Questions of Peace for Taiwan in Tonight's Presidential Debate
INVISIBLE NATION makes THE HOLLYWOOD REPORTER's first Oscar predictions list. Wen Liu, an important voice in our film, has a new book out: FEELING ASIAN AMERICAN! R.I.P James Earl Jones with LOVE
I was so happy to meet Wen Liu when I lived in Taiwan for the final months of filming and editing INVISIBLE NATION between July 2022 and February 2023. In our film, Wen helps audiences understand the significance of President Tsai Ing-wen’s win as Taiwan’s first female president, but what she says has a universal resonance for future female presidents everywhere. May America be next!
Here is my brief interview with Wen about her new book:
Feeling Asian American: Racial Flexibility Between Assimilation and Oppression
What is the book about?
The book argues that Asian Americans are not a coherent racial population, but they are made so through the psychological technologies of “racecraft.” These technologies aim to demonstrate the racial elasticity of the Asian American mind, including cultural essentialism, democratic governmentality, white ascendancy, and unconscious microaggression. They help construct a flexible racial identity that can demonstrate the wide range of cognitive styles, cultural practices, and, most importantly, race elasticity for the postwar USA as it strives to become a multicultural democracy.
What does it mean to “feel” like Asian Americans?
Because Asian Americans come from drastically different migration waves, histories, ethnic cultures, nations, and class makeups, the book argues that Asian Americanness can only be felt. Without a coherent origin story, what has been consistent is a sense of what Cathy Park Hong* articulates as "minor feelings"--or “non-cathartic states of emotion” that “occur when American optimism is enforced upon you, which contradicts your own racialized reality, thereby creating a static cognitive dissonance.” The feelings congealed into a consistent narrative of what I term "racial injury." That is, when Asian Americans feel hurt as a group, the feeling can solidify a coherent racial identity. While such a narrative can be powerful in forming a sense of racial solidarity and racial history, it can also become an obstacle for Asian Americans to dissect the more complex questions of internal power differences, the indigenous-alien-settler positions, and the constructed Black-Asian conflict/solidarity.
How is the book relevant to today’s politics, especially for US-China Relations?
I argue that it is inadequate to only look at Asian Americanness via a racial lens but also a geopolitical one, as the sense of racial injury of some Asian Americans by US society is more and more likely to be projected on the rise of China, especially when US-China rivalry becomes intensified. The emergence of Qiao Collective, Code Pink, and the general rise of Maoist nostalgia among the left-leaning Asian American communities. Without a critical examination of inter-Asia dynamics, the sense of racial injury may be fixated on the critique of the US empire. As we often see in the tankie leftist discourses in the US, the racial and anti-imperial rejection of the US, can lead to a dismissal of progressive social movements in Asia, especially those against Chinese imperialism, such as the recent movements in Hong Kong and Taiwan. The book hopes to complicate this picture, and asks us to reconsider racial politics in a domestic and transnational sense.
Bio:
Wen Liu is an Associate Research Professor at the Institute of Ethnology, Academia Sinica in Taiwan. She earned her Ph.D. in Critical Social Psychology from the Graduate Center at City University of New York. With a passion for interdisciplinary research, she analyzes transpacific geopolitics, queer movements, racial subjectivity, and national sovereignty from a psychological and affective perspective.
*Cathy Park Hong’s book Minor Feelings: An Asian American Reckoning is a must read and is currently being developed into a television series by Greta Lee, star of Academy award nominated Past Lives directed by Celine Song.
On the US-China diplomatic relationship front, this recent story struck a chord because we were filming in New York City when President Tsai visited in 2019 and that story is in our film INVISIBLE NATION. It’s sad, but sadly not surprising, to read that there were efforts on behalf of the Chinese government to BLOCK the Taiwanese delegation from meetings with US government officials on the visit. This story should not be twisted to contribute to anti-Asian hate, but it should be read with a sense of understanding for what Taiwan goes through on a daily basis in its attempts to be seen and heard and have a voice in international relations.
N.Y. Official Charged With Taking Money, Travel and Poultry to Aid China
This story is relevant to what Wen Liu is talking about in her book.
INVISIBLE NATION is honored and humbled to be on the list of Oscar Predictions via Feinberg Forecast: Scott’s First Read of the 2024-2025 Race
The first person I had to share the news with after my husband, Ted, was my mother. They know how hard the journey was, how many obstacles we faced and how much time and dedication we have committed over years to getting Taiwan’s story out.
In my film career, as a producer I’ve supported women directors looking at systemic racism and maternal mortality in America and as a director, I’ve focused on women in power or girls coming into their power because I know we have to see ourselves in leadership and support each other’s leadership, to show we can lead and lead well. I have directed documentaries about how democracy developed in the country of Taiwan, and not China and what the impact of US foreign policy was on each. Now I am entirely driven to ensure that we not only hold onto our democracy in America, but that after we elect President Harris, she is able to lead effectively and enjoy a long lasting presidency. I went to my first Democratic National Convention and will share more on that in future posts.
That the people of Taiwan elected their first female president in 2016, the same year in which the people of the United States had the opportunity to elect Hillary Clinton as president but failed to do so, shows the strength of Taiwan's democracy and the weakness of America’s. Unfortunately, as a White woman, I’m all too aware that we make up approximately 39 percent of the electorate, the largest voting bloc in America and that since the 1950s, White women have consistently, disappointingly voted Republican in presidential elections.
Making INVISIBLE NATION, I was inspired to learn from President Tsai and from Taiwan’s example of resilience and hope in the face of danger and despair, of truth and reconciliation in the face of lies, and disinformation, and of progress for women and minorities in the face of regression, discrimination and silencing of the same groups in authoritarian China and an increasingly authoritarian U.S. under Trump.
It’s a story unfolding now in the United States thanks to the campaign of a future President Harris who will usher in a new era in democracy and I believe, in foreign policy and peace for Taiwan. Shirley Chisholm, the first Black woman to be elected to the United States Congress, who ran for president in 1972, famously said, “When they don!t have a seat for you at the table, bring a folding chair.” Glynda Carr, president, CEO and co-founder of Higher Heights for America, has said that, “When Black women run for office, they not only challenge biased views of who can or should lead, but also disrupt perceptions of electability.” Black women leaders are building a new table and making sure that everyone can come to the table with a seat because when Black women enter the scene, they see and include everyone.
For all the little girls watching Vice President Harris in tonight’s presidential debate, I hope they will be especially inspired.
I saw STAR WARS when I was four and I will never forget the experience nor will I ever forget James Earl Jones. May he rest in peace. Thank you for a lifetime worth of movie memories.
And may the force be with Kamala Harris tonight!
Love everything about this post! I’ve just been in a long and difficult conversation about anti-Asian sentiment in the US starting in the 1800s, so it’s really cheering to get behind your tremendous efforts not only to raise our awareness of Taiwan as a nation in peril, but to rally your readers to support the election of the first woman president of the US-positive karma.