whynot: etc: oh deer (veins and arteries)
Las ([personal profile] whynot) wrote2009-10-28 09:08 pm

i never wanna shame the blood in my veins

I reckon I should be organizing my data sets, but then I listened to Chimamanda Adichie talk about the dangers of a single story (via [livejournal.com profile] heather11483 and [livejournal.com profile] deepad) and my heart just swelled. I was originally going to flock this post because it has a lot of personal information in it, but then I realized that would be kind of defeating the point. So, here it is.


I started flashing back to these disconnected moments of trying to find and defend identity - of how I wrote and read about Americans living in suburbs, of how I perked up when I saw a Vietnamese or an Arab on TV because that would be the closest I'll ever come to seeing a person like me on television (the former in terms of Southeast Asian roots, the latter in terms of religion, at least in my mind), of my mother telling me how Asian I wasn't and how Asian I should be. "You're so Americanized," she'd say. Fine, I was American or whatever. Then I came to America, where I was unexpectedly exposed for the non-American I am, except sometimes people would forget this because I sound like I grew up here.

One time in high school, we had to write a novella for English class and my classmate chose to write about Filipinos in colonial times and I thought, "Oh, that's kind of weird." But it wasn't really. I wrote about a white American guy who went to an all-boys boarding school whose brother just died. As far as writing what you know goes, I was the greater fail. And this is Adichie's point, that I wasn't reading books about living in the expat bubble in a country where you don't look like a foreigner, so I didn't realize that my stories are valid stories. I'm not saying that my problems were the exclusive products and territory of cultural identity angst. A lot of teenagers go through 'find yourself' troubles, a lot of 'am I valid?' questions - I'm just saying these were how mine were articulated. My struggles are important to me. Our struggles are important to us. We are dialectically defined by them, but we also have to develop our own autonomy out of them. We reaffirm and take apart our identities everyday, not in ritual, but in protest against ritual. There must be something that belongs to us, after all.

I read YA books that taught me it is okay to be different, that you should be yourself all the time, and since I was at an age where I respected books more than I respected my parents, I believed these books. I misinterpreted their message and applied it very clumsily to my own life, and became very frustrated with my parents when they tried to stop my vehement individualism. I didn't try to understand the fact that I can't do a wholesale transplant of a value system from one culture to another. The Philippines and Indonesia have their own histories and values and dreams and raisons d'ĂȘtre and all that, but I knew very little about them at the time - all I knew were these Western stories. Instead of writing what I know, I lived what I read.

And it's funny, 'cos these YA books surely meant to teach you to be open-minded to difference, but this is not what happened when I took their morals to heart. I became close-minded and condescendingly vindictive at those who would pooh-pooh my special snowflake status, and wouldn't try to understand them because I was convinced these people (mostly family and relatives) were backwards and not modern enough, oh lord.

Sometimes I wish I could go back in time and arm my younger self with the ideology to defend myself against the haters who didn't know they were haters, and I'm not talking about my family here; I'm talking about my friend in college who said things like, "Yeah, but you guys aren't the real Pakistanis or the real Indonesians. These other international students too. You guys are in the top tier of your economic class, you aren't the real deal."

No one had ever told me I was too rich to be Indonesian. I was bewildered and angry and felt impotent in the face of it: at him, for being so convinced of such an insulting notion; at me, for not knowing how to defend myself. What does that say about Indonesians? What does that say about myself as an Indonesian? All my life, I've kind of felt like a fake Indonesian, so when he said this, my thought was, "...Oh my god, is he right?" He is exactly why this post about why we should stop using the phrase 'Third World' exists. In college, I hung out with a lot of guys who made all sorts of racist/sexist jokes and I let it all slide because, y'know, It Was Funny. "I don't like to bullshit around," said my friend who was an expert on the authenticating of other people's nationalities. "I tell it how it is."

This is one of my pet peeves: saying you're being honest and sincere as an excuse to not think about the shit you do and the shit you say, you fucking asshole.

I am more ready and willing to call people out on their bullshit now, not just because I have the knowledge, but also because I have the confidence. Confidence in myself and what I come from, confidence in my values and all the places in me, all the homes I carry in me and the friendships that remain true despite being now stretched across the world. And here's a confession, fandom, I have you to thank for that confidence. I didn't make a RaceFail post when RaceFail was going on, but I was doing a lot of reading and a lot of processing. I agreed with some treatises and not with others, but the main thing that I got out of it is that I should start taking responsibility.

