Interview with Shawn Wong

Wong, Shawn, 1949- ; McKiernan, Stephen

Shawn Wong is a Chinese American author and scholar. He received his undergraduate degree in English at the University of California at Berkeley and his Master's degree in Creative Writing at San Francisco State University. Wong was a Professor of English, Director of the University Honors Program, Chair of the Department of English, and Director of the Creative Writing Program at the University of Washington.

2010-08-23

In copyright

2018-03-29

McKiernan Interviews

228:32

McKiernan Interviews
Interview with: Shawn Wong
Interviewed by: Stephen McKiernan
Transcriber: REV
Date of interview: 23 August 2010
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(Start of Interview)

SM (00:00:03):
Testing one, two, three. Very good. I got a series of questions here and, of course, a lot of it may be spontaneous too, in response to your replies. I thought before we even start, I just want to say that I think it is very important in this project, when I am looking at the Boomer Generation, that I include everyone, and I have been trying to make this effort. And I also realize that sometimes when you talk about the Boomer Generation, born between (19)46 and (19)64, that ... I am looking at Boomers now more in terms of spirit because some of the people that were born say in (19)38 to (19)45 have told me, in no uncertain terms, that they feel like they're part of the generation, and then some even born afterwards too. So, it is kind of a spiritual thing as well as years-wise. First question. Still there?

SW (00:01:03):
Yeah.

SM (00:01:03):
Could you tell me a ... I have read your background. I know about it, but this is going to be in the book. Could you tell me a little bit about yourself? I know you grew up in Oakland. Your growing up years, what it was like being an Asian American male in Oakland, in the Bay Area, and basically information like who are your role models, people that you looked up to?

SW (00:01:28):
Sure. Actually, I was born in Oakland, but I grew up in Berkeley. We were living at Berkeley at the time, and my parents were students at UC Berkeley at the time. And other than the most obvious, parents being your role models. Both of my parents came from China, so they were part of that generation that came over after World War II, and intended to go back to China. But the communists took over China in 1949, and they elected to stay in the US, and the US allowed them to stay. So, I was born in (19)49, and I think I was lucky in that I was born in the Bay Area, and grew up in the Bay Area, because there were sort of Asian American role models around. I remember my mother always telling me that I was Chinese American but, as a kid, you do not really understand that. She said that my dad and her, they were Chinese, but I was Chinese American. And of course, I did not understand what that meant until years later. But one story that I always tell is that when I was about eight years old, UC Berkeley had a great football team. And I think in 1958, it was the last team to go to the Rose Bowl. But on the football team, they had a Japanese American football player, and his name was Pete Domoto. And I had never seen an Asian American doing something like that. Most Asian Americans were, Asian people, were engineers and doctors, not really any faces in pop culture or sports. And as a kid, I used to go to the Cal football games and, at the end of the game, a lot of kids would run down on the field, and try to get autographs or ... I remember football players often gave away parts of their uniforms, like their chin straps and stuff like that. And I remember running down there, and trying to get a close up look at Pete Domoto to see if he really did look Asian, and to get his autograph. And I never got his autograph, but I remember he was a real role model to me.

SM (00:04:39):
What became of him?

SW (00:04:41):
I will tell you in a second. One of the funny things is that [inaudible 00:04:46] kids, just like other kids at the time, I wanted to be Willie Mays, and things like that, but there were no Asian role models except for Pete, because he was on this famous award-winning football team. He became kind of a target of mine. And when I played football with my friends, my buddies, I would always pretend I was Pete Domoto. He did not play a glamorous position, he was left guard, but that is what I wanted to be. A left guard. And so when I first started ... I used to tell this story a lot, and when I moved up here to Seattle, I remember somebody asking me the same question about role models. And I told this story. And one day I was sitting here in my office at the UW and I get a call, and I answer the phone, and the person says, "This is a voice from your past."

SM (00:05:57):
Oh, my gosh.

SW (00:05:58):
I go, "Who is this jokester?" [inaudible] And you never know who is at the other end. And he said, "This is Pete Domoto." And I was stunned. I felt like I was eight years old. I said, "Pete Domoto? Number 60? Left guard at the Cal Bears?" I knew ... I remembered his number. And he goes, "Yeah."

SM (00:06:28):
Oh, my gosh.

SW (00:06:29):
[inaudible] talking about me. And I said, "Yes, I have." I said, "Wow, I cannot believe you're calling me." And I said, "Where are you calling from?" And he goes, "Well, it just so happens, I am the head of pediatric dentistry here at the University of Washington."

SM (00:06:50):
Oh, my gosh.

SW (00:06:53):
And he says to me, "Would you like to have lunch?" And I go, " Yeah."

SM (00:07:01):
You can get his autograph.

SW (00:07:03):
Yeah. I even said on the phone, "Can I have your autograph?" I reverted to my eight-year-old self.

SM (00:07:12):
My, what a story.

SW (00:07:14):
So, we went and had the lunch, and I remember calling a friend of mine as soon as I hung up, who was an executive at Budweiser, Anheuser-Busch, and he was my age and grew up in Berkeley, and he was also Chinese. And I called him and I said, "Andrew, guess what? Guess who just called me?" And I said, "Pete Domoto." And he goes, "No way." And my friend Andrew said, "I still have his autograph."

SM (00:07:45):
Oh, my gosh.

SW (00:07:47):
So Pete had a, I think, a big effect on Baby Boomer Asian kids growing up in the Bay Area. And this was way before having a role model like Bruce Lee or other Asian Americans who have sort of made it into pop culture. The only Asian images in the movies were these very, very stereotypical images played by actors who were not even Asian, like Charlie Chan. Or we were always the villain or the enemy in World War II movies, or ... there were not really any positive images, or we were Hop Sing on Bonanza. Servant, laundry man, soldier, enemy soldiers, things like that. So, it was important to have somebody like Pete Domoto around.

SM (00:08:53):
Yeah, that is an unbelievable story.

SW (00:08:56):
Yeah. We became friends. I got his autograph. I even brought a ... at his retirement party, he asked me to come and speak at his retirement party. I brought a football. A UC Berkeley football, and I asked for his autograph again.

SM (00:09:15):
Wow. You're talking about growing up in the late forties and (19)50s, a lot of the Boomer kids, and whether ... I read the history books. Now we are talking general histories now, we are not talking Dr. Takaki and some of the others that have really concentrated on the Asian American community. I was a big Iris Chang fan too, and that was a big loss killing herself. But the thing is, what was it like ... when you watch those television shows, a lot of people look at 1950s TV, and certainly if you're an African American, you rarely see a person of color except for Amos and Andy. And then Nat King Cole had a six-week run in the middle (19)50s. And other than that, you wait to the early (19)60s for I Spy and-

SW (00:10:10):
Right. All you had were, if you look at other role models, [inaudible], Tonto.

SM (00:10:19):
Now, you obviously were very conscious of not seeing very many role models. Was that pretty prevalent amongst kids your age for that period?

SW (00:10:32):
Yeah, I think so. We looked at our peers, and lots of our peers had role models. Baseball players, football players. Or we found role models and other people that were involved in pop culture. Musicians, artists, things like that. And I think we were looking specifically for Asian American, not Asians from Asia. Obviously, people would say, "Well, be proud that you are Chinese. Chinese invented gunpowder and paper," et cetera, et cetera. I'd never even been to that country.

SM (00:11:26):
When I first started this process, I remember one person said to me, "You are talking about the Boomer Generation. When I see that term, I think of white men. I do not even think of people of color." And they were not even thinking of women. They were thinking ... but I said, "No, the effort is to try to reach all particular groups, because the Boomer Generation was a boom for everybody." And in your own words, can you describe, as best you can, the Asian American experience in the United States in the following timeframes? I know this is just general, which in ... I know I am going to get more specific later on, but what was America like for Asian Americans during the following periods? And the first one is 1946 to 1960.

SW (00:12:20):
Well, that was a time when, certainly, I was in school, and schools were dominated by pretty much monocultural education, as you know. Columbus discovered America, George Washington never told a lie, et cetera, et cetera.

SM (00:12:41):
He cut down a cherry tree.

