I’m a Texan through and through.
I was born in Bryan, Texas, at the only hospital in Bryan-College Station. I was immediately labeled “white” on my birth certificate. In high school, I became black, and later I became yet other things (the inspiration for my story collection, How I Became a Black Man and Other Metamorphoses). I am also a writer, a Chinese American and an Asian Pacific American.
But the one thing I always wanted to be was an Asian Texan. Not just an Asian American who lives or was born in Texas. An Asian Texan, a term with all the weight and glory of both terms and possessing an identity unto itself, complete and independent — like the Republic of Texas.
I finally knew that I wanted to be an Asian Texan after working for five years co-authoring and editing my new book, Asian Texans: Our Histories and Our Lives. After conducting research on the first Asian Texan (a Filipino boy who arrived here on a Spanish slave ship when Texas was still an independent nation); after interviewing the “Black Chinese” descendents of the first Chinese Texan railroad workers; after visiting Vietnamese shrimpers who waged gunfights with Ku Klux Klan terrorists; after studying the Asian American Underground Railroad running from Mexico through El Paso, Texas, and fanning out into the rest of the United States; and after sitting down with members of every Asian ethnic group in Texas, from Indians and Indonesians to Koreans and Tibetans, I saw the light. I am an Asian Texan, and I always have been.
But I want all Asian Texans to feel the pride and sense of belonging from reading our history. So I’ve set out to plunk our beautifully packaged history into every Texas school and college.
But that ain’t easy. Asian Texans was originally to be published by a prominent university press, but it wished to cut the substantive parts of the book. It also sent it to one clueless academic reviewer (university press books must be approved by two academic reviewers before publication), who stated that the only people who would be interested in an Asian Texan history would be those directly mentioned in the book (the reviewer was neither an expert in Asian American history nor an expert in Texas history).
So I decided to publish the book myself. And I went into debt — so much that books not sold almost represents meals not eaten.
Why am I doing this? Have you ever asked why we Asians are left out from or minimized in textbooks? Have you ever felt like you were alienated not only from many classmates, but also the class and the school system itself? Have you ever gotten nauseous witnessing one demeaning media caricature of Asians after another?
Have you ever wondered what it would be like if Asian Pacific Americans controlled the forces of media — what would happen if we published our own books, made our own films, produced our own TV shows, wrote our own histories using our own research and our own money?
Welcome to irwinbooks.com. If I want to publish a 402-page history of Asian Pacific Americans in Texas, and if I want to include every Asian ethnic group, and if I want to throw in 75 rare images and photos from our history, by golly, I can do that. As one Vietnamese Texan said about the Asian Texan struggle against the Ku Klux Klan and their subsequent decline, “The man don’t bother me no more.”
Irwin Tang is the author and co-author of four books, including Asian Texans and How I Became a Black Man and Other Metamorphoses, available at irwinbooks.com.