I hate confrontation? Well too bad, because I have to tell that person that his rape joke was out of line. I don't want to ruin a date with my boyfriend? Well too bad, 'cos it's gonna go that way if he keeps on defending what he said about 'underdevelopment in Africa'. Don't let it be said that fandom doesn't do shit (and I don't think anyone is saying that anyway), but you guys lift me up: you educate me, you entertain me, you challenge me, you move me. The event that started RaceFail sucked, but I'm glad RaceFail happened because - and I'm going to sound like an utter cheesehead saying this - it kind of changed my life.

I CAN HAZ STORIES, GUYS. \o/

So in the spirit of this, I'm gonna do new twist on an old meme. I want you to ask me something you think you should know about me. Something that should be obvious, but you have no idea about. Ask away. And I will answer in autobiographical narrative form.
ext_42328: Language is my playground (Default)

Re: 2/2

[identity profile] ineptshieldmaid.livejournal.com 2009-10-30 10:36 pm (UTC)(link)
OMG LASS THAT WAS THE SORT OF THING I WAS THINKING OF. Wow. That's... well, damn. You're always a good writer.

how weird is it that I felt kind of guilty for writing about downtrodden female characters

It's a funny thing that fantasy and fandom train us into, instinctively favouring Strong Women (and Strong Women is always defined on western-masculine lines). I'd say your grandmother sounds pretty damn awesome, and I like the way you've written your mother. Makes me wonder if she and *my* mother would get along.

What did you do wrong? What failure in your motherhood has led your children to be unable to see the obvious presence of God? It hurts to have her children shun something that, in the past, has been the only thing to keep her afloat.

Yes, that. I don't know if that's my mother's feelings or just what I expect from her. There's no space to express it, in our family - my father's a lifelong atheist, my brother has been more-or-less atheist for years, and when I defected, there's not much mum can say. Maybe it doesn't bother her (she married an atheist, after all), but it bothers *me*. I gave her confirmation cross back. I think she thought I wanted to get rid of all the trappings of my past faith. I thought I didn't deserve to keep and wear something her grandmother gave to her and she gave to me, that I'd betrayed something there and the only thing I could do was to give it back.

I suspect both my parents are wondering what they did to get TWO non-gender-conformist queer kids (not that my brother has Officially Outed himself yet, but it's hard to miss). My mother keeps asking me if i've paid off my (minuscule, government-subsidised) undergraduate debt yet, and if I go back to uni how will I buy a house/car/whatever, and won't my (minuscule, government-subsidised) undergrad debt make it harder to buy a house and raise a family?

I keep saying off-handedly that I don't want these things - because it seems OBVIOUS to me - and now I'm realising that to my mother, it looks frivolous and irresponsible to off-handedly say I don't (because doesn't everyone?), and if I try to explain it properly, it comes down to the fact that I don't want and don't value highly all the things she's invested her life in, *to my direct benefit*. That can't be easy for her, and I'm kicking my heels and being bratty and exercising my newfound independence and probably making it worse :s

~

Aaanyway. Thanks for this, Lass. :)

Re: tl;dr

[identity profile] marycontraire.livejournal.com 2009-10-31 12:22 am (UTC)(link)
Awww, poor baby! That must have been a scarring experience! My middle school had these uniform skirts that were held up by just three buttons, and one of mine fell off, so my skirt kept flapping open. My friend Tanisha reattached it with a reshaped paper clip. It was hilariously ghetto for a private school.

Re: tl;dr

[identity profile] twoskeletons.livejournal.com 2009-10-31 08:23 am (UTC)(link)
I had to constantly readjust my skirt but it wasn't a huge hole so it wasn't too horrible. But it still shouldn't have happened! Also what got left out of this story was how a parent strongarmed the board into uniforms and COINCIDENTALLY the uniforms were manufactured in her husband's factory.

[identity profile] zempasuchil.livejournal.com 2009-10-31 08:33 am (UTC)(link)
:D Hee.

I barely keep in touch? Two of my cousins now stateside have facebook. and there's something like annual correspondence between my mom and her sister. so... yeah, not much at all. how weird would it be for me to go to Bolivia with missionaries... huh!

[identity profile] twoskeletons.livejournal.com 2009-10-31 08:39 am (UTC)(link)
maybe you can talk Narnia to them.

[identity profile] twoskeletons.livejournal.com 2009-10-31 08:44 am (UTC)(link)
The first house we lived in in the Philippines was large and white with a difficult driveway. Its gardens were tiny, all the more precious and magical for it, and all the entertainment we had was that, TV, and the maids across the road. In the afternoon, they would hang in front of the house, gossiping, playing badminton, and sometimes our maids would join them. They'd bring me, six or seven at the time, along.

