Updated 3 May 2013 adding display on The Asian American Movement from the exhibit.
As if to celebrate May Day 2013,
Gay Insurgent has
resurrected itself, if only as an image, but the magazine cover is now on display
through the mid-June at the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History
in Washington D.C., at an exhibit there.
It is a part of an exhibit celebrating Asian/Pacific American month!
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| Credit: Lawrence-Minh Bùi Davis |
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| Credit: Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center |
The cover is portrayed on a banner, one of 30
banners on display to commemorate the struggles of Asians in America, in the exhibit, "I
Want the Wide American Earth," named from a quote from Pilipino American writer
Carlos Bulosan.
The cover on display is from the Summer 1980 issue of the
alternative magazine I founded and edited. That issue celebrated the first Gay and Lesbian March
on Washington in October 1979 - and featured on the cover the huge cloth sign,
"We're Asian, Gay & Proud," carried by a small contingent of
queer Asians who had marched through D.C.'s Chinatown, a historic first, before
joining the larger march on Washington.
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| Credit: Copyright © Daniel C. Tsang |
I'm the mustachioed guy near the center of the picture, taken by
Steve Nowling, now sadly deceased. I remember it
took me three-months then to grow that mustache!
The first-ever such exhibit at the Smithsonian is curated by
Lawrence-Minh Bùi Davis, initiatives coordinator at the Smithsonian's Asian Pacific American Program, and editor in chief of
Asian American Literary Review. The exhibit will run through June 13.
Thereafter it becomes a traveling exhibit,
going around the country, including a destination in southern California, the
Japanese American National Museum, in Los Angeles, from 14 September to 1
December 2013. Eight colorful posters from the exhibit can be downloaded
here.
This is by no means the first appearance of
Gay Insurgent in
a museum. The
Museum of Chinese in America, located in Manhattan, features the same cover in its
core gallery (see below) after it reopened and expanded a few years ago.
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| Credit: Courtesy Flickr |
And KQED, the San Francisco public radio station,
featured
the cover in a write-up based on the UCLA Asian American Studies Center book,
Asian Americans: The Movement and the Moment, edited by Steve Louie and Glenn
Omatsu, in which I write about that historic march and the role of
Gay
Insurgent in subsequently documenting it.
Below, I have adapted what I wrote, "Slicing Silence: Asian Progressives Come Out," in Asian Americans to make it
available to a wider audience, to stir up memories of past struggles, and to
bring to the attention of younger readers the progressive history of our
movements.
Don Kao (third from left in photo), an activist from New York and I ended up organizing
the first gathering of gay and lesbian Asians-at the first National Third World
Lesbian and Gay Conference at Howard University in Washington, D.C. in October,
1979, the same weekend as the first gay March on Washington. The conference was organized by the National
Coalition of Black Gays.
By covering the conference in the magazine, I wanted to make
sure that this historic gathering would not be forgotten. Re-reading it, I'm
struck by how the cover, now on display in a national museum, stands out: It
features a photograph of the nine of us, female and male, some with arms
raised, most of us smiling, behind a huge banner: "WE'RE ASIANS, GAY & PROUD."
Inside was Audre Lorde's keynote address at the conference
("When Will the Ignorance End?") ,
resolutions from the conference, and news accounts after the conference.
For example, the accounts reminded me that we had heard solidarity statements from the Sandinistas in Nicaragua and socialist compafieros
from Mexico. The statement from the Consul General of Nicaragua in San
Francisco warmed our revolutionary hearts: "May from your conference be
born a movement that identifies, that unites and struggles with the liberation movements of all oppressed people."
It also contained my report on the formation of a
"Lesbian and Gay Asian Collective," when several of us at the
conference caucused and expressed the need to network after we went back to our
respective communities. There is as yet "no statement of principles to
guide the group," I reported, but clearly we felt the need to stay
connected as gay and lesbian people who shared the "common
experience of being Asian in North America."
Among the dozen or more Asians in our new "collective"
that historic weekend in D.C. was Mini Liu, a community activist, doctor and
later (in 1986), co-founder of the Manhattan-based Committee Against Anti-Asian
Violence. In 1974, as a medical student, she had begun reading Mao, and as she
later told an interviewer, "I was just really taken by the idea, the
vision of a different kind of society. And that's when, I think, I became more
consciously political based on heading for a certain point, not just a general
liberal notion of trying to serve other people."
Also reprinted in the magazine was a Chinese American
lesbian sister's talk at the conference, Tana Loy's "Who's the
Barbarian?" Expressing unity with other people of color, she spoke about
what had happened at the Asian caucus meeting: "Somehow, we felt-immediately
and immensely in tune with each other, because when an Asian
sees another Asian-they run away from each other." She attributed this
avoidance of ourselves in part to a "survival response, because for
decades of imperialist wars we have been atomic bombed, we have been napalmed;
we have been raped; we have been driven to suicide-and we have built this
country from the east to the west. And we have been called the barbarian!
...Who's the barbarian?"
She added: "But today we are going toward each other,
and we are sharing our strength with each other, and with all our brothers and
sisters here today. You know something? We're not that quiet and reserved Asian
....We're not that 'model minority.' Oh no, oh, we're silent, but why are we
silent? We're silent, even from each other, by the racism and the sexism that
exists in this country, that manifests itself in the fears and frustrations that
keep our own people in the closet as Asians and as lesbians and gay men. Many
of us cannot even come out for fear of deportation; and yet I know there are
many Asians who are going to be out on that street tomorrow, knowing that's a reality in their lives."
