Comparison Asian American History - Case Study Example

?Gary Y. Okihiro (1994), one of this country’s foremost American Asian scholars, defines Asian American history as more than a simple recounting of dates, events, and accomplishments. His definition of it requires a more complex retelling of the stories of the immigrants of Asia to America. He compares Asian American history to the histories of other people of color and to women, which require a different and untraditional kind of recounting. The examples in Okihiro’s book Margins and Mainstreams, especially of the chapter “Family Album History” (pp. 93-117) are full of examples of the untraditional recounting of Asian American history. He uses the metaphor of the family picture album, full of old pictures of family members that evoke both good and bad memories. He recognizes that this metaphor can only go so far, since instead of using visual pictures of his subjects and their families, he uses oral accounts taken from a variety of oral sources. Okihiro recognizes that he has “mixed my metaphors” (95), as he puts it. Instead of being an inferior way to present history as he intimidates, however, it is one of the best way to recount the history of Asian Americans. It is the use of oral history and of autobiography, a common way that the histories of people of color and women have been presented throughout history. Oral history and autobiography have traditionally been used to recount the histories of marginalized and oppressed peoples because they have not been able to access more traditional history. The slave narrative, for example, is one of the earliest forms of American autobiography. As African American scholar Joanne M. Braxton (1986) states, the purpose of the slave narrative was not only to present the oral histories of slaves in America, but as a tool for abolitionists seeking to end slavery. In many cases, the autobiographies of former slaves were accompanied by prefaces written by white abolitionists to provide them with credibility to white readers. Modern African American writers like Maya Angelou and Richard Wright continued the tradition of using autobiography to present their histories. Other minority groups in America have used autobiography and oral histories for similar purposes. This is certainly true of the presentation of the history of Asian Americans. Another common way to present the history of Asian Americans and other minority groups has been to present them in fictionalized forms. This has been done effectively by Milton Mirayama (1998) in his critically acclaimed, beautifully written, and poignant novel, All I Asking for is My Body. Mirayama wrote the first draft of the novel while a student at Columbia University. It was first published as a short story entitled “I’ll Crack Your Head Kotsun” and published in the Arizona Quarterly in 1959. The story became the first chapter of All I Asking for is My Body and was published in 1968, in a Hawaiian anthology. It was not well received at first, but received critical acclaim and became a cult classic when the University of Hawaii published it in 1988 (Kim, 2005). All I Asking for is My Body reads like a classic autobiography. The novel, including the title, is written in modified pidgin, but is readable by non-pidgin speakers. Mirayama seems to understand that he is writing more than just a novel, and that he is presenting Japanese culture and what life was like for Japanese immigrants in Hawaii in the years just prior to and during World War II. Consequently, he spends a great deal of time explaining his language use. The father of the main character Kiyo threatens him—“I’ll crack your head kotsun!”—Mirayama explains, “Kotsun doesn’t mean anything in Japanese. It’s just the sound of something hard hitting your head” (4). Kiyo also explains that as residents of the Japanese camp in their small town in Hawaii, they really spoke four languages: “…Good English in school, pidgin English among ourselves, good or pidgin Japanese to our parents and the other older folks” (5). All I Asking for is My Body, even though it is a novel and not a traditional history or even a traditional autobiography, fulfills many of the same functions of a history or autobiography. It fulfills many of the criteria for oral history as described by Okihuru. It is an oral history of a family, and describes many similar experiences of Japanese immigrants and their families living in Hawaii. Some critics believe that Mirayama’s book is as close to an oral history and autobiography as it could get; he grew up in Hawaii, on a plantation like the family he writes about in his novel. He, like Kiyo, was able to escape the severe poverty of his family when World War II broke out. He was able to serve the U.S. as a Japanese translator and like so many other Americans of the time, get an education under the G.I. Bill. In some ways, Mirayama’s way of recounting the history of Asian Americans may be more effective than traditional autobiography. Its effects are certainly the same—the recounting of the experiences of a significant group of Americans and of American history. His book, as Okihuru states, is an accurate and touching family picture album. Like autobiographies, it does more than tell the story of one family; it also recounts what it was like for scores of families living under the same conditions at the same time and place in American history. Works Cited Braxton, Joanne M. “Harriet Jacob’s Incidences in the Life of Slave Girl: The Re-Definition of the Slave Narrative Genre.” The Massachusetts Review 27:2 1986. 379-387. Print. Kim, Elaine H. “Defining Asian American Realities through Literature.” A Companion to Asian American Studies. Ed. Ken A. Ono. Malden, Massachusetts: Blackwell Publishing. 2005. 196-214. Print. Murayama, Milton. All I Asking for is My Body. Honolulu, Hawaii: University of Hawaii Press. 1988. Print. Okihiro, Gary Y. Margins and Mainstreams: Asians in American History and Culture. Seattle, Washington: University of Washington Press. 1994. Print. Read More