What exactly I did, I don't remember: some badminton, some cookie-sharing, some anecdotes about what I did at school surely. I don't really remember what they talked about. They would talk in Tagalog to each other, which I didn't understand, so I ignored them when they did, but I still remember now the late afternoons and the walks at sunset to the park, me gamboling ahead with the other neighbor children as the maids trailed along behind us, watching us as they talked amongst themselves.

+

I can't remember what came first - the Radio Flyer movie or the Radio Flyer wagon. It was a quaint piece of Americana, and I wasn't quite sure what to do with it except for transporting my toys from one end of the floor to another, by bulk.

My brother and I would pull each other around in the wagon, and I was always a little bit resentful that he couldn't pull as fast or as long as I. He is six years younger than me, sure, but children are wonderfully creative at finding reasons to resent something.

When we found the cats, we pulled them around in the wagon too. Three ginger cats whom we named Marmalade, Curly, and I can't remember. Marmalade was my favorite, and it being my luck, that was the one that eventually got ran over by my mother.

+

A meal is not a meal without rice, says my parents, and I was sick of it. Rice and eggs, rice and corned beef, rice and whatever; why can't I have a lunch like the other kids have?

And my mother just stared quizzically sort of and asked, what do the other kids have?

Sandwiches or something! Bread, and.. and.. cookies and crackers. Or hamburgers, and some cheese.

So the next day, for lunch, she gave me only Skyflakes crackers and Kraft sliced cheese. It was miserable. Parents just don't understand.

[identity profile] zempasuchil.livejournal.com 2009-10-31 08:44 am (UTC)(link)
I think I would just get upset at or bored with whatever they'd say about it. I'm afraid they might be the sort of Christians that feel reading anything but the Bible is kind of a waste - well, okay, maybe not, but a teeny bit? they can't discuss religion outside Christianity and that's kind of the only way I can discuss religion without getting really upset. :/ but I just get nervous about talking to distant family.

[identity profile] zempasuchil.livejournal.com 2009-10-31 06:54 pm (UTC)(link)
these snippets are so lovely and immediate. I like them because they're something between you telling me a story and recalling a memory, maybe a little blurred, trying to piece it all together. ginger cats! we had a few of those on my block and they both got run over eventually :( your crackers and cheese story is hilarious in an "awww" sort of way :)) oh parents! I love rice so much; I was raised on it too, not like every day but frequently. omg rice. rice and corn are my favorite staples ever.

[identity profile] twoskeletons.livejournal.com 2009-10-31 07:31 pm (UTC)(link)
Thank you! I never realized how patchy my memories of childhood are until this meme XD. It's quite interesting. It reminds me of how I read somewhere, this girl saying that she doesn't know what she's thinking until she articulates it in words. And it's sort of like that. I'm beginning to realize just how important writing is to me as a processing tool. And it brings up interesting questions, like what does it say about me that I don't remember XYZ, or that ZYX is what I mostly strongly remember.

Rice is pretty great. soft fluffy rice with a bit of sauce, mmmmmmm, not that weirdly-cooked hard stuff.

Re: 2/2

[identity profile] twoskeletons.livejournal.com 2009-10-31 07:59 pm (UTC)(link)
<333 Thank you so much! I'm glad! Whenever I have tried recently to write something autobiographical, I am always nervous about what I might accidentally end up revealing about myself, which was why this meme and Ms. Adichie are so liberating. It felt good to just charge forward.

It's a funny thing that fantasy and fandom train us into, instinctively favouring Strong Women (and Strong Women is always defined on western-masculine lines).
YES THIS. I have been discussing this with a couple of people here and there about exactly this. These representations of strong/liberated/awesome women in fic and especially meta sometimes really frustrate me because I felt like they are really culturally specific and exclusionary. This isn't to say that I can't bring in my own interpretation of female strength into the game though. It's like there's a line between 'writing to instruct' and 'writing to reflect', and that the All Awesome Women All The Time thing seems to fall under 'writing to instruct', but can actually end up being counterproductive because it ends up two-dimensionalizing the women and trivializing their Not As Awesome/Liberated relationships/situations/decisions.


Hmm, yes, see I know that it bothers my mother, so that's what bothers me, and it also bothers me that I don't know what I'm supposed to do about it. I can't buoy her up all the time, even if she would do the same for me, but I'm not as loyal and dedicated as she is, none of us are, so. I dunno. And yes 'exercising my newfound independence' and exercising all these things she wasn't expecting, pretty much. She wanted a better life for me but she didn't expect the paradigm shift that would come with it.

Re: ask away, you say...

