#i know that this entire collection is about the the experience of a vietnamese immigrants' daughter

[sirlancenotalot]

daughter by cathy linh che

[cha-d]

Early in the formidable new essay collection “Minor Feelings: An Asian American Reckoning,” the poet Cathy Park Hong delivers a fatalistic state-of-the-race survey. “In the popular imagination,” she writes, “Asian Americans inhabit a vague purgatorial status . . . distrusted by African Americans, ignored by whites, unless we’re being used by whites to keep the black man down.” Asians, she observes, are perceived to be emotionless functionaries, and yet she is always “frantically paddling my feet underwater, always overcompensating to hide my devouring feelings of inadequacy.” Not enough has been said, Hong thinks, about the self-hatred that Asian-Americans experience. It becomes “a comfort,” she writes, “to peck yourself to death. You don’t like how you look, how you sound. You think your Asian features are undefined, like God started pinching out your features and then abandoned you. You hate that there are so many Asians in the room. Who let in all the Asians? you rant in your head.”

Hong, who teaches at Rutgers, is the author of three poetry collections, including “Dance Dance Revolution,” which was published in 2007, and is set in a surreal fictional waystation called the Desert, where the inhabitants speak a constantly evolving creole. (“Me fadder sees dis y decide to learn Engrish righteo dere,” the narrator says.) “Minor Feelings” consists of seven essays; Hong explains the book’s title in an essay called “Stand Up” that centers on Richard Pryor’s “Live in Concert.” Minor feelings are “the racialized range of emotions that are negative, dysphoric, and therefore untelegenic.” One such minor feeling: the deadening sensation of seeing an Asian face on a movie screen and bracing for the ching-chong joke. Another: eating lunch with white schoolmates and perceiving the social tableaux as a frieze in which “everyone else was a relief, while I felt recessed, the declivity that gave everyone else shape.” Minor feelings involve a sense of lack, the knowledge that this lack is a social construction, and resentment of those who constructed it.

In “The End of White Innocence,” Hong describes her childhood home as “tense and petless, with sharp witchy stenches.” Her father drank; her mother, she writes, “beat my sister and me with a fury intended for my father.” Her parents grew up in postwar poverty in Korea—as a child, her father caught sparrows to eat. In order to get a visa to immigrate to the United States, he pretended to be a mechanic, and ended up working for Ryder trucks in Pennsylvania, where he was injured, and fired. He moved to Los Angeles and found a job selling life insurance in Koreatown, then bought a dry-cleaning supply warehouse, and became successful enough to send Hong to private high school and college. He recognized that Americans valued emotional forthrightness in business and developed a particular way of speaking at work. “Thanks for getting those orders in,” Hong remembers him saying on the phone. “Oh, and Kirby, I love you.”

Hong feels ashamed, but not of her proximity to awkward English, or her features, or witchy domestic stenches. “My shame is not cultural but political,” she writes. She is ashamed of the conflicted position of Asian-Americans in the racial and capital hierarchy—the way that subjugation mingles with promise. “If the indebted Asian immigrant thinks they owe their life to America, the child thinks they owe their livelihood to their parents for their suffering,” Hong writes. “The indebted Asian American is therefore the ideal neoliberal subject.” She becomes a “dog cone of shame,” a “urinal cake of shame.” Hong’s metaphors are crafted with stinging care. To be Asian-American, she suggests, is to be tasked with making an injury inaccessible to the body that has been injured. It is to be pissed on at regular intervals while dutifully minimizing the odor of piss.

For a long time, Hong recounts in the book’s first essay, she did not want to write about her Asian identity. By the time she began studying for her M.F.A., at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, she had concluded that doing so was “juvenile”—and she couldn’t find the right form, anyway. The confessional lyric felt too operatic, and realist fiction wasn’t right, either: “I didn’t care to injection-mold my thoughts into an anthropological experience where the reader, after reading my novel, would think, The life of Koreans is so heartbreaking!” In “Stand Up,” she asks, “Will there be a future where I, on the page, am simply I, on the page, and not I, proxy for a whole ethnicity, imploring you to believe we are human beings who feel pain?” The predicament of the Asian-American writer, as Hong articulates it, is to fear that both your existence and your interpretation of that existence will always be read the wrong way. At Iowa, Hong noticed other writers of color stripping out markers of race from their poems and stories to avoid being “branded as identitarians.” It was only later that Hong realized that all of the writers she had noticed doing this were Asian-American.

I read “Minor Feelings” in a fugue of enveloping recognition and distancing flinch. I have tended to interpret my own acquiescence to and resentment of capitalism in generational terms rather than racial ones; many people my age seem to accept economic structures that we find humiliating because we reached adulthood when the margins of resistance appeared to be shrinking. I know, too, that my desire to attain financial stability is connected with a hope, bordering on practical obligation, to protect my parents, as they grow older, from the worst of the country that they immigrated to for my benefit. But, for some reason, I haven’t written very much about that. Was I, like Hong’s grad-school classmates, afraid of being branded as an identitarian? Had I considered the possibility of being positioned as a proxy for an entire ethnic group, and, unlike Hong, turned away?The term “Asian-American” was invented by student activists in California, in the late sixties, who were inspired by the civil-rights movement and dreamed of activating a coalition of people from immigrant backgrounds who might organize against structural inequality. This is not what happened; for years, Asian-Americans were predominantly conservative, though that began changing, gradually, during the Obama years, then sharply under Trump. Today, “Asian-American” mainly signifies people with East Asian ancestry: most Americans, Hong writes, think “Chinese is synecdoche for Asians the way Kleenex is for tissues.” The term, for many people—and for Hollywood—seems to conjure upper-middle-class images: doctors, bankers. (We are imagined as the human equivalent of stainless-steel countertops: serviceable and interchangeable and blandly high-end.) But, although rich Asians earn more money than any other group of people in America, income inequality is also more extreme among Asians than it is within any other racial category. In New York, Asians are the poorest immigrant group.Hong describes a visit to a nail salon, where a surly Vietnamese teen-age boy gives her a painful pedicure. She imagines him and herself as “two negative ions repelling each other,” united and then divided by their discomfort in their own particular Asian positions. Then she pauses. “What evidence do I have that he hated himself?” she wonders. “I wished I had the confidence to bludgeon the public with we like a thousand trumpets against them,” she writes elsewhere. “But I feared the weight of my experiences—as East Asian, professional class, cis female, atheist, contrarian—tipped the scales of a racial group that remains so nonspecific that I wondered if there was any shared language between us. And so, like a snail’s antenna that’s been touched, I retracted the first person plural.” Hong doesn’t fully retract it—“we” appears fairly often in the book—but she favors the second person, deploying a “you” that really means “I,” in the hope that her experience might carry shards of the Asian-American universal.

Throughout the book, Hong at once presumes and doesn’t presume to speak for people whose families come from India, say, or Sri Lanka, or Thailand, or Laos—or the Philippines, where my parents were born. The Philippines were under Spanish control from the sixteenth to the nineteenth century, and under American control until the middle of the twentieth. Many Filipinos have Spanish last names and come to the States speaking English; many have dark skin. In his book “The Latinos of Asia,” the sociologist Anthony Christian Ocampo argues that Filipinos tend to manifest a sort of ethnic flexibility, feeling more at home, compared with members of other Asian ethnic groups, with whites, African-Americans, Latinos, and other Asians. The experience of translating for one’s parents is often framed as definitive for Asian-Americans, but it’s not one that many Filipinos of my generation share; my parents came to North America listening to James Taylor and the Allman Brothers, speaking Tagalog only when they didn’t want their kids to listen. I grew up in a mixed extended family, with uncles who are black and Mexican and Chinese and white. Ocampo cites a study which found that less than half of Filipino-Americans checked “Asian” on forms that asked for racial background—a significant portion of them checked “Pacific Islander,” for no real reason. It denoted proximity to Asian-Americanness, perhaps, without indicating a direct claim to it. (About a month ago, at a doctor’s appointment, an East Asian nurse checked “Pacific Islander” when filling out a form for me.)

“Koreans are self-hating,” one of Hong’s Filipino friends tell her. “Filipinos, not so much.” My experience of racism has been different than Hong’s, as has my response to it. Much of the discourse around Asian-American identity centers on racist images associated with the stereotypical East Asian face: single-lidded eyes, yellow-toned skin, a supposed air of placid impassivity. I don’t have that face, exactly, and I’m not sure that I’ve confronted quite the same assumptions; when I hear people perform gross imitations of “Chinese” accents, I don’t know if it hurts the way it does because I’m an Asian person or because I come from a family of immigrants or simply because racism is embarrassing and foul.

If you escape the dominant experience of Asian-American marginalization, have you necessarily done so by way of avoidance, or denial, or conformity? What can you do when colonization is embedded in your family’s history, in your genetic background, in your very face? If I feel comforted in a room full of Asian people rather than alarmed at the possibility that my inner racial anxieties have been cloned all around me, is this another effect of the psychic freedom I’ve been granted with double eyelids and an ambiguously Western last name, or does it mark progress in the form of a meaningful generational shift? In the decade that separates me from Hong, the currency of whiteness has lost some of its inflated cultural value; one now sees Asian artists and chefs and skateboarders and dirtbags and novelists on the Internet, in the newspaper, and on TV. Is this freedom, or is it the latest form of assimilation? For Asian-Americans, can the two ever be fully distinct?

