iamasiam

Where The Soul Resides

Whether one elects to self transform towards full “Americanization” or to step out of the shadow of that dark cloud of traditional upbringing and familial imposition, it could be a long and weary struggle.  Never mind your bone structure, Western education and accelerated social immersion (real or second life).  There will always be that part of you that sticks out—good or bad, depending on how you play it.

To those just “off the boat”, this challenge is more clear-cut. To next generation Asian Americans, it could be more ambiguous.  Such is the dilemma faced by the character of Thao in Clint Eastwood’s progressive movie, “Gran Torino”. Of course, it helps that Thao comes from a more obscure cultural background with more recent U.S. rooting and thus with fewer template paths and role models to go by growing up in a Detroit neighborhood.

At best, Thao bides time by swinging with the belying forces that conjure his day-to-day existence.  One day, he unwittingly participates in a local gang initiation, an aborted crime.  The next, he half-heartedly subjects himself to traditional family impositions, including indentured servitude.  Otherwise, he prefers to keep to himself, far removed and detached as he could possibly be from these forces, and unfortunately, from the rest of the world.  In his first coming out, it is, darkly, to seek revenge.  As the main character Walt Kowalski (Client Eastwood) surmises, Thao will never find peace in this world if those forces subsist.

Ultimately Walt offers a sublime example that would significantly transform Thao.  Interestingly, it comes from left field—that is, from neither of the two conflicting forces.  Walt’s bold action emanates from confronting the serious conflicts that also haunted him in life.  That perspective offers universal ground that transcends ethno-cultural differences.

Multi-Cultural

There’s a myriad of intricacies other than racial or ethnic identity that govern us and the lot multiplies as the world shrinks at an ever-accelerating pace.  Factor in age, retirement, media access and exposure, sports, and shopping, for example.  Was it then truly non-kosher or just too pretentious for Tiger Woods to identify his own intricacy as ‘multi-cultural’?  Or, is it just human nature that less complex tagging should command broader acceptance—‘black or white’, ‘red or blue’, ‘with us or against us’?

My mother was a fan of Tiger Woods. In late retirement, my parents (now deceased) preferred to stick to just one TV network.  Discerning those tiny buttons on the clicker was too complex for their glaucoma-stricken sights.  That may have precipitated their increased exposure to Tiger’s winning matches.  Even so, Mom may have opted to shut the power or join my dad in his usual afternoon nap.  I find it fascinating then that she would have been so besotted by Mr. Woods.

True, Tiger has Asian heritage and she may have identified with him.  Still, in her frail eighties, and with no sports background (gardening was her chosen form of exercise in her heydays), my mom was apparently captured.  She watched Tiger’s matches whenever they were broadcasted on that channel.  She even asked my dad to scavenge for a putter in one of their estate sale shopping adventures.  (I have not been told whether she did in fact initiate any attempt to land a hole or two in their tiny living room.)

What part of me is Asian, and what part, American?  This complexity ranks as high in the level of my dilemma of understanding what part of my genome is borne from my dad and what comes from my mom.  I concur with Tiger when he finagled his way out of such verbose but less appealing propositions:  “The bottom line is that I am an American and proud of it."