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Episode 58: Picturing Asian America · Political Junkie Podcast

0:00
SPEAKER_02: On July 23,
0:00
SPEAKER_02: 2024,
0:02
SPEAKER_02: Vice President Kamala Harris reached the threshold of Democratic National
0:07
SPEAKER_02: Convention delegates that she needed to become the party's de facto presidential nominee.
0:12
SPEAKER_02: In the two days since President Joe Biden had ceded the nomination,
0:17
SPEAKER_02: a diverse party had become re-energized around the 2024 race and its second
0:23
SPEAKER_02: historic multiracial nominee.
0:25
SPEAKER_02: While Harris would not be the first woman or the first African American at the top
0:29
SPEAKER_02: of the Democratic ticket,
0:31
SPEAKER_02: she would be the first black woman and the first Asian American woman.
0:36
SPEAKER_02: The daughter of immigrants,
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SPEAKER_02: a Jamaican father,
0:38
SPEAKER_02: and a South Asian mother,
0:40
SPEAKER_02: Kamala Harris will make history in her own right.
0:44
SPEAKER_02: It's a sweet moment.
0:46
SPEAKER_02: Harris's political achievement is a signal that Asian Americans have arrived in United States politics.
0:52
SPEAKER_02: Significantly,
0:53
SPEAKER_02: if she is elected,
0:55
SPEAKER_02: Harris will take office in January 2025,
0:57
SPEAKER_02: exactly 60 years since Hawaii's Patsy Takamato Mink became the first woman of color
1:05
SPEAKER_02: and the first Asian American woman to be sworn in to Congress.
1:08
SPEAKER_02: Yet Harris's elevation coincides with another surge in anti-Asian hate.
1:13
SPEAKER_02: While the United States has a long history of vilifying immigrants from Asian
1:17
SPEAKER_02: nations and their American descendants,
1:20
SPEAKER_02: that xenophobia was purposely revived by former President Donald J.
1:24
SPEAKER_02: Trump and his Republican allies,
1:27
SPEAKER_02: who have targeted China and its people
1:29
SPEAKER_02: as an economic and physical danger to the United States.
1:33
SPEAKER_02: By 2020,
1:34
SPEAKER_02: as COVID-19 ravaged communities,
1:37
SPEAKER_02: Trump and his allies labeled it a Chinese virus and the Kung Flu,
1:43
SPEAKER_02: reviving old tropes about immigrants,
1:45
SPEAKER_02: and specifically Asian immigrants,
1:48
SPEAKER_02: as carriers of disease.
1:50
SPEAKER_02: Chinese scholars and scientists have been targeted.
1:53
SPEAKER_02: In 2023,
1:54
SPEAKER_02: when he was competing with Trump for the Republican nomination,
1:58
SPEAKER_02: Florida Governor Ron DeSantis passed discriminatory legislation that,
2:02
SPEAKER_02: among other things,
2:04
SPEAKER_02: prohibited Chinese nationals from purchasing real estate,
2:07
SPEAKER_02: a painful reminder of pre-World War II discrimination that rendered all Asian
2:12
SPEAKER_02: immigrants as perpetual second-class citizens.
2:16
SPEAKER_02: Not coincidentally, random violent attacks on Asian Americans have surged in the United States.
2:23
SPEAKER_02: One of the first things that the new Biden-Harris administration did in 2021 was
2:28
SPEAKER_02: strengthen federal hate crimes laws with special attention to Asian American
2:32
SPEAKER_02: victims of violence.
2:34
SPEAKER_02: Here's Congresswoman Judy Chu,
2:36
SPEAKER_02: who represents California's 28th,
2:38
SPEAKER_02: chairs the Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus,
2:42
SPEAKER_02: and is a powerful supporter of working class rights.
2:45
SPEAKER_02: She's speaking about Harris's outreach to Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Island voters.
2:51
SPEAKER_00: And the Biden-Harris administration really sees us.
2:55
SPEAKER_00: Under the previous administration, when the data on COVID-19 hospital deaths were first announced,
3:01
SPEAKER_00: the death rates for blacks,
3:03
SPEAKER_00: whites,
3:03
SPEAKER_00: and Hispanics were represented,
3:06
SPEAKER_00: but we were shocked to see that we,
3:10
SPEAKER_00: the AANHPIs,
3:11
SPEAKER_00: were lumped in as others.
3:15
SPEAKER_00: Even in the midst of a global pandemic, we were otherized.
3:21
SPEAKER_00: But President Biden and Vice President Harris not only see us,
3:26
SPEAKER_00: they did something that we'd been advocating for nearly 30 years.
3:31
SPEAKER_00: This administration updated federal data standards on race and ethnicity,
3:37
SPEAKER_00: ensuring that every federal agency will disaggregate AANHPI data in their
3:44
SPEAKER_00: collection and reporting,
3:45
SPEAKER_00: making sure that every AANHPI ethnic group will be seen and heard.
3:54
SPEAKER_02: But you can't tell this political story without also talking about over a century
3:59
SPEAKER_02: of Asian American activism.
4:01
SPEAKER_02: Immigrants and their descendants made themselves visible by building vibrant
4:05
SPEAKER_02: physical communities that welcomed generation after generation of newcomers from
4:10
SPEAKER_02: multiple nations.