“Minor Feelings” bled a dormant discomfort out of me with surgical precision. Hong is deeply wary of living and writing to earn the favor of white institutions; like many of us, she has been raised and educated to earn white approval, and the book is an attempt to both acknowledge and excise such tendencies in real time. “Even to declare that I’m writing for myself would still mean I’m writing to a part of me that wants to please white people,” she explains. She’s circling the edges of a trap that often appears in Asian-American consciousness, in which love is suspicious and being unloved is even worse. The editors of “Aiiieeeee!,” one of the first anthologies of Asian-American literature—it was published in 1974—argued that “euphemized white racist love” had combined with legislative racism to mire the Asian-American psyche in a swamp of “self-contempt, self-rejection, and disintegration.” A quarter century later, in her book “The Melancholy of Race,” the literary theorist Anne Anlin Cheng described “the double bind that fetters the racially and ethnically denigrated subject: How is one to love oneself and the other when the very movement toward love is conditioned by the anticipation of denial and failure?” In the introduction to his essay collection “The Souls of Yellow Folk,” published in 2018, Wesley Yang writes about a realization that he regards as “unspeakable precisely because it need never be spoken: that as the bearer of an Asian face in America, you paid some incremental penalty, never absolute, but always omnipresent, that meant that you were default unlovable and unloved.”

The question of lovability, and desirability, is freighted for Asian men and Asian women in very different ways—and “Minor Feelings” serves as a case study in how a feminist point of view can both deepen an inquiry and widen its resonances to something like universality. Essays and articles about Asian-American consciousness often invoke issues of dominance and submission, and they often frame these issues according to the experiences of disenfranchised men. The editors of “Aiiieeeee!” call the stereotypical Asian-American “contemptible because he is womanly”; Yang often identifies the Asian-American condition with male rejection and disaffection. Hong reframes the quandary of negotiating dominance and submission—of desiring dominance, of hating the terms of that dominance, of submitting in the hopes of achieving some facsimile of dominance anyway—as a capitalist dilemma. I found myself thinking about how the interest and favor of white people, white men in particular, both professionally and personally, have insulated me from the feeling of being sidelined by America while compromising my instincts at a level I can barely access. Hong writes, “My ego is in free fall while my superego is boundless, railing that my existence is not enough, never enough, so I become compulsive in my efforts to do better, be better, blindly following this country’s gospel of self-interest, proving my individual worth by expanding my net worth, until I vanish.”

I hate my Asian self the way I worry about being written off as a woman writer—which is to say, not at all. Hong concedes that the self-hating Asian may be “on its way out” with her generation: for me, the formulation still has weight, but does not capture the efflorescence of the present. The question, then, is whether the movement toward love, as Anne Anlin Cheng put it, can be made outside the grasp of coercion. Is there a future of Asian-American identity that’s fundamentally expansive—that can encompass the divergent economic and cultural experiences of Asians in the United States, and form a bridge to the experiences of other marginalized groups?The answer depends on whom Asian-Americans choose to feel affinity and loyalty toward—whether we direct our sympathies to those with more power than us or less, not just outside our jerry-rigged ethnic coalition but within it. The history of Asian-Americans has involved repression and assimilation; it has also, to a degree that is often forgotten, involved radicalism and invention. “Aiiieeeee!” was published by Howard University Press, partly as a result of the friendship that one of its editors, Frank Chin, formed with the radical black writer Ishmael Reed. Gidra, an Asian-American zine that was published in Los Angeles in the nineteen-sixties and seventies, called for the “birth of a new Asian—one who will recognize and deal with injustices.” (Gidra reported on cases of local discrimination and profiled activists such as Yuri Kochiyama; it’s now back in print.) To occupy a conflicted position is also to inhabit a continual opportunity—the chance, to borrow Hong’s words, to “do better, be better,” but in moral and political rather than economic terms.In one of the essays in “Minor Feelings,” called “An Education,” Hong looks back on her friendships in college with two other Asian-American girls—brash, unstable hellions named Erin and Helen. They made art together, they traded poetry, they got drunk and fought and made up. “We had the confidence of white men,” Hong recalls, “which was swiftly cut down after graduation, upon our separation, when each of us had to prove ourselves again and again, because we were, at every stage of our career, underestimated.” The story of their friendship is a story about the way that loving others is often a less complex and more worthy act than loving ourselves—and the way that love can blunt the psychological force of marginalization. If structural oppression is the denial of justice, and if justice is what love looks like in public, then love demonstrated in private sometimes provides what the world doesn’t. Hong is writing in agonized pursuit of a liberation that doesn’t look white—a new sound, a new affect, a new consciousness—and the result feels like what she was waiting for. Her book is a reminder that we can be, and maybe have to be, what others are waiting for, too.

[canonicallyanxious]

reading recap - Sep 2019

In an attempt to document my efforts in completing my New Year’s resolution of reading at least one book every two weeks, every month I’m going to be doing a brief write-up of the books I read to keep myself accountable and share this journey with you all.

i meant to do this like two weeks ago but i totally forgot lol ANYWAY in the month of September i read twelve books knocking me up to a 67 book total!!! i’m really happy about this progress!!! also i enjoyed a lot of the things i read this month so that’s really good!!!!

The books I read, alongside ratings out of 5 stars [5 for favorites; 1 for books I unreservedly dislike] and some of my thoughts:

Murder on the Orient Express - Agatha Christie | 4/5

i thought this was a really fun read! I’ve never been, like, a huge fan of murder mysteries tbh but i think christie’s books are entertaining and easy to read. for this one in particular, i think it was pretty good for most of it and then the ending is what really pulled everything together for me and made it go from a decent read to a pretty excellent read.

How to Cure a Ghost - Fahira Roisin | 4/5

As far as poetry goes i think this collection is quite accessible and also very poignant at times! I love that my copy of the book comes with illustrations, i think the pairing of the pictures with the words is very evocative. This collection explores issues of race, immigration, sexuality, and others in a very personal and intimate way, so I enjoyed it a lot overall. Favorite poems: Utopia, On Being an Immigrant, and Under the Golden Hour

The Murder on the Links - Agatha Christie | 3.5/5

I think of the three Christie books i read this month this one was probably my least favorite. It was still entertaining, but I didn’t really like the pov character that much? Also some of the twists were a little too much for me. Still a fun and engaging read though!

I’m Telling The Truth But I’m Lying - Bassey Ipki | 4.5/5

Guys holy shit this book was SO moving and so beautifully written I don’t even know that I can say anything coherent about it?? Basically a collection of personal essays about the author’s experiences and struggles with family, relationships, immigration, race, mental illness, and more - but so gorgeously written. could not stop thinking about it for a solid week after i finished!

Norse Mythology - Neil Gaiman | 4/5

a fun and well-imagined interpretation of Norse mythology! I have to say i’m not, like, that well-versed on the lore so i’m not sure how gaiman’s version compares but i will say i like that his usual wit comes through in places here, and also that he does a good job of maintaining a sense of character while also making these stories feel like his own.

On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous - Ocean Vuong | 4/5

this book is beautifully written, as you might imagine, bc i mean, it’s Ocean Vuong. Also for me I really felt like i could connect to the queer vietnamese protagonist so that’s what made this a special experience for me. I will say sometimes the poeticism did get a little much for me, just because there was pretty much no reprieve and for me sometimes a lot of that language can get tiresome to get through, but overall, i thought the writing was moving enough that i could look past at it at most points.

Foundation - Isaac Asimov | 3/5

apparently in my notebook i gave this 3.5 stars but from what i remember i’m bumping it down to 3 lol. i think my main issue with this book is there’s not really a strong sense of character voice, like the story is told from several different characters depending on the time period but they all?? kinda feel like the same character type to me???? overall with the world building and the politics, still engaging enough to get me through the end, but that’s about it.

Poems - Maya Angelou | 4.5/5

this is probably my favorite poetry collection i’ve read this entire year. i always feel like i have a harder time “getting” poetry than prose, but i didn’t get the same feeling from this book, like idk i felt like i finally got why poetry is the way that it is. Angelou is just such a goddamn powerhouse of a writer. It’s undeniable. Favorite poems: Passing Time, Wonder, America, Where We Belong a Duet, Still I rise

Murder on the Nile - Agatha Christie | 4.5/5

my favorite of the Christie novels I read this month I think. I connected to the characters more, the pacing never felt slow to me, I like that we got a greater and more complex sense of all the different characters’ motivations, and also i think of the three i read this month this one definitely had the most tragic ending. No surprise there i guess lol

Mind of My Mind - Octavia Butler | 3/5

also gave this one 3.5 stars but i think i’ll have to bump it down to 3... idk... it was a really interesting read and the concept is fascinating and i think butler’s writing is very very good but again, my problem is mostly with the characters, in that i find them all really difficult to connect to. also lots of really uncomfortable parts in this book for me - the main characters are all extremely powerful telepaths who are also technically related to each other, like they’re all telepaths because they have the same father [idk it’s hard to explain sdkfndsjfs], so there’s a lot of really questionable material in terms of consent, bodily autonomy, incest, etc. but it’s not like that stuff makes the book worse, i think, it’s just kind of hard to wrap my head around bc it’s very obviously not a way of thinking i can relate to lol.

Smoke and Mirrors - Neil Gaiman | 3/5

this might actually be my least favorite short story collection by Gaiman? I’ve never been a huge fan of his short stories tbh but i think this one has been the weakest collection for me, maybe because it’s also his first one, idk. also though a lot of it was that exact brand of ~gritty modern realism~ i’m beginning to grow incredibly wearisome of, so there’s that. still some enjoyable reads in here, like Only the End of the World Again, One Life Finished in Early Moorcock, and Murder Mysteries.

Saga - Brian Vaughan | 4/5

a sci-fi graphic novel I got at the bookstore on a whim. i believe this is the first volume and it was a really quick and fun read?? The art is GORGEOUS and I really love the characters and the world building. idk if i’ll ever get around to reading the rest but honestly i think i would like to!

