Yeung, Wai Sik (Wilson)
Asian American Studies 20B
14th Annual API Conference
On April 14th, ASUC and the ethnic studies department sponsored the 14 th Annual Asian
Pacific Islander Issues Conference, where I volunteered there for a day. As a volunteer, I was
responsible for lunch delivery and crowd control by manning the elevator. In fact, I rode in the
same elevator with the conference guesses such as Yuri Kochiyama and Helen Zia.
As a volunteer, I helped out the whole day. Luckily, I was granted some free time in
participating in the conference. Though I missed the two workshop sessions, I did listen to the
two guests speeches. In her speech, Yuri Kochiyama presented issues such as international
political prisoner rights, nuclear disarmament, and Japanese redress for World War II internment.
She even draws a comparison between the poor treatment that Japanese Americans received and
the racism that challenges the African American community. It was inspiring to learn that many
of the issues and challenges that Asian Americans face are quite similar.
Of the two speeches, I find Helen Zias speech more inspiring and easier to relate to. I
think its because she is the author of one of the readers of our Asian American Studies class.
Anyhow, Helen Zia presented a wide variety of issues that range from civil rights and peace to
women's rights and countering hate violence and homophobia. Specifically, she described in
detail her experiences as a lesbian and how the community assigned her the sexual orientation
that they perceived as correct. Immediately, I came to the realization that not only is there
issues that the Asian American community faces, but also internal struggles that the Asian
American community cannot agree upon. Gender issues and sexual orientation is the prime
example. In a way, Asian American homosexuals are placed on a double glass ceiling. Not only
are they suppressed by the racial ceiling, but also a sexuality ceiling that prevents them from
voicing their presence in the community.
Yeung, Wai Sik (Wilson)
Asian American Studies 20B
Asian American Film Festival: High Noon
As an assignment to participate in the 27thAnnual Asian American Film Festival, I
watched High Noon. In her movie, director Heiward Mak depicts a coming of age story of seven
teenagers in Hong Kong. Each character experiences unique struggles including dysfunctional
families, drugs, casual sex, and even violence. Through these themes, High Noon paints an
accurate picture of contemporary teenage life in Hong Kong. And, many of these themes that
director Mak raises are applicable to immigration life in America. Among the many themes are
gender struggles, generation gaps, and assimilation.
Although the themes of violence, sex, and drugs are presented in a different context in the
film, but similar themes are common products in immigrant families. For example, as authors
Tuyet-Lan Pho and Anne Mulvey describe in their article, Southeast Asian Women in Lowell:
Family Relations, Gender Roles, and Community Concerns, immigrant women are often met
with extreme sexism and domestic violence. As immigrants, women often held higher-paying
positions than men, making them the bread-winners of the family. To maintain the traditional
patriarchy, women are often mistreated by their husband with violence. Similarly, director Mak
portrayed the three woman characters as subjects who are locked within this patriarchic logic.
For example, in the film, one of the characters, Lolita, was presented as the victim of a
scandalous video that her boyfriend recorded during their sexual behavior. In the end, she even
committed suicide in light so extreme public opinion that directs blame onto her. Other
characters are also presented as no more than subjects of sex in the eyes of men.
Beside such implicit themes, the plot itself is explicit evidence of similarities between the
film and the issues that we study. In the film, one of the characters manifested the contemporary
issues that second-generation Asian immigrants face. His parents decide everything from college
major to how he spends his free time for him, regardless of his interest in ballad. By the end of
them film when severe brain damage turned him into a vegetable, his parents irresponsibly
regarded him as a burden. As for another character, he was portrayed in various fights, verbal
and physical, throughout the film. Through these plot details, director Mak conveys the
miscommunications between generations. This theme is beyond a plot when we observe the
Asian American community in America. Coming to America, many immigrants held high hopes
for their children, and that they envision their children to possess the most professional and highpaying jobs in the near future. In many situations, personal interests of the second generations
are often overlooked. As an immigrant from Hong Kong, my parents also held high expectations
for me to pursue a professional career after I graduate. Perhaps it is because of this intangible
pressure and expectation that I am applying for the business school next fall. At any rate, the
director takes this sense of false expectations and indifference of the elders onto another level.
Observing the violence and death that she presents in the film, I was inspired to learn that many
situations
are
worse
in
other
cases
of
immigration
experiences.
Furthermore, the theme of assimilation was also integrated into the film. Soy, one of the
characters, is an immigrant from main land China. He plays the role of a leader within the group
of friends. Yet, behind his back, we learn that the group of friends hide many secrets from him
and even make fun of his identify as a main-land Chinese. In many situations, he was alienated
as the outsider along with the transfer student who recently joined the group of friends. Again,
in this scenario, we can discover the theme of assimilation. Similar to Soy who attempts to be
integrated into the group of friends, many contemporary immigrants strive to be assimilated into
Yeung, Wai Sik (Wilson)
Asian American Studies 20B
the American society. While Soy fails in the film, each immigrant possesses a different success
and failure story.