4:11
SPEAKER_02: From these communities,
4:12
SPEAKER_02: they fought back against racism and discrimination in the courts,
4:16
SPEAKER_02: formed unions,
4:17
SPEAKER_02: volunteered for military service,
4:20
SPEAKER_02: raised families,
4:21
SPEAKER_02: claimed the right to education,
4:23
SPEAKER_02: made art,
4:24
SPEAKER_02: mounted demonstrations and formed businesses.
4:27
SPEAKER_02: One activist who documented this Asian American history in pictures until his death
4:32
SPEAKER_02: from COVID was New York City photographer Corky Lee.
4:36
SPEAKER_02: A college history major and graduate of the city's public education system,
4:41
SPEAKER_02: Lee began life as a conscientious objector and housing organizer.
4:45
SPEAKER_02: For almost 50 years, Lee documented New York City's Chinatown, mostly in black and white.
4:52
SPEAKER_02: Hundreds of Lee's photographs,
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SPEAKER_02: Asian Americans living,
4:55
SPEAKER_02: working,
4:55
SPEAKER_02: striking,
4:56
SPEAKER_02: celebrating,
4:57
SPEAKER_02: protesting,
4:58
SPEAKER_02: and taking part in every activity that occurs in a now shrinking part of the city,
5:03
SPEAKER_02: are now available,
5:04
SPEAKER_02: along with accompanying essays,
5:07
SPEAKER_02: in Corky Lee's Asian America,
5:09
SPEAKER_02: 50 Years of Photographic Justice.
5:12
SPEAKER_02: now available from Penguin Random House.
5:15
SPEAKER_02: It's edited by the artist Chi-Wang Ng and my friend, the historian, May Nye.
5:20
SPEAKER_02: So join May and me for this episode of Why Now, where history and politics meet the challenge of today.
5:27
SPEAKER_02: And I'm your host,
5:28
SPEAKER_02: Claire Potter,
5:28
SPEAKER_02: professor of history emeritus at the New School for Social Research,
5:32
SPEAKER_02: a contributing editor at Public Seminar,
5:34
SPEAKER_02: and the author of The Political Junkie Substack.
5:37
SPEAKER_02: This is episode 58, Picturing Asian America.
6:05
SPEAKER_02: Maynai, welcome to the show.
6:07
SPEAKER_02: Thank you for having me, Claire.
6:09
SPEAKER_02: Your collaborative book,
6:12
SPEAKER_02: Corky Lee's Asian America,
6:14
SPEAKER_02: you could call it a coffee table book because there are so many photographs taken
6:20
SPEAKER_02: by Corky Lee.
6:22
SPEAKER_02: But it's also a history of Asians in America for those who perhaps have not yet been introduced to it.
6:31
SPEAKER_02: Can you talk to me about how this project was initiated?
6:35
SPEAKER_01: I guess it has two beginnings, Claire.
6:39
SPEAKER_01: The first beginning was in 2011 when Corky himself wanted to self-publish a book.
6:47
SPEAKER_01: He had been taking photographs of Chinatown,
6:49
SPEAKER_01: Asian American communities,
6:51
SPEAKER_01: and social justice movements already for 40 years,
6:55
SPEAKER_01: and he wanted to have his own book.
6:58
SPEAKER_01: So he started that process,
7:00
SPEAKER_01: and he worked with Chi Wong Eng,
7:03
SPEAKER_01: a colleague and photographer who was actually my co-editor on this book.
7:09
SPEAKER_01: And you know how things are, you know, they didn't finish it.
7:13
SPEAKER_01: So after Corky passed away in 2021...
7:17
SPEAKER_01: from COVID, his brother knew of his previous wishes to have a book.
7:25
SPEAKER_01: And as luck would have it, his brother was contacted by
7:30
SPEAKER_01: a young Asian-American woman who was an editor at Penguin Random House.
7:35
SPEAKER_01: And Claire, this goes to why it's important to have diversity in the publishing industry.
7:40
SPEAKER_01: Jennifer Sitt, the editor, she knew who Corky was.
7:43
SPEAKER_01: She didn't know him personally, but she knew who Corky Lee was.
7:47
SPEAKER_01: And she figured out how to contact Corky's brother, who's the executor of his estate.
7:53
SPEAKER_01: And she met with him and said, I want to do a book.
7:57
SPEAKER_01: So John,
7:58
SPEAKER_01: the brother,
8:00
SPEAKER_01: brought me in as the person who could provide some historical and social context
8:05
SPEAKER_01: and brought in Chi Wong Ng as a photographer who knew Corky's work.
8:11
SPEAKER_01: And so it was a three-way collaboration between John, the estate, myself, and Chi Wong.
8:18
SPEAKER_02: Corky is the son of an immigrant, working class, I think it's fair to say.
8:28
SPEAKER_02: starts taking pictures, but only after he's had an activist career.
8:36
SPEAKER_02: Can you tell us a little bit about Corky's activism and how that shifts into photography?
8:43
SPEAKER_01: Actually, I would say they kind of grow up together.
8:46
SPEAKER_01: There's not a sharp break or one necessarily leading to the other.
8:50
SPEAKER_01: Corky graduated from Queens College in 1969.
8:56
SPEAKER_01: that was at the height of the Vietnam War and the draft.
