese heritage. This memoir is also in part an essay collection, in which the author brings conversations together about race, ethnic identity and cultural politics in the context of personal experiences and the national debates about multiculturalism.

Eric Liu, the son of successful immigrants from a prestigious family in Taiwan, faces a conundrum familiar to many Asian Americans. Raised in a cocoon of comfort and security, growing up in a typically American middle-class suburb of Poughkeepsie, New York, he feels a guilt-ridden ambivalence toward the Chinese heritage he is expected to keep alive. His personality, after all, owes more to the East Coast than to the Far East, and while esteeming the traditions of his parentage, he rejects what he considers to be the sentimental espousals of “Chineseness”. A Yale-educated, former Clinton speechwriter and television commentator on MSNBC all achieved by the age of 29, he is a fervent advocate of success in the mainstream, of being a contributive member of American society, and he is not prepared to jeopardize his future by clinging to an ethnic past that was never really his own. As a result, he tends to be regarded by whites as an ”honorary white” or a representative of “a model minority” and by Asians as a “banana'” -- yellow on the outside, white on the inside. His ambitious memoir tries to conclude a century of Asian American autobiography riddled with the anxiety of national belonging.

Aside from the abovementioned not-unusual narratives of a successful Chinese immigrant family life, this memoir also contains well-argued essay collection, in which Eric Liu brings conversations together about race, assimilation and identity politics in the context of personal experiences and the national debates about multiculturalism. The unifying motif of The Accidental Asian is his painstaking quest for personal and cultural identity, aiming at defending omniculturalism and challenging the ambiguous umbrella called ‘Asian American’ in multiethnic, or postethnic in his view, America. He dismisses his biological inheritance as “accidental” while deliberately affirming his “nativity” both to the English language and the geopolitical sphere of the United States. His poignant reflection on the chance elements of one’s belonging and the transformative process of one’s becoming led some critics to proclaim The Accidental Asian “a major contribution to the literature that defines what it means to be an American”(dust jacket), and to be put onto the list of 1998 Notable Books of New York Times.

Crucial to Liu’s definition of becoming American is the resolution of a series of contradictions between the ascriptive – the biological and social givens that one inherits from one’s family and ethnic community – and the acquisitive – the individual acts of both transcending one’s birth conditions and appropriating the resources for self-invention. Though highly aware of its dialectic tension, for him, the ascription of one’s racial descent is ultimately circumstantial, while the democratic consent of one’s individual autonomy and achievement codified in the founding documents of the nation is fundamental to the making of the American. Throughout the whole book, he deliberately employs a host of vignettes and anecdotes from his own life as examples -- from the contingency and compulsion of identity formation subtly revealed in the title of his book, through “The Chinatown Idea” and “Fear of a Yellow Planet” to the designation of Asian Americans as “New Jews” – to argue that “the end product of American life is neither monoculturalism nor multiculturalism, it is omniculturalism”. With regards to omniculturalism, he articulates arguments for individual choice and against the claustrophobic, lock-step claims of ethnic and cultural traditions. Since “Every identity is a social construction, a drawing of arbitrary lines,” each generation, indeed, each individual within each generation, must establish his or her own cultural identity, drawing on traditions of the past, but ultimately deriving authenticity from the exercise of freedom. Each person has the freedom to choose the degree of one’s ethnic identity. He predicts that the forces of ethnic synthesis will prevail in this postethnic America.

The time has come, Eric Liu contends, “to conceive of assimilation as more than a series of losses …… and to recognize that what is lost is not necessarily sacred …… I often resolve to do more to preserve, to conserve, my inheritance. But have my acts of neglect thus far, my many omissions, been inherently wrong?”

As a reader, I’m not in a position to answer his question of whether he is guilty or not of his neglecting his Chinese inheritance; however, I, at least, think that there is something wrong with his apparent equation of assimilation with establishment career advancement, and wonder if his distaste for the crutch of ethnic labels would be quite as intense if his own path to achievement had been bumpier.

