I read David Henry Hwang’s FOB (again? can’t remember whether I’ve read it before or not; for some reason I knew what it was about when I checked it out). I like the way the play directly touches on a pretty sensitive and embarrassing issue: how Asians can be snubbed by Asian Americans who don’t want to be Asian and in whose minds being Asian means not being American.
It’s a result of being disciplined in mainstream ways of conceiving who a normative American is. Asianness just doesn’t fit in the picture of an all-American guy (or girl, to a lesser extent). Hwang pokes fun at Dale, who is, in his words, “making it in America (Act II)” by showing how there’s really not that much that he can “teach” Steve, the FOB.
“I don’t like being alone. You know, when Mom could finally bring me to the U.S., I was already ten. But I never studied my English very hard in Taiwan, so I got moved back to second grade. There were a few Chinese girls in the fourth grade, but they were American-born, so they wouldn’t even talk to me. They’d just stay with themselves and compare how much clothes they all had, and make fun of the way we all talked. I figured I had a better chance of getting in with the white kids than with them, so in junior high I started bleaching my hair and hanging out at the beach–you know, Chinese hair looks pretty lousy when you bleach it. After a while, I knew what beach was gonna be good on any given day, and I could tell who was coming just by his van. But the American-born Chinese, it didn’t matter to them. They just giggled and went to their own dances. Until my senior high in high school–that’s how long it took for me to get over this whole thing. One night I took Dad’s car and drove on Hollywood Boulevard, all the way from downtown to Beverly Hills, then back on Sunset. I was looking and listening–all the time with the window down, just so I’d feel like I was part of the city. And that Friday, it was–I guess–I said, “I’m lonely. And I don’t like it. I don’t like being alone.” And that was all. As soon as I said it, I felt all of the breeze–it was really cool on my face–and I heard all of the radio–and the music sounded really good, you know? So I drove home.” (Grace, Act I)
Grace’s lines around the middle of the play were the most memorable for me. It also reminds me of something a guy in Economics once asked me. He asked me if Korean Americans mistreat Koreans. The South Asian Americans in his program are snobby to the South Asians in the program. And he wanted to know if KA acted the same way toward K. Asked in a very straightforward way. Indirection is apparently not a virture in some programs. And the guy in question is America, just in case there’s any confusion.
Intraracial relations need some more attention. And in that spirit, I really want to go see Dark Matter at the Asian American International Film Festival. The population that has been long regarded transient is coming to influence the demographics of America, or Asian America, more and more, and I think that population needs a bit more representation.