SW (00:12:44):
And someone like me never saw an image in any of the books that had any kind of resemblance to reality. Obviously, multicultural education was a long ways off. And I had the good fortune of going to schools that were, for the most part in the Bay Area, and they were very sort of racially mixed, especially in Berkeley. But I do remember, in the second grade, my father took a job as a civilian engineer for the Navy. And my first grade, I was lived on Guam. And second grade, we moved to Taiwan. And that is my first experience being in an Asian country, other than visiting Hong Kong or relatives or stuff like that. But we lived in Taiwan, and the first day of school, the US Navy bus came by to pick my mother and I up, and she went with me. And I remember the story my mother tells me, told me the story, I do not quite remember it, but I remember parts of it, the US Navy bus came by, this gray typical Navy bus, picked us up in front of our house, and we both got on the bus. And as soon as I got on the bus, all the kids on the bus started chanting, "No Chinese allowed on this bus," because it was basically a white ... all for white American kids. And I remember thinking to myself, "Oh, it's okay. She's my mom."

SM (00:14:43):
Wow.

SW (00:14:44):
I think they were referring to me. And I sat down in the chair, and this is the part I do remember. A little girl named Pam came up to my mother and said, "Can I sit next to your son?" She said, "Sure." And she sat next to me and held my hand, and we rode together on the bus every day after that.

SM (00:15:13):
And what was your age?

SW (00:15:15):
Second grade. I was like seven or eight. I think I was seven, at the time. And so, it was really interesting to be an American in a Chinese country, and to have been brought up American, and I did not really speak Chinese. I sort of understood it. My parents spoke Mandarin. But growing up, at that time, that was sort of ... since my father worked for the Navy, we traveled around a lot. And by the third grade, he had come home to Berkeley. My father passed away of lung cancer when I was seven.

SM (00:16:07):
Sorry.

SW (00:16:11):
So we grew up there, and then my mother remarried a few years later. We moved to LA with my stepfather, which was a real awakening, I think. In the sixth grade, I went to inner city school in LA. And sort of been coddled in this nice Berkeley school, suddenly I find myself in the inner city with African Americans and Latinos. And they were hardcore kids, but certainly not as hardcore as they are now. But it was a real wake-up call. The whole school was Asian, and Latino, and Black, and different kinds of Asians. It was really shocking to me, and I thought I would not even survive that last year of [inaudible] elementary school.

SM (00:17:12):
And what year was that?

SW (00:17:14):
That was 1960.

SM (00:17:19):
(19)60.

SW (00:17:20):
And from there we moved to the suburbs, and the school became basically entirely white.

SM (00:17:30):
When you look at that period right after the war right to the time that President Kennedy was elected. Obviously, Japanese Americans had been interred in World War II concentration camps, really, out in the West. And of course, when the war ended, there was this attitude in America against the Japanese. I can remember growing up as a kid in the (19)50s up near Syracuse, and Ithaca, and Cortland, New York, World War II people saying Japs. They always used that term, because they had really ... they had hurt our boys, as they said. They had really done terrible things to our boys. So, the basic question I am asking you, and I know that the Chinese Americans, at that particular time, were working in all kinds of plants. So, they were more favored at that time, were not they, than Japanese? And then the restriction between those groups. So, there's not only cultural issues, but there's groups issues between Asian Americans.

SW (00:18:42):
Oh, absolutely. I mean, in many ways, the history of Chinese in America is that they, in the 18 hundreds, they were the pariah race of America, all these exclusion laws to keep them out of the country. And then, when World War II broke out, they were praised for, basically, not being Japanese, and then received acceptance until, of course, the communists took over China, and then Korean War came, and suddenly China became a threat. So the Chinese went back to being suspect race in many ways. And then, in the early (19)60s, when the civil rights began, Asians were then praised again for not being black, and the depiction of the model minority sort of started. There was a Newsweek article, I think, or US News and World Report article about 1962, I believe it was the first article to reference this model minority thing. And the article was called Out Whiting the Whites, and creating ... and essentially, congratulating Asians in America for their achievement. But the underlying message was you are not Black, and you are not [inaudible] all this ruckus. So, it has been an interesting history of what you might call ... oh, I do not know. In one book I wrote, I called it The Great Suffering and Acceptance Sweepstakes. You go through these periods of acceptance and rejection.

SM (00:20:59):
When you think of the (19)50s, you do not even ... again, I am just using this as a white person who's done a lot of reading and scholars, you hear about the Japanese and the Chinese, but you do not hear about many of the other groups. And occasionally, you might hear a little bit about the Vietnamese even before then, but other than when you're talking Asian Americans, you really ... people are probably only thinking Japanese and Chinese, are not they, really, in the (19)50s?

SW (00:21:27):
Much until after World War II, and then more Filipinos started to come. And after World War II, you had a lot of war brides. And then, of course, after 1961, immigration laws were ... LBJ signed into law reforms on immigration [inaudible]-

SM (00:22:01):
But what do you think the-

SW (00:22:03):
Remove some of the quotas. But essentially there were severe restrictions on Chinese until 1943, and World War II basically removed all of those immigration restrictions against the Chinese. It had to, because now China was an ally.

SM (00:22:28):
The question I always bring up here, particularly for those Asian Americans that were born in the United States, either during World War II or after, I consider them kind of together. I am learning that they need to be together, because that had similar experiences, and spiritually they went through a lot of things together.

SW (00:22:51):
And also judged by the same stereotype. It did not matter if, say, you were Chinese or Japanese. [inaudible] media stereotype [inaudible].

SM (00:23:01):
What do you think the impact on Boomers that were born in that period, who were Japanese and Chinese, the ... were they having the same ... they were having the biases and prejudices within the American society, but were they ... African Americans were still fighting for equality in the South. We had young, even white and Jewish Americans going South, and Catholic priests, to help the African Americans in the early (19)60s. And then, of course, we had the free speech movement. And just so much happening in the (19)50s that really was the forerunner to the (19)60s, and I just want to know the influence that this had on Asian American Boomers.

SW (00:23:54):
Well, I think among the Boomers we identified with the ... we came of age during the civil rights movement. So we stopped being Orientals and became Asian. And the term Asian American was coined. It became a political term just like Afro-American during [inaudible 00:24:19] particularly. So the beginnings of the free speech movement, particularly if you lived in Berkeley, you were affected by that movement. And then I went to UC Berkeley during the ... all the period during a demonstration. And Boomers grew up during the, not only civil rights, but also Vietnam War. And particularly for Asian Americans in which US was fighting a war against an Asian country. Again, when we were children, we were now also depicted as enemy. And so that stereotype of the ... it did not matter whether the enemy was Japanese or Vietnamese or communist Chinese, it all got blended together in terms of popular media. And you're sitting there as a member of the Asian American Boomer Generation, and watching the war unfold on TV, and those images of Asians as the enemy.

SM (00:25:39):
Do you have the number of Asian Americans who fought in the Korean War, and in the Vietnam War?

SW (00:25:46):
Yeah. There was a number of Asian Americans in World War II, and the Korean War. World War II, of course, the Japanese Americans, they got the highest profile for 442nd regiment. But in the Vietnam War, there were a lot of ... I do not know the number, but there were a lot of Asian American veterans. In the early (19)70s, some friends of mine, we had a little radio show on KPFA in Berkeley, in which we interviewed returning Asian American Vietnam men, and the difficult adjustment they had in the military as well as afterwards, in which they were subjected to a daily barrage of racial stereotyping, and the enemy being referred to by all the derogatory Asian names.

SM (00:27:06):
Wow.

SW (00:27:06):
And I remember one veteran telling me when he got to Vietnam, his sergeant told him, "Ever take off your uniform, grow a beard, and do not ever go swimming, because we cannot tell you apart from the enemy." So, there you are living in that kind of state, and listening to the kind of racial epithets every day.

SM (00:27:44):
So basically, the Asian American military experience in Vietnam may be similar to what African Americans were going through, because the nation was really split apart at that time. And African American vets, particularly between (19)67 and (19)71, when they say the military really went downhill, they got involved in drugs and long hair and rock music. Were Asian Americans in the same boat, except they ... they had similar feelings?

SW (00:28:22):
Well, I think so. As you know, the draft was on then. So, the draft, obviously, targeted people who did not have a deferment at the time. No student deferment, no ... so many of the soldiers came from a particular class of America. And then, of course, later in the war, they removed all deferments, so you could not even get a student deferment. As we know, it was not only an unpopular war, but those who did serve, they, I think, got it from both sides. They got it not only from within, the racism that was present within, the culture of the armed forces then, but also on the outside from those of us who did not believe in the war. I think nobody blamed the soldier, but certainly felt alienated.

