Sunday, December 05, 2004
Writing The Book, Part 3 or 2.5: The Wait and The "Asian American" Question
This is the period that my editor Monique describes as "the quiet period". As she describes it, it's the time between the final filing of the book and the actual release when the hum of work drops to a whisper and you kind of sit on pins and needles wondering what's gonna happen next. Like the ten minutes before a theater artist or a performer gets onstage. You kind of tighten out your tie and smooth out your shirt a few too many times, stare at the curtain and block out the audience behind it.

I've reacted the way I usually do to this. I either do too many things or suffer these ridiculous mood swings. If I'm not working on something, I'm thinking too hard about the book. I grab the galley and read it, trying to tell myself I'm the dopest writer in the world, can't nobody can top my shit, moohoohoohaha! Or, much more often, I torture myself about how I could have structured a section better or fret over a sentence that wasn't tight, and pray that, if the punditocracy even deems it worthy of comment or review, they won't utterly destroy it and leave me to the discount bins. At the end of this exhausting cycle, I grab the Aiye-Keita album or the advance of this ridiculously hot Luaka Bop comp of West African funk, Love's A Real Thing, and just try to clear my head.

No way is any of this rational, but welcome to The Wait.

In the meantime, I'm still learning to get used to being on the other side of mic. I'm not a stranger to being there, but I was much younger and hot-headed then, usually without sleep, with about 400 other friends chanting or chained together, and about to be arrested.

Todd was kind enough to suggest doing the Hyphen piece (that's the part 2 of this irregular "Writing The Blog series, Part 1 is here.) as a collabo. Any chance to collab with Todd is OK in my book.

But then I'm still refining what I'm trying to say. Here's an interview done by Sabrina Ford at Newswatch. Sabrina was a great, provocative interviewer, and I just went bananas. Sound-bitey I'm not, yet.

The interesting thing about interviews is that there are always a set of unspoken assumptions that proceed between interviewer and subject. The subject assumes the interviewer knows certain things, the interviewer assumes the subject knows certain things. This is just a fundamental truth about human interaction.

That's why some interviewers get lots of stuff, and others get nothing. It was especially pronounced in hip-hop journalism at the beginning, where there was often a huge gap between what a mainstream news journalist might get and what a hip-hop journalist might get out of Rapper X. It's also why the longer you're in the interviewing game, the better you are. You begin to learn how to connect with your subject on an almost cellular level, and it shows up in everything from how you approach your subject to your body language to how and when you ask questions.

Being a journalist, your job is to tell the story to your audience. You learn to phrase questions or to poke and prod until you get the subject to say something that will be immediately transparent to your writing audience. As a subject, you never get told that this is what is going on in the interview, and in fact, the interviewer sometimes doesn't want to let you know--for fear it will impede you from being you. I actually think this is the source of 95% of all misquotes, and the subsequent feeling of betrayal that a subject might feel. The interviewer may have a much better handle onthe assumptions you're coming to the interview with, and if they are adept or unethical or just good (and who knows just where those boundaries fall sometimes), exploit those to the fullest.

I'm not saying Sabrina did any of that--quite the contrary, she's already a kick-ass journalist and the world won't be ready-and folks like me can't wait-for her to take over!--but I realized in reading the interview back how uncomfortable the "Asian American in hip-hop" question makes me.

My stock answer is this--folks who know me, know I don't play, and my resume proves it. It's a real, honest, and incredibly defensive answer. I might as well be telling the interviewer, THE FUCK YOU KNOW ABOUT ME PUNK--WHAT! It's probably right to be mad about lazy interviewers who don't do their homework and try to drop this on me, but lots of folks I like a lot--take Todd and Sabrina--ask it, and I owe a decent answer.

So while I don't think I'm going to come up with a good soundbite soon, here's a shot at trying to be, uh, you know, nuanced and shit.

Politically, I'm a product of 80s anti-apartheid movement and Rainbow Coalition progressive politics. That meant that some black nationalists used to call me a Asian-white-hippie-wannabe sellout back in the day. These days I've been called a nationalist-wannabe sellout by some more-progressive-than-thou-type students (who should have better things to do with their time, like downloading or something), and a black-wannabe sellout by some more-Asian-than-thou activists. Funny what a difference a decade or so makes.

Those kinds of labels used to really rankle me, but in old age, I've gained a teflon coating. It's best, I've decided, to take an independent, idiosyncratic, iconoclastic stance. Always tell the truth. Outside is a good place to be. That way you get to piss off both your foes and your friends. Eventually they all come back and want to party with you despite it all. So as opposed to remembering what you're not supposed to say and holding your tongue, all you have to remember on any given day is who not to invite.

