Word: chins
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Last week in Sicily, Italian police arrested the country's top Mafioso, Giovanni Brusca, leading many Americans to wonder, Do Italian mobsters have colorful nicknames the way well-known U.S. mobsters do, like Vincent ("The Chin") Gigante and Salvatore ("Sammy the Bull") Gravano? In fact, Brusca is known as "The Pig." Other examples of Sicilian nomenclature...
...Asian-American activists of the 1960s and 1970s, the pressing issue was carving out a unique place in America for the Asian community: the finding of a uniquely American identity, one that was not simply defined by our Orientalness. It was no surprise that writers like Frank Chin turned to black culture as a model for Asian-American identity. Chin saw blacks as everything Chinese-Americans were not: independent, defiant of white culture, rejecting assimilation in favor of constructing their own unique identity. Chin and others sought to ground Asian-American identity in the unique historical experience of Asians...
...Chin, naming was vitally important. Just as blacks had appropriated formerly derogatory terms--from "Negro" to "black" itself--as consciously chosen emblems of racial pride and identity, Chin tried to turn the racist label of "Chinaman" into one Chinese-Americans could claim as their own. Instead, hyphenation carried the day. But "Asian-American" only replicates Chin's dilemma: for it emphasizes the duality that plagues conceptions of Asian-American identity. The theme of most popular Asian-American literature has been the conflict of cultures--the alleged impossibility of reconciling Eastern and Western values, the stories of children caught between their...
...find myself stuck with the duality, stuck with the label. And it is into this semantic morass that "African-American" now plunges black Americans. By choosing "African-American" over "black," blacks may give up that historical grounding that Chin envied in favor of the duality he feared. The attempt to return to African culture can only be a kind of tokenism, a search for the "authentic" in costumes and food festivals--just as I exercise my "Chineseness" in culinary exploits. The threat--as Chin and others saw--of trying to root onself in Africa is that it can become...
...accepting it as a free, democratic and independent nation and by making it clear to China that if it wants international respect, it must respect the rights of other nations. Taiwan has transformed itself into a unique and worthy nation. This new Taiwan wants liberty and recognition. MEI-CHIN CHEN, Editor Taiwan Communique Chevy Chase, Maryland...