Anthology proposal

The Anthology Project

For your final project, you are to curate a digital anthology (collection of stories, poems, films, plays, art pieces, etc.) of Asian/Pacific Islander American Womxn Literature around a theme, a concept, or question of your choosing. Anthologies must be submitted via the final project link on May 16th before 5pm.

Sequence of Anthology Elements • Cover Illustration (include the title of your

anthology, editor's name (you), and brief bio blurb about you)

• Table of Contents • Introduction • Copies of Works Included • Head note (appears alongside each item) • Bibliography

Description A. Your Anthology must include literary works of various genres on a theme of your choice. Minimum contents:

Two 2 (you may choose any material we've discussed EXCEPT Cathy Park Hong's chapters). Three (3) outside materials of your choice that

connects to your chosen theme.

B. Each selection in the Anthology must be introduced by a head note that provides a 150 to 200-word note that appears alongside each text or item in an anthology (single-spaced). The purpose of a head note is to provide the reader some context or insight about each work. A head note generally includes all or a combination of several of these kinds of information:

1) biographical information about the author or artist, 2) information about the subject of the text or item, 3) a brief analysis of the text or item’s significance in or

contribution to its field, 4) a discussion of its controversies, if applicable.

C. Your Anthology must include an Introduction that demonstrates to your reader(s) the central argument or thesis of your collection. In other words, you need to make a substantive argument as to why and how the materials you have chosen fit together and are necessary to the anthology. What does bringing together these materials offer us? How do they speak to or about your chosen theme or concept? Discuss how each work answers your question at hand. Provide textual evidence from each material and draw connections and differences. Finish your introductory essay by telling your readers the importance of broadening our understanding of your chosen theme, concept, or question in our lives today. This introductory essay must be one-page, double-spaced, 12 pt. font, 1-inch margins, NO EXTRA SPACES BETWEEN PARAGRAPHS.

Important note: When stating why these materials are important, always be specific. Do not use clichés or stereotypical responses like “these texts are important because they help us understand social justice,” or “these texts allow us to understand the race and gender.” These responses can be said about most literature out there. Think critically and be specific!

D. Your Anthology must have a Bibliography (Chicago Manual of Style - template in iLearn).

E. Your Anthology must include copies of the works you have chosen. If your item is a text or essay, you'll need to include a copy of it (attach a copy - first 2 pages of essay is ok OR create a folder that contains these copies and attach with your submission); if one of your chosen items is a book, simply include copies of the front and back covers; if one of your chosen items is a painting or a sculpture, you will need to include a photo of it; if a film, include the cover image of the film; if an audio file, you'll need to include the link to it.

F. Your digital anthology must be submitted via the final project link in iLearn on May 16th before 5pm.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction …………………………………………………………………………………… 3

Shantel Martinez ……………………………………………………………………………… 5

“For Our Words Usually Land on Deaf Ears Until We Scream” …………………….. 6

Cathy Park Hong ……………………………………………………………………………… 8

from Minor Feelings: An Asian American Reckoning:

“Portrait of an Artist” …………………………………………………………………. 9

“Bad English” …………………………………………………………………………. 11

Aimee Suzara ………………………………………………………………………………….. 13

from Souvenir:

“Catalog of Objects” …………………………………………………………………… 14

“World’s Fair Box” …………………………………………………………………….. 15

Bibliography……………………………………………………………………………………. 17

3

INTRODUCTION

My Pen Is My Sword showcases the works of women writers of color that furthers the

concept of decentering whiteness. Shantel Martinez argues the restrictiveness of academic

writing and reflects on her relationship with language in “For Our Words Usually Land on Deaf

Ears Until We Scream”: “As a woman of color, our words are not observed to be legitimate. We

are not “composed” enough to be considered as serious writers, unless we follow and evoke the

master’s tools” (6). Cathy Park Hong honors the woman writer of color’s relationship with

language through Theresa Hak Kyung Cha in “Portrait of an Artist”: “I find her style… to be

liberating because Cha… made the immigrant’s discomfort with English into a possible form of

expression” (8). “Bad English” cements the legitimacy of such relationship, appropriating white

standards to center the non-white experience: “To other English is to make audible the imperial

power sewn into the language, to slit English open so its dark histories slide out” (5). Aimee

