The Wily Filipino

More Books for the Fall.

My ever-mutating syllabus for my Asian American culture class is finally settling onto a vague coming-of-age theme. In the class's earliest incarnations, I indulged my anthropological side with a couple of ethnographies; I've since moved to assigning readings in "the expressive arts," which is the course catalog's "official" conception of "culture."

Jade Snow Wong's Fifth Chinese Daughter is the lone, constant reading which will never be removed from my syllabi: as template for the Asian American memoir, it's a quick but substantive read; the domestic drama has the virtue of being almost timeless; and it also provides the pedagogical opportunity to enable the students to read on different levels -- to pay attention to the silences and ellipses, to think about the impact of such a memoir, to pull out the implications of Jade Snow's decisions.

This semester I'm pairing it with Ed Lin's Waylaid, a wonderfully hilarious and vulgar novel about a boy who, basically, wants to lose his virginity. (Brian Ascalon Roley's American Son was the runner-up, which I've taught before; so was R. Zamora Linmark's Rolling the R's, but my students were so unprepared for the disjointed prose that they rebelled against it.) I read Waylaid when it came out -- attracted mostly by Helen Zia's incomparable blurb ("Ed Lin has wrought an Asian American Holden Caulfield, whose view from his tightly conscripted life of working at his parents' motel is to get laid without getting fucked.") -- and immediately wanted to inflict it upon my students, but wasn't sure how they would take all the joyous sleaze. But my colleague D-Dog (upon my recommendation!) has used it for a couple of semesters with great success, so my students will be reading it with/against Jade Snow.

It's the films I'm stuck on right now. I've always loved Wayne Wang's Chan Is Missing; it's one of my favorite films, period, but I simply cannot muster any interest from the students every single time I show it. (Perhaps if it was some sort of film class, but...) My colleague Malcolm says that the students are simply "unprepared," and I agree. Much of what the film is based on seems absent -- should I really be so critical or presumptuous? -- from the students' cinematic vocabulary: the improvised-sounding dialogue, Charlie Chan films, the "long" takes, the use of silence, noir films in general, the "static" camera, the unsubtitled conversations, Vertigo, the absolutely sublime final five minutes, Le Samourai, even black and white film period...

So... Justin Lin's Better Luck Tomorrow? (Funny -- I think I'd rather teach John Woo's A Better Tomorrow II -- that, after all, is partly set in the U.S.) Chris Chan Lee's disappointing Yellow? Gene Cajayon's The Debut (not one of my favorites, but good to teach with)?

(Finally nailed down my Anthro class, videos, readings, everything: it's college students and undocumented immigrants in the fall.)

Posted by the wily filipino at July 5, 2005 12:12 AM