SM (00:29:35):
When you look at, going the next period, you have talked already a little bit about the (19)60s. But that being an Asian American during that 1961 to 1970 period, I might even say (19)61 to (19)73, because a lot of people say the (19)60s really ended ... went until (19)73, (19)74, and the Vietnam War ended in (19)75. So maybe from (19)61 to (19)75, what was it like to be Asian American in America at that particular time? And I also, and I am going to preface this by saying, were Asian Americans also involved in the anti-war movement?

SW (00:30:15):
Yeah, they definite ... well, I have a little bit of acute view having grown up in Berkeley, so I cannot really speak for all Asian Americans across the country. But certainly Asian Americans were very much politically involved, particularly, from where I stood. And it was not only the civil rights movement going on, but the anti-war movement, but also the rise of the demonstration to establish ethnic studies in universities, and Asian American studies. And everybody was sort of involved in the act of renaming themselves and re-identifying themselves, picking on political labels like Asian American. Negroes stop being Negroes. It became Afro-American. Asians stopped being Oriental, became Asian. Things like that. So, I think, as I recall, it seemed like the entire population was united in all of these efforts to end the war, to make, since we were all in college at that time, to make our universities be relevant to our experience, to recognize us, and to sort of react against that kind of monocultural education that we grew up in. Education ... I did not find out about Japanese internment camps until I was a senior in high school, which little paragraph in the history book. I went to Berkeley High School, and there is this little paragraph, and I remember sitting there going, "What are these?" And what's interesting is even my Japanese friends are saying, "Well, what are these things?" And we were up in arms. Finally, we had a cause.

SM (00:32:31):
Yeah. It is like-

SW (00:32:32):
It rooted itself in history. And I remember my Japanese American friends would go home and say to their parents, "Wow, there are these internment camps." And the parent said, "Yeah, we were in them." And then the kids would say, "Well, why did not you tell me about them?" "You never asked." And it was something that Japanese America was ashamed about and tried to erase.

SW (00:33:03):
About and tried to erase and tried to keep in the background. But the boomer generation that arrived in college now wanted to make some noise. Now wanted to rectify history. Later in the (19)80s, it was that boomer generation that started the redress movement to get redress for town.

SM (00:33:26):
That was the (19)80s to (19)90s period of the Reagan and Bush.

SW (00:33:29):
Yeah. So Reagan finally signed into law redress and Japanese Americans who were in camp got paid redress. Then it was the boomers who finally arrived in positions of influence as civil rights attorneys, et cetera, et cetera. Who brought that cause forward. All of that stuff that was happening in the early (19)60s was our education outside of academia to build a social and political consciousness that would move forward with us into our professional careers.

SM (00:34:17):
Obviously, you were at Berkeley and Berkeley has always been a progressive way ahead, a forerunner of things to come. A lot of people criticize it now that it is not doing that. Except I believe it still is because we see the students protesting their tuition increases. Some graduate students have actually left out of silent protest over those increases. But when you look at the period from the (19)90s, let us say from when Bill Clinton became president through George Bush and then President Obama, that 20-year period, what have the (19)90s and the first 10 years of the 21st century meant? For not only boomer Asian Americans, but Asian Americans as a whole?

SW (00:35:08):
Yeah. Well the face of Asian America changed completely post mid-(19)70s. When I was going to college, even at UC Berkeley, Asian Americans made up 6 percent of the student population in Berkeley. And it was mostly Chinese and Japanese American middle class. And now on any big metropolitan flagship public university, you might have anywhere from 12 to 15 different kinds of Asian ethnic groups on campus. I think the face of Asian America changed drastically with that new immigration. That new first generation gave birth to an Asian American generation that grew up in America and entered college. During that period, the first Vietnamese who came over and after the fall of Saigon, those kids are the ones who just starting college during the period you are talking about. So, what you had was an interesting mix of maybe fifth, sixth, even seventh generation Chinese Americans and the fourth generation Japanese Americans mixed in with brand new immigrants and second generation, southeast Asian generation. And in American Chinatowns for example, the face of an American Chinatown changed drastically. Chinese Americans at the time would go into Chinatown and not recognize any food anymore. Cause new immigrants took the place that traditional American Chinese American Chinatown, the town.

SM (00:37:41):
I know Vietnamese food is unbelievable.

SW (00:37:44):
Cuisine chain. Part of that typical Chinese American fair the Chinese Americans could not even recognize. I remember during that time in maybe the late (19)70s being asked at a restaurant one time, "What kind of noodles do you want?" What do you mean what kind of noodles? And then they rattled off a list of the different kinds of noodles.

SM (00:38:15):
Wow.

SW (00:38:16):
Oh wow. I do not even know what they are. Shanghai noodles and this kind of noodles. And so whereas other ethnic communities tended to stay the same. I remember a great article in San Francisco magazine in which an Italian American in North Beach was lamenting that his buddies, his neighbors, his Chinese neighbors that he's lived with his whole life have moved away. And he's saying, my new neighbors do not even speak English. That was a great comment because he's lamenting that the other Chinese moved away. Replaced by these new immigrants.

SM (00:39:08):
Well, when you look at higher education, and of course the evolution here of going in the 1950s, when you see the numbers of students in the (19)50s and going into the (19)60s and (19)70s, and you see this major progress with the state universities, not only in California but in New York Community college, state university systems. They're evolving at the same time that the increase in population of Asian Americans is happening. And then to me, and this just as a white person who has spent 33 years in higher education, that Asian Americans, their future is so directly linked to higher ed. And they were with it, so to speak, in terms of making for progress and for growth and development and developing careers. They saw the value of education.

SW (00:40:06):
Yeah. Right. I think that a case in which the previous generation who grew up after World War II or even before World War II, our parents' generation, they lived during a time in which there was second class citizenship. You could have been trained to be an engineer, but you could not get a job as an engineer even if you went to college. And my father was an exception that they actually got a job as an engineer. But it was difficult for our parents' generation to, even if they went to college, being able to find work because of there were not any equal opportunity things or [inaudible] laws, stuff like that. This is the time. I remember my mother going on a rant one day about when she was laid off from her job. This was after she had married my stepfather. And she and my stepfather both worked in the aerospace industry. She was a draftsman, an engineer. And she got laid off from the job and she came home and she said her supervisor told her she was laid off because one, my stepfather still worked for the company and two between her and the other guy, the other draftsman had to support his family.

SM (00:42:02):
Oh my gosh.

SW (00:42:04):
Of course, this is also at a time in which women were paid less than men. And I remember my mother just going on this rant because she was a single mother after my father died and she had to work to support us. And just at a time when all of my friends' mothers were home and they were housewives. None of my mother's friends worked. And those are the last vestiges of 1950s America.

SM (00:42:52):
So, people think, again, they always think of these white fathers and mothers where the mother's at home, but this is really America.

SW (00:42:59):
I remember it was my first lesson in gender issues. I remember thinking to myself, that is unfair. I was there when my mother had the struggle.

SM (00:43:16):
Go ahead.

SW (00:43:17):
So I think a lot of that, the boomer generation took forward because we were that first generation who got to go to college and go into the field that we majored in and graduated. Finally, that opportunity was open. I think our parents wanted us to go to college. But also, I think it was different for my parents because they were both college educated and when they came to America, they were already read and speak English. But for families that had to make a big cultural adjustment, they saw that as the opportunity for children to improve.

SM (00:44:25):
I had just some developments that happened in the United States in the world after World War II and wondering how they affected the Asian Americans here on the home front and also the immigration of those who came here during this time. I will just lift these and then you can comment on any of them if you want to. We all think about Mao Zedong and the Chinese Revolution in the late forties. And of course college students were carrying his little red booklet around college campuses. I know a couple students that actually read it too. So, it was not like it was just for show for some, but what Mao really stood for. Secondly, we know that Nixon went to China and despite what a lot of people dislike about him, a lot of people think that was a very important thing to happen. Thirdly, Iris Chang who passed away, she gave a speech about a couple of months before she died, and she talked about in the (19)90s about the spying about Asian Americans being accused of being spy. So, now Chinese Americans, again, were being looked upon in a negative way. And the fourth item, and you can comment on any of them, de facto may have had on the population as a whole, Tienanmen Square to me, was one of the most important events in my lifetime as a person who devoted my life to higher ed. And to see what happened to those students at Tienanmen Square was like the students at Kent State University. There is no excuse for it. And I just want to know what those events, how those four things affected the Asian American community.

