Tag: identity formation

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Invisible Queerness

Being queer and Asian is “a very powerful identity.”

Creator:
Clover Lee (she/they)

Mainstream discussions around diversity and representation often revolve around culture/race/ethnicity; but it’s obvious that an intersectional approach is needed to better address and understand people’s experiences. What happens when race and queerness intersect? What kinds of experiences do they have that might be different from those who aren’t queer? In Clover’s paper, she explores the experiences of queer Asians in Vancouver to illustrate the power of such an intersectional identity, and also the challenges of embodying this intersectional identity while navigating an LGBTQIA+ space that is very White-centric, as well as domestic spaces that are very heteronormative. While it is challenging to have to navigate these spaces and deal with discrimination in multiple forms in numerous spaces, the people featured in Clover’s paper are resolute in their pride for their identity.

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A Tale of Two Vases

Creator:
Amalee Truong (she/her)

A common experience among minoritized artists is the internal struggle associated with creating art that is traditional to their culture. For example, a Chinese Canadian artist might want to showcase Chinese styles in their art because that is what best represents them; however, the question of whether one is “enough” of that minoritized culture to even use that style often comes up. It makes them question whether they have the credibility to use such cultural styles, and whether they would be seen as merely appropriating a style that they don’t have enough credibility to use. And does using that style create the perception that their usage signals representation? This all creates additional pressures on the artist to do a really good job, lest their potential failure reflects poorly on their entire community. With all of these pressures, though, it is still imperative that minoritized artists push forward and create a style that is their own. Dive into Amalee’s thought process as she discusses similar struggles while creating two ceramic vases to represent her and her brother. If you were in a similar position, how would you reconcile the need for representation with the worries about being too much of an imposter to engage in representation?

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“Where are you from?”

“Are you a ninja?”

Creator:
Anonymous

If there is one thing that racialized people have to do a lot as they move through society, it is having to explain their own identity, culture, and (presumed) history of migration. “Where are you from? No, where are you really from?” While the person asking the question might not have meant it maliciously, the fact that racialized people disproportionately have to answer this question suggests a fundamentally and systemically different perception that many in society have about racialized people. In particular, this perception involves the insidious assumption that racialized people don’t belong here, or that they can’t possibly be from here. Instead, they really belong there, and must be from there. Take a look at this video and wonder for yourself…when someone experiences these perceptions so often, how does this affect their identity formation? How does this affect the ways in which one might see themselves?

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Where is “Home?”

But what if home no longer accepts you?

Artist:
Meriwether Morris (they/them)

The idea of belongingness and home can often be an elusive one for diasporic folks. There is the oft-repeated and clichéd trope of existing in a liminal space, frustrated by being simultaneously both and neither. It being a cliché, though, does not stop it from being true. Compounding this struggle is the additional frustration of not knowing how to react when disaster strikes in one’s “heritage home” – does being away from that “home” automatically make one less? Does being away from the crisis take away one’s ability to claim to be? All of this comes down to the diaspora wondering about their obligations and belongingness. All of this is to say, for many in the Asian diaspora, one of the primary questions is, “Where is home?”

Click on the following to reveal the comic and subsequent artist’s statement (Note: PDF viewer not compatible with some mobile platforms; but it is available for download or to view via mobile PDF viewers)

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Forming identity as a Filipino Canadian

We need people who won’t give up on our country

Artist:
Anonymous

Identity formation is a difficult process for members of the diasporic community, including the Filipino diasporic community. As the anonymous artist discusses, there are a lot of dynamics to consider – Am I abandoning people from the Philippines? To what extent do I embody a Canadian versus Filipino identity? How do people think about my English – is it too Filipino-accented for me to sound Canadian, or is it too Canadian-accented for me to sound Filipino? Ultimately, the big question is “Who am I?” While it’s a cliché to talk about this question, it’s a cliché precisely because of how commonplace it is. The anonymous artist decided to use a novel medium to explore all these ideas, and to ask a very important question – in the Filipino context, how might the interplay of colonial and nativist influences affect the experience of acculturation among Filipinos migrating to another context with an interplay between a different colonial influence, progressivism, and cultural protectionism?

Click on the screenshot to access the Instagram account

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Con người có tổ có tông – Humans have origins

Như cây có cội như sông có nguồn – Like trees have roots, like rivers have headwater

Hosts:
YoungJi Kim 김영지
Tommy Nguyễn 阮武風

Guest:
Tiêu Kiến Vinh (Vietnamese heritage)

Surprise! Not all Asians are the same! (As if that even needed highlighting). As Kim and Nguyen discuss with their guest, it becomes abundantly clear that there is direso much heterogeneity among Asian commnities. North vs. South Korea, North vs. South Vietnam, heritage individuals vs. diasporic individuals, first generation settlers vs. multigenerational settlers, those who settled directly from the homeland to Canada vs. those who settled elsewhere first. All of these distinctions undoubtedly have an impact one’s identity formation and experiences of cultural adaptation. Take a listen as to how the different identities and experiences of the podcast’s discussants are brought to bear in this frank and interesting discussion. More importantly, the discussants challenged each other on disagreements, yielding an hour of conversation that covers so much ground. This certainly leads to a much broader question – with all this complexity inherent in cultural identities, how should we talk about and represent identities in a way that is inclusive, but not tokenizing?

Download here

Click on the following to reveal the artist’s statement (Note: PDF viewer not compatible with some mobile platforms; but it is available for download or to view via mobile PDF viewers)

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