Palestine Is in Asia: An Asian American Argument for Solidarity

February 6, 2024 9:47 PM

An expansion of solidarity: Viet Thanh Nguyen, author of acclaimed works like The Sympathizer, explores what it really means to be Asian American now, and how the question of Palestine is relevant for Asian Americans.

This essay is also a broader lecture that is available on YouTube. Nguyen gained a bit of notoriety when the prestigious literary center 92nd Street Y canceled a scheduled appearance with him after Nguyen signed an open letter in October 2023, joining 750 other writers calling for a ceasefire in Gaza. In the lecture/essay, he discussesJeffery Paul Chan's short story "Chinese in Haifa" and its protagonist, Bill's, relationships with his Jewish neighbors, and the references to a massacre committed by members of the Japanese Red Army at the Lod airport in Israel.

posted by toastyk (7 comments total)

I learned recently that Iran is west Asia. I had no idea. Asia went from being huge to being HUGE.
posted by MonsieurPEB at 12:56 AM on February 7 [2 favorites]

Yes, folks in much of the Middle East—Arabs, Jews, Persians, Kurds—are Asians, though they're so transcontinental as to not always think of themselves as such. I see few Jewish Americans or Arab Americans identify as "Asian American," but that's probably because the term conjures a very specific image that most exclude themselves from it.
posted by Lord Chancellor at 8:09 AM on February 7

There is a new movement to use SWANA, a decolonial word for the South West Asian/ North African (S.W.A.N.A.) region, instead of using terms like Middle Eastern, Near Eastern, Arab World or Islamic World that have colonial, Eurocentric, and Orientalist origins and are created to conflate, contain and dehumanize people. Source: SWANA Alliance.

Re: Lord Chancellor's comment: it seems unlikely / incongruous that Jewish people whose families aren't from SWANA would identify as Asian; in my experience, Jewish people (both in the diaspora and in Israel) are more likely to identify as Ashkenazi, Sephardi, Mizrahi, etc. As for Arab Americans, they may be classified as white by the US Census.
posted by wicked_sassy at 9:11 AM on February 7 [6 favorites]

Reading this essay, my brain was asking in a voice in the background: "Tell me what side am I (should I) be on?" And then the answer is at the very end, the last sentence: "As for whom we should feel solidarity with, the answer is simple albeit difficult: whoever is the cockroach. Whoever is the monster."
posted by storybored at 10:57 AM on February 7 [6 favorites]

I learned recently that Iran is west Asia.

I’ve long referred to my European ancestry as Northwest Asian.
posted by los pantalones del muerte at 11:04 AM on February 7

The "Middle East" is not a global term. Indian news properly refers to the "Middle East" as West Asia.

As for solidarity, it's a tricky thing. A lot of the immigrant experience consists of trying to align oneself with the dominant group. And we live in a particular time when a lot of global politics seems to be embracing authoritarianism and making common cause with authoritarian regimes, and dominance has been somewhat globally homogenized. As a result, Asian American communities are less identified with resistance than they might have been in the past. The community more notable for Palestinian solidarity in America, as well as justice causes in general, is the Black community.

But thankfully there are many small Asian American movements and small groups of people fighting for justice that we can celebrate and nurture. The future is what we make it.
posted by splitpeasoup at 12:35 PM on February 7 [2 favorites]

I recommend watching the video lecture, in which Mr. Nguyen expands on some of the ideas in the essay. It's part 3 of the Norton lectures, in which he discusses "authenticity vs inauthenticity", "speaking as an other", and part 3 is what we're discussing, which is "the death of Asian Americans". There's been an ongoing discussion in Asian American literature/politics about how useful the term "Asian American" is, whether it's outlived its usefulness, and what kind of solidarity can be...I don't know if it's the right term but maybe reborn? remade? from the current political situation. See Jay Caspian Kang's the Loneliest Americans (which I have not read yet).

Nguyen's argument is that the term "Asian America" was only borne out of necessity by the violence inflicted on us Asian Americans in the first place - there was no actual need for Chinese people in the US to feel any sort of solidarity with, for example, Japanese people, until the violence imposed by the US state and its population forced us to form the political/cultural alliance that makes up Asian America. Because of this, he is saying that we should expand that sense of solidarity to the rest of Asia.

Anyway, it also brought up for me this roast between Hasan Minhaj and Ronnie Chieng, which makes some of the same points in much sillier ways.
posted by toastyk at 8:33 AM on February 8 [4 favorites]