More importantly, although he acknowledges racial inequalities in America and Asian Americans’ contribution to social progress during the Civil Rights Movement, throughout his book, Eric Liu claims that Asian Americans no longer need the racial label because “America is white no longer, and it will never be white again.” His claim puts an emphasis solely on the demographic growth and its influence due to the changes in the immigration policy since the 1960s while neglecting deep-rooted uneven power relations among ethno-racial groups. The naivety and flaw of his claim has been totally exposed since post-911 and post-Katrina; that is, the “browning of America” does almost nothing significant to change power relations in America. The structural factors centering on American society are still along the lines of race, class, and gender. This means that the ethno-racial label, Asian American, is still strategically useful to push the advancement of social progress in America.

A swallow accidentally soaring high does not make a summer in multiethnic America. Maybe it's time for Eric Liu to re-think about: why some people choose to become wholeheartedly Asian Americans.
_________________
Time is nothing but a disquiet of the soul

[Lake]

Eric,

Are you the author of the book? Very impressive!

What a toiling mind here! Why don't we face the fact that we ARE Asian Americans (nothing can change that) and we do what we can? Well, that's only me. It seems you are a person of deep thought and have a sort of ambition in your journey of life...

Much appreciation!

All the best,
Lake

[[Lake]]

Eric,

Are you the author of the book? Very impressive!

What a toiling mind here! Why don't we face the fact that we ARE Asian Americans (nothing can change that) and we do what we can? Well, that's only me. It seems you are a person of deep thought and have a sort of ambition in your journey of life...

Much appreciation!

All the best,
Lake

[博弈]

now, every once a while, views like these appear, that's totally stupid! why?

why did people like to use terms like Asian Americans, a plot by
US goverment, and you are encouraging the concept unknowingly

did any one write about English Americans and brag/enlarge ethnics there? we all know the genuine Americans are Indians, every one else after that are immigrants, the eariler ones labled the later ones, that's all.

i would suggest be americans, not asian americans
be president, not be classified, otherwise, children will still win/receive some kind of award generations later, be the one giving awards, ok?

bless you.
_________________
Sometimes I am busy
Sometimes I am free
In between, there's it
Until I find thee...

[[Mark]]

now, every once a while, views like these appear, that's totally stupid! why?

why did people like to use terms like Asian Americans, a plot by
US goverment, and you are encouraging the concept unknowingly

did any one write about English Americans and brag/enlarge ethnics there? we all know the genuine Americans are Indians, every one else after that are immigrants, the eariler ones labled the later ones, that's all.

i would suggest be americans, not asian americans
be president, not be classified, otherwise, children will still win/receive some kind of award generations later, be the one giving awards, ok?

bless you.
_________________
Sometimes I am busy
Sometimes I am free
In between, there's it
Until I find thee...

[星子]

I agree with Lake.

You are who you are no matter how others define or view you.

The peace and beauty is inside ourselves not outside our skin.

I try to read more of yours (I guess?)

http://www.yale.edu/yrb/winter98/review06.htm

Your english I envy!
_________________

[[ANNA]]

I agree with Lake.

You are who you are no matter how others define or view you.

The peace and beauty is inside ourselves not outside our skin.

I try to read more of yours (I guess?)

http://www.yale.edu/yrb/winter98/review06.htm

Your english I envy!
_________________

[ericcoliu]

Hi! Lake:

Thank you for your encouragement. Really, I’m flattered.

I’m not the author of The accidental Asian with whom I, accidentally, share the same English name. However, it’s my intention to write a review of his book to expose the flaw of his view on the ethno-racial label, Asian American. Two Lius, different linguistic capabilities and class backgrounds in “white America”, have different senses of self-identification.

Hi! 博弈:

Thank you for your reading of my writing.

Asian American is NOT a term coined and plotted by the US government, but a term proudly used by “Asian Americans” civil rights activist. In her introduction of the historical past of Asian American community, which is very useful here for our brief discussion on this thorny issue, King-Kok Cheung, a leading scholar in Asian American Literary Studies, stresses that

“The umbrella term Asian American was coined in the late 1960s to promote political solidarity and cultural nationalism. This movement was a broad-based one, appealing to immigrants and American-born Asians alike.”(Re-viewing Asian American Literary Studies, p2)

The ideology behind Eric Liu’s discussion about the uselessness and inadequateness of the ethno-racial label, Asian American, is that living in a land of freedom and opportunities, individual effort and achievement outweighs solidarity among marginalized people by their ethnicity, race, class, and gender.

