<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN">
<HTML><HEAD>
<META http-equiv=Content-Type content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1">
<META content="MSHTML 6.00.2600.0" name=GENERATOR>
<STYLE></STYLE>
</HEAD>
<BODY bgColor=#ffffff>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>Dear list,</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>I have failed in my bid to be a cultural
comprador.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>Collecting my unemployment checks, I have time to
read what I want to read.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>I can't help asking myself whether or not Asian
Americans can have a voice in Asian Studies.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>Orientalists remind us that only a native's
"access" to Asian culture could possibly give an Asian any use value in the
field. This results in pitting Asian Americans (issei, nisei, 1.5
generations, and in betweens) against each other -- a divisive strategy that
succeeds because of the economics of Necessity, in which Asian Americans are
only too willing to sell each other out in order to survive. It is a
strategy that pre-empts any possible alliances that Asian Americans might try to
form, alliances that dominant whites find threatening.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>I remember a male WASP professor at Harvard (now at
a different school) asking department majors to introduce ourselves and our
reasons for majoring in East Asian Studies. One Asian student, recently
immigrated, said he wanted to study his culture. I said I had a somewhat
academic interest in Asia, rather than studying it as "my culture," since I was
born in N.Y.C. and grew up here.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>The WASP male professor, perhaps sensing a
smugness in my attitude, immediately said, "But isn't that what it
is? _Your_ culture?" It was a harsh rebuke of my confidence in my
American identity. My skin color meant, to him, that I would never be
accepted as an American.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>Ann Lee</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2><A
href="http://home.myuw.net/asl/"></A></FONT> </DIV></BODY></HTML>