The media are reporting on how Muslim Americans are braced for attacks this weekend, because of the 9/11 anniversary. I know what that's like, unfortunately, though not on the scale of violence and hatred Muslims are facing today.
It's a sad commentary on the state of American "patriotism" that Japanese Americans still get nervous every December 7 because we grew up with racial slurs of "go home, Japs" and "Remember Pearl Harbor!"
Such are the deep emotional scars that form after a national trauma, and ethnicity and religion add layers of fear and complexity. It's understandable in a way, but also unjust -- Japanese Americans had nothing to do with Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor any more than German Americans had to do with the blitzkrieg of London. And Muslim Americans certainly had nothing to do with the awful attacks of 9/11. It's too bad that so many Americans can't understand such a basic fact and separate nationality from ethnicity, faith from fanaticism.
These schisms are bouncing around my head along with the powerful writing of author Rahna Reiko Rizzuto, whose terrific second book, "Hiroshima in the Morning" has just been published by the Feminist Press.
The book on its surface is a simple idea: A memoir of Rizzuto's 2001 trip to Japan, paid for by a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts to research the stories of Hiroshima bomb survivors, a group that shrinks each year as the generation passes away, in the city where her own family roots are planted. Rizzuto lived there for eight months to find people to interview, so she could write her second novel.
Instead, she came out of the experience with her life changed profoundly, and this memoir came first before the novel, which is finished but incubating a bit before she sends it to editors under the name "Shadow Child."
Until the novel comes out, readers can devour "Hiroshima in the Morning" and marvel at Rizzuto's craft and literary approach to telling non-fiction stories, as well as her brave willingness to expose the emotional evolution she undertakes by the end of her fellowship.
Her ability to write literature as if it were non-fiction is what set Rizzuto's first novel, "Why She Left Us," which won the American Book Award upon its release in 2001, apart from other books based on the Japanese American internment.
Rizzuto, who is half-Japanese, based that first book in part on her mother's experience of being interned at Camp Amache in Colorado during World War II. But she interviewed many former internees to collect observations, details, relationships, experiences and story lines that she wove together into fiction that rang with the power of truth.
She wrote the novel in the different perspectives and voices of its main characters, and jumped through time and space in ways that masterfully held the reader on track, following the devastating legacy of internment on generations of one family. It was unorthodox, artsy and literary, and a riveting read.
I look forward to seeing how she uses the research in Hiroshima as fuel for her fiction, especially after reading "Hiroshima in the Morning."
The second interview lined up for visualizAsian.com's AAPI Empowerment Series is with Korean American attorney-turned-TV celebrity Yul Kwon. The interview will be held Tuesday, June 9 at 6 pm PDT (9 pm EDT).
Erin and I were fortunate to see Yul speak during last year's Democratic National Convention in Denver, and more recently during Asian American Pacific Islander Heritage Month at an event in Denver. He's a great role model because of his accomplishments, and because he's on a mission to dispel myths and stereotypes about Asian American Pacific Islanders, and to urge AAPIs to enter the political process.
Kwon has a diverse background in law, politics, technology, business, and media -- except for his exceptional "Survivor" victory, he's almost a model for the "model minority" myth!
Call him Cool Yul. If you're a fan of "Survivor," you know who Yul Kwon is. He's the Korean American attorney who won the "Cook Island" season (season 13), helping to chip away at the myth that Asian men are meek and mild-mannered geeks. He was a good student, all right, and he works hard, so he fulfills the "model minority" stereotype in those ways. But he's also buff, handsome, an eloquent speaker (even though he says he hates public speaking) an Asian American activist and just plain cool.
Kwon was in Colorado yesterday, as the main speaker for an APA Heritage Month celebration organized by the MillerCoors Asian Network, the beer-maker based in Golden just west of Denver. Also on the bill were traditional Filipino dances by members of the Filipino American Community of Colorado, and terrific Filipino food by local chef Leah Eveleigh's Tropical Grill Catering. The turnout was smaller than it should have been -- shame on the local Asian American community for not coming out to support this kind of event, which was free of charge and featured a nationally-known celebrity as a draw. But the crowd that was there about half Asian descent, and mostly curious Coors employees and their families, was appreciative of Kwon's speech, and the performances and food.
I thought Kwon's speech was especially notable. He'd been to Denver before, last year during the Democratic National Convention, to urge Asian Americans to register to vote. He's still passionate about having AAPIs involved in politics, but he's not so interested in running for office himself, as he explained to a fan who asked. But his speech was all about his experiences growing up Asian in America, and how important it is for our future to have AAPIs to look up to as role models.
He explained how he grew up without seeing anyone who looked like him on TV or in movies, except people who were subservient, foreign and exotic, or at the other end of the scale, martial arts masters.
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