The Asian Voice
By Grace Lung
20 years ago, it was hard to be a weeaboo (a mostly derogatory slang term for a non-Japanese person who is obsessed with Japanese culture). If I wanted to buy a song I liked, I had to look for the next person going to Asia and ask them to buy a CD for me, or buy it online for $50 and wait a month. There were no budget airlines to Japan. Once in Japan, I would stock up on all the hard to get things from Daiso or Uniqlo. In the West, Asian products and media was part of a small and weird subculture.
Now, times have changed. I just go to my local Westfield for Daiso, or go online to get Uniqlo clothing shipped to me within days. I can just turn on Netflix and there’s an entire catalogue of dramas from all over Asia, with grammatically correct English subs! China is a rising superpower, and KPOP can top the Billboard charts. We’ve had an amazing run of Asian Americans in film and we’ll soon get our own Asian Marvel Superhero.
Never before have Asians been so visible, Asian media so accessible and Asian trends so acceptable.
The world is globalized, with Asia at the forefront. It’s all happening. As one book has put it, The future is Asian.
If the future is Asian, what is YOUR place in this future? What does ‘the future is Asian even mean? How did this make you feel? Is it the same as ‘the future is female?’ Recently, Eternity news had the headline “the future church is Asian” and here were some of the responses:
“I thought the future of the church is every tribe and nation?’
“JESUS will save the church, irrespective of which country. Jesus died for all people. We are ALL saved by grace and grace alone.
“All have sinned and come short of God’s glory ‘ Romans 3:23”
“The future of the church is heaven? Or am I wrong?”
The future is Asian…is it a good thing? Why do we rejoice? Jeremy Lin, Simu Liu, Crazy Rich Asians. What’s the big deal about being Asian? No-one ever talks about being white, or celebrating whiteness. Don’t we cause more divisions when we start talking about specific ethnic or racial groups? Can’t we just be people? Can’t we just be Christians?
I think for many of us, we don’t want to talk about Asian-ness because there are wounds associated with being Asian.
From one end, there are wounds from your Asian community. There’s those paper cuts. Those comments at family gatherings – you still don’t have a boyfriend yet? You look fatter. Why are you studying that? I can walk into Hong Kong and even though I grew up on TVB dramas and 10 years of Chinese school, I don’t feel belonging; I am foreigner.
Other of you have bigger wounds: daily comments that shame. What are you crying about now? Stop being so emotional. We sacrificed so much for you. You need to listen to me because I am your mother or father. These are emotional wounds. For a group like this, there will be some with physical wounds inflicted from family.
In Asian culture, it’s hard to speak out. Against our family who’ve sacrificed a lot to be here. It’s not just our biological families it could be our church families too. How could we talk back? There’s not much room for challenge. I can’t damage our family’s reputation. If I speak out, if I’m honest with my feelings. my family won’t accept me. I won’t belong anywhere. I will get punished for raising my voice.
On the other end, there are wounds from being Asian in a majority Caucasian society:
There are also paper cuts. You look like this other Asian person I know. Where are you from? Where are you really from? A question which comes from someone who can’t fathom that their home could be my home too. Then there are more subtle wounds. When I watched tv, read a book or learnt history, the stories were great but they weren’t about people like me. We think it’s normal to be invisible and excluded. If they did feature people like me, the person was often stereotyped, they were one dimensional because it wasn’t written by someone like me.
Then there are bigger wounds: I can’t walk into the baby formula aisle at a supermarket without feeling self-conscious. The opposition leader can say things like he doesn’t want Maroubra to become the Chatswood by the sea. Asians with PhD’s are taking over young Australian jobs. Perhaps you think the more I try work hard to blend in, the better it’ll get. But no matter how educated you are. If you don’t have a white face, some don’t consider you a real Australian, you are, to many, a forever foreigner. Whether you’re 2nd gen or 5th gen, you can’t change your face. You know, 2nd generation Europeans like Italians don’t have this problem. They aren’t perceived as a threat. What happens when you try and speak up against this hurt and discomfort? It might be considered un-Australian. If you don’t like it, leave. You ought to be thankful.
It’s not just that talking about our Asian-ness is painful. We’ve been taught that if we speak up our belonging will be threatened. There might be social consequences. We are expected to be thankful. For our parents sacrifice. For being in this country. What is it like when you might get punished for speaking up? We internalize it. We think its normal. We might even think deserve it.
One way we deal with these wounds and pain is that we can retreat into our safe Asian-Australian community. If you grew up in Melb or Sydney that can be pretty easy. We stay in our community and pursue security and upward mobility. If you come out, because you have to, to work with your Asian church uncles, or try to enter the corporate executive level leadership in Australia, it’ll be hard.
Another way we deal with wounds and pain is by assimilation. The more I fit into mainstream Western values, the less hurtful it will be.
When left undealt with, wounds fester. Hurt people, will hurt people. Asians between cultures can do this by elevating one culture as superior, and seeing others as inferior.
I walk into an area with lots of Chinese tourists and feel this niggling urge to speak really proper English – just so you know, they don’t get me confused with ‘those’ people. We push down and suppress our Asian-ness, our Asian community, to somehow prove our loyalty to the nation we call home. We may also minimize the pain of others. When other people are struggling, it must be because they didn’t try as hard as us. Those Sudanese, Muslim migrants or mainland Chinese, refugees or people on government handouts. We see them as outsiders or foreigners, who haven’t work as hard as us to get to our position as model citizens or children.
Broken people, if not healed, go on to hurt people, including themselves. Our wounds is a key part of what has formed us, it is part of our story. But we don’t have to be defined by it.