9:00
SPEAKER_01: And as soon as he graduated, he became draft eligible.
9:04
SPEAKER_01: He had protested the war as a college student.
9:07
SPEAKER_01: And I should just say parenthetically,
9:09
SPEAKER_01: there were hardly any Asian American students at Queens College in the 1960s.
9:14
SPEAKER_01: Anyway, when he graduated, he declared himself a conscientious objector.
9:19
SPEAKER_01: And the draft board accepted that designation and they assigned him to work
9:25
SPEAKER_01: at Two Bridges Neighborhood Council, which is a social service agency in Chinatown.
9:30
SPEAKER_01: And so he was a tenant organizer and he went into the tenements and he talked to
9:35
SPEAKER_01: people and he took pictures with a borrowed camera of the bad conditions in those
9:40
SPEAKER_01: apartments and he had the
9:42
SPEAKER_01: residents, put their rent into escrow.
9:45
SPEAKER_01: You know, he was a tenant organizer.
9:47
SPEAKER_01: But at the same time, this was 1969, 1970, Chinatown was exploding with the new Asian American movement.
9:55
SPEAKER_01: And he got
9:56
SPEAKER_01: drawn into a group called the Asian Media Collective, which became the famous Basement Workshop.
10:03
SPEAKER_01: If some of your listeners know anything about the history of Asian American
10:07
SPEAKER_01: movement in New York City,
10:08
SPEAKER_01: they will have heard of Basement Workshop.
10:09
SPEAKER_01: It was a wonderful place where artists in all different disciplines and media did work.
10:15
SPEAKER_01: art for social change.
10:18
SPEAKER_01: So Corky's photography began with taking slides,
10:22
SPEAKER_01: color slides,
10:23
SPEAKER_01: because his intention was to use photography to educate people.
10:27
SPEAKER_01: So he developed slideshows about the conditions in Chinatown and issues facing Chinese immigrants.
10:34
SPEAKER_01: And he showed these slideshows to students.
10:38
SPEAKER_01: He had some gig with the Board of Education where he got into classrooms and showed
10:42
SPEAKER_01: these shows to community groups.
10:45
SPEAKER_01: So a lot of what he started out with was using photography to educate people.
10:50
SPEAKER_01: And then he started documenting all the stuff that was going on in Chinatown, the protests, the
10:57
SPEAKER_01: festivals or performances, ordinary people.
11:01
SPEAKER_01: And I think he then adopted a persona as the man behind the camera,
11:07
SPEAKER_01: although he also identified with what was going on on the other side of the camera.
11:11
SPEAKER_02: Although he works for
11:14
SPEAKER_02: I think it's the New York Post for a while.
11:16
SPEAKER_02: He sells photographs to the New York Post.
11:18
SPEAKER_01: Well, it's freelance.
11:19
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
11:20
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
11:20
SPEAKER_02: He's a freelancer, but he doesn't really want to call himself a photojournalist.
11:26
SPEAKER_02: Can you talk about that a little bit?
11:28
SPEAKER_02: Because I think it says a lot about who he was in the world that he didn't embrace that identity.
11:34
SPEAKER_01: Well, he didn't.
11:36
SPEAKER_01: rejected completely, but he did not believe that it was the extent of his identity.
11:42
SPEAKER_01: He worked as a photojournalist.
11:45
SPEAKER_01: He was a member of the Asian American Journalists Association,
11:49
SPEAKER_01: and he organized other photojournalists,
11:51
SPEAKER_01: and he sold work as a photojournalist,
11:53
SPEAKER_01: as a freelancer.
11:55
SPEAKER_01: But he was always very clear that his purpose and his identity was far,
12:01
SPEAKER_01: far exceeded that of being a photojournalist.
12:04
SPEAKER_01: He considered himself a chronicler, a documentarian, a historian.
12:10
SPEAKER_01: His work was always intentional.
12:13
SPEAKER_01: You know, he wasn't just in it for getting the shot.
12:16
SPEAKER_01: He was deliberate and intentional and very careful about how we composed his photographs,
12:22
SPEAKER_01: even when he was getting the shot.
12:24
SPEAKER_02: I loved just a little snippet of information that one of the
12:30
SPEAKER_02: journalists, photojournalists he studied was Weegee.
12:35
SPEAKER_02: So which listeners,
12:36
SPEAKER_02: if you don't know Weegee,
12:38
SPEAKER_02: Weegee photographed the sort of dark depths of criminal New York in the 1930s and
12:44
SPEAKER_02: 40s and really sort of develop these techniques.
12:48
SPEAKER_02: Like Weegee had a development kit in the trunk of his car because the faster you
12:53
SPEAKER_02: could get it to the newspaper and beat the other guys,
12:55
SPEAKER_02: the better you would be able to sell the shot.
12:58
SPEAKER_02: So Corky is both in a tradition of Asian American activism and art and chronicling and history.
13:07
SPEAKER_02: And we should talk about him as a historian.
13:10
SPEAKER_02: But he's also in a tradition of New Yorkers who are capturing a city that's always changing.
13:19
SPEAKER_01: Yes, yes, absolutely.