[octoberinvienna]

Youth, Marriage, Motherland

There is something sublime and quietly magical that happens to me when I cross the border into Poland, the country of my birth. It’s not exactly a feeling and certainly no kind of realization but instead a wave or state or sensation that both envelopes and radiates. A profound peacefulness. Some alignment of the axes of my DNA. Not really borne of any geographic nostalgia for the place since I never lived there beyond my toddler years. But a soulful, even spiritual, fondness, connection, unity with the land that was first felt under my tiny feet, that fed and sustained my parents and their parents, with this beleaguered country that appears and disappears from maps over the centuries and yet retains its clear historic arc.

As I’ve already said, despite what it might appear from the above, I don’t feel myself to have any particular nostalgia for being a Pole in particular, let alone any identifiable national pride, but it is the place I’m from, stamped on my birth certificate and passport, and for whatever reason, it’s where I feel most unhurried, most pleasantly resigned, least like a stranger in a strange land. And I can assure you, that as a younger me, I never, ever, imagined that would be the case.

For an immigrant child, the relationship between your personal identity and ‘home’ country is complex in almost indescribable ways. Amongst my earliest memories is my first day at daycare near Roncesvalles Ave, the Polish community’s landing spot in Toronto until very recently. I had become comfortable in a mock car in the corner of the classroom and couldn’t understand why the teacher was pulling me out when I was clearly telling her that I wasn’t done yet. Since children don’t typically require a common language to play, there aren’t too many other misunderstandings that I readily recall from those early days. But every few years after that brought a new mysterious paradigm shift in how I thought of myself, my Polishness in a Canadian world, the accents of my parents, the foods that we ate and avoided, and the wool cardigans I always suffered through on school picture day.

Being different as a kid in Toronto is definitely less difficult than in most other cities of the world. Almost everyone, especially in newcomer neighbourhoods, is some variety of novel. My kindergarten playground was a mini-UN. Grade school was in a Maltese neighbourhood (if you can believe that) and with a healthy mix of Philipino, Vietnamese, Dominican, Jamaican, Portuguese, Ukrainian, and of course, Canadian kids. My high school was predominantly Italian or they at least tried hard to make it feel that way. But even there, I studied and played sports with Croats, Salvadoreans and Lebanese friends and classmates.

Even in this multicultural melange, I still felt outside the norm on better days and embarrassed for my heritage on worse ones. I always had blackforest ham sandwiches on rye bread for lunch. No one else every did. I never got granola bars, or rice pudding, or fruit roll-ups, because I was a sophisticated pre-teen with old world canapes in my He-Man lunchbox. I couldn’t understand why my parents were unable to pronounce three or thirteen or thirsty even as adults. That my dad didn’t recognize the crucial difference between Nike and Nike Air running shoes. That my mom would look for me in the neighbourhood, while I was playing baseball or hockey, by hollering for me in my diminutive Polish name Piotrus – which when you’re 12 is pretty much the equivalent of her with a mega-phone yelling: Sweetie Petey Pie!

In the assertively awkward teenage years, it’s not an exaggeration to say that I shunned my heritage. As I mentioned, there didn’t seem to be many other cool Polish kids around. My skin crawled when recent Polish arrivals gave presentations in English class, well researched and heavily accented. Now, looking back 20 years later, I couldn’t be more embarrassed that I was so embarrassed, but in that frail dawning time of life, I needed confidence drawn from the collective inputs to my makeup and being Polish didn’t appear to provide that in any way. I couldn’t help but feel that being a Pole dragged me down more than it lifted me up.

That all thankfully started to shift in my 20s. Broadened experiences, a University education and the first of many overseas trips began to expand and contextualize how interesting it is to have a whole world within yourself that isn’t necessarily evident to those in the world outside you. With the help of new friends and acquaintances, I felt emboldened to appreciate knowing a unique (if not particularly practical) language, celebrating communal rituals and events in specific ways, getting under the skin of my parents’ decisions and memories of my sandwiches and school trips and all the invisible-to-me in’s and out’s, before’s and after’s of life from their perspectives – that they only now could themselves acknowledge with some distance and hard-earned stability. I realized that the best kind of multiculturalism doesn’t mean the fading away of heritage, but the doubling-down, the creation of new, as yet unknown, fusions, the celebration and sharing of the meaning of your roots.

After all those years and that enjoyable evolution, it still never entirely settled though. I continued to find Poles xenophobic at worst and grouchy grumpy at best. I wondered how I’d ever find a woman to marry me and what I could possibly offer in negotiations to her family for taking on my name. What would my folks expect of my wife? Could she possibly ever meet the exacting Catholic Eastern European standards that travel silently from generation to generation?

As you enter proper adulthood, questions of identity become deprioritized in the all-encompassing effort to become independent, blaze a respectful life and career path, and at the base, manage to have somewhere to live and some food to eat. More time is spent doing than reflecting. In that vein, as a 35 year old graduate student of immigration in Brussels, where once, in a seminar on integration and identity, I may have questioned aloud what I owed to my Polish (and now EU) passport, I found the woman to perfectly complement the parts of me that needed complementing.

Her background was even more interesting than mine, and dare I say, more complicated. A Sudanese Copt of Egyptian heritage with a Russian mother. It still thrills and baffles me to hear the stories of her youth, childhood, emigration, integration and evolution. And always provides an invaluable and cherished counterpoint to my own cultural self-realization.

Dalia and I get to co-habit a world much larger than the one immediately evident in front of us. Full of history and exploration, questions and discovery, interpretation and perspective. She took my name and even claims to like it. She memorized a speech in Polish and recited it to my parents at our wedding to barely a single dry eye. And she sits next to me here, as we drive our rented car across the Czech border with Poland, on the highway linking Osprava to Katowice, and bringing us to Krakow. She looks forward to bigos as much as I do to pierogi. She craves herring and rye bread like a true Pole, but even better, because she isn’t one. My peacefulness is further fulfilled in her. My genes rejoice at being home, my heart rejoices for being hers. The journey of life takes us to many places but in some sense, it’s always about drilling deeper into yourself and the things closest and most important. And there is little better than sharing that journey and even finding an unexpected guide towards its fulfillment.

[shaunstoffer]

I left the school I worked at in Vietnam to start a new journey backpacking Japan, visiting my family in Singapore, and to live and teach in Taiwan. I didn’t dislike Vietnam but couldn’t get past some of the cons that made me not want to extend my stay past my fifteen months of living in Ho Chi Minh City.

Some of the things I do and don’t miss about living in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam:

The corruption: My temporary residence card was a piece of crap to begin with. It cost me well over $100 and was simply a cheap quality business card that had my photo laid on top and laminated. The seal was uneven and already breaking after just a few weeks in my wallet. So, I tried to double laminate it like a stubborn fool only for it to get bizarrely stuck in the laminator and come out looking like this. As a result, I tried several different ways to leave Vietnam from trying to purchase an exit visa, paying a bribe, and hiring a man who specialized in immigration issues such as this. In the end, the only method that worked was ironically getting help from a friend’s, whose dog I was fostering, cousin who worked for immigration. He simply met me at the airport, talked to immigration for maybe one minute, and waved me through hundreds of people queued in immigration and security. Literally he instructed me to go to the staff lines, which were empty, while hundreds of people waited in the regular lines. Each employee would look at me confused, I’d point to him, he’d give a thumbs up and a nod, and they would wave me through without a second thought. It was the most impressive thing I’ve seen in a long time.The pollution: My neighborhood in district seven was among the cleanest in Ho Chi Minh City, which isn’t saying much frankly, but I still never got used to waking up and seeing smog that would conceal the sky. I ended up getting a Vietnam “cough”, something a lot of expats initially develop from the exposure to pollution and are left with no choice but to either get used to it or leave. I was missing fresh clean air and nature more than I ever imagined to the point that every holiday I took I would go somewhere with mountains or beaches or both. Fresh air is something I’ll never take for granted again. The flooding: There’s nothing more comical than watching a horde of people with their feet on the panhandles of their bikes, going a kilometer an hour, and doing everything in their power not to come to a complete stop as that would cause them to have to put their leg, sometimes thigh deep or more, in the dirty flood waters that have nowhere to go due to the poor sewage system which is regularly clogged by locals uncaringly sweeping their into the drains. It was also unpleasant to be driving to work or the gym and experience a mild drizzle turn into a full on flash flood within five minutes. Many people wear heavy raincoats while driving, as umbrellas aren’t rational, even when walking due to the strong winds. However, people typically still bring an extra outfit in their bag or wear shorts and flip flops to avoid being stuck in wet clothes the entire day.

My students:My neighborhood, Phu My Hung:An unfortunate quick stop to Singapore: I reluctantly took a trip to see my mom and her side of the family in Singapore for my birthday prior to going on a three week holiday to Japan. I was fighting a serious case of homesickness and had contemplated going back home for my holiday instead of Japan. However, after spending three days with my family I couldn’t wait to say goodbye and move on to the next adventure. Aside from a nice birthday dinner and some much appreciated birthday gifts, I was all but forgotten. No one wanted to go out to eat, I ended up getting sick again, and every conversation went to gossiping about people or questioning my every life action. “What are you going to do after you’re done teaching?” “How are you qualified to teach social studies?” “What’s this? Why are you growing a beard?” “If you don’t like it you can go eat somewhere else!” It’s been a long time since I’ve been around people who made me feel so alone and small and I attribute my coldness and lack of trust to my undesired experiences and interactions with a fair amount of my family. To them it’s normal, to me it’s something I would never tolerate from any other persons. I chalk it up to different cultures but also to a lack of understanding from both sides of my family. I’ve never been understood and people can seldom relate to me, I ultimately think it attests for a lot of my loner mentality and lack of emotions.

