Some examples of Asian Third Wavery

This is an expansion, likely part of a series, of my previous post on "Third Wave Asian Poco Asian Politik"

Just wanted to share just a few examples of what I've been reading/exposing myself to in considering a 'third wave' sort of expression.

The excellent Asian-Australian blog Peril 

(in reference, mockingly, to way that of waves of Chinese and Japanese gold rush migration to Australia and the USA were seen as 'Yellow Peril')...

And a sample of some emblematically 'third wave'-type articles, by Eurasian Sensation:

"Taking on an English Name"

"When White People Cook Asian Food"

"Shut the Gate Once you Get In"

"Racism and the Many Different Australias"

And, just for a bit of historicism on the specificities of difference between Asians in Australia and Asians in the USA (where Asian-Americans start to become hegemonic, at least for me, in representations of diasporic Asian folks in the English-speaking world... to the extent that we ever get a chance at hegemony):

"Comparing Asian-Australians and Asian-Americans"

Here is an excellent article by queer Shanghainese-Melburnian Lia Incognita, also on the same blog:

"Why I Have a Queue"

with this gorgeous quote, "For me, it’s the hairstyle of Yellow Peril. It’s what Chinese people looked like when white Australians were still shit scared of us, before all that model minority crap which is intended to divide people of colour from each other."

Lia Incognita also has an incredible poem, "Typography"... you can listen to it on the link, or you can read it, at the bottom of their tumblr:

http://lia-incognita.tumblr.com/

(a rendering of Lia Incognita by Aron Hemingway for the Melbourne Poetry Map.)

The Asian American blog, Angry Asian Man

is another excellent example of this 'straddling' of multiple loyalties; partially 2nd-wavey in formation (in its interest in representations of Asian Americans in mainstream white-dominated media), as well as with lots of 3rd-wavey zeal (sometimes ironic (re-)appropriations of Asiatic motifs in self-representation)

The excellent book, by gay Japanese American law professor Kenji Yoshino, called "Covering"

from his website review:

"Everyone covers. To cover is to downplay a disfavored trait so as to blend into the mainstream. Because all of us possess stigmatized attributes, we all encounter pressure to cover in our daily lives. Given its pervasiveness, we may experience this pressure to be a simple fact of social life.

Against that conventional understanding, Kenji Yoshino argues that the demand to cover can pose a hidden threat to our civil rights. Though we have come to some consensus against penalizing people for differences based on race, sex, sexual orientation, religion, and disability, we still routinely deny equal treatment to people who refuse to downplay differences along these lines. Racial minorities are pressed to “act white” by changing their names, languages, or cultural practices. Women are told to “play like men” at work. Gays are asked not to engage in public displays of same-sex affection. The devout are instructed to minimize expressions of faith, and individuals with disabilities are urged to conceal the paraphernalia that permit them to function. In a wide-ranging analysis, Yoshino demonstrates that American civil rights law has generally ignored the threat posed by these covering demands. With passion and rigor, he shows that the work of civil rights will not be complete until it attends to the harms of coerced conformity."

More to come.