13:21
SPEAKER_01: And,
13:23
SPEAKER_01: you know,
13:23
SPEAKER_01: I talk of Corky as being somebody who occupied a position at a historical juncture,
13:30
SPEAKER_01: or I call it a hinge,
13:32
SPEAKER_01: because he was born at the tail end of the Chinese exclusion era.
13:36
SPEAKER_01: And then he witnessed the vast changes in demographics in the Asian-American
13:41
SPEAKER_01: communities after 1965,
13:44
SPEAKER_01: when the immigration laws were reformed.
13:47
SPEAKER_01: So he was both somebody who experienced those changes personally and directly,
13:52
SPEAKER_01: and he was also somebody who witnessed them and documented them.
13:56
SPEAKER_01: So he was very much about the changing tableau of New York City and New York's
14:02
SPEAKER_01: Asian American communities.
14:04
SPEAKER_01: And I should add across the country as well.
14:06
SPEAKER_01: You know, he traveled around the country.
14:08
SPEAKER_01: You know, most of his work is in New York and the Northeast, of course.
14:11
SPEAKER_01: But he was interested in and had contacts with and traveled around the country also.
14:17
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, and interesting.
14:19
SPEAKER_02: Let's talk about this whole question of how Asian America evolves,
14:26
SPEAKER_02: because I'm always a little cautious about using the term Asian American because it
14:33
SPEAKER_02: represents so many different people from so many different cultural traditions and nations.
14:39
SPEAKER_02: But to Corky,
14:41
SPEAKER_02: Asian American Pacific Islander made sense as a category.
14:47
SPEAKER_02: Can you talk about that a little bit?
14:48
SPEAKER_02: Because I think it'd be helpful to some of our listeners.
14:51
SPEAKER_01: That's a great question.
14:52
SPEAKER_01: You know, Corky, I think, identified early on as a Chinese American.
14:58
SPEAKER_01: You know, he was son of a Chinese laundry owner from Queens.
15:02
SPEAKER_01: Chinatown was, as he says at one point, Chinatown is my soul.
15:08
SPEAKER_01: And so he was deeply, deeply committed and identified with New York's Chinatown.
15:16
SPEAKER_01: But he also understood from the beginning of the Asian American movement that
15:23
SPEAKER_01: Chinese were part of a larger Asian American community.
15:26
SPEAKER_01: So I referenced Basement Workshop earlier.
15:28
SPEAKER_01: Basement was not just Chinese youth.
15:31
SPEAKER_01: It was Japanese Americans, Filipinos.
15:35
SPEAKER_01: South Asians.
15:36
SPEAKER_01: It was a very diverse crowd,
15:38
SPEAKER_01: and a lot of the politics of Basement revolved around racism and the war in Vietnam,
15:45
SPEAKER_01: anti-imperialism.
15:47
SPEAKER_01: So Corky,
15:47
SPEAKER_01: from the very beginning,
15:48
SPEAKER_01: was part of an activist milieu that had only recently rejected Oriental...
15:57
SPEAKER_01: as the label put on us by the mainstream of society and was declaring an Asian
16:04
SPEAKER_01: American movement that had common interests.
16:06
SPEAKER_01: So I think for Corky,
16:07
SPEAKER_01: as for myself and a lot of other people,
16:10
SPEAKER_01: having your own particular ethnic identity is not a contradiction with having an
16:15
SPEAKER_01: Asian American identity.
16:16
SPEAKER_01: You know, it's situational and contextual.
16:27
SPEAKER_02: Asian American people and Asian immigrants and Asians who are in Asia,
16:32
SPEAKER_02: you know,
16:33
SPEAKER_02: and we might want to talk about why these sort of waves of hostility recur over and
16:39
SPEAKER_02: over again,
16:39
SPEAKER_02: because we're in one now,
16:41
SPEAKER_02: to photograph Asian American people as they are in their lives,
16:49
SPEAKER_02: as workers,
16:50
SPEAKER_02: as families,
16:52
SPEAKER_02: at play,
16:53
SPEAKER_02: making art.
16:54
SPEAKER_02: That's a really radical act, isn't it?
16:57
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it is.
16:58
SPEAKER_01: I think some of Corky's loveliest photos are those of ordinary people just living their lives.
17:05
SPEAKER_01: And he often said, you know, I want to smash stereotypes one photograph at a time.
17:14
SPEAKER_01: If I could classify him as a photographer,
17:16
SPEAKER_01: I'd say he was a social photographer or an activist photographer.
17:20
SPEAKER_01: But he's not like Dorothea Lange, right, who...
17:24
SPEAKER_01: photographed migrant farm workers as abject subjects, right, in order to elicit sympathy from elites.
17:33
SPEAKER_01: None of Corky's subjects are abject.
17:36
SPEAKER_01: They have dignity.
17:37
SPEAKER_01: They're quirky.
17:39
SPEAKER_01: They're proud.
17:41
SPEAKER_01: They're just relaxing.
17:42
SPEAKER_01: They're chilling.
17:44
SPEAKER_01: And he really shows that they are ordinary people
17:48
SPEAKER_01: And Corky also was very committed to showing that Asian Americans are Americans.
17:54
SPEAKER_01: That was a really, really central point of his entire outlook.
17:59
SPEAKER_01: He would always say, don't let anybody tell you to go back to where you came from.
18:03
SPEAKER_01: You built this country.
