Arts and Artists

Simply grateful to have had the chance to pursue her dream in the United States, Japan-born Keiko Ibi ended up in front of a room full of famous movie stars, holding a trophy denied to so many in the audience.

As she accepted her Academy Award for Best Documentary Short Subject, Ibi reminded us that Asian Americans are now becoming major players in the arts and entertainment industry.
While sometimes we appear on the American radar screen only when we reach a non-Asian American audience, Asian American artists have been writing, singing and dancing since first arriving on these shores.

As David Henry Hwang reminded us in his play Dance and the Railroad, railroad builders and gold miners from the mid-1800s were singing Peking Opera songs and performing remembered dance routines around camp fires in the high Sierras.

For some of us, Asian American arts began in the late 1960s and early 1970s, as we struggled to gain a sense of identity.

I remember listening to Nobuko Miyamoto’s haunting vocals on the song Something About Me Today from the legendary Grain of Sand album. I could fully relate when she sang, “I looked in the mirror/And I saw me/And I didn’t want to be/Any other way/Then I looked around/And I saw you/And it was the first time I knew/Who we really are.”

When I saw the 1961 movie version of West Side Story the other night, I was reminded that Miyamoto, as Joanne Miya, had appeared in this and several other stage and movie classics, and thus had honed music, dancing, and composing skills that she was able to combine with her commitment to social justice.

Her fellow musicians on Grain of Sand, whose pictures are featured in an update of the famous Yellow Pearl Project just published in New York by Godzilla, were Chris Iijima and “Charlie” Chin. They had similar experiences as well.

Iijima was a well-respected poet and guitarist who had been raised by a choir-master father and social activist mother. Chin grew his politics by listening to the old-timers sitting on the park benches in New York’s Columbus Park in Chinatown. He perfected his banjo and guitar playing to the point where he was asked to sit in with the Buffalo Springfield.

As the political awakening of our community took place, they brought their gifts together and didn’t wait for someone to tell them that their songs did not sound like the current Top 40.

And today, our scholars are going back to uncover the pioneers who kept the dream alive even in the shadow of racism and neglect.

Frank Chin and the editors of the Aiieeeee! anthology have helped to mainstream writers like John Okada (No No Boy), Wakako Yamauchi (And the Soul Shall Dance), and Sui Sin Far (Her Chinese Husband). Community celebrations have been held belatedly for cinematographer James Wong Howe, painter Mine Okubo, and early celluloid film idol Sessue Hayakawa.

When I first started teaching Asian American courses in the early 1980s, I could honestly claim that I had read most of the published Asian American works. By watching each new production at Asian Cine Vision and Pan Asian Repertory Theater in New York, I could keep up with many of the new Asian American stage and screen works as they debuted.

Now, though, there is no way that one person can keep up with the prolific explosion that is called Asian American arts. I receive emails and letters almost daily inviting me to see new plays, read new books, or visit a new gallery show. The full range of identities hidden within the census category “Asian or Pacific Islander” is visible when we can be ourselves as South Asian or Filipino Americans, gays and lesbians, gang members, and other personas not encompassed by the model minority myth.

And the full extent of our power is seen when we start to produce our own movies, as did Philip Gotanda and Dale Minami, when we become agents in the book business, like Theresa Park at New York’s venerable Sanford Greenburger Associates, or when we set up our own production and distribution houses, as Nobuko Miyamoto has done with Great Leap Productions. Our power is visible when we get National Endowment of the Arts monies to promote the works of other artists, as the National Asian American Telecommunications Association has done. Formed in 1980 to challenge the historical exclusion of Asian Pacific Americans from the media and to counteract the distorted portrayals of Asians by mainstream press. NAATA started with seed funds from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Today, NAATA is one of the five Minority Consortia created to provide culturally diverse programming for public television.

In addition to national public television broadcasts, NAATA’s program areas have expanded to include support for media artists, international, educational and cable distribution; and the annual San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival. As Asian Pacific American Heritage Month looms on the horizon, in May, see what you can do to set up a local screening of NAATA’s videos or Great Leap’s stage shows. You might also check out the new Temple University Press anthology about Asian American arts, edited by Amy Ling (contact Janet Francendese at janet@astro.ocis.temple.edu).

And recognize that, as author and Asian American Village Online editor Stewart David Ikeda said recently, “Young APA artists aren’t just cracking the mainstream culture—they’re Asian American-izing it.”