In response to a recent posting by Eileen Tabios, who writes, in part:

I’m sure the sunny professor doesn’t realize he struck a nerve with me (or perhaps he does). You see, prior to tending my grape vines (all one stalk of them), I was fairly active in the Asian American literary scene…..but what I noticed is that much of my work never gets classified as “Asian American” or “Filipino American” literature. Why? Because I don’t write the kind of stuff that has mostly become classified (as Timothy has observed) as Asian American works by referencing biography, food and ethnicity. I am not the only “Asian American” poet who’s ranted before at this practice.

I really didn’t mean to strike a nerve — though I realize that now — but my initial hesitation to classify her as such was partly in reaction to what Tim Yu wrote earlier. That is, I didn’t want to simply pigeonhole her poetry as “Pinoy poetry,” as poems (or as a blog) that is only brought up within that Asian context. (Not that that’s a bad thing, but I think the readers know what I mean.) Both Asian Americans (and well-meaning non-Asian editors, etc., out to “diversify” their anthologies) are complicit in fashioning particular tired images, narratives, paradigms, and so on that keep Asian Americans in safe, domesticated categories. And that was what I was reacting to when I wrote what I wrote — I think Eileen and I agree about things, only I came about it the other way round. For instance, I think Lew’s Premonitions is important precisely because it does not simply proclaim Asian American poetry as an “Other voice.” Not all Asian American poets may want their work to be (“merely”) classified as “Asian American poetry,” with all that that label, positive and negative, entails.

She writes as well:

Let me spell it out: if the author is Asian American, that makes the works “Asian American” — the work itself doesn’t have to fit your preconceived paradigms. Kapisch?!

Oh, I completely agree. But — hee hee — let me play devil’s advocate and present a couple of statements:

Chan Is Missing is an Asian American film.
Smoke is an Asian American film.

Both may be true, but is one truer than the other? =)

(There will be a Part 3 to this entry as well, including a response to a letter by Tim Yu, and Dana Takagi gets thrown in there somewhere.)

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Swiped from Metafilter is an excellent exhibit of tabloid photographs from the Los Angeles Herald Express, curated by Diane Keaton. But aside from the lurid nature of the photographs — it looks like a James Ellroy gallery come to life — the high aesthetic quality of the images cannot be denied either. (This has already been explored in, for instance, Luc Sante’s Evidence, the Police Pictures exhibit at SFMOMA a few years back, and Sean Tejaratchi / Katherine Dunn’s Death Scenes, not to mention Weegee’s place in the photographic canon.)

The caption reads:

Mrs. Shirleen Kunin
March 27, 1948 Saturday
“Dennie got so many Christmas presents! But the dreadful accident happened 10 days before Christmas.

What’s striking about the photograph is not just the Diane Arbus-like quality of the image, but the way the light falls on her unreadable (rapturous?) face and how her gaze similarly follows the light. It’s almost reminiscent of a shot in La Passion de Jeanne d’Arc!

Compare this, for instance, with Carol Jo Pivar’s portrait, which looks like a Cindy Sherman “film still” — she looks like she just stepped out of some noir film.

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From my friend Romeo:

Here’s one that wasn’t there:

“Naku, kung puede ka lang ibalik sa pinanggalingan mo, matagal ko ng ginawa.”

You can probably label this one as a lesson in REMEMBERING YOUR PAST.

Isa pa: “Naku, kung ahas iyan, kanina ka pa tinuka.” Lesson in CREATURE APPRECIATION.

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