In his work entitled The Meaning of New Times, cultural critic Stuart Hall claims that,

“The question of ethnicity reminds us that everybody comes from some place – even if it is only an imagined community – and need some sense of identification and belonging. A politics which neglects that moment of identity and identification – without, of course, thinking of it as something permanent, fixed or essential – is not likely to be able to command the new times.

I agree with him wholeheartedly.


Hi! 星子:

Thank you for your time reading my review and the information regarding Chong-Hao Fu's review of The Accidental Asian.

As a historical and cultural being, one’s sense of identity is inevitably intertwined with one’s surrounding environment. The important part of Your sense of who you are is shaped by the significant Other around you.

I completely agree with your second statement.
_________________
Time is nothing but a disquiet of the soul

[[ericcoliu]]

Hi! Lake:

Thank you for your encouragement. Really, I’m flattered.

I’m not the author of The accidental Asian with whom I, accidentally, share the same English name. However, it’s my intention to write a review of his book to expose the flaw of his view on the ethno-racial label, Asian American. Two Lius, different linguistic capabilities and class backgrounds in “white America”, have different senses of self-identification.

Hi! 博弈:

Thank you for your reading of my writing.

Asian American is NOT a term coined and plotted by the US government, but a term proudly used by “Asian Americans” civil rights activist. In her introduction of the historical past of Asian American community, which is very useful here for our brief discussion on this thorny issue, King-Kok Cheung, a leading scholar in Asian American Literary Studies, stresses that

“The umbrella term Asian American was coined in the late 1960s to promote political solidarity and cultural nationalism. This movement was a broad-based one, appealing to immigrants and American-born Asians alike.”(Re-viewing Asian American Literary Studies, p2)

The ideology behind Eric Liu’s discussion about the uselessness and inadequateness of the ethno-racial label, Asian American, is that living in a land of freedom and opportunities, individual effort and achievement outweighs solidarity among marginalized people by their ethnicity, race, class, and gender.

In his work entitled The Meaning of New Times, cultural critic Stuart Hall claims that,

“The question of ethnicity reminds us that everybody comes from some place – even if it is only an imagined community – and need some sense of identification and belonging. A politics which neglects that moment of identity and identification – without, of course, thinking of it as something permanent, fixed or essential – is not likely to be able to command the new times.

I agree with him wholeheartedly.


Hi! 星子:

Thank you for your time reading my review and the information regarding Chong-Hao Fu's review of The Accidental Asian.

As a historical and cultural being, one’s sense of identity is inevitably intertwined with one’s surrounding environment. The important part of Your sense of who you are is shaped by the significant Other around you.

I completely agree with your second statement.
_________________
Time is nothing but a disquiet of the soul

[ericcoliu]

[[ericcoliu]]

[博弈]

[[Mark]]

[Lake]

Eric,

Sorry, fell into "Who's Who" trap. Whoever you are, your English is good and you are very thoughtful.

Here is something I wrote:

Look in mirror in vain
Life’s not to find who we are
But create ourselves

[[Lake]]

Eric,

Sorry, fell into "Who's Who" trap. Whoever you are, your English is good and you are very thoughtful.

Here is something I wrote:

Look in mirror in vain
Life’s not to find who we are
But create ourselves

[ericcoliu]

Hi! Lake:

Yes, trying to see one’s self in the mirror of life is futile, like a dog chasing its tail.

Thank you for your advice.

Much appreciation!
_________________
Time is nothing but a disquiet of the soul

[[ericcoliu]]

Hi! Lake:

Yes, trying to see one’s self in the mirror of life is futile, like a dog chasing its tail.

Thank you for your advice.

Much appreciation!
_________________
Time is nothing but a disquiet of the soul