Hey APIA Family!!!

Just wanted to share with you my latest sun:SCRIBES Scroll (Newsletter).  So I just clipped some bits of it below

You can read the full thing at: http://fburls.com/5-9V4eU3Wa or www.therealsun.com

The Eighth Scroll:

“ASIAN HERITAGE”?

May 3rd, 2010

Ah, yes, SOUL-SHARINGS…. always my favourite part.  I have decided to dedicate this issue of sun:SCRIBES speaking to “Asian Heritage”.  This is partly because the discussions that were sparked at  Toronto Poets’ Saturday Night Love: “Are Asians The Ignored Majority”, were immensely passionate.  And also because this is a topic that I personally am very interested to see grow in the presense of  discussion.

“Asian Heritage Month” is May.  I did not know that there was even an Asian Heritage Month until a few years ago.  I never learned about it in school or heard about it in the communities I was a part of.   And I have to question why is that?… I’ll touch on this a little later on.

Asian Heritage Month was incepted in Toronto in 1993.  1992 in the states, they call it Asian Pacific American Heritage Month.   According to CBC and the government of Canada Website it is “Asian Heritage Month”,  According to Wikipedia, its “South Asian Heritage Month”.  I will choose to stick with “Asian Heritage Month”  instead of “South Asian Heritage Month” because, well, with the latter, I don’t get an  official month to celebrate my heritage as an East Asian………….! 

Yes… Asian Heritage.  What does this mean?  Especially in the context of our North American Diasporic Experience?  I’m still trying to wrap my head around it…  It must mean I inHERITED something, because I’m Asian, right?  But, how do I celebrate my heritage without feeling tokenized, exotified, or mis-represented?   Maybe I’m over thinking it……

I’m just not sure what to celebrate…

Does that sound absurd?

How can I explain…. I think back to the history of East Asians on this land, and this is the only and specific context I speak from (not the stuff that happened back home IN asia, but here in Canada).  And the first thing I think of is the Candian Pacific Railway… probably the only thing I ever heard in school that mentioned Asians as a part of Canadian History.

The Chinese built the railway.  Cool.  Under exploitive and oppresive conditions… building something that wasn’t their own, or meant for them to benefit from, with just enough at the end of the day to be living in poverty, in highly racist conditions.  (They don’t teach that last part in school, at least not in my school they didn’t).

Then came The Head Tax… The Government restricting the entrance and immigration of Asians of East and South, into Canada…. I guess they didn’t have use for us anymore?

Next…. The Japanese Internment Camps during World War II… persecution, red baiting, all asians are labelled communists, Japanese and anyone suspected to be, or close enough, were inprisoned, against human rights… OK.

Fast Forward to more recent times… Asian contributions recognized in today’s society…  Apparently we’re all good at math, have a monopoly over convenient stores and have parents that speak in funny accents…. oh and we are super-good at assimilation.  Awesome.

I must sound bitter and synical to you.  I  say this because I sound bitter and synical to myself.  lol.

Like I said, I’m not sure how to celebrate this Month.  And maybe i’m just ignorant, no I AM ignorant, I don’t know enough of my own history to know what I should celebrate…

All I can think of to celebrate is the complexity of our relationship to our own identities.  And I’m not sure celebrate is the right word for it.  I think maybe the words “investigate” , “explore”, or “shed light on” may be better terms to describe it.  Bringing attention to the complex ways that these histories, and the fact that we are disconnected and not knowing of these histories, have impacted our sense of identity as Asian-Canadians, or atleast the Asian-Canadians I know.

I think at this point I’ll just continue on speaking only for Myself and my own relationship to these complexities….  I am not a spokesperson for my entire race in this country.  Only for MYSELF.

Back to the not-knowing-ness of my relationship with “Canadian Asian Heritage”….

There is an Korean-American Poet by the name of Ishle Yi Park, and in one of her poems speaking to the Korean-American experience she said “Where are our Martins? our Malcoms?… All we have are Fathers with thick Tongues”.

…I don’t know how to answer her.

Where ARE our Malcoms? Where ARE our Martins, and Rosas?  They MUST have existed…?  And if so, why don’t I know who they were?  Why has no one celebrated them?   They Must have existed….. ……right?

