Saved by the Bell, Van Halen, and Asian American Identity
It’s AAPI Heritage month, and this year it’s more important than ever to recognize the collective experience of Asian Americans. I’ll be writing posts on Asian American identity and creativity.
In her book Caste, Isabel Wilkerson shares what a Nigerian woman told her:
"Africans are not black," she said. "They are Igbo and Yoruba, Ewe, Akan, Ndebele. They are not black. They are just themselves. They are humans on the land. That is how they see themselves, and that is who they are…They don't become black until they go to America or come to the U.K; it is then that they become black."
The same is true for Asian Americans. Until they get to America, they are not Asian; they are Vietnamese, Chinese, Indian, Nepali, or perhaps even more granularly, Tamil, Javanese, Visayan. The first generation survives not by forging a new identity, but by balancing allegiance to the homeland and a Herculean effort to fit in.
Until the late 1960s, there was no “Asian American” at all. There were Chinatowns and Little Tokyos, Filipino farm workers and Vietnamese fishermen, but there was no central identity that united the disparate Asian experiences. So in 1968, activists Emma Gee and Yuji Ichioka coined the term “Asian American.”
This became the political and academic nomenclature, but it’s near impossible to build a collective experience from almost 50 national origins, over 2,000 languages, and countless paths of immigration.
But, No Really, Where Are You From?
As a Dutch Indonesian woman, I’ve never identified as Asian American, but I identify with Asian America. Even after working with an Asian arts organization, putting on exhibits of Asian American artists in Chinatown, producing an Asian American theater festival, and making a documentary about the Indonesian immigrant experience, I have never fully understood what it means to be “Asian American.”
I’m learning, however, that I’m not alone in that. As Daryl Maeda, a professor of Asian-American studies at the University of Colorado, Boulder and author of the book Rethinking the Asian American Movement told NBC:
“If you were to ask most people who are Asian American, ‘Describe your race or ethnicity,’ they would say, ‘I’m Japanese American,’ ‘I’m Thai, Cambodian, Filipino.’ Very few of us would start out by saying, ‘I’m Asian American.’ Instead, 'Asian American' — rather than describing our personally felt identities or describing our family histories — expresses an idea. And that idea is that as Asian Americans, we have to work together to fight for social justice and equality, not only for ourselves, but for all of the people around us.”
Rather than see Asian American as an identity, I see it as a community of linked experiences, shaped by diaspore and migration, food and song, stereotype and resistance, and a lot of hard-to-explain back story.
So here's a little of mine.
Indonesians in America
First of all, I must briefly brag about our contribution to American culture.
Mark Paul Gosselaer in Save by the Bell, Cynthia Gouw in Star Trek, and the Van Halen brothers: the 80s would not be the same without Indonesian-Americans.
What’s interesting is that these are quintessentially American cultural products. There’s nothing inherently Indonesian about Saved By The Bell, Star Trek, or hair metal. Although none of them hide their Indonesian heritage, it’s easy to pass as white and be part of the dominant culture, or as East Asian, undistinguished from bigger Asian populations.
But the immigration story of Indonesians is different from Filipinos who were the first Asians to land in America in Spanish ships, or Chinese who came to work on railroads and pan for gold, or Vietnamese and Cambodians who fled the Vietnam war. Here’s a meandering history.
In spite of all these blips and bumps of migration, there are not many Indonesians in the US. According to Pew, there are about 129,000. And Dutch-Indonesians? Not a lot of data.
A sub-group of a sub-group of a sub-group…
You may think, such a tiny population in a sliver of a minority of America! But there’s value in unpacking the multi-faceted experience of people from all over Asia that comprise “Asian American.'“ As Li Zhou says in Vox:
When it comes to the term “Asian American,” there’s a continual risk that it’s masking the differences within communities and fueling the myth that Asian Americans are a monolithic group. For some, there’s also the sense that East Asians, including groups that were part of some of the earlier waves of Asian immigrants such as Chinese, Japanese, and Korean Americans, are viewed as more synonymous with the term Asian than others.
After decades of being invisible, or even worse, caricatured by white people, Asian Americans are exploring the vitality of their stories and how they shape America. From Fresh off the Boat to Never Have I Ever, there’s a growing narrative of the Asian American experience, shaped by tiger moms, foods that classmates think is gross, a shoes-off household, and a desperate desire to just be accepted into an American middle class. This is all expanding America’s perspective of the American experience. But it’s just the start.
A few more Indonesian contributions to American culture:
The history of ikat, the fabric style that’s become hip over the last decade or so has its origins in Indonesia.
One contribution to the English language is the idea of running amok.
A late interview with Van Halen on rock’n roll, reinvention and racism.
Inside Edition peeks at Barack Obama’s upbringing in Indonesia.
Next time: More on Asian American creativity. Share or subscribe!