By Ken Sakamoto, Star-Bulletin
Lois-Ann Yamanaka with her dog,
'Lady Bebe Neuwirth of Kalihi.'

Yamanaka's award for
'Blu's Hanging' is yanked,
igniting a hot debate about
literature vs. social
responsibility

By Nadine Kam
Assistant Features Editor
Star-Bulletin

LOIS-ANN Yamanaka never sought accolades or awards for her poetry and novels. They just came, and most of the time, that was that.Her latest fiction prize for "Blu's Hanging," however, was delivered by the Association for Asian American Studies, then taken back amid controversy at the group's national meeting here June 27. On the surface the beef seemed to involve one faction charging the author with racism and another claiming the right to freedom of artistic expression.

It's not that simple, involving instead, disagreement about the function of literature, conflicting visions of what an Asian-American community should be and the age-old reality that art and politics don't mix.

"Blu's Hanging" is about three motherless children growing up in Kaunakakai on Molokai. The novel depicts childhood as an alternately scary and magical time. A charge of racism surfaced in the portrayal of one character in the book, Uncle Paulo, who commits incest with his nieces and rapes another youth. He happens to be Filipino.

Supporters of Yamanaka say the ethnicity of the character is incidental. Challengers say that the ethnicity of the character perpetuates a stereotype of Filipinos as sexual deviants, a stereotype some readers say they never knew existed.

"To tell you the truth, I just saw a bad guy," said bookstore owner Pat Banning of Bookends in Kailua. "I didn't say, 'This is a Filipino and that must be why he's bad.'

"In good fiction, there are implications that the author doesn't even realize. The depth of the illusion causes readers to make associations of their own. Good writing does that. In that way, it's a tribute to her that she created all this uproar."

Banning, who doesn't know Yamanaka, says, "I feel sorry for Lois-Ann. I think this whole incident is embarrassing for her, embarrassing for us, and makes the Asian American Studies people look foolish."

Ibrahim Aoude is chair of the University of Hawaii Ethnic Studies Department that raised the resolution to rescind the award. He said early reports of the action in another newspaper "sensationalized the issue."

"It was portrayed as a witch hunt. We are not the thought police. A writer has the right to write whatever he or she wants.

"But we have the right to criticize. Writing is a social act and impacts on society in many ways. It's naive to think otherwise.

"A villain can be Native Hawaiian, Samoan, Filipino, Japanese, Chinese, anything, but portraying an entire family in a very important novel -- in which the man is a predator and the girls are sluts -- that does damage and is not good for ethnic relations," he said. "Writers have to ask themselves about their relationship to society. Do you break down stereotypes and contribute positively or do you want to be divisive?"

Aoude dismisses the notion that rescinding the award itself was divisive. "The decision was sensitive to a significant ethnic minority," he said.

Rose Cruz Churma, co-owner of Kalamansi Books, which promotes books by Filipino authors and works from the Philippines, suggests the opposite, that the AAAS argument insults Filipinos by presenting them as victims.

"This desire to kill one stereotype perpetuates a more dangerous stereotype. What they are saying is that Filipinos are devoid of critical thinking, that we cannot distinguish between fiction and reality. We're not wimps," she said.

"It struck me as ironic that this person they vilified as a racist is the same person that has done so much to help the Filipino community."

In the '80s, as a teacher at Kalakaua Intermediate, Yama-naka taught her students to write their own stories, which were included in an anthology, "Voices of the Youth." Churma said the book is now used by human services providers trying to gain insight into the community.

"What the AAAS has done is so short-sighted and mean-spirited. I hope this will not move us backward, but the last issue of Fil-Am Courier (July 1-15) was so full of hate. People who never read the book were accusing Lois-Ann of being a hardcore pervert.

"I said to myself, 'Good Lord, what have we done?' "

Author Wing Tek Lum, who organized a letter-writing campaign supporting Yamanaka, said, "There are a lot of visions and I think it's human nature for people to want to impose their vision on others. That's what writers do. That's what social scientists do. That's what everybody does.

"There are people who view literature as a means for furthering their own particular vision. Many times, it is a romantic or nostalgic vision. I look at it as people needing to have heroes, with the typical happy ending.

"Lois-Ann does not write that way. Her characters are more complex, more ambiguous. She is writing on the edge and going beyond conventional standards. That is precisely why it is exciting literature to read and that is also why it may be controversial to others."

Three AAAS different book award selection committees recognized the eloquence of Yamanaka's work. In 1996, Jinqi Ling (UCLA), Sau-ling Wong (UC Berkeley) and Traise Yamamoto (UC Riverside) made up the committee that gave the 1997 prize to Yamanaka for "Wild Meat and the Bully Burgers."

The AAAS board overturned the selection after controversy arose -- not over "Wild Meat," but over Yamanaka's portrayal of Filipinos in "Saturday Night at the Pahala Theater," a 1994 AAAS award winner.

Another committee -- with Caroline Chung Simpson (University of Washington), David Eng (Columbia University) and Wendy Ho (UC Davis) -- chose to give "Blu's Hanging" the 1998 prize. But a 90-55 vote of AAAS's general membership revoked the award.

After that vote, both the AAAS outgoing and incoming boards resigned. There were no leaders to tell Yamanaka of the revocation; she read about the action in a newspaper article.

Gregory Mark, AAAS Conference Site Coordinator and an associate professor in the UH Ethnic Studies Department, said a new board will be elected soon and should be in place in a month.

Responding to criticism about public way in which the controversy was handled, he said, "Anytime you see a reversal of position and disunity in an organization, you can say it's embarrassing."

