I had promised to give a review of Janko's book once I finished it, and I had actually finished it a while ago but got side tracked by other issues and projects. However, a recent comment by a friend of Janko (click here) made me realize I should revisit this subject and weigh in on Janko's novel.
The first thing I'll say is that Janko is a gifted writer. His descriptions of the natural landscape of Viet Nam--the animals and plants and insects of the region of Viet Nam along the Cambodian border--truly made the novel come alive and gave a perspective to the war in Viet Nam (the American war as those in SouthEast Asia refer to this conflict) sorely lacking from other narratives (I hope someone will work on the novel in terms of eco-criticism and/or environmental justice). The novel follows two narratives, Nguyen Lu, the titular "Buffalo Boy" and Antonio Conchola, "Geronimo," whose lives eventually intersect. I'm not going to provide a summary here, if you want to know what follows you should read the book, it's a worthwhile read. What I will say is that I enjoyed the story and will be interested in Janko's other writings, if he continues his literary career, because I think he has a good eye for detail.
However, I never doubted the literary merit of this work--it's not why I was disturbed by the book winning this award (although I have to be honest and say that a book that was eligible for the award, Lois-Ann Yamanaka's novel Behold the Many is a stronger story; her voice is lyrical and haunting and polished (this is her sixth novel I believe), whereas Janko, as a first time writer, has a few places where I think he could use some more editing and revision). Let me repeat something I wrote in my April 28 blog post: I believe that writers should be free to write whatever subjects they choose. My criticism of this novel winning an Asian American literary award isn't about Janko's right to author a novel where he does not "match" the identity of his protagonist or any other "authenticity" arguments. Nor am I trying to impugn Mr. Janko's character--as his friend noted in the comments section of the April 28 post, Janko seems to be a man respectful of Vietnamese culture and Asian American politics.
What I am concerned about--what I already voiced in the April 28 post, is what the conferring of an Asian American literary award to a novel set in Viet Nam with a main character of Chicano background written by a white American man signals for the expansion of the category "Asian American literature."
Because after reading this novel, it is not clear to me what exactly qualified it for the status of "Asian American" other than the fact that one of its main characters is "Asian" (ie: Vietnamese) and the other is "American" (ie: Mexican American specifically) and that it is set in Viet Nam (an Asian country).
So this begs the question: what does it mean for a work of literature to possess an "Asian American aesthetics" because that's essentially what troubles me about this novel winning this award. It's not that I think the novel was poorly written or uninteresting or without literary merit. But in thinking specifically about issues of race, there are many questions I am left with that remain unanswered either by the novel itself or by the novel winning this particular award:
*Why was the American medic made to be a Chicano man? His ethnicity seemed to be important--the fact that he was not a white American. In fact, I interpreted both the reference to Germonimo as well as the continued references to Spanish and other aspects of California Chicano culture to be significant to understanding the character's personality and motivation, and a partial reason he is targeted by a white American troop member. So race seems to be playing a role in this novel--a recognition of racism if you will. But how this gets translated into an "Asian American" issue seems to puzzle me--not to say that Asian Americans shouldn't be interested in other forms of racism and race outside of their community, but in terms of marking or signaling a concern that is "Asian American" there seems to be no hint of that in the novel itself.
*Why the reference to Germonimo? Cross-racial and cross-cultural identifications abound in the novel--but I am not sure I understand the purpose of these markings and what the author is trying to demonstrate with them, other than an attention to marginalization and perhaps stereotyping/myth making.
*If there is no "Asian American" content per se in this novel, why was it up for consideration? Is Asian American literature now to be understood as any type of literature set in Asia that features an American character or penned by an American author? In which case, are novels written by Pearl Buck now to be understood as Asian American? Or Mark Salzman's The Laughing Sutra?
[By the way, Mark Salzman is a great writer and I love The Laughing Sutra as well as another one of his novel's Lying Awake--although I wouldn't consider either of them Asian American].
Ultimately what I think is bothering me is the power of representation. It's not that I believe my "voice" is any more "authentic" than a non-Asian American person's--especially given the fact that I often feel that some of my experiences are not necessarily typically understood as "Asian American" (ie: large extended maternal family from Jamaica that identifies as mixed heritage or in some instances mixed-race), even while others seem to be typically Asian American (childhood in the SF Bay Area). It's that finally we're at a moment when we, the Asian American community, as imperfect a group as that is, is trying to make itself understood, legible if you will, within the larger American (read mainstream white) culture and society--and understood in a way in which we are not simply the standard stereotypes of foreign immigrants or insulated and insular ethnic communities.
So having a book that seems not to have any discernible or explicable or legible Asian American content written by someone who does not "identify" as Asian American win an Asian American book award given by an Asian American association begs the question:
What does it mean to be Asian American?
And if the category has become so broad that affiliation with something Asian and something American qualifies, than what does this do for the state of Asian American political enfranchisement and social/cultural awareness in the U.S.?