Suzara’s Souvenir explores the journey of the Filipina on her trip to the Missouri History

Museum. “Catalog of Objects” appropriates the museum’s collection of information to highlight

how her ancestors are marginalized in the gallery: “The placard marked ‘Labor’ / shows Africans

and Asians bent over to build, to clean, to make the Fair grand” (15). The speaker continues to

flip the script on using Filipino bodies as sources of entertainment to question the imperial gaze

in “World’s Fair Box”: “I hold the aged photo between my fingers, / the yellow of El Captain’s

eyes a warning. / And all of us viewers vexed” (25). The rise of movements like

#BlackLivesMatter and #StopAsianHate has urged several people to become better allies for

marginalized people and take accountability for contributing to and reinforcing white supremacy.

The anthology emphasizes the importance of uplifting the voices and narratives of communities

that the system works against as a crucial part in building and fostering an antiracist society.

We cannot speak of women writers in our century (as we cannot

speak of women in any area of human achievement) without

speaking also of the invisible; the also capable: the born to the

wrong circumstances, the diminished, the excluded, the lost, the

silenced. We who write are survivors…

—TILLIE OLSEN

5

SHANTEL MARTINEZ

Dr. Shantel Martinez is the Director of First-Generation

Programs and Enrichment at the University of Colorado,

Boulder. She was the Director of the Otter Cross Cultural

Center and a former affiliate faculty at the School of

Humanities and Communication at the California State

University, Monterey Bay. She has been published in

journals such as Latino Studies, Cultural Studies ↔

Critical Methodologies, Journal of the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning, and Qualitative

Inquiry. Her research explores academia: the learning space in relation to the marginalized

student, and the committee behind the institutions in relation to the marginalized professional.

Her article “For Our Words Usually Land on Deaf Ears Until We Scream” is an examination of

the writing standards reinforced by the American education system and its effects on students of

color. She traces the history of Women’s Writing and feminism and demonstrates breaking away

from the traditions of academia through weaving her poetry to frame writing from the personal

experience as a practice of resistance.

8

CATHY PARK HONG

Cathy Park Hong is an award-winning poet, writer, and

educator. She studied in Oberlin College and got her MFA

at Iowa Writers’ Workshop. She is a recipient of the

Windham-Campbell Prize, the Guggenheim Fellowship,

and the National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship. She

currently teaches Creative Writing at Rutgers University –

Newark and is the poetry editor for The New Republic.

Hong has published three poetry volumes: Translating

Mo’um (2002), Dance Dance Revolution (2007), and Engine Empire (2012). She also wrote the

widely celebrated collection of essays titled Minor Feelings: An Asian American Reckoning

(2020). Minor Feelings dives deep into Hong’s experience as an Asian American woman writer.

She argues that she has been gaslighted to think that her pain and her struggle was not a big deal

and was forced to take her experiences of racism under her chin. Weaving together her personal

history—her family and her relationships with her female friends—with her career as a writer,

literature by writers of color, the racial hierarchy, feminism, and belonging, she creates a body of

work that critiques America’s undermining of the Asian American struggle and urges people to

initiate social change.

13

AIMEE SUZARA

Aimee Suzara is a Filipino-American poet,

playwright, performer, and educator based in

Oakland, CA. She received her MFA in Creative

Writing at Mills College. She has published her

poetry in several journals and anthologies including

Kartika Review, Phat’itude, 580 Split, Lantern

Review, Walang Hiya: Literature Taking Risks

Toward Liberatory Practice, and Check the Rhyme: An Anthology of Female Poets and Emcees

and Poets; as well as two chapbooks, the space within and Finding the Bones. Her play A

HISTORY OF THE BODY was commissioned by the East Bay Community Foundation and

supported by the National Endowment for the Arts. It has also been selected as a Finalist for the

Bay Area Playwright’s Festival alongside her other play TINY FIRES. In February 2014, she

released her debut poetry book Souvenir. The speaker in the poems, a Filipino-American woman,

tours the Missouri History Museum. She explores her own history, connecting to her own

ancestors through reflecting on the artifacts in the gallery. She ponders on the ghosts left behind

by the horrors of colonization.