Fair warning Singapore is a fun place but definitely strict when it comes to drugs. If you want a party beyond alcohol, don’t come to Singapore or try your luck in Geylang.The view from my grandmother’s apartment in Braddell Place.Six different currencies I’ve managed to collect overtime. Thai baht, US dollars, Japanese yen, Malaysian ringgit, Singaporean dollars, and Vietnamese dong. (From left to right, top to bottom.)Osaka Food Market: The seafood market was easily the best and my favorite out of the three I visited in Japan. Some of my favorites of the foods I tried were Kobe beefsteak, raw sea urchins, and fresh fire-roasted scallops.

Osaka’s Streets: Osaka is absurdly clean and people follow every traffic rule there is. No one j-walks, no one loiters, and everybody is helpful and courteous despite the language barrier. In Japanese culture it is rude to stare and common courtesy is expected such as holding the door out for someone, allowing someone in a hurry to pass you by, and to greet and thank customers and patrons habitually. That being said, a lot of Japanese will still see foreigners as outsiders, especially if they do not speak Japanese. Meaning just because they are polite to you does not necessarily mean they care or want to know about you.

My regular traditional Japanese Food: Sushi and dumplings.A Guilty Pleasure: I go to a McDonalds in every country I visit because it’s always a little different from the menu to the seating. Japanese McDonalds have bacon lettuce burgers, teriyaki chicken fillets, and double beef and egg burgers for example.Vending Machines: Vending machines are sprawled out everywhere, literally every block has one. From soda to coffee to beer and even ice cream. There are very few things, especially beverages that you can’t find in vending machines in Japan.

Trains: Japan has a lot of conveniences such as toilets and breastfeeding rooms everywhere for the self-explanatory. Trains are definitely one of those conveniences offering different trains like local, sub-express, and limited express. The system is a bit confusing but there are some conveinces to help you such as maps posted every where, machine for route finders and fare adjustments, and there is almost always a tenant who speaks reasonable English at every ticketing queue.

My first experience on the train in Osaka I followed Google maps which took me on an unnecessarily longer route. I showed the ticket tenant my ticket and asked if my directions were accurate. He literally gave me my money back, bought a new, cheaper ticket, and walked me to the right line, stop, and told me when and where to get off. I had never been so thankful or respectful of someone’s courtesy and helpfulness.

7th Eleven: These are everywhere as well in Japan and offer some of the freshest meals as well ass an exceptional variety of beverages.

Toilets: Something I have to admit I miss about Japan is the toilets. The seats automatically lift up and down and there is always a set of buttons that allow you to control music, clean the toilet for you, a bidet with adjustable buttons for the spray strength and temperature. It became one of those weird things where you actually looked forward to using the toilet.

Traditional housing in Japan: Oddities: For whatever reason Japanese people love Spam, they literally have flavors I didn’t even know existed. Nightlife: Osaka has a thriving nightlife from strip clubs to highball bars to British pubs. People in Osaka are generally more open and friendly towards expats whereas many Japanese can be particularly cold to foreigners. For example, many foreigners who have tattoos are not allowed into saunas, gyms, and springs unless they find a way to cover them up. Also, many foreigners are politely unwelcome at restaurants or bars simply because they are foreigners as well as aren’t fluent in Japanese. They’ll be politely told we are closed or full.

I experienced all these things in a variety of way such as being told at a hookah bar in Kyoto that they were full, until they saw my Japanese girlfriend and magically two seats became available. I also booked a hotel in Tokyo with a Taiwanese girl who spoke Japanese and laughed when a sign posted read:

The famous Glico Running Man:

Highballs & Sake: Highballs, which are basically tall cocktails comprised of liquor, normally whiskey and a lot of club soda. At first, this drink seemed unappealing to me as I prefer whiskey on the rocks or neat, but overtime they grew on me and I ended up having numerous highballs over my time in Japan.

Sake, on the other hand, is something to be either taken as a shot or sipped and enjoyed. A general rule of thumb is that quality sake is served cold where has lower tiers are served warm. I had the pleasure of trying a variety at various bars and have to admit I became a fan of aged Suntory whiskeys.

To politely cheers in Japan you should either pour your sake bottle or be holding your sake glass with two hands to receive your sake. You should also cheers lower than the person you are cheering with.

Japan isn’t cheap to eat or drink out at and one should expect to spend around 600-700 (around $6) for a standard beer at a bar.

Hookah in Japan: I fell in love with smoking Japanese shisha in Japan because it was something cheaper, social, and I wouldn’t be comatose in bed the next day. I also happened to Casanova my way into charming a female employee who gave me quite the hook up.Traditional Japanese Eateries: What I loved about the neighborhood, Tennoji, that I stayed at in Osaka was the variety of traditional eateries a short walk down the street form my hostel. The language barrier was difficult at first as I didn’t learn how to say useful phrases such as, “one please” “thank you” or “excuse me” until after a week of practicing in Japan. I relied on Google translate, pointing at pictures, and the dumb luck of having an occasional English speaking server or chef.

Osaka Castle: Is it touristy? Yes. Is it worth it? Hell yes.

Nature and weather during summer’s June: All over fellow travel blogs and travel websites I heard that June was the worst month to visit Japan due to the lack of blooming cherry blossoms and the unfortunate rainy season. However, of the three weeks I spent in various cities in Japan it only rained, and mildly at that, a fraction of the time. There was no flooding, no heavy rain, and no thunder or lightning. A simple umbrella and you can get around no problem. As far as nature goes, there is a bit of a lack of variety in color but there are still plenty of flowers and everything is very green and pleasant to see nonetheless. Many flowers won’t be in bloom but nature is still worth visiting in parks and gardens for sure.

Survival Japanese: Simplified for English pronunciation.

One = Itchy

Yes = Hi

Cheers – Comb pie

Please – Own knee guy she mas

Thank You – are we got toe go zi mas

Excuse Me/Sorry = Sue me ma send

No Problem = Moan die nai

Story Time: My last night in Osaka I spent the day in the slums run by the Yakuza. I walk into the first restaurant I see without any foreigners and the server tells me, “only Japanese menu.” I reply “mondai nai (no problem),” and the cook comes out to take my order but instead asks me about my cauliflower ears. I explain I’m a semi-retired fighter on holiday.

We start taking about fighting and I show him old videos of me and some of my old training partners killing it right now. They start bringing up old Japanese Pride fights and ask me to send them one of my old fight pics. They print two copies out and get me to sign them and they tape one on the wall and tell me they are going to put the other up in a nearby bar. It turns into a small group of the staff but we are all vibing.

I ask them if there are any Yakuza bars nearby I should be wary of and they laugh. They tell me you’re really close to one and I go seriously? The cook pulls up his shirt to show a full back piece of Shiva and I’m like oh shit. He explains he’s lower tier but not to worry, if you respect us we’ll respect you. I offer to buy them a round of drinks and they starts cheersing me and return the favor by giving me a free meal.

We keep talking and they literally say we’re going to close the restaurant down and take you to a local bar. Being me, I reluctantly say let’s go. They literally close the place down and we go to a Yakuza bar that’s something like a speakeasy where, go figure, is the second picture hung up. The bartender’s and other patrons go what are you doing bringing this foreigner here? They go don’t worry he’s with us, he’s cool. They warn me the boss isn’t in tonight but if he decides to show up you have to leave, it’s not personal but you aren’t one of us. I tell them I understand and we start eating and drinking but then a random member stands up and slaps me in the face – twice. I stand up and square up like what the hell? They all start laughing and say we wanted to see how you would react then say don’t worry, we all like you now because you didn’t back down, it shows you have pride like us. We go shot for shot, drink for drink ALL NIGHT. Eventually, I leave and they ask for a way to contact me to keep in touch, I right down my number and bid them farewell.

Never a dull moment. This is my version of Bert’s “I Am The Machine!”

Osaka I left the school I worked at in Vietnam to start a new journey backpacking Japan, visiting my family in Singapore, and to live and teach in Taiwan.

[nikhilgraphic]

Showcasing Diversity in Illustration: Advice From 10 Artists

Diversity may be a topic on many people’s minds lately . For designers and illustrators, the question they often ask themselves is how they will meaningfully contribute to the present urgent discussion on equality and variety . Through the visual arts medium, designers and illustrators have more power and influence than they'll realize, now available their course also, you have to just find the best university or institutions who has providing the best graphic designing course in Delhi, so get start your creativity and work hard.  When it involves showcasing diversity in your illustrations, don’t believe stereotypes to make equity, as that defeats the aim entirely. Instead, take the time to actually get to understand different cultures. Design and illustrate with a more sensible approach to how the planet really is and appears . To get experts’ opinions on the way to add more cultural diversity in illustration, we spoke directly with our Creative Market Shop Owners. We wanted to seek out out where they get their inspiration and references, how they are doing their research, and, ultimately, how they create their designs more inclusive. Here’s their insightful combat things.

1. Use real locations as inspiration sources

One surefire thanks to showcase more diversity in your illustrations is to base your drawings on a true location on the earth . This overcomes the temptation to stereotype since you’re handling factual, on-the-ground information as against mere assumptions. In Alone Sawchuk’s case, her inspiration for her Social Diversity/Objects Collection was a visit to at least one of Sweden’s most multi-cultural neighborhoods. “The Diversity Collection theme originated in Stockholm, Sweden. There’s a neighborhood in Stockholm called Rinke by. I had the chance to feel the atmosphere of this area, and 90% of the inhabitants there are immigrants or first and second generation with foreign roots.

 They formed the idea of my collection. Also, I take most of my topics from the environment now that I'm in Poland. I watch women strike, smog within the air, and dirty water. you'll already understand what is going to form the idea of my next collections.”

To ensure this cultural diversity successfully makes it into her designs, Alona follows a specific process:

“First, I decide what the gathering will contains . These are mainly characters, banners, seamless textures, posters, and postcards. These are often applied in several areas or, for instance , complete the location . i feel about what colors would be better to convey the theme. i really like black and white. I feel that such a mixture means there’s no got to consider details and obtain lost in colors. there's only the essence of what you would like to convey,” she revealed.

