Racist advertisement
Dear Editor:
Please refer to your advertisement on page 9 of your Sept. 9-19 edition. If I simply change the word “Asian” to “Caucasian,” what would be your reaction?
“Are you an Asian a Caucasian American visual artist? Are you interested in promoting yourself and your work? The International Examiner is hosting our 3rd annual “Arts, Etc.” fall event where Asian Caucasian American artists can display and sell their work at no charge. Submit your work for consideration via your web site or email and attach JPEG photos along with a short bio to [email protected].”
I read your paper whenever I can. It truly amazes me that you would allow such a blatantly racially prejudiced advertisement to be printed in your newspaper, let alone have the International Examiner be the sponsor! How can you possibly point a finger at anyone now for being racially prejudiced?
I would suggest an immediate apology to your non Asian readers and artists in the community.
William N. Turnbull
Seattle
Frank Chin responds
This letter is a response to the article from the Sept. 6 – 19 issue on “Frank Chin” by Ken Mochizuki. We run it as is, without edits. -—ed.
To: Ken Mochizuki at the International Examiner, and writers in Seattle, Kevin Minh Allen and Koon Woon
Frank Chin says the Chinese American sensibility begins with Chinese children’s stories and Euro-American children’s stories, against Maxine Hong Kingston saying “feminism” justifies changing the children’s works of China.
The New York Asian American Writer’s Workshop sides heavily on Kingston’s side by giving her their first Lifetime Achievement Award on the 28th of Sept and holding a day of panels on her work and her feminism.
What? Asian American writers cutting off Asian children’s stories from their childhoods and defend the “American” childhood of Jack and the Beanstalk, Cinderella?
All the name writers in their society of AA writers gave their approval of Kingston’s changing the characterization of Mulan from the first poetic statement of female to male equality in 550 AD., to a tattooed victim of Kingston’s act of feminism?
Ken Mochizuki wrote in the International Examiner about my being in Seattle and telling stories. One of the reasons why I’m telling old children’s stories is Kingston and the tradition of David Henry Hwang, Amy Tan and the Writer’s Workshop.
I don’t think much of writing or journalism of any of Seattle’s yellow press. Society page treacle on the front page? Nobody knows how to write a headline. Tom Robbins at the Times showed a genius for headlines. He met David Ishii at the Times. All the papers (I don’t read Chinese so about the Chinese papers, I don’t know.
But Mochizuki ends his Examiner piece with me vs Kingston. Significantly he did not talk about the storytelling. By the by I saw Koon walk by the Panama and peer in the doorway. It would seem that a real newspaper would see that they have set up Chin vs Kingston on the question of THE BALLAD OF MULAN and feminism.
The proof as to who is real and who is fake is available to Mochzuki in Seattle. at the UW. Ask for Steve Sumida a professor of AALit in the AAS dept. and there’s Ron Chew of the “authoritative” Wing Luke Museum.
You live in the state where the yellows are the most politically active and accomplished. The yellows seem going backwards toward white racism with the “International District” timidity about taking a stand on yellowness while others are moving ahead, like Gary Locke and Ruby Chow.
If Mochizuki is curious about what “Asian-America” represents he will write about Kingston vs Chin on THE BALLAD OF MULAN and try to resolve it. He is an AA writer. He may survey the many AA writers around Seattle on the question of a society of AA writers taking a stand approving Kingston’s revision of a 550 ad Chinese text and history, to suit thought that didn’t come to be until 1789, and Mary Wolstonecraft’s THE RIGHTS OF WOMEN..
I hope he interviews you.
Frank Chin
via e-mail
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