She explained: "In our short time together, a support
system has evolved from which we have drawn our strength, from each other and
from all of you here. And out of this strength we have collectively decided to
march together as Asians ... and you can be sure, you can be damned sure, that
those who oppose us will hear us, and they will hear us loud and clear."
And indeed they would, as about a dozen of us marched from
Howard University in the black neighborhood through to Chinatown and to the
mall, behind the banner expressing our pride, an historic first march by openly
gay and lesbian Asians.
At the march, we marched joined in solidarity with other
people of color, with the indigenous gays and lesbians leading the entire Third
World contingent, behind a "First Gay Americans" banner. We listened
as one selected to represent our group, Michiyo Cornell, a Vermont-based
Eurasian poet, addressed the huge rally at the Washington Monument, on the
theme, "Living in Asian America." Her talk was also published in the
magazine.
Saying it was the first time such a network had been formed,
Michiyo noted: "I am careful to use the phrase Asian American because we
are not hyphenated Americans nor are we always foreign-born women and men from
Asia. We have been in this country for over 150 years! We live in Asian America…”
She continued: "We are called the model minority, the
quiet, the passive, exotic erotics with the slanted cunt to match our 'slanted'
eyes or the small dick to match our small size. But we are not. For years Asian
Americans have organized against our oppression. We protested and were lynched,
deported and put into concentration camps during World War II. We must not
forget that the United States of America has bombed, napalmed and colonized
Asian countries for decades .... It could rape and murder Vietnamese women, children and men, then claim
that 'Asians don't value human life."'
Describing herself as an ''Asian American woman, a mother
and a lesbian,'' characteristics that are "difficult to put into a neat
package," Michiyo exclaimed that "I know that I live in the face of
this country's determination to destroy me, to negate me, to render me
invisible." She demanded "white lesbians and gay men" to think
about how they repress "your Asian American lesbian and gay sisters and
brothers," urging them to address their "white skin privilege."
She urged the crowd to realize that "the capitalist system uses not just
sexual preference but race and class as well to divide us .. .I would say that we share
the same oppression as Third World people, and for that reason we must stand
together or be hanged separately by what Audrey Lorde calls the 'noose of
conformity."' She urged fellow closeted Asian Americans to come out,
asking them to "consider how we become accomplices to our own sexual and
racial oppression when we fail to claim our true identities."
The excitement and solidarity we felt that weekend is
captured by Richard Fung's report, "We're Asian, Gay and Proud," in
the Body Politic, a gay liberation journal from Toronto. His report was also
reprinted in Gay lnsurgent.
Richard (the taller guy in dark glasses in photo), now well-known as the Canadian Chinese (born in
Trinidad) videomaker who has pioneered in documenting the gay Asian experience, wrote
that "if for many of us it was the first time we had spoken with other
Asian gays, we immediately recognized each other's stories." He offered a
stinging critique of existing gay society, "organized and commercial,'' is
"framed around the young middle-class white male. He is its customer and
its product. Blacks, Asians and Latin Americans are the oysters in this meat
market. At best we're a quaint specialty for exotic tastes.
Native people aren't even on the shelves." Fung noted,
"To make our voices heard, non-white lesbians and gay men have
organized." He concluded: "Washington was just the beginning."
Indeed it was. Richard went on shortly thereafter to found
Gay Asians Toronto, serving gay Asians in the Canadian metropolis. He had been
inspired by
Chua SiongHuat (second from right in photo), whom he had met for the first time at the march. A
Malaysian Chinese who had graduated from MIT,
"S.H.," as he was affectionately known, had just
founded, in the summer before the D.C. conference and march, the Boston Asian
Gay Men and Lesbians. S.H. had started the group with two lesbians and another
gay man at Glad Day Bookshop in Boston. A member of the radical Fag Rag
collective, he also wrote for the first gay liberation newsweekly, Gay
Community News.
He was profiled in Richard Fung's "Fighting Chance", a
documentary about Asians with AIDS or seropositivity. S.H. remained a strong
advocate of seeing Asians as sexual "subjects" rather than just
"objects." He would later argue that "there is nothing wrong
really with being a sexual object if you can also be a sexual subject." He
authored the definitive essay on gay Asians for the Encyclopedia of
Homosexuality, which came out in 1990. He
died of AIDS in August 1994.
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| Credit: UCLA Asian American Studies Center Press |
At the time many of us remained active in progressive causes
because we sought a radical restructuring of America. We rejected straight
depictions of us a psychologically impaired, or as incapable of progressive
work. We knew those stereotypes weren't true. We remained activists even when
we suffered racism or homophobia, because of this larger goal of changing
overall society. And we saw our struggle as part and parcel of people of color
("Third World" peoples') struggles. But in 1979, because similarly
inclined individuals were able to meet together, a critical mass was achieved,
and we were able to begin organizing publicly as both Asian and gay. That
effort continues, because the task of creating a society that meets basic human
needs remains unfinished.
I am glad I can see Richard again this weekend where his
latest documentary, "Dal Puri
Diaspora" (2012), about his love of dal puri roti growing up in his native Trinidad, will screen at the
Los Angeles Asian Pacific Film Festival, Sunday, 5 May 2013, at 12 noon at
Directors' Guild of America, 7920 Sunset Blvd, West Hollywood, CA 90046.
For more information about the book,
Asian Americans: The
Movement and the Moment, see the UCLA Asian American Studies Press
site. - Daniel C. Tsang.
Note that some hyperlinks are to licensed resources available at subscribing institutions.
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