A couple of months ago, I had this idea of creating an Asian American club on my college campus. But not the kind that you're probably thinking of, as in the cultural, getting-back-in-touch-with-my-roots kind of club. I usually shy away from clubs of that nature. Part of it comes from my slight aversion to things that sort of blare out my heritage. That may come off as sounding xenocentric, but I really don't mean it like that: I love my culture and heritage, I'm proud to be Chinese. But it's like that adolescent reaction where your parents push you to do something and you don't want to do it, like a disobedient reflex.
But anyway, I just don't see those clubs as having to do with what I'm really passionate about, which is working with Asian American issues, what it means to grow up in a hybrid culture as a second generation Asian American, and making AAs visible in the media while fighting the stereotypes that burden us. All I want is a forum for a debate, a discussion, a conversation, with others who have opinions on all these topics but who also don't know how to find each other in the real world. Because as much as we owe to technology, everything that really matters goes on outside of one's computer.
After some Google-ing about how to start an Asian American club, I found out that my campus already has one! And a working one at that. I guess I was wrong to write off those cultural clubs during Welcome Week. Though I have to say, I don't remember the last time I've even heard of them hosting anything. I'll have to look into it when school starts again in the fall. Maybe I don't need to create a whole new organization. Maybe I can use their resources and offshoot a discussion panel. There must be members who are interested, right?
Sometimes I feel like I'm the only one my age who's interested in the Asian American community. Online, it's a totally different story, with so many blogs and websites that do show, "We're here and we care. You just have to find us." And it's true. When I mention to my friends that I aspire to be an editor for a mainstream Asian American magazine, I usually get questions such as, "There are magazines that target that demographic?" or "Is there even a demographic to target?" And every time I hear that, it only shows to me that there is a reason to be working on AA issues, to fight against the stereotypes and prejudices that cause hate crimes and to use media as a tool for equality. That's the thing about the APIA media community: we exist, you just have to search us out on the web and in print. I also get questions of why a publication would focus on such a narrow spectrum. Well, it's the same reasons why magazines like Ebony, Essence, and Latina exist. The kinds of perspectives that we want to hear from are not as prominent or as available as we'd like in mainstream media.
It's a double blow to be an Asian American magazine: not only is the news print industry going through hard times, it's even harder to keep up an ethnic publication for more than a few years. When I cite examples for friends (Hyphen, Audrey, East West, KoreAm, and Giant Robot are among the more popular ones), they've never heard of any of them. And in case you haven't either, any major bookstore chain, and possibly smaller ones, should carry them; just look outside of eye-level. Even my campus bookstore has some of these titles and it's where I get my fix every month. It's almost like a hidden community, out of sight from the mainstream, but once you break in, you see that it's loud and vibrant and busy and angry, because there's so much injustice and not enough exposure of that injustice. That's one of my main motivations of why I want to be involved--because there is a reason to be. It's everything that MANNA is about: "monitoring the media and advocating balanced, sensitive, and positive coverage and portrayals of Asian Americans."
My interest, or at least my cognizance, of the AA world happened sometime around middle school. I grew up close to L.A.'s Chinatown and was a library frequenter at a very young age. Given the obvious Asian community in the area, there was a wealth of Asian and Asian American literature available. But it wasn't until I happened upon the now defunct Monolid magazine (“For those who aren’t blinking.”) that I started to take advantage of it all. Finding that magazine and reading it was like this whole undiscovered world opening up for me: you mean there are Asian Americans out there who write about this hybrid identity? There's a community of people who are just like me? That magazine was my only link to this world at the time, and it was such a good magazine. After that, I read YELL-OH Girls!, which was another eye-opening experience that got me started on AA literature. So yeah, the blog name is an homage to the magazine that started it all for me. I'm also a monolid.