14

Collection of Poems from Souvenir

Catalog of Objects

1 Bahag 1 Skirt 1 Beaded bag 2 Beaded necklaces 3 Carved statues of the rice god 1 Set of Filipino playing cards

You walk into the Missouri History museum. You see white everywhere: alabaster casts of women in Victorian dresses, plaster infused with “staff” from the Philippines. Lion heads and the columns of the Palace of Fine Arts. Victorian men and women sit atop elephants, smiling in tall black hats and mustaches and finely pressed jacket, brown men on either side. The placard marked “Labor” shows Africans and Asians bent over to build, to clean, to make the Fair grand.

You dream that night: statues a creepy feel swimming in dark waters I touch warm flesh underwater underfoot find out they’re dead recently dead lots and lots of stairs two six-year-old boys they want me to follow them the bus is waiting I’m lagging like I don’t want to go the bus is parked above lots of steps it’s really hot moving slow there’s a woman who like me slippers on slippers off I can’t find mine now a

15

movie theater and behind the theater a shopping market 2 Bontoc Head Hunters 1 Visayan Girl 1 Geisha Girl 1 Esquimaux Family 1 Hoochie Coochie Girl You see the daguerreotypes of Filipinos, Native Americans, Eskimos, Arabs, and Japanese, assembled in one cluster on the wall. Nearby, you see playing cards of Filipinos and a beaded Bagobo dress behind the glass case. You see your face reflected in the glass.

World’s Fair Box At the Missouri History Museum Library The Negritos are very interesting. The lowest grade of human creatures under the jurisdiction of the President of the United States, they are more debased in morals, more feeble of intellect than the Digger Indians of California. - William Curtis, 1904 At the entrance to the Library guarded by wire-rimmed men, I leave my belongings in a locker, taking only pencils and notebook paper. My eyes trace immense dark wood panels, broad, cold tables and rounded study lamps. The ceiling rises, arched into stain glass. I note the instinct to clasp my hands in prayer. I hear the whisper of fingers tracing over leather book covers turning onion-paper, each inhale marking discovery. The Special Collections Manager, a compact man, takes my index cards scribbled with numbers from the Dewey Decimal deck. He disappears behind the stacks into a back room. After a moment, he emerges, saying, Take a look at these. Soon, several books wrapped in archival paper sleeves are piled before me. A picture box arrives, filled with photos of tribal peoples from 1904. I lift the cardboard lid; the scent of forgotten dust flies to my nostrils. I flip through manila folders labeled: Igorotte. Negrito. Visayan. I select Negrito, pull the folder up to see its contents. A photo falls into my hands. In sepia-tone, there is a nipa hut – thatched roof and stilted bamboo construction. Crouching ebony-skinned boys lean bows into their hips readied for some unseen target. Behind them, an elder man with kinky hair and full lips stands like a sentinel. At least sixty, he appears stiff

16

as a bamboo stalk. Refusing the loin cloth, he wears Western clothes: buttoned down shirt, a fitted suit jacket, slacks. A tipped hat shields round eyes that almost glow. What does he say to the boys, before the shutter closes, drawing their shadows into light? What do the boys reply, as they yank the bows back? What does the photographer tell them, as they pose? Is it cold, in this unnamed season? Do the boys’ thighs bristle in their nakedness? Or is it hot, the man sweating in his thick suit reminiscent of a ringmaster’s tuxedo, tipped hat rimmed with sweat? Each day, I read: they demonstrate a ritual at 9, hunt boars and reenact the selection of a chief at 10; the women cook in the afternoon; honor the dead at the close of the day. Each Saturday they show pale-skinned visitors how to carve a tattoo. I find the man’s name later: El Captain. I hold the aged photo between my fingers, the yellow of El Captain’s eyes a warning. And all of us viewers vexed.

