Exploring East Asian Identity Live Broadcast

Undeniably, engaging in interviews and having discussions about the East Asian identity on our campus offered me a lot--no and what’s more, I believe that all three courses assisted in helping in the  and also within myself, I choose to concentrate on how this project “pushed my thinking of these disciplines” by asking me to place into practice what our academic texts preached.  More specifically, I believe the literature we had read inspired the project to begin with (hopefully, this is evident in my discussion of Colored Amazons), and what’s more, remembering the concepts of vision, voice, and silence when attempting to understand the group dynamic was also imperative.   Working with Chandrea and Erin was formative, enjoyable, and perhaps most importantly, asked me to understand what roles are important within a group dynamic.

Data and records kept of people can show a lot.  Not only in the contents it records, but also in what little it records, what type of history is kept, and how well it is maintained.  These records or lack thereof then can reflect what society viewed a group or demographic of that time.  In Colored Amazons, Kali N. Gross states how “for most [of these black women], their criminal records serve as the only documentation of their lives." (Gross, pg.4-5)  This statement (along with Gross’s research) reflects how little respect, voice, and importance black women were given during late 19th and early 20th century.  Because their lives were not considered important, records of black women were not kept, except when they had offended the system that oppressed them.  (As you can see in my post reflecting on this, the notion of how little attention they received genuinely disturbed.) Compare this to the upper middle class women who attended Bryn Mawr college around the same time:  their addresses were kept in the president’s notes, diaries are now stored in special collections…inane letters about the weather were thought to be important enough to keep over a hundred years.  The discrepancy in privilege not only showed itself in how well they lived, but how well their lives were preserved.

I could not help but apply this lesson to how East Asian students are often discussed or recorded on this campus numerically, statistically, or in a way, not at all.  Bryn Mawr has a large East Asian population compared to past figures and to peer institution, however, beyond the statistics, not much about the East Asian demographic is discussed.  To my group’s knowledge, no one is trying to record the issues that face East Asian students today, no one is trying to facilitate a discussion about the myriad of ways people can identify (or as Chandrea aptly put it, not) as East Asian, no one is asking for an East Asian’s students notebook to be kept in special collections.  More generally, no one is attempting to hear their stories of the individuals who comprise this phenomena. This applies to the international East Asian students, the Asian-American students, students who do not know whether they even belong underneath the umbrella term of “East Asian”, the student who, despite her mother being Japanese, checks “white” because she has more Caucasian physical identifiers…

It is the purpose of this project, then, is to start that record, to give their historical permanence and image more depth than just numbers in an admissions site.  I genuinely believe this lack of attention on the East Asian community on this campus is not an attempt to relegate East Asians as an unimportant aspect of our community.  I would be surprised if a student on campus said that they believed that the East Asian demographic should be ignored, or did not deserve an imprint in history.  What’s more, I certainly do not believe this lack be compared to the dismissal of black women that still occurs to this day (as we have seen both in our readings, and more disturbingly, in our class at the Cannery).  Rather, I believe the truth is simply that there has yet to be a means that allows these voices to speak.[1]

I make the turn from understanding the origins of the project to how our learning’s then affected how I engaged within the group dynamic.  Frankly, working together on this project was difficult—I hadn’t worked in a collaborative project like this since my freshman year, and I didn’t know how to go about working in a more egalitarian form of academic collaboration.  Looking back on it, I was nervous and concerned for the majority of our time together—not because of I did not have faith in Chandrea and Erin, but because I became too self-conscious over wondering if they knew that I had faith in them.  Was I taking on too much of the work?  Were Chandrea and Erin upset over how difficult it was for me to articulate what I had envisioned?  Was I imposing my own vision of this project onto them?  Am I bulldozing over their thoughts? Am I doing something wrong?

I don’t know how Chandrea and Erin received and understood my interactions with them, but I do know how I attempted to negotiate these anxieties within myself and also within the group.  Chandrea and Erin were nervous about editing software, how to interview people, narrative scripts, and dare I say, stressed about the podcast process more generally.   They were, however, deeply invested into the most important aspects of the project:  how to understand East Asian identity within the campus and within themselves.  With this, the roles were delegated: I asked if Chandrea and Erin could write the narratives for the podcasts, while I just tried my best to help them out with what I could and then edited the final piece.

This decision was based in remembering Delpit’s argument for the necessity of the knowledge of codes, acknowledging the interactive and important play between silence and voice, and more practically, knowing that there was a short amount of time available.  There was simply not enough time to sit Chandrea and Erin down to get them comfortable with the software, and more generally, with all that this process entailed.  How much they were being introduced to through this final project was visibly overwhelming to them in our group meetings.  What’s more, my ability to communicate the “codes” necessary for them to be successful independent of my guidance was obviously lackluster—throughout the project, I could not help but feel as if I was forcing them to play catch up to the image I had in my mind of the final project instead of creating a vision of what the final project would be together.  Chandrea and Erin, the two most demure peers within the classroom, then took spotlight during the presentations while I asked myself to remain more in the background…silent and act as structural basis for these two to grow.

Admitting to all of this is difficult.  Here I am, with piles of thoughts and interviews to process, and I am still ruminating on the role I played within the group. I don’t want to seem self-congratulatory or patronizing.  I certainly do not want to seem as if I am asking for an award for heroism or mentorship.  What I learned from Chandrea, Erin, and our interviewing process was profound, and I hope they understand our relationship within this project as both ways. (As is obvious by the live podcast, Erin and Chandrea both have remarkable insight and unique perspectives to provide).  I guess at the moment, I’m still coming to terms about how much my position within this group represents how I see myself: as someone who should start stepping down and foster other’s voices and visions on this campus.