“Finally, I mostly create characters on paper. These are the most characters or the most composition; I supplement them with different elements, and, from this, I combine seamless textures.”

2. Design realistic characters

Character design may be a multi-faceted process that comes with illustration, design, storytelling, and even technical skills in working with animation software.

 Character design is additionally integral to cultural diversity in illustrations since an outsized a part of a character’s design is predicated on outward appearance. For Anna Minkins, an illustrator from Erceg Novi in Montenegro, character design is that the basis for her design inclusivity, like together with her Nude Modern Diversity Collection. "Character design may be a big a part of my job. i really like the thought that each single person is gorgeous in their individuality, regardless of what age they're or what complexion or somatotype they need.

 Drawing diverse people isn't only a stimulating activity and a continuing test of skill, but (I would really like to believe) also an honest thing for contemporary society. As references for my sense of equality and variety , I usually use photos of individuals i do know or images from either Instagram or Pinterest. Using real photos also helps to point out cultural trends (like hairstyles and fashion) correctly. The representation of various cultures can help different people relate to the visual content far better.

3. Capture subtle physical differences If you’re truly committed to cultural diversity in your illustrations, there’s no substitute for extensive research.

 Doing quite just scratching the surface of varied ethnicities is that the key to fairly representing different groups of individuals .In Irina Mir’s case, research is that the differentiating factor that enabled her to make her latest graphic, Diverse Cartoon Avatars, et al.

 in her collections. "When doing research for my latest set, I looked into a wider range of ethnicities, aiming for tons of diversity in people's physical appearances. for instance , when trying to represent Asian people, it's often overlooked how Malaysian, Vietnamese, Chinese, Japanese, and Korean people could also be different. 

an equivalent goes for Central and South America. there is a huge visual diversity here, which isn't really reflected within the broad term ‘Hispanic,’” she said. "I sleep in Chile, and it's an oft-discussed issue here how we've a spread of individuals of all shapes and colors , but the actors and models we see on national media and billboard ads are selected to seem tall, thin, and blond. this is often not how a mean Chilean looks and isn’t representative of the people I interact with daily. i think it is vital for our visual culture to reflect the range of our lived experience.

 "Something as accessible as Google Images can go an extended way toward enabling this diversity research." I just did plenty of Google Image searches with keywords like ‘middle-aged Indian woman,’ together example. It’s about listening to those photos that look more candid and trying to ascertain common trends (like how women tend to style their hair, which tends to differ between cultures and among ages).

4. Seek balance in your compositions

 Instead of only that specialize in one racial representation in your drawings, you'll attempt to include an equal quantity of varied ethnicities within the graphics you create, along side a balance between gender representations. That’s what Franz of Franz Draws did for her Huge Collection of 220 Diverse Faces set, with good results. 

"For the range face set, I loosely divided people into very generalized ethnic groups (Black, White, Asian, Latino, Arab). i attempted to draw an equal amount of girls and men for every group (15 women, 15 men, 7 boys, and seven girls).

��I honestly didn't think an excessive amount of about it. it had been a really simplified, very loose guideline that I had in my head,” she explained. "Of course, within the process of drawing, the boundaries became blurry, and lots of faces fit into quite one group, which i prefer.

 i do not want to squeeze people into categories. My main goal was simply to make an illustration where White race aren't the bulk and where everyone features a chance to seek out a face that they will identify with. 

"Using stock photo websites for inspiration and research also proves handy in Franz’s workflows. "I tend to look for photos and portraits as an idea for my illustrations. I especially use photos from free websites like Apixaban and Unsplashed to form sure that i do not infringe on any photographer's copyrights.”

5. Eliminate stereotypes 

This actionable takeaway is perhaps one among the harder ones for illustrators to use consistently because a number of it's subconscious thanks to popular culture and media dissemination.

 However, there are steps you'll fancy make sure that stereotypes don’t make it into your illustrations. As Spain’s Beatriz Gascony, creator of the Family Big Set

 1: Diversity graphic, understands it, artists should take care to not replace a scarcity of representation with simple stereotyping. "Diversity is everything. the planet isn't always fair, politics aren't always helpful, and we, as citizenry , don't grant an equal voice to everyone. That's a reality that we all should fight every single day and check out to form people understand.

 I cannot change the planet , but I can attempt to give them a voice in my drawings, to offer them representation,” she said.

 "About my research process, my main concern is stereotypes. Stereotyping does the maximum amount harm as non-representation.

 There are many sorts of stereotyping, from plainly hurtful simplifications to little needles we've stuck in our cultural baggage that we might not remember of.

 I always attempt to be conscious and sensible by trying to use empathy. Addressing diversity requires attention and respect. 

I attempt to surround myself with people that are different from me.”It also comes right down to being discriminating in what sources you employ to try to to your illustrations justice.

 "About my sources, I attempt to avoid the moment search on Google (again, probably filled with stereotypes). I follow tons of artists, and that i attempt to follow diverse artists.”

6. Research your material thoroughly

When conducting research for cultural diversity in your drawings, it’s important to really understand the topic matter. rather than just changing an attribute or feature of your character here and there, make certain to make wholly unique designs for them across different cultures. Lana Elanor practices this when in her workflows for her illustration process. It begins with honest and fair research right from the beginning.

“One of the common mistakes is when artists accompany attributes and clichés rather than creating different people. for instance , once I was performing on my Abstract Gallery Modern Women’s Prints collection, I researched and decided to form different women rather than just adding some significant attributes to ‘average’ people.

 i think the ‘create-average-to-sell-more’ era is finally getting to end, and other people want to acknowledge and be recognized,” she reasoned "So in Abstract Gallery, you'll see unique women with their different styles, backgrounds, and stories behind them.

 It’s not about just recoloring one to urge another race; they're obviously completely different women with many features to raised reflect real people and achieve the goal of celebrating diversity. And this makes these women alive.It is a contemporary issue, and that we all still should understand and learn such a lot about it.

 we'd like to widen the spectrum of our perceptions of what exactly inclusivity in art means to the planet and the way it impacts real people.”

7. Study history and empathize

 with other points of view Equality and variety can only happen once you apply empathy, which begs the question, how does one become more empathic?

 Walking in someone else’s shoes are some things we all strive to try to to , but many folks come short , regardless of what proportion we would like to. IN the case of designer Jerome from Dedra Studio, it comes right down to a three-pronged approach, which incorporates learning about history, taking into consideration the viewpoints of others, and being an honest listener. To start performing on an illustration like Black History Month Mosaic #BLM, I check out the events through recent history that have shaped the way we see these celebrations today.

 To be more objective and know what to incorporate , I'm going online and skim about other points of view. i feel that taking note of what these communities need to say (whether we belong to them or not) is vital to helping us understand how they feel—and the way to best represent that on an illustration.”

8. Travel, both face to face and thru research

A recurring theme among a number of our designers, with reference to inclusivity and cultural diversity in illustrations, is travel. Travel exposes you to different cultures, but, of course, that’s not always possible for everybody , especially now during the pandemic. For Antonio Santos from Spain, travel isn’t just something you'll neutralize person. It’s also a journey that solid research takes you on, which ends up in learning and more equality and variety in your illustrations. “I don't just attempt to represent diversity when the topic itself ‘demands’ it. for instance , once I designed my collection of wedding characters, I did it thinking that not only White race marry . That's something obvious, and that is why there are characters of various skin colors, races, etc. Throughout my life, I even have also been lucky enough to travel tons . I even have visited more or less 40 countries in Europe, Asia, Africa, and therefore the Americas. This has undoubtedly been one among my sources of inspiration to make several of the characters within the collection of 125 Kids of the planet Cartoon Style,” he revealed. Nonetheless, despite all his travels, there have been times when he wasn’t ready to experience a culture face to face , which is where travel through research takes over. “I don't always have a private reference, so in those cases, I search for information about the country from which I wanted to style a representative character. I search for something special, something that's unique thereto country. Something that, if an individual from that country saw it, they might identify it and feel that it represented a crucial and distinctive a part of their culture or customs. I remember, for instance , the case of the character from Sri Lanka . It’s a rustic that I wanted to seem within the collection, but I didn't know any regard to design a singular and representative character of the country. After long research, I discovered that their traditional wedding dresses are beautiful and unique. The character ended up wearing the suit of a standard groom from the country. That doesn't mean that everybody wears it. Still, i feel that anyone from Sri Lanka who sees the character will identify him as a representative of their country, and that is what i used to be trying to find . The truth is that designing this collection ended up being an exquisite trip round the world on behalf of me , during which I discovered and learned many things.”

9. Design so every team has players

You’ve heard it said that variety is that the spice of life. So it's with drawing, too. once you honestly strive to incorporate legitimate variety in your designs, you finish up designing for cultural diversity because the natural results of your effort. That’s what Svetlana Vasilkovskaya does as she goes through her creative workflows. “When I design with a spread of individuals in mind, I attempt to balance it in order that all groups are approximately equally represented. for instance , there should be approximately an equivalent number of youngsters , children , and older people, half men and ladies . Among these three groups, I confirm that there are representatives of various people and races. That even means people with glasses and without, with hair and without, with features and without, etc. This is all quite entertaining to form sure that every team is staffed with players, if you'll . Different people inspire me. it's interesting on behalf of me to see into their features and see differences and nuances, and then, using minimal means, show it in lines and color spots,” she said. Svetlana’s creative process is predicated on strong sketch work and her minimalist approach to style . Something as basic as navigating Google Images stirs her imagination and inspires her inclusive illustrations. “Whenever i want to urge able to work on a design like this, I just grab pencil and paper and attend Google. for instance , once I was drawing Diverse Crowd of individuals Wearing a Mask and other people of the planet Pattern, I looked for ‘portrait’ and just went through the results. If I liked an individual , I drew a portrait supported his appearance in my minimalist style. In the process, I could change something, like hairstyle or age, or mix it up. Take a hairstyle from one person, placed on glasses from another, and take a face from a 3rd. 

