Panel Reflection, C2E2 2019, Part 1 — “From Sulu to Rose Tico: Celebrating and Fighting for Asian-Americans in Geek Culture”
From Friday, March 22 to Sunday, March 24, 2019, C2E2, Chicago’s biggest and brightest pop culture convention happened at McCormick Place. This year, I had the privilege of going as a professional, and could not have been happier.
For the next few weeks, I’ll be providing some quick writeups on some of the panels, which is always a major highlight for me. Truth be told, I enjoy going from room to room and listening to professionals wax rhapsodic about aspects of industries I love more than walking the floor looking for bargains or hunting down signatures in Artist Alley.
I scheduled so many for myself that there was some overlap. Some I was unable to attend in full; I was unsurprised by the advice I heard on writing and entering the business of comics, which always seem to come down to the same three things (network, practice, be independently wealthy), but I was delighted to hear Marv Wolfman, Cecil Castellucci, Robert Venditti, and Tim Seeley talk about how much they liked Superman.
“From Sulu to Rose Tico: Celebrating and Fighting for Asian-Americans in Geek Culture” was not the first panel I went to that weekend, but it was the only one I made sure not to miss. It was at 11:00 am on Saturday, and I left my house shortly before 9:00 to catch the shuttle bus and get a front-row seat. It consisted of Hugo Award-winning editor of Uncanny Magazine Michi Trota; prison chaplain, professor, and one half of Sun Bros. Studios Wesley Sun; comic book expert, academic, and director of the Asian American Resource and Cultural Center at University of Illinois at Chicago Dr. Mark Martell; founder/director of bellydance and fire performance company Raks Geek and critic Dawn Xiana Moon; and author and Clinical Associate Professor at University of Illinois at Chicago Dr. Mary Anne Mohanraj.
Moon started what would be a lively discussion with a question that should be unnecessary but is always the first demand from those who feel somehow threatened whenever representation is brought up; namely, “Why are we talking about this?”
Trota answered first by explaining how this is something near and dear to the hearts of everyone present. “Representation is an ongoing conversation,” she continued, “not a race to the finish line.” There is not one, single story to be told for all Asian Americans. Martell brought up how he teaches Asian American representation in pop culture and how it’s important to push against stereotypes and fight for voices to be heard. As examples of films that foregrounded racial identities, he brought up Black Panther and Crazy Rich Asians.
Moon, who was born in Singapore, took hold of Crazy Rich Asians as an example of how the Asian community is “not a monolith.” The film received a very different reaction in Singapore, and was not seen as indicative of the experience of the South Asian minority that exists there in distinction to the Chinese majority. Mohanraj spoke of how she discovered science fiction as a kid, and was a big Spock fan, which led her to be a writer. She related her experience at WisCon in 1998, where she was only one of five people of color. “The history of genre literature is white presenting.” Mohanraj described how Samuel R. Delany would be literally whitewashed for his author photos, and how furious Ursula K. Le Guin was when an adaptation of her Earthsea novels included white island dwellers.
Mohanraj and Moon traded stories of how they would find books by Asian authors. Moon “used to be so desperate to see [her] own background,” that she would go right for the books authored by people whose names began with a C or L, as that was her best chance to find someone with a Chinese surname. Mohanraj joked that she bought any book with a red sari on the cover, “whether [she] liked them or not.”
Sun interjected that authorship is what interested him most, and that he was more engaged in the creator side. He said there was equivocation on what he can see, and how well-meaning people can still create bad representation. He joked how he would have to ask, “Who wrote that line?” whenever there was unnatural dialogue from an Asian character, stressing the importance of diverse writers’ rooms. He also mentioned how he supports stories written by Chinese people.
Mohanraj talked about how common it is to write as white characters, even as a minority, because that’s “writing what you know,” due to the lack of representation. Trota championed Greg Pak’s work, and how authentic it is to the Asian American experience. She agreed that it is important to talk about the creative side, and contrasted the first season of Iron First to the Doctor Who episode “Demons of the Punjab.” Mohanraj felt “Demons of the Punjab” did a “really good job” with exploring a difficult and nuanced situation and promoted the hashtag #ownvoices.
Trota detailed how she “didn’t have a lot of Asian friends until adulthood,” and Mohanraj shared part of her own history. Having moved from Sri Lanka at the age of two, she detailed how there was pressure to follow an “expected path.” She mused about the damage done from “fighting a dominant culture as well as our own.” Martell talked about how he was born in the Philippines, but, because he grew up in South Florida, a predominantly Hispanic setting, didn’t know he was Asian until moving to Chicago. “Being Filipino is an identity crisis.” He explained how they have been the victims of imperialism from Japan, America, and the Spanish and how he will “support anyone who looks like me.”
The problem of impostor syndrome as it related to the minority experience was brought up by Moon. As a member of a diaspora who grew up in a white community, she didn’t feel Singaporean for part of her life and lamented “throwing away lots of culture.” Mohanraj touched on the concept of “cognitive estrangement” and how useful that is for genre storytelling, including the variety of experiences in the human condition that do not get enough exposure. One can “use a story about space whales to talk about the refugee crisis.”
We can “bypass preconceptions with genre tropes,” she continued. She educated the crowd a bit on the civil war in Sri Lanka and talked about how she “translated it into space” for her own work, which allowed her to write about it “without causing damage” and to collaborate with the Sri Lankan publishing industry.
“All of us have collaborations,” Trota agreed, complimenting Mohanraj’s point. She elaborated about drawing in people, contributions, and networking opportunities, and how easy the internet makes this. She emphasized how important it is to open doors “for others, not just ourselves.” Moon and Mohanraj concurred, particularly with social media such as Twitter and Facebook. The latter mentioned a Facebook group for South Asian authors, and encouraged everyone to “make colonialism and globalization work for you.”
“We’re at a great con,” Sun reminded us, with a “big diaspora of artists and writers.” “Goliaths of the industry sit next to indie creators” with “much less of a barrier.” We “may be surprised by the diversity on display” by the talented people in Artist Alley, but also in the crowd of people.
Returning to the topic of social media, Martell praised how useful it can be to call out missteps and downright offensive actions and material. He cited as an example a Twitter exchange he recently had with a prominent writer about Psylocke. Moon chimed in about a recent revelation from Kurt Busiek on Twitter about Doctor Strange, to which Martell had alluded and upon which Trota commented, about how that character was originally created to be Asian and how Steve Ditko had never explicitly made the character not white.
“Unless a character is specifically called out as X,” Trota concluded, “whitewashing will occur. Everyone defaults to them being white unless you say they are not.” It defines “who we see as sidekicks, who we see as love interests.”
“[Main characters] can be minorities,” Mohanraj interposed, “but not too much of a minority.” She expressed excitement about Priyanka Chopra and Mindy Kaling, two very talented women who are unapologetically South Asian. Moon related how actors who are “half-something” can get caught in the middle.
“As happy as I am about representation,” Martell said, “most known [talented Asian people] are half-Asian or light-skinned.” He shared how he became aware of the emergence of new tropes for Asian American that break from historical stereotypical roles. This will be his next research topic to write on, in fact, and I look forward to reading the results.
Afterwards, questions were taken from the audience, which led to small explorations about everything from racebending Batman to how white creators can best tackle Asian characters. It was a wide-ranging and vital hour, and its points always bear repeating.
