I am Canadian. Really.

The CBC radio show, “The Current”, is running an in-depth report on “Mixed-race identity”. For those who know me, this is a subject near and dear to my heart. As a budding writer, it influences a large part of what I write about and how I face that subject. I sent in a series of posts in their forum on this subject. You can read what I said below.

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Where do I come from? As a Canadian of Chinese and Japanese ancestry I get that question a lot. I do not think it a rude or ignorant question. People are usually genuinely curious. They are usually shocked to find out that I was born in Montreal, Quebec (and was fluently bi-lingual until the age of six).

I am a third generation Chinese - Japanese Canadian. My parents (who were both born in Canada) married at a time when it was very "bad form" for Chinese and Japanese to date, let alone marry. Even now, their union raises eyebrows in the Asian community.

I have grown up in Canada and throughout my school years was (usually) the only non-white in my class. Others pegged me as "different" and I stood out no matter where I went. I felt very alienated and often wished that I was white. How could someone feel that they were wholly Canadian, when they were made to feel that they didn't truly belong? Claims that not only was I born here, but my parents were born here fell on deaf ears. I looked different, so I must be different and come from somewhere else. Not here. Not Canada.

This sense of alienation followed me even into High School. At an early age I had shown promise in the fine arts such as acting, but was told by well meaning teachers that even though I could be an accomplished actor, it was unfortunate that I was Asian and there would be little or no place for me in Canada. They were not racist or trying to be mean, they were only telling me the current reality - that there was no place for me. Needless to say, I gave up on that dream.

Slowly things changed and far from being resentful about my heritage, I began to embrace it. I found strength in my cultural heritage and a sense of belonging and identity that I did not experience in my earlier life. I began actively seeking out books and literature about my heritage and found very little. I began watching movies and interacting with others in my own cultural community. This process of discovery allowed me to grow, change and mature.

But even here, I did not feel that I completely belonged. I did not understand the language. I only had a minimal understanding of the culture and customs. I had never been to China or Japan. I had no shared history. And since I was both of Chinese and Japanese heritage, I looked "off" to many of them. They would smile and reassure me, but behind the smile was the knowledge that I would never truly understand or be a part of that heritage.

So I felt like a person in-between. Not really part of one world because of the way I looked, and not really part of another world because I had grown up westernized. My entire adult life has been spent reconciling these feelings of alienation that I have experienced on both sides of the cultural wall. My response has been to embrace all those things that made me unique (including those parts of me that have nothing to do with my culture). I continue to embrace my ancestry and to be proud of it. To do anything less would be to deny what I see in the mirror every day. At the same time, I realize that I do not live in Asia, that I was born and raised in Canada. I do not simply "feel" that I am Canadian, I am Canadian. And being Canadian is to celebrate all those cultural identities and take strength in them.

Today, I am happily married to a woman of Chinese ancestry (she was born in Asia but raised in Canada) and we have a two-year-old son. I will raise him to be a proud Canadian with all the rights and privileges that entails. I will also raise him to know where his great-grandparents came from and why it is important to retain that part of his background - to be proud, not arrogant about that background. And all my hopes go with him that he will find a place in his life long before I found a place in mine.

Updated: Now with links

You Can't Fix Stupid

I just returned from a noon hour seminar on humour in the workplace. Humour, as the speaker defined it, is "looking at something in a different way". She used pictures such as this one to illustrate her point. Every situation, just like this picture, can be seen in more than one way. If we can look at a situation differently, we might see the humour in it and thereby decrease our stress level as we attempt to deal with it. After all, we can only change how we react, we can't change other people.

Of course, I also liked her suggestion of imagining other people giving you grief, as vegetables - it takes all the power they have over you away.

New Year, New Blog

"A Writer writes ... always."

This quote comes from my favorite movie about writers block - Throw Momma From the Train starring Billy Crystal and Danny DeVito.

