Don’t judge
literature through
politically correct veilDeep feelings elicited by
By Corky Trinidad
Yamanaka's book show her awards
are well-deservedEditor's note: The Association for Asian American Studies this week revoked its 1997 Fiction Award from Hawaii author Lois-Ann Yamanaka for her popular but controversial novel, "Blu's Hanging." Critics said the book's portrayal of a Filipino character who molests children perpetuates disparaging stereotypes of Filipino men.
I'm sure Lois-Ann Yamanaka is not alone in having to go through the usual gauntlet of literary pharisees for her novel "Blu's Hanging."
From "Beowulf" to "The Godfather," from poetry to comic strips; from the moment the very first caveman to paint on a wall was criticized by a neighbor for depicting that all cavemen look like sticks, writers and artists always have been subjected to the same age-old condemnation from people who take a literary work literally.
Was Shakespeare saying all Jews were shrewd and heartless businessmen as Shylock? That all Danes are as weak as Hamlet? Was Shaw depicting all women as twits? Were the characters in "Rashomon" a description of all Japanese? Are all Mexicans fat and lazy just because Gordo is?
As a Filipino, I certainly didn't feel any personal affront about Yamanaka's novel or the characters in it. She wasn't writing about me. Literature is fiction, for heaven's sake. And fiction is not truth. It is only true to its literary forms.
Literary characters are foils in the tugs of war between good and evil. Characterizations are literary devices, not ethnical descriptions. If Yamanaka's Uncle Paulo was not so despicable a character, we'd be the first to say where's the conflict. If the social circumstances in the novel were watered down for political correctness, where would be the point?
In fact, if Yamanaka was able to create characters so believable, their conflict so logical and her theme so apparent that people felt her story so personally, then she deserves the book award all the more.
As a Filipino, I felt more personally affronted by the fact that an organization, with its own agenda and aims (which is good, mind you) would lump me in with its way of thinking, would have a reaction for me and make an intellectual judgment for me based solely on my ethnicity.
I thought that's the very thing the association was formed to fight against.
For whatever good intentions the Association for American Asian Studies has, it certainly has no business giving out literary or artistic awards. Because its judgments on things will always be on a political level as rightly befits its purpose.
The heated debate and personal feelings that took over what should have been a purely literary evaluation of a book will always come up with other works, with other authors in future awards.
Because literature will always be literature. Writers will always be writers. And, in a kind of intellectual censorship, the association will now be looking for both, which would be within the guidelines of its charter, politically correct by its definition and totally acceptable to everybody.
That Babel, too, will burst.
Related stories in the Monday
Features section online.
Corky Trinidad is the Star-Bulletin's editorial cartoonist.
My Turn is a periodic column written by
Star-Bulletin staff members.