If i'm missing some details, then I also search for them in Google Images. for instance , once I drew men, it clothed that i prefer men in T-shirts. So I had to look for “man during a shirt" in order that I didn't get a crowd of athletes. The main thing is balance. If I see that one group outweighs another, I simply add representatives of the others.”

10. Explore teamwork as a topics

When we consider cultural diversity, we don’t immediately consider working together in teams. Yet, once you believe it more deeply, you start to know that working in teams may be a great opportunity to market equality and variety . For digital illustrator Mary Long, a team is that the perfect setting for this. “Each new illustration starts with a thought and a question: who might need it? Women’s History Month inspired me to make my Strong Women Together graphic designing.

 I've designed this product to point out the facility and therefore the opportunities of girls when they’re working as a team. Indeed, within the very diversity of the team or community lies its strength.

 I've included female characters of various nationalities and cultures, and i have worked on the small print , skin tones, hair color, accessories, and garments. 

I even have shown the individuality and strengths of every female character. At an equivalent time, the illustrations should promote a spirit of cooperation that's reinforced by this very diversity. I visit various design blogs, and I’m following illustrators on Dribble or Bedance to form sure that my images are currently relevant.” We hope you’ve gotten some powerful, actionable takeaways from our group of expert Creative Market Shop Owners. These artists practice what they preach, which is obvious to ascertain from the range in their illustrations.

[faithfulnews]

Look Who’s Here

Look Who’s Here

By Brett C. Hoover

March 23, 2020

Editors’ Note: We’ve​ asked a number of authors to discuss the state of the American parish and what it means to be church in a time of migration and movement. We also wanted to offer practical suggestions for how parishes can be more welcoming, just, and Spirit-filled in these times. Together, our contributors provide a picture of the U.S. church today, one not so much in decline as undergoing a profound transition. To read all the articles, see the entire collection, The American Parish Today.

  When my parents left their hometown in central Indiana in 1966, theirs was the “German” parish, though about the only thing really German about it was the heritage of many of the parishioners. I never knew that parish—St. Joseph, a large, gray neo-Gothic edifice on Market Street downtown. My parents were married there a couple of years after my mother converted to Catholicism. Then they moved to California, where I was born. Decades later, in my thirties, I began to visit my extended family in Indiana more frequently. St. Joseph’s was now All Saints, a single combined parish for the entire town. Latin American and Southeast Asian immigrants had moved in to work at the pork-processing plant, and there was a Spanish Mass. By my last visit, a good number of the congregants even at the English Mass were Hispanic.

The town I grew up in lies in suburban Orange County, south of Los Angeles. As a child I rode my bike among the endless subdivisions, and almost everyone I encountered was white. By the late 1970s, however, refugees from Southeast Asia and other immigrants began settling in the area, and our parish offered a late-afternoon Vietnamese Mass, so remote from the rest of the life of the parish that we hardly knew it was there. In the mid-80s, I went off to college, and by the time I moved back to California decades later, my home parish had not only a Vietnamese Mass but a Spanish Mass as well. My mother found herself helping to organize a multilingual, multicultural Thanksgiving Day Mass.

In both cases, local demographic change had turned our hometown parishes into shared parishes, each with two or more distinct cultural, racial, or ethnic groups whose regular worship and ministries were separate, but who used the same parish facilities and were served by the same clergy leadership. Perhaps most Mass-going Catholics in the United States today have at least visited a shared parish on vacation. But at the same time, very little specific data about them has emerged. The Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate (CARA) found in 2013 that fewer than one-third of U.S. parishes had Mass in a language other than English (in four-fifths of those cases, the Mass was in Spanish). In 2014, Boston College’s National Study of Catholic Parishes with Hispanic Ministry reported that just over half of the parishioners at parishes with Hispanic ministry were not Hispanic, and that on average half or more of the Masses at such parishes took place in a language other than Spanish. Over the past decade or so, my students and I have studied various dioceses around the United States and calculated the percentage of parishes with Mass in more than one language. Dioceses in “gateway” cities and states where immigrants have been arriving for decades showed a majority of parishes with multilingual Mass schedules—in the most immigrant-rich dioceses, it was usually a supermajority and as high as 75 percent (Los Angeles) or 81 percent (Miami). Across the Midwest and South, where demographic transformations began in earnest in the 1990s, the percentage lay somewhere between 15 and 45 percent.

[In 1950, U.S. Catholics were regionally concentrated in the Northeast & Midwest. Since then, it's migrated to the South & West. See the data here.]

Shared parishes were almost never the result of a pastoral plan but rather an ad hoc response to demographic change. They constitute a kind of “middle way” between parishes that simply refuse to accommodate newcomers (or will only do so if the newcomers adapt English-language Masses and Euro-American Catholic customs) and those parishes that, de jure or de facto, devote their entire communal life to a particular racial, ethnic, or language group. A few shared parishes remain breathtaking in their diversity, such as St. Camillus in a Maryland suburb of Washington D.C., where Mass is held in English, French, and Spanish, and distinct ministries exist for Mexican, Central American, Francophone African, Haitian, Bangali, and African-American Catholics. Here in Los Angeles, I have personally visited and researched an inner-city African-American and Hispanic parish, a historically Mexican parish gentrified into multicultural affluence (but retaining a Spanish Mass), and a suburban parish with English-speaking Mexican Americans, Filipinos, and Spanish-speaking Mexican and Central American immigrants. The most common kind of shared parish, however, remains the combination of a Euro-American English-speaking community and a Spanish-speaking community of Latin American descent.

Shared parishes juxtapose unity and difference, sometimes emphasizing one side and sometimes the other.

Shared parishes juxtapose unity and difference, sometimes emphasizing one side and sometimes the other. The best such parishes balance the two effectively, providing safe space for different groups to worship and minister in their own way, but also joining those groups together in certain activities—liturgy, parish maintenance, festivals, committees—that offer an experience of the parish as a common project. Some native-born Americans object to the preservation of safe space for difference in shared parishes, insisting that Spanish Masses or Simbang Gabi celebrations just foreground the racial or ethnic differences that otherwise people would take little notice of, and that such displays delay necessary assimilation. In truth, people always take note of differences, even if they do not speak of them, and such differences remain very strongly felt by immigrants bewildered by the customs of their new country. In areas with a long history of immigration, a different kind of resistance emerges, where people of all groups tend to assume that regular contact has already made them interculturally competent enough—they have little more to learn from one another. Probably the deepest resistance to the unity-in-diversity model in shared parishes comes from patterns of avoidance. We tolerate one another well, but there are few or no opportunities to encounter one another as human beings and as equals.

Theologian Susan Reynolds speaks of shared parishes as “borderlands,” and they often do bring out the tensions, encounters, hybrid identities, and absurdities that we associate with lands near national boundaries. Regarding tensions, there are the angry battles over parish-room space, between-Mass confusion over the parking lot, and the occasional prejudicial complaints about “the Mexicans” (or, on the other side, “the white people”) uttered with disdain. An English-speaking Mexican American woman married to a white man spoke of how other whites would vociferously complain about “the Mexicans,” seemingly unaware that she was also Mexican.

On a more positive note, shared parishes also engender a lot of “code-switching,” where people naturally adjust their behavior depending on whom they’re speaking with. A Puerto Rican refers to the same priest by his first name in English settings, but always as “Padre” in Spanish. Then there are the beautiful and rich encounters that may occur. People deliver the peace in their neighbor’s unfamiliar language at a bilingual Mass, surprising their pew mates; older Euro-Americans fawn over the young children of their immigrant parish-council colleagues; people from multiple cultures pray the rosary in different languages at the same time in matched rhythm; and people sing the bilingual parts of the Mass without hesitation and in unity.

There are also absurdities, sometimes exasperating, other times humorous. A middle-schooler tells me after Mass how he was scolded by an adult for speaking Spanish (at recess!) to another child who had just arrived from Mexico. A couple with steadfast anti-immigrant views declare their love for the afternoon bilingual Mass. Celebrating Our Lady of Guadalupe on December 12, there are ebullient calls and responses of “Viva la Virgen de Guadalupe” (long live the Virgin of Guadalupe), and “Viva Mexico,” but then the Mexican priest eyes our modest group of visiting Anglos and cries out, “Viva Estados Unidos” (long live the United States), a cry so unexpected for the occasion that the whole congregation begins to laugh, we visitors included.

  In my experience and research, there are four big challenges in shared parish life.  First, the language barrier figures prominently, even in areas where bilingualism is common. People grow nervous not knowing how to speak with one another, or they commit offense unintentionally. Even where translation is readily available, it has its politics. Translating secretaries soften up blunt complaints for their monolingual priest (often to his chagrin). Language barriers lead to culture clash, as when communities accustomed to avoiding mention of death find themselves face-to-face with the skeletons and candied skulls of the Day of the Dead (Día de los Muertos). Second, culture clash emerges in daily misunderstanding—perplexity at why white people do not shake hands with everyone when they enter a room (as in Latin American custom), why Mexicans double park on major feast days, and why African-American liturgies are so long—but it also manifests itself in misinterpretation of different approaches to key parish activities such as fundraising, popular devotions, and the emotional tone of the liturgy.