He said that the AAAS is trying to be more responsive to varied ethnic communities, in this case, Filipino Americans. In clarifying that position, he said, "It's important that a discussion take place, but this time the discussion was open to the world."

In support of Yamanaka, writer David Mura said that taking back the award "confirms that the organization is confused by the difference between a literary award and an award for 'understanding' or good citizenship ...

"If you want to make the award subject to the voting of the membership, then you're not giving a literary award, you're holding a popularity contest."

Author Lum, who received many letters of support for Yamanaka from writers of Filipino heritage, said, "I look at this, not as a division along ethnic lines, but about the difference between literary people and social scientists.

"I would prefer to encourage and celebrate diversity and the deepening and expanding of each individual's vision, rather than the opposite, which is to homogenize. I want to support Lois-Ann, but the goal, really, is to keep the dialogue going so we can recognize these different visions.

"Social scientists tend to look for patterns and common ground. They want to emphasize similarities," Lum said. "If (AAAS members) feel there is a power imbalance between ethnic groups, they should be directing their energy toward society in general and not toward (Yamanaka's) book. It is not a racist book."

Referring to the lack of prestige of a popularity award, author Frank Chin wrote to the AAAS: "It's not my place to tell the Association of Asian American Studies what to do with their book award, except, to say, never stick me with it."

The AAAS has a history of attacking its own. At its 1990 convention, several scholars denounced Ronald Takaki's prize-winning book, "Strangers From a Different Shore: A History of Asian Americans," saying it reflected poor scholarship.

Earlier, the group criticized David Henry Hwang's work "M. Butterfly," accusing the playwright of perpetuating stereotypes of the emasculated Asian man.

Other Asian-American groups have, since the 1970s, sought to find fault with the work of Frank Chin, Maxine Hong Kingston, David Mura, Amy Tan and Cynthia Kadohata.

In Kadohata's case, her novel "The Floating World" depicted a Japanese family wandering the country in search of work during World War II. She was accused of falsifying history by avoiding mention of internment camps. She later told author Garrett Hongo that she had been writing about her experiences and found it odd that the Asian-American community "felt compelled to attack her for what she didn't write even more than for what she did write."

Writer and teacher Darlene Rodrigues, who has a master's degree in Asian American Studies from UCLA, is a local Filipina who is a fan of Yamanaka's, but she says that as a writer, Yamanaka has a responsibility to avoid capitalizing on stereotypes.

"I think that people are forgetting that Lois-Ann has gone national," she said, "so we have to ask how other people are reading and understanding her work outside of the context of Hawaii.

"People have to take a look at themselves, as to how they think and be and do in relation to other people."

Rodrigues argues that there is no complexity of Filipino characterizations in any of Yamanaka's books. "It's not true that people cannot write about other experiences because they can imagine it, because other people have."

"These arguments are not new, but complexity is unfolding and that can be a source of inspiration and growth."

After Yamanaka's award was rescinded, Candace Fujikane, an English professor at the UH-Manoa who has frequently criticized Yamanaka's portrayals of Filipinos, said, "People felt we would be celebrating. This is nothing that we are celebrating.

"I never thought I'd be doing this. It's hard to be critical of a writer we feel is so important. In fact, we were trying to keep her personally out of the debate and focus on the award.

"If a literary organization wants to give her an award, I have no problem with that. But the AAAS is a political organization that looks at power relations between various Asian-American groups. The Japanese and Chinese occupy positions of power in our society, and Filipinos do not."

She said that because Filipinos are characterized so poorly in the Yamanaka's novels, "We have to ask why, and the book doesn't provide any answers."

The idea that writers should use their voices for the betterment of a certain tribe is anathema to fiction. It is easier to attack artists than the institutions that create inequity. For instance, it was much easier for Vice President Dan Quayle in 1992 to complain about a breakdown in family values epitomized by TV's fictional unwed mother, Murphy Brown, than to fix a society that creates unwed mothers, teen pregnancies and absentee fathers.

Author Garrett Hongo said that writers owe no allegiance to any group "whether dominant, perceived dominant or minority." Yet, he said Filipinos have a legitimate claim to fair cultural representation. "The Asian-American community is beginning to face these issues and it's going to be a struggle. There is a pain there and as Asian-American writers, it would do well for all of us to deal with it."

Hongo, a professor of creative writing at the University of Oregon in Eugene, has no ties to Yamanaka or the AAAS. He has written about the phenomenon of Asian cultural wars in his introduction to the anthology, "Under Western Eyes: Personal Essays From Asian America."

Hongo, who was in Hawaii doing research on the Hawaiian sovereignty movement when the award incident took place, says he sees no easy solution.

"We can't say like Rodney King, 'Can't we all get along?' No. There are some things that need to be dealt with. If getting along means someone has to eat dirt, that's no good.

"We all know the history of pain. What if Frank Chin grew up in an era in which Chinese men were represented by Hop Sing? By Fu Manchu? Dr. No? Don't you think you would be upset? Or you would write something of your own and get on?"

Hongo chose to do the latter. "People talk stink about my work and me all the time, but it doesn't shut me up."

"If you look at writers like Dostoyevsky and Solzhenitsyn, they went into exile because people in their homelands didn't understand them. I don't think any writer is going to be silenced by prison or by a bullet.

"If the issue is serious enough to silence, the issue is serious enough to scream about. If the issue is serious enough to decry, the issue is serious enough to proclaim. The question is, how serious is the writer?"

It is Lum who comes closest to some kind of resolution: "Maybe it's best to ask non-writers and non-academics to borrow the book from the library and draw their own conclusions."