 Media Credit: lai-yan tang Arar Han, BC ´03, spoke on her collection of essays Asian-American X. [Click to enlarge]
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In a time of increased turmoil over the campus' racial diversity, author Arar Han, BC '03, returned to her alma mater on Sunday to discuss her book, Asian-American X, which describes the often overlooked struggles of Asian-American youths living in the United States.
Han's book consists of a series of essays that tackle an identity crisis among Asian-American youths. All the essays were written by Asian-American high school and college students and then edited by Han and a co-worker, a recent Harvard graduate.
The book's publication came on the heels of a widely-circulated essay written by an Asian-American college student that lambasted the social habits of his peers, describing them as introverted, self-absorbed, and sexist. "Anytime you say something like that publicly, it's going to kick up some dust," said Han.
Largely as a response to that essay, Han received 170 different essay submissions for her project. Due to space considerations, only 35 could be published.
Before reading two excerpts from the book, Han outlined some of her frustration with the term "Asian-American."
That label, she argued, oversimplifies the complex stories of many Americans of Asian descent. If they made up a larger part of the population, Han argues, more fitting labels would become part of the lexicon. "If you look at the United States, those of Asian descent only make up 3 percent of the general population, so everyone is thrown into the same pot as an 'Asian-American.'"
The first essay, called "Label Us Angry" described a racially charged altercation between two Filipino teenagers and an older white male in Palo Alto, Calif. A traffic accident escalated after the white man hurled insults at the two teens, Jeremiah and Carlos, from his car, calling them "lowlifes," "hoodlums," and "chinks." After hearing that last insult, Carlos assaulted the man, who responded to the attack by spraying mace in his face.
As the white man drove away in his car, Carlos hurled a quarter at him, shattering his rear window.
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