Asian-Americans on the racism the coronavirus pandemic unleashed, and their identity
- Asian-American artists struggle to come to terms with their cultural and family past in 71 deeply personal letters which have been compiled into a book
- The book is a response to the racism and violence aimed at Asians in North America because of the Covid-19 pandemic’s roots in China
Ken Lum, a Canadian-Chinese artist, has written a letter to his late mother in which he apologises for the contempt he felt as a child in Vancouver for his Chinese roots and her cultural practices.
“I so regret kicking up such a fuss whenever you wanted to go and see a Chinese opera in Chinatown. I felt embarrassed by what I thought of then as noise, the strange costumes, and painted faces. I did not appreciate your insistence that […] I learn how to read and write in Chinese. I did not appreciate the strange medicinal brews you made me drink,” he writes.
The letter by Lum, Chair of Fine Arts at the University of Pennsylvania’s Weitzman School of Design, is among 71 deeply personal epistles in the book BEST! Letters from Asian Americans in the arts, in which people in the arts explore how it feels to be Asian in North America.
Ho’s own letter is a mea culpa addressed to all his former Asian students at the Rhode Island School of Design in the US.