17

Bibliography

"ABOUT." Aimee Suzara's Website. September 23, 2020. https://aimeesuzara.net/about/.

"Cathy Park Hong." Penguin Random House Speakers Bureau.

https://www.prhspeakers.com/speaker/cathy-park-hong.

Hong, Cathy Park. “Bad English.” Minor Feelings. Profile Books, 2021. 91-109.

Hong, Cathy Park. “Portrait of an Artist.” Minor Feelings. Profile Books, 2021. 151-180.

Martinez, Shantel. “For Our Words Usually Land on Deaf Ears Until We Scream”. Qualitative

Inquiry 20, no. 1 (2013): 3-14. doi:10.1177/1077800413508909.

"Shantel Martinez." Center for Inclusion and Social Change. University of Colorado Boulder,

September 17, 2021. https://www.colorado.edu/cisc/shantel-martinez.

Suzara, Aimee. “Catalog of Objects.” Souvenir. WordTech Editions, 2014. 15.

Suzara, Aimee. “World’s Fair Box.” Souvenir. WordTech Editions, 2014. 24-25.

1

Are You Awake?

Half Asleep- Half Awake, 2009

Dumkaptaha 23.5” x 27.5” Edited by

is a third-year student at San Francisco State University studying philosophy as his declared major. Main areas of interest and expertise include existentialism, metaphysics, epistemology, philosophy of religion, philosophy of history, and semiotics. Psychoanalysis is an additional field of interest outside of philosophy that has shaped his interpretations and perspectives on the study of Asian American women’s literature and art, and by extension, the world itself.

2

Contents Title Page/Editor Biography Are you Awake? 1 Table of Contents 2 Introduction 3 Cathy Park Hong End of White Innocence 4 Barbara Jane Reyes Howl/Witness/Testify 7 Kathleen Uno Unlearning Orientalism 9 Aleksandr Deyneka The Defence of Petrograd 12 Bibliography 14

3

Introduction As the title of this anthology suggests, the core idea of this body of work is awareness (being

awake, thinking about the world). The collection of literature and art represents a critique to the

status quo of contemporary society, pushing for a cultural change of focus from individualistic

perspectives to make judgements- to collective cultural critique. That is to say, the authors

presented in this piece wish to change the normalized and concrete perception of groups that

people use right now, and create new ones. More specifically, perceptions of Asian American

women and women in general. Each author (Cathy Park Hong, Reyes, and Uno) challenges and

ruthlessly criticizes a standard- labeling them “white culture”, “orientalism”, and other names

that denote what they perceive to be harmful and unjust. Each piece presented is crucial for

understanding the indignation/resentment that drives the vision for a more ideal society, a step

closer to a “utopia”. In this way, they offer views that are the “antithesis” (negation, opposite) of

traditional standards, which we can call the “thesis” (established standard). What will arise to

become the “synthesis” from this conflict? That is the importance of this anthology and the

concepts within: readers will be able to assess their position in relation to themselves, their

culture, and society as a whole. Their awareness of ongoing cultural critique from these authors

and within the world will help them understand the conflict between ideological forces and their

own position in the world. Gaps in understanding will be filled, in their discovery of other

people’s experiences. Are you awake? This question will prompt inquiry and curiosity from

readers to think about this final question: what will the future look like from what we see now?

We will understand through analyzing the cultural critiques, or the objections of the status quo

provided by these artists and authors.

4

Cathy Park Hong

Cathy Park Hong is a Korean-American poet, author, and professor who has published two major

books- Dance Dance Revolution and Minor Feelings: An Asian American Reckoning. Her

chapter for the latter work in this anthology titled End of White Innocence responds to the theme

of change in contemporary culture, by focusing on what she perceives to be the harmful effects

of permeating “white culture” (that is, American traditionalism and standards) in contemporary

society. Her commentary sheds light on what she believes to be a just emphasis; an emphasis on

the differences between races in the United States, not a focus on commonalities and shared

values between peoples (which is part of the American tradition), will lead to happier outcomes

for minority groups. This piece is important because it is the work of a writer who is sharing her

perspectives for a cause, that being the reformation of modern American culture. Books

containing these ideas are very relevant to the state of the status quo.