[identity profile] twoskeletons.livejournal.com 2009-10-31 08:12 pm (UTC)(link)
Ooh, a difficult question! Hmm. Let me ask you a question in turn! Would you like to hear a story about love or a story about travel?

Re: ask away, you say...

[identity profile] nixwilliams.livejournal.com 2009-10-31 11:02 pm (UTC)(link)
WHY YOU MAKE ME SO CONFLICTED! i think ... i think today i would like a story about travel. yours, your family's, an abstract idea of travel, whatever. i am tired because i didn't sleep well, and i think i will stay at home most of the day, so i would like a story about movement.
ext_42328: Language is my playground (Default)

Re: 2/2

[identity profile] ineptshieldmaid.livejournal.com 2009-10-31 11:30 pm (UTC)(link)
She wanted a better life for me but she didn't expect the paradigm shift that would come with it.

Oh, *mothers*.

Again, thank you for writing :). What's the point of autobiographical if it is not self-revealing?

Re: 2/2

[identity profile] twoskeletons.livejournal.com 2009-10-31 11:31 pm (UTC)(link)
Thank YOU for giving me the needed push. XD

[identity profile] zempasuchil.livejournal.com 2009-11-01 07:15 pm (UTC)(link)
Do you eat warmed-up rice with milk and cinnamon sugar? Like a soupy thing? My mom makes it for a snack sometimes, and she calls it arroz con leche. I thought we were the only ones who did it until a couple days ago when someone else brought it up.

[identity profile] animus-wyrmis.livejournal.com 2009-11-03 12:57 am (UTC)(link)
Oh, man, Lass, thanks for this. :) I always feel weird writing serious matter-y stuff on my journal, but word, I have been thinking I need to get over it. I'm getting better calling people on their shit irl though, idk.

"Yeah, but you guys aren't the real Pakistanis or the real Indonesians. These other international students too. You guys are in the top tier of your economic class, you aren't the real deal."
agh wtf. that's so shitty, what, how can you suddenly lose your nationality with enough money? (sometimes I wonder, though, how many generations until you lose it? like, I'm white but dad's family's arab, but it's a couple generations back now, so when does it become something I don't have any right to hang onto anymore? am i appropriating somehow? agh, sorry to derail your post!) I read that post on calling things third world too, and I think--like, is there some reason we (=white Westerners) want to see ourselves as first world people saving the poor third world people, is it just money and feeling superior and colonization? does it make us feel better about having so much and contributing to a system which makes sure we have so much more than other people? Like then we don't have to really do anything, it's just the third world, what can you expect. Something like that.

Stories! What songs did you sing when you were growing up? Did your mom sing to you? Did your dad tell you stories? Did you have family legends?

[identity profile] twoskeletons.livejournal.com 2009-11-03 03:41 pm (UTC)(link)
No, I've never heard of that. That sounds like a rice pudding almost? We don't really do rice as a dessert in the Philippines and Indonesia. Glutinous rice though, that's a different story. XD

[identity profile] zempasuchil.livejournal.com 2009-11-03 10:19 pm (UTC)(link)
Almost! but with no additional cooking, just like rice and milk. it's yummy.
Oooh, I think I've had some glutinous rice dessert. in high school we had Cultural Food Fairs or whatever, one day a year where during lunch they'd have clubs and other groups of students set up tables with food they made, and everyone went around and got samples of exciting stuff. Let's see, I think there was Samoan, Filipino, Thai maybe, maybe Indonesian - a pretty good variety, and really good food.
dhobikikutti: earthen diya (Default)

Re: 2/2

[personal profile] dhobikikutti 2009-11-05 05:36 am (UTC)(link)
Just a quick note to say how much I loved this. ::hugs you::

I will say more when I am awake and with brains.
ext_80109: (Misc: Landscape: temple of nowhere)

Re: 2/2

[identity profile] be-themoon.livejournal.com 2009-11-05 11:30 am (UTC)(link)
What did you do wrong? What failure in your motherhood has led your children to be unable to see the obvious presence of God? It hurts to have her children shun something that, in the past, has been the only thing to keep her afloat.

Yeah, see. This! And I feel bad because I know that it must make her unhappy, even if she doesn't say that often. Because according to her beliefs, I'm not going to heaven, and she is.It's probably the most painful part of my disbelief/dislike of God, that I am hurting my mother by it. *waves hands* It's frustrating but I can't change my beliefs because of it. And that hurts.

Re: 2/2

[identity profile] twoskeletons.livejournal.com 2009-11-06 08:11 am (UTC)(link)
Ya, for shiz! 'Cos I can't make her move on, I can only move on myself, and how long should I stay, and for what reasons? My mother is a faithful woman, but the trait manifests itself in me more as stubbornness.

