From the San Francisco Bay Area, calligrapher and anti-racist educator Ellie Yang Camp has now debuted as an author with her first book, Louder Than the Lies: Asian American Identity, Solidarity, and Self-Love. Being the daughter of Taiwanese immigrants, Ellie brings to the table what every Asian American needs to hear right now.
In the introduction, Ellie describes a realization she had in her twenties during a study program in Birmingham about the Civil Rights Movement. She was a high school history teacher located in San Jose at the time, and among all the fellow teachers who also partook in this program, she was the only Asian one. At one cafeteria table were the majority, white teachers, and at the other table were Black teachers, fewer in number. Ellie is struck with a question she had not quite experienced before growing up among the Asian enclaves of the Bay Area – should she sit at the white table or the Black table? The white table feels more familiar, but she wouldn’t have to pretend to be white at the Black table.
What does it mean to be Asian American when it feels so confusing being Asian American? Rather than being a how-to with all the answers, Louder Than the Lies is an honest discussion that strives to help Asian Americans understand their identity and place in the world more deeply. Ellie acknowledges that she cannot speak for everyone as there are so many diverse Asian American backgrounds. She hopes instead that the reader will be able to relate to what is said and when not, add on to what is being said as they read.
Being Asian American myself, Ellie’s book feels like a confirmation and a validation of everything I’ve experienced and observed in my life and everything I’ve learned taking Asian American courses at university. It’s like she went inside my head and wrote everything I would say if I were to write a diary for every day I’ve been alive. I’ve never really read a book where every page and point made was so reflective and real to my own life. I definitely got a stronger sense of who I am to myself, who I am to others, and what I can do going forward in our society. Seriously – if we could only read one more book in our lifetime, I would recommend this book to be the one Asian Americans read.
Louder Than the Lies is divided into 3 parts: “The System”, “Living in the System”, and “Dismantling the System”. The first part explains the system of white supremacy and how racialization in the United States leads Asian Americans to be where they are in the hierarchy – higher than Black people and other people of color as the “model minority”, but always lower than white people. The second part describes from the earliest history to the most recent instances of Asian Americans experiencing their race under this system of white supremacy. Through commodification, erasure, demonization, and indoctrination, the system makes us hate ourselves and our non-white peers, consciously and unconsciously uplifting whiteness. The last part tells us how we can stop upholding this system – take more control of our decisions rather than looking for white approval, recognize and unlearn our anti-Blackness to build solidarity, learn from Black and Indigenous people, and unlearn our self-hate by giving ourselves the empathy we deserve.
Ellie’s decision to premise the book on the white supremacist system is so important; it’s the root of why we feel so conflicted about our place as Asians in the US, why we can feel so Asian and not Asian enough all at the same time. Her openness when talking about anti-Blackness within Asian communities and how she has found realistic ways to resist anti-Black stereotypes in her daily life is commendable and sets an example for the rest of us. The book is a reclamation of the beauty, pain, and paradoxes that come with being Asian American.