SW (00:46:24):
I think those of us who were born in America and were Chinese American, I think we had a very complicated relationship with those world events. The first being Nixon's visit to China. You have to remember it is a country that our parents may have come from, but we had never been to, and suddenly the world's attention is on. And there was a great CBS documentary that was done just before Nixon went to China and it was called Misunderstanding China. And it was a look at narrated by Charles Kuralt, who had hair then. He introduced the documentary by showing all of these stereotypical movie images. So, this is what we know about China. Then they move into reality, the kind of China that you might be exposed when Nixon goes there in the media. So, I think for many of us, we have been combating media stereotypes of being Chinese in America for such a long time. Now we are on the cusp with Nixon's trip to China and afterwards of reality. And even China of itself is being revealed in a way that has never been seen before. I remember a bunch of things. Insane or really interesting things like the Chinese food is not like the Chinese food we have at home, my God. But there were a bunch of things that happened during that period. I think Chinese Americans fought hard not to be defined by it because it was on everybody's tongue. It was now acceptable to go to China. Nixon opened to China basically, and now Americans could go there to get visas to visit China. And then years later when everybody started to go to China, I remember people would tell me about their visits to China and they would talk to me as if I knew what they were talking about. They would say, oh, you know, Forbidden City. And I would just nod my head. I felt reluctant to tell them, in the (19)90s, but I had not been there. They just assumed I have been there, somehow, I have been there. My first visit to China was not until 1998, and that was to, we were not counting Hong Kong, but that was to Shanghai for three days. I arrived there and I figured it out, but something like 50 years to the day when my parents left China. And so we had this odd relationship, that China not really recognizing Chinese Americans for decades. Because I think China felt that you were in that generation that left China, but you overseas Chinese were basically clumped together. And in China we did not really have an identity in a way. Only recently has China shown real academic interest in Chinese America, Chinese American history.

SM (00:51:02):
The Tienanmen Square situation though in 1989, I would like your thoughts on it because obviously it was a major event in the world. But I can remember coming back to my university in late August, September. No one wanted to talk about it. And what amazed me is we had quite a few students from China, the international student organization, that did not even want to talk about it. And I think maybe they were here on visas and they were fearful of it and I could not understand. So what I ended up having to do was I went to Temple University and got three graduate students who were not afraid to speak up. They were strong activists and I brought them to the university and even still then the Chinese students did not come out to see them for fear that if they were in the audience, they would be watched. We were a small school. What is it about Tienanmen Square? To me it was about democracy.

SW (00:52:06):
Yeah. I think for the foreign students, it was something that they were, I think rightly afraid of to comment on. Get them expelled from the US they thought, or they might have repercussions back home, or their family. But I think for Chinese Americans, boomers particularly, it was something we recognized. It was that kind of public defiance that we grew up with at the (19)60s and (19)70s and it resembled the free speech movement. It had all the earmarks except for the tanks and all the earmarks of the things that we had gone through. But even with the tanks, I mean certainly we got tear gas from helicopters and things like that. And then as you mentioned, Kent State.

SM (00:53:14):
Yes.

SW (00:53:16):
On one event, it captured all of the events of the (19)60s and early (19)70s when our campuses were on fire and on strike and being shut down. Civil disobedience was something Boomers recognized [inaudible] plot. And if you look now you look at China. You think, oh, I do not think this is what Mao had in mind.

SM (00:53:55):
Well, it is interesting though that my nephew went to China about four years ago. And when he got on the plane, they were all counseling. They said one thing you do not talk about when you get over to China, it is Tienanmen Square. And you're going to go Tienanmen Square but if you start talking about the 1989, they will put you on a plane back to America.

SW (00:54:16):
Yeah.

SM (00:54:17):
And I say, you got to be kidding me. No. Then they will not allow any protests even to this day on Tienanmen Square. And-

SW (00:54:25):
You can talk about it now.

SM (00:54:28):
You can talk about it?

SW (00:54:30):
Yeah. I mean, a few years ago I was there on a trip during that exact period you are talking about. When the book Gentleman Papers came out. I was on a trip for the State Department visiting southern China, some universities there, and you really could not talk about it then, but now you can. I was just on a trip there a couple of years ago and as a guest of what the equivalent to like the USIA in China. And they said to us right off the bat, there's a group of writers, you can ask us anything, we will talk about anything. We talked about Tienanmen Square, we talked about banned books. These are officials.

SM (00:55:33):
Based on your experience...

SW (00:55:35):
They were intent on changing. I have never been in a country which the entire country was intent on changing its image. And this was just before the Olympics. We knew we were on the very manufactured kind of visit, but still, they kept reassuring us to talk about anything. We will talk about it. The idea was it's a new China, entirely capitalistic now, and it was. They were trying to change their identity prior to the Olympics.

SM (00:56:26):
One quick question though regarding it. Put your thinking camp on regarding what was happening here in the United States in the fall of 1989. At the university you were teaching at, I do not know if you were at the University of Washington, but was it also quiet there? No one talked about it? Or is it just our college?

SW (00:56:46):
Well, people noted it, I do not know. I do not recall what the Chinese student reaction was. But I think publicly Asian students as a group supported what was going on. And I think it may be different on the West coast.

SM (00:57:13):
My thought was here we have college administrators running universities who were boomers and they immediately saw Tienanmen Square and they thought uh-oh, activism. And so they were very happy that colleges were quiet in the fall. We brought Lee Lu to campus and he believed that one day they would come back and take over the leadership of China. I will get back to the question here in a minute. There was a faculty member on our campus who was probably in her late forties, and I mentioned about Lee Lu and about Tienanmen Square and some sort of a conversation. She went into a rage saying those students were the worst. I lived in China then, and those students were terrible. They tore our country apart. She did not care that they were killed. It was just amazing the reaction of a person who was probably pro-government, an anti-student. Looking at some of these other things here. When you look at the 1950s again, Asian Americans had issues in America during the time that, well, all boomers were younger. These are some of the issues and can just, this is kind of the mentality that was happening in say from the 1950s through the 1980s. We had McCarthyism where there was a fear that people were communists.

SW (00:58:49):
Hang on one second.

SM (00:58:50):
Yep.

SW (00:59:11):
Sorry Steve.

SM (00:59:11):
That is okay. Did McCarthyism and that attitude not only of HUAC, but of McCarthyism in the late forties, and then of course the (19)50s affect Asian Americans? Because in reality, anybody who supposedly had been a member of the Communist Party, they were looking. They were looking for communists everywhere. And that must have made Asian Americans feel tense.

SW (00:59:39):
Oh yeah. Lots of things in Chinatowns, for example, ended during that McCarthy period, Chinatown had a healthy group of labor unions, for example, and all of those disappeared during the McCarthy era. The labor unions whatever manufacturing was going on, or the Chinese Hand Laundry Alliance and other places, Chinatown, all of those labor unions disappeared because labor unions were looked upon as a socialist construct. And so Chinese went into a period in which the last thing you want to do is be perceived as a communist or any red or pink, and to disassociate yourself with communist China. You had public demonstrations embracing the nationalist Chinese flag in the streets of American Chinatowns during festivals and embracing a country, almost none of the Chinese of Chinatown ever been to. And disassociating themselves from post 1949 China. Not to mention that China, the China that these immigrants had left is no longer in existence.

SM (01:01:18):
Let me turn my tape here. Hold on a second.

SW (01:01:25):
I might take something that was on my iPod.

SM (01:01:31):
Oh yeah. Well I am old school, but they still sell these.

SW (01:01:42):
Or what was it? I picked something on iMovie.

SM (01:01:42):
Well, when you go interview people, you got to have a recorder. You can continue on McCarthyism.

SW (01:01:49):
Right. So again, even in the (19)70s there was a red scare. And Hoover was investigating American Chinatowns for secret communists. He posted these hand bills around Chinatown in Chinese. One second, I will read part of it to you.

SM (01:02:23):
I also know that Lyndon Johnson feared that communists were behind the anti-war movement. The dissonance.