Re: ask away, you say...

[identity profile] twoskeletons.livejournal.com 2009-11-06 09:13 am (UTC)(link)
When you step through the sliding doors from security into the main hub of the Detroit airport, you breathe a slide of relief. Your passport is stamped, your luggage rechecked for Boston, and you still have two hours before your connecting flight. Maybe you can grab a meal.

You've been holding your cellphone in your pocket since the escalator, and you turn it on without taking it out, you feel it vibrating to life. You navigate around businessmen, families, and backpackers until you find the monitors announcing departures and arrivals. By the time you find departures, the number you dialed is ringing. By the time you find your flight, someone answers hello.

You say, "I'm back."

+

There is only one place where you can smoke a cigarette in this airport, and in your quiet corner table, sipping your Rolling Rock, ignoring the dozens of sports games on the dozens of television screens around you, you text idle messages to him just because you can.

who d hel cares about college foot ball?

guy behind me smells like a dumpster

wats up

You have another beer, you have another cigarette. You meander to your next gate listening to the Dandy Warhols on earphones, and you wonder if it's sad that you have a favorite band to listen to for each airport you frequent. You stop here to window-shop duty-free perfumes, you stop there for a coffee. It sort of niggles at you that you haven't bought him a birthday present yet, and you idly think you might buy one here but no, you'd never buy anyone's birthday present from an airport.

You text, what do u want for yr birthday?

The reply: you.

You smile; you can't help yourself.

+

The girl beside you is about your age, with glasses and a shawl wrapped around her as she sleeps. Her copy of Life of Pi lies face down on her lap, and you wonder which school in Boston she goes to. One time, you had this really awesome conversation with a physics professor about beauty and meteors, but you're more reluctant about pursuing those conversations these days. When the girl wakes up for peanuts and water, you don't say anything.

The inflight magazine shows the architecture of the airport, the locations of internet access and toilets and the various gates. These large concatenations of concrete, glass, and metal; these solid structures housing transience. These large windows through which you can see the airplanes wink in and out of the clouds. You remember being a child and holding the hand of your grandmother mother father aunt, waiting at the airport and watching the sky with rapt attention. Something was going to fall out of it, and it was going to be for you.

You can't remember the first time you were on a plane, whether you were headed to Yogyakarta or Singapore. Ever since you were six, you have been told that your home lies somewhere else, like it was some mythical land over the sea. It's a little sad and it's a little funny, and you go through your life collecting homes the way others collect snowglobes and rare postmarks.

A disembodied voice tells everyone to buckle their seatbelts. Touch-down is in approximately forty minutes. Outside the window, the constellations of Boston streetlights stretch out in all directions. It is winter here now, and man do you hate New England weather, but the weather is not why you come back.

You turn on your cellphone as soon as you step off the plane and already there is a text: im by baggage claim

You walk a little faster.

[identity profile] twoskeletons.livejournal.com 2009-11-11 03:55 am (UTC)(link)
Hee! Anything that hasn't been covered here (http://lassiterfics.livejournal.com/101636.html) and here (http://lassiterfics.livejournal.com/96762.html)?

Re: 2/2

[identity profile] fantasyecho.livejournal.com 2009-11-12 03:36 pm (UTC)(link)
She wanted a better life for me but she didn't expect the paradigm shift that would come with it.

... I think with that line you just managed to lay out exactly what I was trying to articulate about my own mother. My story of my mother is similar, but dissimilar in that my mother doesn't have faith in God, but in work.

Thank you for writing. What a fantastic meme!

[identity profile] tariq-kamal.livejournal.com 2009-11-12 04:21 pm (UTC)(link)
[livejournal.com profile] fantasyecho linked me to this. It is an awesome sight, and there are stories here that are triggering my memories.

I... I honestly don't know what to ask...

Let me just get this right: your father is Filipino, and your mother is Indonesian, right? How did they meet? I've seen three of my uncles marry out of their ethnicity/religion, and as hard as I wish that it wasn't true, there was always... some kind of friction, some kind of cattiness, the kind of horrible tension between one side of the family and the other, that doesn't come out in the open but lies in the background, poisoning things.

I know for a fact that my family's incredibly dysfunctional, at least from my mother's side -- it's the sort of thing one gets, I guess, when one's maternal grandfather was "difficult to live with" (he was very likely an alcoholic, and he was a policeman, in a time when policemen could very well be violent and brutal; a side of him I only found out, only in allusion, never outright spoken, long after he died).

...shit, I'm talking about myself, I'm terribly sorry. Let me just wrap it up. Was there anything like that for you?

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