The third and most difficult challenge to confront in shared parishes has to do with the way the larger U.S. society seeps into parish life. We suppose and celebrate the equality of all Christians in our common baptism and one faith, but we live in an unequal society where injustice persists. How do we maintain equality at the parish when at local workplaces all the bosses are from one cultural group and all the workers are from another? How does one exclude from parish life the unconscious biases and half-conscious stereotypes that appear on the streets or in the stores? How do we keep the differences embedded in societal structures out of the structures of the parish? The answer, of course, is that we rarely can. Affluent people of one group struggle to separate out their parish interactions with another group from interactions with the same people who serve as their gardeners and housekeepers. Because of educational advantages or longtime presence in the parish, parish professional staff (parish associates, directors of religious education, music directors, youth ministers) often come from dominant groups, even sometimes when the volunteer-led immigrant choirs or youth groups are far larger than their own. Middle-class Euro-American volunteers think nothing of using parish resources (reasoning that they give on Sunday), while working-class Hispanic parishioners host fundraising events for every penny they spend.

These inequalities between cultural, racial, and ethnic communities pose significant challenges. When I give workshops, people do not want to talk about power dynamics in the parish. To speak of inequality or injustice in the parish itself brings long simmering resentments out into the open, provokes fears of being branded as racist, and sparks worry that conflict will consume the community. Addressing inequalities raises thorny questions about who should work for the parish, about accurate representation on parish committees or at multicultural liturgies, about who gets to use which rooms, when, and why. Many immigrants come from places where rules are never equitably enforced and fairness is hobbled by corruption, while native-born Americans often assume that fairness and equitably enforced rules will settle everything. We can struggle to see how fairness may not translate to justice, that equal opportunities may be technically available but not truly accessible, and that people born in the United States have a kind of home-field advantage when it comes to interpreting and following the rules. At one parish I studied, the African-American lay leadership insisted that members of the Hispanic immigrant community attend monthly liturgy meetings so that everyone had a voice and was on the same page, but the translation offered at the meetings was so poor that the Hispanics could not meaningfully participate. The situation looked fair but was actually unjust.

Finally, there is the grief that comes with change. Fr. Stephen Dudek, a priest of the Diocese of Grand Rapids who writes and presents frequently on shared parish life, calls shared parishes “crucibles of grief.” Immigrants struggle with all they have left behind—family, culture, language, home. (I once visited the father of an undocumented immigrant in Mexico; when I brought back a photo of him, his daughter wept at how much he had aged.) People in receiving communities see their hometowns transformed by different languages, restaurants, social media, stores, and music. In places where immigration is a relatively new phenomenon, the emotional whiplash can feel particularly acute. Age differences between communities exacerbate the issue, as when, for example, an aging white or African-American community finds itself paired with a young Hispanic or Asian community. At the same time, grief in the face of change is such a common human experience that everyone can relate. Once clued in, we recognize emotions that may at first shock us—anger, longing, sadness, depression—as part of a process of letting go. Recognition that everyone grieves what they have lost can engender more sensitivity, perhaps especially to elders who find themselves dealing with multiple experiences of loss near the end of their lives.

Nothing can replace the long, sometimes challenging, ultimately joyful process of communities getting to know one another and learning to cooperate.

People often ask me to offer them a packaged program or set of bullet points on how to successfully navigate shared parish life, but nothing can replace the long, sometimes challenging, ultimately joyful process of communities getting to know one another and learning to cooperate. I will say that time helps a great deal. A shared parish I attended in New York City, and another my wife attended in Chicago, had juggled two language communities for decades, and most parishioners were unbothered by cultural differences. They continually committed themselves to cooperation across the communities, and they genuinely wanted a parish of equal partners, even if the larger societal dynamics kept getting in the way. I would also argue that having a priest-pastor (or a lay parish-life director) with a vision of equal partnership goes a long way. One pastor I know worked hard to confuse people as to which community was his favorite. He would also intervene if any pastoral leader began to speak of one group’s needs as more important than those of others.

As Catholics, however, we cannot and should not expect our often-overburdened priests to always come to the rescue in a context like this. These days there are far more shared parishes than there are clergy who are prepared to work interculturally, who have language skills, or who know how to express a vision of unity in difference. Our long hangover from the centralized uniformity of nineteenth-century Catholicism leads us to subtly expect that everyone will ultimately express their Catholic faith in the same way, and somehow be officially sanctioned by Rome. Such uniformity was always more an ideal than a reality, even in the heyday of medieval nostalgia, common Catholic culture, and Bing Crosby in a collar. Today’s diverse parishes require genuine acceptance of many distinct Catholic practices, tones, and styles, finding our unity in the things we truly hold in common—core beliefs like our faith in the Eucharist; sacramentality; patron saints; common prayers like the rosary; and shared pastoral leaders like our pastors, bishops, and Pope Francis. I recognize this puts us at odds with some of the ideological fervor of our times, where differences are poison and often exaggerated. The tenor of our times requires, however, that whatever our legitimate political differences, we must not speak of our immigrant brothers and sisters in Christ as if they were some sort of plague rather than people. If we can speak hatefully without any compunction, then we have lost our moral compass as a people.

In some specific aspects of shared parish life, we have come a long way; in others, wisdom and expertise has only begun to emerge. Preparing a proper multilingual or multicultural liturgy is now easier than ever; the Federation of Diocesan Liturgical Commissions has a thoughtful guidebook to show us the way. Less clear is the way forward on stewardship. Long-resident cultures sometimes lament the low collections in working-class immigrant communities. But one has to calculate expenses longtime residents may not have, such as sending money (remittances) home, as well as the cultural customs around giving in the country of origin (almost never state-sponsored, despite what people think). I would argue that the primary problem with stewardship in shared parishes is not that immigrant communities do not give; rather, it is the odious comparisons between long-established, stable communities and poorer immigrant communities. They will always make newcomers look rather unjustly like freeloaders.

The proper language and cultural idiom for faith formation still stymies us. The answer will be different for different communities, but many shared parishes thus far have emphasized either English to push people along toward assimilation (usually imitating the public-education system), or an immigrant language to facilitate the preservation of cultures. Both have their limitations. Monolingual English risks dividing families, especially in places where immigrant parents have insufficient time or resources to learn English properly. Monolingual Spanish, Vietnamese, or Korean programs keep families united, but they can compartmentalize faith as an aspect of one’s culture of origin and not a matter for everyday life, much of which is lived in English. Parishes that develop some kind of bilingual program, admittedly harder to pull off, have often found a sweet spot that prepares children to pray both with their families and with their peers in the larger society. Again, there is no sure solution for every parish.

I began this essay with an account of the changes in the parishes of my parents’ hometown and my own. Even in those two stories, one can see some reliably recurring patterns in shared parish life, such as the way newcomer communities emerge in response to unforeseen local pastoral needs, and how such communities are only gradually integrated into the center of parish life. Like all parishes, however, shared parishes are a product of their unique local environment. Our incarnational theology celebrates this rather than finding it a problem. All Catholic unity is communion, that is, unity amidst difference, rooted in the three-persons-but-one-God of the Holy Trinity, present as much within a family as within a parish as within the global church. That unity in difference unfolds in history, which means that the way we live our common faith constantly adjusts to a changing world. Thus, I would be foolish to say too much with certainty about shared-parish life moving forward. Instead, I look to the perfect communion that we will find only in the “eschatological parish,” that is, the Reign of God. In the meantime, we do the best with what we have, struggling and celebrating.

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Viet Thanh Nguyen Is The Pro-Refugee Voice America Needs To Hear

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Viet Thanh Nguyen Is The Pro-Refugee Voice America Needs To Hear

When it comes to the Vietnam War, Vietnamese refugees in America and the Vietnamese diaspora, Viet Thanh Nguyen has written the book ― a few of them, actually. It’s little wonder the MacArthur Foundation chose to honor him among its 2017 class of Fellows, commonly referred to as “MacArthur Geniuses.”

An academic and a novelist, a critic and a short story virtuoso, Nguyen has written about the experiences of Vietnamese-American people and their roots in Vietnam from seemingly every angle. His debut novel, a darkly comic spy novel set amidst the Vietnam War, garnered him a Pulitzer Prize. He followed up with a collection of haunting short stories, which move away from the conflict itself to the experiences of Vietnamese refugees and immigrants. 

Nguyen, a professor of English and American studies at the University of Southern California, has also published works of acclaimed nonfiction. His most recent nonfiction work, Nothing Ever Dies: Vietnam and the Memory of War, critically examined the cultural memory and artistic memorialization of Vietnam throughout the world ― particularly calling attention to the dominance of American narratives of conflict, and the diminishing effect this has on our collective memory of other cultures, populations and their suffering. 

His work has acted as a blazing ray of light illuminating a whole world of human experiences in a publishing industry often dominated completely by white American voices and perspectives ― and his breakout has arrived at a particularly vital time, when a wave of anti-refugee and nativistic rhetoric has gripped American politics.

We reached out to Nguyen ahead of the MacArthur announcement to talk more about his impressive body of work, the current political moment and what he hopes to do with his hefty grant from the MacArthur Foundation: 

How did it feel to be a Genius Grant recipient?

It felt like a shock, a big surprise. I had to sit down for a little bit ― actually, through the entire length of the conversation.

Just a huge honor, but also a moment where I had to think very much about how lucky I was to get this, given how many other important, good, great, fantastic writers are out there who could have gotten this award, and all the others in previous generations who did not get this, but who were doing incredibly important work that made it possible for me to publish my own book.

Are there any writers that you look back on ― that you’ve read or that you’ve built on ― and think you really couldn’t have done it without them?

If you think about the people who’ve won the MacArthur, there’ve been so many writers who I’ve enjoyed reading and who’ve inspired me. People like Junot Diaz and, I think, Edwidge Danticat. 

And then I think of myself, obviously, as an American writer, but also very specifically sometimes as a Vietnamese-American or Asian-American writer. I think back to the fact that Asian-American writers have been writing in this country, in English, since the late 1800s. Those early writers must have been very lonely people, because [there were] only one or two or a handful of them.  But the work of writers like that, like the Eaton sisters from the late 1800s, established a tradition that made it possible for someone like me, more than a hundred years later, to publish a book that people at least would recognize as something they understood. 