18:05
SPEAKER_01: You belong here.
18:06
SPEAKER_01: And so he loved to have photographs.
18:09
SPEAKER_01: I don't know if you noticed,
18:10
SPEAKER_01: Claire,
18:10
SPEAKER_01: we have a lot of them in the book of people in ethnic parades,
18:15
SPEAKER_01: in ethnic costume,
18:15
SPEAKER_01: carrying American flags.
18:17
SPEAKER_01: Yes.
18:17
SPEAKER_01: He loved to show this juxtaposition.
18:19
SPEAKER_01: You know, he had like Filipino Harley Davidson bikers or Muslim girls in front of a McDonald's.
18:27
SPEAKER_01: And it was never cheesy.
18:30
SPEAKER_01: or didactic.
18:32
SPEAKER_01: You're in the parade and you're wearing shades and carrying an American flag.
18:37
SPEAKER_01: So to him,
18:38
SPEAKER_01: that was,
18:39
SPEAKER_01: I think,
18:39
SPEAKER_01: one of his most important commitments was to show that Asian Americans were Americans.
18:46
SPEAKER_01: And it wasn't a contradiction to be a proud American and to be proud of your ethnic heritage.
18:52
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
18:52
SPEAKER_02: And I found some of the pictures of, say, the veterans of foreign wars and the
18:58
SPEAKER_02: flag hung after 9-11,
19:00
SPEAKER_02: I found them extraordinarily moving because it spoke to a kind of resilience and
19:07
SPEAKER_02: capacity to love despite the hostility that has historically been directed at Asian
19:18
SPEAKER_02: American people.
19:19
SPEAKER_02: I don't know, maybe that overly sentimentalizes it, but I found them very moving.
19:25
SPEAKER_01: You know, I think the flag...
19:27
SPEAKER_01: The flag carries a very heavy burden as an icon.
19:31
SPEAKER_01: It can mean so many things to different people.
19:34
SPEAKER_01: And sometimes it's ambiguous.
19:36
SPEAKER_01: Sometimes it could be a declaration of assimilation.
19:40
SPEAKER_01: Sometimes it could be a declaration simply like, I'm not a terrorist.
19:45
SPEAKER_01: You know, it has a lot of different meanings.
19:47
SPEAKER_01: So, you know, I think you can read these photographs differently.
19:51
SPEAKER_02: And Corky probably intended us to sit with them and think.
19:57
SPEAKER_01: What does this mean?
19:59
SPEAKER_01: Right.
20:00
SPEAKER_02: Who was his audience?
20:02
SPEAKER_01: I think he had more than one audience.
20:05
SPEAKER_01: One audience was for ourselves so we could see ourselves as we are.
20:09
SPEAKER_01: He was not on the outside looking in.
20:12
SPEAKER_01: He was the inside looking out or the inside looking at the rest of us.
20:17
SPEAKER_01: You know,
20:17
SPEAKER_01: he would often take photographs of an event and then he would return to the
20:23
SPEAKER_01: organizers a couple of days later.
20:26
SPEAKER_01: and give them a flash drive with all the photos that he took of their event.
20:31
SPEAKER_01: So he was literally taking it for them.
20:33
SPEAKER_01: Right.
20:34
SPEAKER_01: But he was also taking it for society in general.
20:38
SPEAKER_01: He wanted Americans of all walks of life to know something about our histories, about our communities.
20:47
SPEAKER_01: So I think he had, he had that double intention.
20:51
SPEAKER_02: So let's talk about Corky as a historian, because you are a classically trained historian.
21:00
SPEAKER_02: Classic, yes.
21:01
SPEAKER_02: Well, I guess what I mean conventionally, like me, we come out of universities.
21:07
SPEAKER_02: We're not community historians.
21:09
SPEAKER_02: We're academic historians.
21:11
SPEAKER_02: And the book is this sort of wonderful convergence of the kinds of work
21:22
SPEAKER_02: that you and your colleagues have done to uncover the Asian American past and make
21:27
SPEAKER_02: it knowable to others,
21:29
SPEAKER_02: and the work that community activists have done,
21:34
SPEAKER_02: that Corky did to make this visual,
21:39
SPEAKER_02: is it reasonable to say,
21:40
SPEAKER_02: yes,
21:41
SPEAKER_02: Corky Lee was also a historian?
21:44
SPEAKER_01: Corky was a history major in college.
21:46
SPEAKER_01: You know, he was an undergraduate major.
21:49
SPEAKER_01: So he did have a sense about history.
21:52
SPEAKER_01: He did believe that Asian Americans were making history, that we're making our own history.
21:58
SPEAKER_01: I don't know that he thought of himself as a historian in any bigger way,
22:04
SPEAKER_01: the way we think of ourselves as historian.
22:07
SPEAKER_01: That is to say, we gather evidence, we unfold an argument.
22:12
SPEAKER_01: I mean, Corky was always unfolding an argument.
22:13
SPEAKER_01: That's true.
22:14
SPEAKER_01: He was a consummate storyteller.
22:18
SPEAKER_01: And I think you would agree with me, Claire, that as historians, we are storytellers.
22:23
SPEAKER_01: So he had many attributes of a historian.
22:29
SPEAKER_01: I'm not sure he would have told the history that I tell in this book in exactly the same way.