SW (01:02:29):
Hoover posted these leaflets around Chinatown and (19)71 and (19)72. I will just read you the beginning and the end. "Now that you have settled in America, you are not only entitled to enjoy the various blessings of America's free political system, but in addition, we will be able to shoulder the responsibilities of protecting these free traditions." Blah, blah, blah. "Communists frequently engage in secret activities within America's borders and plot to destroy the free traditions of China. While our bureau is on constant alert, it pays close attention to these matters. From now you too may join our defense against communism."

SM (01:03:17):
Oh my gosh.

SW (01:03:22):
"This, while in America you'd become aware of communists or [inaudible] spy who are engaged in intelligence or destructive and subversive activities, you are urgently requested to telephone the local branch of the FBI."

SM (01:03:37):
Wow.

SW (01:03:39):
But down at the bottom they talk about, all you have to do is report. You do not have to carry out your own investigation. And then it says, "You must realize that investigation is a specialized and sophisticated profession, and if ordinary people attempted, they not only risk their own safety, but also risk startling the snake from his hiding place."

SM (01:04:02):
Wow.

SW (01:04:02):
Signed J. Edgar Hoover.

SM (01:04:02):
You got that framed?

SW (01:04:02):
These are posted in Chinese.

SM (01:04:02):
Oh my gosh.

SW (01:04:14):
Around Chinatown.

SM (01:04:16):
That is a collector's item.

SW (01:04:18):
So these leaflets obviously placed the entire population at risk. Of course, now, because it was signed by J. Edgar Hoover, he was a little off his rocker.

SM (01:04:34):
We found out he also wore dresses. I do not know if that is true.

SW (01:04:36):
So yeah, he had a name too for himself, I forgot what it was.

SM (01:04:52):
When you look at some of the other things here. I guess mainly I just want to know that the Asian American boomers and families were well aware that these things were impacting their lives as well. Obviously the Korean War. How were Korean Americans treated in the 1950s during this particular war? We have talked about the Chinese and Japanese, but how were Koreans treated?

SW (01:05:12):
I do not really know too much, but there was not a huge population of Korean Americans around the time, not like there is now. So, their immigration is [inaudible] numbers is basically post 1961, (19)63, when they started to arrive in the larger numbers.

SM (01:05:39):
Were Asian American students or youth boomers involved in the counterculture in the 1960s? I bring these things up. Woodstock and the Summer of Love and 1968, which tore the nation apart and the assassinations obviously, and then even going back to where... And even going back to where Asian Americans aware of Freedom Summer in (19)64 and what young people were doing in the South in early (19)60s, risking their lives.

SW (01:06:12):
They're all certainly part of that. But I think all the boomers, no matter where you were from, got involved in pop culture of (19)60s and (19)70s. I graduated from high school (19)67, the summer of love, lived in the Haight-Ashbury while I was going school and that kind of thing. And I saw around me a lot of Asian Americans who embraced that culture and everything about it, our hair long, but we went to college.

SM (01:07:09):
Yep, and you were influenced like all of them.

SW (01:07:12):
We were doing it. We were not exactly dropping out, but-

SM (01:07:17):
In other words, you were basically inhaling and not-

SW (01:07:22):
No-no.

SM (01:07:23):
You were inhaling but you were not taking, right?

SW (01:07:26):
Right. We were not actually holding it. Going, in those days, you went to other public place and just sort of stood around, you could not help but inhale.

SM (01:07:37):
I know, that is why Bill Clinton saying he never inhales really is amazing.

SW (01:07:41):
If it is a rock concert, you do not have to touch one, but you are inhaling constantly.

SM (01:07:50):
To me, 1975 is a major year. Vietnam means a lot to me. If you can tell, my whole life I have been involved in civil rights, and I have actually worked with a lot of Asian American students. I have advised Asian American students for over 20 years, and so I got to know a lot of them. They were always in my office talking. But one of the areas, I was very close to Vietnamese students, and I still, most of my Facebook is with Vietnamese students, have gone on different careers and so forth. 1975, when the helicopter went off the top of the embassy, we all know the people that did escape and were on the ships and everything, they got back to America or different parts of the world, and of course that was the beginning of the boat people. And then we know what happened in Cambodia with a Khmer Rouge. We have had [inaudible] on the campus, and the exodus of people from Cambodia. I have known students from Laos and Thailand and even India and Pakistan. What is it about 1975 and that helicopter that really not only impacts boomers who were really in the anti-war movement and veterans who were in the war itself, but also to possibly Asian Americans themselves as a symbol of the new flood of immigrants into the United States?

SW (01:09:30):
I am thinking one thing from Asian American point of view, watching the fall of Saigon, in some ways there is a sense of relief. Now the war's over. We're not the enemy in the media every night. And so that image is, people I think felt finally will go away. It may take some time, but it will go away, or at least until the next war against an Asian county. And I think there were two significant events. Prior to the helicopter lifting off from the American embassy, the other one I remember when I was in college was LBJ saying he was not going to run again. And that was, I remember standing there with a bunch of other people, wow. We might see an end. And we thought, I think that too was a significant moment. And I think other people, or Asian Americans, other things happened following that. During the Iranian hostage crisis and stuff like that, when there was talk of any kind of internment, Iranian American, Japanese American boomers spoke. History repeats itself. And I think what happened was, among boomers particularly, is that in the early (19)60s through civil rights and on, not only did Asian Americans sort of reinvent themselves in a political way by renaming themselves, but also, they, I think established a political coalition among all Asian Americans. Whether you were Middle Eastern or Asian from Asia, the idea of things that we learned from history have to be brought up in a way that is politically supportive. I remember Japanese Americans speaking up on behalf of Iranian Americans at the time.

SM (01:12:48):
Well, the boat people is kind of a sad story because as many as 2 million people I think tried to escape and many died. But one of the, I used to mention this to the students, your mom and dad never would have met if they had not met in a camp. And they never thought of it that way, because a lot of the Vietnamese students that I have known, their parents met in camps.

SW (01:13:12):
Yeah, the very first ones who came over in (19)75 were ethnically Chinese. So that was interesting to see that, particularly from our point of view as Asian Americans. When the Vietnamese came over, they were Cantonese speaking Vietnamese. We realize, oh, these folks are Chinese.

SM (01:13:43):
It is interesting, there are a lot of naysayers and doubters and critics. There is still a lot of bigots in this country as you well know. And it's interesting that in the Vietnamese population that came over here in 1975, I have heard this from others, not from students, but from people that I think are a little biased, they say, "Well, if the Vietnamese can come over here in 1975 and be a smashing success in life with good jobs and everything, and they have had to work, some of them worked in the cities and sold things on the streets and they worked their way up, why cannot African Americans do the same? They have been here 200 years." Have you heard this before?

SW (01:14:29):
Oh yeah.

SM (01:14:31):
They always talk about the Vietnamese. It's the Vietnamese comparing them to the African Americans.

SW (01:14:36):
Yeah, I mean it is a popular racist assumption.

SM (01:14:41):
Yep-yep.

SW (01:14:41):
Minority group off against another.

SM (01:14:47):
Yeah, I think that exists today.

SW (01:14:54):
Yeah, oh absolutely.

SM (01:14:57):
Yeah.

SW (01:14:57):
And you cannot fall into that trap.

SM (01:14:58):
Yep. Agree. I am going to go back to Berkeley here. I am all over the place, but you were on the Berkeley campus as a student from (19)67 to (19)71?

SW (01:15:04):
I was actually at San Francisco State for two years, (19)67 to (19)69, during the Hayakawa years.

SM (01:15:14):
Yeah, those were all over the news.

SW (01:15:18):
And I got disgusted with Hayakawa, so I left and went back to UC Berkeley, and I graduated from there in (19)71. And then I went back to San Francisco State for graduate school in creative writing and ended up having SI Hayakawa's name on my diploma.

SM (01:15:37):
Oh my gosh. Well he went out and become a senator.

SW (01:15:40):
Yeah.

SM (01:15:42):
What is interesting about him is-

SW (01:15:42):
Ronald Reagan's name on my diploma.

SM (01:15:47):
Wow. That is a historic document.

SW (01:15:50):
Ronald Reagan.

