Asian Women Carnival 4: storytelling, or reclaiming our selves through our words

Welcome to the 4th Asian Women Blog Carnival!

When I first sat down to brainstorm for this Carnival, I was tired and feeling incredibly overwhelmed by the barrage of stereotypes- of single stories [transcript], as Chimamanda Adichie says- that come with being an East Asian woman in the US. yuki_onna wrote an ally post during Racefail'09 about the roles that stories and storytelling play in our lives, and I felt the need for similar discussions, and for efforts like the Remyth Project, that centered around the voices of Asian women.

As I began to compile links, I was struck by the diversity of our stories and our storytellers. We, Asian women, are spoken word artists like Kelly Zen-Yie Tsai, Staceyann Chin, and Corinne "Calamity" Manabat; musicians such as Vienna Teng and Zeb and Haniya. We are writers like Minal Hajratwala, Neesha Meminger, and Sarita Malik; filmmakers like Mira Nair and Alice Wu. We are dancers such as the mastermind of Navatman, who choreographed the brilliant bharata natyam duet Her Story [trailer & interview]; students like Lori Phanachone; politicians such as the truly inspirational Malalai Joya... and these Asian women are only a few of our contemporaries. These are only the Asian women that I, in my limited experience as part of the Chinese-American diaspora, was aware of.

We have stories. We have so many stories. We just need to know where to look.

This Carnival does not, cannot ever encompass all of us; our identities as Asian women are shifting and incomplete- not because we are not whole or happy, but because as we live and grow and change, so too do our self-definitions. It is simply a starting place, a meeting ground where we can find each other and talk to each other about our differences and our shared experiences of Asian-ness and femininity. It is, I hope, a place where our voices paint a picture larger and brighter than any single story.

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tielan wrote a Remyth about a Little Girl With An Inner Dragon:

She wanted red. Strong red like the colour of joy - like the colour of her blood when she fell out of the tree, which gong-gong said was the colour of everyone's blood and she shouldn't be ashamed because they were different on the outside.

Angela Martinez Dy wrote Manila, My Manila:

I was Taga-ilog – of the river;
you Pampanga – of the riverbank.
upon taking leave of Indonesia, we were neighbors
met again in the harbor of Manila Bay.
by the shade of mangrove trees we built
our homes on stilts, villages called barangays
because without each other we knew
we would not stay afloat
would not make it to the nearest shores
we dreamt of reaching

Mistress Naoko talks about women in Malaysian folklore in Remembrance of a myth:

Among all the rulers who bended, bribed, cajoled and rebelled against the old empire of Siam, only one family stood up to Siam. Only two women, as far as I could remember, did not let Siam bully them. These women taught their sisters and daughters of Kelantan how to be fierce. How to fight for what they wanted, and screw anyone who didn’t let them.

aozhoux discusses the weight of conflicting stereotypes in Our stories, our selves:

I am blunt and tactless to the point of rudeness, except when I am so shy that I can barely speak in company. Similarly, I have appalling table manners, except when I eat with gracious Oriental poise. I always dress modestly, except when I drag out the cheongsam and long painted talons. I wait patiently to be rescued by a white male, except where I'm a manipulative gold-digger who entraps one into marrying me. Unless I stick with "my own kind", of course, because we Asians are terribly racist that way. I am hard-working, intelligent and educated, and therefore stealing your rightful jobs, and yet I am also a worthless, drug-dealing triad member burdening your criminal justice system. These are the stories I have heard since childhood, over and over again, and some part of me still believes them - all of them, all at once. Never mind that they can't all be true at the same time, never mind that I should and do know better from, you know, actual life experience. I still know the stories by heart, and they still affect the way I see myself, and, I believe, others see me.

ressie_noldo talks about her identity in on the monstrous other:

So perhaps let us say it like this: even I am Indian. I was born a stone's throw or two from the Pennines, and (mapping my life out in mountain ranges) I live a stone's throw or two from the San Gabriels, and people on the streets here have almost stopped asking me where I come from and why I speak English as though I've never spoken anything else -- here, then, is the truth: because I never had the time to learn the Tamil that by some definitions I was probably born to, because colonialism's bee-sting stole my breath away -- : and I am allergic to coconuts and sandalwood and stereotypes, and I am Indian.

thedeadparrot ponders the unseen backstory of Glee's Tina Cohen-Chang in Our Stories:

There's this other character on Glee named Tina Cohen-Chang. I only got through two episodes of the show (okay, one-and-a-half), but all I learned in those one-and-a-half episodes is that she (a) probably resembles me the closest out of the main cast, (b) she is a backup singer in the glee club, (c) she dresses like a goth, (d) she stutters, and (e) she is not good at anything. She doesn't get slurpees in the face, and it might be that she's uncompromisingly herself considering her wardrobe choices, but we can't see if she comes across as vulnerable or unsympathetic or anything else for that matter. She doesn't get to be talented. She doesn't get a story.

twoskeletons reflects upon Adichie's speech and puts a new twist on an old meme in i never wanna shame the blood in my veins [Note: keep an eye on the comments, as they are gorgeous!]:

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.

zahrawithaz provides a signal-boost for works by several Asian women writers: Randa Jarrar, Anita Amirrezvani, Kamila Shamsie, Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, An Na, Ruth Ozeki, Mariko and Jillian Tamaki, Nina Revoyr, Staceyann Chin, Malinda Lo, and Alia Yunis.

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This concludes the 4th edition of the Asian Women Blog Carnival. Many thanks to the participants for sharing their stories, to yeloson for hosting the truly inspirational Remyth Project, to the lovely ladies of truthrages for granting us this space, and especially to ciderpress, who started all this in the first place. If you are interested in hosting a future edition of the Carnival, please contact her!