It also acts as my mantra pushing me forward as I begin my adventures in imaginative fiction that should have begun a lifetime ago.

So, what do I plan to write? Well, the short answer to this is: Asian Fiction - fiction with Asian protagonists, settings and themes.

Why Asian fiction? Well, it's the niche I am interested in and don't see much on bookstore shelves. Really. Especially in Sci-Fi and Fantasy. It's out there, but it is pretty hard to find. Look at some of the links for some of the authors I have read. Most of them are mysteries and a few are horror. Only a couple of them are fantasy. Some authors not even listed aren't even being published any more.

I noticed this trend in the 1980's when Dungeon's and Dragons was my Role Playing Game (RPG) of choice (you can throw the geek references at me here). Back then, there weren't many Asian themed RPG's and the majority were about Japan. And, I think it goes without saying, all of them were written by non-Asians. So when the Oriental Adventures supplement came out I lapped up each page as if I was learning long lost truths about my heritage. What opened my eyes was discovering how many inaccuracies, untruths and clichés riddled its complex text.

Then, I began noticing that there were next to zero fiction books with Asian themes on the bookshelves of major bookstores either. I suddenly had a need to find out about my own culture and I had very few resources to utilize to start looking.

You should know that I am half Chinese, half Japanese and all Canadian, so I know what growing up Asian-Canadian is all about. I still remember those Asian influences in my childhood. I remember going to my uncle's place in High Park and hearing kabuki music lilting from his record player. I remember eating sushi at an early age (and wondering what all the fuss was about when it became popular in the 1980's - after all I had been consuming it since the 1960's). I remember devouring my Uncle Jack's authentic Chinese meals which included fresh steamed fish with ginger, green onions and soy sauce. He cooked the fish in a wok and would pour hot oil over top of the fish to crisp the skin sending aromatic smells wafting throughout the house. I also remember ancestral shrines, Buddhist funerals and the odd red envelope filled with money on Chinese New Year.

But I hadn't learned much about Asian history. I knew a little. I knew about the Japanese internment in World War II, but my parents didn't discuss this much. And what about Chinese and Japanese history? The school curriculum didn't add much to my knowledge either. Everything I have learned about history I've learned on my own.

So I began my cultural exploration by seeking out books and RPG's with Asian characters, settings or themes. RPG's began changing as tastes changed. Things really took off when Asian cinema began to cross the Pacific and gain a foothold in mainstream movie theatres. Games such as Feng Shui and Legend of the Five Rings were published and became cult hits. Sure, they were still mostly inaccurate and cliché versions of Asia as seen through western-coloured glasses, but they were more accessible and a starting point to introduce people to Asian culture and history. So, I narrowed my focus in RPG's and began specializing in only running RPG's with an Asian focus.

As for books, slowly Asian fiction and even some Asian authors began appearing on bookstore shelves. As these books became more available, the internet and internet book sellers such as Amazon made finding the more obscure ones easier and less expensive and I was able to enjoy many excellent authors that may forever remain as niche writers.

By 2000, I had begun dabbling in writing, and what I wanted to write was what I had been seeking and reading about for over 15 years, Asian fiction.

So what can a Canadian-born descendent of Chinese/Japanese parents contribute? The area of Imaginative Genre Fiction such as Fantasy and Science Fiction remains relatively untapped and it is there I plan to stake my writing claim. Asian-style fiction can be just as fantastic as contemporary western fantasy. It has shape shifting foxes, horrendous demons, faceless apparitions, majestic dragons and spirit-talking shamans not to mention the odd talking monkey on a quest for enlightenment.

But as a Canadian-born descendent of Chinese/Japanese parents, I have a very different voice than those who might have been born, raised or lived in Asia. I have been raised in an Asian environment, tempered and formed by western ideas and sensibilities. Even my travel’s to these lands is limited. My voice, although my own, can only be an echo of an Asia that lives in my imagination. In those worlds, I have visited at length and never truly left.