Letter to young diaspora artists
is the 'stinky food' era of art ending?
My Vietnamese friend hates Asian diaspora art. He usually blasts this opinion loudly and in a variety of more punchy ways, but his argument is basically this: it is perverse to inherit your immigrant parents’ trauma as material, and furthermore to then locate yourself, you, little old you, as the primary victim within it. Some people think Ocean Vuong is a good example of this, though I haven’t read him in detail, and I’m not sure I will.
Obviously, this is only a fraction of what diaspora art is, but it is certainly the most representative and popular. In private we sometimes refer to this as ‘stinky food’ writing (overly protracted details of racial trauma essentially encapsulated by ‘the white kids at school made fun of my stinky Asian food’, with no significant growth.)
For what its worth, I think there is real healing value to this kind of art — no piece of art or writing can fully encapsulate reality, and in my view just about every story is worth telling well — but the problem is that this trauma-core becomes representative of diaspora art when it is really just emblematic of the immaturity and lack of provenance in the field in general. As in, when the most prominent writers of your subculture are literally in their early twenties still binging on ketamine, going to therapy and getting into frustrating situationships (me, in a bygone era), you are going to get indulgent writing and indulgent perspectives.
Many young diaspora artists unfairly depict their parents’ experience through Western eyes, which is to say: they pity them, alienate them, because they do not understand them. They cannot grok what could cause someone to become emotionally unavailable, cold, or excessively materialistic. This flattening has the effect of commodifying an entire cultural experience — the same harms that have usually been done to fully-blown trauma-core artists — only into commodified trauma rather than, say, exotic foods.
That is, on its own, fine. Again, it is deeply important to understand these parts of our lives. It is important to find ways to connect with others at the same stage of maturity. But it is also important, once you have this, to have an aspiration to grow and conceive of the world as infinitely, reassuringly, larger than yourself.
I fear that those of us aspiring to understand ourselves through diaspora art, as well as those on the outside hoping to get an insider perspective, are only bound to further entrench this self-focus. Diaspora art should be ambitious beyond matters of the self and into matters of the human soul and spirit, as with any other kind of art. And fulfilling this ambition requires attention to the broader cultural and historical context in which one originates, and which therefore contextualises trauma. For a certain period, all fledgeling artists should be given grace in small publications and slam poetry events to be rather self-centred as they develop their practice and consciousness — and certainly they need mentors and institutions that can comprehend their context enough to recognise the raw underlying talent — but ultimately the calling of artists everywhere is the same: to provide authorship over the human narrative that is empowering, enlightening, or agonisingly beautiful.
Han Kang, Korean novelist now made Nobel-laureate, is a wonderful example of this. This review by Yung In Chae:
The Gwangju Massacre is central to Han’s magnum opus, Human Acts—a harrowing and clear-eyed yet somehow tender look at the weeks-long uprising against Chun that began on May 18, 1980, resulting in exorbitant death and enduring collective trauma. The novel also means a great deal to me personally: For as long as I can remember, my mother, who is four years older than Han, has resisted thinking about life under Chun in the 1980s, so much so that she avoids TV shows and movies set in that decade. She does not refuse to talk about it per se, but over the years I have gathered that discussing it causes her pain, so I prefer waiting for her to volunteer information rather than asking her for it. Once, we were wandering the campus of her alma mater in Seoul when she looked up at a building and remarked that her classmates set themselves on fire and jumped off the roof as a form of protest. And then, I fill the gaps in my knowledge with books.
It wasn’t until I read Human Acts, I recently told Han, that I truly understood my mother’s silence and was able to imagine what might lie on the other side.
This gives me goosebumps. Imagine this line of communication like an arc of light travelling from 1980, through periods of shame, trauma and silence, being transformed into art, and then finally, sparking across a long-held bridge between Yung In Chae and her mother.
That is a worthy aim.
Ironically, the word for what is required for young diaspora artists is what many resent most about their parents: the imperative for ‘respect’. Respect means deeply assuming that the other party is inherently strong, wise and capable in their own ways. Respect is a presumption that someone has legitimate reasons for their beliefs and behaviour. Respect means that you recognise that the way you engage with each other matters even when you fundamentally don’t see eye to eye. The other person might not be correct, or ethical, or warranted to continue but they can be legitimate, as in: if you had the same experience, you would behave the same and even be quite wise to do so. So but for the grace of God go I, type thing.
You might be able to do this in theory very easily, but it requires true imagination and long-standing curiosity to believe this.
Thankfully, I sense the influence of self-obsessed therapy culture on Western art is starting to deflate slowly, and I’m looking forward to the forced growth that artists will have to do to go along with this. I earnestly think Everything, Everywhere, All At Once was a great step in the right direction, but its superpower is ultimately that it is incredibly entertaining! As in, it is held to a high standard of art. My diaspora-art-hater-friend facetiously argues that his highest dream for diaspora artists will be when they can ‘make terrible terrible art for commercial gain’, because then they are also hold to the same low, low standards of non-diaspora arts. I agree!
There are obviously many barriers ahead, and real discrimination and ignorance that holds back diaspora art. Art has also always, always, always been enabled by material security (another reason why making terrible art for commercial gain is a great move.) So there is no simple fix. I won’t go into these because I won’t do them justice.
But as tactical advice to both myself and others in this sphere, I would echo this line from Vonne Patiag, a ‘Filipino-Australian’ (ha! that inescapable hyphenation) filmmaker who grew up in the same shithole part of Sydney I did: Heal first. Before you make art — at least art that intends to be released into the world, or that you feel is entitled to success — heal first.
And when you heal: look into your personal past, sure, but also look into your cultural and historical past. When you find that your pain is a pattern — a pattern within a pattern, like a seashell fractal — you may find it blindingly beautiful enough to finally be ready for your art.