Where is the other side of my history?  The Indentured Labour, The Head-Tax, The Internment Camps, Scapegoating…. someone must have stood up for us….  Someone must have said and done something?!  ….I don’t know.  That part of my history is missing in my life.  And I have to come back to the questions of Why?  Why is that?

Am I supposed to be satistifed with celebrating with dragon dances, how far we have come in this economy,   how well my community has assimilated into this system based on greed and exploitation?  The Corporatons?  The Doctors? the Lawyers?  The Accountants?

I don’t buy it.

I’m NOT satistified with that.  And I REFUSE to be satistifed with that.

THIS IS A CALL TO ARMS…

a CALL TO KNOWLEDGE,

a CALL TO THE NARRATIVE OF OUR ANCESTORS.

I need your stories,  I need to know my history and herstories.

if YOU, yes YOU or anyone you know have these stories,  i IMPLORE of you to share them.  And I would love for you to share them with me,  but if you don’t want to share them with me, share them with someone else.  But share them. Please.

I’m going to take it upon myself this month to really research the history of Asian Canadians in Canada.  And try to uncover what “Asian Heritage” really means to me.  I hope you will join me on this journey, let me know if you are up for it!  I love being nerdy with other people.  lol  please email me at sun@therealsun.com

Let’s celebrate our ancestors and collect their narratives so that we can better understand where we come from so that we can have a clearer vision of where we are to go.

And let’s continue to celebrate OURSELVES, proudly, not exclusively or over-patriotically in a divisive way, but proudly, passionately.

Shout outs to my Brothers and Sisters that are part of the KEEP/DEEP and  the Asian Pacific Islander Spoken Word Poetry Summit Family… I miss you!!!  I will see you in Minneapolis Summer 2011.  (Any APIA or Asian Canadians interested in this network check out www.apiaword.com)

Yellow Ranger Out.

(This is the story of a fictional character, based on true events that took place in Korea, that I learned about during my travels there, as well as reference to true stories from the Canadian-immigrant experience. Written for a NoManzLand Play)

“NA-YOUNG’s STORY”

Factories, filled with fibres that coat my lungs, like tiny hands built to choke my life out from within me.

When I walk into that windowless building, the sun is always still tucked away beneath the horizon, waiting to wake with the dawn, and shine light to the earth…

When I walk out barely able to fight my exhaustion, the sun is already fast asleep.  I feel as though I haven’t seen the sun for years… my skin pale as the crescent moon that accompanies me on my walk home.

I worked all day and all night, crouched over my sewing machine.  As the managers marched the isles, like guards in prison, march the cells.

We were not allowed to take breaks or go to the bathroom when we needed to.  Many of us got sick, but we still had to work.

We needed the money.

We worked hard, SO hard.  But it was never enough.

But we, we had had, enough.

So we began to whisper when we were far away from the factories.  We would whisper our plans, our dreams.  Our hearts would beat with excitement and fear.

We the women in the factory stood up for our rights.  We joined hands and formed a resistance.  We took over the factory and organized a sit in.  Some of us started a hunger strike…

They hosed us with cold water, they even threw shit at us… literally, fecal matter.

It was so degrading, humiliating, de-humanizing.

All because we wanted to be treated with dignity.  Because we wanted a fair wage.  Because our families were struggling.  And they refused to listen.

I was a leader amongst them.  I was scared but I couldn’t sit and die this slow death.  So I resisted with all I had inside of me.  I refused to sit and suffer.

When the police finally raided us and took us by force, they protected me.  My co-workers, my sisters, my comrades.  And I escaped.

The police had warranted my arrest, and so I was now a fugitive on the run.

That is how I ended up here.

Living in constant fear of deportation, for I would only go back to face imprisonment.

But for now I am here.

—

© 2010 sun a.k.a. The Real Sun

strength x love x balance

**life is like a walk along the beach, no matter how you step, you will leave a footprint behind; the only thing you have control over is the directions your footprints lead, and the understanding of where they come from** ~ sun a.k.a The Real Sun

www.therealsun.com