SM (01:15:52):
Two people that really, really put their careers on the line against students really. People's Park happened in (19)69 when you were there, I believe, at Berkeley, and that was a pretty rough experience. And then of course, Hayakawa had his experience with the African American students at San Francisco State. Just, obviously, again I am asking, maybe repeating myself and the experience that you have, but in your peers and your Asian American students at that time, they were experiencing both of these. How were they taking this in, the People's Park and the SI Hayakawa confrontations?

SW (01:16:36):
Yeah, I mean Hayakawa was, just infuriated Asian Americans because of his, not only his conservative stance, but he also took a very sort of conservative view on the internment camps too.

SM (01:17:07):
Oh wow.

SW (01:17:08):
He was Canadian. He would not even speak out against the internment camps. I forgot what he said, but I remember he said about-

SM (01:17:14):
So where was he during the internment camps?

SW (01:17:14):
Well, he was Canadian, so I do not know where he was, but he certainly did not experience it. But the Japanese Canadian experience is much worse than the Japanese American. Japanese Canadians were sent to abandoned mining towns. Now they were not allowed back to the West Coast until (19)49 or something.

SM (01:17:28):
Right.

SW (01:17:42):
But yeah, Hayakawa was just, every Asian American just wanted to disown him.

SM (01:17:45):
What is amazing is he was a very highly visible person then.

SW (01:17:48):
Yeah, and was just, as I recall it, just infuriating because his stance was basically anti-student.

SM (01:18:00):
Wow.

SW (01:18:00):
I think we went through six presidents that year until the governor finally was able to, because none of the governors wanted to bring police on campus. None of the presidents wanted to bring police on campus at San Francisco State, and so they were fired. And finally, Hayakawa was hired and immediately brought the police on campus, which of course caused the riot.

SM (01:18:30):
You wrote the book, American Knees. Now I have got to admit, I have not read it, but I will within the next month because every person I interview, I must read their books. Now, I read someplace in one of the things on the web that said that it was a cultural, that you wrote American Knees as a cultural response to Amy Tan's Joy Luck Club. Is that true?

SW (01:18:59):
Oh, I do not think that is quite accurate. I remember somebody saying that, but now I do not know.

SM (01:19:10):
How do they differ? How do those two books differ?

SW (01:19:14):
Well, I mean, Amy Tan's book is a very, very commercial sort of venture. And I mean, for what it is, I have to hand it to her, the chief kind of commercial success that book put on me, but I do not personally agree with her stance in the book which is basically, to put it in a very short form, you read her book or you see the movie version and you come away with one conclusion, which is, Chinese culture sucks. And I have aunts who are the same generation as her main characters and they never talk about their culture like that. If anything, they go the opposite way. They're just boring me to death about how great Chinese culture is. And to represent Chinese culture as misogynistic or more misogynistic than any other culture is, I think, wrong. But my book is certainly not a response to her book. I do make a mention, I allude to her book late in my novel, and that is the only illusion to Joy Luck Club. And that is probably the only dig, and it is really about the readers of Joy Luck Club rather than the book itself.

SM (01:21:00):
Yeah. I read an interview that, you have seen it too on the web, which is the one where you and filmmaker Eric Byler were together?

SW (01:21:09):
Yeah, Byler, yeah.

SM (01:21:09):
And you were talking about the model minority. And I think it gets, in the conversations that I have had with some of the female students who were Asian American, many have gone on to become doctors and nurses and accountants and everything, they really got upset when they hear that term model minority. It really, and it is even today, it is something that just, and they kind of laugh it off and all this other stuff, that we are so much smarter. I know a couple students that had some hard time in math, so you cannot stereotype. But can I read something here, because I want your response to it?

SW (01:21:56):
Yes.

SM (01:22:00):
Because it is from the interview, and I might, it says here, "So now we have Raymond Ding in the novel, a lady's man, almost a womanizer. And so those people who have this agenda, they claim that finally we can say that Asian men are virile, sexual, charismatic, charming. We can finally show that we can dress up in clothes, and we can appropriate their version of masculinity." And then down below here is, "We can be just like you. Is not that what the model minority myth is all about? Where the mainstream culture says, 'Hey, there is a place right here next to us.' It is almost as high, your chair will be almost as high, and that is the best you can do. And all you have to do is follow these little rules: be a model student, be a model minority, be a model prisoner, follow the rules, and you will be next to us." I think that is beautiful because of the fact that is kind of like joining a fraternity and it is-

SW (01:23:01):
It is about conformity.

SM (01:23:04):
Yeah, and I just think at the bottom here it says, "And yet there are performances in American Knees that are very, very Asian, very Asian American, that do not suddenly throw off our own culture in order to burrow into another." And I think that is be who you are and do not be a copy of what other people want you to be.

SW (01:23:26):
Right. Right. Well, actually, Raymond Ding, the main character is very flawed individual and he sort of comes to terms with that during the book, as well as the film. The film's obviously very different from the book. I am thinking only-

SM (01:23:56):
Would you say that Asian American boomer men and women have had to deal with these perceptions, not only today, of the last 20 years, but-

SW (01:24:05):
In a different way. So we work hard to reject not only the most obvious media stereotypes, but also the negative stereotypes, but also those sort of so-called positive stereotypes, being the model minority and college educated, quiet, hardworking. Another statistic out there that says Asian households have highest income, does not take into effect there might be more working members in the household, that kind of thing. That model minority myth is out there, simply as we noted earlier, its main purpose is to pit one minority group off against another. And you cannot accept that label when you realize that it becomes a stereotype. And the goal of any racial stereotype, the ultimate goal of any racial stereotype is to have that racial minority eventually believe in the stereotype. So, if the stereotype is you work hard, but you keep quiet and you do not upset dominant society, and you do not try to be aggressive and things like that, if you believe in that stereotype, then you're doing the work of the oppressor for them.

SM (01:26:05):
Very-very well said.

SW (01:26:07):
Same thing like the gender issues. A woman's place is in the kitchen, not the boardroom. So the ultimate goal of that stereotype is for the woman to believe that, "Oh, I could never be a CEO. My role is in the kitchen." So, believe that, and you are made to believe that stereotype, then dominant society or male dominated society does not have to expend any effort or attention to keeping that engine going.

SM (01:26:41):
I think Phoebe, you know Phoebe Yang?

SW (01:26:44):
Yeah.

SM (01:26:44):
Well, Phoebe was on our campus right after she got married and before she wrote her first really big book, actually it was her second book, and she mentioned she had been a lawyer and was involved with [inaudible] Magazine. Now she's gone on to do unbelievable things, very success in everything she does. But she said she went to China and she was at a conference in China and she was in a boardroom. And they were all sitting around this table in, I think it was in China, and one of the men looked at her and said, "Can you go get me a cup of coffee?" Because he did not, she was the only female in the room. She was a lawyer too. And she said that was so prevalent in China. The attitude that men have over there toward women is go get me a cup of coffee. Well, she did not get them a cup of coffee, but that was a very revealing experience that she told our students. And here she was a lawyer at that time and all the other things, but it was perception people have of women, maybe not only here but around the world.

SW (01:27:52):
Well, certainly, I think so. But to represent, I think it's wrong to represent China as being more misogynistic than any other culture. Look at Italian culture.

SM (01:27:52):
Oh, that is true.

SW (01:27:52):
Or there is somehow, another popular stereotype is to show that China is more misogynistic.

SM (01:27:52):
Did the Asian American community, after World War II, concentrate on dealing with xenophobia and pure racism, excuse me, and pure racism, but once after years they were accepted as Americans or some people label a model minority? I think what I am getting here, because this makes us feel, I guess what I am saying here is could you describe xenophobia in America? Is it as American as apple pie?

SW (01:29:02):
Yeah, I think it is sort of like, as you know, the progress or the latest immigrant to arrive in America always occupies the bottom rung of the ladder. As you recall, so Chinese of course, were once the pariah race of America, but so were the Irish, right, or the Italians or whoever the latest immigrant is. Not only does the racial hatred follow them, but also, and look at the vicious stereotypes of Irish and Italians during the early 20th century. The attention spent on the kind of xenophobic energy is an American tradition certainly, but it has not always been about people of color. And the only difference is, to quote Richard Rodriguez, is that during this history in America, Western Europeans had stopped being who they were, could choose to stop being German or choose to stop being Irish. You could change your name, but people of color did not have that luxury of deciding to stop being whatever culturally ethnic roots they come from. And as you know, even in the 2008 election, America has a very, very difficult time talking about race, and still does. I find it, everybody finds it difficult to talk about race, and we still do not get it right.