Back to the point, these questions about being an Asian American in hip-hop are funny to me. I can no longer relate to the fixed notions of identity that they assume. My writing in the early 90s criticized Asian Americans for being caught in old paradigms of race that prevented us from recognizing how in some blacks' and Latinos' eyes we had turned from ally to enemy. These days, as hip-hop has moved beyond the rhythms of the African diaspora into Asian sounds--this is why I'm so into Robin D.G. Kelley and Vijay Prashad's idea of polyculturalism--it's strange to me that we'd still be discussing the culture in terms of '80s frames of identity. Multiculturalism is dead, long live multiculturalism, apparently.

This doesn't answer the "Asian American in hip-hop" question for those concerned that hip-hop studies and new forms of scholarship around hip-hop will lead to a whitening of the story, an erasure of the African roots of the culture. In other words, is the inevitable result of hip-hop studies the access of more non-Black scholars to the culture? (For now, let's dance around the Afro-Latino question, which actually puts a lot of this stuff to rest.) Does that mean we'll eventually have some white, Asian, or even Latino revisionist history, a Richard Sudhalter-style take on hip-hop?

That's the assumption of the question that makes me defensive.

And unnecessarily so. All my study of hip-hop has only led me into deeper into Afrodiasporic roots and rhythms and cultures and Black nationalist politics. And, at the same time, my study of hip-hop has only led me deeper into rejecting most fundamentalist notions about hip-hop culture as a whole. The deeper you study, the more questions you have to ask, the less certainty you have about anything, except for the beauty and survival of African cultures, the way they continue to transform and expand upon contact with non-African cultures, and the openings and transformations they create for those other cultures that come into contact with it.

That's not a soundbite, and it still doesn't really answer the question, and it opens up hella other questions, but it's closer to how I feel.

posted by Zentronix @ 2:04 PM   4 comments

4 Comments:

At 12/5/04, 11:16 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Jeff...

Two questions.

Are you worried more about how the book will be received in the mainstream, or by the hip hop audience?

Is there a particular audience whose opinion means the most?

_eric

 
At 12/6/04, 8:21 AM, Blogger Zentronix said...

Damn, another tough question there. I think at this point, both. It's a monster-in-the-closet kind of feeling. You just don't know how anyone will receive it. Also you gotta get over the fact that it's not yours anymore. People are going to interpret it however they want, whatever your authorial intentions were. I'm impatient by nature; The Waiting is the hardest part. Hey, that sounds like it could be a song...

 
At 12/6/04, 3:46 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Yeah, high expectations/hopes are a bitch like that. It's funny how writers can be their own harshest critics. Many a great writer has tossed a masterpiece in the fire.

_eric

 
At 12/6/04, 7:10 PM, Blogger ronnie brown said...

Jeff, no need to get defensive...you give credit where credit is due. When a culture is in full bloom, a "revisionist" can't get any traction. It's only when a cultural form is temporarily on the back burner (like Jazz) a Richard Sudhalter dares to step from the shadows. Black folk are still not used to having their cultural contributions appreciated so the "Asian-American in Hip-Hop" strawman may still be used as a hook in some reviews (much like the bogus African-American/ Latino question) but your respect for Hip-Hop's essential Africanness is what is going to establish your credibility.

and Robin D.G. Kelly has his finger on the pulse of the thing...polyculturalism is a nice dictionary word, but Black folk have been makin' somethin' out of nothin' or makin' something new of what's already on hand since we created soul food from throwaway scraps from the slavemasters kitchen table...

 

 

Previous posts
More Reasons The Yankees Suck
The Cleats Drop
The 974th Version of "Ikaw" + Blogreading Fun
Hooverism
Iraq, Inc.
It's Been A Long Time...
Radio Apex
R.I.P. Errol Thompson
More On The Back-Door Draft
R.I.P. O.D.B.


select * from pages where handle = "BlogLinks" #content#

Archives
June 2002
July 2002
August 2002
September 2002
October 2002
November 2002
December 2002
January 2003
February 2003
March 2003
April 2003
May 2003
June 2003
July 2003
August 2003
September 2003
October 2003
November 2003
December 2003
January 2004
February 2004
March 2004
April 2004
May 2004
June 2004
July 2004
August 2004
September 2004
October 2004
November 2004
December 2004
January 2005
February 2005
March 2005
April 2005
May 2005
June 2005
July 2005
August 2005
September 2005
October 2005
November 2005
December 2005
January 2006
February 2006
March 2006
April 2006
May 2006
June 2006
July 2006
August 2006
September 2006
October 2006
November 2006
December 2006
January 2007
February 2007
March 2007
April 2007
May 2007
June 2007
July 2007
August 2007
September 2007
October 2007
November 2007
December 2007
January 2008
February 2008
March 2008
April 2008
May 2008
June 2008
July 2008
August 2008
September 2008
October 2008
November 2008
December 2008
January 2009
February 2009
 

Email list

Add me to the Can't Stop Won't Stop email list, an irregular update of what's new in our world:

Submit