5

6

7

Barbara Jane Reyes

Barbara Jane Reyes is a Philipina-American poet, teacher, and editor who has written numerous

collections of poetry with feminist themes and evaluations of cultural norms from her

perspective as an Asian woman. The selection included in this anthology is a poem titled

“Howl/Witness/Testify” which is taken from her larger work Invocation to Daughters, written in

2017. This selection has a couple of attributes that are noteworthy: the passionate tone of a

person who is unwilling to stay down and give up, the usage of words with rebellious undertones

and connotations, and a feeling of affirmation that is radiating from the author, which is exerted

from both tone and diction. This work is significant because it is an example of a work of

extreme passion: a work that is simple in length yet so deep in concept. The sheer amount of

conviction portrayed in this short poem is a reflection of how strongly people feel about the

status quo. It is hard to miss, and one should be able to see voices like these, provided they are

awake and not living under a rock.

8

9

Kathleen Uno

Unfortunately, there is not much information on the internet about Kathleen Uno. Her works

however, are published and fragments of greater collections of literature about cultural norms.

Her short essay presented in this anthology is titled “Unlearning Orientalism”, which is part of a

greater work titled Asian/Pacific Islander American Women: A Historical Anthology. Part of a

greater collection of works, Uno’s essay is an anthropological and sociological study, taking

elements of structuralism (language use, family roles structured by a larger societal norm, etc.) to

analyze the position of women in relation to their society as a whole. It is an impressive project,

as Uno evaluates similarities and differences between different Asian nations as particulars, and

does not use a blanket/universal analysis. This work is important because it is specifically an

academic, intellectual study that compiles data; it is a logical approach to unmasking aspects of

the status quo that people tend to gloss over. The political message at the end is similar to that of

Hong and Reyes, but it is formed through rigorous analysis and non-anecdotal argumentation.

The work is subject to scrutiny precisely because it is academic, but it is an essay that deserves

our attention.

10

11

12

Aleksandr Deyneka

Soviet-Russian artist, painter, and sculptor Alexander Deyneka is a notable figure of the 20th

century for his painting style. As a winner of multiple national awards, his works have a certain

flavor and theme to them- a depiction of worldly events using a realist style. His painting in this

anthology is titled “The Defense of Petrograd”, which was created in 1928. This painting depicts

tired soldiers returning from the battlefield on the top half of the work, while vigorous and eager

soldiers are marching on the bottom half of the painting to take the place of those who have

vacated their posts on the battlefield. This painting is significant for one major reason: it depicts

the realistic nature of antagonistic conflict. No matter where conflict occurs there are at least two

sides that struggle for supremacy, each claiming to be good and their opponents evil. In our

analysis throughout this anthology, we have gone beyond good and evil to establish the positions

that authors and artists are taking in the contemporary conflict. The ideals of this painting also

apply to the cultural war against the status quo mentioned in the introduction of this work: there

are people in the community who lay down the foundation for others to go on so that others can

do their part. Hong, Uno, and Reyes have all been doing their part.

13

The Defense of Petrograd, 1928 Aleksandr Deyneka Painting 9.5” x 8”

14

Bibliography

Deyneka, Aleksandr. “The Defense of Petrograd, 1928 - Aleksandr Deyneka.” www.wikiart.org. Wikiart: Visual Art Encyclopedia, January 1, 1970. https://www.wikiart.org/en/aleksandr-deyneka/the-defense-of-petrograd-1928.

Dumkaptaha. “Half Asleep - Half Awake (2009).” Foundmyself Art Community. Foundmyself, May 4, 2010. https://www.foundmyself.com/dumkaptaha/art/half- asleep-half-awake-2009/54655.

Park Hong, Cathy. “The End of White Innocence.” San Francisco: Penguin Random House, 2020.

Reyes, Barbara Jane. “Invocation to Daughters: Howl/Witness/Testify.” San Francisco: San Francisco City Lights Spotlight, 2017.

Uno, Kathleen. “Unlearning Orientalism.” New York: New York University Press, 2003.