SM (01:31:12):
Yeah, there is a professor at, I think he is at New York, is it, no, he is at Columbia. He's an Asian American professor. He has written a couple books and he said-

SW (01:31:21):
Yeah, Gary Okihiro.

SM (01:31:24):
No, I am interviewing him. No, not Gary. One other professor is Lee, Dr. Lee or Lou? Anyways, he has written a couple books about the fact that America's forgetting the issue of racism, and he was really talking about the Bush administration putting it on the back burner. So he's written some really good books. What laws were passed since World War II that have had the greatest impact on Asian Americans?

SW (01:31:54):
I think just, well, just prior to World War, or during World War II, 1943, they ended, Chinese Exclusion Act ended in (19)43. So that had the biggest effect on Chinese American, Chinese. And then the Immigration Act of, some people say (19)61 to (19)63, was revised a few times, but between (19)61 and (19)63, I think the Immigration Act was finally rewritten so that issues of race were removed from immigration laws. It is all about nationality rather than race. And the quotas moved up for the people for every country. In (19)43, when immigration was relaxed or Exclusion Act ended for Chinese, the quota was just, I forgot what it was, 109 per year. So effectively, it was still on, or 105 I think per year, and then there were lots of exclusions to that. So, after World War II, Congress had to pass the War Brides Act, and then after that they had passed the GI Finances Act. And then in (19)53, what is it, the Cable Act. I am a little fogged here, copies for quite a while, but '53 race was removed as a bar to immigration. So, I think all of those things.

SM (01:34:08):
And Brown was very important too, Brown versus Board of Education?

SW (01:34:13):
Oh yeah, Brown versus Board of Education.

SM (01:34:15):
And the (19)64, (19)65 civil rights bills?

SW (01:34:18):
Obviously, the Civil Rights Act, ending second classes citizenship for at least the outward, obvious second class citizenship. And also after World War II, for Asian Americans, World War II actually gave them the opportunity to leave their ethnic community. Hawaiian Americans could leave the plantation and join the army. Asian Americans who were in the Army got the GI Bill, et cetera, et cetera. So the same thing that was happening for women in the workplace was happening now for, I think, minorities. All people of color found opportunity during and after World War II.
SM (01:35:24):
Who are the best writers, the books that you really liked, that had an impression upon you when you were younger in the (19)50s, (19)60s, (19)70s, (19)80s say, that personally had an influence on you? And then if there is any Asian American writers who think that people need to read this if they really want to understand the Asian American community, not only in the past, but now.

SW (01:35:56):
Well, it is interesting. I mean, when I was at Berkeley, I think I was 20, I decided I wanted to be a writer. And I remember thinking to myself at the very moment that I decided that, I also realized I was the only Asian American writer I knew in the world. I could not name one, and no teacher, no high school teacher had even mentioned the name of one, or no college professor ever mentioned the name of an Asian American writer or assigned a book by an Asian American writer. And I remember going to my American literature professor and asking him, "I am interested in Asian American literature. Can you suggest a book?"

SM (01:36:50):
And what year was this?

SW (01:36:50):
This was in 1970.

SM (01:36:50):
Unbelievable.

SW (01:36:55):
And I decided, well, I got to do this on my own because I cannot be, somebody must have published something before me. I went and started researching the field and I ran into a couple of other young people who were my age or a little bit older, Frank Chin, and Jeffrey Chan and Lawson Inada, and the four of us started looking for Asian American literature for all sort of young writers, pretty much unpublished. And we found them; we found these books. They were out of print. They were in used bookstores, but basically outside of academia. We found these books and we ended up publishing the first Asian American literature anthology in 1974, and it basically started the study of Asian American literature. You read any sort of literary lit crit work on Asian American literature, they always mention our anthology. And at the beginning, they also take exception to our point of view, which is healthy.

SM (01:38:16):
And that is really when Asian studies was starting right then too, correct?

SW (01:38:20):
And so I always say I became a professor by accident because I just wanted to be a writer. And I thought, well, I will end up being a waiter for the rest of my life, or taxi cab driver, like most artists. And when I came out of school, I went to undergraduate school, I went to graduate school in creative writing back in San Francisco State, and while I was in graduate school, ethnic studies departments were just starting. And there was a job at Mills College and- There was a job at Mills College and we had a brand-new ethnic studies department, so I applied for the job. I had no graduate degree yet, no teaching experience whatsoever, and no publications. They asked me, they interviewed me and said, what can you teach? I said, I can teach a class in Asian American literature and only one other person, my colleague Jeff Chan, was teaching a class at the state on the subject in the entire country. They said, you are hired.

SM (01:39:06):
Wow, that is good.

SW (01:39:06):
And I was sitting there thinking, wow, do I really want this job? I was working as a gardener at the time. I think I was making more money, and then I noticed that Mills College was an all-female college and I was 22.

SM (01:39:06):
Oh.

SW (01:39:06):
I said, I think I will start my academic career. But it's funny, I tell people I started my academic career teaching a subject I had to teach myself, that I did not learn that at university.

SM (01:40:17):
That is a story in itself.

SW (01:40:18):
Then we published the first anthology of Asian American literature. It was Published by Howard University Press, and African American publishers were the first ones to recognize Asian American literature. They published our anthology, published my first novel, Homebase, they published my second anthology. So Asian American publishers, I mean African American publishers, were quick to understand where Asian American literature stood. After our anthology came out, Aiiieeeee, it was reviewed everywhere. It was astounding, the reception. We did not think anything like that would happen. It was reviewed in Rolling Stone, New York Times, and Dr. Robert Polls wrote an essay about it in the New Yorker. There I was in my early twenties, and all I was trying to do was legitimize the field of literature I wanted to go into.

SM (01:41:49):
That is-

SW (01:41:49):
I am trying to educate the readers to something called Asian American literature.

SM (01:41:49):
That could be a movie.

SW (01:41:49):
Which I would eventually belong to, tried to belong to.

SM (01:41:50):
It is interesting because as an Asian American you were not able to find anybody who knew anything about Asian American writers or Asian writers per se. When I think of my first contact with learning anything about Asia or any of the countries in that part of the world, I think of Pearl Buck. I think of Graham Green and Tom Dooley. I do not know if you know all three of them.

SW (01:42:15):
Yep.

SM (01:42:15):
Because Tom Dooley was over in Vietnam in the (19)50s, and he was on Jack Paar's show, and, of course, Pearl Buck's right from Bucks County here, and she wrote some things. Now only until Dr. Takaki, we had him on our campus, bless his soul. His books are unbelievable. But you really have a telling true story here.

SW (01:42:43):
In the early (19)70s there were no books available. If you started teaching Asian American studies, there were absolutely no books, zero, available. When I taught Asian American literature, all the books had to be Xeroxed for the students. It is interesting you brought up Pearl Buck because after Nixon opened China, Pearl Buck applied for a visa to go back to China to visit the China of her youth, and the Chinese government refused her visa. In a public statement, the reason that they refused her visa was for the years and years of her distortion of the Chinese people.

SM (01:43:19):
Oh, wow.

SW (01:43:35):
It is interesting that they came out with that statement.

SM (01:43:36):
Wow. I know we are heading a little over. I got two more questions.

SW (01:43:40):
Sure.

SM (01:43:43):
One of the questions is I have asked everyone is the question of healing. I took a group of students to Washington DC in 1995 as part of our Leadership On the Road programs. We worked for the former senator, Gaylord Nelson, from Wisconsin, and we met nine former US Senators, and that day we met with Senator Muskie. So, the students and I came up with this question, and the question was based on, they thought, 1968 with that terrible convention and the cops and the young people, and of course the year was bad with two assassinations, and Tet, and the president, and the whole story. The question is this, due to the divisions that took place during the 1960s, the divisions between black and white, and I got, yellow was not in the question here, but divisions between black and white, male and female, gay and straight, those who supported the war, those who were against the war, those who supported the troops and were against the troops. Do you feel that the boomer generation of 70 plus million will go to its grave, like the Civil War generation, not truly healing from the terrible divisions that divided the nation during the time that they were young, and it's subconsciously affected them the rest of their lives? The students knew that only between five and 15 percent of the boomers were really involved in any sort of activism. So, they knew this when they were putting their question together. But there was a belief that if you lived at that time, even if you were not an activist, you were subconsciously affected by everything. So, what is your answer to that question? Do you think we as a nation or that this generation, now your part of it, is going to go to your grave or its grave, and where do you think Asian Americans are on this because all the divisions that they have had in their lives, particularly the boomer generation, as they are heading to social security now.