22:34
SPEAKER_01: I tried to combine two threads in what I wrote.
22:40
SPEAKER_01: First,
22:41
SPEAKER_01: I tried to give what I thought was a good history of the Asian American movement
22:47
SPEAKER_01: from 1970 into the 21st century.
22:50
SPEAKER_01: That's my analysis.
22:52
SPEAKER_01: But I drew from Corky's work.
22:55
SPEAKER_01: In a way, he was my biggest primary source, if we can put it that way.
23:01
SPEAKER_01: And I was careful to present his own views and values honestly.
23:08
SPEAKER_01: Truth be told,
23:09
SPEAKER_01: Over the years, I didn't agree with Corky about everything.
23:13
SPEAKER_01: We had different positions on different issues.
23:15
SPEAKER_01: I didn't get into that in the book.
23:16
SPEAKER_01: I didn't think that was appropriate.
23:19
SPEAKER_01: So I tried to represent his own views and values in an honest way in the context of
23:24
SPEAKER_01: a larger story that I think his photos do tell.
23:29
SPEAKER_01: What you get in the book is a visual history that's got a kind of narrative arc.
23:37
SPEAKER_01: It's the emergence of a movement.
23:40
SPEAKER_01: It's several decades of growth and accomplishment,
23:44
SPEAKER_01: but also pushback from forces that don't want Asian Americans to be powerful or
23:50
SPEAKER_01: have any visibility.
23:52
SPEAKER_01: And then in the 21st century,
23:54
SPEAKER_01: we have this,
23:55
SPEAKER_01: you know,
23:55
SPEAKER_01: I mean,
23:56
SPEAKER_01: that chapter of the book starts with 9-11 and ends with the pandemic.
24:01
SPEAKER_01: That says something.
24:03
SPEAKER_01: And in between is a kind of resilience and maturing,
24:09
SPEAKER_01: but also more controversy within the Asian American community,
24:14
SPEAKER_01: right?
24:14
SPEAKER_01: Asian Americans started to cleave over different issues.
24:19
SPEAKER_01: Not that there was unanimity in the 70s, there were also differences at the time, but
24:24
SPEAKER_01: politics become much more contentious in the 21st century because they've become
24:28
SPEAKER_01: more contentious in our society overall,
24:31
SPEAKER_00: right?
24:31
SPEAKER_01: And so we're not immune from those forces.
24:34
SPEAKER_01: So I think the last chapter or the ending on the pandemic,
24:40
SPEAKER_01: I think it also,
24:41
SPEAKER_01: you know,
24:42
SPEAKER_01: this may not be obvious to the reader,
24:45
SPEAKER_01: but as a historian,
24:46
SPEAKER_01: I think it's important for us to say the story's not over.
24:51
SPEAKER_01: We don't know where it's going to go.
24:53
SPEAKER_01: Right.
24:54
SPEAKER_01: We don't know the future.
24:55
SPEAKER_01: The future is ours to make and it's ours to struggle with.
24:59
SPEAKER_01: Right.
24:59
SPEAKER_01: Against all kinds of contending forces.
25:02
SPEAKER_01: There's a lot of hope in Corky's photos, but there's also things that aren't so pretty.
25:08
SPEAKER_01: And,
25:09
SPEAKER_01: you know,
25:09
SPEAKER_01: with the pandemic especially,
25:10
SPEAKER_01: I think,
25:11
SPEAKER_01: you know,
25:12
SPEAKER_01: we're in a moment now where I can't predict where we're going to go.
25:16
SPEAKER_01: I mean, they're passing laws all over the country now that Chinese people,
25:20
SPEAKER_01: nationals can't buy property.
25:23
SPEAKER_01: It's like a throwback to the 1920s.
25:25
SPEAKER_02: Everything old is new again, May.
25:28
SPEAKER_02: Exactly.
25:28
SPEAKER_01: So I hope that people will read the book and appreciate the historical arc that it
25:36
SPEAKER_01: has as also something that has both hope,
25:39
SPEAKER_01: but also an unfinished nature to it.
25:44
SPEAKER_02: I loved the
25:46
SPEAKER_02: of the lights that Corky put up a couple of days before he died or got sick,
25:53
SPEAKER_02: I guess,
25:54
SPEAKER_02: that were intended to make Chinese people feel safe in their own neighborhood from
26:00
SPEAKER_02: the kinds of assaults that were happening during COVID.
26:04
SPEAKER_02: It was so beautiful.
26:05
SPEAKER_02: And it seemed like a metaphor for what he did,
26:09
SPEAKER_02: which was to sort of shine a light on this beautiful place called Chinatown.
26:15
SPEAKER_02: I also,
26:16
SPEAKER_02: and I just want to sort of drop this in as a tidbit for listeners,
26:20
SPEAKER_02: I loved the photograph where he recreates
26:23
SPEAKER_02: the driving of the golden spike, but this time with Chinese people who are not in that picture.
26:30
SPEAKER_02: Initially,
26:30
SPEAKER_02: all the Chinese people who built the railroad are out of the frame or dead,
26:36
SPEAKER_02: but it's this large group of white people who did not,
26:39
SPEAKER_02: in fact,
26:39
SPEAKER_02: build the railroad.
26:40
SPEAKER_02: And he redoes it with Chinese people.
