I also want to talk a bit about the Justin Chin essays and take up one of the questions that was brought up monday during the Lee Young-Li conversation: are these poems Asian-American enough? (to put it bluntlty). It is an issue that Chin discusses in a different context. He brings up the other side of the issue when commenting that many poets of color are accused of 'playing the race card' with their poetry in order to gain points from guilty-feeling white judges. I am less concerend with to what extent this is or isn't true, and more interested in the idea itself. How far does a poet (or any person of color) have to go before they are accused of somehow milking their minority experience for gain? Isn't it possible that these poets were simply sharing the experiences of their lives? Should they have to censor themselves so that everyone in the room listening to their poetry feels comfortable? I think we would say, no. Chin seems to agree with this, but moves on to lament a slam contest in which everyone was giving depressing poetry. Here, I think Chin misses the point. Perhaps these members of the Queer community use their poetry to express the emotions and feelings they have about traumatic instances in their lives. The slam poetry that I have seen, at least in part, has taken up some of these same issues. The poem is the poets way of compartmentalizing experiences in a very personal way. It logically follows then, that some poems are happy and some are sad. I think it is limiting to complain when poets bring 'depressing' poems to slam competitions. Chin does not take into account the fact that while his poetry may usually be more 'fun', his experiences are not the same as others' and the slam events should be a forum for all sorts of ideas and experiences, including Chin's.

This is beginning to sound like I am slamming (forgive the choice of words) Chin. That's not the case at all! I really enjoyed his pieces and they definitely made me think. On to my other point of the poetry we read being 'Asian-American enough'. This is a difficult question that has no one answer, as it is something that every Asian-American writer/artist/etc... (not to mention anyone who does not fit into the category of white and christian)has to answer for themselves. I think it is hard to be an Asian-American and not express that somehow in your writing, because it is simply part of who you are. Maybe this means mentioning the different cultural ways of eating a persimmon. Maybe this means bringing up issues of being the right kind of sister. Whatever it means to the person is what is going to show up naturally in the writing. It is dangerous to categorize any group into one style of writing (or anything else) because then this image basically becomes a stereotype, doesn't it? If we expect every bit of Asian-American literature to be about silence or the feminized man aren't we seriously categorizing all kinds of people as one thing and not another?? Maybe most Asian-American literature does allude to these two important ideas in varying amounts, I do not know. But I do think it is hard to answer a question about anything being 'Asian-American enough' because that naturally depends on multiple factors, situations, and choices of the author.

I don't know if these ideas make sense, I hope I haven't offended anyone. These are just things I have been thinking about.

-Rachel Berman