SW (01:45:50):
That is for sure.

SM (01:45:51):
It is unbelievable.

SW (01:45:52):
I think, well, I tend to be an optimist. I would say that those times, (19)68, et cetera, made us who we are. You cannot sort of say, well, I wish we had not done this, or wish we had not started UC Berkeley on fire. I think that is defined who we were, and it became part of our identity, whether or not you were actually active or not. It drew everybody in, particularly in light of the fact that everybody, because of the draft, for example, you had to have, you were actually out on the street demonstrating because of the draft, and as a young man you were part of it. You were made part of it. When you sat on the floor listening to the radio for your birthday to come up for the draft lottery-

SM (01:47:06):
Oh, yeah.

SW (01:47:07):
[inaudible] deferment. You sat there, and I remember the relief when my birthday came up 324.

SM (01:47:12):
You are lucky. I was 72.

SW (01:47:24):
And my other roommate was 348, but our third roommate was something like 36.

SM (01:47:31):
Oh, boy.

SW (01:47:37):
So, I think part of our generation is that partly you feel that tremendous relief that in one sense you had, and at the same time a guilt, in that you were suddenly you are this outspoken, vocal, committed generation, and then in one minute you were relieved from making that decision of whether you would go into the Army or go to Canada. And at the same time, you're looking at your roommate and he has to report for action physical.

SM (01:48:20):
Wow.

SW (01:48:20):
So everybody knew somebody who was at the wrong end of the ladder or had to go into the Army or died in the war. So, you struggle with the sort of dichotomy of having escaped, being escaped, having to even make a decision and being a part of your peers’ lives who had to endure the next step.

SM (01:48:53):
Right.

SW (01:48:53):
I think our generation was always, sort of had to deal with that kind of dichotomy. At the same time, I remember Tom Brokaw saying something key is that when we look at the world from our point of view of the (19)60s and (19)70s, and we look at the world as it is now, we bring our experience forward. Nobody's asking us our opinion. And he says, at the same time when we were in the (19)60s, did we ask anybody in the 1920s for their advice?

SM (01:48:53):
Yeah.

SW (01:48:53):
But we did not.

SM (01:48:53):
Yeah, that is true.

SW (01:48:53):
So, it is interesting that feel. I think we feel, or at least at times we feel, the generation that struggled to be as relevant as possible is now sort of becoming irrelevant.

SM (01:50:12):
Well, what Senator Muskie said is that he did not even respond to the (19)60s. People thought he would respond to the convention because he was the democratic vice-presidential running mate, and he said, "Well, we have not healed since the Civil War because of the issue of race," then he went on to talk about it. About the issue of race and the loss of lives during that war. So, thought that was interesting. Do you think the Vietnam Memorial, have you been to the Vietnam Memorial?

SW (01:50:40):
Oh, many times.

SM (01:50:42):
Yeah. What was your experience when you saw for the first time, do you think... Jan Scruggs wrote a book called, To Heal a Nation, and I have been to the Vietnam Memorial because to me it is the number one event of the entire boomer generation, Vietnam, and I feel I have to be there. So, I have been there since 1994 for Memorial Day and Veteran's Day experiencing it and trying to get a better grasp of it. And I have seen many Vietnamese there that are in the audience and walking around and thanking the American troops and so forth, and then I see many that are kind of distant and whatever, and the Hmong, I think it is the Hmong, they have been there too, as well. But what was your initial thought the first time you saw, when you walked to that granite wall? And the second part of the question, has it done anything to heal the nation from the war?

SW (01:51:36):
I think, you know, there were two things that struck me. Not only, it is basically everybody up there is my generation and the immensity of seeing 58,000 names inscribed on the wall. It's one thing. But at the very same time, I am also cognizant of who designed it.

SM (01:51:36):
Oh, yeah.

SW (01:51:36):
They hounded her as a young 20-year old architectural student being called all these derogatory racist things. And in the end, what I feel is what everybody feels, at the end she was right.

SM (01:51:36):
Mm-hmm.

SW (01:51:36):
Maya Lin was right. And people often ask me the standard interview question, what person would you most like to meet? And I always say, Maya Lin. I would like to meet her just to say what everybody says, I think. I just want to meet somebody who had that vision, who had that vision so young, and that she knew this was the right thing to do. I want to meet people who knew at whatever age that they knew the right thing to do. So, you feel, one, this intense loss, but you also feel that somebody did the right thing and that she's Chinese America.

SM (01:53:30):
Well, you reach a good point because when we are talking about women's issues too, it is interesting that two of the three statues were designed by, the wall was designed by Maya Lin, but the Women's Memorial was designed by Glenna Goodacre, and then the third design of the three-man statue, I forget his name, but that says a lot about women, too. That in a man's war...

SW (01:53:55):
Right.

SM (01:53:58):
And it was also a woman's war, and we cannot forget that. We continually forget this in history how important women were on the side of the Vietnamese. And so, women were very, and of course the nurses and the donut ladies and all the people involved on our side, so we have a tendency to make this a man's war, but it is a human war.

SW (01:54:20):
Right. As you know, the history of the controversy before the wall was built.

SM (01:54:28):
Right.

SW (01:54:28):
Maya Lin just had to endure all kinds of really vicious racism then.

SM (01:54:38):
Well, there are still people that do not like it. I interviewed a professor up in Boston who is a Vietnam vet, and he still does not like it, but there are a lot of different opinions. But I think it is unbelievable. It is the most widely attracted wall in Washington, I mean for tourists.

SW (01:54:58):
Yeah. I used to work for the, sit on a lot of national endowment for the arts panels in the early (19)90s. Every time I would go to DC, I would go visit the wall.

SM (01:55:11):
My last question then I am done, and it is real fast. And I only got about two, I think two minutes left on my tape here, two or three minutes. I am just going to list these names and neatly when I, as a white person now, as a person, and I am sure a lot of boomers if they were asked to list all besides entertainers now that have come about the last couple years or politicians, these people really stand out to me that had tremendous influences not only in the world, but in terms of... Still there?

SW (01:55:46):
Yeah.

SM (01:55:46):
And still in terms of our attitudes, Mao Zedong, Kim Yao Jung, President Thieu, Vice President Ky, Di Em, Pol Pot, the Khmer Rouge, Chiang Kai-shek, and the Dalai Lama. I just brought them up. I do not know if they have any significance, to you or...

SW (01:55:46):
Well, they are certainly part of all that. All those names are part of the history of the boomer generation. I think there are probably some Asian American names in there you could probably add.

SM (01:55:46):
Well, Senator Inoyue is another one that is...

SW (01:55:46):
Yeah, Daniel Inoyue and other politicians like Gary Locke, the governor of State of Washington. So, others who actually, well, Daniel, I know he is not, but you know boomer generation Asian Americans who went on to become really figural on the ground stage in any case, or at least in our eyes.

SM (01:57:18):
Yeah. And finally, what do you think the lasting legacy will be of the boomer generation when the best books are written 50 years from now?

SW (01:57:26):
I think I do not want to know. I think the desire to live a life that is relevant and respond to the things that go on around us. The injustice, simply just to be cognizant and relevant to your society, no matter when you are living, even if you are on the cusp of facing social security.

SM (01:57:56):
Right.

SW (01:57:56):
I was speaking up.

SM (01:58:00):
Yep. I agree. Well, that is it. Do you have any questions that you thought I was going to ask that I did not?

SW (01:58:06):
No, I encourage you to watch Bill Moyers, that documentary.

SM (01:58:11):
I have got to. I saw part of it on YouTube, but I have not been able to see the whole document.

(End of Interview)

2010-08-23

Stephen McKiernan

Shawn Wong, 1949-

228:32

English

Binghamton University Libraries

audio/mp4

Sound

2 Microcassettes

Audio

Chinese American authors; Scholars; College teachers; Wong, Shawn, 1949--Interviews

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