26:42
SPEAKER_02: And that's a wonderful sort of might have been that should cause our listeners to
26:49
SPEAKER_02: think about the role that Chinese people,
26:54
SPEAKER_02: played in building this country.
26:56
SPEAKER_01: Corky always told this story about how he was in junior high school where he saw
27:00
SPEAKER_01: that original 1869 photograph.
27:03
SPEAKER_01: Now,
27:03
SPEAKER_01: a lot of people,
27:04
SPEAKER_01: especially in the 60s,
27:05
SPEAKER_01: we didn't really know much about our history,
27:07
SPEAKER_01: but we all knew we built the railroad,
27:09
SPEAKER_01: right?
27:09
SPEAKER_01: If we knew nothing else, we knew we built the railroad.
27:11
SPEAKER_01: So Corky looks at this photograph in junior high and he says, where are the Chinese people?
27:16
SPEAKER_01: And to him, it was
27:18
SPEAKER_01: It just stuck with him,
27:19
SPEAKER_01: I think,
27:19
SPEAKER_01: throughout his life as this injustice and an exemplar of the invisibility or the
27:26
SPEAKER_01: erasure of Chinese from American history.
27:29
SPEAKER_01: So in 2014, he organized
27:31
SPEAKER_01: This reenactment,
27:33
SPEAKER_01: and he put out a call,
27:34
SPEAKER_01: and because he was thoroughly networked throughout the Asian American communities,
27:39
SPEAKER_01: and he didn't organize it single-handedly.
27:41
SPEAKER_01: I mean, he worked with Asian Americans in Utah and other places, but several hundred people showed up.
27:48
SPEAKER_01: And he staged this photograph and he said it was his finest work of photographic justice.
27:55
SPEAKER_02: There's another piece of this too, which is the chronicling of Chinatown itself.
28:01
SPEAKER_02: In this case, mostly New York's Chinatown.
28:04
SPEAKER_02: And Chinatowns are kind of in trouble in major cities all over the country.
28:10
SPEAKER_02: First, can we talk about that a little bit?
28:13
SPEAKER_02: What does it mean that Chinatowns are being pressured by other forces?
28:18
SPEAKER_02: Where I grew up in Philadelphia,
28:19
SPEAKER_02: they want to build a basketball stadium in the middle of Chinatown,
28:23
SPEAKER_02: which is horrifying.
28:24
SPEAKER_02: But what did Chinatowns represent and what would the erasure of Chinatowns mean?
28:32
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
28:33
SPEAKER_01: You know,
28:33
SPEAKER_01: for decades throughout the 20th century,
28:35
SPEAKER_01: even from the late 19th century,
28:37
SPEAKER_01: Chinatowns were these ethnic enclaves,
28:41
SPEAKER_01: or you could even say ghettos,
28:43
SPEAKER_01: right?
28:43
SPEAKER_01: Where laboring people lived, immigrants, mostly men because women weren't allowed to come.
28:51
SPEAKER_01: And they were as close as you could have to a home community away from home.
28:57
SPEAKER_01: And then after
29:00
SPEAKER_01: 1970, women came, families came, and Chinatowns became very active and vibrant.
29:08
SPEAKER_01: And in recent years,
29:09
SPEAKER_01: I would say maybe since the 90s,
29:12
SPEAKER_01: there's been tremendous amount of pressure from real estate interests,
29:16
SPEAKER_01: gentrification.
29:18
SPEAKER_01: Chinatowns typically are located near central business districts,
29:22
SPEAKER_01: or in New York's case,
29:23
SPEAKER_01: near the financial district.
29:24
SPEAKER_01: Their land is very valuable.
29:26
SPEAKER_01: And the real estate people want it.
29:28
SPEAKER_01: The money people want it.
29:30
SPEAKER_01: But the other thing that's happened in Chinatown in the last 15,
29:33
SPEAKER_01: 20 years has been there's been this huge vibrancy of businesses,
29:40
SPEAKER_01: arts organizations.
29:42
SPEAKER_01: New York Chinatown has...
29:44
SPEAKER_01: several arts organizations.
29:47
SPEAKER_01: They're run by younger people, you know, people in their 30s and 40s.
29:51
SPEAKER_01: Corky was a founder of the Asian American Arts Alliance, also known as A4.
29:57
SPEAKER_01: He was a founder, and he mentored many artists and photographers.
30:03
SPEAKER_01: So there was a really exciting kind of scene.
30:06
SPEAKER_01: There's, you know, some of the oldest shops in Chinatown were taken over by
30:12
SPEAKER_01: Children or grandchildren are the original owners.
30:15
SPEAKER_01: So there's a kind of multi-generational commitment in many of these communities to say,
30:20
SPEAKER_01: this is our community.
30:22
SPEAKER_01: It's not just a bunch of old men.
30:25
SPEAKER_01: Some of the old guys are still around.
30:27
SPEAKER_01: But it's really vibrant.
30:28
SPEAKER_01: There's kids, there's art.
30:31
SPEAKER_01: And so it's a huge issue about how gentrification is going to be resisted.
30:38
SPEAKER_01: And in New York, the city wants to build a mega jail right on the outskirts of Chinatown.
30:43
SPEAKER_01: So the community has opposed that steadfastly.