We need to own our pain. We need to acknowledge that we have wounds, whether big or small. The good news is, Jesus has come to heal. Jesus doesn’t need us to earn our belonging to our country or family. Or, to prove our worth as model children, or model citizens. In Jesus’s nation kingdom, we are “no longer foreigners and strangers, but fellow citizens with the saints, and members of God’s household.” (Eph 2:19). We are no longer on the fringe.
We are already accepted by Jesus death on the cross. We don’t need to suppress our hurt to join this community. Jesus welcomes our honest expressions of hurt and pain through biblical lament. Did you know 1/3rd of the Psalms contain lament? We have been given scriptural language to use and to raise our voices to Jesus who hears and doesn’t condemn. We can talk back without our belonging being threatened. God doesn’t punish hurting people, shame them or guilt them we to be thankful for his sacrifice and the opportunity to be saved.
Jesus knows what it’s like to be on the outside. In fact, like all Asians Between Cultures, he intentionally goes into the in-between space. Between God and man, rejected by both His father, and his people. By Jews and Romans. Because he wasn’t concerned about being accepted, he didn’t seek refuge or try to assimilate and please people. He copped criticism as he went to the margins, to those who were rejected by their families and the majority society. He has a special concern for them.
Asians between cultures around the world, we are yearning for community, for belonging, to be heard and known. They can find this in Jesus.
We need Jesus to minister to us in our brokenness. Do you need him today for this area of your life? Jesus has come to you.
Jesus also asks us to repent. In our hurt, we have elevated one culture at the expense of another. We may have idolized security and belonging at the expense of others. But we are all valuable, made in the image of God. Acts 17:26 says “from one man he has made every nationality to live over the whole earth and has determined their appointed times and the boundaries of where they live.”
Jesus died for all people, we were all made from the same man. There are none that are inherently better or worse. We need our Asian-ness, those wounds to be healed, to be redeemed. Then we can offer our healed selves, our redemption stories to God, so that ALL of ourselves can be used for God’s kingdom and glory.
Our Asian wounds, once a source of discomfort and pain, through Jesus, is transformed into a gift for the kingdom. It’s time for Asians to soar.
As Asians in between culture, now is our chance to speak, to raise our voices.
We rejoice this newfound prominence because we were not visible. Whether it was channel 7 in Australia, or TVB growing up, the English speaking Asian was on the outside. We rejoice because we were misrepresented. We were one dimensional side-kicks, kung fu masters, nerds or token Asians. We rejoice because we are being heard. Stories about our families, our communities, in all their multi-dimensional non-stereotyped ways.
There are no generic Christians. We are all ethnically situated. As we own what it means to be created by God as Asian and Australian, we can give ALL of ourselves to God, to be used by Him, our successes, but especially the discomfort or pain that we might have suppressed.
For so long, we have heard other people’s voices and other people’s cultures. Billy Graham, Tim Keller, Paul Tripp. Some of them have become our heroes, our role models. But they are not culturally neutral. You may not realize it, but they speak out of their own ethnic contexts too. But we resonate with them and they have blessed us. We should feel confident that our ethnically particular voices can also bless and resonate with others too.
The next global Christian voices could be Asian, it could be you. But not just in the Christian world, but in the secular world. How about the sporting world? The entertainment world? The culinary world? How will you speak in the places where God has placed you as his redeemed bi-cultural ambassador?
We don’t just want to regurgitate what people from other cultures have said. Let’s not use our voices to blindly elevate Western culture because that’s all we know. Let’s not use our voices to blindly put FOB culture and marginalized people down. We need to rediscover our unique perspective as Asians Between Cultures. In this way we reflect another facet of God’s goodness and glory to a world that is ready to hear it, that needs it. This pain is not going away any time soon. It’ll continue to come, from our family and our society.
Now that the tables are turned and that Asians and Asians Between Cultures seem to be on the rise, let’s not return the favour. The natural response is to fight back and demand people take responsibility for the pain they’ve caused, or retreat into a place of safety. There are certainly times that God calls people to do that. But more than that, we can draw on the resources of the Holy Spirit, as God sends us back into those uncomfortable places and reflect Christ in us, to love and to serve people who may still hurt us without being defined by pain and anger.
Only people healed by Jesus can go back to the places that gave them wounds and to love.
Back to Asia.
Back to Hong Kong, to Malaysia, to China, to Korea.
Back to the majority Caucasian place of study or work.
Not only that, as people who know the pain of being on the fringe and rejected, When we can connect with their struggle, we won’t minimize their pain and guilt them to be thankful. We can empathize and stand with others like this, not in a top down way, but side by side, as those who’ve experienced it themselves.
“Greater connection with our communities, though, comes through our pain, not our successes. Our shame, marginalization, and invisiblity – that is the connection.” - David Gibbons
We have a foot in both the West where Christianity is declining, and the East, where Christianity is rising. Christian Asians between cultures can play a key role in the next phase of world Christianity, to bring two distinct values and cultures together. Yes, in the Christian and missionary world, but also in all the spheres of life God has given us to speak into. But we can only do that if we have a redeemed sense of who we are. Not as generic Christians, not as deficient Asians or honorary Caucasians. Not elevating one culture over another.
But like Christ, who didn’t really belong anywhere, but was secure in his relationship with God. Jesus, a Jewish man from Galilee, from the Greco Roman world, could bless and save ALL nations.
Further Reading:
The Next Evangelicalism (Soong Chan Rah)
Raise Your Voice (Kathy Khang)