What do you have planned next? What are you going to do with the grant?

I haven’t really thought about it that much, but I have a blog that I do, that I edit, called Diacritics.org, and it’s devoted to the politics, art and culture of the Vietnamese and their diaspora. I’ve built it up over several years and unfortunately, in the last couple of years, because of the Pulitzer, it’s just been sort of moribund, because I don’t have the time. I want to use some of the money to hire an editor to take over that site because what it does is to create a space for writers like me to talk about these things that are important to us.

You’ve written about the Vietnamese diaspora and refugees and the Vietnam-American War both in fiction and nonfiction. Why do you keep writing in both? What draws you to each form?

I think my first attraction was always to fiction, ever since I wrote my first book when I was in the second grade. I became a scholar because when I was in college, I was just better at that, and I was realistic about what I could do. So I became an academic and a critic.

Both of these things, nonfiction and fiction, have remained important to me, because I think they can accomplish different kinds of things. In my case I wanted to try to understand the Vietnam War and the refugee experiences and the United States from both of these kinds of perspectives ― nonfiction and fiction, scholarship and art.

But I think the last thing is simply that I’m just someone who’s easily bored, so as soon as I’m done with something, I like to do something different. That’s one of the things that working with nonfiction and fiction enables me, which is this sense of constantly experimenting, and being an amateur, and also setting myself up for potential humiliation because I don’t know what I’m doing. That’s how I learn, by trying to keep on being a student and moving between these different disciplines. 

I recently heard Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie say that she’s found American literature is resistant to overt discussions of race and politics, that there’s an expectation that art should be separate or if it discusses politics it’ll be really subtle. What do you think the role of literature, and fiction particularly, should be in political life?

Well, I think generally she’s right, about speaking about American literature as a whole. There are certainly American writers who are political, they just either tend to be in the minority or they are actual minorities, racial minorities for example, or sexual minorities and so on.

I think that’s important to point out, that the political traditions of American literature have often fallen to African-American writers, for example, or Asian-American writers. I think because for us, we see that it’s hard to separate politics from everything else in your life, including art. Separating politics is not a luxury that many of us have. That’s one of the things that I think the MacArthur has been really good at doing, at least when it comes to writers, is recognizing writers who don’t see a separation between politics and literature, or see that you can use literature to be both something that’s artistic but also political.

I’ve always been a person interested in the possibilities of art and politics intersecting, and been frustrated that so much of American literature, especially by people from majority populations, however you choose to define that, have been very quiet on that issue. It is definitely something I find exciting to do, but also sometimes you feel very lonely because other American writers and American audiences sometimes just don’t want to hear it.

Your book The Refugees arrived at this time when a lot of people were talking about refugees and whether they would be and should be made welcome in America. It’s a very visible issue right now, but it’s also not a new issue. What do you think are the long-term, historical misunderstandings that Americans have had about refugees and immigrants and their place in our country, and do you think that’s changing?

I think on this issue, as on so many others in American society today, the United States of America is contradictory, and these contradictions go to the very origins of American society. The earliest settlers in this country from Europe and so on were classified as either immigrants or refugees, and yet at the same time American history has a long tradition of nativism and exclusion and racism directed against newcomers of various backgrounds. So we’ve, for a long time, been a country that’s embraced the mythology of the immigrant as being crucial to who we are, and yet periodically we have spasms of anti-immigrant and anti-refugee feeling.

Of course, I think that is obviously what’s happening today. We’re in one of those xenophobic moments. But at the same time, it’s not a complete victory for those forces who are opposed to migrants and refugees. There’s a substantial number of Americans saying that refugees and immigrants should be welcome here and do make us better, and so on.

There are misunderstandings that arise in American society around this idea that refugees and immigrants only come to take things from other Americans, when, in fact, I think most economic studies indicate that they actually contribute more. We should look at other countries that are completely restrictive on issues of immigration and accepting refugees, and see that they suffer from a lack of cultural diversity and tolerance.

We’re just in a moment of conflict and it’s unclear what the resolution is going to be, but it’s obviously critical for refugees and immigrants like me to speak up about it. Again, going back to the question of politics and the role that politics plays in the lives of writers ― we have to. Those of us who are refugees and immigrants or who support them, we have to use every tool at our disposal, including our writing, to speak up about this.

I’m the most stressed out about politics I’ve been since I’ve been born, I think.

There’s been this big push to say we’re a nation of immigrants, but then there are Native Americans who would say, “We weren’t immigrants. We were invaded, we were colonized.” How do we grapple with the fact that this country is both made up of immigrants and refugees, but also people who were colonized?

That’s absolutely right. That, I think, is part of that ― when I say America is a contradictory place. These are part of the root contradictions. That’s why it’s crucial for those of us who are immigrants and refugees to not only privilege the language of coming here and settling down, as if these were only positives. If we have any success, it’s made possible by participating in this original history of settler colonization.

The smartest writers I know, people who are recognized by the MacArthur but others as well, they make these connections. They don’t settle simply on one narrative, where the immigrant comes here to make it good, but they also talk about the immigrant in relation to other populations in this country, including Native peoples and African Americans.

Your work really deals with these historical contradictions and injustices of America. There’s a strong urge among many on the left right now to say that this is worse than it’s ever been, and “now more than ever” we have to protect people. Is this an ahistorical framing? What’s your reaction to this vision of the Trump era of the absolute nadir of American life?

I think it may be the nadir within, at least, recent memory. I’m the most stressed out about politics I’ve been since I’ve been born, I think. But I think that, going back to this notion of contradictions and root contradictions, that they’ve shaped American society from the beginning. Then you have a sense that American history has moved cyclically and that there have been moments in American history when things have been worse ― slavery, the Civil War, Reconstruction ―  and the fact that those issues are actually not over, as we see with Charlottesville. It means that these historical things we might want to think are over and done with are actually not.

The election of Donald Trump right after the election of Barack Obama, to me, speaks exactly to the fact that we in the United States are still dealing with a history that goes back hundreds of years, to issues that are still unresolved today. It feels pretty bad to those of us on the left, but that’s only because those contemporary issues are revealing that the U.S. has always been driven around race and class and gender and sexuality, and we are now being forced to look directly at that contradiction, whereas at certain more luxurious moments in American history, they’ve been submerged, at least to the eyes of the mainstream.

Speaking of the submersion of history, one thing I loved about The Refugees was this fascination throughout with the idea of haunting, and the past returning in this ghostly form ― by memories, guilt, even literal ghosts. Why do you think you return to this conceptualization of the past as a haunting?

We came here as refugees, and one of the things that happened to my family was that not all of us made it. I have an adopted sister, my oldest sister, and she was left behind to take care of the family property. I was 4 years old, so I actually have no memory of her. When I was growing up, we had one family picture of her ― a black-and-white, wallet-sized picture ― that my dad managed to carry with with him.

I grew up with this sense that we have a missing person in our family. Don’t know why she’s not here; not really something I could talk about with my parents. I did feel haunted by that. It felt like there was an absence in our family. I thought often about who she was, what her life was like, why’s she not here. To me that felt ghostly. I knew that that experience was actually very common, and that we were at least fortunate that she was alive. There were so many families I knew that had literally lost people, not just left them behind but that had died through one experience or another.

To me, ghostly hauntings were very real in the lives of these refugees that I knew. It didn’t take very much empathy to think that this was also true for some of the other people who were refugees and had fled from dire circumstances as well, who’ve all left behind things or people or identities.

Is that a framework you think we should be looking at America through ― this American history where so much has been ignored and submerged for so long?

As the sociologist Avery Gordon has said, ghosts are a figure of injustice ― that some injustice has happened in the past and a ghost returned to demand that justice be done. To achieve a genuine reconciliation with the past, to put those to rest, you really have to address directly what that injustice was. I think so much of American history has been the refusal to do justice to the injustices. We haven’t substantively corrected these problems.

There have been certain attempts to deal with the legacy of slavery, for example. Half the country, apparently, or at least a third of the country, doesn’t think it’s that big of a deal what happened, now, and that’s simply not true. I look at the example of Germany, the Holocaust ― horrific thing ― but the Germans are actually much better at confronting their past in both literal and symbolic ways than Americans have been about their own past. So as long as we’re not able to deal with it as a society, our past will keep coming back.

In American culture, we tend to assume a default white audience, and there can be this pressure for writers of color to explain things to white people, or educate white people, or make their narratives accessible. Is that a pressure you feel? Do you think about your audience when you’re writing?

As I was learning how to be a writer, it was a big issue for me. It’s a big issue for many writers ― who the audience is. It’s an issue for writers of color, minority writers, but all writers agonize, I think, or at least are aware, that their fate is in the hands of others. Who’s going to read this, who’s going to buy this, who’s going to publish this.

But it is a problem that’s exacerbated for writers of color, or anyone who’s not defined as mainstream or part of a majority, because we’re not the ones in power. So we can’t necessarily assume there will be something in common between us and the people who make these decisions to publish.

As a younger writer, I did write some of those stories in The Refugees in a state of anxiety, thinking about this issue. And it was very liberating after finishing The Refugees, when I started to write The Sympathizer, to think, I’m done with that. I wrote the book that I thought, in The Refugees, that was a little more oriented ― not just towards Vietnamese people but to whoever I thought was in charge of publishing. To give all that up, to give up all that anxiety with The Sympathizer because I simply didn’t care anymore, and to write for myself and for an implied Vietnamese audience, thinking then that everyone else who read this book would be in the position of an eavesdropper, was really liberating.

This interview has been edited and condensed.

Check out a complete list of the 2017 MacArthur Fellows here.

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