30:46
SPEAKER_01: And Corky also documented that.
30:48
SPEAKER_02: And the city or other interests will do this thing where they say,
30:52
SPEAKER_02: well,
30:52
SPEAKER_02: let us build this mega jail and then we'll give you some money for a cultural project.
30:58
SPEAKER_01: You know,
30:58
SPEAKER_01: you bring up something that's very controversial because there are some people who
31:04
SPEAKER_01: believe that the Museum of Chinese in America took such money in exchange for
31:10
SPEAKER_01: supporting the jail.
31:12
SPEAKER_01: And that, frankly, Claire, is not true.
31:14
SPEAKER_01: You know, they had applied for a capital grant to renovate the museum and they received it.
31:21
SPEAKER_01: And if there was any quid pro quo, it was in the minds of the city.
31:24
SPEAKER_01: It wasn't in the minds of the museum.
31:27
SPEAKER_01: And the museum has come out in opposition to the jail.
31:32
SPEAKER_01: So there are some radical activists who want to blame MOCA for the jail and
31:39
SPEAKER_01: And I oppose that personally.
31:42
SPEAKER_01: I support the museum.
31:44
SPEAKER_01: I don't support the jail either.
31:46
SPEAKER_01: I think if you want to oppose the jail, go march in front of city hall.
31:49
SPEAKER_01: Don't march in front of one of our cultural institutions.
31:53
SPEAKER_01: And some of these activists have very extreme points of view.
31:56
SPEAKER_01: They say, well, you know, MoCA just wants to raise money.
32:00
SPEAKER_01: Well, I don't see how you're going to run a museum these days if you can't raise any money.
32:04
SPEAKER_01: So it's been very destructive.
32:07
SPEAKER_01: It's been very divisive in the community.
32:10
SPEAKER_01: I've been attacked.
32:11
SPEAKER_01: There have been open letters against the professors who support the museum,
32:15
SPEAKER_01: and I'm just like,
32:15
SPEAKER_01: you know,
32:16
SPEAKER_01: I can't be bothered with this stuff.
32:19
SPEAKER_01: But for various reasons,
32:21
SPEAKER_01: there's a new board and a new president at the museum who say they are committed to
32:27
SPEAKER_01: a new relationship to the community.
32:31
SPEAKER_01: I've been invited to help build that relationship, and I look forward to doing that.
32:35
SPEAKER_02: This is the kind of thing that happens in communities, right?
32:38
SPEAKER_02: I mean,
32:38
SPEAKER_02: you know,
32:39
SPEAKER_02: outsiders might think of Chinatown as this eternal thing,
32:43
SPEAKER_02: but it has been growing and changing.
32:45
SPEAKER_02: And the people who live there have been different over time.
32:48
SPEAKER_02: I think one of the things Corky's book documents is the different people who sort of
32:54
SPEAKER_02: embrace the category Asian by moving to Chinatown.
32:57
SPEAKER_02: So there is this change over time, which is, listeners, what historians like May and I do.
33:03
SPEAKER_02: There's also a sense of place that you referred to earlier, a touchstone.
33:13
SPEAKER_02: Chinatown is a touchstone,
33:14
SPEAKER_02: even if you don't live there,
33:16
SPEAKER_02: a place that reminds you of this past and the struggle.
33:22
SPEAKER_02: to thrive in America.
33:24
SPEAKER_01: Absolutely.
33:25
SPEAKER_02: So May, why should our listeners read this book now?
33:29
SPEAKER_02: I think regardless of where you are,
33:32
SPEAKER_01: what community you identify with,
33:33
SPEAKER_01: where you live,
33:35
SPEAKER_01: I think there's a lot you can learn from this book.
33:37
SPEAKER_01: First of all, visually, it's gorgeous.
33:40
SPEAKER_01: There's a kind of beauty and poignancy in the kind of photographs that Corky took, whether or not it's
33:49
SPEAKER_01: ordinary people living their lives or people lined up at a Fourth of July parade or
33:55
SPEAKER_01: people at a demonstration or people getting their heads bashed in.
33:59
SPEAKER_01: Corky had a very special kind of eye.
34:03
SPEAKER_01: He's able to capture something in his subjects that I think is very moving.
34:09
SPEAKER_01: And I think the fact that he was very intentional in all his work comes through right in that.
34:16
SPEAKER_01: So I think it's something we can all learn from,
34:19
SPEAKER_01: whether from an aesthetic point of view,
34:22
SPEAKER_01: from a kind of humanistic point of view of seeing our fellow humans,
34:27
SPEAKER_01: all their diversity and complexity.
34:29
SPEAKER_01: And it's also a social movement history.
34:32
SPEAKER_01: It's a history of the Asian American movement for racial equality and social justice.
34:37
SPEAKER_01: Most of the main struggles that we've been involved with for the past 50 years are
34:41
SPEAKER_01: chronicled in this book.
34:43
SPEAKER_01: So it's all those things.
34:44
SPEAKER_01: It's a social movement history.
34:46
SPEAKER_01: It's a history of Asian American diversity and change.
34:50
SPEAKER_01: It's a history about mothers and fathers and grandchildren and kids who want to have a better life.
35:15
SPEAKER_02: And that's it for today's show.
35:17
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35:18
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35:26
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